Duncton Quest

by William Horwood

  When Tryfan and his companions arrived the system was but a shadow of its former self. Whole sections had been abandoned and such few moles as survived lived in burrows and tunnels far too extensive for them, as lost and bereft as the last few leaves that cling here and there to the branches of an empty beech tree through the cold months of winter. But in that, the system was no different from many of the plague-desolated systems moles such as Spindle and Tryfan had already seen.

  By the time Tryfan and his companions came to the Wen, the final death of the Dunbar moles had almost come. One fecund female alone remained, and she the youngest of all the moles remaining. There were other females it is true, but they were dried and bitter pupless hags, jealous of the younger one, the more so because she herself was the single offspring of the last successful Wen pairing, that between Leine and Paston, the old male who had followed Starling from the chamber and persuaded her to come and meet his “douchter”.

  Bitter the feuds between the ancient males who ogled his “douchter’s” flanks and fur as she matured; bitterness mixed with longing, for few of them had ever mated, perhaps few of them could. But even if they could, were they fertile? Whatmole would know? But that poor young female had had to choose a mate among that aged rabble of bitter males and finally had gone to the Library Hill, and did what she had been taught to do, which was to pray to the Stone and seek guidance.

  After which she declared that that guidance said “wait” and no male mole was bold enough to come forward and insist she abide by the new Rule and choose one of them.

  But wait for what? Wait for a lifetime? Wait for a miracle perhaps.

  Two seasons she waited, hoping, despairing, and only her father, Paston, to protect her and talk to her. The males wouldn’t. The females chose not to. All hated her. Two seasons of waiting with the burden of that system’s future on her. Waiting....

  It was into this lost and hopeless system that Tryfan’s group came, not knowing its history, nor understanding why the aged moles there soon eyed them as they did. Nor why young Starling was touched and harried by grey, aged paws, or why, even before they had recovered, ancient crabbed females smiled and fawned like youngsters over the recovering bodies of bemused and astonished Mayweed, and embarrassed Spindle. Pairing? How could that have crossed their tired minds and beset bodies? As for Tryfan, he was, virtually, ignored. Anymole could see he was dying, nomole had time for him when there were better opportunities to feud for.

  So in the days following their arrival, far from showing any genuine interest in the four moles who had arrived, or in moledom beyond the Wen, Dunbar’s system had become so closed and inward-looking that all the tunnels hummed with was talk and gossip of who the newcomers might like, and lies and intrigue, until finally Mayweed and Starling had to stand their ground to give Spindle peace to tend as best he could to Tryfan. He, now, was rarely conscious, but lay rank with illness and festering wounds, unable even to move. But by him poor Spindle stayed night and day, watching over him, cleaning him, and asking again and again for herbs or a healer or help. Anything but the rabble of old desperate moles trying to paw himself, Mayweed and Starling and offering their crabbed and nauseous favours.

  Perhaps by then Spindle had learnt enough to have guessed the truth of the Dunbar moles, for he was able to exercise his knowledge of the rituals of the old systems to summon a council of moles in the chamber adjacent to the Library, invoking some spurious rule or other he made up, with the express purpose of asking them to stop their squabbling and appoint somemole with a knowledge of the surface who could find herbs to heal Tryfan. For without them he would soon be dead.

  So, charging Mayweed and Starling with this task of persuasion, for he did not wish to leave Tryfan alone, he had left them to it. But the council had merely talked and talked, suggesting nothing. It was then that Starling had finally lost her temper and stormed off, to be followed by Paston.

  She was doubtful of his intentions but, being Starling, and strong, and fed up, and (most of all) willing to try anything to find help for Tryfan, she had gone along with him.

  He took her downslope westward, by surface and by tunnel, but having only established that it was his daughter Starling was to meet she had no idea what to expect. Only that she must be old, because he was decrepit, but she might be nice.

