Duncton Stone (101 page)

“You’re Whillan, aren’t you?”

Loosestrife, the bigger of the two, darker, the more lively one.

“Whillan,” said the other with less passion, a shade suspicious and resentful.

Sampion, smaller, paler of fur, eyes disconcertingly clear.

They introduced themselves and Loosestrife said, “Which of us looks more like Privet?”

“Sampion,” said Whillan.

“You’re serious, and you don’t look like what I expected at all!” said Loosestrife.

“What did you expect?”

“A younger mole. They always talk of the Whillan who drowned at Wildenhope as Privet’s
son.
Sons are young.”

“Were you really at Wildenhope, and if you were, how did you survive?”

It was Sampion, and her voice was cooler, like her gaze.

They settled in the sun, and he began his story, and talked as he never had before. They listened and asked him questions, and their guardians, the moles to whom Rolt had entrusted their lives years before, did not interfere.

“I remember Rolt,” said Loosestrife. “He was nice.”

“I remember Chervil,” said Sampion quietly. “His flank, not his face, and being warm against it.”

“Tell us more and more and more,” Loosestrife implored, making Whillan laugh. “About Privet, and about...”

“About
him
.”

“Thripp?”

They nodded but did not say his name. Whillan told them what he knew, and then spoke at last of how... and then somehow he understood so much, so very much – guessing then what their guardians confirmed – that Privet’s “Brother Confessor” at Blagrove Slide was Thripp himself. Yes... so he told them how Privet and Thripp had first met, and how they had dared to love, and how their pups had been born.

Loosestrife wept. Sampion was dry-eyed and quiet.

The sun reached its peak and then seemed to float in the sky all that day, the dales soft all about them, the air warm, and their lives being re-made for them all.

“I’ve had pups, Loosestrife hasn’t,” said Sampion. “They’ve more or less left the nest now. Would Privet be pleased?”

“I don’t know,” said Whillan.

“Are you still angry with her?” asked Loosestrife.

“I didn’t say I was.”

“Oh, but you are, you are. Are all Duncton males like you, or are some of them... light?”

“Light? We haven’t had much to be light about. We’ve had it hard, not like you up here in the Dales away from it all.”

“No,” said Loosestrife, suddenly serious. “Sorry.”

Their meeting had come to an end, for the moment. But in the days ahead Whillan saw them again, travelling up the slopes to where they lived some way above Mallerstang, hearing their story, and seeing for himself how wise Rolt had been in his choice of system in which they might survive unnoticed by anymole.

July came and Loosestrife said, “You’re leaving, I can see it in your face.”

“Another mole said something like that to me once,” said Whillan.

“Madoc,” said Loosestrife matter-of-factly. “Did she really... you know... with Squelch?”

“She didn’t have much choice.”

“Do you still love her?”

“No.”

“You’re very unemotional, Whillan, like the males in Mallerstang. They’re the same. When a system suffers, or moles do, they get like that, don’t they? I’m not like that.”

“I’ve noticed. Maybe you haven’t suffered.”

“When are you going?”

“Soon.”

“Very soon,” she said. It was a statement, not a question, and it was true.

“Where are you going? No, don’t answer. I know. You’re going to the Charnel Clough. Back to your roots.”

“How do you know?” he asked, genuinely surprised.

For the first time she reached a paw to his. It was firm and good.

“I know you, Whillan. You’re like I imagined Chervil would be. Like a brother, a half-brother, a cousin in fact. Sampion envies you because you were raised by our mother. But I don’t. I don’t know her. I don’t know what I’d think if I met her.”

“You’re not like her, so you must be like Thripp,” he suggested.

“Him,” she said.

“Him,” he laughed. “Your father.”

She sighed and said archly, “I don’t think you should go to Charnel Clough alone.”

He said nothing, and wondered when and from where he had begun to feel so still.

“Shall I tell you something,” said Loosestrife, “something you don’t know?”

