Duncton Rising (53 page)

“Have you come to help me as you did once before?” said Privet.

“She is safe?” said Rolt, still cautious. He was clearly under great strain.

“She is,” said Privet.

“Then that’s one less complication. But we have little time, Sister... I mean Privet. If I may call you that now. It has been so long, hasn’t it, and we’re all older?”

Why Privet felt touched he should nearly use the title she had borne in Blagrove Slide she was not sure – perhaps because it meant he remembered those days.

“There is much I want to know, that I need to know,” said Privet. “You are well, Brother Rolt. But others... I would like to know, just something.”

They both knew she was referring to her pups, whose lives she had begged for and been refused.

“And my Brother Confessor...”

“Yes, yes, my dear, of course you want to know what happened to him. They are all well enough, what I know of them, and I want to tell you more, for the time for secrecy is gone, but this is not the moment. Later... later perhaps.” He said it with little conviction, as if he felt that there was no future, or none of which they could hope to be part. “Now listen, it seems that two moles at least wish that you escape from captivity this night. One is none other than Senior Brother Chervil who sent me here, for he has not forgotten his promise, and though he is not against Brother Quail, perhaps even for him now and against his father the Elder Senior Brother, yet he made a promise he wishes to fulfil – if the Stone allows him to. At least, so he says...”

“And the second mole?”

“Quail,” said Brother Rolt shortly. “Not that he wishes you to escape for long – just long enough for Newborn guards to be justified in hunting you down and killing you. Brother Quail feels that certain moles are best out of the way this night.”

A look of horror had come to Madoc’s eyes, but into Privet’s there came a philosophic resignation, as if this were the kind of evil nonsense of which she was getting very weary indeed.

“In fact,” continued Brother Rolt, “my “friend” Quail has sent me here now to aid and abet your escape – no doubt in his tortuous and unpleasant mind he is thinking that if I do then there will be good cause to eliminate me as well. All very labyrinthine, isn’t it?”

“It’s tiresome,” said Privet.

“Well now, what’s to do? I’ll tell you. You do escape, now, but you go by a longer way I will take you on, which Quail will not have been expecting, and when you reach the surface you will make for a destination which is the very last to which search parties will be sent: the Stones of Caer Caradoc. It is a steep climb, even a dangerous one, but we cannot change topography.”

The sound of returning pawsteps came to them, and with a final appealing look, and the comment that “Much depends on it! Follow me!” he set off with both of them close behind.

Although Privet lost all sense of direction whilst they stayed underground, for the route was tortuous and took them past occupied chambers, down narrow tunnels, and across great communal ways, when they finally surfaced into clear cold night she saw immediately where she was. For there, rising into moonlit nothingness with stars bright beyond, was the eastern face of Caer Caradoc.

“You know where the Stones rise?” said Rolt to Madoc.

“Yes, Senior Brother!”

“Go on then, go on. Hopefully moles will be waiting for you up there.”

“Which moles?” asked Privet.

“Oh, you know, Maple and Whillan. Whatmole else?”

“Weeth,” she replied. “Where’s he?”

“I have no idea. I can’t know or do everything, though sometimes it feels as if the moles about me from the Elder Senior Brother down expect it!”

“Brother Rolt...” Privet tried again to have him tell her something of the past that she had lost, and he must know about.

“Later, my dear,
later.
We’ll talk about all that when we have more time.”

“And when will that be?
Now
is the only time moles truly have.”

“Go on up there, go on!” ordered Rolt. “Save philosophy for
there,
and
him,
it can be the only hope they have.” He turned from them with a gesture that seemed to express the despair of a drowning mole, and dropped back into the Newborn tunnels and out of sight.

Privet stared forward, up into the dark, while Madoc peered to right and left, and then behind them, and listened, and looked fearful and eager to move.

“We had better do as he says,” she said, attempting to get Privet to move.

“We will, but I see no need for speed. I heard nothing behind us – and anyway, it’s what lies ahead that should concern you, Madoc.”

“I don’t want to be discovered now we’ve escaped.”

