Duncton Stone

by William Horwood

  “Going to the Stone as usual, sir?”

  “To pray, yes,” said Pumpkin.

  “Let one of us accompany you. For Stone’s sake, one of these nights —”

  Pumpkin shook his head and said quietly, “No, no, I need to be alone sometimes. Now, I must be off.”

  But it was not to the Stone that he went; nor towards the Stone that he hurried through the night-still Wood; nor to the Stone he went to pray – but to Sturne’s austere quarters on the Eastside slopes just beyond the Library, to report and to warn. Of the coming of Weeth and the others sent by Maple, Sturne naturally knew nothing, but of Quail...

  “I know, I know, Pumpkin, I heard it from Brother Fetter this afternoon. I have been much concerned about how to tell you: Quail will be here before two days are out. He has Thripp with him. There are to be trials and arraignments, and from Duncton a new wave of terror is to be prosecuted across moledom. Pumpkin, what is to come will be worse than what has gone before, unless there is some way to stop it.”

  “There will be a way, there must be a way,” said Pumpkin earnestly, “but I don’t know where to turn to find it. The coming of moles like Weeth and Arvon is all to the good I’m sure, but I do not want to see Duncton itself riven by a bloody war, and nor does Hamble. There has got to be another way forward.”

  “You’re tired, mole,” said Sturne with unaccustomed gentleness. “Here, stance yourself down and rest. Dawn will not be with us for a while yet.”

  Pumpkin did as he was asked, and Sturne found him a thin worm from his meagre stock, which the library aide dabbed at in a dilatory sort of way.

  “I wasn’t trained for this kind of thing, Sturne,” he muttered. “I’m no good at it at all, full of doubts, not a strong leader...”

  Sturne admitted a bleak smile to his lined face.

  “You are a leader, Pumpkin, and a good one, whether you like it or not.”

  “Humph!” said Pumpkin, finally chewing the worm and relaxing. “Humph! What other news did you get from Fetter?”

  “Rumours, stories, nothing factual. Nothing certain, nothing you would wish to scribe into a text.”

  “Like what?” said Pumpkin, who could see Sturne had something more to say, but was reluctant to do so. He either doesn’t believe it, Pumpkin thought to himself, or it’s not “factually substantiated” enough for his academic mind!

  “Tittle-tattle. Idle dreams of moles with nothing better to talk about. I dislike peddling rumours – they become accepted fact and then scholars like me have to spend the years disproving them.”

  “Like what?” said Pumpkin again, the familiar exasperation with Sturne returning. If only the Acting Master Librarian would let himself go for once! Rumour arose from emotion, and that was why he did not like it.

  “Well then,” said Sturne, reluctant, his mouth pursing with distaste, “I’ll tell you what I’m told is being said, and it’s the main reason Quail is so anxious to get to Duncton fast. He wants to be here before it comes.”

  “What comes?” poor Pumpkin almost shouted.

  “The Book of Silence.”

  The Book of Silence...

  “The Book itself?” gasped Pumpkin.

  “They’re saying the Book of Silence has been found.”

  Pumpkin could only stare into the enshadowed eyes of Sturne. His own eyes were wide with excitement, all weariness gone.

  “But it’s not true, you see, it can’t be true,” said Sturne.

  “Why not?”

  “The Book’s here, it has always been here.”

  “Here?”

  “That’s what our Master Stour always believed, that it was deep and safe in the Ancient System.”

  “Here in the Ancient System?” said Pumpkin incredulously.

  Sturne nodded. “That’s why he went into retreat into the Ancient System not once but twice, and it killed him in the end. He was seeking the Book of Silence.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He told me.” The two moles looked at each other and Pumpkin knew that Sturne would never lie, and had never lied. He spoke the truth.

  “But he never found it?” said Pumpkin.

  “Oh, but he did, you see, he did – or more accurately, he found out where it must be. It was just that he did not have the strength to go on into that Dark Sound. You saw what the other Books involved, you shared the burden of them with me in the Chamber of Roots at Longest Night when we helped Master Stour take them at last to the Stone.”

