Duncton Stone (18 page)

Nor did Rooster’s return into captivity attract as much interest by that spring as it would have immediately after his escape. The years of winter had passed by, moles had moved on, and now the long-awaited spring Crusade absorbed the Newborns’ interest. In any case, those that remembered his confused and abject confession would almost certainly have failed to see the courage and pathos of it, marking him down instead as a mole past his prime. How could so strange and aberrant a mole be a threat to the Newborns?

As for Whillan, he was a mere youngster, and the Inquisitors were well-used to the recalcitrance of youth, and knew that the right discipline applied in the right way moulded most wills to correct behaviour. Thus, whilst the danger they were in was great, interest in them was at first minimal.

More obviously serious was Madoc’s plight, for she was Newborn-trained and had dared to escape Bowdler and go her own way. She who as a Newborn female had been almost worthless, was now worth nothing at all. But she was young and pretty, and having erred deserved punishment – and females such as she (as Thorne had rightly perceived) could be both punished and made use of if given as a reward to deserving brothers or guards. The fact that Squelch had already claimed her for “his own” boded ill.

This terrible fate, from which moles never emerged without emotional as well as physical scars – if they emerged at all – was one already decided for her long before the unhappy party reached Wildenhope, and the question was simply whatmole might have her first. The second and third were of less import, and the last few of no import at all. By then all the hope would have long since fled from poor Madoc’s heart and eyes, and if there was life left at all in her used and abused body she would be cast out of Wildenhope and left to wander as a half-demented creature, and die lonely and afraid of the nightmare memories of a cell in which a succession, endless and vile, of corrupt males came to take their brief reward of her. Yet, though this was bad enough, there was a worse fate, and its name was Squelch. He had the run of such moles as Madoc, male and female, and if his lust was hungry, and his sadistic muse titillated, he might indicate that such and such a one be brought to him. This he had done.

It happened that Madoc’s coming to Wildenhope coincided with a brief unwelcome lull in Squelch’s and Snyde’s symbiotic pornographic explorations. For only if Squelch did, could the other ken; Squelch the private doer was needed to service Snyde the secret fantasist record-keeper. But it seemed that nothing much had been doing of late.

No normal mole, raised to love and natural feelings, who delights in the shared touch and caress that innocent love may bring, can begin to understand why moles such as Snyde and Squelch find pleasures in clandestine deviant performance and aberrant observation, let alone collude in so foul a thing. But so it was, and at that time each was on the watch for the other’s secret pleasure. Certainly Snyde had let Squelch know that it would give him useful instruction to be able to witness for himself, and scribe down, the things that Squelch did to a mole unfortunate enough to fall into his power.

So it was that just at the moment Madoc was brought to Wildenhope, Squelch was on the look-out for a mole who was deserving of fit punishment. We have no intention here of describing even in outline, let alone in any detail, what Squelch did to Madoc. It is enough to say that the very same evening of her arrival she was dragged to a cell rather different from the ones already described, in that it was down a deep tunnel that reeked of the odours of violent torture and death, made dreadful from time to time by the mortal moans and screams and helpless lost groans of moles brought to final confession and murder.

That Wildenhope even
had
such a quarter has until recent years been in dispute, and in defence of the Elder Brothers few of them even suspected its existence; even the Governor himself, his being an appointment temporary and by rotation, often never knew. Yet culpability must be upon the souls of those most senior for never asking questions and investigating to discover what happened to certain unfortunates who disappeared, and why it was that of those that arrived at Wildenhope some were never subsequently accounted for. Or if these questions were too much to expect, some of the Senior Brothers might have wished to ask why it was that the bodies of moles, often young, often horribly mutilated, were found along the banks of the treacherous river that was Wildenhope’s western boundary. The river might at times be violent, as it was that fateful spring, but a river never put a mole’s eyes out, and a river never tore the talons from a strong mole’s paws; and no river ever ripped from a male... but enough is enough and of that we will scribe no more.

