Duncton Quest

by William Horwood

“Nomole knows what happened up there exactly but one day the grike guardmoles must have mutinied and killed Beake – snouted her up by the Stone and good riddance. Then they broke through their own lines and invaded the worm-rich tunnels of the Westside.

  “Very nasty time that, but as I didn’t come until a month later I missed the worst of it. That was all a cycle of seasons ago and a lot’s happened since. “Course, what it was all about was mating and that, and the guardmoles were not going to have celibacy forced on them. Naturally they wanted females, which Beake objected to and so they snouted her and broke ranks to get at the Westsiders. The females were mostly willing enough.”

  “So a lot of young were born on the Westside?” said Tryfan.

  “No young were born anywhere in Duncton, not a single living one. A few abortions, some stillbirths but no living young.”

  “Scalpskin?” asked Spindle.

  “Aye, makes moles pupless.”

  “But not always,” Tryfan said, remembering: how could he forget? “Though often the young are born deformed.”

  “Sterile now,” said Hay. “Of course the males blamed the females and the females the males – that’s why the healthy-looking ones were popular. You could be as ugly as a lobworm, but if your fur was clear of sores then you were wanted. Well, they found out that spring that it doesn’t matter: if one or other of the partners had scalpskin, that’s it. Nothing. Not even the hope that being in pup brings. And not just scalpskin. There was this disease from Avebury which is virulent and turns a mole blind and then mad in the end....”

  “Murrain,” said Tryfan.

  “Aye, that’s it. Well, whatever the reason the moles here were sterile, and by all accounts they have been over a lot of moledom.

  “Then in the summer months a lot more died and the guardmoles began to lose sway until by the autumn nomole gave a damn who was who, it was the strongest surviving, and the cleverest. Naturally there was hope of young in the autumn but that came to nothing, just more abortions, more failures, and not even a stillbirth.

  “That’s when depression set in. Moles, like Teasel you met, wandering around and going on about the good old days before they came here when they did have young. Without young a system’s dying, isn’t it. Naturally some tried to get out of the place but the grikes by the cross-under were strengthened and any who tried to escape got killed. Plenty have disappeared trying to get out and that’s where the strongest have gone. Now it’s the old and weak who remain, along with a few like me who seem lucky enough to be disease-free but of course we can’t get out. Still, there’s always hope, and that keeps a mole alive.

  “Now January’s here, the question of pupping has come up again and there’s many a mole would like to have young but there’s not much chance of it. Things have quietened down, though the Westside is still the best place to be, but there’s no real order there. A few so-called leaders of different sections of the tunnels, plenty of henchmoles, the hardest bunch of females you’ll ever meet but, well, the system – if you can call it that – is dying for want of young. Not that the overall number is down, no, Wyre sees to that. There’s always new moles coming in like you, and the guardmoles are as strong as they ever were down by the cross-under. At the end of spring we’ll probably get a batch of younger moles come in – diseased, troublemakers, Stone followers and the rest and that’s the time to keep your snout low! Meanwhile, there’ll not be much trouble about.

  “A few moles will try to get out, females mainly, in the hope of making young. It can drive some moles mad that, not having pups. What’s the point of it all if you don’t make life? The moles here aren’t getting any younger either, so the females particularly are losing hope.”

  “It’s like the Wen, Tryfan.”

  Tryfan nodded.

  “It’s as if all of moledom’s dying for want of young.”

  “Well, I don’t know about anywhere else,” said Hay, “but this system is.”

  “What about the zealots in the Marsh End?” asked Spindle. “A mole thought we were two of them, whoever they are.”

  Hay grinned.

