Duncton Wood

by William Horwood

  The mole’s head appeared—the head of the oldest mole Bracken had ever seen. ‘At least I think it was merest chance. I’m not sure that chance exists anymore.’

  The mole emerged completely from the entrance and stood on spindly paws peering in Bracken’s direction. ‘By which I mean that I’m not anymore sure… if you see what I mean. Haven’t got a worm or two, have you?’ he asked abruptly, settling down with slow dignity and not saying another word.

  Bracken, half hidden behind a fallen branch, came out a little and crouched down himself. The old mole evidently gave up hope of a worm from Bracken and asked the question moles traditionally ask of others on their territory: ‘Who are you and where do you come from?’ He asked it in a singsong, almost as if he wasn’t thinking about what it meant or expecting a reply. But he got one, all the same. ‘I’m Bracken from the Westside, exploring.’

  ‘Mmm, exploring! Very good.’ He dropped his voice a little and, in a stage whisper that Bracken thought might be sarcastic, said, ‘Haven’t explored out any of my worms, have you?’

  ‘Well, I…’ Bracken stuttered, because he didn’t like to admit he had done just that, yet didn’t want to tell a lie somehow. ‘Well, I could find you some worms in no time, I expect,’ he offered at last.

  The old mole said nothing, but chomped his jaws together appreciatively and started to hum again. Bracken ran off busily to look for worms, pleased without knowing it to be doing something for another mole, even if the impulse was born of the fact that he had stolen some of the old mole’s worms. He rummaged happily under fallen branches and down an old tunnel he had seen, half dug and abandoned. He sensed that the other mole was not aggressive; indeed, he seemed positively friendly, and obviously wanted to have a chat. And that would be nice, thought Bracken: he might know something about the slopes that he wants to tell me. And the Stone.

  Soon he had got six or seven worms together, enough for them both. He deposited four by the old mole and, as a mark of respect, bit their heads off so they could not escape, and sat down again. The old mole thanked him and crouched in silence, looking at the worms as if he was pondering something. Then he said:

  ‘Be with us, Stone, at the start of our feast.

  Be with us, Stone, at the close of our meal.

  Let no mole adown our bodies

  That may hurt our sorrowing souls,

  Oh no mole adown our bodies

  That may hurt our sorrowing souls.’

  The simple grace was over almost before it had begun and it so awed Bracken, so filled him with wonder, that he was shaken with silence. He had never heard a prayer before. He had never heard the Stone spoken to as if he were a friend at a mole’s side.

  The evening fell about them and they ate their worms in silence, in great peace with each other. When the mole had finished the four worms, which he ate with slow relish, he stopped and cleaned his face and licked his paws.

  ‘That’s better. I am grateful,’ he said. ‘My name’s Hulver, by the way, and if I’m not much mistaken, your father is Burrhead from the Westside.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. How did you know?’ asked Bracken.

  ‘He’s an elder, like me,’ explained Hulver, ‘and he’s mentioned you once or twice.’ Hulver leaned forward like a fellow conspirator and whispered, ‘He’s not pleased with your progress. You’re not nasty enough!’ Hulver laughed and Bracken decided he rather liked him, but still didn’t know what to say. He was in the presence of an elder he had heard of as the wisest in the system, so what could he say? Hulver fell into silence again, snout quivering in the blue evening light and slowly lowering on to outstretched paws as he contemplated nightfall.

  Bracken’s mind was in a whirl—the prayer had left him feeling very strange and, as far as he was concerned, it hung magically in the air about them, making everything beyond it seem dim and unclear. He felt lost in his thoughts, literally lost, for he couldn’t find where among them he actually was. The old mole crouched before him as if he were one of the trees, or a plant growing or the soil, part of the whole thing that seemed around him contained in the prayer. He was finally dragged—that’s what it felt like—out of these thoughts by Hulver, who asked him in a gentle voice, ‘Why have you come over to the slopes, can you tell me that?’ Bracken started to tell him, explaining how he was interested in the system, liked exploring and… and soon he was telling Hulver everything.

