Duncton Quest

by William Horwood

  “Today it is the best,” he said.

  “Not always?”

  “When you’ve touched other Stones and prayed by them, then you must decide that for yourselves.”

  “You don’t really think it’s the best, do you?” grinned the female wickedly.

  “I’ll tell you what I do think,” said Tryfan confidentially. “I know a Stone that I think you would like as much as this.”

  The other youngster nodded his head knowingly.

  “You mean the Duncton Stone, don’t you? Everymole says that’s a very special one, but how could we ever go there?”

  “Why not?” said Tryfan.

  “Too far and dangerous,” said the female.

  “Grikes,” said the male.

  “Well, I got here all right.”

  “You’re an adult.”

  “So will you be one day, and anyway I don’t think it makes much difference.”

  “You would if you were us!”

  Tryfan laughed.

  “Would you like to see our tunnels?” asked one of them.

  “I would,” said Tryfan, “but it seems a pity while the sun’s so good. I seem to have been in shadow for a long, long time, and today I found a way out of it.”

  “We can wait till the sun goes in,” said the female.

  Tryfan nodded and said, “Meanwhile, you can tell me your names.”

  “I’m Bramble,” said the male.

  “And I’m Betony,” said the other.

  “What are you going to tell us?” said Bramble, settling down with pleasant expectancy.

  “Yes, what are you?” added Betony, impatiently.

  “Well, there’s lots of things to tell you about, but perhaps I should start at the very beginning,” Tryfan said.

  “That’s a very good place to start,” said Bramble, making himself even more comfortable.

  So then Tryfan did, and told those two youngsters about things he thought he had forgotten which seemed so long ago now. And as what he told them went on, he only gradually became aware that other moles had joined them, adult moles, old moles, searching moles, moles who had lost their way as Duncton Wood had, as he felt he had; moles with a longing to hear, and a longing to hope.

  But it was to Bramble and Betony that he spoke, for they were young and still had so much to do, and he thought that if they thought it hard to get to Duncton Wood then they might never try to go anywhere, and then they would make a great deal less of their lives than they might have done.

  Tryfan spoke to them until the sun was setting on Beechenhill, and the grass was cooling, and only the Stone that rose among them retained the day’s warmth, and a hint of the beauty it had had.

  Spindle and Mayweed were among those moles who heard Tryfan that day, and while some would call it a teaching, most would remember it differently than that, as a day when a true mole of the Stone opened his heart to them, and told them his hopes and fears through the troubled story of his life, and made his testimony.

  As he reached the end of what he had to say his voice grew quiet and all there sensed that he spoke like a mole who feels he might not have the opportunity to speak of such things again. All grew close to him then, sensing he needed the promise of a future that their hopes might give. Until, at the end, he led them in prayer to ask the Stone that the Stone Mole might come and show them how a mole who feels he has lost his way may find it once again, whatever he is, however humble he feels, wherever his failures may have taken him.

  Then Tryfan blessed the moles of Beechenhill and they quietly dispersed to their burrows and to sleep.

  Morning came, grey weather, the journey onwards once again, and news of Skint.

  “Grassington,” whispered a mole. “You’ll find him there with Smithills. In the very shadow of Whern. May the Stone’s Silence be with you, mole, and remember: you and yours will always find sanctuary here!”

  The mole’s gaze was direct, his manner cheerful. He was large of girth, but strong and there was something about him that made Tryfan ask his name, and Spindle to record it.

  “Squeezebelly I’m called. Bramble and Betony are my young. They and I, as all moles here, are enemies of the grikes and therefore forever your friends. Remember us in your prayers, Tryfan of Duncton, for we shall always remember you in ours.”

  Then, with that friendship affirmed with a touch, Tryfan turned to Mayweed and said that they must leave.

  “Sirs both, Mayweed will get you there! To elusive Skint’s burrows and good Smithills’ laughter he will take you, and himself as well. So follow, and find!”