“Go on.”

“You look like Sampion. Same eyes. Same stance. Bigger, nicer in a way; happier. But you do. Do you think that’s strange?”

“No,” said Whillan.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Which one?”

“About Privet and what I would think if I met her. What would she think?”

He looked at her for a long time: at her eyes, at her dark glossy fur, at her bold paws and warm face.

“Privet would be surprised, I think.”

“Why?” whispered Loosestrife.

“You’re what she’s not. She’s timid, and shy, and thin, and diffident in lots of things. She’d see you weren’t.”

“So what would she think?”

Again he was silent; then he said, “I think she’d love you, Loosestrife, with her whole heart, just as she did when you were born.”

Loosestrife stared at him, eyes wide and filling with tears. “And Sampion, and Mumble alias Chervil, and Brimmel who died.”

“All of you. But
you
are what she wanted to be.”

“Whillan,” she said a little later.

“Mmmm?”

They were stanced down looking across Ribblesdale, the sun out of sight behind them sending its red evening rays upon the western face of Pen-y-ghent. They had been like that for what seemed hours.

“I’m coming with you,” she said.

“I know,” said Whillan, and still he might have felt all day, but now his paws shook like autumn leaves.

They reached the Moors in September, travelling cautiously, for now there were Newborns about, and stories of a Brother Commander Thorne, and of Chervil himself, who it seemed best to avoid, all things considered. Nomole knew what was apaw at all, and they adopted the guise of pilgrims, though as Loosestrife said, “That’s what everymole we meet claims to be, and very unholy most of them look.”

They travelled well together, as if they had always known each other, and Whillan had never been as happy. But as they climbed up into the Moors the summer began to fade away and winds came, and rain, and the going grew hard.

Crowden, where Privet was raised, was a disappointment. Ruined now, half flooded by the nearby lake, and barely a mole about, and those they did meet unfriendly and wanting to be left alone. They could find nomole to guide them across the Moors to Charnel Clough, but one at least pointed a stubby talon north-east and said, “Go by the Withens, if you’re going at all, and you might not get lost so soon.”

It was a name that Whillan remembered dimly from Privet’s account of her own journey this way, though more did not come to him until, climbing up the long and tiring length of a brook towards what they hoped was Top Withens, a scraggy old mole, fierce-looking, ragged of fur, large, stanced in their way.

“Going far, strangers?”

“To Charnel Clough.”

“You’re fools. And you’re not from these parts.”

“Do you live here?” asked Whillan, looking about the miserable rutted place.

“Always have, always will. Chances to leave don’t come twice.”

The mole was not unfriendly, he just was not used to mole. To Whillan there was something about him, something about the place...

“Is that Top Withens up there?” he said, pointing to the coming rise.

“It always was and still is.”

“Are you... are you Way... Waythorn?” asked Whillan suddenly, amazed that he remembered the name Privet had mentioned in her tale told so long ago. “Son of Turrell!” That was it.

“I am,” he said, frowning and puzzled. “How would you know?”

“My father came this way once,” said Whillan, looking about again, sure of himself, pleased to feel his paws on this rough terrain, pleased that Loosestrife was with him to witness it.

“Yes?” said Waythorn. “And whatmole was he?”

“Rooster of Charnel Clough,” said Whillan steadily, uncertain what the response would be.

Waythorn stared at him astonished. “Rooster?” he said faintly. “Ratcher’s Rooster? Delver Rooster? Rooster of Charnel Clough?”

Whillan nodded, grinning. The wind tugged at his fur and watered his eyes, and he said, “Well, Waythorn, we could do with some food.”

“You’re small to be Rooster’s, though not that small, I suppose.”

“I’m only half Rooster’s, the rest of me is Lime’s.”

“Ah, yes. Remember
that
shenanigans. Well. Well. And who’s she?” Waythorn nodded at Loosestrife.

“Another mole came this way,” said Whillan: “Privet of Crowden.”