“I feel as if I have been running all my life,” said Privet, “and I don’t like it. In fact I have stopped it. I will not hurry, and if I did I would not get up that great hill without having to rest so long on the way that I might as well not have hurried in the first place.”

“Whether we hurry or not, can’t we go?” pleaded Madoc.

Privet sighed, and frowned, and then touched her new friend affectionately in the night.

“Come on then, my dear.”

“Who are Whillan and Maple?” asked Madoc as they went.

“You told me so many things and I told you nothing, did I? Well, then...” and as they began the long ascent through rough grass, and amidst the worn remnants of rafts of summer bracken, pausing now and then as Privet wished, staring about a little, and looking up at the stars and rising moon, Madoc heard something of Duncton’s tale, and of the journey to Caradoc that Privet had made with Maple and Whillan, and latterly with Weeth.

Their progress was slow, and they lost time at one point when, during a pause, they heard moles shouting and rushing about some way below them and they stayed still. During this halt, far above, too far to make out clearly, they heard a faint cry, which might have been a scream, and soon after a scatter of small rocks spattered down across their path.

“I have a feeling,” said Privet, “which is very comforting, that wherever we go, whatever we do, we will not be harmed this night. I feel as if I am not really here at all.” There was wonder in her voice, and curious cheer, potent enough to calm Madoc somewhat, and cause her to hurry Privet rather less than she had been.

A short while later, as if to prove Privet’s feeling right, they turned a dark corner on the climb, clambered around a protrusion of rock, and found themselves face to face with two dozing Newborn guards.

“Stone the crows!” exclaimed one of them when he saw them. “Damn me. Females! Not tonight if you don’t mind, not
this
night. Scarper. Bugger off. Get lost. And not up there!” And with a kick to Madoc’s well-formed rump he sent her and Privet back down the way they had come.

“Why didn’t he arraign us?” asked Madoc in wonder, when they had gone back downslope a little and out of sight.

“I should imagine it is because he is used to being “visited”,” said Privet. “We chose a bad night for love.”

“Love! You mean they thought we... and females below come..
. here?”

“
There’s more goes on here than you know, Madoc, more certainly than you knew to tell me, most of it harmless enough I dare say. Moles are good at scenting out the worst, as you have been; less good at scenting what is better.”

“Well!” declared Madoc, not knowing what to make of this, or quite how she felt about being taken for a “comfort” to a male guard in the midst of such danger; she did not know what to make of the progress of the night so far, at all. “What do we do now?”

“Go round the guards and continue our climb up Caer Caradoc, which begins to feel to me like a climb through the stages of life itself,” said Privet, more for her own benefit than for Madoc’s; still restless and apprehensive, she was already slipping off their path and contouring the slope northwards.

This second escape of the evening, their first upon the slopes, seemed far enough behind them when they finally found a spot to point their snouts upslope once more and begin to climb. In that time they had heard more rushing and shouting across the flatter ground below them, and guessed that some of it at least must be moles out searching for them. It seemed that Rolt had been right about nomole thinking that they would climb Caer Caradoc, though if the guards were used to females coming up to them (and this presumably was something a more innocent mole, like Brother Rolt no doubt, might not have known about) others might have guessed they could come this way. Other business was perhaps apaw, and fully engaging Brother Quail’s Inquisitors and patrols.

No sooner had Privet shared these thoughts with Madoc, and they had succeeded in climbing back to the level they had reached before the guards packed them off downslope, than they heard the sounds of mole coming up the slope some way behind them, though further across the hill.

“Time to pause again?” said Privet ironically. Madoc grinned, nodded and stanced quietly down – the Duncton mole’s calm was affecting her as well. As they waited and listened the ground about them lightened as the clouds across the stars thinned and shifted, and revealed a clear night sky and the moon.

They heard the approaching moles, and peering southward downslope they saw several great moles labouring upslope and doing their best to be silent, but not succeeding very well.

“They’re going straight to where the guards are,” whispered Madoc. “They must be a party out looking for us.”