  And he did! Crossing the Dark Peak in safety, getting confirmation of Skint’s message from the moles of Kinder Scout, puzzling still that the grikes troubled them not, pressing on through August and into September before they reached Grassington, the last system before dread Whern itself.

  Skint had aged, and Smithills too, and in seeing them again Tryfan realised that he must have aged as well, and all his friends.

  But what a greeting they had, what news to share, how tempting to stay in Skint’s clean tunnels (or even Smithills’ grubby ones) and pass the time in idleness or chatter! A temptation to which they yielded!

  They found time, too, to travel a few molemiles to see the burrows where once Willow had been a pup, and to honour that old mole’s memory, whose death at Henbane’s command they would never forget. There Skint recalled the anger that he felt, and Tryfan observed that there was a stronger feeling among them now, of pity and of anguish. Perhaps anger is a young mole’s emotion, and anguish something only older moles can bear. They turned from Willow’s former burrows and stared on north to where the ground rises towards Whern and felt that anger was not now enough.

  “When do we leave?” asked Skint. He was as brave as ever he had been, but now his voice had a tremor in it, and they could see he did not want to leave his home again. Nor Smithills, though he offered his help too, and would have come and faced Henbane’s talons straight.

  “We three will travel on alone,” said Tryfan. “Spindle and I led on by Mayweed here. You have said you knew we were coming....”

  “Aye, there’s been talk of nothing else for weeks now. Allmole knows you’re going into Whern, and the guard-moles have instructions to leave you be,” said Smithills. “They say Henbane wants to talk to you, and even Rune himself, but nomole knows what to make of it, but that things are changing when moles of the Stone can visit Whern unharmed.”

  “Changing or not changing, I don’t like it,” said Spindle.

  “Nor I,” said Skint. “A mole that snouts old females like Willow doesn’t change, and don’t you forget it!”

  “We won’t,” said Tryfan. Yet Spindle silently shook his head and fretted his paws restlessly, as if troubled by more than he could find words to say.

  Then, as Spindle and the others talked, Skint took Tryfan to one side and said, “But what are you going there for? To talk with a mole who commanded the cruelties Henbane did? The mole I trained in clearing at the Slopeside of Buckland has more sense than that.”

  “To seek Boswell,” said Tryfan. “He is there, and he is waiting, and our coming has been long waited by him, so very long. I don’t know, Skint, why we must go, nor why I know that Spindle and Mayweed will be unharmed, but so it is; so worry not of them....”

  “But you, mole? What of you? Eh?” said Skint softly, touching him.

  “I don’t know,” said Tryfan, shaking his head. “I think I don’t matter now. I think that all those moleyears ago Boswell trained me for this, but I don’t know how or why. I think the Stone knows and I hope in time we will.”

  “You’re shaking, mole! Let us come with you – an extra few paws may be useful. We’re not so old yet there’s not a use for us!”

  “No, Skint,” said Tryfan, “not this time. It’s not with talons that we’re fighting now. I have the best defences I shall need in Spindle here and Mayweed. They’ll know what to do.”

  “Well... if there’s an
y way we can help....”

  “Pray for us,” said Tryfan.

  “In my own way I will, every day until I know you’re safe. You come back to us and tell us you spat in the eyes of Rune himself! You will, won’t you?”

  Tryfan smiled wearily.

  Then after a moment’s thought he said, “We will return this way, and perhaps when we come we will have need of help. Be ready, Skint. Have strong talons at your command, but remember they are not for killing but for authority. Watch out for us and if we come not ourselves then news of us will.”

  Skint nodded.

  Then after a moment Tryfan added, “There’s a place we visited on our way here, a place you know. Beechenhill.”

  “Aye, what of it?”

  “Remember it, Skint. Remember that for one day of my life I was happy there. The moles there have great faith and trust and gave me courage to come on. Remember it!”

  “I will,” said Skint, much moved and troubled, “I’ll not forget.”

  Then Skint and Smithills accompanied their three friends on the last part of their northward way, with the moorlands that precede Whern beginning to rise darkly to their left and right, and the river flowing past and away downslope behind them towards the sun, and all the life they had ever known.

