Duncton Stone (94 page)

“Which is Chervil?” whispered Pumpkin.

Hamble pointed and Pumpkin went quietly over to him where he stanced, dark and still.

“Go to them,” said Pumpkin, “go on, mole. She needs you,
they
need you.”

Chervil went out into the Clearing, stared briefly and dismissively at the foul sight of Quail’s dead body, and Snyde’s still living one, and stanced down with Privet and. his father.

Thripp reached up to him as he continued to whisper: “... remembered for the love we found, and the promise to Privet that I honoured.”

One paw held Privet’s, and the other reached out to hold their son’s.

“Chervil, call Brother Rolt to me,” he whispered.

But Chervil had no need to look for Rolt, for he had come, and looked into his beloved Master’s eyes with love.

“It is done, all done, Master, as you decreed,” he said. “You have honoured your love for her, and redeemed the wrongs committed at Blagrove Slide. There is no bloodshed now, only peace across the High Wood of Duncton, and spreading out beyond.”

“Not as I decreed, good Rolt, but as the Stone decreed. Now Chervil, listen, and you Rolt...” But suddenly he said no more, and his clear eyes looked upon the Stone again, and saw a vision simpler but greater than any he had ever had.

“Not I, but the Stone,” he whispered again, his voice at peace. “And it will help you now, and her.”

“Help her, Master?” whispered Rolt, glancing at Privet, then at Thripp once more.

“Find the Book, mole, find the Book,” said Thripp with a touch of his old impatience that a new vision he had seen was not yet understood by others.

“The Book of Silence,” said Chervil.

“Yes,” said Thripp firmly, and if he saw the Light and the Silence before him then, it was not at the Stone he looked, but into Privet’s eyes. Then he was gone from them, like a breath of wind at dawn.

Yet near them Snyde still heaved, still he died, and still Quail’s ruptured body desecrated the Clearing by the Stone.

None would touch them or go near. Not Privet, not she. Nor Chervil. Nor Hamble. Nor any one of the followers who stanced so still, and stared, and wished to cast out what had come among them, and befouled them. Nomole had the courage to touch that defiled corpse, or the corpse-to-be.

But one.

A warrior, as true to the Stone as anymole there, yet flawed in himself by a single act, and needing, as he thought, absolution: Maple.

He had led the followers to the Duncton Stone and now he led them one more time in an act whose courage and significance will for ever be remembered and debated by moles who ponder the story of the coming of the lost and last Book.

Maple came forward, slowly and steadfastly. He gently moved moles aside. He stanced above Quail and Snyde and whispered some prayer to the Stone that rose above them; he looked down at them, and then, with a roar as mighty as a thousand moles”, charging the vilest of enemies, he bent down and took Quail and Snyde up together in his great paws, white talon worms and all.

He turned from the Stone and ran roaring with them out of the Clearing, out to the west side of the wood, out as others followed, out into the light of the new day and on to the western pastures beyond.

“To the river,” somemole shouted, and down the long way to the river they went, down and down, thundering down, the dead paws of Quail limply flailing, the living paws of Snyde clutching at Maple’s thick neck, and the worms, the worms, clinging on to Snyde.

They reached the river and Maple turned from it, swung, and with a final roar he hurled the bodies far out into the dark flowing water. They turned, they sank, they bubbled, and they surfaced once again, drifting away in the cold, cold water of the Thames.

Quail sank once more and was gone; Snyde seemed to try to swim, seemed to try to rid himself of that which clung to him, seemed to try to scream. But he could not, and nor could he rid himself of any of the worms, struggle and strive though he might. He drifted and they saw come glistening out of his body one bigger than the brood. Fat, puckered, legged, with head of Snake and body of Worm, in Snyde and out of him, the mother of them all. Once Quail’s; now Snyde’s.

And if any creature alive could ever be called Paramount and Prime it was she, as she curled on Snyde’s drifting living body to survive. Then the river moved them on, and they were gone away for ever from the sight of Duncton Wood and the Stone.