  So on they went, until they reached a humble entrance to a humble tunnel and went down it. Paston called ahead, to warn his daughter of their approach, and then, indicating to Starling to stay where she was, he entered a chamber. Starling noted that the tunnels smelt good and sweet and were dry, simple, and new-made. This female, she decided, must be a mole after her own heart.

  Then Paston came out again, ushered Starling forward, and smiling with a touching pride brought her into a chamber where a sweet-looking, gentle-seeming female waited, somewhat apprehensively.

  “Myne douchter Feverfew,” he said.

  Starling grinned and said a loud, “Hello!”

  Feverfew stared and did not seem to know what to say. To Starling’s surprise she was quite young looking, and had good fur and a sensible way about her. Her gaze was shy but her eyes intelligent and direct when she had summoned up courage to look at a mole, and she looked fit, as if, unlike the other moles in the system, she spent time in the tunnels and on the surface exploring and keeping herself occupied. She even had some texts in one tidy corner of the burrow and there was evidence of further scribing. A scribemoless!

  Starling, a little intimidated by this, said, “Er, glad to meet you. My name’s Starling. Can you understand me?”

  Beside Feverfew, Starling felt large and cumbersome, and far too full of good cheer. But she also felt heartily relieved because for the first time in a very long time she was with a female like herself, even if she was older. The others in the system were so old that Starling barely counted them as females at all.

  There was a long silence while Feverfew seemed to gather herself together to make a speech, which, finally she did.

  “Starling, I recomande me to yow and am in no perell of deth, blessed be the Stane.”

  Starling took all this in slowly, but when she had she said, “Well, that’s a relief, I’m glad you’re not going to die. Did you think you were then?”

  Feverfew shook her head vigorously, looked at her father, nodded, looked at her father again, and said nothing. An uncomfortable silence ensued in which Starling decided this was no time for males to be about. She had to talk frankly to this Feverfew and get her moving.

  “Look,” said Starling, “two’s company, three’s a crowd...” She turned to Paston and politely made it clear it would be better if he left, for the time being. No harm would befall his beloved daughter, none at all. Starling smiled at him, a charming and winning smile. This overwhelmed him and he made a long speech full of “reverents”, “besechementes” and “hertys desyres” at the end of which Starling shooed him away.

  She then turned back to Feverfew who, meanwhile, had relaxed considerably and was smiling shyly. She seemed about to ask a question but instead suddenly darted a paw forward and touched Starling’s fur.

  “Yonge, soothe and lustie!” she sang, continuing with a song of very good cheer.

  “That’s very nice,” said Starling, quickly coming to the conclusion that she was going to like Feverfew very much indeed.

  Starling settled herself comfortably, realising that this was going to take some time, and she said, slowly and clearly, “I am very happy to meet you.”

  Then, when Feverfew did not understand this, she repeated it, indicating herself for “I”, giggling to indicate the “happy” and finally touching Feverfew to indicate the “you’. It took time but when Feverfew at last understood what Starling was so patiently trying to get across she said something similar in old mole, waited for Starling to repeat what she had said, and then, quite unexpectedly her eyes filled with tears and she wept as a mole who had waited for years to weep; but as much with relief and discovery that anothe
r mole could like her, as with sadness that for so many years nomole had really done so.

  So the two chattered on, learning to understand each other, and discovering the joy, pure and unalloyed, of talking to another female in a world of ailing, dithering or too-familiar males.

  When, much later, Starling was able to explain that there was a mole in the system called Tryfan and he needed help and herbs and healing, Feverfew smiled and said in a quiet and gentle way that she would come now, and do what she could.

  “Hys nam?” she asked.

  “Tryfan,” said Starling.

  “Ys hee comely?” asked Feverfew shyly.

  “Yes!” said Starling, astonished and laughing, yes Tryfan was! It had not occurred to her for one moment that Tryfan might be the object of any female’s interest, but now she came to think of it... And with that they both laughed, and passed out of the burrow and ran up to the surface without a word of explanation to Paston who had waited so long and with much puzzlement at the sound of laughter and talk, which, even if he had understood it he would never, however old and wise he became, have understood it.

