Duncton Wood

by William Horwood

  He had now developed, almost to a science, his system of sound exploration to establish what lay ahead, and seeing that the tunnel was in softer soil more typical of the lower slopes, he called ahead with a deep roaring sound that travelled well and got a good response in this kind of soil.

  The response it gave was the one he hoped for—a clean echo back, though far in the distance. It meant that the tunnel ran down to a dead end, the end being the seal he had seen from the other side in Hulver’s tunnel. He ran on down, occasionally making an uncharacteristic whooping sound from the sheer pleasure of having finally found his way right round the Ancient System and established, he was almost certain, the site of its link with the present Duncton system. This was an important moment for Bracken, not so much because he wanted to go into the present system, but rather because it satisfied the desire he had had since puphood to get a grasp of how the Ancient System related geographically to everything else. ‘Where is the Ancient System—where does it start and where does it go?’ he had once asked Burrhead. Now he would know.

  He ran on down the tunnel almost as excited as when he had reached the Stone for the first time. Soon he heard the echo of his pawsteps coming back, pitter pat pat patter, pitter pat pat patter, drumming back to him in an escalating pattern of soft sound as the end of the tunnel got nearer and nearer and then finally came in sight straight ahead of him. As he reached it, he let out a shout of pleasure, for surely the tunnel was the right size, in the right direction… it was just a matter of finding a way through to the other side without leaving any clues for any Duncton mole who might, at some future time, come along.

  The sound of his shout echoed back past him and on up the tunnel down which he had just run, where it was lost in the darkness of ever-shifting air currents. The tunnel here was dusty and he saw at once that the seal was as it had appeared on the other side—hard-packed soil. He was at the end! Again he let out a laugh or shout of pleasure, crouching down on the dusty floor of the tunnel with contented relief.

  And Rue heard it. She thought she had heard sounds before, distant sounds like a mole running and shouting, sounds from outside her tunnels. She had run about seeking their source, determined to fight to the end for the tunnels she had found with such difficulty and which nothing would make her give up. Perhaps, three moleweeks before, when she had first come here, she would not have been so determined. But now she was strong again and though the tunnels were not a patch on the system Mandrake had turned her out of—at least from a food point of view—they were hers. She had busied herself to make them comfortable for the approach of autumn and they smelt sweet from the nesting material she had brought in and rustled with the sound of beech leaves. Her cache of worms was well stocked and she had cleaned everywhere. It was hers, and nothing would force her out.

  The sounds did not come from up on the surface into whose night air she snouted and listened fruitlessly. Down below again she listened and distinctly heard the sound of Bracken’s approaching pawsteps, soft but persistent in her tunnels. She darted about, eliminating one tunnel after another as their source, until she took the old half-finished tunnel that lay past her burrow and led up towards the higher slopes, and the sound seemed to come from there. She went up it very, very hesitantly, because being dead-end, any creature there would have to fight, and a fight is best avoided if it can be.

  The sound came stronger… pitter pat pat patter, pitter pat pat patter… a running mole. Surely a running mole! Rue, trembling with apprehension, approached the tunnel end and looked up at the blank wall which, on this side, had been covered over with a thin layer of dried mud.

  The sounds were coming from beyond her tunnels. Higher up the slope. From the direction of the Ancient System. Rue’s eyes widened, and she waited, not knowing what to do or how to move. How can a mole fight an enemy who isn’t there?

  Beyond the wall she heard the pawsteps stop. She heard a triumphant shout or laugh—she couldn’t tell which—and the settling of a body on the ground. She not only heard that, she felt its vibration as well. Her heart in her mouth, her mouth slightly open, she waited. Behind her her bright tunnels, her sweet place, seemed to darken and blur as she wondered if perhaps she should run after all.

  Rue waited in the silence that now settled on the tunnels as, beyond the seal, Bracken got his breath back. She knew that the slightest clumsy movement on her part would send a vibration, and possibly even a sound, through to whatever creature it was beyond.

