Duncton Stone (4 page)

“Aye,” he muttered darkly as he approached it, “if I’m to do what I intend then I had best see all I can for myself.”

As he approached the bank the roar of the rushing waters was almost like a wall of sound, and the sight of the currents and whirlpools where the two streams met was enough to terrify anymole. He stared sombrely down into the rapids into which the nine moles had been thrown, and he could only hope they were dead before they reached such cruel waters; only as he turned away did he notice the sweet-rotting smell of death, foul enough in his throat to make him retch. He looked down the steep bank and saw a sight that, fight-hardened as he was, he could not easily have imagined – nor ever have wished to do so.

For the bank was steep indeed, no doubt gouged out by flood waters, dropping almost vertically into the rushing stream. Whether there was some eddy, or submerged silty shoal, he could not tell, but there, some under water, some clinging in their death contortions to the crumbling wall of the bank, were several mole corpses. No wonder then that the guardmoles had tried to hurl their victims out bodily into the stream, for the poor wretches below had not gone far enough into its main flow, but rather slipped and slid to the very brink and then, if not yet dead, found themselves trapped in this little treacherous odoriferous nook of death. Unable to clamber back up the sheer slippery bank, unable to burrow, unable to swim for it, many must have lingered on to die amongst the corpses of their fellows.

“We cannot let them be so... Moles must do what they can to stance up to them.” So had the mole they had murdered along the way spoken, and seeing what he saw now, Hamble was resolved to carry out the idea that mole had inspired.

“As the Stone is my witness,” he whispered, “I shall kill no mole, unless it be in self-defence, but I will go where I must to gather evidence of what the Newborns do. And I will make it my task to tell others what I have learnt so that moles in the future shall know what happens when some believe theirs is the one true way, and think less of those who do not agree with them. For as sure as night follows day, once moles believe they have right on their side then some among them will lead others into the path of “just punishment”, whose end I have witnessed today, and whose stench makes me retch now. I’m not a religious mole, Stone, nor have I been a good one, but so far as I am able from this moment I shall be witness against the Newborns and encourage others to be the same.”

Hamble had found his new task and having done so resolved to abandon his idea of over-wintering in some safe place, and decided instead to set off for Duncton Wood in a roundabout way forthwith when and where the Newborns would least expect journeyers, to find out all that he could about their killing, their organization, and their plans. As for explanation of whatmole he was, should he be stopped and questioned he decided to appoint himself the survivor of a patrol, all other members of which had been killed, whose task was to track down and bring before the Inquisitors that most infamous of moles at liberty – Hamble, friend of Rooster! It was not lost on Hamble that this search for himself, which Privet had started by sending him to Duncton Wood, might be nearer to the mark than most might suppose. Whatmole was he, after all? Only now was he beginning to find out.

So it was that Hamble of Crowden began his winter journey across moledom, a mole just a little past middle age who had seen much of life in one way, and now desired to see more of it in another. His life had not so far, as he himself had whispered to the Stone, been of a religious turn, and nor did his appearance – grizzled, tough, serious, doughty, strong of limb and slow to passion – suggest it would be now. But few moles that stark winter dared even venture out in the Stone’s service, and fewer still can have had the potential to serve it so well as Hamble.

Chapter Two

Spring came to Hobsley Coppice towards the end of March, and quite suddenly. One day the air was chill and dark, and the trees and vegetation all leafless and bleak across the icy ground; and the next dawned warm and mellow, and even as the last snows melted and dripped away it seemed the delicate snowdrops and sunny aconites were up and about all across the woodland floor.

All of which was not a moment too soon for the six followers who had been so long safely hidden as refugees with the ageing Hobsley, but now wanted to be up and away with their plans, and projects, and journeyings. For with the stir of life underpaw that a new spring brings, and the buzz of life overhead, a mole is inclined to raise his snout with excited eyes and stare towards dreams and hopes in the far distance, giving little thought to the difficulties of crossing the middle ground between. All, that is, but Hobsley, the seventh mole, who had seen enough springs to last a lifetime, and wished for nothing more than to stay where he was and enjoy the coming warm days in peace and leave a troubled moledom to itself.

