Duncton Rising (7 page)

and that demands clear decisions. That is why the Elder Senior Brother Thripp has pronounced that the libraries of moledom must be cleansed of the taints and stains of adulterated texts.”

“I have said as much for many a year,” said Snyde smugly, “but in this of all libraries, presided over by Stour himself, you would hardly expect...”

“Yet he has favoured you with advancement,” said Chervil, eyes narrowing as he pondered the implications of a thought that had just come to him.

“He could not deny my talents,” said Snyde. “Stubborn unbeliever he may be. Brother Chervil, but I will admit that he promoted talent where he saw it. Now we must consider how to censor the Library.”

“You are willing to destroy all profane and impious texts?”

“Did I not direct your brothers to Rolls, Rhymes and Tales and tell them what to do?”

“True, you did. It is a pity the mole Husk died as a result. I have noted that you chose to remain in hiding while the deed was done. We Newborns like to stance up and be counted.”

“It would be unwise for me to be seen to be involved in the destruction of such texts, or to have harried Keeper Husk. Some moles harboured a liking for that has-been.”

“That ‘has-been’ was found dead by the Stone,” said Chervil.

“The Stone has judged him then,” said Snyde indifferently.

“And the texts he collected all those years? All gone?”

“Not one remains. I checked through what was left after the storm and personally destroyed what little had survived.”

“Good,” said Chervil with an approving smile. You win our confidence.”

“I wish to take my rightful place as Master Librarian here,” said Snyde. “My only interest is in a reformed Library.”

“And library aides like Pumpkin, of whom you were dismissive just now? Can you rely on them? He was the one who was with Keeper Husk when the brothers went to reform him, was he not?”

Snyde shrugged and then frowned, as if feeling suddenly that he must assert himself.

“You are well informed. Brother Chervil: Pumpkin was indeed there. I interviewed him myself later, not letting him know of course why I did so, and expressing due sorrow that so many texts had gone. I am satisfied that the Master had sent him to Keeper Husk himself and in being there he was only doing his duty. You may not understand that humble though such moles as he are, library aides are not easily found – not good ones. They save time, they know their texts, our work could not be done without them. I made it clear to Pumpkin where his loyalties now he: to me. We will need such workers while we cleanse the Library. After that... they will be dispensable.”

“Good, good,” said Chervil. “But I trust you will not be so possessive of your new domain that you will not willingly make available moledom’s greatest library and its holiest of texts to the scrutiny of the greatest Caradocian scholars and divines?”

“The Stone’s will must be done,” said Snyde.

“And you trust this Sturne? You are satisfied that he can deputize for you in your absence?”

“I trust him to be for ever subordinate. In any case, he has expressed a willingness to be Newborn which appears genuine. He will do.”

Chervil blinked, “A dangerous trust. Moledom is led, and always was, by moles who were once subordinate.”

“Like me!” said Snyde, confident again. “I have bided my time and earned my place. Sturne is not made of such stuff as that.”

“And you think you wall return as Master here because...?”

“Because the Master Librarian cannot long survive his foolish venture. It is mere hubris, an attempt to live again the glories of his past when he alone summoned and carried the Conclave of Cannock. No, he cannot return to Duncton Wood as Master.”

“No,” said Chervil, “no, I don’t suppose he can. The Stone will pass judgement on him. He would have done better to stay in Duncton Wood. Elder senior Brother Thripp has made clear that the time of such moles as he is over. This place...” said Brother Chervil, looking about uneasily. For a brief moment he even looked vulnerable.

“Oh, a mole gets used to it,” said Snyde. “Now tell me straight, when shall we depart? I
am
impatient.”

“Soon, I think. We are expecting certain of our brothers to return to Duncton Wood to begin their work of revision here.”

“Here?”

“In our great Library, the Library of which one day you will be Master.”

“What moles are these?”

“Some Brother Inquisitors of Caradoc, three in number I am told. Trained moles, who will know what books to make more prominent, what books may stay, and what must be destroyed. They are on their way from Rollright, where they have been doing similar work, and they will direct Sturne in what to destroy and what to. save. This will be the last major library in moledom to be revised.”