  Bracken looked about him with pleasure, and then up at the blunt end to the tunnel formed by the seal. It looked like a mass of consolidated and close-packed soil and was not likely to give him much difficulty now that he had regained so much of his physical health and strength. He did not intend to break the seal right down, because he wanted nomole to know what lay on this side of it. But he wanted to make a hole big enough to peer through and establish without any doubt that this was the link. So he would make one, burrow his way up on to the surface, re-enter Hulver’s tunnels and make his way up to the seal to confirm its position in the tunnels.

  He got up, turned to the blank face of the seal, and in an exultant gesture, spread his talons wide, reached as high as he could, and brought them crashing down on the seal, ripping them vertically down its length. The noise that followed was indescribably terrible. For, unknown to Bracken, or to Rue who crouched so near on the other side, the seal was, in fact, massive flint covered over only thinly with soil and debris. Bracken’s talons cut through the veneer of long-dried soil with ease, and scraped down the flint beneath with such a screeching scratch that the sound was like a million blackthorns flying in the air.

  The soil fell away before him to reveal the great flint underneath and Bracken had to cover his ears with his paws to block out the terrible sound he had made.

  While, on the other side, unknown to Bracken, Rue heard the terrible sound, and it was like an owl killing its prey. In that moment she forgot all her resolutions to stay and defend her territory. All she knew was that there was a mole beyond the Stone who could make owls appear and screech at their victims. She turned away in fear and ran away out of her new home, desperately making for the communal tunnel down to Barrow Vale, where, if she survived that far, she could tell her tale of a dreadful mole from the Ancient System and the owl that seemed to screech at his command.

  She could not know what effect the sound of her fleeing would have on Bracken. His talons smarting from their confrontation with the impregnable flint, its sound dying away, he heard a mole beyond fleeing into the distance.

  Nothing could have told him more clearly than this flint that it was here that the Ancient System ended, or started, depending on which side you came from. Nothing could have driven home to him more forcibly than the sound of yet another mole running from him, to whom he meant no harm, that he was for ever dispossessed of the Duncton system in which he had grown up. It was no longer his system. He was not of it. He was of the Ancient System now, and alone in it. Its tunnels, its wormless depths, its mysterious secrets, its aching isolation and loneliness, were his, and his territory.

  His mood changed from exultation to a grim despair.

  He looked at the great flint and knew it would be useless to try to dig a way round it. Still, at least he could confirm that the seal was where he thought it was in Hulver’s old tunnels, and perhaps stay in them for a few moledays, or until whatever mole it was that had run off came back. When he did, Bracken would retire gracefully. For the time being, however, he simply could not face going back to the confines of the Ancient System—which, though it was now his place, was too lonely for him to bear quite yet.

  Chapter Thirteen

  With Rue’s sudden appearance in Barrow Vale one morning, frightened, dishevelled and with a genuine tale of horror to tell, the rumour of a giant mole in the Ancient System turned into solid fact. She happened to arrive at a time when both Mandrake and Rune were away in the system, so that before news reached them, she had told her
story to everymole who wanted to listen to it—which was every mole.

  But the story did not only bring Mandrake and Rune hotpawing it back to Barrow Vale; it also brought Rebecca, who, since her meeting with Rose, had grown much more independent. Perhaps having her own tunnels had something to do with it as well, for she seemed to throw off any sense of the constraints that Mandrake’s bullying and rules of conduct had put on her and started living with a joy and spirit that Duncton females rarely showed. If there was laughter in the system, hers were the tunnels it seemed to come from; if there were tears, hers was the place where a mole might find comfort; if there were moles having a good feast, hers was the place where they had it.