  Until a great overhang of dark rock loomed on their left and Skint and Smithills muttered that it was as far as they would go.

  “What is this place?” asked Tryfan, as Spindle looked doubtfully about, and Mayweed narrowed his eyes and peered into the shadows there.

  “Kilnsey,” said Skint. “The start of where the grike moles breed. Ahead across the river Wharfe you see Whern rise.”

  “But it is not so dark and miserable looking a place as I thought!” said Spindle.

  “Aye, it has a beauty of its own,” said Smithills looking up, as they all did, at where the evening light was cast across the flanks of Whern, and lit up pale the limestone scarps that run its length.

  “Pretty enough by some lights! Lethal by others!” warned Skint.

  Certainly, beyond those lines of pale rock the moors rose grim, steepening off into a sombre distance. As the moles stared at the great scene the air grew cold about them, for Kilnsey casts a shadow black as night as evening comes.

  “Your business, mole?” said a voice, and a grike appeared out of the scree and grass. “Speak quick, scarper, or get killed.”

  “Snub-snouted, Sir, we go —”

  “Him, not you, I spoke to,” said the grike. He gave the impression of strength and confidence, and he had a sneer to his voice. It was clear that others waited near him, and suddenly those gullies all about seemed the last place a mole of the Stone should be.

  “We come to Whern in peace,” said Tryfan.

  “Tryfan are you?”

  Tryfan nodded and the grike came and thrust his snout into Tryfan’s face and stared at him in satisfaction.

  “Took you a bloody long time, however you’ve come. Been waiting for you, and I don’t like to wait, nor do my friends. We don’t like it one little bit, you scum of the Stone!” He spat a gob of cuddled worm among them as dark snouts appeared all about, and eyes stared malevolently as if expecting a reaction from Tryfan. He made none.

  Instead he said a brief farewell to Skint and Smithills and saw them safely away. Then, when they had gone, he stared one last time after them feeling a great sadness and shadow on his heart and turned back to the grikes.

  “Where are you taking us?” asked Spindle.

  “Shut up, move, and ask no questions. You’ll find out if you’ve the strength to climb that far.”

  Then they followed a grike ahead while the others circled around behind saying “Move it, scum!” and taloning them to make them travel faster.

  While below them, Skint and Smithills watched them disappear into the long shadows of Whern.

  “Don’t like it, Skint,” said Smithills with a shudder.

  “Those moles have courage, but they may need help,” said Skint. “But not the help that talons give, not here. We’ll stand by for their return in case they need us. But they’ll need something else.”

  “What then, mate?”

  “Don’t know, Smithills,” said Skint, staring north where Tryfan and the others had gone. “Stone knows!”

  Smithills grinned, but even on his kind, lined, generous face the grin was a sad one.

  “We should try something, anything,” said Smithills.

  “Praying,” said Skint sharply.

  “Come off it, you never prayed in your miserable life.”

  “Well... I’m going to now,” said Skint angrily, and before he betrayed the emotion he felt at that moment, which had him close to tears, he turned from his old friend and hurried back down the way they had come; and Smithills lumbered after him.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Whern had loomed so dangerous and grim in the minds of Tryfan, Spindle and Mayweed for so long that it would have been suprising if, as they set off with the guardmole grikes towards its north-west flank, they had not felt an awesome dread descend upon them. And they did.

  The sense of grand darkness which Whern gave out was increased by the fact that as they left Kilnsey to cross the river Wharfe by a twofoot way, the light began to fade and the colours slowly to drain from the approaching trees and rocks.

  Above them in the gathering gloom hung the rising terraces of limestone which ran north as well, defining the Wharfe’s course below, and rising out beyond sight towards the high mass of Whern itself. These terraces – the first of which they began to climb towards – seemed almost luminous in the dusk, full of crannies and hollows in which a nervous mole might imagine all manner of ill-natured creatures to exist.

