Duncton Quest

by William Horwood

  That this was so was generally unknown to the males for males were not present at birth, nor allowed by other females near birth burrows, and what male could argue when a mother reported the young dead?

  Yet Tryfan knew that “dead” meant “killed”, and his source was Smithills.

  Smithills’ mate, an Eastside female, had borne young and he had been told they had been born dead.

  “I thought ’twas to be expected, Tryfan,” he explained sadly. “Anymole who knows anything about scalpskin knows that a mole that has had it, whether male or female, does not make healthy pups. Pregnant she may become, with pup may he make her, but if one or other has had the sores then those pups will not be born at all, or if they are they’re as good as dead.”

  “But your scalpskin was cured,” said Tryfan, who had done it himself.

  “Begging your pardon, Tryfan, but you didn’t cure me, you healed the sores, and that’s a different thing. I’m not saying I’m not grateful, just that I know ’tis too late for me to have young now.”

  “Did you tell your mate that?” asked Tryfan.

  “Course I did – for it wouldn’t be fair otherwise. But you know what females are: if they think there’s a chance of a pup and there’s no other male around they’ll have even a rough old mole like me, and I’ll not stop ’em.”

  Tryfan chuckled but, uncharacteristically, Smithills did not and Tryfan saw he had more to say.

  “Fact is, that there was young born alive of my mate’s litter, but they were killed.”

  “Who did that?” asked Tryfan appalled.

  “Other females. ’Tis the way. They stay in the birth burrow and watch over, and if the young aren’t right why, they kill them.”

  “By who’s authority?” asked Tryfan.

  “By tradition’s,” said Smithills. “I asked my mate and she said that ’twas the desire of the Stone. ‘And what was wrong with the mites?’ I asked. ‘Three paws upfront, and no snout,’ she said. ‘No shame to kill them, but shame for male to know.’”

  Smithills lowered his great snout.

  “They say it has been bad that way since the plagues, some say even before. And now it’s worse, Tryfan, and surviving young are few.”

  “And the more precious to us,” said Tryfan.

  Of all of this Tryfan later questioned Maundy in Comfrey’s burrow.

  “Smithills is right,’tis females’ lore,” she said. “Seems cruel, I know, but it’s for the best. A female can’t be trusted to do it for herself, though some are willing enough. But we try to have another there to help.”

  “To murder you mean,” said Tryfan angrily.

  “Such young are better dead,” said Maundy matter of factly.

  “But Boswell himself was such a one, wouldst thou have killed him?”

  Maundy stared at Tryfan and said, “Aye, in this system such a mole would not have lived.”

  “It’s not right, Maundy. The Stone is life itself and desires not that its young be killed however hurt they may seem to be.”

  “Then may the Stone itself grant that you never witness some of the births I have seen since the plague,” said Maundy, “or have to decide what pups of a bad litter must live and what must die.”

  When she had gone Tryfan asked Comfrey, “Did you know of this?”

  “N-not many males know, but I d-did, T-Tryfan. Yes I d-d-did.”

  Later, when he was calmer, Tryfan asked Maundy, “Have any scalpskinned moles ever parented successful young?”

  “Never have to my knowledge, never shall is my belief, not ones with sores. Nor moles touched by plagues, nor murrain, nor any such. There’s many a mole in moledom would have young if they could, but their body’s been tainted with disease, and the Stone won’t permit them young. But there you go.”

  Tryfan saw there were tears in Maundy’s eyes, and sadness, for a mole likes to make her own young, and teach pups what she knows.

  Learning this, Tryfan was not surprised to hear that Thyme, too, had difficulty pupping after she and Spindle had mated. Spindle had not caught scalpskin in the Slopeside and seemed clean enough, but Thyme had been ill when they first met her, and was ill again during her pregnancy. So ill, indeed, that both Comfrey and Maundy tended her and Maundy herself stayed to watch over her when she pupped.

  That was a long and dangerous thing and the young when it was born, for there was only one, was weak. But not so weak as Thyme herself, who seemed to suffer a recurrence of the illness she had suffered in Buckland and was quite incapable of tending to her pup. More than that her bleeding would not stop, and no amount of care from Maundy or herbs from Comfrey could prevent it stopping either. So for a time after the birth the youngster was left to mew alone, unsuckled and alone while Thyme fought for her life. But then the moment came when Thyme seemed to accept that her weakness would not improve, and she bravely asked Maundy to find another, stronger mother for the little thing.

  “Ask Spindle himself to take him, he’ll find a female will have want of him,” she said.

  “It’s better I do it,” said Maundy. “Female won’t take it from a male.”

  “No, no, let Spindle take him,” whispered Thyme. “He’ll know where to go.”

  So it was that Spindle was summoned to Thyme’s birth burrow and there he saw his love so weakened by the birth she could barely reach for him; and at her dry and wasted teats he saw their male pup, tiny and striving.

  “Take him,” whispered Thyme. “While there’s time take him, my love.”

  “But I didn’t know you were so...” said poor Spindle, shocked to see Thyme so ill and thin with the effort of birth and the ravaging of her illness.

  “Surely he’ll be all right if only —”

  But Thyme shook her head.