  In no sense was Rebecca wilfully disobedient to Mandrake, about whom, and to the amazement of all moles who knew her, she never had a hard or harsh thing to say. ‘I love him,’ she would declare, as if such a love could forgive the many cruelties and unkindnesses all the system knew he had imposed on her. Which, indeed, it could. The fact was that Rebecca did not seem the least affected by Mandrake’s attitude to her. But however great her love for him, her love for life and for living was greater. It was as if she was driven by a force for joy and love quite out of her control, and anymole who came into contact with her fell under its spell and got carried along by it. She seemed not only to affect other moles, but other creatures and plants as well, as moles like Mekkins, who took to visiting her, soon noticed. The trees, the plants, the creatures of the wood—all seemed brighter and happier around Rebecca’s burrows. Hers was the place where the nightingale sang; hers was the place where the sun seemed to shine; nowhere else did wood violets look quite so lovely in the sun.

  And Rebecca herself was the picture of health and happiness. Her coat was full and glossy, catching even the most delicate of summer dawn lights in its sheen, and beautifully warm and dark when the sun shone full upon it. She had grown since the spring and was big for a female, equal in size to some of the smaller males, and though not so graceful as her mother, Sarah, she was a thousand times more feminine.

  She would touch and rough-play, and cry ‘Look!’ pointing to some rambling eglantine or scurrying beetle whose beauty and life caught her eye, which she always seemed to want to share with another mole. But for many, her enthusiasms were sometimes almost embarrassing in their exuberance, for it doesn’t do for an adult to dance and play too much, does it?

  So that sometimes, when Rebecca was quite alone and lying still in the evening or watching the light change in the early morning, there was a subtle sadness about her of which she herself was barely aware, and if she had been, she could not have known its cause. Sometimes in her dreams she wished that she might meet a mole who would play and dance with her and make her laugh and sing with the same abandon to life that she gave to others.

  There were only two moles who understood this unseen sadness in her life. One was Sarah, who was now more a friend than a mother and who, though more sedate than Rebecca, would sometimes giggle like a pup while they lost themselves in each other’s fun. The other was Mekkins, who, since that day in July when he had conceived such a powerful affection for her, had often stopped by near her burrow and spent some summer time there. Of all the males she knew, he was the one with the greatest force for life, the only one whose wit was sharp enough and whose humour was wide enough, and whose experience was sufficiently great, for Rebecca to feel in his presence an expansion of herself that she did not feel with the others. She loved his Marshend language and irreverence.

  Curiously, it was these two, who loved and cared for Rebecca most of all, who were the least concerned by the change that started to come over her at the end of August. She began to become restless and stayed for moledays down in her burrow, seeing no joy in the fading summer sun, no fun in the flocking of starlings and pigeons that were the early heralds of autumn. For the first time since she had left her home burrow she became angry with other moles, snarling at them if they came too near or presumed (as they had often done before) on her good humour and generosity. Sometimes, when she heard another mole coming, she would hide herself and not answer its calls.

  But Sarah and Mekkins understood in their different ways. The fact was that Rebecca was beginning to need a mate. Or rather a mating and a litter, since Duncton moles rarely pair for more than a few moledays.

  When Mandrake had forbidden her to go near a male in the spring, she had had a craving for a mate and a need to celebrate the busy life she saw about her with the feel of a litter inside and the joy of pups in her tunnels. There had been times in early June when the sound of other females’ growing pups had left her feeling bereft and lost. But these feelings had faded as the summer advanced until, at the start of September, this much stronger and more specific desire for a mate came to her.

  Then sometimes she would remember, with a dark excitement, the time Rune had followed her down into the tunnels, chasing after her, and she had been scared, knowing what he wanted. She hated him and yet (and this she could not understand) again and again the secret memory of the mating ritual he had started and Mandrake had stopped short, coupled with the dark, assured malevolence of Rune, came back to her.

  It was Mekkins who, in the middle of September, brought her the sensational news that the Stone Mole, as the Eastsiders had first called him, had been sighted by a female called Rue who, at this very moment, was telling everymole in Barrow about it.

