Duncton Wood (67 page)

“Does he know it?” asked Rebecca.

Boswell shook his head: he didn’t know. He could not help wondering whether or not Rebecca knew that she loved Bracken. But then, what did those words mean unless they were expressed through the Stone, which, in the first place, they had been?

“When I think of him or hear his name, I think of Mandrake,” said Rebecca quietly. “I think of him trying to reach out to me by the Stone and Bracken stopping me, stopping me.”

“But it was Stonecrop who killed him,” said Boswell.

“It wasn’t that,” whispered Rebecca, remembering. “Perhaps a fight is better than an owl, or disease, especially for Mandrake. Perhaps that was best. No, you see. Bracken
heard
Mandrake. He heard him calling me and because he was afraid he stopped me going, and Mandrake was left in that... place —” Rebecca could not go on. She cried freely, freer than she would have been before any other mole but Boswell. Boswell wished he had had the wisdom to understand.

But Bracken and Rebecca did meet, an accidental crossing of paths in the Marsh End where he and Boswell had been talking to Mekkins one day about what every-mole now recognized was a drought, and getting more serious every day.

Bracken and Boswell were going down a tunnel. There was laughter ahead, a couple of females chatting, and then there was Rebecca, large as life. Bracken tensed and looked surly, even angry. Rebecca smiled, a shade too calmly Boswell thought, as he backed away to leave the two together.

“Rebecca!” exclaimed Bracken with false cheer, having recovered himself. “I hear good reports of your work – not only in Duncton but on the pasture as well.”

“Hello, Bracken,” said Rebecca quietly.

“Yes, again and again I come across moles who...

and within Boswell’s hearing Bracken launched into a shower of talk about everything but what was in his heart – his joy and confusion at seeing Rebecca again.

She said hardly a word during this prattle, except “yes” and “mmm” and “really?” but each word she spoke seemed slower and sadder than the last. But there was a point in their painful conversation when, for a brief moment, the light shone again. Bracken had gotten onto the subject of the drought and Rebecca suddenly said, ironically, “You should put a stop to it. Bracken. You’re the leader of Duncton.”

Bracken laughed a little too loudly and then said, “I’m not the Stone, Rebecca,” and Boswell heard her soft reply: “No, my dear, you’re not.”

Bracken was silent, for he heard the love behind her reproof just as much as Boswell did, and he could not hide the sadness in his own eyes. For a moment he relaxed and looked directly into Rebecca’s eyes – and she into his. And there was stillness between them again. Rebecca had seen that look before, one September in the fading of a rainstorm when Bracken had first told her his name. He had run off then, and he did it again now, barely saying goodbye before he was gone. And Rebecca was left with only a look of understanding from Boswell to weigh against the loss she felt, the frustration at Bracken’s fear, and the feeling that in some way, surely, it was her fault. She could have done more: the same feeling she had so often and so sadly faced with Mandrake. And then she thought of Mandrake, whom she had loved so deeply, and wondered why Bracken had not heard his cries.

   33  

I
N
the third week of August, Stonecrop came over from the pastures to see Bracken. They talked in the elder burrow with Boswell and a couple of other Duncton moles present.

“The drought on the pastures is now getting very serious, Bracken,” started Stonecrop. “Perhaps you in the wood are more protected than we are, and so do not realize how critical it is becoming. The grass is turning yellow with dryness; the soil is cracking and so hard for lack of rain that our youngsters who have left their home burrows cannot burrow tunnels and are being forced to live on the surface in the few areas of longer grass that exist. Many have been taken by owl and kestrel. The stronger ones are fighting for older moles’ territory and there is death and violence in the system. Food is scarce and moles that find a source of worms are keeping it secret, or killing other moles who find out their secret, and there is a growing sense of distrust and treachery throughout the system.”

“What can we do about it?” asked Bracken coldly. “Our own food supply is poor and, I am told, getting worse.” He looked round at the others for confirmation. They nodded, and Boswell thought to himself that there is nothing like a shortage of food to turn a system violently against others and itself. He had heard of it, but never seen it at first paw.

Bracken looked at Stonecrop unsympathetically. His job now was to protect his system and if Stonecrop was going to suggest, which it seemed likely that he was, that the pasture moles should move in on Duncton where the food supply was better, he would have to resist it. With force, if necessary.

“My predecessor, Brome, who helped you save your system and get rid of Rune – not to mention Mandrake – believed that the Stone should be accessible to the pasture moles,” said Stonecrop.

“Well, isn’t it?” asked Bracken irritably. He didn’t like being reminded about Brome and Rune and Mandrake, not by Stonecrop of all moles. All that, and a lot more, was over. It was gone.

“Does anymole
live
in the Ancient System now?” asked Stonecrop unexpectedly.

The question brought an icy calm into Bracken’s mind as, keeping his face quite impassive, he worked out what his response to the implication behind this question should be. He wanted no pasture mole living in the Ancient System. There was something almost blasphemous about the idea.
Blasphemous?
Bracken thought to himself that that was a strange word for him to use. Why, for Stone’s sake, he didn’t want
anymole
living in the Ancient System.

