Duncton Wood

by William Horwood

  ‘How do you know where Uffington is?’ asked Hulver curiously. Bracken interested him more and more. ‘I can feel it. If you stand with the Stone behind you,’ said Bracken, ‘you can feel it pulling. Well, you know…’

  But Hulver didn’t, though he understood what Bracken was saying better than Bracken himself.

  Bracken would have stayed there all night if Hulver had not at last said, ‘Come on, Bracken, we must hide ourselves now. We must find worms to eat and we must rest. There is much for you to learn tomorrow.’

  They finally hid themselves among the surface roots of the old beech in the clearing by the Stone. The soil was hard there, but there was mould and leaves to burrow under and the nearer the Stone they were, the safer they felt themselves from the danger of Rune.

  Bracken was never sure afterwards whether he slept right through until the sun rose or whether he kept waking up and looking at the Stone. But dream or reality, he later remembered a changing vision of the Stone, first deep black in the night, later mellowing to purple, suddenly very dark grey, gradually lightening to a dull grey before lightening to pink and soft grey and yellow as the sun broke through the beeches behind them with the dawn.

  When he finally woke up, there was the Stone rising protectively above him, the soft grey and greens of the beech trees in June behind, and the sky beyond that. A shaking of leaves off his fur, two or three steps forward, and he was able, at last, to reach out with his paw and touch the Stone in the morning light.

  Chapter Eight

  The threat from Mandrake against Hulver and Bracken over the performance of the Midsummer ritual was very real. At the previous Midsummer, Mandrake had not felt secure enough to order Rune to kill Hulver at the Stone. But now he had the system so cowed that he felt strong enough to kill off its old traditions and anymole who stood by them.

  At the June elder meeting, which Hulver had left Bracken to attend, Mandrake left no doubt about his intentions. The Midsummer ritual must not be spoken, he told the elders, and nomole must go up to the Stone. This was an absolute ruling for which he now expected each elder publicly to signal his support. If it should be disobeyed, he stressed, then that would result in the death of the disobedient.

  Before he asked each elder to show his support, Mandrake made himself very clear a final time: ‘I understand that a certain mole here among us performed the ritual last Midsummer Night, despite our agreement that it should be abandoned. I was prepared then to give him the benefit of my tolerance…’ Mandrake looked about him with avuncular concern. ‘But nomole should depend on it again.’ He paused to let the message sink home, fixing Hulver with his gaze. ‘Now do we agree that the ritual must not be performed?’ One by one the elders signalled agreement. Except for Hulver, who stayed silent and motionless, snout on his paws and his eyes half closed. Very peaceful.

  Mandrake affected to ignore him. ‘We have made our decision, then, and will see that it is carried out,’ he said with a heavy menace that amounted to a command to them all: he did not actually say that they must all take part in what looked to most of them like the inevitable slaughter of Hulver up by the Stone, but anymole there who refused to be involved, and take responsibility, had better watch out!

  But Hulver was not the only mole there to disagree with Mandrake. Mekkins, the half-Marshender, had no intention of adding his talons to those who might strike Hulver down on Midsummer Night. True, he had signalled agreement, and he would go along with Mandrake’s suggestion that they all take part in any punishment meted out to the ‘disobedient’—but Mekkins was good at appearing to do something and actually doing something else. He might not be a very moral mole—how could he be while he acted for Mandrake and the Marshenders at the same time?—but he had never yet killed a youngster or a mole too old to defend himself and he wasn’t going to start now. He would fight anymole that got in his way, but he didn’t set out to kill them because they did something to which he was utterly indifferent, like performing the Midsummer Night ritual.

  Soon after the decision on the ritual, the elder meeting fizzled out. Rune left early, muttering something about an important job as Mandrake gave him a nod of approving dismissal. Hulver was suspicious, and on his way out with the others, he stopped one of the youngsters hanging about Barrow Vale and asked if he had seen Rune pass by. The answer was as he had feared: ‘Yes, sir, he went up by the tunnel to the slopes. Not so long ago, so you might catch him.’