  “Why did he not tell me? I was... I mean I would have... I...”

  For the first time in his long life Pumpkin felt he had been betrayed by Master Stour, or not trusted at any rate. That felt like betrayal, and Sturne saw how deeply hurt he was.

  “My dear friend,” said Sturne, “Master Stour wanted to tell you so much and he knew how hurt you would be when you found out you had not been told. But you see, he was sure that if you knew, you would, as you were about to say, have wished to help him. More than that, that you would have done anything to help him, for you were and remain a library aide whose sense of service goes far beyond the bounds of duty. He knew it, and he valued it, but he also wished to protect you from it.”

  “But why? If he had found the Book, then it was only a matter —”

  “‘Only a matter’!” cried out Sturne. “Mole, it would have killed you as it so nearly killed him. He knew where the Book could be found – deep in the Ancient System, through those tunnels nomole can venture through, nor emerge from alive. The ones, my dear friend, you know something about...”

  They looked at each other, remembering that grim night when Pumpkin and Cluniac had barely escaped with their lives from their foolhardy attempt to explore the central section of the Ancient System.

  “I now think that but one mole can lead the way right into the centre and find what it is that the mediaeval Masters of the Delve sought so successfully to hide away, and protect with Dark Sound.”

  “You think the Book of Silence is hidden there, don’t you?”

  “I do.”

  “And that Privet’s the one to fetch it?”

  “Aye, I do,” said Sturne quietly.

  A tawny owl hooted and then was gone from a nearby tree on the surface above them; the first light of dawn touched the portal of Sturne’s tunnels, grey-violet and dim.

  “I want to think the same, but if it’s so why did Stour send her from Duncton?” demanded Pumpkin, angry now, and confused. If he knew the Book was here... did he see the Book? Are you sure he could have known?”

  “He knew or guessed,” said Sturne firmly. “Why did he send Privet forth? I think because he understood that she was not yet ready to fake up the challenge of the Book of Silence, and find a way, or the strength, to take it up from the centre of the Ancient System and then through the Chamber of Roots to the base of the Stone and so complete the circle of Books and Stillstones. Her present retreat into Silence is the last part of a journey that will bring her back in readiness to Duncton Wood.”

  “And to the Newborns, and Quail, and danger,” said Pumpkin regretfully.

  “You will help her,” said Sturne softly. “Stour believed you would be the one she would need.”

  “Me?” said Pumpkin faintly. Oh yes, he remembered the

  Books, and the near-impossibility of holding them and the terrible toll they took of a mole. He thought too of the Dark Sound of the Ancient System, delved so many centuries before by Masters unknown, as he guessed too, to protect the Book of Silence until a great mole came. It was all waiting for them! As, in some way, he had always felt it must be.

  “I will do whatever I can, Keeper Sturne, you know that.”

  “I know it, mole, and the Master Stour knew it. Above all moles he ever worked with or ever knew, you were the one he trusted for the task of aiding Privet of Crowden.”

  “A mole can only do his best,” whispered Pumpkin.

  “And your best. Library Aide Pumpkin, is the very best there is!”


  Weeth’s description of the panic and recriminations that had swept across moledom through the molemonths of June and the beginning of July was accurate, and it had been into this very wave of danger, bloody and terrible, that Hibbott of Ashbourne Chase had unknowingly set off after his stay in the Community of Rose at the southern edge of the Midland Wen. Let us join him on his pilgrimage once more...

  His cause had not been helped by his bold, if ingenuous, insistence that there was no virtue in going on a pilgrimage in search of Privet of Duncton Wood if he did not honestly tell others whatmole it was he sought.

  “I was surprised,” he later scribed in the account of his great pilgrimage, “that mere mention of Privet’s name should send moles scurrying for cover, or disappearing into their portals, or hotpaw (as it finally turned out) to report my presence to a group of Newborn guardmoles who, unhappily, were ensconced nearby.

