Duncton Wood

by William Horwood

  Mekkins fell back before her assault, unable to strike Rebecca, even though he was bigger and more powerful and could almost have killed her with one blow. Instead, he warded off her blows, or dodged the wilder ones, until her rage was spent and she was stooped and sobbing before him.

  ‘So much killing in the system,’ she cried. ‘He hates everymole and every living thing. I tried… to show him how much I loved him, but he can’t hear me…’ She sighed deeply and looked out into the evening.

  Then, to Mekkins’ amazement, for he was just beginning to think he felt the depths of her sudden grief, she laughed in a tearful way: ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘this mole Bracken’s not dead. He couldn’t be, you see. He couldn’t be.’

  She turned to Mekkins inquisitorially and said, ‘Did you see him dead?’ And Mekkins, who could not keep up with Rebecca’s changes of mood or understand them, had to admit that he hadn’t. But then, how could you see if a mole who had gone over a cliff was dead?

  ‘No, no,’ said Rebecca, ‘he’s not dead. Or if he is, he’s not.’

  With this mysterious comment Rebecca fell silent, and Mekkins fell to thinking that the Duncton system was going mad.

  ‘Bloody ’ell,’ he thought to himself, ‘I’m going mad.’

  He told himself this because he felt a peculiar sense of escape coming over him that his commonsense character could do nothing at all to hold back. It was as if after weeks of misery his body could again feel the space and trees about him, and his paws feel the firm soil he loved so much. And just as Rebecca had asked ‘Who is he?’ of Bracken, he now found himself asking ‘Who is she?’ of Rebecca.

  For, faced by Rebecca’s absolute conviction that Bracken was alive, Mekkins found himself delightfully able to believe that this impossibility was, in fact, true. At the same time, in the space of this short conversation, Mekkins had shed, like last year’s winter, whatever loyalty to Mandrake he might have had left. Duncton Wood could go and jump over the cliff as far as he was concerned. He was a Marshender first, foremost and for ever, and that was all he wanted to be.

  ‘Maybe you’re right after all,’ he said finally, getting up and playfully pushing her with his shoulder. Rebecca laughed with him and the July evening was warm again, the insects hurrying and busy with their life.

  ‘Take care, Mekkins,’ she called after him as he left her for the Marsh End, as if she knew he had changed and made a decision about himself that would cause him trouble if he was to honour it. Mekkins found in going that he hated to leave her.

  The end of July and the beginning of August turned out to be a time of delicious chatter and idleness. The females who had littered in spring were well clear of their young, who had gone off to find their own burrows and tunnels, while the males had lost their aggressiveness. Moles rarely came right to the centre of Rebecca’s system, as Mekkins had done, but out on its periphery, or on the edge of other moles’ systems, Rebecca spent a lot of time with them, talking and learning new lore of the wood.

  Her springtime fascination with plants continued and she was especially interested in what the older females had to say about how herbs could heal all kinds of ills and aches, if only a mole knew how to use them. Again and again the name that cropped up was Rose the Healer’s, who was said, though nomole was certain, to live on the pastures! This was always whispered in a hush and gave Rose a special air of mystery that resulted in Rebecca regarding her with a great deal of awe.

  ‘What’s she like?’ Rebecca would ask, but nomole seemed to express him- or herself the same way about her.

  ‘She’m the most understanding creature I do know,’ one would say.

  ‘Commonsensical—that’s the word I’d use,’ another would pronounce.

  ‘Rose? Ah, well, Rebecca, if you want to know Rose, you get her to tell you a story. She’s good at that.’

  Rose appeared to possess, for each mole that talked to her, the one characteristic they liked in another mole best of all. Rebecca wanted to meet her for lots of reasons, but most of all because of what she might be able to tell her about herbs.

  However, Rose’s appearances and disappearances were as mysterious and unpredictable as everything else about her. You didn’t arrange to meet Rose—she just appeared.

