Duncton Stone

by William Horwood

  “Better sleep,” growled Rooster behind him, “better rest.”

  Which they all did but for Weeth, who was first watch, close and hidden in a scrape near a deserted two-foot way.

  Maple woke them all just before dawn, and they began the climb in earnest as the sky above their heads, reluctantly it seemed, allowed streaks of dull grey to break into its darkness. They trekked upward all day with barely a break, finally collapsing into temporary scrapes at dusk to sleep.

  But it was only next day, when the top was reached and they moved out of the trees and on to the gentle east-facing slopes of the Edge that they really began to feel they had left the Newborn threat behind. Naturally there would be danger ahead, but now surely they were beyond the immediate influence of Caer Caradoc, and the time was coming for Maple’s and Weeth’s departure north for Cannock, while Privet and the others continued eastward towards Duncton Wood by as obscure a route as they could find. Ahead and below them stretched another wide, flat valley along which the River Flade flowed southward. Beyond was a further rise of higher ground in whose undulations and remote valleys they could hope finally to lose themselves.

  “Hopefully, we can journey by way of systems untouched by Newborns as we did in the Cotswolds on the way to Caer Caradoc,” said Privet.

  “But the Newborn missionaries seeking to spread their creed probably set off for their destinations at the first sight of spring, as we did,” said Maple. “That’s a good reason for Weeth and I to find out what’s apaw in Cannock now, before others get there. Then we’ll turn back south for the Cotswolds.”

  “One day perhaps,” said Privet, looking round them one by one. “One day we will all be together again in circumstances very different from those we face now.”

  There was a sudden brief fading of light across the face of the long wood behind them, and a cold rush of wind through its trees, and Maple said quietly, “Say a prayer for all of us, Privet, that we may one day return to Duncton Wood safeguarded.”

  She nodded, smiling, then, lowering her head in thought she said:

  “Peace to our going,

  Peace to our intent;

  Peace to our journeys,

  Peace to our paws;

  Peace to our arriving,

  Peace to those we meet;

  Peace to our doing,

  Peace to those we face;

  Peace to our returning,

  Peace to allmole,

  To allmole, Peace.”

  Privet gently embraced Weeth, whom she had grown to like and respect, and as he held her he said over her shoulder, “Guard her well. Rooster, for there’s only one Privet.”

  “Only one of all of us,” said Rooster, eyes warm.

  Great Maple took her in his paws and held her close, so warmly and so tightly she gasped and protested in a pleased kind of way.

  “The Stone is with you, Maple,” she whispered, “and you are ready to lead others now. The day will come when Duncton moles speak of you with pride and pleasure.”

  “I hope so!” laughed Maple. “Be careful and remember that if you face a mole Rooster and Whillan can’t handle I’ll come to your aid!”

  Their farewells were warm and affectionate, but there came the moment of final parting, and then the smiles were a little sad, and the eyes concerned.

  “Farewell, Maple!”

  “Goodbye, Weeth!”

  “And good luck, good luck...”

  Then Maple and Weeth were gone among the winter-worn grass, off back towards the top of the Edge, to begin their journey north to Cannock, and the start of a campaign whose objective was nothing less than to bring about the fall of Newborn strength and power for all time.

  Chapter Three

  Rooster was the last to watch after them, and indeed, it was not until they were long gone from sight that he turned back to his friends.

  “You look as if you want to go with them!” said Whillan in the jocular yet uneasy manner he often seemed to have with Rooster, as if trying to mollify him in some way. Rarely had two moles found it so difficult to be relaxed with each other; but for once Rooster’s response cut through everything to a deeper level.

  “Was thinking,” he began, continuing after a moment’s pause, “... was wondering. What it would be to be Maple. Good. Easy. Honest. Strong. In right place.”