  Talking on and on into the night, telling Hulver things he hardly knew about himself, complaining bitterly about his life, criticising Burrhead, saying finally that he hated him, expressing his contempt for Root, telling about Aspen’s stories, admitting his fear about leaving the home burrow to find his own territory. Now and again Hulver would nod encouragingly, but he never said more than two or three words or passed a judgement, making Bracken freer to say what he felt.

  He was stopped finally by an ominous owl hoot somewhere high above and the sudden realisation, as he looked up and saw the shining crescent of a moon dimmed by clouds, that it was late, and getting later. He was tired, and felt he had never talked so much in his life. Hulver yawned, looked about him, and said, ‘Time for the burrow, my lad, time for sleep.

  ‘Now you are welcome to use this tunnel, though perhaps I should say continue to use it. But I’m going down to my burrow, which is a little way off, because it’s so much quieter.’ And with that he ran off into the night, Bracken following his course by sound until he went down an entrance and his sound was lost.

  For a while Bracken crouched in the night alone, wondering about Hulver and enjoying the unusual calm and peace he felt. A snatch of the grace Hulver had spoken came back to him and he let its words run through his tired mind like the sound of the breeze in the long grass by the edge of the wood:

  ‘Let no mole adown our bodies

  That may hurt our sorrowing souls.’

  He changed the ‘our’ to ‘my’ the second time round, not knowing that Hulver, in his graciousness, had himself modified the words to take account of Bracken’s presence, for it was a prayer he often said for himself over his solitary meals. Bracken couldn’t remember all the words and promised himself that he would ask Hulver to repeat them so he could learn it; then he climbed down into the tunnel, carefully reblocked it again, and fell into a deep sleep.

  But Hulver, resting his old snout on his greying paws, did not fall asleep immediately, thinking about the strange young mole now sleeping in one of his tunnels. For all the youngster’s confusion and bitterness, and his youthful carping at the Westside ways, there was something about him that pleased Hulver. He had a nice quick way with words; his damning criticism of some of the Westside moles, including Burrhead, was on target, while his obvious courage in exploring the system so far was impressive in one so young.

  Hulver was excited, too, that he seemed to have a curiosity about the old system and something of the spirit for exploration that too few moles had. He paused in his thoughts, scratching his forehead with his left paw, trying to catch the words to express the effect Bracken had on him. ‘Never was much good with words,’ he muttered to himself, shifting into something nearer a sleeping position. ‘But I like the youngster, there’s something about him, even if he doesn’t look as if he could fight a flea.’

  He thought about the impulse that had taken him to the part of his tunnels where he had found Bracken. The same warm impulse he had felt in recent weeks lifting him out of the long moleyears of pain and desolation that had followed the preceding Midsummer Night when he had been sure Rune had been listening in the shadows. Only with the new spring had the load lightened and something of his old love of life returned. And now, this Bracken had turned up on his territory, bold as a brash young pup.

  ‘Well,’ he told himself, drifting into a happy sleep, ‘I’ll teach him something about the Ancient System and its ways. What I know of them. I might even mention something of the rituals to him, some of these youngsters ought to know about them.’

  So began the f
irst friendship that Bracken ever knew and the last that Hulver ever enjoyed. A strange association of the oldest mole in the system, who had long lost his political power, and one of the weakest, who had no power at all.

  In the June days that followed Hulver told him a great deal, and Bracken listened well, taking an active part in his imagination in all the adventures and journeys, fights and rituals that Hulver talked about.

  He soon asked Hulver to take him up to the Ancient System, but Hulver always refused, one excuse following the other: ‘I’m too tired today for such a climb… it’s wormscarce up there at the moment, better wait a while… there’s nothing much to see that I can’t describe… too many owls now because moles have been gone too long.’ But all this didn’t put off Bracken, who only became more determined to go.

  But there were other things to talk about as well. It was from Hulver that he first learned of Uffington, where the Holy Burrows were, and where mysterious White Moles were said to roam.

  ‘It’s far off, far to the west. I’ve never met a mole who’s been there, though I talked to some when I was your age who claimed to have met moles who had.’