  “Before I knew what was happening I was surrounded by large and brutal moles who demanded my name, and asked where I had come from. It seemed plain to me that the Stone must have sent me into their path because in some way as yet unknown to me they would help lead me nearer the object of my quest. I therefore bade them welcome, and told them they really had no need to buffet me to the ground, stamp on my head and abuse me, as we had common cause. Were we not all seeking peace and harmony? However, these words appeared to incense them further and I found myself being dragged along into unwholesome tunnels and cast into a chamber with other moles, who, I came to realize, were their captives.

  “Only later did I know that I had unwittingly arrived at the notorious place of containment called Leamington, whose moles were generally elderly and infirm, and disinclined to support the Newborn cause. This being so they had been massed into a great and unwholesome chamber and there I now joined them, after some unpleasant questioning from which the Newborns deduced that I was a fool and knew nothing about Privet.

  “Surrounded as I now was by the groans of the injured and dying, not to mention sights and odours about which I have no wish to scribe, I told myself, “Hibbott, you are on the edge of a void. Gloom and depression beckons, hopelessness and desolation calls, and you must now use all your strength and faith not to be lured towards them, and so into the depth of black despair like these other moles. Therefore, your progress temporarily halted, and the fulfilment of your task in abeyance, you must keep yourself busy and occupied by creating a task for yourself The Stone will guide you...”

  “With such words as these the positive pilgrim can remind himself of his responsibilities, and avoid the sloughs of despond into which he will be in danger of floundering from time to time on his long journey. Certainly it worked on that occasion for me and I raised my snout, took a good look around, and decided that my task must be to help those poor moles of Leamington as I myself had been helped by the healers of the Community of Rose.

  “I am not a healer, and know little of Such matters as herbs, and touch, and prayer, as healers need to know. However, it is my observation that moles know more about helping others than they realize, and they may draw upon it, as a honeybee draws upon the nectar of a flower, much more easily if they forget their own little trials and tribulations. A self-absorbed mole is not much help to others, justified though his self-absorption might be! And it is a strange paradox of life, which I will not try to explain here or anywhere else, that a mole often finds that the quickest way to help himself is to help another. I resolved therefore to give what aid I could, and bring what healing to the injured and comfort to the dying I was able.

  “Ah, but little did I know how dire was our situation at Leamington, nor how onerous and long would be the time I was forced to spend there!”

  Hibbott, as unwittingly as ever, had journeyed straight into one of the most notorious massings of those times, in which some two-thirds of Leamington’s followers died in circumstances of much horror and suffering. Deprived of food and water, unable to relieve themselves but where they lay, and with the heat of summer adding to their discomforts, disease and death was their slow lot.

  It was Hibbott’s fortune, if such a word can apply to such a circumstance, that he was captured towards the end of the massing when the Newborns were growing unwilling to impose the harshest disciplines in the chambers where moles were held, because the conditions had become so foul that guardmoles would no longer venture in. For this reason he had considerable freedom of movement, and as he was in good health, and elicited the sympathy of one or two of the guards, he was able to secure at least a little food and water for those he tried to help. For himself he took the minimum, sensing that he had longer to die than the others, and that if he might keep a few moles alive a few more days then the decline of his own health and strength would be worthwhile.

  Never once in his account of those terrible times does he complain of his own grim lot, nor does he make much of his own great contribution. Indeed it has only been through the recent scholarship of Bunnicle the Second (of Witney), that we have come to realize that the shadowy mole mentioned in many of the contemporaneous accounts of the Massing of Leamington as having been a source of comfort and healing to many a mole, was in fact good Hibbott himself

  Yet his is not the only mystery attached to that terrible incident, though it has taken many years for scholars to make sense of the clues; for it is now known that Privet herself was involved, and even more anonymously than she was in the Community of Rose.