  For a brief moment Whillan saw the lost mole in Rooster, a gentle mole whose heart was filled with longing to be at one with himself and life, one who believed that others – at the moment it was Maple, but it might well be any other mole – had attained a state which he had not, and could not. With a pang in his own heart Whillan saw and understood, and felt an unfamiliar surge of warmth, love and sympathy for the strange and mysterious mole his foster-mother loved. That so... so magnificent a mole (Whillan could think of no better single word to describe him) could feel so worthless! It put his own doubts and fears into perspective and he felt suddenly humble, and relieved.

  It was the kind of insight young emerging moles sometimes have when forced by some chance or circumstance to see the world from another’s point of view; then they see themselves afresh, and more clearly, and, if only briefly, know themselves for the overly self-absorbed moles they so often are.

  In right place” Rooster had just said, and now Whillan felt he had found the courage and opportunity to try to speak more personally to him. Rooster was still staring after their departed friends, but now his huge front paws and talons were fretting at the grass and soil.

  “That’s when he feels the delving need,” Whillan said to himself, remembering this from what Privet had said.

  “Rooster,” began Whillan tentatively.

  Rooster turned to him and Whillan knew it was the right time to speak.

  “Rooster, I was thinking, well, wondering —”

  “Rooster!” Privet called, cutting across the moment, “I wanted to talk to you. I... oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean...”

  Whillan turned from them both, his heart closing again, the moment gone.

  “It’s all right,” he muttered, and fled, angry for exposing himself. Rooster and he were just not ever going to be able to talk. “And why should we?” he asked himself wildly; “why?” He stopped and looked back briefly and caught sight of Privet and Rooster together, companionably as it seemed to him, and he turned away to stare downslope over the great vale across which they must soon travel. Worried, Madoc came over to him, but he ignored her too, to brood and stew and seethe about nothing he could put a paw on, except that it felt like everything.

  “Stone, get me away from this, all of it. Yes, including Madoc. All of them. Get me away!” It was as bitter and desperate a prayer as he had ever made, and only later, when Madoc came close to him and his mood softened, did he pause to think how terrible it would be if the Stone answered such impulsive and negative prayers.

  “Stone,” he began, but he could find no words with which to unsay such a prayer, so he just frowned and whispered instead, “I don’t want to be parted from you, Madoc. Never. I don’t know why I get so angry.”

  “It’s past,” said Madoc, “it’s over.”

  But she still felt the chill that had struck her heart when Whillan had said, “I don’t want to be parted.” How close she held him that day, as they waited for dusk to fall; how little she wished to yield him up to the world beyond, and the dangers that came from journeying.

  But Whillan was wrong to think Privet and Rooster had been stanced “companionably” when he had looked back at them – “uneasily” was the better word.

  “I want to talk to you,” Privet had said, and how much she had.

  “Know,” Rooster had replied, “and don’t want to!”

  To talk? Or to know?

  “But Rooster, it’s time Whillan knew you’re his father. Whatmole can tell what lies ahead? We are going to be separated, of that I’m sure.”

  “Know!” said Rooster more emphatically, thumping his right paw on the ground. “Know he wants to tal
k. Maybe he was about to try. I was trying. You interrupted. You want me to talk? Let me, let him, in our own way. Not interfere. Let go, let go, Privet. Then you will be closer.”

  He reared and growled and frowned down on her, and if she had not known him better she might have been afraid. What she did feel was surprise and dismay. Surprise that he was ready to talk to Whillan, and say something about being his father; dismay that in her eagerness to see them talking she had prevented their doing so.

  “But know there’s danger here,” said Rooster suddenly, looking around the rough grassland where they had halted. “Can’t talk to anymole now. Best to rest a short time and then move. Not now, talk. Not now, think. Now we must go —”

  “We agreed not to go until dusk.”

  “Now,” said Rooster, a little desperately.

  “Where to?” asked Privet.

  “Not there!” declared Rooster, pointing across the vale they intended to traverse.

  “But that’s our way.”

  “Our way,” muttered Rooster, frowning, “maybe it is. A mole can’t undelve a delving in the stars. That will be. Must be. But danger’s there!”

