“Am,” said Rooster.
“The Master who comes from the Moors up north somewhere where the giant Ratchers roam, and the water tumbles in great torrents off the mountain-tops.”
“Do, sort of,” said Rooster.
“And you’ve killed more Newborns single-pawed than anymole in moledom.”
“Might have. Shouldn’t have. Have been punished, have lived, and now can atone for what I did.”
“‘Atone’ is something the moles of the Word used to say,” said Dint. “It’s not a word that’s pleasing to my ears.”
Rooster shrugged. “Atone is righting wrong the best way a mole can. I’m not good with words. Words are awkward in my mouth. Words argue with each other in me and make dark. Privet knows words. One day she will speak and scribe for me and I will delve for her and between us in the centre where we are, where there’s no speech, no scribing, no delving, there will be our Silence which is our love. Couldn’t die because of Privet; she won’t die because of me. But Whillan...”
“That’s her lad,” said Dint. “That’s what moles say. Killed at Wildenhope, along with you. They say.”
“He didn’t die. I didn’t die. Whillan’s not Privet’s son.”
Dint looked both sympathetic and unbelieving. Some rumours take deep root and sprout into great errant trees of whispered tales which moles are reluctant to alter. They like them as they are and they become part of their internal landscape. The idea that Whillan was not Privet’s son somehow spoiled the inherent tragedy of the story of the Wildenhope killings, as he had heard it. He did not want to let the idea go. But there was something compellingly true in all Rooster said, so much so that Dint, an experienced elder and so a good listener was asking himself, even as Rooster talked, “Why has the Stone made me find this mole? Assuredly he is the Master he says he is. Assuredly he is Rooster. And it is certain that if the Newborns learn he is here then there’ll be a whole horde of them on their way from Evesham before they can say “Quail”!”
It said much for Dint that he did not also immediately conclude that the best thing for Stoke was to get Rooster as far away as possible as quickly as he could. No, he saw it only as an honour and opportunity that Rooster had so mysteriously, if unceremoniously, been delivered to Stoke, and that upon his modest and nearly forgotten system had fallen the responsibility of watching over a Master of the Delve.
“Not Privet’s son?” repeated Dint automatically. He was playing for time as he pondered what to suggest that Rooster now did, for there was something about the delver that was ungovernable and wild. It had been a relief, for example, that he had said he would not try to “love” the Newborn Inquisitor, for it would not have surprised him in the least if he had said he would. And then, Dint thought worriedly, how could I stop him. This is not a mole anymole stops. So, naturally, Dint was paying little attention to Rooster’s words, so involved was he in the thorny problem of how to cope with him.
“No,” said Rooster, “Whillan’s my son.”
“Your son,” said Dint faintly. His son, he repeated to himself. Oh dear, this is all quite beyond me. He was trying to save his son at Wildenhope. One great branch of the errant tree of rumour concerning the killings had cracked and fallen, but now another, bigger one was thrusting forth in its place.
“Do Masters of the Delves have sons?” said Dint, genuinely astonished by the thought. “After all. Masters are sort of... well, surely... I mean...”
Celibate was the word he was seeking. Holy as well. Not ordinary. Not prone to that sort of thing.
“Do,” said Rooster. “You look worried. You think I’m in danger. But wrong, very. Am safe here and will stay. Nomole knows I’m here. Will help you. What are you doing here?”
“Ah!” said Dint, unsure what answer to make. He had hoped it was a question he would not be asked. Nomole likes to be asked what he’s doing when what he’s doing is to find the solution to a problem that has no solution. Though perhaps the solution was Rooster! Of course, the Stone does provide.
“Delving,” said Dint, wishing immediately he had said anything else but that.
Rooster grinned and dug one of his huge front paws into the ground. It seemed to Dint that soil and vegetation flew slowly into the air. The ground appeared to tremble. The earth shuddered.
“Er, I’m just delving tunnels,” continued Dint apologetically. “Clearing them out, repairing them after winter, that sort of thing. Boring, dull, mundane, not your sort of thing I should think.”
