Duncton Rising (63 page)

But then Skua, transported it seemed by his mood of warning and threat of punishment, turned sharply towards the main gathering, leaned forward and, pointing his talon towards some moles to the centre-left, hissed, “There!”

“There, Brother?” cried out his fellow Inquisitors, beetling their brows and leaning towards where Skua pointed.

“There!” thundered Skua, leaping off the dais in his eagerness to root out whatever evil he had seen, and rushing in amongst the crowd until he stanced over a trembling Newborn, his sharp black talon pointing straight into the mole’s terrified eyes.

The gathering began to mutter and hum in a most foul and murderous way – the kind of mob sound the Duncton moles had heard before the strettening at Ludlow on their way to Caer Caradoc. But the sound was replaced by a collective gasp of alarm as Brother Skua wheeled round suddenly, pointed to another part of the chamber, and cried out, as if on a private journey of discovery whose successive stages were causing him increasing agony, “Or
there
!”

As the other Inquisitors back on the dais swung their talons towards the new point of corruption, Skua raced through the gathering, pushing moles to right and left to reach the place – and the mole – before it fled his talon. The victim this time was a large and robust male, but before Brother Skua’s inquisitorial gaze he broke down, saying, “No, Brother, I have not sinned, my heart is pure. The snake entwined my paws and rode upon my back but I cast it off. Brothers,” and here he turned to the gathering in general, “I cast it off.”

“Then where is it. Brother?” asked Skua with terrible intensity, “where is that snake? If you would be pure, point out the mole wherein the snake resides now.”

“Ah!” breathed Privet when they heard this grim development. “So I was right. This is a rule of fear, the rule of tyrant and dictator.”

“It was not always like this,” whispered Arum, evidently in distress. “Not under the Elder Senior Brother Thripp – in our young days our meetings were never like
this.”

“
But Brother Thripp started it?”

“No, Sister, it was never thus,” said Boden, almost pathetic in his shame at what was going on below and his desire to dissociate his master Thripp from all of it.

“Monsters grow from good intentions if they are not founded on the liberty of the Stone’s Silence,” said Privet.

Once more a hush had fallen below them as Skua awaited a reply to his terrible question. To the credit of the second mole at whom he had pointed the talon of doubt, he did not immediately turn to the nearest mole to say that that was where the snake resided, thus shifting attention and blame away from himself. Rather he wavered, looking about with tears in his eyes and saying in an agony of doubt, “I don’t know, I’m not sure, I am pure of the snake, and my brothers are pure...”

“
He
is not pure!” The voice came from the back of the gathering, and it was thin, snoutish, and accusatory. It was the voice of a mole well-used to finding blame in others, and knowing exactly the right time to declare it.

“Which Brother has seen the snake?” whispered Skua, stancing up and peering over the heads of others to see which mole had spoken.

“I accuse!” said the voice again and with a sudden movement of moles the speaker emerged from the mass at the back, while at his flank others held or pointed at yet another accused mole, who struggled to get free as he protested his outraged innocence.

“The snake resides in him and has devoured his heart and spewed it out as filth and doubt. He is corrupt. He is no brother to the gathering here.”

As Skua rushed to this new place of shame the accuser came quite clear of the others. He was small, he was twisted, and his back was as crooked as his cruel and malicious smile.

“It’s Snyde,” growled Maple, “our own dear Snyde. Trust him to get involved in this kind of thing.”

The accused mole struggled and shouted until at a command from Skua he fell suddenly silent. Skua and Snyde conversed in short sharp tones, jabbing pointed talons at the accused. Four heavy Newborns came to his flanks and led him down through the gathering towards the dais. His journey must have been terrifying, because not only did the gathering begin to chant “Snake amidst us’, whose sibilant sound in so many varied voices was like an icy wind through the branches of a dead tree, but on the dais the Inquisitors waited for him with their mean snouts and cold eyes.

While behind him the Chief Inquisitor followed, crying out, “See where the snake lurked, in our very midst. He shall be judged in the Stone’s Light, and if he be guilty, punished.”

“I wouldn’t have thought guilt came into it,” muttered Whillan.

“It has happened that a mole is acquitted,” said Boden. “But before this day is out some poor mole or other will be found guilty and punished.”

“Why else do you think they come?” said Arum cynically.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Maple knew Privet well enough to believe that she would not change her mind about leaving the Convocation before she had learnt what she could from it. Had Snyde shown immediate signs of having seen them, Maple might have been more determined to get Privet and the others to safety, but he had not, and there was still surely much to learn in Caer Caradoc.

But what he could do he now did, which was to take Boden as guide and safeguard while he explored the complex of tunnels in the rocks into which they had made their way, looking for escape routes and places of possible danger. He found that by taking a narrow and awkward route, involving some tight squeezes and strenuous climbing, it was possible to emerge on the surface virtually on the steep west edge of Caradoc from where, he already knew, escape would be easier than anywhere else. He knew this from his studies of the military texts relating to the classic campaign led by Gareg of Merthyr against the forces of the Word a century before, of which Caer Caradoc had been the centre. Indeed he knew Gareg’s
Strategy and Attack
almost by heart, as well as his much obscurer text
On Ending Wars
which that excellent library aide Pumpkin had informed him was scribed in old age.