  It was at the beginning of August that Rebecca heard a snatch of an old rhyme that so intrigued her that she decided to make another herbal journey down towards the Marsh End. The snippet she heard was this:

  When white stars have shone,

  When their petals have gone,

  Then pick thy ramson.

  ‘Ramson’ was the old word for wild garlic and everymole knew how good that was in times of trouble. Hearing that it grew in the darker and moister parts of the Marsh End, she was at first put off trying to find it, but then one old female claimed to have seen it in a bit of a damp patch over where the Marsh End butted on to the pastures and so, hoping to avoid the dark places she did not like by keeping to the wood’s edge, Rebecca set off one dawn to find it.

  But it was more than just the desire to find ramson that drove her out of the safety of her burrow. She had felt ill at ease for several days, unhappy, uncertain—as if there was something that needed seeing to just around the corner, but she didn’t know what. She had kept looking over her shoulder. It nagged at her and made her restless, so the journey to find the ramson was a good means of giving way to her restlessness. There had been a shower sometime in the night, and as the morning warmed, the wood’s floor grew steamy, while droplets of rain fell off the bramble and ivy where Rebecca had to take to the surface.

  Quite what ‘white stars’ referred to, she wasn’t sure, but the rest seemed to make sense. ‘You’ll know the place by the perfume, if you can call it that,’ she was told, and she spent a happy morning sniffing her way along the pasture edge, seeking out a ‘perfume’ that wasn’t quite a perfume.

  Lower and lower down the hill she went, among the long summer grasses and bracken, and stopping with delight by a stray wild honeysuckle that entwined itself among a stand of brambles. Scent after scent came to her—nettles, oak bark, ants, cow dung, the most delicate aroma of fungi, but nothing that smelt like the way ramson sounded.

  Still, it was a nice day and that part of the wood felt safe, provided you didn’t stray too far beyond the cover of the trees. By midmorning she was sleepy and dozed off in a warm, dry old burrow she found.

  She awoke in a delicious summertime reverie, when each thought comes crystal clear but leisurely. She was aware of birdsong around her and the gentle buzz of flies and bees along the edge of the wood. The thought she was thinking was how curious it was that some parts of the wood seemed safer than others, carrying in their every plant and creature a greater sense of peace and calm. She had mentioned this feeling to other moles before now, but they looked puzzled and didn’t seem to understand what she was talking about.

  Still, on a day like this, what did it matter what other moles thought? Indeed, it didn’t even matter much that she couldn’t find the wild garlic, because there were plenty of other things to experience.

  She listened to a blackbird hopping impatiently about the wood’s floor, turning over this and that in search of grubs; she came upon a dusty little ants’ nest and, as once before, tried licking up one or two. They tasted horrible and she spat them out again.

  ‘Oh, well,’ she sighed happily, ‘if everything tasted nice, then nothing would taste nice, would it?’ And with this thought she wandered straight into the range of a strong, clinging smell that was not horrible and yet not exactly nice… but definitely attractive, and began to make her way hopefully towards it.

  She would have pressed straight on, but stopped when she heard the quiet singing of a mole ahead of her amongst the undergrowth. There wasn’t any tune to the song, but it had a tune; there weren’t any words, either, but it had words; you couldn’t say the voice was much… but it was lovely to listen to.

  In other places in the wood Rebecca would have backed
carefully away, unwilling to risk attack, even if moles who sang songs were rarely aggressive. But here, in this part of the wood, on this particular August day, she had never felt safer. So she made a semi-burrowing noise to announce politely that she was about and then went cheerfully forward through the undergrowth from beyond which the singing was coming.

  There, right before her, was the singer—and the ramson. A female was crouched with head on one side among a clump of tall green plants with long, floppy, oval leaves that curled and fell back on themselves. She was quite old, by the look of her fur, and as happy as anymole Rebecca had ever seen. Between snatches of song, she was sniffing the plants up and down, almost as if caressing them.

  The mole, who did not seem to notice Rebecca, was smallish, the tall plants all around her perhaps making her seem rather smaller than she was. But her shoulders were sturdy and there was a great solidity about her that reminded Rebecca of an oak root poking out of the ground to which there is a great deal more than the eye can see or the snout scent.