Not only was Madoc’s cell in a less savoury place and nearer the tributary stream than those of her three friends, but it had a roof in which a vertical hole had been tunnelled straight to the surface, which allowed a curious round shaft of light into the centre of the cell. In addition, and disconcertingly, there were peepholes, just out of reach in three of the walls, which taken together meant that no part of the cell was free from being spied upon. That they
were
peepholes Madoc had no doubt at all, for the moment she came into the cell she heard a scuffling some way above her behind one of the walls, and looking up saw movement at one of the holes and an eye, black and shiny, staring at her. She moved out of its line of vision, and after more scuffling sounds it reappeared at another of the peepholes, as black, as shiny, and as filled with cold curiosity as before.

But Madoc had more than prying eyes to worry about. Apart from a quick word of comfort Privet had been able to give her on their arrival at Wildenhope, and a final embrace from Whillan and whispered words of love, as despairing but undying as they were real, Madoc had nothing to cling on to but hope; and hope dies quickly in the heart of a mole brought to such a cell as that by guards who prod her obscenely, and mockingly tell her that some very unpleasant things will soon be happening to her; threats which were confirmed by the stains and desperate scrabbled scratchings on the walls and floor of her cell. But Madoc had no need of any of this to put mortal fear into her and widen her eyes and set her heart beating in a near-uncontrollable panic as she was pushed into the cell and left to wait – for she knew already Wildenhope’s reputation and had seen what was left of moles who survived the place, and had looked into the icy eyes of guards who had worked there. Madoc had no illusions – she knew that the chances of seeing Whillan again, or sharing time with Privet, or ever completing the journey to Duncton Wood, were now negligible. All life as she had known it was over, and her venture into freedom now finished.

“Yet I did it, I did get away!” was all the comfort she could whisper to herself, “and I met moles who treated me as a mole should be treated! And I loved and was loved in the way the Newborns deny, but which all moles should know at least once. Oh Stone, you granted my wish to live, to love; now give me courage to face what comes without losing faith in you, or the memory of moles I have been proud to call my friends.”

The eye at the peephole blinked at this prayer to the Stone “so sweetly sincere” as the watcher, Snyde himself, was to describe it in the scribing-down of all that took place in that cell.

If the light in the cell brightened for a brief moment, and if the Stone gave the sense of its grace to that murky place, it was while Snyde blinked, which is why he never recorded it. Some things Snyde did not see.

“Oh Stone, Privet said you would help a mole if a mole will only help herself. She said your power comes from faith, and that even a mite of faith, even less than a mite, if it is felt in the heart, and expressed with truth, will bring forth from you all the power a mole needs – so Stone, I have faith in you, I really have. Help me now. Help me be true to my friends. Help me find a way through the trial, and Stone be with me.”

Privet! Snyde smiled with pleasure at this reminder of Privet and her current plight. Abandoning his secret occupation for a moment, he scurried down the tunnel to the main one from which the punishment cells radiated, just in time to find Squelch waddling along and peering pleasurably into each of the cells as he passed them by, to find his latest victim.

“Brother Squelch!”

“Ah, Brother Snyde! Welcome. But be peaceful, for such joys as you are going to watch and record are best taken slowly. Hunger is a greater pleasure than satisfaction; unsatisfied lust more joyous than fulfilment. Or did you not know that?”

“I know it, I know it,” whispered Snyde impatiently, “your pleasure is a few cells down from here. Now, in saying her pathetic prayers Madoc mentioned a mole called Privet and I would like to learn what she knows of her.”

“The same Privet of Duncton we heard mentioned before?”

“The same.”

“I may ask her of it.”

“You must!”

A brief look of displeasure crossed Squelch’s shining, benign face. “There is nothing I
must
do, Brother Recorder Snyde. But let us not squabble over titbits when a feast of pleasure lies before us. Back to your spyhole, mole, while I go to the portal of desire!”

He made a flourishing gesture with his paw, if any gesture by so fat and greasy a mole could be called a “flourish’, and Snyde hobbled obediently back to his watch.

