Duncton Quest

by William Horwood

  There was the smell for a start. It reminded them of the Slopeside, foetid and unclean. Then there was the rubbish of roof-fall and litter drift, all uncleared. Then there was the scurry of paws and the snouting of snouts, not out of curiosity but fear and disquiet. Moles who did not wish to be seen, or contacted, or even disturbed.

  Finally there was mole, squatted down and facing them.

  “Who’s there?” it said. “It” because they could not be sure if it was male or female, so rough and wild its fur, so filthy its face, so formless its sore-ridden body.

  Spindle was alarmed but Tryfan advanced, quite willing to talk to the mole.

  “In peace we come...” he began, but the mole turned and dragged itself away, muttering.

  They went on, none challenging them. Moles stared at them from burrows, with hollow eyes and gaunt faces, and fur that was dry and patchy. Some of the moles seemed sightless, others utterly unaware, and more than one was dead and rotting where they crouched.

  “Scalpskin?” whispered Spindle.

  “Something more, I think,” replied Tryfan. “It is murrain, a form of plague.” His voice was sad and concerned.

  “These poor moles,” he whispered, staring at them, and watching as they retreated from fear or shame as they came near.

  Some tunnels were deserted yet wormful, others held many moles as if in their suffering they preferred to be close together. None spoke but to themselves in rasping whispers, or groaned and seemed confused and agitated when the two moles went by.

  It was only after they had passed through two such grim concentrations of suffering moles, and were nearly through the area where traditionally most of the Eastsiders had had their burrows, that they found themselves approaching a mole who did not go away.

  She had her back to them and seemed not to have heard their approach. Certainly she started suddenly when they came within her view, but did not run off. She looked prematurely old and gaunt and sunken of eye but she had no sores upon her haggard body.

  “Come on then,” she said, shouting as if she was deaf, “you can take what I’ve got but it ain’t much.” She led them down a poky tunnel to a pathetic cache of worms, which she crouched beside indifferently.

  “We don’t want your worms”, said Spindle, repeating it more loudly as she was clearly a little deaf.

  “What you come for then?” she cried, peering suspiciously at him.

  “We’re going to the Marsh End,” said Spindle.

  At this her manner changed from servility to contempt and she reared up at them, her broken talons flailing, and said, “From the Marsh End, are you? Well, what are you disturbing me for, then, with your do-gooding and interfering? Bugger off, the pair of you! It’s bad enough in this dump without the likes of you wasting our time. I’ve got all the bloody faith I need, thank you, and you’ll find others think the same. Promises get a mole nowhere.”

  They retreated, and though they tried to pacify the mole and asked her who she thought they were she was not interested, and eventually her rage so overcame her that she began to cough in a terrible hacking way, and phlegm dripped from her mouth.

  “Bugger off!” she screamed again and they did.

  Others seemed to hear the female’s tirade and gain courage from it. They shouted at Tryfan and Spindle and drove them off, saying they were not welcome.

  “Who do you think we are?” Tryfan managed finally to ask one of them.

  “Frauds!” he screamed, and then he laughed and was gone, his laugh a madness of sound in the stricken tunnels.

  They got themselves to the surface and there a younger mole, and male, crouched waiting for them.

  “So?” demanded Spindle, angered by the reception they had had. “And who do they mistake us for?”

  “Well,” he said slowly, “you look like Westsiders, being fit and well and that.”

  “Fit!” exclaimed Spindle.

  “Well!” said Tryfan.

  “It’s what I said. So what if you’ve a bit of scarring to the face? Doesn’t stop you functioning, does it? Got a brain, haven’t you? Can think, can’t you?”

  “So if we’re not Westsiders, who did you think we were then?”

  “Marsh End zealots, of course. Preaching the bloody Word, going on about the frigging Stone, blathering on about what’s to come and doing nothing about the here

  and now. No thank you, not interested. I live my life and keep my snout low and bugger the lot of you!”

  “We’re neither Westsiders or zealots,” said Tryfan quietly.

