He turned even as she stopped on seeing him, and he saw her then. They were too far off to speak, too near to shout, so for a moment they just stared, as transfixed it seemed as they had been in Hen Wood.
Then moving at the same time they started towards each other. She dropped her gaze on him then, from sudden shyness or embarrassment. She looked at the ground, she looked up again, she moved, she looked away, she dared to look once more and there he was, and there she was, smiling, each smiling, and the sun upon them both.
“You’re the...” she began.
“I’m Beechen of Duncton born,” he said. He did not want to be called “Stone Mole’, it seemed. He looked larger than he had in the wood two days before, he looked tired. He was smiling. He....
As so many thoughts rushed through her head she heard herself say, “My name is Mistle, born of Avebury....”
He came closer, his eyes were clear as purest sky, there was nothing but him before her, nothing but him at all.
“I thought...” he began.
“... that we might not find each other,” she continued for him. Her voice trailed away. “He’s mole, he’s mole,” she said to herself and relief was flooding into her. She felt her paws shaking on the ground before her, and she saw he was nervous too. More than nervous, he seemed quite terrified. So he is but mole, he’s just as I am....
“Is that Duncton?” she asked, seeming unable to turn her head away from him to point the way she meant.
“Yes,” he said looking at her as she did at him, “where you were looking before.”
“Yes,” she said still staring at him.
Somehow, clumsily, paw almost to paw, they turned together and stared at Duncton Wood, though it might have been in a cloud of mist so little did they see of it, so much did they feel overpowered by the other’s presence so near.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
“I have never felt fear like this before,” he said. “Do you feel it?”
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
“Yes,” she said abstractedly.
Neither said a word, both stanced utterly still staring at what their eyes could not for the moment see.
Slowly, fearfully, shaking, his breathing sharp and irregular, he reached out his left paw and placed it on her right one.
“Mistle,” he whispered. It was a statement, not a question.
She looked at his paw and then dared look at him, dared because he still stared ahead. She felt his fear and it was the sweetest thing. Moledom was in their touch. She looked on him and even as she felt surges of joy and pleasure and relief she said, “Beechen?”
And this was a question. Many questions. A whole life of questions, a whole life beginning.
He turned to her and came closer still, and their paws reached for each other, and as the release of touch came to their bodies she wanted to cry and laugh, and run and dance. She felt at that moment that she could reach to the sun itself and yet still be on the earth; and when at last he spoke, and when she replied, it was to say as much, and much, much more.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Wort, eldrene of obscure Cumnor, waited two days before she was satisfied that her guardmoles had failed to apprehend Beechen of Duncton, whom she now felt certain was the long-heralded Stone Mole.
Being satisfied, she gave strict instructions that her guardmoles were to stay in Cumnor and on no account leave it until she returned to them.
“Where are you going?”
“The Word shall guide me,” she said enigmatically. But then obscurity was of the essence. Obscurity would, as she had frequently said, be their strength and it was the Word’s will that obscurity should remain the lot of the Cumnor moles for a little while longer.
But surely, her devotees in Cumnor’s Chawley End responded, the Word was displeased with them: they had been presented with a rare, probably unique, opportunity to take this mole Beechen who might be the Stone Mole – “who is the Stone Mole,” she interjected – and the Word had not let them do so.
“Now is the Word testing our fortitude, and exposing our weak vanities,” eldrene Wort lectured them. “Can you not see that it was meant that the Stone Mole was not caught? Let us gratefully accept that it is so and open ourselves to learning and moving on positively from this ‘failure’.”
So obsessive and intense was the faith in the Word of this notorious eldrene that anything that happened to her, or the zealot moles attracted by her ruthless devotion to the Word, was interpreted as “meant”, “inspired” and an object lesson in “providence”. The worse it was, the more to Wort’s twisted and prejudiced mind it seemed to speak of grace. Plague might hit them – well then, smile, for this is the Word’s judgement and retribution on moles who were spiritually weak; she and several of her cronies had been banished from Fyfield to Cumnor by Wyre for overzealousness, then smile again, for this was “the Word putting us into obscurity to prepare us still pure in the faith for the rigours of our finest hour soon to come when we shall be the talons of the Word’s final judgement”. And so forth. Dangerous insanity.
Whatever setback came Wort’s way, she survived it, turned it, and gained strength from it. Although thus far her obsessive faith seemed to have served her ill such moles do not give up, least of all Wort. Indeed, she sensed the turning point had come that justified everything that had so far happened to her and she believed that now, if she did the right thing, she would be set fair on the way that would lead her to the great destiny the Word had prepared for her. No wonder then that she was turning the failure to catch the Stone Mole into success.
As always at such moments she resorted to passionate prayer: “Holy Word, mother of my mind, father of my body, cleanse me of doubt, cleanse me of despair, cleanse me of sadness, wash from my outer form the dust and filth of the infections and temptations of the Stone; Holy Word, my mother and my father, guide me.”