“Remember her,” said Waythorn. “Like a twayblade those two were when they came down through here. I remember it like yesterday. Like spring itself they were, and it was spring too. What of it?”

“She’s Privet’s daughter, Loosestrife.”

“Hit me, go on, hit me, and I’ll fall down.”

“I
am
,” said Loosestrife, laughing.

“Rooster’s too? Brother and sister like?”

“Kin. Not siblings.”

“Clear as peat this is. My mind’s clouding fast. Not so sure I want to know anymore. But... WELL! Rooster’s on one paw and Privet’s on the other! Worms, that’s what we need, and
days
to hear the story.”

He showed them to his tunnels, which were the same as Privet and Rooster had been in, and Hamble too when he had first come up this way with Privet and her father Sward.

And they talked, long and fervently, and Waythorn told them as much as any mole could about the Moors as he had heard of them in Red Ratcher’s time, and later when Rooster gained dominance; and later still when times changed and moles left and only the wind and rain, and the curlew stayed behind. And he himself.

“You’ll not be safe trying to get to Charnel Clough by yourself, so I’ll guide you there,” said Waythorn some days later when they wanted to get on. “Come to that, you won’t be safe when you get there.”

“Why not?”

“The place is haunted by old Hilbert himself. The Charnel is cut off of course, and has been since the day Rooster, Samphire and the others made their escape. The Reap rages still, tumbling down the Creeds, filling the sun-forsaken Clough with mist and spray so you can’t see much but shapes, and rockfalls; and you can hear nothing at all above the roar of water, but the sound of moles long dead wailing and calling their loneliness.

“Aye,” continued Waythorn in a low voice, “it’s a cursed place now and the only moles who go there are ones like me who travel the Moors and look down into the Charnel from the heights above, and shake their heads and move on. But seeing as Rooster was raised there I can see you might want to visit it, Whillan, and pay your respects.

“But you’d do better to go over the Moor to Hilbert’s Top, where those two lovebirds lived alone awhile. It’s high and it’s bleak but it’s the nearest this part of the Moors has got to a holy place. And Chieveley Dale below it is a spot I like on a summer’s day. I go there and remember things, and thank the Stone for giving me health and sanity, and then I come home.”

He led them first across the Moors to look down into the Charnel, guiding them skilfully through treacherous bogs and among peat hags that loomed out of the chill mist that blotted out all memory of summer.

“Does the sun never shine up here?” asked Whillan, his fur wet with mist.

“In winter sometimes,” said Waythorn with a wry smile.

The sheer edge of the Creeds came out of the mist quite suddenly. One moment the Moors seemed to be going on ahead for ever, and the next the ground fell away into the rocky cliffs, and wild winds, of an impenetrable void.

“There’s the Creeds,” shouted Waythorn over the roar of the wind from below, “and all have streams tumbling down them from off the Moors. Here, I’ll show you.”

He led them away from the edge, over a rise, and they found themselves looking down into the rocks and rough bracken of a steep clough.

“You can’t see the water from here, but it’s there all right, and more than you might think. It’s white and dangerous at thaw-time, or after heavy rain, for it flows off the Moor tops over there.”

He raised a talon against the wind, and pointed into the mist.

“The Creeds join up lower down and their streams become a torrent, and it’s that which is what they call the Reap, which roars through Charnel Clough and makes all wet and dark.”

They moved back to the edge once more.

“That roaring you can hear, that’s the Reap. Nomole ever fell in that and got out alive, and in Ratcher’s time moles who displeased him were hurled into it and their bodies, or what was left of them, were found way down in the dales, the terror of what they saw before they drowned still scrivened on their faces!”

Waythorn rolled his eyes dramatically, and Loosestrife, morbidly fascinated, clasped Whillan all the tighter.

“They used to say that a Master of the Delve would come out of the Charnel by way of the Creeds, but you can see for yourselves that that would be impossible.”