Duncton Rising (74 page)

“I wonder,” said Privet quietly when the moment felt right to talk, “what Fieldfare is doing tonight, and where she is?”

“Aye,” whispered Maple sadly, thinking of Chater. Then, quite suddenly he knew what she was doing, as if she was there at his flank. “She’s watching the sky. She’s wondering like us. She’s... restless.”

“I think she may know she will not see him again,” said Privet, not fully aware of how strange Maple now felt. “Those two knew each other as a right paw knows its left.”

“Don’t know Fieldfare,” said Rooster, contemplating his own misshapen paws, “and don’t know if left knows right! Doubt it! But know tonight we can’t sleep yet. Nor mustn’t.”

There was such rueful good humour in the way he spoke, staring quizzically at them in the moonlight, that the others could not but smile.

“Would you like us to tell you about Fieldfare and Chater?” asked Privet.

“No,” said Rooster, “tell about Duncton. There, it is. There tonight we’ll send our thoughts. Now. Must.”

He looked up and around at Privet and gazed into her eyes, worried, determined.

Watching them, Weeth, and perhaps Maple too, realized how shy he was with her, and how tender she with him. But more than that, Weeth saw they had a mutual trust as palpable and strong as a tree’s greatest root. This was no great surprise to him, for he had guessed as much from what he had heard before about Privet and Rooster’s past history. But to Maple the surprise lay in seeing Privet with another male in this way, for he had only known her mateless; but here she was, her voice tender, her severe face softened by an inner contentment, her manner easy.

If only he himself did not feel restless and uneasy. First Whillan, then Rooster, then Privet, if he kenned her right, now he himself.

“Weeth,” he whispered while the other two talked softly for a time to each other, “if it doesn’t seem a strange question, how do you feel tonight?”

Weeth looked at him, the light of the night sky on his face, which was serious and unsmiling.

“How do I feel? I’ve been asking myself that question since the afternoon, since Whillan went strange. Well, I’ll tell you: I feel terrified tonight, that’s how I feel. Something isn’t right.”

“No,” said Maple.

The other two had fallen silent, and they now came closer.

“Not right,” said Rooster, echoing Weeth’s words.

“Maple,” said Privet suddenly, “go and get Whillan and Madoc now. Go and get them quickly.”

“Why, mole, what is it?” asked Maple, stancing up.

“Whillan will know, he must know. We all feel something’s wrong but he felt it most of all. Get him, my dear.”

Maple was soon back. “They’re on their way,” he said, his grin indicating that he had disturbed their tryst. But... “Whillan was half expecting it, I think. It just needed somemole to remind him.”

Moments later Whillan and Madoc came hurrying to join them.

“What is it?” they asked, a little shy.

“We’re not sure,” said Privet, “but something’s wrong, somewhere.”

Whillan peered up into the starry sky, he stared at the silvery leaves on the branches above their heads, he looked around at his friends, and then reached a paw momentarily to Madoc’s. He took one step and then another beyond the edge of the wood and into the open, turning a little so that he faced south-east.

The air was bitterly cold now, and deathly still.

“It’s Duncton Wood,” he whispered. “It’s not still there, not peaceful at all! It needs us; Duncton needs all of us. It needs us
now
!”

Chapter Thirty-Two

It was the third evening after Pumpkin had been so savagely hauled off to the Marsh End by the Newborn guards, and it was the grimmest of Sturne’s life. He waited now in that shadowed and cursed place that lies beyond the trees a little to the north-east of the Marsh End. The night was already cold and foul, and promised to grow worse, for dusk had settled on a livid blizzard sky, and the winds cut through a mole’s fur and chilled his heart.

“All the better for what I must do!” said Sturne through gritted teeth, trying to encourage himself. “All to the good!”

He crouched invisible among the rotting weeds and freezing wet of the Marsh itself, trying his best to keep clear of the oozy puddles of water all about. Yet there was worse than that. For scattered around him were pathetic humps and unrecognizable remains of moles “made eliminate” by the Newborns, some by order of the Brother Inquisitors no doubt, others not. This was the Newborns’ killing ground and here on a hunch, a guess, and a prayer, Sturne had come in a last bid to save the life of his first, his oldest and his only friend, library aide Pumpkin.