“They will surely need me.,. yet I trust I
will
be able to go to Caer Caradoc?”

“Initially their work will simply be to make a record of what they find here, and check what records you have. Librarians, particularly those of ambiguous faith like the Master Stour, have a habit of not listing texts which others might find objectionable. Why, there was that scandal at Beechenhill when a Brother Inquisitor proved beyond reasonable doubt that the Librarian there had inclinations towards the Word, and harboured many of their most corrupting texts.”

“Yes, I have heard something of that. The Librarian concerned was named Cobbett.”

“Yes,” said Chervil, adding with cold menace in his voice, “and a substitute was found for him. No matter, the situation here in Duncton is rather different, and now the Master Stour has chosen to yield up his power to younger, more right-thinking moles, if only by default, I think that our Inquisitors will in the end, with your co-operation, make things satisfactory with the minimum of trouble.”

“Was there trouble at Beechenhill?” asked Snyde, his head twitching a little nervously, less out of fear – he was not a mole easily made afraid – than from the effort involved in attempting to weigh up the new situation he was in at the same time as protecting for himself what, no doubt, he hoped would soon be the domain in which he was officially in charge.

“Beechenhill has a reputation for resistance,” said Chervil curtly, “and is not an easy system to control if its moles do not wish it.”

“The scholar Privet was at Beechenhill for a time, I believe,” said Snyde, hoping to sow a small seed of doubt in Chervil’s mind about that mole.

“Yes,” said Chervil, “I had heard.”

“You constantly surprise me by how well informed you are. Brother Chervil, for a mole —”

“For a mole as out of the way from the centre of Newborn affairs as this?” said Chervil. “Yes, well... it is wise for a mole to be informed. But to present matters; the cataloguing of texts here will take some time and can be satisfactorily done while you are away in Caradoc provided you appoint a competent mole to deputize for you – and that you seem willing to do. After that you
will
be needed. Brother Snyde, but by then you will be back from Caradoc.”

“And you, Brother Chervil? Will you be coming back, or will your duties here have finished?”

“Elder Senior Brother Thripp will instruct me on my next task when we get to Caer Caradoc. I trust I will come back here in time. There is... something about Duncton that I like. It is a gentler place than Caradoc.”

His voice was almost wistful, but Snyde was never one to notice such subtleties, and did not seem to now, nor ponder what the implications of such wistfulness might be for himself.

“Yes, yes, it has its charms I suppose, but if it had no library it would be nothing at all and I would have long since gone elsewhere.”

“I suppose you would,” said Chervil, eyeing the chilling misshapen form before him and wondering how Duncton could have produced such a mole. Joy, supposed Chervil, was not a thing that had ever lightened Acting Master Snyde’s narrow eyes.

“The Brother Inquisitors should be here soon,” said Chervil, wishing to bring the conversation to an end. “When they finally come I shall brief them immediately, and we can go. You have definitely decided to appoint Sturne to work with them?”

“Keeper Sturne will do,” said Snyde.

“I am sure that Keeper Sturne will satisfy their needs,” agreed Chervil, “and I suggest you make the mole Pumpkin their minion, for fetching and carrying and so on.”

“I would have suggested him myself,” said Snyde, “no aide knows the place better than he. But 1 thought you doubted his loyalty to the Stone, or at least to the good news of the Newborn way?”

“Oh I do, I do. But the moles the Inquisitor will send are not mere aides, you know. They are trained to scent out those who seek to hide texts, or otherwise preserve them from the Stone’s burning Light. Trained in conversion too. By the time you return from Caradoc I am sure that they will have not only seen through Pumpkin’s vague support for us, but have converted it into a passionate loyalty to the cause. He will be a changed mole, and more tractable, and that will inspire other library aides here to be the same.

Meanwhile, until they come, Brother Snyde, please try to remember that patience is a virtue.”

For four more days Snyde was forced to wait, and pace to and fro, and tap his talons and snarl at aides and Keepers alike, before the assistants to the Inquisitor came back. When they did, guarded by a group of strong, silent moles, they did not smile at all: three males, all middle-aged, all dark, all with the clipped accent of the Welsh Borderland. He was briefly introduced to them, and the first two spoke their names in the same chilly voices.