  ‘What do they do there?’ Bracken wanted to know. ‘What moles live with the White Moles? Do you know anything about scribe moles, like Aspen mentioned in her stories?’

  The questions tumbled from him in a flow that sometimes made Hulver feel old and helpless, for there were so many questions he didn’t know the answers to and, what was worse, had never thought of finding the answers to.

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve never known,’ he would say. ‘The scribes came from there, I know that!’

  ‘Yes, but what do scribemoles do?’ Bracken would persist. ‘They write the stories that moles want to remember and the prayers and blessings that true moles love. They go out from Uffington to remind us of the Stone.’

  ‘Have they ever been here?’ asked Bracken tirelessly, and Hulver told him what he knew of that.

  So Bracken learned much from what Hulver talked about, but more without knowing it from the gentle way the old mole lived, looking for worms, openly seeking the Stone’s help, pausing sometimes to tell Bracken to listen to the sound of ‘this beloved wood’. Often just crouching and making Bracken do the same, even though he found it irksome crouching in silence when he could be doing something or talking.

  ‘Which is why I make you do it,’ Hulver would tell him mysteriously.

  One day Hulver shocked Bracken by announcing that it was time for the June elder meeting and he would be gone for five or six days—‘even though they don’t listen to what I say, with Mandrake hard upon them.’

  Just before he left, he spoke to Bracken very seriously. ‘Stay here quietly, live in my burrow silently as I have been teaching you to do, for though, being Midsummer, this should be a time of great happiness, I fear there is much danger about. I can smell it, so take care.’

  A chill came over Bracken’s heart at this, for the sudden prospect of being alone again made him recognise the joy he had been living with in the last few days with Hulver, who, seeing fear cross his face, softly touched his shoulder with his paw and said, ‘There is danger, but you are strong enough to face it. You will never face an evil you have not the strength to master. When I come back there will be a lot to do and you will have much to learn,’ Hulver told him finally. ‘I am going to take you up to the Ancient System. Meanwhile, do not be lulled by the June sun. There is danger in the system and I fear you may suffer in its coming, so be careful.’

  Hulver turned and ran a little way down the slope before disappearing down a tunnel leading to far-off Barrow Vale. He hated to leave Bracken, for he had rejoiced in their friendship too.

  Bracken watched him go, and with an enormous sense of loss turned back down into Hulver’s tunnels and along to his burrow, where he crouched, shaken and desolate. A terrible dark fear began to seep into him and he shivered, despite the June warmth. He had never felt so alone. In the darkness he tried to find words to comfort himself, the fear swirling about him, but they had gone. Then the fear took him over until it felt like a black cloud that would burst and explode inside him, and he found himself crying and desolate, repeating between his sobs lines from the first grace he had heard Hulver speak:

  ‘Let no mole adown my body

  That may hurt my sorrowing soul.’

  And though he did not know it, it was the first prayer to the Stone that he ever spoke. Slowly it calmed him until he was able to think of Hulver again and not himself. He changed the ‘my’ to ‘his’ and said the grace again, hoping it might go down through the tunnels with Hulver to the elder meeting at Barrow Vale, where it might protect him.

  * * *

  But Hulver met another mole and had a conversation with her, before he joined the other elders. It was a meeting that affected him very much and caused him to think that Bracken was a more special mole than he might otherwise have thought.

  The mole he met was Rebecca, and it would be the first time that Rebecca ever heard the name of Bracken spoken, for her now legendary first meeting with him by the Stone was not to take place until the following September. She had known that an elder meeting was taking place in June and, her curiosity as ever getting the better of her fear of Mandrake, she had dared wait in Barrow Vale to see the elders arrive for the meeting.

  Other moles did the same. That was the nice thing about the communal tunnels beneath Barrow Vale. The moment she saw the old mole coming down through the tunnels that led from the slopes, his snout wrinkled and low, his fur ragged and greying, she knew who it was. She ran up to him in the old friendly way she hadn’t dared adopt with anymole during April and May, breathless and smiling. ‘Are you Hulver?’ she asked. He stopped and looked up at her, for she stood more upright and young than he did, and he was so nice. Oh! he was wise and radiated love!