Somewhere behind him the roaring owl way ran, with its rumbles and roars, and its occasional yellow gazes of the owls, and the reds of their disappearing tails. Sometimes a gaze cut over his head and the dank pasture’s humps and hollows loomed in the lurid light for a few moments, before it swept on. Beyond the Pasture the Wood’s edge rose black and ragged against the sky, shifting a little in the erratic and violent wind.

“He should be there by now,” whispered Sturne to himself, “I pray that he is there.”

“He” was the young follower Cluniac, and that night he was a most frightened mole, his teeth chattering with apprehension and fear as much as from the cold. He was not a Marsh End mole, and its unfamiliar shapes and sounds by night, quite apart from its evil reputation since the Newborns had come, unnerved him. Yet here he was, and wondering why, and what it was he was going to have to do as he stared out across the Pasture at the evil Marsh.

Earlier that day, as the afternoon darkened suddenly and cooled towards the blizzard storms that lingered in the sky above them, waiting to descend, he had been in the Library, trying to fulfill what tasks he was set. But his mind, like those of most moles who had been involved in the extraordinary scenes by the Stone on Longest Night, was upon the life, and imminent death, of Pumpkin, aide and hero.

The mole who had served the Master Stour to the end, and so given up his life to the Newborns, was to die tonight. He had been dragged down the communal tunnels into Barrow Vale, and there beaten and as good as tortured in front of moles like Cluniac and his mother Elynor, who were forced to watch. How weak and hurt he had looked, how unlike a hero! Yet he took his punishment nobly, staring into the eyes of his tormentors as long as he could, blood coming from his snout, one eye swelling, but always trying to rise again.

It had been the most terrible thing Cluniac had ever seen; he had never hated a mole until he had been made to watch Brother Inquisitor Barre raise his talons to Pumpkin and begin the “punishment”. No doubt it was meant to intimidate the followers watching, though it only made most of them more angry, and even more determined to resist; but it was useless to try to intervene, for guardmoles had been drafted in from their posts on the periphery of the Wood and down by the cross-under expressly for the purpose of preventing further revolt. Then Pumpkin was taken away, and the moles told to go to their own burrows and not leave them on pain of death.

The next day, morning and evening, it was the same: Pumpkin dragged up from the cells in the Marsh End, tormented, abused, hurt, yet not so much that he would not be fit enough to suffer again on the morrow... and the followers forced to watch, and then retire.

The day after that Cluniac avoided the morning spectacle by dint of going off to the Library to work earlier than was his custom. He saw that once he was past the guardmoles about Barrow Vale there were fewer than usual along the higher tunnels, and the Library was almost deserted. Except for Keeper Sturne, in his usual foul mood, and other aides who, like Cluniac, had the idea of coming early.

Then, sometime in the afternoon, somemole, and Cluniac did not know who, had placed a brief and startling text amongst the folios where he was working. How, or when, he had no idea.

“Cluniac,” it kenned, “if you valew the lives of those followers who have faith in the Stone, reddy them for escape this evening. Speak to nomol. Alert all you can and all you trust. Then wait amongst the trees by the far corner of the Marsh End, and have faith. Pumpkin may come. Save him. Save the others. Save yrself.”

Cluniac stared at this strange missive with doubt and suspicion. The tortured, spindly scribing he did not recognize at all, and it was obviously by the paw of an ill-trained scribe for it was ill-spelt, and ill-placed on the bark. “Speak to nomol...” it said, but that was precisely what Cluniac did as soon as he could escape the Library without causing suspicion, and return downslope to Barrow Vale.

He showed the scribbled bark to his mother Elynor, who could not ken at all.

“Repeat it again,” she said, and he did. “Well?” she asked.

“It’s a trick,” said Cluniac.

Elynor placed her paw on the bark and bid Cluniac put his paw to hers.

“Close your eyes, mole, forget your fears, and have courage to believe what you feel. Well?”

“I feel... it tells the truth.”

“Aye,” concurred Elynor, nodding her head slowly, “so do I. If the Newborns had identified you as the mole who alerted us all on Longest Night do you think they would have let you roam free since? Or entrusted you with this?”

He shook his head. On Longest Night the Newborn guard had rounded him up, but he had later escaped when Pumpkin ordered him to run for help, before the guardmole had a chance to ask his name.