  So Hulver set off back to the slopes, regretting now that he had left Bracken so exposed. But he had found him, and now, here they were, up on the Ancient System waiting for the days to pass to Midsummer Night.

  * * *

  The Midsummer ritual Mandrake, Rune and Burrhead made so much trouble about was a thanksgiving for the blessing of the new generation of youngsters born in the spring. Midsummer fell at about the time they left (or were pushed out of) their home burrows to find their own territory. It was the beginning of a more solitary life and a time in which many would be caught by a tawny owl or starve as they searched for new territory. As well as being a thanksgiving, the ritual was also a petition to the Stone that these youngsters might be safe from talon and beak.

  As they began the first of many sessions of explanation and story-telling in the nine-day wait before Midsummer Night, Hulver explained to Bracken that in ancient times every youngster in the system made the trek to the Stone and witnessed the ritual. It helped give youngsters the courage they would need in the trials that lay immediately ahead of them. Indeed, after it, many never returned to their home burrows—the ritual was the moment of departure and their home burrows were left for their mothers to occupy by themselves again.

  In ancient times, a scribemole would make the long trek from Uffington to attend the Duncton ritual, for the presence of the Stone gave it a special status among mole systems generally. By the time of Hulver’s youth, of course, no scribemole came, or had come for a long time, and the ritual was beginning to decline in importance. Fewer youngsters attended, perhaps initially because, as they migrated down the slopes, the journey became too dangerous.

  ‘Perhaps Mandrake’s ban on the ritual is the inevitable conclusion to what has been coming for generations,’ explained Hulver, ‘though why an outsider should be the instrument of it, I do not know. It may be ending, but I will not let it end as long as I am able. They think I’m old and traditional down at Barrow Vale, and perhaps I am, but unless you honour something, you honour nothing. There’s more to being a mole than burrows, worms, fighting and mating—much more. I hope you’ll have the sense to see that one day.’

  ‘Did you go to the ritual when you were young?’ asked Bracken.

  ‘Yes, I went. I was one of the few—but then my mother came from the slopes and insisted. It was the first time I saw the elders together in the shadow of the Stone and with the chanting and the words it was very awe-inspiring. I remember afterwards I felt I could do anything. Anything! It gave me the courage to face the fact that I could never return to my home burrow, and after it, I never did.’

  Bracken nodded with understanding. He remembered his own feelings of fear and desolation when he was alone in Hulver’s burrow.

  ‘What’s a chanting song?’ Bracken wanted to know next.

  ‘Oh!’ Hulver was surprised, but then youngsters these days didn’t seem to know anything. ‘Why, they’re ritual songs, songs of courage, hope and prophecy. One mole sings a verse and then the others join in.’

  Hulver began to sing one of the songs in his old voice, but Bracken wasn’t impressed and finally Hulver stopped singing. ‘Well, you need a lot of moles singing it together. Hear that once and you never forget it!’

  They stayed entirely on the surface for the first two or three days, because although Bracken was at first inclined to search for an entrance into the Ancient System, Hulver refused to let him. ‘No living mole has been down into the Ancient System and I’m certainly not going down now, after all these moleyears. There’s something about
it that makes it wrong. It’s not ready yet.’

  Bracken, despite his desire to explore everything, understood. He could feel the Ancient System around him, apparently more than Hulver could, but he felt the Duncton moles had lost it and were not yet ready to find it again. He hadn’t even seen an entrance to it since he had been up on the hill, because everything was so blocked up by mould and debris. But the tunnels were there, their secrets intact.

  After two or three days of staying near the Stone, the two set off across the hill to the south end of the wood. On one side of it the chalk escarpment fell away sharply, the wind rushing up and blowing your snout into the air if you tried to peer over. On the other side, the pastures began—or ended, depending on your point of view—all rough and scrubby with billowing clumps of gorse whose bright yellow flowers attracted Bracken, though he didn’t dare break cover from the last of the wood to take a closer look.