  When they reached the burrow where Tryfan had been put they found him now so weak that though his mouth was open his breath hardly seemed to come at all. “Comely” he may once have been, but not anymore. His right side was swollen and suppurating, and dirty yellow pus leaked from it and congealed on his fur. His flank wounds were an ominous white and grey where the flesh seemed to have began to rot, and smelt of death. His delirium of the journey there had gone now, and he lay still, his eyes half closed. Sometimes he whispered, or tried to, but the words were unintelligible.

  Spindle rarely left him, cleaning him as he could, and offering him food which lately he had not touched. Spindle was utterly distressed, trying his best to be calm when he was with Tryfan, but when he allowed himself to be relieved by Mayweed or Starling from that duty, he was restless and unable to sleep or even listen to what another said.

  The older moles who plagued him he now utterly ignored, and nomole could comfort him. His friend was dying, and he, Spindle of Seven Barrows, who had been charged by Boswell himself to watch over Tryfan’s wellbeing, felt he had failed. His last hope had been that a meeting of these wretched squabbly medieval moles would produce somemole to help, anymole; but all Mayweed had come back to tell him was that Starling had shouted at them and gone off by herself looking for a “healer’. Too much to hope for such a thing here.

  Now he was up on the surface, Mayweed having relieved him, and was looking this way and that wishing he knew what to do or what to say. It was there that Starling found him, exhausted and muttering to himself in a distressed way, and said firmly, “Spindle, I want you to say hello to this mole and be very nice to her as she is extremely shy.”

  “Not another one come to...” Spindle began, until, looking up, he saw Feverfew before him. He stopped his protest: she was younger than the others at least, that was something, and, what was more, she looked intelligent.

  “But is she a healer?” he asked.

  “I really don’t know,” said Starling a little defensively. “She knows about herbs and I expect if you’re nice to her and encourage her she’ll do her best.”

  Feverfew looked at each of them in turn, not quite sure what they were saying. Spindle managed a weak smile and said rather brusquely, “Well, thank you. Um, hello! Better come along then, see what you can do.”

  “As I am of the blessid Stane, so wyll I doo for youer welbiloved Tryfan,” she said quietly, laying a paw on his and staring into his eyes.

  “Well now,” said Spindle, suddenly rather shy, for the only female that had ever touched him closely apart from Thyme was Starling, and she was more or less a daughter to them all! But this mole’s touch, why, there was something almost too direct and intimate about it for Spindle’s comfort.

  “Er, thank you,” he said again. Then, suddenly feeling better than he had for days, he added unnecessarily, “Yes! Yes! Good! Let’s go then!”

  They brought Feverfew down to Tryfan’s burrow and she went into its smelly interior without flinching, and was briefly introduced to Mayweed. All she did at first was to indicate to the others to stay back while she examined him.

  She crouched down and stared at him, making no sound but for a quite audible and sympathetic sigh and then, as she circled him, snouting closer here and there, she whispered occasionally to herself, and made more sighs, some medieval equivalents of “Oh!” and “You poor thing!” and then, as her examination went on she concluded with, “This is terrible” and finally, “This will not do!”

  Mayweed looked around at the others and nodded vigorously as if to say, “Spindle Sir and Magical Miss, this mole is impressing me, Mayweed, your humble friend, already! She is!”

  Then Feverfew went closer still and, laying a paw on Tryfan’s flank, whispered the following gentle prayer:

  Dere Mowlitwerpe

  Wee are nere thee.

  For laik of Symmer with his flouris

  For wintere’s nycht with haill and schouris

  Your herte semes dirk and drublie

  Dere Tryfan mowle

  Hav curage now

  Listen! Lyf ys gude

  And thou art welbiloved and frended

  And we to heill are cum to thee.