“Brother Fetter.”

“Brother Law.”

“And this is Brother Barre,” said Fetter, introducing the third and most silent of the three. A powerful-looking mole with tiny sharp eyes and a curved snout that had wrinkles at its sides, as if it had been forced at birth into an inquisitive position and had never got back into its proper shape.

Snyde introduced Keeper Sturne as briefly to them, and Library Aide Pumpkin as well. Then, feeling his position demanded it, he made a long briefing speech to them all, designed to make clear that happy though he was to have such Inquisitors in Duncton, their role was merely to record. Any decisions about how to dispose of dubious texts could wait until he got back.

The aides stared unblinking at him and said nothing.

“So,” said Snyde uneasily, “we understand each other then!”

“May your journey be a safe one,” said Fetter coldly.

That done, Snyde and Brother Chervil, with guards to watch over them on the way, finally set off down the southeast slopes towards the cross-under that leads moles all ways from the system. Snyde did not even look back for a second as they passed under it, and out of sight of the Wood up beyond the pasture slopes. But Chervil paused, and looked back for a time on the system that had been his home in exile for so long. He said not a word, and the guards gathered respectfully round him while they waited.

“Duncton Wood,” he whispered at last, and from the way he said it a mole whose mind was open to such things, and knew well the ways of the Stone, might have thought Chervil was being rather more than merely wistful, and uttering two words that spoke of a liberty he had tasted for a time, had never known before, and now began to understand he might regret losing. A cold wind blew through the concrete tunnel of the cross-under and parted the fur on his haunches and back. For a moment he noticed it not, but saw only how the light of the winter sun, lost behind mists and November gloom for so many days, now broke through and caught the pale trunks of the leafless beeches of the High Wood. They seemed to shine and shimmer with the colours of life itself. Where he came from, to where he was now returning, leafless trees never seemed to shine as they shone here and now in Duncton Wood.

“We go!” he said sharply, turning and following Snyde out through the cross-under, and passing him without a word to take the lead as the guards hurried to keep up with him.

“Do we really need so many guards as this?” asked Snyde irritably of one of them. He had never travelled out of the system, and on the rare occasions he had imagined doing so he had thought he might be able to see the scenery without seeing what seemed a crowd of moles at the same time.

“There’s trouble in moledom,” said the guard heavily, “and we can’t risk harm coming to
this
particular brother. The moles in the north are causing what the Senior Brother has called “difficulties”.”

“Ah, yes...” said Snyde, who had no idea what the mole was talking about, but realized that he would not be likely to get more information if they saw he was ill-informed, and also that he had better make it his task to become informed as quickly as possible. “I have heard something of this...”

“What have you heard. Brother?” asked the guard.

“That the recusants need to be brought into line,” he said smoothly.

The guard was suitably impressed by the unusual word but he in turn did not wish Snyde to know he had not fully understood.

“Yeh...” he agreed.

It was just the kind of conversation Snyde enjoyed and was good at. “Tell me, Brother, what’s the latest?” he asked confidentially. “We have had our snouts rather too firmly into library matters these days past.”

The guard was glad to talk.

“Well, all I know is that our brothers are well on the track of the rebel Rooster, who as you know has proved elusive and troublesome until now. What’s more...”

The mole rambled on obligingly and told much that Snyde did not know. He listened with interest, remembering all that was said, and only at the end, reviewing what he had heard, did a thought occur to him, and fill him with sudden alarm and apprehension. For the guards kept darting astonishingly respectful looks at Chervil, and fell over themselves to be obliging when he wanted anything. All of which seemed in excess of what might be due to a mole who had been merely the Senior Brother in a cell of Newborns in Duncton Wood.

It was then that with a start Snyde remembered that the guard had said, “We can’t risk harm coming to
this
particular brother”. No sooner had he remembered this than he recalled a remark by Master Stour himself, all that long time ago when Chervil had first come to the system so unexpectedly; “He seems a remarkably well-trained mole for what is surely a minor posting from Caradoc. There’s more to his coming than there seems.”