  “Who are you then?” said the mole.

  “I think they call us outcasts.”

  “You mean you’ve just come into the system?” asked the mole suspiciously.

  “Yes,” said Spindle, with obvious truthfulness.

  “And you came straight here?”

  “The grikes said it was best to make for the Eastside and then down to the Marsh End. Suggested the Westside was dangerous.”

  “Interesting,” said the mole, still doubtful of them.

  “Marsh End seems sensible,” said Tryfan. “It’s not too bad down there in some places, moles from the worm-rich tunnels on the Westside never used to bother much with it and I don’t suppose they do now.”

  “Sounds like you’re remarkably well informed, mate.”

  “He ought to be,” said Spindle. “He was born here.”

  “Well, blow me and lie down and die,” said the mole in astonishment. “You’re not having me on?”

  Tryfan shook his head.

  “No, I didn’t think you were. There’s an alarming sincerity about you two that’s unusual for Duncton, to say the least. Really born here were you?”

  Tryfan nodded.

  “Then you’re the first mole I’ve met in this place who was born here. I thought the grikes killed off the Duncton moles.”

  “They didn’t,” said Tryfan.

  “So you’ve got to be believers in the Stone, then?” said the mole quietly.

  “Yes, we are,” said Tryfan.

  “What are your names?” But before they could reply the mole pushed them to one side and, lowering his voice, said, “Best to keep your own secrets round this place, let’s find a quieter spot. Tunnels have ears.” He took them some way from any tunnel entrance, then disappeared for a little while and came back with worms, which he laid before Tryfan and Spindle.

  “Now,” asked their new friend, “what are your names?”

  “What’s yours?” asked Tryfan.

  “Hay,” said the mole. “Short and sweet. Now....”

  “My name is Tryfan.”

  The mole immediately laughed and turned to Spindle and said, “And you’ll be telling me you’re the Stone Mole.”

  “Spindle, actually,” said Spindle.

  “Stone me,” said Hay, breathing heavily and staring about in alarm. “Well stone the crows!”

  He looked at them some more and then said, “Trouble is, I don’t need to ask if you’re serious ’cos nomole would be daft enough to say they’re Tryfan if they weren’t. Too bloody dangerous. Well! What a turn up! Tryfan, eh? And Spindle of Seven Barrows?”

  “You’ve heard of me?” said Spindle in surprise.

  “Heard of you? You’re famous, mate. As for you,” he said turning to Tryfan, “you’re meant to be dead, and you might decide you’re better off dead when you realise... but you don’t, do you? I can see it in your faces. You’ve got no bloody idea, have you? Blimey! Wait a minute – didn’t the grikes ask who you were?”

  “Didn’t get round to it,” said Spindle.

  “Perhaps you’d better tell us how you know of us, and why you’re so surprised and what we obviously don’t ‘realise’,” said Tryfan.

  “Perhaps I’d better get shot of you as fast as I damn well can, except...” And then his voice dropped to a sudden whisper. He signalled their silence, and turned away into the undergrowth suddenly. There was a short silence and then a scuffle and a scream.

 
A different voice cried out, “Wasn’t, didn’t, wouldn’t, can’t, just passing by.”

  “Passing by, my arse,” said Hay, dragging a protesting mole to the spot where they had been talking. She was as scabby and foetid a looking mole as they had ever seen, and she was blind. She was the one who had been following them.

  “You’ll find a lot like her,” said Hay, “wandering about, listening, exchanging the miserable pittance of information they get for a pawful of worms up on the Westside. Eh? And what’s your name then mole? “Filth”? “Vile”? Or they got a better name for you?”

  The mole’s snout closed and opened as she scented at Tryfan and Spindle, her eyes white and staring. “I got a name and that name’s mine to tell when I like. A mole’s got to live. Others get worms quicker’n me, others aren’t nice to me, so I get by best I can. Moles blabber, I report. You hurt me and they’ll know who it was.”

  “How?” said Hay, who did not look like the hurting kind.