  “Rooster, we should talk,” tried Privet once again. There were times when she felt he was a mountain whose top she could never reach. He towered over her now and slowly turned away and when she called his name he took some paces from her.

  “We’ll go at dusk. Want to be alone.”

  She watched as he climbed back upslope a little and snouted at the ground, until finding some tunnel or burrow he had seen before he dug his way down and out of sight.

  “To brood, to fret, to continue to be confused,” Privet whispered miserably, turning from where he had gone to see Whillan stanced alone staring down at the view, and Madoc still some way off from him. Privet sighed. “We’re meant to be a party of moles travelling together but suddenly we seem like four individuals who have met by chance, and cannot agree on a common destination,” she said to herself “Oh, Stone, why have I grown so tired? Why do I yearn so for your Silence? And why do I feel so afraid? Stone... Why have you given me this burden of thought, and worry, and thinking about things that probably don’t exist? Like the Book of Silence.”

  She repeated “Book of Silence” without pleasure, remembering how, long ago, when she escaped Crowden and reached Beechenhill, the old librarian Cobbett had suggested that finding the Book of Silence might be her task.

  “Some task. Stone!” she muttered wryly. “How can I ever find it? Where do I look?”

  But there was no answer, not in the whispering breeze in the grass about them, nor in the wind that fretted at the branches of the trees in the wood they had passed through. Nor any at all from the distant vale below.

  “I want it all to stop,” Privet continued in her thoughts, “to be at peace, as moles should be. Moledom is so beautiful, so perfect, if moles could but see it. We are but part of something far greater and grander than ourselves, which is of the Stone’s making. Why cannot moles see it and stop their rushing, and fighting, and dissatisfactions? Really... really Whillan and Rooster are no better than the Newborns in all their anger and confusion. I wish I could just rest! I am tired, but I shouldn’t be, after all that time over-wintering at Hobsley Coppice: but I am!”

  She stayed where she was on the surface for a long time, trying to rid her mind of her worries and doubts and feeling very detached from the three moles traveling with her. She was vaguely aware that on the slopes below Madoc had made a move towards Whillan and the two eventually made up, if that was what young moles did, and found a place below ground to rest until dusk. Then Privet was out on the surface alone, blissfully so, and she watched the progress of the spring day all around and above her as if each tiny gradual change – a cloud moving, a blade of grass quivering, a brief moment of birdsong – was part of a change in her. For a time she found a strange peace. There would be time to tell Rooster and Whillan what they needed to know – what Weeth had told her. Time...

  It was only in mid-afternoon that she was roused from her waking stupor by the sudden emergence of Rooster from his temporary burrow some way above her. He set off downslope immediately, passing her by without a glance, and only stopping finally a good way below to stare as she had, and as Whillan had before, at the vale below.

  His passing by her brought about a complete change of mood in Privet; she felt uneasy, restless, for there was something about his appearance that meant... meant something. She could not quite decide what. As she puzzled about this she was interrupted by the sudden emergence of Whillan alone from the burrow in which he had been resting with Madoc. Looking for a moment like a startled squirrel as he peered about the surface – Privet could not tell whether he had seen Rooster – he finally fixed his gaze on her and came hurrying up.

  “There you are!” he exclaimed irritably, in the voice of one who feels the other has gone missing deliberately. Then more reasonably, “I felt suddenly uneasy; I hadn’t seen you... we should have been watching over you... I think we should move on.”

  As Privet smiled and protested that she could perfectly well watch over herself, Whillan looked up and about as if he scented something in the air.

  “What is it, my dear?”

  “I... don’t... know,” he whispered, moving round her and upslope towards where Rooster had been below ground, as if following a trail.

  “That’s where Rooster was...” she began. He set off for the place.

  “No, Whillan, don’t go there!” Now her voice was urgent.

  “No...”