  From open pasture they climbed to overgrown scree among which old stunted trees grew, and there was life of the kind moles avoid: owls, roosting rooks, and bats. Somewhere an old badger scratched; while far below, in the pastures, cows moaned in the valley mist and their shapes loomed above its low thin veil like rubbish surfacing across a river’s reach by evening light.

  The leading grike set a fast pace and seemed disgruntled that not one of them complained. But to them, who had travelled so far and climbed hill and dale and crossed the Dark Peak, and now wished finally to confront whatever it was that Whern would face them with, his pace was not fast enough.

  Mayweed looked here and snouted there as he always did, and more than once was reprimanded by the otherwise silent grikes and told not to wander. Tryfan took the pace easily, moving with strength and grace and feeling fitter than he ever had. Even Spindle, whose gait was ever awkward and untidy, had no difficulty keeping up, so that the only moles who were breathing heavily, and pausing now and then to get their breath, were the grikes, from which Tryfan concluded that this was not a route they often took.

  Eventually they reached the first of the terraces. It rose palely above them, and they saw that there were many faults and clefts in its sheer edge, many places a mole might hide; and many routes inside.

  Tryfan had the feeling that they were on the edge of a system vast and strange, and that even the guardmoles felt it, looking nervously about them and then up at the limestone scar.

  “Where are we cutting through?” asked one eventually.

  “North Flats,” said the leader.

  The first one nodded briefly. Silence reigned and after a brief pause they pressed on.

  They passed a point where a spring came out from just below the scar and gushed down to the Wharfe far below. Above that the ground was very dry, and the only sound of waterflow was downslope of them.

  Eventually even the sound of the spring they had seen fell away and was gone. Then the shrubs and trees they had been among thinned to nothing, and they found themselves on exposed grassland. The cliffs line seemed to break up, and all about them were scars and castellations of limestone, shining mauve with the last of the western light. Across the valley they saw the distant gaze of a roaring owl and watched it run
far below them, until it was gone, though whether into ground mist or trees was impossible to say. Two footlights twinkled on over the dale and dusk drew in.

  A tawny owl called sharply nearby and they heard the scrape of claw on a dead branch. Somewhere far above dry rocks fell, rebounded, and the echoes seemed to sound forever across the dale.

  They sheltered then, among some scree, and food was found. Whichever way they looked a grike had taken stance in shadow and seemed to stare impassively at them. But the strangest thing was this: the ground seemed reverberant with sound, so distant that at first they did not notice it. But as night fell and the grikes dozed, the sound seemed clearer and it came from out of the limestone cliffs above them. It was not specific or identifiable, but rather a dull roaring made of many things, running water perhaps, and echoes.

  Morning came, and the ground was dew-sodden, and a mole could not move without tangling a spider’s web in his talons, and water dripping from his snout. But sun came and the ground steamed, the sky was a rich blue.

  As they were west-facing, the scars were not in sunlight, and the air beneath was cold; but on the far side of the vale the sun struck hard at the limestone scars that were twins to the ones they were ascending, while in the valley below white mist slowly cleared.

  But as “cutting through” turned out to mean climbing, they soon found themselves back in the sun and looking down on the way they had come. It was a strange landscape made of grass and limestone, chasms in the rock, deep clefts through which a mole scrabbled, paws cut by the sharp frost-shattered fragments, snout bruised by the steep slope ahead.

  It felt like a landscape in which death hid waiting to be discovered. In one place they found a scatter of rabbits’ skulls, in another the torn and dried wing of a rook; in a third was the rotting carcass of a sheep and in a fourth a dying hedgehog, its snout pale and its flanks shivering.

  Only Mayweed seemed content, always peering about him, snouting at the rock and its welcoming fissures which ran into darkness, and turning back sometimes to check the way they had come.

  “Wondering Sir,” he managed to whisper to Tryfan that morning, “humble me is excited by this. My paws tingle with magnificent expectation. Mayweed makes the observation that it is not Whern that a mole should fear but the moles who live here!”