  “They’ll know,” said the mole.

  “We’ll not hurt you, mole, and there’s no secrets that we keep. My name is Tryfan, my friend is Spindle, we have returned to Duncton and intend no harm to anymole. But tell the ones you report to that if anymole tries to harm us they will not benefit by it. Go in peace, and remember we mean no harm to befall anymole.”

  She shook herself, looked disgruntled, finally snouted close to Tryfan, and said, “Give us a worm and I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

  “Mole,” said Tryfan softly, “you need only ask.”

  With that he pushed the worms Hay had brought, over to her.

  “You’re a good mole!” she said. “Time was when I had no trouble. Reared pups of my own and fed them. Time was when I did that. Had two litters before disease came, but, mind you, that wasn’t here, no, I don’t come from here....”

  “Off you go!” said Hay. “You’ve got your worms.”

  But Tryfan raised a paw to silence him, crouched down with the blind and smelly female, took a worm himself, crunched it companionably and said, “Where are you from, mole?”

  “Long way off, long way. Long time ago now, and you wouldn’t think it, looking at me, but I had two litters, a three and a four, all my own to cherish and care for.”

  “Tell me, mole.”

  “You don’t want to hear my nonsense!”

  Tryfan went close, gently made some of her food easier to reach, and said, “Now, tell me.”

  Which she did, in a rambling tearful way as moles do when none has been willing to listen to them for a long time, and they fear that if they stop their listener will go away. But Tryfan stayed, and Hay and Spindle backed a little away and were silent while the female talked as Tryfan desired her to.

  It was only much later, when the mole had told Tryfan her whole life history, that she finally got up to go.

  “Things to do, got to keep busy. What’s your name again?”

  “Tryfan.”

  “Mine’s Teasel and it’s been a pleasure talking, Tryfan. I like a natter. Whatmole doesn’t?”

  “Company’s everything,” said Tryfan.

  “You’re right there,” said Teasel, and she snouted about, scented her route away, and set off. “Bye then!” she called out as she left, humming tunelessly to herself as she went, her blind and wandering form the only movement over the dusky floor of the Eastside wood.

  When she had gone Hay said, “So, now I know why there’s stories about you, Tryfan, and you, Spindle. I got a feeling I was meant to meet you today.”

  “More than likely,” said Tryfan cheerfully. “Eh, Spindle? We’ve got a habit of finding the right mole at the right time or, more accurately, the Stone does it for us.”

  “Now don’t you start preaching the Stone at me!” said Hay with mock alarm. “I’m not one for worship.”

  “Not many moles are until they try it,” said Tryfan. “Now, perhaps we had better find some temporary burrows to overnight in and you can tell us what Duncton has become in the time since we left it and what we should know. Spindle is worried about surviving here, thinks we’ll get attacked, so maybe you can put his mind at rest.”

  “You’re on! I’ll tell you what I know and in exchange I’ll find out if what they say about you is true. As for being attacked, forget it. Those days have passed. There’s a few idiots about who make a lot of noise, and ’tis true they’re on the Westside, but I just tell them to go and take a walk in the centre of the roaring owl way and they push off and leave me alone.”

  “What have you heard about us?” asked Tryfan.

  “That you’re the only moles who ever resisted the grikes successfully, and that you did it in the name of the Stone and not yourselves. They say you’re brave and clever and all that, but I’ll judge that for myself.”

  “The only way!” said Tryfan.

  So two moles came that day to Duncton Wood and now there were three, and the little party set off to find burrows, and to learn what they could from one another.

  The Duncton system they had returned to was but a place of quiet desperation compared to the murderous viciousness that had prevailed at the time the immigrants brought by order of Henbane first came.

  Hay’s account came partly from himself and partly from what others had told him before they had died, as many had. Now the population was more stable, and though disease was rife deaths were fewer, as if the moles had settled for a lower level of life which took as part of its habit disease and illness and general debilitation.