Of the others. Maple and Weeth were the most eager to leave, for their intentions were specific and well worked out. The question of whether Maple would continue to act as Privet’s protector – which naturally he had offered to do – had long since been resolved by Privet herself.

“You have fulfilled your task in getting me to Caer Caradoc in safety, and out again,” she said. “Besides, I have Rooster at my flank now, and Whillan too, and Madoc as well. If we are to go back to Duncton Wood, they will see me safely there.”

“Humph!” Maple had said, being persuaded though not quite satisfied that his task now lay in trying to build up resistance to the Newborns, beginning with the moles in the Cotswolds whose confidence he had already gained.

“Well then, we’ll travel with you until I’m satisfied you’re clear of Caradoc and its influence, and only then will Weeth and I think about how to lead resistance against the Newborns.”

But both moles remained uneasy about Whillan travelling on with Privet. She might have gained a new serenity and wisdom since leaving Duncton Wood, but where Whillan was concerned her judgement was suspect. It was as if she knew she should make it easy for him to leave her flank and journey as some youngsters must if they are to find true adulthood, and yet she would not. His life meant so much to her that she could not quite let him be free. This would not have mattered if Whillan had been more secure, more normal, than he was. But a mole who loses an anonymous mother at the moment of birth and has no known father, may well feel a reluctance, even guilt, to leave the foster-mother who raised him. How deep and troubling their strange tie, how hard, it seemed, to break.

It might have made all the difference if Rooster had confessed his suspicion that he was Whillan’s father. Or so Privet and Weeth, who both believed this to be the case, argued. But Rooster himself was not so sure this would have done Whillan a favour, true though it might be.

“Will get in way of him finding his delving path,” he said, and refused the offer to talk of it, except once.

“
You
tell him then, you do it,” he said to Privet and Weeth in exasperation one day when they mentioned it again. “You think, I feel. Am delver and only know feelings. Doesn’t feel right to tell. If it does to you,
you
tell.”

But neither mole had, and as the winter had passed by Whillan’s paternity seemed less important than before.

Meanwhile Whillan himself was full of resolve to break free from Privet – once he had seen her safely back to Duncton. None knew this better, nor more unhappily, than Madoc, whose love for Whillan was overshadowed by the knowledge of his desire to become independent. The fact that she understood so well his need to do so, which he had declared the first time he talked to her, made it no easier for her to bear. Their love had been born in danger, and had blossomed in the darkness of cruel winter, but with the coming spring she saw again the pain of restraint in his eyes, and feared that however bright the blossoms of their love, its fruit would never be.

Yet love is often optimistic and these fears and shadows were lessened by the hope that she was wrong, and that somehow on the journey back to Duncton Wood Whillan’s restlessness would ease, and his need to escape for a time alone would be appeased for ever. Perhaps she would have his pups...

But that hope, at least, had been dashed by the time spring came, for she had not got with pup and as neither was slow to make love, she began to feel that the Stone had decided this was for the best. A time of uncertainty and travelling is no time to get with pup. Not that Whillan did not ask, and show disappointment when she said that she would not pup now. Yet his confusions were many, and she saw there was relief as well. If travel and doubt were poor auguries for starting young, so was a reluctant, vacillating father-to-be.

Although Whillan did not speak of such things outside their warm tunnels – nor even much inside them – Maple and Weeth guessed well enough what was on the youngsters’ minds.

“Just as well she’s pupless,” said Maple, not without sympathy, “for a gaggle of youngsters would be nothing but a hindrance on the journey ahead.”

“Ah, true!” exclaimed Weeth warmly. “But a
nice
hindrance. For what is life, if not for rearing young? Why do we seek to resist the Newborns if not to make a better world for youngsters to be born in?”

“Have you ever had a mate, Weeth?” asked Maple.

“I have had... moments,” replied Weeth. “Love as such has not yet visited me, but opportunities have been few. There have been moments this winter past when I have envied Whillan his Madoc, and her her Whillan, and thought it would be good to retire to a warm burrow and the embrace of so charming a female. But I am content: I have my task, which is to serve you and the cause of all true Stone followers.”

“Don’t you ever wonder about love?” asked Maple quietly.

