Duncton Rising (70 page)

“Never wanted killing, not first, not since. Was trained to other things. Good things. Felt the delving need. Not satisfying it. It eats my heart away.”

He raised his paws – the same paws that had not only killed, but (as Privet knew better than anymole alive) had once delved most beautifully and with great love and wisdom – and peered at the walls of the chamber. His eyes softened and looked hopeful and though it was but momentarily Privet was not the only one who saw it, and understood.

“Mole, if it’s easier for you to tell us what’s in your heart you can delve it here and now,” said Thripp, moving a little closer to the centre of the dais, with Brother Bolt at his flank. Privet looked down appreciatively at his back and again wished she could see his face and eyes so she could the better assess what kind of mole he was. She was surprised that like others there she felt an instinctive warmth and sympathy towards him.

Rooster turned towards Thripp, and his heart was still.

“The Stone honours delving,” said Thripp. “It was once the greatest of arts, taking precedence even over scrivening and scribing.”

“Is still, does now,” said Rooster in a calm voice. “But I can’t, now nor never. Broke the vow.”

“What vow is that?” asked Thripp, waving Skua into silence when he tried to interrupt. Quail glowered, not liking Thripp’s involvement, nor the way his voice and seeming sympathy seemed to quieten Rooster, and turn the Convocation’s goodwill towards him.

“Old vow. Made to Gaunt. Gaunt taught me, he was Mentor and said the centuries’ guarding of the delving art ended with me.”

“Why with you, Rooster of Charnel Clough?”

“Must go forth as Master, must do right. Must show moledom. Was my task.”

“Show us...” said Thripp seductively.

Again Rooster looked appraisingly at the walls and floor of the chamber, and his paws fretted and moved restlessly in the air so that the watching moles could feel his need to express himself through delving as if it were their own.

“Can’t,” said Rooster, “afraid. Can’t never.
Must never.
”

But how desperate was his need, and how his very desperation and frustration explained the conflicts that seemed to plague him.

“Perhaps the Stone will not mind...”

Perhaps so, and perhaps given time Thripp might have persuaded Rooster to delve there and then, had not Quail, uneasy with his diminishing control, reared himself up and said harshly, “Do as the Elder Brother says you must, for the snake is in your heart and you must bring the evil up and out before us now.”

“Can’t,” said Rooster, faltering and upset once more.

“Do it, sinner!” ordered Quail, his voice suddenly vicious. Whatever bloom of hope and trust Thripp had succeeded in bringing to life withered and died before this unnecessary harshness, just as, no doubt, Quail had hoped. Yet Rooster continued to be capable of surprises. He turned on Quail and said with brutal honesty, “Would be a bad delving with you here, and others. Darkness of the moles in this chamber would make my delving be dark, and would frighten you. Need peace, need love, for delving to be good and pure like the Stone. So. can’t.”

“And the vow?” said Chervil, who was stancing closest to Rooster throughout all this. “The vow the mole Gaunt made you make; can a confession not make you free of it?”

“You,” said Rooster compliantly. “Felt you from the first.
You
should leave.”

“Moles,” said Skua, addressing the gathering generally, “this mole is wasting our time with his wandering and the things he says, this mole —”

“Am
confessing,”
roared Rooster, thrusting his snout at the increasingly hapless Skua. “Like a journey in dark it is confusing, like delving for something unanswered. You talk, he talks, all talk: none listen and I am alone. None hear and I cry. None know, but I know. Darkness in mind, for I have done wrong and only moles who could help are gone. Knew moles could help but all gone and Rooster’s alone. Rooster’s in darkness. Rooster cannot see...”

His anguish was so genuine and palpable that it was impossible for moles to do anything before it but stay silent, or weep as Privet did; and Squelch. Oh yes, fat Squelch was weeping now and very quietly crooning some new lament.

“He knows,” said Rooster, pointing at Squelch without looking at him, “he is in darkness. He has sinned. His singing is like my delving need – but he
can
sing, I can’t delve. Can never. Never will now. All friends gone...”

“Mole!” began Quail and Skua simultaneously, no doubt to admonish Rooster for what they in their narrow-mindedness understood to be an attack on Squelch.

