Duncton Rising (29 page)

“‘You cannot speak to me, to a Brother Confessor, thus.’

“‘I am their mother and as I cannot go to them this is the last I can do for them. Before you harm them, Brother Confessor, turn your snout towards the Silence of the Stone and ask for the Stone’s guidance. The pups are not yours to mould, as you have moulded moles like me.’

“‘They are —’

“‘They are not yours.’

“‘Sister Crowden —’

“‘My name is
not
Sister Crowden. It is —’ and I stopped. I could see the anger mounting in him, but it was well under control, as you would expect from a Senior Brother. Such control is a formidable and frightening thing which the male Newborns no doubt learn from a young age and it gives them strength, and a power to command. As I stared into his eyes I felt my own strength weakening, not yet in spirit, but in body, and I knew that my last reserves were almost gone and that if I had anything left to say that might influence him for the good of our pups I had best say it.

“‘Promise me they will all live,’ I said.

“He hesitated, and I knew the mortal danger some of them at least must be in.

“‘The Stone will —’

“‘Put your talons on the names of our pups I have scribed, and promise.’

“He stared at the scribings he had just kenned but did not move. ‘The male will live to glorify the Stone,’ he whispered.

“‘Promise they
all
shall live,’ I said, with almost my last strength. ‘If you do not, Brother Confessor, you are nothing before the Stone – nothing.’

“The chamber swayed and darkened about me, and as I tried to hold his gaze, I heard him say softly, ‘You know, Sister,
I
would not harm a single hair on their bodies.’

“‘Promise,’ I whispered with my last breath, ‘for our pups are more than us, and one day... one day we must go to the Silence. Go not with the shadow of their robbed lives upon your face.’

“I remember seeing his paw reach out towards the wall, and his eyes staring at me, and his mouth opening, but nothing more, nothing more. However hard I try I can remember nothing more of him, or of that cell.”

“But later, Privet, later?” said Whillan urgently.

Privet shook her head. “There was no ‘later’ for me in Blagrove Slide. The next I knew I was on a long, dragging journey through tunnels I had not seen before, being half carried, half pulled by the Brother Assistant. I remember that I cried out to him to stop and let me rest, but he only whispered ‘Sssh!’ and I thought I was being taken to my pups, but I was not. On and on I was led. We rested only once that I recall, if it is a true recollection. We seemed to be in the shadow of a portal, and what I saw there a mole such as I would not be likely to forget, and nor would
you,
Whillan! I saw a library the like of which I had never seen before, nor have since. There
were
rows and rows of identically made texts, their covers birch-bark, all thin, all neat. The place was well-lit and clean as well. No nooks and crannies, no scholars hunched over ancient texts, nor scribes busy editing new ones: just texts, and not a mole in sight.

“Was it a real library I saw in Blagrove, or a dream of endless obedient brothers and Confessed Sisters, turned into endless texts all made to be the same for ever more, and safe, a place cleaned of transgressions by doctrinal moles? That’s what I think I dreamt or saw... until it ended, and the darkness came back and the running went on down a tunnel into nightmare, and I awoke on the surface beyond the confines of Blagrove Slide. The Brother Assistant was stanced over me.

“‘Sister,’ he commanded me, ‘go far from here and never return or try to, or think of doing so. Go south or east. You must go
now
.’

“‘My pups —’ I began.

“‘Sister, speak not of this and all your pups shall find favour with the Stone. Your Brother Confessor wishes it. But speak not of this; go now, and never...’

“‘All’ he had said, and it was enough to send a surge of joy and gratitude through me – the unreasonable gratitude a victim feels who has been given a mite of comfort by her oppressor. But it made me believe that I could turn and go, knowing I had done all I could for my young; they were left with a chance, even if they were in the grip of the Newborn moles.

“I had but one more thing to say to the Brother Assistant, and in saying it I finally found myself again: ‘Tell the pups their mother’s true name!’

“‘I know not your name, and I
should
not know it!’

“‘It is Privet, tell them
that,
Privet of Crowden.
Tell
them, mole.’ And with that I left him, and did not look back.

“Instead I trekked off into the last of the summer years, as low as a mole could ever be, to a state of shocked wandering, a kind of living oblivion. Did I meet other moles? Perhaps. Did I enter other systems? Perhaps. Did I pause awhile in lonely places along the way, and watch the seasons advance, and see the autumn come? I think I did. Once or twice I think I came across the Newborns, and when I did I turned from them as I turned from the Brother Assistant that last day at Blagrove Slide, without looking back. I preferred not to even think of them, for to do so was to remind myself that they had taken part of me.

“Sometimes in those long moleyears I wept for moles I had known, and the pups I had lost. Sometimes too I asked myself that question
he
had asked of himself. Why me? What was there between us that was meant to be, and which the Stone made happen? And why, when those questions came, did my mind turn again and again to the nature of Silence, and the search for the Book of Silence? Perhaps the power of the task I had set myself in Beechenhill sustained me, for lost though I was within myself, and numb though my feelings were, beneath it all remained the drive to carry me to Duncton Wood, as if it had always been my destination.

“By November I had reached Rollright, but when I discovered there were Newborns there I turned away again, and wandered on. I was rarely troubled. Whatmole noticed a thin, strange, vague female, who looked middle-aged, and worth nothing at all? Nomole heeded me, and I felt invisible as I journeyed on. Sometimes I whispered as I went, asking myself what Silence was, and where I might find it, and why my snout always brought me back towards Duncton Wood.”

“And did you come to a conclusion about Silence?” asked Weeth.