  This later passage in Hibbott’s until now obscure Pilgrimage, both explains his anonymity in relation to Leamington, and provides the missing clues which connect Privet with the same affair, and indeed with Hibbott himself

  “I believe,” says Hibbott, “that after some two mole-months of these conditions, and doing all I could for my fellow moles to keep my own spirit up, I succumbed to fatigue and illness. Certainly I grew gaunt and thin, as one of my charges constantly told me, and my mind began to wander. *

  * This was the redoubtable Spire of Leamington, one-time elder, whose Out of Disaster Came Triumph, though occasionally inaccurate, offers a personal and moving account of the most notorious Newborn massing of those times. His reference to the mole we know to be Hibbott graphically describes how he ministered to others despite the slow decline of his health, how towards the end he refused several opportunities to escape, and how his faith and prayers sustained the lives of so many until the massing was finally ended.

  “For this reason I can remember little of Leamington’s now famous relief at the paws not of followers but of a new contingent of Newborns led by Brother Commander Thorne of Cannock. Starved and ill as I was, I remember days of wandering, though I now believe that this was largely in my fevered mind. But I woke to reason, and the beginnings of health once more at the gentle paws of a healing mole, a middle-aged female of greying fur, and thin face. She did not speak then, nor did I ever hear her speak, yet to her many found themselves talking, as if in her silence they found a release for their own doubts and fears, hopes and joys.

  “I found myself among many others who had barely survived the massing, and in need of time and respite while we recovered ourselves, much as wounded moles from a battle might recover together in some safe place. I remember only that dear, silent mole who came and tended me day and night, as others did, and it was to her visits that I most looked forward.

  “I talked little, and nor did I desire to when others asked me whatmole I was and whither I was bound. Certainly I did not dare at first say that it was Privet of Duncton Wood I sought, for what trouble had that got me in already! Yet one night I found myself whispering Privet’s name to that silent mole, feeling it was safe to do so, for she never spoke and would not give my secret away!

  “Soon I found myself speaking less of Privet than of the many feelings and experiences that had so far arisen in the course of my pilgrimage. It may seem strange that I should have asked her questions knowing she would not answer, but there is something about silence in another that encourages a mole to seek
answers to questions he has not dared even ask before. So then I began to do what I had not yet done, which was to wonder why I was upon a pilgrimage, and what it was I hoped to discover.

  “‘It isn’t Privet herself I seek,’ I told my confidante, ‘but something about the idea she represents. Yes, I’m sure it’s that. Her stance at Wildenhope, of which no doubt you’ve heard, made me realize that there comes a moment in a mole’s life, perhaps many moments, when he must take stock and ask himself truly whither he is bound. I believe with my whole heart that the Stone will guide me to Privet when the time is right, but to discover that moment I must journey trustfully, trying not to strive for what I seek, trying not to seek at all! I feel you understand, I feel sure you do!’

  “How her clear eyes seemed to bore into me with love and understanding, how careless I was of her and concerned with my own thoughts and desires! How free I felt to talk of things I had never thought of before. To journey without hope! To seek without desire! To find without searching! What strange ideas were these? What perplexing paradoxes! Yet such are the questions a pilgrim begins to ask himself along the way, shedding hope and desire, ceasing striving, letting his hungry spirit be as free and vagrant as his roaming body and errant mind!

  “Such were the ideas I expressed to that silent healer that long night! And the most abiding impression of all? The sense she gave me that I was free to say what I most feared to say and she would not judge or admonish me. I was free, free to speak what darkness or silliness or nonsense came to my mind, and had time to do so, for she was there like the Silence of the Stone itself.

  “I must have fallen asleep, for the next thing I remember was that it was dawn, she had gone, and that I was well, if weak, and ready to resume my pilgrimage. I felt stronger in my mind than I ever had, and all because of a conversation with a mole who never said a word. There is something to be learned from that!

  “I knew my time of respite was over and I resolved therefore to slip away from Leamington as anonymously as my silent mentor had slipped away from me. I rose, went quietly and without interruption up to the surface, surveyed the unfamiliar landscape and said to myself, ‘Well, Hibbott, and in which direction will you point your snout?’