“Life’s “just” tunnels,” said Rooster with an ominous seriousness. Worse, he stanced up and loomed so large above Dint that it appeared that the sky had suddenly clouded over. He raised his paws and clashed them together with terrible relish, and Dint thought the last moments of his life had come.
Perhaps Rooster saw the effect he was having, which was why he made a doomed attempt to ease Dint’s mind.
“Ratcher moles aren’t giants,” he said. “I’m a Ratcher mole.”
“Ah!” said Dint, trying to creep out from under the shaggy shadow of Rooster. “You are?”
“Am. And now...” said Rooster, his paws still huge and dangerous against the spring sky as he peered down at poor Dint.
“Yes?” squeaked Dint.
“I feel the delving need.”
“The delving need,” panted Dint, scrabbling out of Rooster’s shadow and into the sunlight again. “You feel it?”
“Do,” said Rooster, “very much.” Then frowning ferociously (as it seemed to Dint) he said softly, “Wouldn’t harm you, Elder Dint, wouldn’t harm anymole. Anger’s gone, been washed all away.”
Dint stared into Rooster’s eyes and saw concern, love, and genuine sorrow that he should have frightened the old mole. More than that – and perhaps, after all, this was why the Stone had chosen him of all moles in moledom to be the one to find Rooster – he suddenly became aware of the profound gentleness and vulnerability that was Rooster; and he saw in Rooster’s concern some shadow from the past life that the river had “washed away” that made him wonder for a moment if he was now, after all, free of what he had hoped was left behind.
Dint smiled, as one who has seen a way forward and is suddenly at ease. He knew what to say, and what to do.
“Mole, we need your skills here. You asked me what I was doing here but I did not really tell you the truth. Rooster... er, Master, I was praying for a miracle. I was hoping... but I just can’t seem to find... I just don’t...”
Then Dint, who until then had seemed such a solid and certain sort of mole, even if he had looked a little nervous when Rooster stanced over him so suddenly and waved his paws about, now looked very uncertain, and very unsolid. His mouth wobbled, his eyes searched desperately here and there, one of his flanks actually trembled and he cried out, “I don’t know what to do!”
“Tell me,” said Rooster, putting one of those great and terrifying paws upon Dint’s shoulder, “tell me your pain. I will understand.”
“But you won’t be able to help. Nomole can help us. We are doomed here in Stoke, all of us, doomed. The Newborns...”
“Tell me,” said Rooster again; and Dint told him.
Indeed, it did seem that he had not revealed the whole truth about matters at Great Stoke. While it was true that the Assistant Brother Inquisitor he had mentioned had been neutralized by a timely satisfaction of his “gluttony and lust’, it was also true that at the beginning of May some self-righteous and zealous Stoke moles, persuaded of the Newborn way, had gone off to Evesham to report what was going on.
That this might create real danger for the Stoke moles had not occurred to any of them until they received ominous reports of Newborn advances into systems adjacent to Great Stoke. Investigation showed that the Stoke moles had been quietly surrounded, nearby systems had been turned against them, and any hope of escape was gone.
“We can’t get out, and can’t cross the River Severn. But even if we could we wouldn’t want to until the present crop of youngster
s are a bit older and less vulnerable,” explained Dint. “A few of us, and I’m one of them, believe rumours we’ve heard from a few friendly neighbours that the Newborns are going to make an example of us all. There’ll be a massacre here just like there was down at Shepton Mallet back in March.
“Yesterday we heard that the advance on us is imminent and I decided prayer was not enough. The reason I came down to Nether Stoke wasn’t to delve at all – what’s the use of that now? – but to see for myself if there was any way we might escape across the river. I got that idea from what happened at Duncton years ago at the time of the war of Word and Stone, when moles were led to freedom an unexpected way.
“So I came, but I soon saw there’s no way to do it, and I was just about to give up and go back upslope to Great Stoke and say to everymole that the only way now is to fight it out, when I saw you down there looking as good as dead. Now I know you’re the Master of the Delve, I’m thinking you might be able to help. You might have an idea – but then it may well be there’s no idea anymole could have that would save us!”