But like a rising surge of floodwater in what had been a dried-up watercourse Rooster was now rising to his theme, far beyond their power to control. His voice was loud and full of pain, his gestures clumsy yet fearsome and his eyes wide and compelling in the sudden stares that transfixed one mole after another, the whole effect making all feel that they were somehow to blame for the sins, supposed or otherwise, that beset the great mole.

“All friends of my life died. All kin, all gone. All, all, all made to go by me. Samphire my mother who bore me, she’s gone. To her I was beautiful. To her I was worth saving. To her I was worth living in the Charnel for. Stone forgive me. She did not know my ugliness!

“Gaunt my mentor, he suffered pain to teach me. His paws were diseased, his body hurting, but he used them to teach me. Stone forgive me.

“Humlock, in silent darkness, he knew me, he was part of me, my delving born of his acceptance. Humlock I left to die. Glee was only mole like a sister I knew, white-furred like snow and eyes that saw like Samphire’s the beauty that lies beyond these misshapen paws, and behind this furrowed face. Left her to die. Stone, Almighty Stone, forgive me. Hear my confession now.”

“Yes, yes,” sang Squelch softly, tears streaming down his face. “Stone hear him.” And against Rooster’s anguish, Squelch’s voice was the lament of a wild wind through leafless hawthorn alone in a winter’s waste.

“Is more, more and bad. Mole found me up there where I was alone, where Hilbert was, on the Top. Came out of my tears and found me. She did. Found Rooster and not afraid. Found me.”

There was still an innocent wonder in Rooster’s voice at this sweet memory, and had they seen Privet’s tears and mute anguish for the suffering of a mole she loved, no mole would have doubted who had done the finding.

“Found me and taught me, like my Mentor taught...”

“Oh no my dear, you taught me as you are teaching those who hear you now,” whispered Privet helplessly.

“... taught me to delve a different way. Like Gaunt said, life would teach me more than he ever could. He showed me how, not why or when. We lived together up on Hilbert’s Top and I knew joy. Rooster knew joy. Life taught me new delving ways, and she was life to me. Was all.”

“Was she the one you killed for?” said Thripp from the now enshadowed dais; and even Quail did not interrupt. He had retreated and Privet and the others could not now see him at all.

Rooster nodded massively, eyes imploring others to understand. “Was the one. She was my life and from what she gave me and would always give me, all my delving would be, all, all was hers. She could hear beyond the Dark Sound of my delving. To her I was not ugly.” He bowed his head. “But I wronged. Wronged her, wronged us. Did wrong to the Stone in that.”

“You wronged,” insinuated Skua, with the relish of a mole who after a long hunt has found a very large and tasty worm indeed.

“Not wrong, but wrong,” said Rooster wrinkling his brow at a confusion he still felt. “Didn’t feel wrong what Lime did. When she did. How she did.”

Skua’s eyes glistened with pleasure and zeal and his snout rose quivering as, carried on the air, he found the heady scent of base desire.

“Fornication,” he whispered almost silently, turning to share his discovery with Quail.

“With Lime it was good. Only one was Lime. Was right... but wrong. Destroyed her love for me.”

“Lime’s?” whispered Quail.

“No, no, no,” roared Rooster, angry at Quail’s misunderstanding. “You’re dark as deep tunnels. You’re where things die. You’re...”

As a collective gasp of dismay at this sudden attack on Quail went through the gathering Thripp cut it short.

“Then who’s the mole you love, mole? Speak the name you dared not speak before.”

“Privet’s,” said Rooster at last. “Hers was the love I broke. Confused her. Red Ratcher found her. My father, who took Samphire and made me. Dark, dark was Ratcher, like
him.”

Nomole need ask any more who
he
was! Quail!

“He was taking her. Like disease across a young mole’s face; like odour in a place of flowers; like death all filthy on life. Ratcher was the slash of Dark Sound across a perfect delve. So I killed him and broke all vows. A Master must not kill; a delver cannot kill. A delver makes, a delver creates, a delver brings to life the sound of life, of happiness, of all. A delver
cannot
kill. So, I was delver no more. I hurt Privet and destroyed our love that was all we had: me to delve and she to scribe. Killed Ratcher with these paws and killed myself and Privet who was more than myself.”

“Privet of the Moors,” whispered Thripp’s voice.

Rooster glared at all the moles about as if defying them to speak. His chest heaved with the effort of memory and confession and he muttered incoherently to himself, his head swaying from side to side as it had at the beginning.