  ‘I’m Hulver, I can’t deny it,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Anyway, nomole else is as old as I am now, so it wasn’t hard to guess. Who are you, my dear?’

  She hesitated to say from habit, for moles tended to back away when they found she was Mandrake’s Rebecca. But with Hulver she sensed it didn’t matter. ‘Rebecca,’ she said.

  ‘Sarah’s daughter!’ he said. ‘And Mandrake’s. You’re a fine-looking female, I must say, though I suppose you’re an adult now, but you all look so young to me. Be the same for you, one day,’ he laughed.

  ‘Would you tell me about the old times?’ she asked eagerly. ‘Because they say you’re the only one who remembers now, the only one who’s left.’ She dropped her voice a little as she said these last words, because she felt an unaccountable desire to go close to Hulver, to press herself to him, to hold him.

  ‘It would take a lifetime to tell you even a small part of it,’ he said, ‘and unfortunately I’m in a hurry for the elder meeting.’

  ‘Oh,’ sighed Rebecca, disappointed. There was so much she wanted to know about things and she felt Hulver could tell her. Indeed, she felt he could answer questions she didn’t even know how to ask. She crouched down near him sadly.

  Hulver, too, was affected by their meeting. She seemed so, so… so alive! Eager, and sighing, standing and crouching, sad, loving. ‘Elder meetings never start on time, anyway,’ he thought to himself, settling down comfortably by her as a sign that he would talk for a little at least. ‘I’ll tell you about Rebecca, your namesake, if you like, Rebecca the Healer of the Ancient System.’

  Rebecca changed mood again, now sighing contentedly, smiling, peaceful, and closing her eyes as she asked to do when Sarah began to tell her a story.

  ‘Mind you, I expect you know all about Rebecca; you can hardly fail to in Duncton, since she’s the only claim to fame we seem to have and at least they haven’t forgotten her, though they’ve forgotten everything else that matters.’ Rebecca nodded happily; she had heard all about Rebecca but she didn’t mind hearing it again, not from Hulver.

  But Hulver himself didn’t know what he was going to say, since it all
came into his mind and out as words without him seeming to have too much to do with it. He felt very peaceful. ‘Most of the stories you’ve heard are nonsense, I’m sure; harmless nonsense, of course. It’s just that we all like a good tale and if there seems to be a gap in the telling of it, we fill it up with something we like to think might have been—and who knows, it might have been!’ Hulver felt as if his words were exploring a tunnel down which he himself had never been.

  ‘Do you know what I think?’ He asked the question as much of himself as of Rebecca, but she shook her head and crouched even closer to Hulver, whose presence she found she loved, because there was something about his great age and goodness which seemed to grow out of the ground itself and make her feel safe and loved. ‘I believe she did stay here in Duncton for quite a time. I believe that in those days Duncton was a system where a mole like her would want to stay. I believe she loved Duncton Wood as you or I might love Barrow Vale in the spring.

  ‘Now, what you are going to ask me, in fact, what I ask myself, is why I believe all that. Well, I’ll tell you, my dear, because even if you don’t understand now, one day you will, I’m sure.

  ‘Twelve moleyears ago, before you were born, there was an elder meeting. It was the June meeting like the one about to be held. Much was said at it, though you needn’t worry about that. But during it, your father became the leading elder and his real sway over the system began. There were threats, dark talk, much sadness over the system for some of us, as there still is. For a time I felt full of despair and wanted to die. I saw that your father would destroy the system and there was nothing I could do about it. I went back to my burrow and sat in silence. I would have liked to have talked to another mole, but even my dearest friend, Bindle, was too afraid to talk to me. Now he no longer attends the elder meetings. Anyway, I was alone. Everything seemed bleak, although outside the June wind was warm, the worms were plentiful and the youngsters were growing fast down in the main system. But I didn’t eat. I crouched alone and silent.