“May be a way, maybe not,” said Rooster, cutting Dint short. “You can’t escape with young and old, females and males. A few, but not many.”
“No,” said Dint, “but —”
“But you can be lost, lost to Newborns, lost to neighbour murderers, lost to violence for a time.”
“Lost?” whispered Dint.
“Could delve tunnels to hide good and innocent moles in. Could delve tunnels so that Newborns couldn’t get into them without knowing how. Could make tunnels of innocence, with help. Did it in Chieveley Dale when I was younger. Worked then against the Ratcher moles; could work now.”
Dint looked both puzzled and hopeful.
Rooster nodded and said, “It can be done, to make tunnels, chambers, nooks, places, where mole is at peace. Goes back to where we started. Beginning, when young. Even then was darkness, but where innocence is hurt is less. Can do that, I can, because Gaunt mentioned it. Told me others have done it. You have touched old history in my heart; Dint, you are a clever mole. You weren’t led by the Stone to me, I was led to you.”
Still Dint did not understand.
“Will show you,” said Rooster. “Will teach you. Your system’s young, your females, and the old moles will be safe. Well, safe until river floods again.”
Rooster nodded sombrely towards the great river.
“Am clever but not that clever. Can’t delve tunnels here that will stop the waters coming back, but...”
“Yes?” said Dint eagerly.
“But maybe can nearly do it. Nearly is better than nothing. Now, you show me the ground, show me all, show me where Great Stoke is, and we are, show me everything and all. Can’t delve until then, and then will as best the Stone allows me. Will help your system. Being Master is to serve.”
Poor Dint! Cast down by the worst apprehensions for his system, staring out at the grim waters of the Severn and knowing that his last hope of bringing friends and kin to safety was but a dream; astonished to discover a mole, a Master of the Delve no less, muddy and half drowned; in turns amazed and terrified by said Master; and now... now falling over himself to show Rooster the dull and empty landscapes of Nether Stoke, eager to find some feature on which to rest his still distant hopes, or some small landmark where a mole might, as it were, begin...
“It’s all very much the same you see, all, well, nothing much at all,” he said despairingly once they had inspected the surface between river and terrace. How impassive Rooster’s face had been, how devoid of even the flicker of interest or possibility that Dint had hoped he might see there. Even a Master of the Delve, it seemed...
“Where’s Stone?” said Rooster suddenly. “Nearby, long-lost, found and lost, where, where, where?”
“What Stone? We have no... we...”
“Said was holy place of Stoke moles once. Long time ago.
Said that’s why when summer comes you elders come here.”
“But that’s a story, that’s... that’s a tale, that’s...”
“Yes?” said Rooster eagerly, surveying the flat meadows where the grass was greening fast. There were a few old water-ruined fences, and clogged-up dykes that had been cut by two-foots centuries before and now forgotten. Rooster was thinking of the Stone in Hobsley Coppice. That was risen now, but the Stone lost here at Nether Stoke was fallen; probably all over moledom there were fallen Stones, remnants of a faith that had almost died, but which could still recover if only moles believed again.
“Is Stone here. Is!” said Rooster.
The strangest of looks came to Dint’s face and he creased his brow as if trying to resurrect a memory.
“Didn’t even think of it,” he said at last, light dawning on his face. “Well, damn my old bones, but I didn’t —”
“What? Think what?” said Rooster urgently. “No time, see. No time now. Your dark nightmare coming over that rise!” He pointed a huge talon to the very top of the terrace, beyond which lay Evesham and danger.
“Old days,” said Dint urgently, almost hopping from one paw to another in excitement. “In the old days of my grandfather’s time a Stone was found, or part of one. They didn’t delve it all. Buried under the mud. Silted over. Grass grown on top. Lost and then found.”
“You saw it?”