  “It’s what I thought for a bit. Down in the Marsh End’s where you find the clever ones, or the ones who think they’re clever. They have to have an argument about something, so down there you either have to be of the Stone or of the Word. Doesn’t make much difference as far as I can see: they’re as bad as each other. They send zealots up to the Eastside to get recruits, because sometimes when a mole’s ill enough he’ll believe anything if it promises relief or help. Get quite nasty if you disagree with them, so what a lot of moles do now is avoid them and let them get on with it. In the end they all get diseased just the same, they all die. Where I suggest you go is on the eastern side of the Marsh End, which is moister and danker but there’s a few sensible moles down there who keep themselves to themselves. Borage is down that way as well. As for me, I was due for a move so I’ll try my luck down there for a time as well. I daresay you’ll have a visit from the Westside moles, and others too if they hear you’re Tryfan.

  “Best thing is to be tough and offish with them and they’ll leave you be in the end. Time was when you would not have survived at all without joining them. Now they’re all too old for much fighting, except for a few of the henchmoles who fancy themselves.”

  “What about the Stone? Do any moles live up there?”

  “No, but the Westsiders don’t let others through to reach it, and discourage approaches from the Eastside, because they say that trekking moles take worms. They’re right, they do. “Course the Stone followers, if that’s what they are, don’t like it, but the Westsiders can count on the moles of the Word to give them help. Bit of a do at Longest Night when the Stone followers set out for the Stone, but that all faded to nothing. Strange that....”

  “Yes?” said Spindle.

  “Strange sky that night, stars so bright it was like day in the woods. There was a star in the east and talk among some of something going to happen.”

  “The Stone Mole,” said Tryfan.

  “Aye, the Stone Mole. That was the last time I saw Borage, Longest Night. Creeping about with his mate on the Eastside, heading up for the Stone. It was his mate more than anything, poor thing. She’s like all the rest. Wants young and will never have ’em. Diseased as they come, and as thin as a female can be. Told me that if she could only touch the Stone by that star’s light then she’d maybe have young this spring. I told her she was a fool to try, but... as I said, they’re desperate.”

  “And did she touch the Stone?” asked Tryfan softly.

  Hay shrugged.

  “Maybe she did. Persistent she is. But she would have got a buffeting for her pains, or something worse.”

  The last time Tryfan had been in the Marsh End was many moleyears before when, with Duncton Wood already invaded at its southern end by the grikes led by Henbane, the system had been evacuated.

  But now was a different time, a different season. The scrubby Marsh End trees stood still and desolate in the fading light, and the cold ground held rafts of snow in its darker parts. Dead vines trailed from the ragged trees, no bird scurried or flew, aching silence reigned and the place was drained of colour and hope.

  Underground the earth was dark with moisture, and chill, and what worms they found were withered and pale, every one unpalatable. Spindle cast his gaze about uneasily, uncertain where to settle for the night, and even Hay, a cheerful mole and one they were evidently fortunate to have met, seemed uneasy.

  Yet Tryfan, though tired, was positive and glad to talk a little more with Hay, and answer his questions about Duncton Wood as it had once been.

  The tunnels where they stopped were communal, or had been once, and word seemed to go up and down them that strangers had come, strangers indeed. For one claimed his name was Tryfan, and the other was Spindle the Cleric himself, whom some had heard of too.

  So as night came, and Tryfan talked, others came, surreptitiously at first and then more boldly unt
il the tunnels seemed full of moles, although in truth there were only nine or ten gathered there. One or two of the later arrivals, zealots apparently from the unyielding smiles on their faces and their eagerness to talk, were shushed, for the stranger was talking, and what he said held a mole’s attention.

  It was true enough, though Tryfan himself, whose night vision was less good than once it had been, seemed barely to notice the listeners. But Spindle did, and sensing there was no harm in it and might be some good, he signalled to Hay to let the listeners be.

  So that night Tryfan talked and repaid Hay’s account of the recent moleyears in Duncton with one of his own, which told of the time in the years immediately before he was born, when the Marsh End had as its elder a much-loved mole called Mekkins. He told of how Mekkins helped Bracken and Rebecca, of how he made trek to the Stone to pray for Rebecca’s life.

  But what brought tears to the eyes of many of the listeners – beset moles all of them, gaunt, sad, and ill, lost moles who were shorn of hope and brought to a system of despair – was Tryfan’s account of how Mekkins’ prayer was answered, and how he found a pup called Comfrey, and brought him to the teats of Rebecca here, right here in the downcast Marsh End.