“No, you’d already be in the Marsh End cells with poor Pumpkin. And by the by. Pumpkin wasn’t brought up to Barrow Vale this evening, which does suggest they’re going to kill him tonight. But whatever mole sent you this knows he can trust you, which means he’s more likely to be a follower, or a follower’s friend, than anything else. Well then, we must act on it. But so far as the others are concerned we know what to do, don’t we?”

Cluniac nodded, his eyes wide, his breathing tight, but determined to do what he must.

“Mole, your father would have been proud of you. You’re still young for all this, but when the Stone calls us to its aid we must answer its call, whatever age we are. Now listen, the plans Drubbins and I made molemonths ago before he was killed must now be acted on.”

So they had gone about the tunnels adjacent to Barrow Vale, Elynor as far as the Westside, and Cluniac to the Eastside, whispering to moles they knew: “This night; it is to be this night! Prepare, be careful, and get to the right place in time!”

Then, that dangerous work done, Cluniac had taken advantage of some guardmole bullying in Barrow Vale to slip away like a shadow in the dusk to make his way down to the edge of the Marsh End trees, and wait. He was worried for himself, for his mother who had become unofficial leader of the secret followers since the murder of Drubbins in November, and for those brave moles, mainly elderly, who he knew would do their best to muster as had long been arranged, and seek to flee the murderous talons of the Newborns in one last bid to escape the punishment and death that now, it seemed, was inevitable.

Another yellow gaze from the distant roaring owls broke across the sky, and swept over the Marsh and the Pasture in front of Cluniac. Behind him he heard various sounds and knew moles were coming. He shrank down deeper into the dank leaf-litter where he hid. He heard voices, harsh commands, swearing, and four moles came right past him to break clear of the Wood and go out on to the Pasture.

A roaring owl gaze swept over them, and briefly and starkly, Cluniac saw Brother Inquisitor Barre leading the group, two large Newborns behind him supporting a third mole between them: Pumpkin.

“Hurry up, you blaspheming bastard,” one of them growled at Pumpkin, “cos we’re getting cold. We want to get rid of you as fast as we can.”

“Shut up,” said Barre ahead of them. “I can’t see for hearing you talk.”

From Pumpkin there came not a sound.

“They
are
going to kill him!” thought Cluniac desperately, and to his credit he gave serious consideration to trying to charge the whole lot of them and getting Pumpkin to safety.

“The Shtone’s guided me all my life,” said Pumpkin suddenly, though with a slurry voice, “and it w... will guide me now.” He sounded a weak but purposeful mole; not easily broken.

“There’s no bloody Stone where you’re going, chum,” said one of the guardmoles.

“Nor any “Shtone” either,” said the other mockingly, which provoked Barre and the other one to break into cruel laughter. Another yellow gaze briefly lit up the scene; finding his line to the Marsh’s edge, Barre led the others on as

Cluniac watched in utter misery, a chill of fear and horror rising along his spine.

“I must wait, I must hope, I must pray,” he whispered, but no words of prayer came to him.

Yet, beyond his vision, and all unknown to him, Sturne mouthed words in the reeds and muck where he lay shivering. He had seen the coming of Barre, and hoped it would be Pumpkin they were leading here. If it was not... but it must be!

For that morning Brother Inquisitor Fetter had confided that “this evening the mole Pumpkin will be executed for crimes against the Stone; and the miscreants who infect Barrow Vale shall be finally punished.”

It was what had decided Sturne to act, after two nights and days of personal agony since Pumpkin had been hauled away, and his public punishment had begun. What to do? Sturne had had no idea, knowing that almost anything he did would probably not save Pumpkin’s life, and would reveal to the Brother Inquisitors that he himself had been deceiving them. It seemed a dilemma impossible to resolve.

Then, that same day, Sturne had been waylaid by the mole Elynor, an old friend of Drubbins, and certainly a follower. Bravely, risking her life for all she knew, given that Sturne was known to have switched to Newborn ways, she had tried to invoke in him loyalties to Duncton.

“For the Stone’s sake, sir, if you have any pity in your heart, try to put a word in for Pumpkin,” she had said, and more; all of it as brave, as true, as inspiring, as any words he had ever heard mole speak.

But after all of it, unable to give himself away, he had had to shake his head and say, “Mole, the most I’ll say is this: these are hard times for us all. You’re under stress, you’re not yourself, and so for the memory of Drubbins, a worthy but misguided mole but one who was your friend, I’ll forget you spoke to me. Justice must be done! Moles who deserve it must be punished.”