She lowered her snout fearfully into the short grass, and then, still feeling exposed, slunk back in among some nearby bracken. But Privet stayed where she could watch, until the force of moles dropped out of sight into a slight fold in the ground, up about where the guards had been.

The guards’ confident challenge came soon after, loud and clear, demanding to know whatmole was about, and why, all in the name of the Order of Caradoc!

To Privet’s surprise there was no reply, and after a short pause the challenge came forth again, this time more menacing. Some instinct of natural preservation in Privet, that had nothing to do with the idea of being “invisible” and being especially safe that night, caused her to draw back in amongst the bracken where Madoc already hid. As she did so there was a third challenge, this time sounding rather desperate, and broken off halfway through into an ugly grunt of pain and surprise, followed by a shout, perhaps from the second of the guards, and a savage, attacking roar.

Then there was fighting, fierce and evidently frantic, and a voice, a rough wild voice, cried, “That one!”

There was a scream of pain, and the sounds of struggle grew louder, close at paw, then nearer still.

“They’re coming here,” whispered Madoc urgently. “What shall we do?”

What shall we do? Privet found herself staring up through the bracken and on up the silvery slope of Caer Caradoc towards where she knew the Stones must be. All her life, she and moles about her had constantly been asking what must they do, what must they do, and then, before they really found the answer, striving to do it...

Privet felt her calm, her friend as she now thought of it, return: nearer, more powerful about her, everything to her.

“We let things be,” she whispered quietly. “This night it is all we will do, all we must do, let things be.”

The struggling moles were suddenly almost on them, the scent of their angry fear preceding their rolling bodies and wild thrusting paws. One broke free, and reared up for a moment, and Privet and Madoc could see it was one of the Newborn guards who had earlier turned them back; he fled across their sight and crashed his way down the slope and away, blood shining black on his flank in the moonlight.

The other, the one who had spoken to them in so jovial and friendly a way, almost fell out of the darkness on to them, his breathing fast and desperate as three great moles followed him, fierce and terrible, buffeting, pushing, trying to gain a hold to finish him off. He broke free and turned as his friend had done to try to get away but tripped and fell forward, his paws crashing about the clump of bracken where the two females hid, before his body thumped down painfully upslope on the grass beyond.

With a great roar a mole moved out of the melee and placed a massive paw on the fallen mole’s chest to hold him down before raising his other paw preparatory to striking a killing blow. The light of moon and stars shone on his face with horrid clarity. His brows were furrowed, his eyes angry, his mouth open, his face all shadows and light.

Madoc saw him, and screamed.

The mole beneath him raised a futile paw to protect himself.

And then Privet spoke.

Calm? Aye, she was calm. At peace? She seemed as peaceful as a lake in a still winter’s dawn. But never, ever, had she in all her dream thought to meet her love again in a nightmare such as this.

“Rooster,” she said, her voice quiet, her eyes still, her heart so sad to see the mole she once loved come to such bloody murder, no better than the Newborns. “Rooster, you cannot. This you must not do.”

He turned slightly and stared down at her with eyes that seemed those of a mole who had long since lost himself Yet he knew her. He stanced back as if afraid, his raised paw falling to his flank, and that which held the Newborn to the ground easing, seeming almost gentle now.

“Oh, Rooster,” she said again, and all was still. He was reared up in the light; she stanced amidst the dry bracken. The Newborn, suddenly free, turned, rose, stared, and ran – all no doubt in but a moment of time, but there, then, it seemed like all time had slowed, and faded away as he fled. Then time returned.

“Rooster,” she had said, but in a voice that was more than mole. It was as if the earth itself had finally spoken to him, or the night sky. Behind him, his companions, grike and mole alike, large and wild, desperate and ready to fight anything, swayed, pushed, shushed and were still as well.

“He let him go,” whispered one. “He let the Newborn bastard get away!”

Rooster turned to him slowly, his stare silencing him, and then the great mole looked at Privet again, his head bent and fretting in the night, seeing her, and the moonstruck slopes of Caer Caradoc, and the starlit sky rising behind; his mouth opened to speak, but at first he could not find the words.