Privet paused and thought about the question, and when she replied she did so slowly, as if drawing on deep and well-considered thoughts on which she had long pondered. Indeed, to add to the variety of “Privets” they had witnessed that night, from scholar to mother, from prudish librarian to Newborn lover, there now came forth another – a Privet who had begun to discover the peace of mind that enabled her to speak with authority and grace on matters of the heart and the Stone.

“The question moles should really ask when evil befalls them is not, ‘Why me?’, nor even, ‘What is the purpose of the Stone in this?’ But rather, ‘What talons of truth and faith has the Stone given me by which, now that I am in darkness, I may proceed back to the light?’”

Weeth allowed a slight smile of acknowledgement to play across his face, a sign that he felt that this was indeed an important question, and more relevant at the present hour than any but he and Privet yet knew.

“Make no mistake. My experience of the Newborns was an experience of evil, yet evil in disguise enough to confuse me, and to leave me wondering if I was in darkness at all. At the time I was not so philosophical or capable of detachment as to ask the crucial question I have raised now. Indeed, until this very moment I never asked the question so clearly of myself before, but I think it is one we must all ask ourselves in the coming times of darkness: ‘What strengths have we that will aid us in reaching the light again?’

“Remember: the task I had accepted was the pursuit to the very end of the search for the Book of Silence. Perhaps where the wisdom of the Stone most deeply lies is in directing moles into circumstances which force them to ask, and to answer, questions they would otherwise be reluctant to raise. So I was directed to Blagrove Slide.

“We all want an easy life, or hope for one. What I had in Blagrove Slide was an experience so shocking, and so searing, that I would never again believe that life can be easy. Pleasant perhaps, joyous, fulfilling; but never easy. And for many moleyears, until now indeed, I lost all confidence in myself as mole.

“But as I have talked tonight of my long journey, and come at last to the trauma of my time at Blagrove Slide before I ended my travels in Duncton Wood, I have begun a second journey, which is that which has taken me out of the darkness of my life until now into the light of acceptance and love: the love of moles like Fieldfare, and Master Librarian Stour, and Whillan here, and my other friends. I see now, for the first time, that there can be, or can have been, no great Books without such journeys as these, nor any scribing of them unless it be by moles who have made such journeys. I know now that I may still have some way to go along the path which I started on so long ago, and from which I found respite for a time in Duncton Wood.

“And what of my journey to Duncton? It ended a few days before Longest Night when I reached the cross-under on the south-east side, and passed through it on to the Pastures whose slopes lead up to the Wood.

“I looked up and saw the great beech trees, all leafless and tossing in a storm of winter wind, and I came slowly up. There, at the edge of the Wood, I turned and stared back as if to look across the moledom I had journeyed through, and say goodbye to all my former life: to the Moors, to Rooster, to Hamble, to Cobbett, to my pups in Blagrove Slide. If they lived they would be so changed and grown I would no longer recognize them, with only their names scribed on a wall, and for ever in my heart, to record what they once had been before they became Newborn.

“Then I turned into the Wood, and Fieldfare was there to welcome me. And welcome me she did, and led me to a new life, and gave me time to find myself. I joined a system to which I feel I have given but little, so lost have I been in the darkness of forgetting what I was.”

A sudden gust of wind caught the surface where they talked and when it had passed by they knew Privet’s tale was done – at least, so much of it that related to the past. The rest had yet to come, and each knew he was now a part of it.

PART III

Into Darkness

Chapter Fourteen

The following day they found themselves approaching a second and larger patrol of Newborn moles and realized that they were now very near to Evesham, and to discovery by the Newborns after so long journeying unobserved.

“This may well be it,” said Weeth. “One and all, now may be our last chance to retreat.”

“We’re going on,” said Maple.

“You’re going on,” said Weeth, “but
I
will not unless you tell me if you accept me as your companion. You’ve had these days of travel in the Vale to judge me and now you must make up your minds. You’ve seen me as I am, for better and for worse, and —”

“Mole,” said Maple, “I speak for all of us when I say we want you with us. We have no choice, but even if we had I’d choose you as a companion on the way!”

Weeth seemed much touched by this, and blinked his eyes as if about to cry, though no tears could be seen at all.

Whillan asked, “What would you have done if Maple had said no?”

“I would have gone over to the other side, of course,” said Weeth matter-of-factly, “as Maple knows, that’s why he speaks of having no choice. Mind you, I would have regretted betraying you, but a mole must...”

“... take his opportunities where he can?” suggested Whillan with a smile.

“Young mole, you are learning fast, and I rather think that what you have learnt may be the saving of your life one day, as it has been of mine in the past. The study of opportunity – what a rich, worthwhile field that is! But look, we have been seen. Observe the humourless aspect of the Newborn patrol! See their joyless eyes! Thrill to the sterility of the purpose of their paws!”

It was true enough, the patrol had seen them and, shouting to others nearby, a good few Newborns were bearing down on them with ominous speed and intent. Weeth kept up his commentary for a little longer before breaking off and turning to his adoptive friends.

“Weeth pledges himself to you and yours. Weeth’s years and months and days of non-commitment to anymole but himself are done! Weeth is
yours.”

“
Beware, Weeth,” said Privet gently, as the first Newborn arrived, “for the Stone may turn what you think of now as opportunity into the very destiny you doubt, and it may ask much of you. Remember, if that happens, that in us you have three friends who will give you loyalty in return.”

“Well!” declared Weeth, unable to say more, and with a sudden brightness to his eyes that certainly
was
tears.

He sniffled a little and, without being asked, pushed forward towards the first Newborn. Raising his paw in a benign but imperious way said, “Hail, Brother in justice, truth and good intent, take us to your leader!”