  There were females among those listeners, thin of flank and dry of teat, who cried openly at Tryfan’s memories of stories told to him, of a system in which pups’ cries were heard. The males, too, were restless and sad.

  One or two dared ask questions: “What was Rebecca like?” and, “Was Comfrey harmed by his experience?” and, “Were moles from the Marsh End normally allowed up to the Stone?” All of which Tryfan answered with such modesty and evident authority that a mole could have heard a beetle stir so silently and well did they listen.

  Then at the end one or two females nudged each other and whispered, “That’ll be the day, when I hear a pup mewing down this system’s tunnels.”

  “Aye, that’ll be something to make a mole feel good about!”

  Then afterwards, when they had gone as silently as they had come, Tryfan turned to Spindle and said, much moved, “Not until now did I truly know I had a home system where memories might live, and moles be content to go where others went before, knowing their lives succeed the deeds of others. I shall not leave Duncton again, Spindle, not even if the Stone Mole himself summons me! This is my only place now and whatever Hay may say I believe good life will come back to these tunnels again, and hope, and faith. As for the Stone, why that’s somewhere we’ll make trek to soon enough. If moles cannot live together in peace in a system like this, how will they ever live so in moledom itself?

  “Here is our task now, Spindle, here where I began. And we shall succeed in it by word and peaceful deed, not by talon and tooth and war. We shall begin to scribe those things we know, and teach others to do so, that they may scribe their own lives down, and learn of others too. We shall meditate and we shall be quiet, and from the silence we make, little though it may be compared to the Silence of the Stone itself, something good will come to these moles here.

  “I think, Spindle, that the pain I felt in Whern, and which lives with me always across my face and sometimes throbs in the night, will remind me of the pain all moles feel when they are wrenched from places and moles they love, and forced to raise their talons against their hearts’ desire. But a mole cannot forever live on dreams and pretend he is not where he really is. Duncton is the home now of these many stricken moles, and quietly, without force or persuasion, we may, through our own stillness, help others love where they are.

  “As for these weak paws of mine, and these talons once so strong....” and here Tryfan raised his right paw and looked at his scarred skin and bent and weakened talons, “They will learn to scribe again, and if the script they scribe is weak and falters then it will do so no more than the mole who scribes it.

  “Tomorrow we begin, Spindle, and one day before too long, when we have made something to be thankful for, we will make trek to the Stone whatever moles in this place may say or do, and make obeisance and celebration.

  “The Stone Mole is coming, and I pray that we may be granted to see him. A star heralded his coming, and many saw it. Many wait as we do now, and this time of waiting is a time to reflect and be still, a time indeed, as January always has been, of waiting for life to begin once more.

  “Each mole to his own way of meditation and discovery, each to his own direction. It matters not what they say they do, or what names they give it, only the spirit in which they do it. With knowledge of themselves first, with love of others next, and with respect for the place they find themselves in last; that is the way. Which means no fighting with talons, nor harsh words without thought, nor belief that they are right without belief that they might be wrong. Tomorrow....”

  Yet tomorrow began that night. For as Tryfan slept, Spindle scribed down the words he had spoken, using bark he found, and so began the first of what historians call the Marsh End Texts.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  That first night that Tryfan returned to Duncton Wood, deep snow came. Soft, unheard, and gentle, it drifted through the black winter-stricken trees and settled heavily on the ground.

  So with dawn there was startling light: reflecting from the white snow, deep and pure, the trees alive with its cold reflections. Across the whole of Duncton Wood the snow lay and brought with it a special silence that marked the coming home of Tryfan.

  Under its cover, Tryfan and Spindle were able to move to a place only Hay was allowed to know, which was the old Marsh End Defence where Skint and his covert group had been. Nomole had found those tunnels, nor other creature either, and they lay quiet and protected just as Skint had left them.