  ‘Course it’s a load of rubbish. I mean, it’s got to be, hasn’t it? You’ve only got to look at this mole, and I’ve seen her, to see she’s as nervous as a pup and would think a dormouse was a monster. They say that she’s been through a hard time… ’ Mekkins knew perfectly well that it was Rue whom Mandrake had turned out of these very tunnels to make way for Rebecca, but knowing Rebecca as he did, he realised that if she knew, she would be the first to go impetuously rushing off to offer Rue back her tunnels. Rebecca would learn in time that there were some things a mole couldn’t do much about.

  Mekkins went on: ‘Anyway, it’s had the inevitable effect of making the Stone Mole rumour the number-one talking point all over the bloody system.’ He laughed, and Rebecca shared his laugh.

  Rebecca believed that the Stone Mole was Bracken, with a conviction born of the faith first put into her by Hulver just before the June elder meeting; as for Mekkins, he almost believed it too, and the very least that Rebecca’s certainty did for him was to remove him from taking part in the gossip about the Stone Mole and make him see most of it for the nonsense it truly was. This objectivity about something everymole else got worked up about was perhaps characteristic of Mekkins anyway, for he had maintained his unique position as a buffer between the Marshenders and the main system only by the extreme independence of his spirit and actions. He was perhaps the only mole in the system uncorrupted by any fear of Mandrake.

  It had been the Eastsiders who had first labelled whatever it was up in the Ancient System the Stone Mole. Mekkins told Rebecca that story and thrilled to see the pleasure it gave her to have her belief that Bracken was still alive confirmed. He was puzzled that she should be so concerned about a mole she had never met, but with Rebecca, well, she was concerned about so many things so enthusiastically that one more shouldn’t be a surprise. And she had explained the impact Hulver’s conversation had had on her.

  After that, he brought her the ‘news’ of the Stone Mole as it came along, and there was plenty of it. Nothing highlighted the system’s decline in morale under Mandrake’s thrall so well as everymole’s willingness to believe that anything out of the ordinary that happened in the system was the Stone Mole’s doing. It was as if the whole system were looking for a saviour, if only a fictional one, to rid them of Mandrake and his henchmoles. If a wind-broken branch was found at the foot of a tree, it had been felled by the Stone Mole; if a badger left his trail in moist soil down near the Marsh, the Stone Mole had passed that way; if weasels had a fight and left a mess on the ground, why, of course, the Stone Mole had done it!
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  Mekkins and Rebecca laughed together at these stories, for even Rebecca, eager as she was to have her hopes confirmed, could not believe them all when a mole as sceptical as Mekkins was her mentor.

  But even Mekkins was surprised at something that happened just a few moledays before the arrival of Rue and provided almost the perfect preface of violence to it. One night, over on the part of the Westside which was adjacent to the pastures, there were screechings and unearthly growlings as two creatures locked together in combat late at night. The woodland silence was shattered by it, and many moles trembled to hear the fatal sounds carrying down into their burrows.

  Everything finally fell silent as dawn broke, and some brave Westsider, whose burrows lay nearby, crept out to find, hanging limp from the pasture fence in the cold, dull light of very early morning, a massive owl, savaged to death. One wing was entangled in the barbed wire of the fence, the body tilting from it down on to the ground, its talons hooked and dead. One eye was staring open, its yellow glare overtaken by a lifeless, opaque haze; the stomach and neck were bloody with gore, while the only movement was in the soft downy feathers of its inner legs when the morning breeze stirred them where they were not stiff with dried blood.

  Burrhead was summoned, and he immediately sent henchmoles to get Mandrake and Rune, for a dead owl is a rare sight for a mole and something the elders should see. And the word quickly got about that the Stone Mole had killed an owl!

  The only mole not visibly shaken by the sight was Mandrake himself—even Rune seemed put out by it, looking at the body sideways and unwilling to get too close to it. Mandrake doubted whether the owl had been killed by a mole at all—the descriptions of the unearthly growling that had been heard, presumably sounds made by the owl’s successful adversary, sounded very like a wild farm cat to him. But then, he thought, looking contemptuously around at the miserable Duncton moles gathered there, he was forgetting that this lot had never seen a farm, let alone a farm cat. They had never even been out of their own system.