A few moments before this Maple had returned. Now he gathered Whillan and the others about Privet and said urgently, “It’s possible to get right below here to the entrance to the chamber. The Newborn guards are all listening to Rooster, and preparing to have their fun with him once Skua has had his say. I was seen but nomole said a thing. Maybe they think I’m Newborn. Now listen, Privet, will you go with Whillan when he decides the moment’s right? That could be very soon.”

She nodded bleakly and asked, “But can you get Rooster out?”

“I shall try. There’s going to be confusion and that will be our chance. We can take advantage of the obvious dissension between Thripp and Quail. Then there’s Squelch and his singing, and Chervil and his doubts. Not to mention Feldspar and his sons. Well, if an opportunity for escape doesn’t come from that lot none other will.”

The moles nodded grimly.

“But we’re going to be chased, so the further Privet and Madoc can get downslope once you’ve got them on the west side the better.” He turned to Arum and Boden. “Do you know what lies downslope of there?”

“Only by hearsay,” said Arum. “But we can’t leave Caradoc ourselves, the Elder Senior Brother will have need of us; but perhaps we could go a little way downslope with the two females and wait behind on the route to show you which way they went.”

Maple nodded his agreement. “Now I shall go below. Choose your moment well, Whillan – though it would be better if it were now.”

“No,” whispered Privet, “let me watch him just a moment more.”

At which Maple left them again, to see how best he might rescue Rooster, while the others turned to look down into the chamber for what might be the final time. The light had steadily lessened so that the narrow tunnels behind them, amongst whose sharp bends and fissured ways Maple’s pawsteps receded, were in the deepest gloom.

For long moments now, after his declaration of guilt and loss regarding Privet, Rooster had said nothing, but seemed to wrestle so terribly with some remaining thing he wished to say that all who watched him said no word. Then without warning, like sudden thunder, he roared it out.

“But there is
more.”

His voice broke into a half-sob, and he nodded in agreement with himself, thinking perhaps that none other there knew enough to understand.

“More. Worse. End. So when guards found me didn’t care. Came to confession, didn’t I? Came to be free. Will be free?”

He turned once more to the Inquisitors on the dais behind him, and specifically to Chief Inquisitor Skua.

“Will I?” he asked.

This seemed to take Skua by surprise; considerably discomfited, he narrowed his eyes, frowned, and finally said carefully, “That is for your judges to decide.”

A look of despair came to Rooster’s face. “Thought confession meant freedom. Will I be forgiven? Will I
ever
be forgiven?” How desperate his cry was, how hopeless his expression as he raised his misshapen paws and bent his head, and scored his talons over his face until he drew blood. “But there is more,” he said pitifully.

“You shall be forgiven,” whispered Thripp, and a sigh went through the gathering.

“For ever and always?”

“For now.”

“Not harmed and hurt more?”

“Not by Newborn mole.”

“But there is more.”

“If you speak true and of all that is in your heart,” said Thripp quietly, to Quail’s and Skua’s ill-concealed rage, “the Stone may have mercy on you, forgive your sins, and bring you to everlasting Silence.”

“Two moles stayed by me. Two moles good to me. One was Lime, only mole I knew. Only mole I mated with. Only one. But no love, not like with mole I lost. But when one mole mates with another and there’s no love there’s still something. Didn’t know that until I drove her from me. Didn’t know and nomole told. Stone forgive me for hurt.

“And Hamble. He was last. He warned. He said, “Rooster, you must kill no more. Rooster, you are Master of the Delve, you must not kill. Rooster, if you kill more I will leave you”.”

Rooster looked at Thripp and said from the depth of all his confusion and despair, “I kill my friends. I kill all things. Sin is in me. Lime...”

“And what of her, mole?” said Thripp gently.

“She was with pup when she left. Our pups. Unborn, unformed. Just as well with me as father.” He roared with an unbalanced laughter that was tinged with the deepest sadness. “I would have liked to know what I made. Know what I could have delved because I can feel it and see it all. Would have been good. But my pups – wanted to see, wanted to know, but I drove Lime away, I...”

But for a moment neither Whillan nor Privet heard him because as Rooster spoke of Lime, Whillan, eyes searching the chamber for the kind of opportunity Maple hoped they would find, saw something he could scarcely believe.