  There, for a time, Tryfan might be safe from prying eyes, while Spindle would help him as, together, they began their work which later moles would know as the first flowering of a time of great scribing for which moledom had unconsciously thirsted for so long.

  White was the snow over Duncton, deep its purpose, silent its effect. Rumours went forth of the presence of Tryfan and Spindle, strange stories of two moles who came into the system, who told of days gone by and prophesied a peace to come. But though moles of the Westside searched for them, and zealots of the Marsh End hunted them, yet those two had disappeared as silently as the snows that fell that January and whose silence seemed to spread and deepen as the cold, still days of February came.

  So Tryfan and Spindle found peace, and safety, to scribe as they felt they must, the one of the spirit and the other of mole: the one as a scribemole trained by Boswell himself, the other as a scrivener, not ordained by mole but certainly ordained by the Stone, who told of moles like Comfrey and Thyme, like Starling and Bailey, like Holm and brave Mayweed, so that moles of future times might know their stories and whatmoles they were.

  Spindle made a library as he had before up in the Ancient System, in Harrowdown and other places too. Caches of texts that one day others might find to know what happened before and learn from it.

  Unseen by the two scribes, but reported to them by Hay, that harsh February brought death to Duncton Wood and growing despair. For cold saps an ill mole’s will to live, and many who had been strong before perished then. Nor did new ones come, for moledom outside Duncton seemed in a thrall, and more than one of winter.

  By the end of February, when normal systems would be beginning to sigh and rejoice to the sounds of mating and of pups to come, the tunnels of Duncton were more silent than ever. Indeed, the winter seemed to linger in them, and on the surface where the snow had settled and then turned to ice. Now it was grubby with the fall of bark from old trees, and the earthy print of fox, and the spatter of spoor from winter corvid. Birds lay dead, branches had fallen, life among its trees seemed gone. If there was sun at all in moledom, it shone rarely upon the open spaces of Duncton Wood, and never in Barrow Vale, once the heart of the system Bracken and Rebecca had known.

  So the system was beset by stillness and silence, and felt oppressed, with every entr
ance blocked by snow and debris and moles staying underground and waiting for a pupless spring beyond which lay no hope nor sign of relief.

  Such mating as there was was a hopeless thing, gaunt flank to gaunt flank, cries not of ecstasy but despair, for those moles were cursed by illness and disease and whatever it was that made them sterile. Females wandered aimlessly, caring no more for the threats of the Westside, or the zealots. Not that they came much now, for among them many had died. And still there was ice above, still the chill ate deep.

  So, surrounded by suffering and despair, Tryfan and Spindle scribed their work until, as February ended, they made their darkest texts which told of the filthels of the Wen, of the savagery of grikes, and of the story of Rune. Their days were lightened only by Hay’s secret comings, though the news he brought was ever of a system that seemed downcast by cold and ice, and where the future was all gone.

  One day he came while Tryfan was scribing, and he spoke for a time with Spindle alone....

  “... Mind you, the grikes are still there down by the cross-under because I’ve talked to a female or two who went there. Looking for mates, of course, but the grikes won’t touch the Duncton females – fear of disease. Anyway they’ve got other things on their minds at the moment. Thick as mites in a weasel’s nest the grikes are. Nervous, too. They’re said to be under strict rulings about allowing new immigrants into Duncton because of fears about the Stone Mole. Think he’s coming here! That’s why there’s hardly been a mole come in recent weeks, and no males at all. So if he’s on his way, it’s not to here!”

  But Hay stopped his chatter because he saw Spindle was tired and looked ill, while the glimpse he had of Tryfan showed a mole slowing down.

  “Not sickening, are you?” he asked worriedly. “Duncton’s not the place to be in this winter, if you ask me. Maybe you came at the wrong time.”

  Spindle shook his head.

  “It’s always a hard season, but I’m tired and I need a change, and Tryfan’s been very silent lately. He feels he’s failed in his tasks, he feels he’s let moledom down in some way, and he feels far away from the moles he grew to love.”