Of all the wonders of that day, none is more satisfying than this: not a single Newborn was killed by Maple’s followers, not one. Many were buffeted, many hurt, many came close to death before the anger of the crowds.

But not one died. Rather, battered and taloned, scratched and scorned – which even Maple’s leadership could not prevent – they were cast out from Duncton, and sent wandering. All but one, that is. For him there could surely be no forgiveness, nor any pity, nor help at all.

Wandering by the Library he loved, and had served so supremely in the long moleyears of darkness that had beset it, the followers found Sturne, unknowing what he really was.

He who was of Duncton and had betrayed them, and had been ever at the flanks of Fetter, ready with the cold eye and unforgiving stare.

“Kill him,” somemole said. “But not quickly.”

And so, while peace began to reign elsewhere across the High Wood, Sturne was taken and battered, pushed and shoved, harried and hounded to the Wood’s edge and then down the south-east pasture slopes, the blood of his wounds the only blood upon the grass. He spoke not a single word. He stared up at the trees which seemed to rise above him as he was pushed further from them and down the slope by a crowd of angry, vengeful moles.

“Take him to the cross-under! He is not worthy to have his blood spilled within the system’s bounds. Let’s kill him outside it!”

Perhaps he called for help, or whispered Pumpkin’s name. Whatmole-else knew that he was innocent, and one of the bravest of them all? If any guessed they were not nearby.

So, torn and helpless, he reached the cross-under and was thrown against its walls, first to one side and then another, torn and taloned by any that could get near enough to hurt him.

“He’s the mole Sturne! He betrayed Duncton! He’s going to die. He’s...”

They did not quite get him out of the system before they raised their talons for the killing blows. The crowds pressing to come in were too great, and anyway their bloodlust was up; pathetic and vulnerable, he lay unable to defend himself in a dark and puddled far corner of the cross-under.

“Pumpkin,” he whispered, and he even tried to smile, for this, he supposed, in the painless place to which he seemed to have gone, this was... well... jocular. After all they had done, such an end was either mad or... mirthful. And Pumpkin and he might have laughed, not at it, but at the idea of it.

Somewhere on the slopes above the word went about, “They’re killing Keeper Sturne! They’re killing Sturne!”

And Maple had heard it, horrified, for there must be no more killing, not now. Even one was a defilement, as he knew too well. And Pumpkin had told him the truth of Sturne.

“Stop them!” he roared, leading others down the slopes, running ever faster but seeing from the crowd, and hearing from their roar, that he must be too late.

“No!” a voice cried at Sturne’s bloody flank. “No!” it screamed.

The killers paused and stared at the female who had dared raise her talons in Sturne’s defence.

“No,” she said more quietly, moving in front of him, to stance boldly between him and their talons. “Whatmole is he? And whatmoles are you to judge him?”

By then few knew who he was, but one there did and then another.

“That’s the bastard Sturne, and he deserves —”

“I don’t give
that
for whatmole he is,” said Myrtle, mate of Furrow, who had died heroically at Buckland, “you’re not killing him. It’s not what Maple would want.”

“Mole, get out of our way.”

“You’re
not
,” she screamed, the very image of righteous anger. “We didn’t fight for
this.
We fought —”

“Get out of the bloody way, you bitch,” cried another of them, who, far bigger than she, was in the act of pulling her bodily aside when a strong paw stilled his own, and a mole came to her flank, and stanced by her.

“No,” he said quietly.

“And whatmole are you, for Stone’s sake?” said another, raising his talons to strike.

“My name is Whillan of Duncton Wood.”

“Whillan!” gasped one of the crowd.

“Whillan like hell!” said another.

“Aye, Whillan of Duncton Wood!” said Whillan, his eyes calm and clear, and his shoulders strong, his paws sure, his face mature.

“Whillan,” whispered Sturne.