“If you are going to suggest that because no mole from Duncton now lives in the Ancient System that pasture moles might now live there, then...” he was about to say, and thought better of it, that if that was what Stonecrop meant he had better forget about it. Right now.

However, if his time as leader of Duncton had taught him anything, it was that blunt statements of intent were sometimes less effective as a way of getting things done than ambiguity. So he finished the sentence clumsily and only half-convincingly: “then... this is something we will naturally need to talk about carefully among ourselves. Trust me, Stonecrop, to see that we do our best.” But Stonecrop didn’t like the indirect mole Bracken was becoming and certainly didn’t trust him much at all. Why, it used to be so easy to talk to Bracken, didn’t it? But he hadn’t smiled once. Where was his spirit gone?

After a few minutes of half-hearted talk, Stonecrop left with only the promise that Bracken would let him have an answer in the next few days. Well, a week at most. But Stonecrop let it be known that he wasn’t sure that he would be able to hold his moles in control that long unless something changed very dramatically. If it didn’t, and Bracken remained uncooperative, then he would have to consider whether the help his moles had given Bracken did not give them the right to take the Ancient System by force....

The effect of Stonecrop’s visit on Bracken was immediate. As soon as he had gone, he ordered the other Duncton moles out of the elder burrow and turned to Boswell. “Right. We’re going to the Ancient System to see what the food situation is there. It was never up to much when I lived there, but you never know, it might have changed.

But first we’re going to find out what the position is in Duncton. I’ve been thinking this drought would soon go away, but we’d better face the fact that it might stay for many weeks yet, perhaps even months. We owe something to the pasture system. We had better make some plans, but you can’t do that without facts.”

Boswell could hardly believe his ears. For the first time since Bracken had taken over the system he seemed to have real fire in his spirit. His eyes were brighter, there was a combativeness in the way he spoke. More than that, Stonecrop’s suggestion seemed to have opened the way to Boswell finally getting to see the Ancient System with Bracken.

They went first to the westside, then down to see Mekkins in the Marsh End. They talked to mole after mole, getting a detailed picture of what effect the drought was having on the system. Then back to the tunnels of Barrow Vale, where the moles were at first surprised to see Bracken so personally interested in what they had to say, then falling over themselves to tell him their woes. Finally they went to the eastside before starting on the trek up the slopes toward the Ancient System.

By then the picture they had formed – not only from what they had been told but also from what they had seen – was a grim one. The system was on the verge of disarray and fights over food were already becoming more frequent.

Along the wood’s edge, the normally green grass and burgeoning brambles had turned yellow in the dryness. Everything creaked and crackled for want of moisture. The very air itself seemed to be made of oppressive dust, the light was harsh and bare – though because of the pall of white haze that seemed to have fallen on the earth, the sun rarely shone directly. On some of the more exposed trees, particularly on their south-facing side, the leaves had dried and crinkled and turned prematurely autumnal. The moisture that normally stayed throughout the summer just beneath the first layer of leaf litter seemed all to have gone, and what grubs there were had buried themselves deeper than usual, along with all the worms, making the normal summer surface runs useless for getting food. The worms also seemed to have bred much less prolifically, so that there was a general shortage. It was not acute, but to survive a mole had to spend much longer each day, and range much farther, to find enough food. As a result there were more fights, for territory was more valuable, and anyway, any shortage of food makes moles aggressive and irritable. At the same time, the number of owls in the wood seemed to have increased – summer was always a bad time as the tawny owls’ own young were learning to fly and feed, and took any young moles in the wood or on the pastures they laid their yellow eyes upon. By the end of August, however, this bloody threat was normally over, for the youngsters that were going to be taken had gone, and most moles were sensibly underground. This time, however, the weather seemed to have prolonged the owl threat, whose hanging presence added to the grim atmosphere in the wood.

Mole after mole complained to Boswell and Bracken that something was wrong, very wrong, and they were afraid, very afraid. The Stone was angry and something was going to happen to them. And everymole they met complained of something they themselves had noticed in Barrow Vale: there was an unpleasant infestation of fleas in the tunnels all over the system.

So it was in a mood of foreboding that Bracken and Boswell turned at last up to the slopes and toward the Ancient System. The slopes were more populated with youngsters than Bracken could ever remember having heard of. Unable to find territory in the main system because its residents were keeping a larger portion of it for themselves, many youngsters had come to the traditionally impoverished slopes and established a meager existence for themselves in the dilapidated tunnels that were distant remnants of the original migration from the Ancient System. They were a skinny, frightened, sorry lot, somehow symptomatic of the arid days through which the system was going. Most ran away and hid when Bracken and Boswell approached.

“The whole system’s falling apart,” growled Bracken once when this happened, unaware that just as once he had been afraid of fully mature adult males, so these timid youngsters were afraid of him. Had Boswell been by himself, the story might have been different, for Boswell was the most approachable of moles.

Hulver’s old tunnels were unoccupied and they entered the ancient tunnels by the route carved out by the side of the owl face by Mandrake. As they did so, Boswell felt obliged to reveal to Bracken what Rebecca had told him about their experience together in the central part of the system and what they had found together under the Stone. But whereas before Stonecrop’s visit Bracken would surely have been angry, now he seemed, if anything, relieved.