  ‘Why, hello, dear,’ the mole said, without looking around, ‘I wondered how long it would be before you summoned up enough sense to come and introduce yourself.’

  Rebecca started forward but the old female raised a paw to signal that Rebecca should wait where she was while she finished whatever she was doing with the ramsons.

  ‘It’s best for you to wait there while I do this. I’m just getting these ramsons used to the idea that I’m going to pick one or two of them. It might slow things down if you came here among them.’

  She sang a little more, touched one or two of the stems, peered at them through wrinkled eyes, and finally said, ‘There, now! That’s all right! They’re almost ready!’

  Finally she turned to Rebecca, who saw what she had already sensed, that her face was one of the kindliest and most sympathetic she had ever looked upon.

  ‘So they’re ramsons, are they?’ exclaimed Rebecca, finally unable to resist the temptation to run forward and sniff at the leaves and stem of the one nearest to her. The flowers, which were withered and nearly done, were too high for her to reach, though their scent was strong enough to smell without getting near. Even so, Rebecca noticed something curious. ‘It’s strange,’ she said, ‘how they smell more at a distance than close to.’

  ‘It’s not strange at all, as a matter of fact,’ said the other mole, coming over to where Rebecca was standing. ‘It’s inevitable. If you can understand why and believe it, then you’ll hold a secret in your heart for which many moles you meet will have cause to be grateful.’

  Before Rebecca could ask what this mystery meant, the mole asked, ‘What’s your name, dear?’

  ‘Rebecca. Mandrake’s daughter.’

  ‘And Sarah’s child, if I’m not mistaken. Well, child, my name’s Rose.’

  ‘Oh, at last!’ exclaimed Rebecca. ‘Rose the Healer! They said you’d know about ramsons and lots of things like that, and here you are to tell me!’

  Rose laughed gaily and Rebecca began asking questions so infectiously that Rose quietly settled herself down in a spot warmed by the sun, for she knew she would be asked a lot more before this young thing had done with her.

  But what Rebecca wanted to know about most of all was the little rhyme about ramsons she had heard. ‘I couldn’t see what it could possibly mean,’ she said, ‘unless it was that you can only pick them at dawn when the stars have shone. But then… well… that would mean you could pick them at any season, and I’m sure that wouldn’t be right.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t it be right, my love?’ Rose asked the question quite seriously, the cheerful content in her face subtly replaced by an excited curiosity about what Rebecca had said.

  ‘Well, because there’s only certain times you can pick plants and herbs like ramsons—I mean, times of seasons. Looking at growing things, I’ve often thought that they weren’t exactly ready but I’m not sure ready for what.’

  ‘What mole told you there were only certain times?’ asked Rose, now quite serious.

  ‘Well, nomole exactly. My mother, Sarah, told me about some of the plants, and other, older moles told me names and rhymes and how you can use them for healing, but nomole said when to pick them. Well… the plants told me!’

  Rebecca finally got this out with some difficulty; she had never thought about it before, though it had always seemed obvious enough to her. ‘Isn’t it obvious?’ she finally asked.

  Rose looked at her for quite a long time, her head on one side. Then she said firmly, ‘It’s not obvious at all; in fact…’ But a blackbird hopped and scurried near her, seeming to break her line of thought. So Rebecca asked, ‘Well, what does that rhyme mean?’

  Rose laughed. ‘It’s the flowers, Rebecca; they’re like lovely, white stars when they come out. Here, I’ll show you… ’ And she led Rebecca through the clumps of ramson to a plant in a dark part of the wood over which an oak branch had fallen so that its growth had been stunted.

  ‘Look!’ said Rose, pointing to the moist shadows by the branch. There, among the small ramson leaves, Rebecca saw a stalk with a cluster of white flowers whose pointed petals were sharp and bright against the gentle, pale green of the long leaves. Several of the flowers were withered, but one or two were still fresh and their smell strong.