  “Don’t delay, Spindle, take him now. Find a female who will care for him. Go now, please go....”

  “I don’t know where,” said Spindle.

  Then Thyme reached for his paw and, touching it, said, “There is a place you know, a place we said we’d always meet, the place where we first found our love; take him there, my dear, but hurry now.”

  So Spindle took his pup up by the skin behind his neck, awkwardly, for a male is not so good at such a thing, and Thyme smiled and said, “Bring him to me.”

  Which Spindle did and laid him before her. Thyme looked at her one and only ever pup and said, “My father’s name was Bailey, let that be his.” Then she spoke as best she could to Bailey, and caressed him, saying again and again, as if those words she spoke then were all the words that pup would ever hear from its own mother, and they must say everything, “You are much loved.”

  Again and again and again, but weaker and weaker, her voice fading in that dark burrow.

  Then Maundy nodded to Spindle, who took up Bailey once more, and turned away and did not hear as Thyme whispered after him, “And you, Spindle, never forget you too are loved, so much.”

  Then Spindle was gone, down the long slopes of Duncton Hill to the north, knowing where he must go, which was Barrow Vale, where he and Thyme had known their love and sworn to meet again one day, or tell their kin to do so.

  Of that long journey Spindle left no account, nor of what happened when he got to Barrow Vale. But another mole did, one other mole knew, and she remembered and repeated what she knew.

  There in the dark of Barrow Vale, where the roots of dead trees were, and dust of the past, Spindle brought Bailey and found a female waiting. Gaunt she was, but her teats were full and her longings were great.

  “Whatmole are you?” asked Spindle when he saw her and placed Bailey before her.

  “Prayed to the Stone,” whispered the female, very afraid. “Said to come here. Said...” But she stopped there and bent to tend the pup, licking him, caressing him, and curling her body to his that he might suck.

  “What is your name?” asked Spindle.

  “He’s a lovely thing, what’s his?”

  “Bailey,” said Spindle.

  “A
good name,” said the female, trying to suckle the pup.

  “Have you young?” asked Spindle, puzzled.

  “Aye,” said the female. “Two good, one bad. The bad was killed. Bailey’ll replace him.”

  Spindle wanted to say, “Tell him he was of Thyme and Spindle,” but instead he told her, “Tell him that when in doubt in days to come he’s to trust the Stone and come to Barrow Vale where you found him. Will you do that?”

  Then the female looked up at him, her eyes filled with the joy of a mother who has found her young, and said, “As sure as the Stone is good to me, I will. That in times of doubt then Barrow Vale is the place where he must go. I’ll tell him.” And she turned back to tiny Bailey, and nudged him close as close can ever be.

  “I must go,” said Spindle, fearful for Thyme, eager now to get back.

  “Aye, aye,” said the female vaguely, and she did not look up as Spindle left the dusty tunnels of Barrow Vale.

  Yet he left the whisper, “You are much loved...” and he wanted to turn back for a terrible fear was in him to hear those words Thyme had said, and repeated so strangely.

  Then again, “You are much loved.” So he ran from Barrow Vale, and up the long way of the slopes, but even before he reached his mate’s burrow once more, Maundy was coming to meet him and he knew, from her face and her gait he knew it, that his Thyme was no more.

  Some say he ran then to the Stone; others that he was mad with grief and attacked Tryfan himself. But one knew the truth, and told it. Spindle of Seven Barrows went back down to Barrow Vale to find Bailey again, and take him back, but when he got there the female was gone, and Bailey with her, and he stayed alone at Barrow Vale, mourning his loss, and angry with the Stone.

  Now, as spring advanced, everymole in Duncton sensed urgency, and the tunnels were imbued with tension and purpose, as each there knew a time of trial was approaching, and that many among them might die.

  Already a Council of Elders had been formed, with Comfrey as its senior member and Tryfan as its natural leader. Skint was on it, and Maundy, Spindle too and Smithills.

  Alder should have been, but some in Duncton still did not quite trust a mole who had been a guardmole so recently, but they were content that he should remain in charge of new arrivals, many of whom became trained watchers as they were taught discipline and made fit for the long struggle to come.

  As for Mayweed, he reported only to Tryfan or Skint, but followed his own rules, disappearing nomole knew where, exploring tunnels and routes nomole else could fathom, thinking his thoughts; confiding in Tryfan of this and that secret he knew, or secret way he had found.

  Everymole in the system knew that with each day of warmer weather the chances of grike attack increased. The watchers beyond the system had been increased, yet the only reports they had were of a certain restlessness which always comes to moledom in the spring. If the grikes were coming they were biding their time, making their plans, massing their forces. But where, and when...?

  Meanwhile, Tryfan and the Council made plans of their own, though only after much discussion, and some dissension. War was not natural to Duncton moles, and nor could they really believe the cruelty that might come. The Pasture moles, to the west, when asked if they would fight alongside the Duncton moles, simply laughed.

  Tryfan’s experience in Buckland had taught him that there were advantages in the kind of organisation and planning the grikes evidently used, and they had better use it themselves if they were to survive.