When Maple found himself out on the deserted surface, with Boden keeping watch, he took the opportunity of getting to know the lie of the land. Escape was certainly possible down the steep west face of Caradoc, and if his memory served him, Gareg and Caradoc in their day had found a track which brought them right up behind the Stones at the northern end of the hill. Maple saw no reason for not using it to go down by if need be. While he was at it, he could not resist looking about the high wild surface of the hill to identify places Gareg and another fighter of those days, Haulke, had mentioned in their texts, nor could he help feeling the tragedy and sorrow that war, successful or not, brings to allmole in its wake. Looking across the pitted surface and rough winter grass of the high hilltop where he knew so many brave moles had died successfully defending the Stone against the Word, he could hear their cries more loudly and see their blood more brightly than when he first kenned accounts of the battle in the safety of Duncton’s Library. Deserted now, the place seemed too small and ordinary to have been the scene of so much tragedy and triumph.

“May their spirits be with us this night and coming dawn if we have need of them,” he whispered, “and may you guide me, Stone, to protect the good moles in my charge as best I may.”

But now the darkness was beginning to descend upon them again as in the great chamber down below the Newborns began to gather to themselves the evil forces of hatred of others’ freedom, and dogmatic faith in their right to judge them.

Maple had never led a single mole in battle, nor, even, had he had many personal fights, for he had always had an inner strength and authority that matched his outward size and agility and deterred others from attacking him. Yet he knew himself to be a warrior, and felt in his paws the itch to lead, and a faith that he had strength and courage of mind, and the decisiveness that military leaders needed, to bring others through to safety and triumph.

But Maple had more: he had doubts as well – doubts about the value of mere military victory if it was not followed by something more lasting. As he stared balefully across the hilltop, and Boden moved about, and peered down into the tunnels, to check they were unseen, he understood why it might be that Gareg of Merthyr had scribed the text
on Ending Wars
in his old age. Maple wished now he could remember more of it.

As he thought these things Boden came hurrying up to him and said, “Moles coming, and if I’m not mistaken it is the Elder Senior Brother Thripp himself, and Brother Rolt!” Lost in a world of thought. Maple stared impassively at the approach of Thripp, and felt no special surprise when the leader of the Newborns, leaving Rolt with Boden, approached him alone. Thripp came to him, his stare as bright and deep as it had been when he had talked to Whillan early that morning by the Stones.

“I am told you travelled with the moles Privet and Whillan to give them protection.”

“And learn of moledom,” replied Maple.

“And what have you learnt?”

“To have doubts,” said Maple. “I had thought to lead moles in any war that was necessary...”

“On Newborns?”

“On enemies of the Stone.”

Thripp nodded slowly, and stared across the killing ground Maple had been contemplating with such sadness only moments before. He turned and looked hard at Maple, who as he returned the gaze had the disconcerting feeling that this was a mole who knew him better than he knew himself.

“Mole, you were born to lead others for a time, and it may be that your hardest task is to learn when to stop. Simply stop. It has taken me a lifetime, and many mistakes which have affected too many lives, to even learn to ask myself about stopping, let alone to do it. I still think I have things to do, and moles to influence, but true greatness of spirit lies simply in knowing when to do nothing. Moledom will need you, for you have seen something of the monster to which I, Thripp of Blagrove Slide, gave birth. For my Caradocian Order
is
a monster now. You may see today its dark turn beyond adolescence into narrow-minded, self-centred adulthood. Moledom will need you, Maple, and moles will want you to help guide moledom to a better way; and then? Moledom will need you no more. Turn gracefully at that moment, as I cannot, towards the task of peace.”

“Stour, Master Librarian of Duncton Wood, believes the same,” said Maple.

“Ah!” said Thripp, “Yes. Truth is ever the same, whichever side a mole seems to be on.”

Maple did not know what to think except that he could not understand how so much that seemed bad had come from a mole who made those who met him feel good, and safe. But then...

“What of Chervil?” said Maple impulsively.

“Trust him,” said Thripp with sudden vehemence. “Whatever may happen in the struggle ahead, trust him. Through my son I saw the light of the new liberty, though I am discovering it too late. But what I made badly he may re-make well. Trust him. Maple, help him. He is our future peace.”

Maple thought of the dark and powerful mole that was Chervil, who had seemed to see everything with cold eyes, and wondered what peace could come from such a mole. Yet Privet, too, had seemed to have some faith in him.

“Can’t you stop all this?” asked Maple simply.

Thripp smiled sadly. “I shall try, you shall see me try in the molemonths ahead, but a mole cannot stop a storm by holding up his paw against the wind. He can only try to change its direction, and that I am already seeking to do. So trust Chervil, and trust yourself – though such advice to moles from Duncton is perhaps misplaced.” He seemed to hesitate for a moment before asking, “This mole Privet, Whillan’s adoptive mother. Was she born of Duncton?”

Maple shook his head absently and replied, “No, no, she’s from Bleaklow in the north.”

“Ah, yes...” said Thripp in a strange, peaceful way. “She is a remarkable female.”

“She is a remarkable
mole,”
said Maple, not liking the Newborn’s differentiation between the sexes.

Thripp smiled once more, warmly this time. “That may be, but I
meant
female. Now I must leave you; Brother Rolt and I have matters to decide. Oh... and if you are thinking that this may be the way to effect an escape from Caer Caradoc you are probably right. Are you aware of Gareg’s text?”

Maple looked surprised and nodded.

“Yes,” said Thripp mysteriously, “it’s what brought me here in the first place. Let us hope it helps fair-minded and just moles escape to fulfil their tasks of the Stone!”

He left, and soon after Maple called Boden over to him and they went below ground once more, through the twisting rocky tunnels, and back to the darkness of the Convocation.

By the time Maple returned to the others the Convocation had broken up into smaller groups, some of whom left the chamber, while the others, taking advantage of the greater space they now had, spread themselves apart from each other and submitted to individual haranguing by one or other of the Inquisitors.