  ‘You’ll often find in a clump of plants that one or two flower very late, or their flowers stay longer after the others have developed towards seed. Perhaps the sun doesn’t reach them, perhaps, as with this one, they are stunted by accident; or perhaps, like some moles, they just naturally take a long time to develop. Never ever pick those ones, my love, never ever. They’re very special. Their spirit has a special beauty.’

  Again Rebecca wanted to ask why, but Rose turned away and went slowly back to where they had been sitting before, touching the stems of the bigger ramsons with her paws as she passed them. The subject seemed closed.

  ‘Anyway, you can see now what the rhyme means, can’t you?’ said Rose.

  ‘Yes,’ said Rebecca, but rather vaguely, because something had occurred to her. ‘Do stars look like that?’ she asked Rose.

  It was a good question. Everymole knows that stars shine some nights, usually when the moon is strong. But, of course, moles cannot see them. It had never occurred to Rebecca to wonder what mole it was that had been able to see stars so that other moles knew about them with such certainty that they never questioned their existence.

  Rose thought about Rebecca’s question for some time. Indeed, it prompted a whole series of thoughts in her mind far beyond the question itself. The fact was that, in a very short space of time, Rebecca had made a deep impression on Rose. She had liked her from the first moment she scented her hesitating beyond the undergrowth, uncertain whether to show herself or not. But liking is one thing, feeling awe is another. And that’s what Rose felt.

  Rose had been a healer in the pastures and Duncton Wood for many moleyears past and had felt many times the great wonder of the life about her which she was sometimes graced to have the special power to cherish and preserve. She was loving and modest in her service to other moles, going to them when they needed her and expecting nothing in return. Some, however, would bring to her useful herbs which grew near their tunnels, while others would tell her the stories and tales that had been told them by their parents, knowing they delighted her. She loved to tell stories herself, especially to the youngsters in spring (when she noticed with a smile that many adults would stop to listen as well). But she never spoke about one mole to another or of Duncton Wood in the pastures—or the pastures in Duncton Wood. Such knowledge was her own and she never passed on the secrets of the moles she helped and healed.

  But a healer’s life may sometimes be a lonely one, and in recent moleyears Rose, who had been getting older, had felt the weariness of forever being a prop to other moles and never being able to seek support for herself when she needed it. Naturally she scolded herself for such thoughts, or chewed some dried flowers of yellow meadowswe
et which she gathered from where it grew down near the Marsh End and blossomed in summer. ‘Nothing like this to cheer up a mole,’ she would tell herself, but some melancholies will never quite leave, even from the heart of a healer.

  On the dawn of this particular day, Rose had been drawn out of her burrow and over to Duncton Wood by an impulse compounded of unease and excitement. She never questioned such impulses—they had a will of their own, and a purpose, too, which it was beyond anymole to fathom. A mole resisted them at her, or his, peril. All she knew was that somewhere in the system there was a mole in deep trouble who in some way needed her help. Where the mole was, what the trouble was, or what mole it might be she had no idea. But the need to pick ramsons was part of the impulse and that in itself was unusual, since she had already gathered her stock of ramsons for drying in June, when they were flowering most widely. Still, with ramsons the fresh plant is always best, and if the impulse said ‘Go and pick some’ Rose would do just that.

  She had not been at all surprised when another mole joined her—though she had half expected whatever mole it was to be the one in need of help. That, however, did not seem to be the case.

  To add to her puzzlement, and subsequently to create a sense of awe in her, Rebecca said several things that suggested she knew a great deal instinctively about plants and their powers, which she did not yet know she knew. Sensing this, Rose had deliberately not elaborated on several of the more important questions that Rebecca had raised almost unconsciously. The question of why the smell of wild garlic may seem stronger further off than close by, for example, involved explanations of why it is that the smaller the dose of a herb a healer gives, the more potent may be the impact.

  Rebecca’s understanding of the fact that plants talked to her was also difficult to explain to her without, in a curious way, jeopardising her ability to listen.