  Skint had been deputed to check the defences of Duncton, and it had taken him three days to travel its circumference in the company of Smithills and Mayweed, following the course of the Thames which largely encircled it, and then the route of the way itself, under which he and the others had first come, using the narrow cow cross-under, twofoot made. Not nice for moles, but efficient so long as the weather was dry. They found drainage conduits under the way, buried in gravel and hard to reach, and memorised their locations, making sure to hide their entrances and exits.

  “But the fact is,” reported Skint to the Council on his return, “if grikes come from the south east, which is the only way they can, we will be unable to escape without having to fight through their ranks because there’s no way of getting over the river, and they can cover the other ways out.”

  “Then the first thing we must do is to establish positions beyond the way, which will divert attack and leave exits which will be safe,” said Tryfan.

  “We really must l-l-leave Duncton then?” said Comfrey unhappily.

  “There will be no way to defend it, or the moles in it, against prolonged attack by superior numbers,” said Tryfan. “Yes, I think we shall have to leave – for a time. I believe that Henbane would wish to massacre us here, as proof of the Word’s power, and as a lesson to anymole remaining who harbours hopes of being loyal to the Stone. So an evacuation is not a failure so much as a frustration of her objectives, and allows us to fight when we are in a better position to do so.”

  “So why not get out now while the going’s good?” said Smithills, not needing to add that had they left Harrowdown earlier Brevis and Willow might still be alive. Tryfan was discovering, as his father had before him, that leading moles is not easy, and demands a balancing of one option against another, for which there are few rules, and where instinct is one strength, and purposefulness another.

  “Skint and I have already discussed that,” replied Tryfan, “and we feel that an evacuation now is premature. For one thing we cannot be sure where the grikes are, and therefore might make the mistake of fleeing towards them in country we do not know and which we cannot defend as well as our own system. But certainly they are not very near because otherwise our watchers would have seen evidence of them. Secondly, each day that passes a few more refugees come and swell our ranks. Although their number has now declined, we might still miss some who would have joined us.”

  The Council heard what he said and reluctantly approved it. All there wished to protect the pups that had recently been born, for they would be vulnerable in attack, but they recognised that the longer they stayed the stronger the pups would be when they left, and the more would survive.

  But Tryfan had another point to make. “And finally,” he added, “we must prepare Duncton for the time after our evacuation.”

  “After?” queried Maundy.

  Tryfan and Skint nodded.

  “We are too few to defeat Henbane’s forces outright, and to do so may – will – take many moleyears. But until now moles of the Word have had little trouble from the systems they have overtaken. Not only have such systems been severely weakened by plague, but for decades past, perhaps even centuries, moles of the Stone have lived peaceably, and there has rarely been inter-system fighting. So the grikes have never faced serious resistance. They have offered order and security to moles demoralised by plague and weakening belief, and what little resistance there has been they have crushed with threats, cruelty and punishment.

  “But now, here in Duncton, there is resistance, and there are moles willing to fight to the death for what they believe.”

  The Council moles nodded – there was not one there who would not die for the Stone. And increasingly it was being said (though Tryfan discouraged such ideas) there was not one who would not die for Tryfan himself.

  “We were taught by the grikes themselves,” said Skint, “though unintentionally, that it is possible to resist them from inside a system, by the use of secret tunnels, surprise, and a strategy of withdrawal. This is not the traditional mole way, but then nor is snouting and the injustice of the Word. So far we are small in number, and we must find ways of making what strength we have be felt a hundred times. The day may come when Henbane and Weed will regret the creation of punishment tunnels like the Slopeside, for it taught us that we can survive in conditions not thought fit for moles, and from out of those conditions successfully fight, demoralise and escape. We have three moles among the followers – Skint and Smithills here,
and Mayweed – who survived the Slopeside, as you did yourself, Tryfan, and Spindle here....”

  “Yes, yes,” said Tryfan, “but what is your plan Skint?”

  “Seems to me now that we should create secret tunnels in Duncton, ones to which we can return after an evacuation and from which we can cause trouble for the grikes if they stay here. Some of us can remain and hide after the rest of you have gone, to harass Henbane’s guardmoles, or learn things they do not wish us to know.”

  “Aye,” said Smithills, “that’s work I’d willingly do, and others too if I’m not mistaken.”

  “M-m-may the Stone guide us, and k-keep us safe until we are ready for the c-coming fight,” said Comfrey at the end of the meeting, and doing his best to sound inspiring, though fighting was never his way.

  Yet, perhaps the Stone was listening, or at least guided the moles of Duncton in those dangerous days. It certainly seemed to have guided one mole, and that was Mayweed, who came searching out Tryfan one day as excited and eager as he had ever been.

  Mayweed had changed a great deal in his time at Duncton Wood, as had many of the moles. He had become fuller, more cheerful, and more winningly enthusiastic about what he did. He had also, in a strange way, become more mysterious and secretive, and was much liked by the youngsters, many of whom he knew and with whom he was relaxed, and who loved him to tell his long-winded stories.

  But on the day he sought out Tryfan he was anything but leisurely.

  “Bold Sir, come quick come now, come eagerly! Mayweed has something astonishing and amazing to show you!”

  “Which is what, Mayweed?”