“Well, I can see you do, sir!” said Weeth. He liked to call Maple “sir” now and again, though Maple never asked that he did.

“Warriors don’t have time for love.”

“I’ll remember you said that!”

They grinned at each other.

“It has been good to have two lovers here in Hobsley Coppice,” observed Maple at last.

“It’s been odd,” said Weeth. And then, responding to Maple’s quizzical look he added, “Peculiar, strange, the odd chances of destiny, and inevitability.”

“What are you talking about, Weeth?”

“Suspicions I can’t yet express, things of which even after months of observation I cannot be certain;
things
.” Weeth had too much good sense to reveal his suspicion that Rooster was Whillan’s father to any other mole than Privet.

A mole less balanced than Maple might soon have become irritated by this kind of talk, but then Weeth was inclined to these musings, and Maple knew him well enough to appreciate that he only talked when he felt like it.

“Rooster,” said Weeth cryptically, “from so far, and he is so... unsettled and unsettling, yet I do believe he is at the centre of it all. An uncentred centre, a non-delving Master of the Delve, yes, yes, no wonder moledom’s in disarray.”

“That’s Thripp’s doing.”

“But which came first? The disarray or Thripp?”

“And what has
this
to do with two young moles in love?”

“Oh,
that?
Everything, I think, everything.”

“It’s a pity Whillan and Rooster don’t get on, then.”

Weeth laughed, and said in his cryptic way, “Sir, you may be a fine, though unproved, general, but in the matter of moles’ hearts take the advice of your subordinate.”

“What is it you know?” said Maple.

“I know nothing, I suspect much, and I blame the Stone for all of it! As for advice, I am not yet ready to give it.”

Sadly, Maple was right: Whillan and Rooster did not “get on’, or rather Whillan was unable to feel easy with Rooster or even understand the intimacy between his foster-mother and the delver, despite the discoveries of his own delving need he had made in the tunnels and chamber beneath the risen Stone. Like all young moles, especially those who have just discovered the joys of love, he could not imagine, nor did he wish to believe, that moles he perceived as old could actually make love. The very thought repelled him that Privet –
his
Privet – the mole who had raised him and who ought now to be declining gracefully into a respectable maturity of age, might do it, so to speak, with Rooster. No, no, it was not possible, it was disgusting. Yet he could not deny that Privet and Rooster spent nights together as well as days.

“But they can’t...” he explained, “I mean not that...”

Madoc laughed at his outrage. “It’s no different than us, my love!”

“It is! It is!”

She laughed again, not quite taking Whillan seriously. “Some moles do it till they die,” and she giggled, thinking this a little ambiguous. But Whillan was in no laughing mood – the less so because he was beginning to think that

Privet and Rooster really did do what he found so unacceptable.

“It’s just wrong and... and...”

“You’re jealous of Rooster, that’s all.”

“
Jealous
!” shouted Whillan, very irate indeed. “Me jealous of him?” But he was so angry he could say no more, and rushed out of their tunnels to stomp about on the surface above. Then, as many times before, he went down and lost himself amidst the delvings beneath the risen Stone, which calmed him and made him return to Madoc later, contrite and apologetic.

But it is harder to say quite what Rooster felt about Whillan, or why. Never an articulate mole on matters of the heart, nor one ever to express real anger and dismay about any other mole than himself – unless it be in the far distant years when Privet’s sister Lime had so successfully lured him to her burrow, and helped bring on all their heads so much grief and trouble.

No, Rooster’s anger was mostly an expression of the confusions and guilts he felt about his terrible past when he was only saved from a violent drowning in the Charnel at the paws of Red Ratcher by his mother Samphire, and destiny placed upon him the seemingly impossible burden of being Master of the Delve. And then... not to live up to so great a task, to lose Samphire, to desert (as it had felt) his puphood friends Humlock and Glee and leave them to die desolate and outcast deaths, and finally to lose Privet; these had added furrows to his face, and left scars on his heart. While the desertion of his old friend Hamble at Caer Caradoc, so long threatened and in response to his violence, had shocked him into that state of self-abnegation in which the Newborns had found him, and with which they had come near to destroying him.