“Taken to where it had been before I was born. They delved around it, the lost Stone of Stoke. Centre of the old system, here, where my ancestors lived long, long ago before the river moved and took their ground. When they found the Stone they tried to raise it before the winter floods. The whole system tried, day by day, working against time, trying to raise it from where it had fallen.”
“Many Stones fallen, few raised,” said Rooster, his eyes narrowing as he seemed to peer towards past and future both at once. “Raising Stones again is a Master’s skill. Not easy.”
“No, no, it wasn’t and they didn’t succeed. But the winter came early and the Stone was still half buried when the floods rose, and it was lost under mud again.”
“Found too soon,” said Rooster matter-of-factly.
“Nomole could find it again afterwards. Maybe the waters moved it.”
“River changes things,” said Rooster, “back and forth, back and forth again.”
“Does the Stone mean something?”
Rooster laughed aloud. “Mean everything here, there and everywhere. Listen. You go and fetch five moles, good moles, to help; I’ll find your lost Stone.”
“But...” began Dint.
Rooster nodded, his paws fretting to get at the ground.
“You bring five moles, not six, not four, but five. We are two, they are five and together make seven which is best. The moles will tell you they’re the ones. They’ll know without knowing. Bring them soon. From the Stone we’ll make a tunnel, and from that tunnel we’ll make two and from those two we’ll make four and from those four we’ll make seven and so sublime confusion!”
Rooster laughed again.
“But where will you find the Stone?” asked Dint.
Rooster shrugged and said blithely, “Stone’s problem, not mine. Go, go, go, no time. Five moles only, no more nor less.”
“I will!” said Dint, scurrying off across the meadows.
When he looked back Rooster was already half underground.
“Delving,” muttered Dint with excitement and awe. “And now... five moles. Where will I find them? Who shall I choose?”
He heard a shout, turned round again, and saw Rooster far from where he had been, calling something. He heard Rooster laugh. And Rooster’s words seemed with him as he turned once more to run as fast as he could: where to find five moles?
“That’s the Stone’s problem, not mine!” Dint panted to himself.
Chapter Twenty
Dint re-appeared half a day later, but with something more than five helpers.
“Who’s the sixth?” growled Rooster, glowering at the youngster whom Dint had vainly tried to make i
nconspicuous behind himself.
“He’s hardly a mole at all,” said Dint apologetically. “He’s only small; he won’t say anything, you won’t notice him.”
“Have noticed him,” said Rooster irritably, taking a step nearer and staring down at the thin face and wide eyes of the mole at Dint’s flank.
“He’s kin. He’s harmless. He’s —”
“Not staying,” said Rooster, reaching down a rough talon and, as it were, prising the youngster from Dint’s protection. He prodded him in the chest, and none too gently. “Why bring him? Five and two make a Seven Stancing, six and two makes nothing. We have work to do. He goes.”
“He... well, you see, he has...” but Rooster stared blankly at Dint, whose defence of the youngster withered in his mouth.
“You better go,” sighed Dint, turning to him. “Maybe you’ll be allowed to help later, maybe...”
“He only wanted to help, sir,” said one of the other moles, evidently disappointed at the stance Rooster was taking.
“Am Master of the Delve,” roared Rooster suddenly, so loudly that all of the moles jumped back. All but one. The youngster stolidly stanced his ground, staring at Rooster all the while.
“Why you bring him?” asked Rooster again, but this time more gently.
“Parents dead,” muttered Dint. “In our system the elders care for orphaned young. His siblings are with other families but this one I care for. He was waiting for me when I went back to Great Stoke this morning. Had waited all the day before and all the night. He wanted to come yesterday.”
“Why?” asked Rooster, turning to the youngster.
“Want to delve,” said the mole, blinking, as it seemed, for the first time. “Want to delve away the Newborns. Want to make the wind-sound clear.”
“He speaks like that, when he speaks at all,” said one of the others apologetically. “He means no harm.”
Rooster seemed about to roar again, but somehow the roar transmuted itself into a great chuckle, so warm, so friendly, that the atmosphere within the group was transformed in a moment from uncertainty and disappointment to an easy unity.
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