  There was a nomole’s-land of rough grass and stunted hawthorn between the wood and the pasture where they petered out into each other and it was here that they spent the last five days of their wait for Midsummer Night. Each made a burrow for himself, grubbing about in the wood itself for food. Bracken didn’t like them to go back into the wood proper for fear that Rune or some other henchmoles might find them, but none ever did, nor did they see anymole. In fact, the only life they saw was rabbits, which Bracken had often heard about but never seen close. They scampered about, squatted still feeding, and shot their ears up with a start if Bracken so much as poked his snout out of a tunnel near them.

  Until now Bracken had tended to sleep long and irregularly. Now he fell in with Hulver’s habits, which consisted of three sleep periods every day. Hulver liked to check the burrows and tunnels in the afternoon, but these were temporary and not extensive, there wasn’t much to check, and Hulver got into the habit of using the afternoon period to tell Bracken scraps of history about Duncton, something about the great elders of the past, and of the famous fights and the notorious worm-poor years. He told of the coming of Mandrake and other tyrant moles of the past—‘though none I’ve heard of was ever as malevolent as him’. Bracken had to ask what ‘malevolent’ meant, and when Hulver told him, he thought to himself that it sounded as if Rune was malevolent as well.

  It was from Hulver that he first learned of Rose, the healer mole who occasionally came in from the pastures to work her magic on sick or diseased moles. ‘You’ve probably never seen her, because she tends to go only to the Marsh End, where they believe in her more than most other Duncton moles. Anyway, she comes mainly in the autumn and spring—one of which you haven’t experienced and the other which you won’t remember.’

  ‘She’s a Pasture mole?’ Bracken was surprised, because all Pasture moles he had ever heard of were treacherous and aggressive and if they ever tried to visit Duncton, they would surely be attacked.

  ‘Ah, yes. But Rose is a healer and that’s very different. Healers live by their own rhythms and ways. Anyway, Rose wouldn’t hurt a flea and nomole would want to hurt her. Mind you, I’ve only seen her a few times myself and only in passing. She’s never laid a paw on me!’

  ‘How many Longest Nights has she seen?’ asked Bracken.

  ‘Mmm, well… she’s certainly not young, and yet she’s like a youngster all the time. She sings, you know, and dances, too, on occasion. She tells stories to the youngsters, if they can persuade her to.’

  ‘When does she come?’

  ‘Ah, now, that’s a good question. It’s a bit of a mystery, because nomole ever knows when she’s going to come, even the ones she comes to heal. In fact, some of them don’t even know there’s anything wrong with them. You see, as she lives somewhere out in the pastures, no Duncton mole ever goes and gets her, and yet, when she’s needed, she suddenly appears, as if by magic. Of course, she doesn’t come for every hurt and illness, otherwise she’d be here all the time.’

  A day or two after this, Hulver let forth another scrap of information about Rose. They were talking about aches and pains, and Hulver was explaining that he found it helpful to chew various plants like the seeds of dog rose (‘Excellent when you’re run down; you’ll find them over on the Westside edge of the wood if you want to risk it’) and sanicle (‘Good for wounds after a fight—and plenty about in Duncton’), and Hulver got to telling Bracken about how he loved the smell of some of the plants and herbs in the wood, especially the sunnier clearings and then said, ‘And you know that Rose I mentioned, the healer, well she always has the sweetest smell of herbs about her that I’ve ever come across. Makes you feel good just being near her! Mekkins is the one to talk to about Rose. He knows her best of all the elders, coming as he does from the Marsh End.’

  Hulver sighed. He often felt when he was talking to Bracken that his words didn’t say what he wanted them to. He wanted to tell the youngster so much. He became irritated with himself because he seemed to know so little and there was so much for a youngster to face.