  For she guessed now what Rooster had been doing, and realized why his appearance had seemed odd. His talons had been dirty with soil, his face and his fur dusty and besmirched. He had been delving!

  He had been delving. Though Stone knew at what.

  “Whillan, you mustn’t go down there!” she cried out, running upslope after him and trying to restrain him from venturing down where Rooster had been. But it was too late, Whillan was already on the way down, and despite her protests, continued until he was out of sight.

  Why she was so fearful of his finding what Rooster had done she did not know, but she dithered in a state of dismay and trepidation, looking first downslope towards where Rooster stanced so still, then at the entrance nearby, and then down towards Rooster again.

  Slowly, inevitably, he turned to look upslope at her, rising in alarm when he saw where she was and guessed what she was about before roaring out a terrible “No!”

  Though he was a good way off, his shout was violent enough to shake a mole to his paws, loud enough too to bring Madoc up from where she was hidden. Then Rooster was charging back upslope. Privet, uncertain for a moment what to do, turned impulsively to the tunnel entrance and darted down to find Whillan.

  “Mustn’t go there!” roared Rooster. “Nomole must!”

  Privet supposed she had to warn Whillan that Rooster was coming, and the sound of her paws pattered urgently ahead of her.

  “Whillan!” she called, or tried to. But the echo softened her voice into a caress of diminishing sound, as time seemed to slow; her sense of urgency left her as she continued along the tunnel towards a huge portal from which light seemed to shine, and shadows play. She passed through it into a chamber in which Whillan was stanced, peacefully gazing round the walls. The floor itself was covered in loose soil and stones, and in one corner of the chamber, the darkest place, a bigger pile of debris lay.

  “I could hear you calling, and Rooster, and all the sounds of day,” whispered Whillan, awe in his voice at the sight of the extraordinary delvings on the walls. “I can hear him coming now. He made it, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, this is Rooster’s delving,” said Privet, her voice hushed as she stared about.

  These were no ordinary delvings of the traditional sort, and nor were they the angry, jagged creations such as a mole like Rooster might be expected to make. They were deep and gentle, like dappling light through summer trees, and they seemed to shine
and shimmer. The sound they made was soft and whispering, and distantly familiar, like a long-forgotten scent of someone dear, or the fragment of a song or tale caught on the wind.

  “Sound the delving!” said Privet suddenly, quite carried away by the beauty that encircled them.

  “I have already! I will again. Listen...” Whillan moved to one side, reached out a paw and touched the wall low down where the line of a sinuous soft delve seemed to emerge from the rough soil.

  “It’s a mole,” said Whillan, “it’s a mole I feel I know...” and he sounded the delving, now here, now there, and Privet heard the mewings of a pup, and the whisperings of mother-love, and the dark sounds of menace kept at bay from a growing mole, much loved and well-guarded – and by more than a mother. Nomole can be reared without threat and danger – nor should they be, for the experience of fear and the exploration of doubt expand a mole’s perception of himself towards the reality of his life’s path, which will be, must be, through light and dark, and dark and light.

  So in this extraordinary delving around the chamber’s walls Rooster had hinted at darkness along the way of the young mole whose life he seemed to have created, and Privet was amazed. There were the stumbling joys of first steps taken, and first food found, and the gambolling delights of early explorations beyond the encirclement of a mother’s body, beyond the birth chamber, beyond the first tunnel to the next and beyond all that to the surface... of a wood. Oh yes, the wood was there, sighing above, whispering below, and bit by bit the mole advanced with the months and early years of growth as far and no further as the dark and looming shadows that lurk in wait beyond mother, beyond the birth chamber, beyond on the surface above, and then beyond the furthest tree.

  Now Whillan was near the end of his sounding, and nearing the darkest corner of the chamber where the debris lay. Still the young mole journeyed on in Rooster’s imagining and the shadows were more complex and the light brighter in places, fragmented in others; while beyond, in the darkest place – undelved as yet – was the full menace of the world, now looming up, now falling back to voids of fearful darkness.