  Perhaps Tryfan stirred at the sound of her lovely voice, perhaps he did not. Certainly story-tellers now, recounting this moment of first meeting between Tryfan of Duncton and Feverfew, a mole who would change his life, and that of all moledom’s in time, naturally like to report that Tryfan stirred, and opened his eyes and saw that mole so near to him. Some versions even go so far as to suggest that he spoke to her.

  Spindle’s account is less romantic than that, but probably the nearest of all to the truth, and it records simply that Feverfew turned from where Tryfan lay with an energy and purpose about her that she had not seemed to have had before, as if the very weakness of Tryfan then was her ensuing strength.

  “Conne yew to holpyn hym to heele?” asked Spindle, hoping his attempt at old mole would make sense to Feverfew.

  She smiled at his words, and said, “I know nat yet, but trust hym by the blessid Stane’s grace to be clene hole of hys hurttys by sevennyght, by wyche tym we maye truste to have gud tydyngys.”

  But now we begin to do as Spindle did and record her speech in mole.

  She examined Tryfan further and decreed that he must be moved, and soon, to a place where he would have a better chance of recovery.

  “He’s too ill to move,” said Spindle.

  “The Stone wyl ministere yts beste wen mowlitwerpe ys putte best whay,” said Feverfew.

  “Er, which way should an ill mole face?” asked Spindle.

  “For word of pawe or word of flanke be weste. For hertis peyne to rysyng sone.”

  “Well,” said Spindle doubtfully.

  “Stop being so fussy and old,” said Starling irritably, “you’re getting as bad as the other moles in this system. It’s perfectly obvious that Feverfew knows what she’s talking about and the sooner we do exactly what she says the better in my opinion. Don’t you agree, Mayweed?”

  “Marvellous amazing Miss...” began Mayweed.

  “Yes or no?” said Starling, cutting him short.

  “Yes,” said Mayweed, with enormous difficulty. “Definitely so.”

  “Where shall we move him then?”

  “To burowe myn,” said Feverfew, with just a touch of shyness.

  Which they did, much to the amazement of the other moles, almost carrying Tryfan through the system and down to the west side of the hill, putting Tryfan in Feverfew’s warm and sweet-scented burrow where, gently, she began tending to him, making him lie west-facing, and getting the others to help him to the surface at night, to snout weakly to the west where the great Stones lay, the nearest of which was Duncton Wood.

  Lurid the great sky of the Wen, distant the roaring of the owls, muffled the pounding of the twofoots: but sometime
s in those clear, cold days of that January when Tryfan lay so near to death, it seemed the moon was so strong that it overcame the lights of the Wen, and made a far-off horizon clear, where a hill rose to a high wood, as if to bring the Stone that stood in the high wood a little nearer. Slowly Tryfan of Duncton settled, and his crisis passed, his pain eased, and there came about him a peace and quietness that comes to a mole who hears something distant which he has waited to hear all his life but has needed another to show him.

  So Tryfan began to hear the sound of Silence, and to make a journey through his illness which was harder by far than that long journey which started, so long before, at Uffington. And at his side was a mole he did not know, but whose sweet voice he could sometimes hear out of the chaos about him, and whose touch he could sometimes feel so tender among the pain that was his body; and whose spirit he could sometimes sense was like his own: uncertain and troubled and as yet unfulfilled, but holding on, even in the darkest hour, to its love for the Stone.

  Tryfan’s illness lasted much longer than a “sevennyght”, for January passed and February was nearly done before days began to come when he was fully conscious and beginning to feel at last what it might be to be well once more. He was weak, and nightmares came, and often still he wept, as he had through the worst part of his illness, and images of the past came before him which he thought were real.

  He did not speak but to himself, but consciousness must have come because he knew when Feverfew was near and protested weakly when she went away, even for a moment, and gentled into sleep at her touch. So Feverfew stayed near, caring for him, while Spindle was close by, watching over them both and beginning to see that, as he had had his Thyme, and known love forevermore through her, so now Tryfan was beginning to know that love two moles can have if only they will let each other to each other’s heart. And Spindle snouted west and thanked the Stone that it had brought Feverfew to Tryfan.