  “Terrible those early times, by all accounts,” Hay told them, shaking his head, “and moles lived in fear of their lives. For in those days most who came were miscreants or scalpskinned, and until madness or the sores set in bad such moles had strength and intelligence. So you can imagine what happened when they came here and were given the freedom of the place to make what rules they liked.

  “That Henbane must have been a cunning mole to think that one up! Mayhem it was, and murder. The strong attacking the weak, and the weak attacking the dying, and the dying living off the dead.

  “Disease all over, like all the plagues of moledom had settled on this place. Well, knowing the layout of the system you can imagine what happened. The Westside’s where the worms are, so the strongest took that over for a start. Mad bloody lot they were, and cruel, too, and used to raid the Marsh End for poor bastards to snout on the Westside wires that face out on to the Pastures.”

  “Was there a leader?” asked Spindle, who always liked to know whatmole did what, and who was who.

  “Leader? There’s always leaders, jumped-up bastards most of them, but of course they can’t last long. Diseased, you see. They weaken and others take over and then they go. I seen it so many times I don’t bother to keep track.

  “Anyway, the strongest among the first wave of immigrants took over the Westside, and the clever ones who weren’t physically strong lost themselves down in the Marsh End where a mole with sense can hide himself. That’s where I was when I first came, it’s why I know the routes down here, or some of them.

  “As for the new moles coming in, the ones who couldn’t fight their way into the Westside, they stayed on the Eastside, didn’t they? And lived as best they could there until they died. “Course the moles of the Westside came and looked them over and took the females for their own.

  “And not always females,” he added darkly. “Males as well sometimes, because in those days we got some young ones in, gone mad mainly. Lot of that about.

  “All this time what they called the Ancient System, which includes the so-called famous Stone of Duncton, was in the paws of the grikes garrison under the control of Eldrene Beake, as vile a mole as Fescue, her predecessor at Buckland.”

  “You knew Fescue?” said Spindle in surprise.

  “I wouldn’t say ‘knew’, though I saw her once or twice. I’m from Buckland originally and was one of the minions there, serving the grikes. And there I might still be but for a mole you once met, and who indirectly got me into tro
uble.”

  “A mole we met?” said Tryfan.

  “Aye. Ragwort. Said he met you when you came to Buckland.”

  “Ragwort,” repeated Tryfan. Ragwort who had been a watcher and fought the grikes, and who had been lost in the disaster at the tunnel. “Ragwort knew the Stone,” Tryfan said.

  “Knew the Stone?” laughed Hay. “Damn near lived and breathed the Stone after you left. Organised secret meetings, inspired other moles towards the Stone, including a friend of mine called Borage. Well I don’t know what happened to Ragwort but Borage continued his good work and held a session on the Stone which I was fool enough to go to. Got done by the guardmoles for that and when they found I was ill I was sent here with Borage and a few others in the second wave of deportations after that mole Wyre took over Buckland and Beake was sent here.”

  “So Borage is here?” said Spindle.

  “Alive and dying of sadness,” said Hay. “He’s all right in his way, and he keeps his mouth shut about the Stone. He doesn’t like the way the Stone zealots force their beliefs down others’ throats. Feels he did that himself too much and got moles like me into trouble. He’s got a mate, if you can call her that, but keeps himself to himself. Ashamed you see, of all the moles he got into trouble.”

  “Trouble?”

  “Blabbed, didn’t he? The grikes threatened him with snouting and he blabbed and gave away the names of those in Buckland who were interested in the Stone. Don’t blame him, mind. I would blab rather than suffer that. Nomole really blames him, but few talk to him now. Keeps his snout low.”

  “I would like to meet Borage,” said Tryfan, “he sounds a worthy mole to me.”

  “Aye, well. Maybe. Anyway, as I was saying, Eldrene

  Beake got sent here against her will and eventually scalpskin broke out among her guardmoles and then herself, and Wyre ordered that they had to stay where they were up in those tunnels near the Stone. So they found themselves prisoners too. Got to paw it to Beake, she held things together for a while, but then the scalpskin weakened her.