“Leave him be,” said Whillan with authority, “and let this female go. And...”

The crowd of killers became but a crowd of moles once more, uneasy and retreating, and parting too, for Maple came then and others with him. And after him one more, bigger than the rest.

“Whillan,” said Rooster, and in that grubby, echoing, crowded, puddled place he took Whillan in his paws and held him so tight that tears came to his son’s eyes.

“Bad place to meet again,” grunted Rooster.

“Not so bad,” replied Whillan.
“
This
is where I was born.”

They tended Sturne. Later they could climb the slopes once more, go through the High Wood, and make their way to the Stone, and Privet; and talk as they must surely do. But for now they cared for Sturne.

“Pumpkin knows it all,” whispered Sturne, “but you can’t blame them. I
do
seem a little severe at times. But we succeeded where we might have failed.”

“You talk less and you’ll recover more,” said Maple. “Why, if Whillan had not come...”

“It wasn’t me!”

It wasn’t him,” said Sturne. “It was... she...” He looked round at the crowd and to his dismay saw her disappear into it. “Her,” he said. “It was her. What is her name?”

But she was gone, and Maple, the only one there who would have known her, did not quite see her face.

“She saved me,” whispered Sturne again, when they got him back to his austere quarters up on the Eastside. “I must thank her.”

“Sleep, mole,” said those who cared for him, and, protesting, he did.

Then Whillan and Rooster and many others made their slow way to the Stone to find Privet, and tell Pumpkin of how near his friend Sturne had come to death, and to talk at last to Privet. And so they might have done, had not Hamble come to meet them looking just a little lost.

“Privet? And Pumpkin the library aide? You won’t find them by the Stone now. They’re not there. They’ve gone.”

“Where to?”

Hamble shrugged helplessly. “Into the Ancient System, somewhere there. Wouldn’t let me go with them. They just slipped away.”

“For what?”

“To find the Book of Silence, I should think.”

“You think right, mole,” said Rooster. “Frogbit! Frogbit!”

“Sir! Ever ready at your flank, through fair weather and foul!”

“Mole,” said Rooster, “we have work to do. Hamble, you know the High Wood?”

“As well as anymole by now, Rooster,” said Hamble, glad to be with his old friend again. “I know the parts of it that moles can get into without dying of Dark Sound like the back of my paw. As for the rest...”

“It’s the rest we go to,” said Rooster grimly. “Now. And you Whillan, you come. May need your skills.”

The High Wood seemed to have darkened again, and its great trees trembled. Somewhere, far off, there was a cry or scream. Not much, but enough to echo in the gloom all about; it seemed to tell of tunnels deep, and chambers dark, and a female who strove to reach a place beyond them all.

“Needs us,” said Rooster, Master of the Delve, a mole who had journeyed as far as anymole through darkness, and was ready now to come into his own.

“All of us!” said Frogbit.

And Hamble led them into the echoing, threatening tunnels that ran beneath the High Wood.

PART V

Book of Silence

Chapter Forty-Four

Privet had not uttered a single word since taking her vow of Silence at Wildenhope; barely any sound at all, indeed, but for sighs and moans when she had been ill, or lost in nightmare sleep and crying out for help.

But of her long journey into the far recesses of her heart and mind, and her lonely grappling with her own errant spirit, we may reasonably guess. Many before had tried to trek the same path, and have given enough accounts of it to leave us in no doubt that nothing is harder for a mole to do than be still enough to hear the silence of the Stone within.

But we need no texts to know this truth – only a few moments with ourselves. Try it, mole, and you will know. Stance quietly where you cannot be disturbed, and discover what the real disturbance is; it is yourself... whatever that may be!

At Wildenhope Privet saw that if she was to find the Book of Silence she must give up all she had, including all she held most dear. Which for her was three moles most of all, all of whom were present there: Thripp of Blagrove Slide, Rooster of the Charnel Clough, and Whillan her adopted son, offspring of her sister Lime and Rooster.