  At such times, Bracken imagined that he was tiring Hulver, or annoying him. So much of what Hulver said he found hard to understand and when he tailed off in the middle of something after trying to explain it two or three different ways, he felt the loss as much as Hulver felt the irritation. But then Bracken was beginning to love the old mole so much that it didn’t much matter what he said. He would have listened with reverence anyway.

  Since they had moved to the furthest point of the wood, indeed almost out of it, they felt much safer and the days passed by peacefully.

  As Midsummer Night drew near, Hulver became more specific about the ritual. He had explained something about its meaning and purpose in the first few days; now he began to repeat the ritual itself. He would quote sections of the words, explaining what they meant and how they should be said. But he made no attempt to teach them formally to Bracken.

  ‘Words change in the speaking,’ he explained, ‘so I want you to know what they mean rather than what they are. Listen to the spirit that lies behind them, that’s what you most need to remember. Should the day come when you have to say the ritual yourself, then you’ll remember enough of what I’ve taught you. Most of the words are known by my friend Bindle, so he’ll tell them to you if you need to know.

  ‘But he doesn’t know the final blessing, the most important part of all. I tried to teach him but he wouldn’t listen; he said he couldn’t learn them because they were just words to him. It’s too late now—he didn’t come to the last Midsummer Night—frightened off by Mandrake, if you ask me. I haven’t seen him for moleyears now, literally moleyears. But he’s my oldest friend, is Bindle.’

  Bracken sensed sadness in Hulver as he talked of his friend, the only time in their days together up on the hill that Hulver ever showed sadness.

  But there was one part of the ritual Hulver did make Bracken learn—so much so that Bracken almost became sick of its constant repetition. By the end, the words had no meaning whatsoever, blurring themselves into the same meaningless syllables as the two lines from the food blessing had done when he repeated them too much. They were lines of the final blessing—the words that Bindle refused to learn. And he learned them by hearing Hulver gently repeat them again and again:

  ‘We bathe their paws in showers of dew,

  We free their fur with wind from the west,

  We bring them choice soil,

  Sunlight in life.

  We ask they be blessed

  With a sevenfold blessing:

  The grace of form

  The grace of goodness

  The grace of suffering

  The grace of wisdom

  The grace of true words

  The grace of trust

  The grace of whole-souled loveliness.

  We bathe their paws in showers of light,

  We free their souls with the talons of love,

  We ask that they hear the silent Stone.

  ‘Repeat, repeat,’ Hulver would command Bracken. ‘The rest you can learn when the time is ripe,
but these words I want to hear you say until they are part of you. You need not understand them yet—indeed, they will change their meaning with the passage of time—but you must know them.’ So Bracken repeated them, whispering as the sun rose, saying them into the wind from the void, whispering them into sleep.

  Though he grew tired of repeating them, he learned to love the words he was taught, and he wondered where the moles who had first made them had gone. Why had they left the system?

  They heard molesounds only once, carried on the wind and in vibration in the soil from the direction of the Stone. They waited silently for the sounds to come nearer, but they never did and they were left again in trembling peace.

  Only when Midsummer Day itself came did Hulver tell Bracken his plan. ‘There is only one way to complete the ritual, and even that is risky and I have my doubts that it will work. It will demand great courage from you. It depends on my belief that they do not think I will come with another mole. If this is so, then, if you advance from the direction of the slopes, they will mistake you for me. You will come towards the clearing so that you are seen, run off and draw them away, so that I can move into the clearing from another direction. Then, with the Stone’s help, I can repeat the ritual.’

  The old mole stopped, for that was his plan, all of it. Bracken didn’t like it—too simple, too much to go wrong. Supposing they didn’t all chase him; supposing they caught him? But though he racked his brain for a better plan, he could not find one: there were too many imponderables whichever course they took. So in the end, Hulver’s simple plan seemed the best.

  As the afternoon fell away into evening, Bracken grew restless and hungry. Hulver had calmly fallen asleep, but Bracken was too nervous to do anything but toss and turn. Finally he went in search of worms and found six. He woke Hulver as dusk fell and laid his worms before him.