We have already made clear that the foul details of Squelch’s intercourse with Madoc in that cell, fully recorded by Snyde though they were, will not be permitted to besmirch this text. We will say only this: Squelch heaved himself with some difficulty through the narrow portal of the punishment cell and presented himself to Madoc. She smelt, and knew, the greasy scent of his body even before he entered the place, and her nightmare came true when he did, and she screamed – a scream that only fuelled his lust, which fed entirely upon the fear of his victims.

She looked into his piggy, smiling eyes and knew that her life was about to be forcibly and irrecoverably changed. He touched her as the guards had done and she shrank away until her rear was to the wall. Then foully and sickeningly he abused her, so that her body felt it had been tainted and stained for ever, even before from out of the odorous, sweaty folds of his flesh there appeared that pink and shining thing which was all, for now, his vast and shapeless form became. Trapped, nowhere to turn, she struggled violently against his slippery yielding bulk, unable to get a hold, unable to escape. Then she was turned by him and submerged under him, as he clumsily mounted her, and entering her, tried to steal her very soul and self-respect for ever.

And all the while a solitary eye stared down from the peephole upon the sorry, murky scene.

But just as Snyde had not seen the brief glimmer of the Stone’s Light when Madoc had prayed before Squelch’s coming, he was blind to the grace of light, of hope, and of insight that now entered into her heart.

It is a fact of moles’ spiritual life that often when hope is let go, and the tunnels are at their darkest and deepest, the Silence is heard, and the way ahead to Light made clear. We must, it seems, give up the hopes and expectations that link us to the past, to move freely forward. Such moments may be rare, but they are always recognized, if not for what they truly are, then at least as something special which should be barkened to. Such a moment came to Madoc then, and the thought it prompted took her utterly by surprise. One moment she was pushed and shoved to the void of self-abnegation and the next she found herself thinking in wonderment, “I am going to have his young.”

Oh yes, she knew with certainty that from this vile act upon her the very thing she had failed to achieve with Whillan would follow, and in knowing that all fear fled her, and she knew that Squelch could not, would not, harm her more, and she would be free of him. Knowing this, she felt a terrible pity for him, that he was so hideous and his act so unforgivable. It was what had formed him – much trouble and lacklove in his past – that made her feel pity.

“Forgiveness is not so hard,” Privet had said once, “provided you can forget yourself”

For better and for worse Madoc knew that this act would leave her with pups and they, for all their horrid paternity, would be more important for a time than anything. Above, about her, over her, into her, Squelch quivered and slobbered the climax of his stolen act. And all Madoc could think was, “One day I shall tell them what he was, except he
isn’t
this. Nomole is this. All moles are of the Stone and we must strive to see the Stone in them, however foul they are.”

Many moles, and even some historians, insist on disbelieving that Madoc can have experienced such thoughts and feelings. Yet so she herself has scribed, but it helps that she repeatedly expressed utter astonishment at her final detachment from the horror of it all. “I can only say,” she said, “that I felt pity, and amazement that of all moles and all acts, this was the one to get me with pup!”

Squelch finished, his voice a squeaky scream, his paws fat and flabby at her flanks, his shafting excitement shrinking back into the folds of furry flesh whence it had briefly come.

“Sing,” she whispered, immobile on the floor, her strength utterly taken. “Sing to me.” It was, she knew, what he did best – and that would be all she ever told her pups about him. The song, the beautiful song he would sing, and never the circumstances. Why should pups know their father for a monster, when a part of him is perhaps something more worthy?

“Sing?” whispered Squelch, heaving himself off her and wishing that Snyde was not privy to this part of their dialogue as he realized to his surprise and horror that his victim felt no more fear, nor even pain; not even disgust, only pity.

“Yes,” she commanded, turning to him and looking into his eyes with a sympathy he found exquisitely unbearable.

“What about?”

She took his paw and put it to her flank. “About what you might have been if you had not been made what you are.”

He was gifted to understand what she meant, and spontaneous tears rolled down his cheeks.