She spoke the words rapidly and with terrible intensity and they brought tears to the eyes of some of her listeners.
“Afflict mine enemies with suffering and death, for they are your enemies, Word; teach my mind to know thy justice and help my talons to wield thy punishment on those whose ignorance is an affront to thy great beauty, and whose wilfulness in following the Stone threatens thy great peace.”
She finished and stared at the henchmoles and guardmoles about her. They were a mixture of zealots like herself, male and female, some cruel and loyal henchmoles, and some guardmoles thrown out of more moderate systems locally and now clustered to eldrene Wort and Cumnor as galls to bitter fruit.
The eldrene Wort, whatever else she did, knew how to lead such moles. She gave them discipline and the hope that soon they could openly go forth and prosecute the Word’s will upon allmole, as its most loyal servants. She pandered to their obscene belief that they were right and all others wrong. In this way, since her dismissal as eldrene of Fyfield by Wyre, Wort had quietly given legitimacy in Cumnor to this group of misfits, sadists, outcasts and obsessives of whom she was the archetype. Her faith was obedience to the Word. Disobedience was blasphemy. A blasphemous mole was no longer mole, and whatever was done to him, however it was done, was justified. She, or the Master himself, perhaps, was judge of what was blasphemous. Since she was obedient to the Word and its sworn agent, to doubt her was blasphemy. Such was the closed circle and harmonic evil of Wort’s mind.
In truth, she had a certain dark genius as well. She was the first to recognise Beechen for what he was: the Stone Mole. She had been the first to appreciate that if the persistent rumours were true that he was in Duncton Wood, then the moles who controlled the cross-under outside it had an important part to play – something she had long urged, though with the more pragmatic and less prejudiced Wyre, it fell on deaf ears. Which made him a suspect mole in her twisted gaze. So strongly had she believed in the significance of Duncton’s role as harbinger of the Stone Mole that in September, without seeking permission of Wyre, she had sent some of her own guardmoles t
o “support” the patrols at Duncton’s cross-under.
But the cross-under was also on the key routeway between north and south, and so it was that through her well-placed guardmoles she was informed when Lucerne’s sideem first came. Better still, the contrast between “her” guardmoles, and the more easy-going ones already there proved favourable, and the sideem gave them promotion. When new guardmoles were sought Cumnor supplied them. By late September, unknown to the sideem, the cross-under was Wort’s.
Therefore, when the trinity led by Heanor first came that way it had been Wort’s moles who had thoughtfully directed them to Cumnor first, and so turned Wyre’s decision to demote her back against him, for she entertained them well, spoke a language of zeal and faith they liked to hear, and was the first mole in those parts to hear that Lucerne would reward that mole well who first brought him news of the “Stone Mole’. She had been bemused by their desire to talk to moles of the Stone and relieved that they were to fulfil this part of their task in Fyfield and would not undermine her authority in Cumnor.
She was astute enough to understand the value of the information she had now, and cunning enough not to reveal it. She had thought it likely that the trained and clever Heanor would quickly find out the Stone-fool’s true identity and so had risked a return to Fyfield, and soon afterwards assassinated Heanor – making it seem the work of followers of the Stone. Smock, the eldrene, was killed as well.
Wort justified the evil deed to herself by judging that the Word was offended by Heanor’s failure to deal with the insults towards it Beechen’s appearance in Fyfield had produced. But, with Heanor dead, she was more likely to be the one honoured for discovering the Stone Mole.
Her prayers said, Wort told her devotees what she would do.
“The Word guides me, the Word tells me that our patience shall be rewarded and our hour is coming. I shall entrust my life to the Word and travel to distant Cannock and there seek the direct intervention of Lucerne, our father in moledom, our beloved Master-to-be. From him I shall gain authority to act against the Stone Mole as I must. Did not corrupted Duncton spawn him? It did! Should not Duncton then be Said waste as the Holy Burrows of Uffington was by the Word? It should, and it shall! This shall be Cumnor’s great task, for this shall it ever be remembered. The Master-elect shall hear us on this. Your eldrene shall return and lead you and others we shall find against Duncton Wood.”
“But eldrene, the place is outcast and diseased.”
“Mole, you are right – it must be to have produced the evil that is called Beechen. But do not worry, the Word shall be our guardian and protector against disease!”
She then gave instructions that moles in her system must stay unseen and obscure until her return and, her preparations complete, the still-unknown, unmeasured, eldrene Wort, together with two henchmoles, set off north to Cannock, to seek out her dark and driven destiny.
In the space of the short time Lucerne and his sideem had occupied Cannock, the place had been transformed, and what had once merely been a system of dull tunnels now had the gloss of evil; and by that infection the Word brings wherever it comes, the same dark menace that inhabited the tunnels of Whern now occupied the tunnels, burrows and chambers of Cannock.
Mallice, ever attendant on her Master’s needs, as on her own, controlled the running of the place, and had established the quarters of Lucerne at the central southern end of Cannock, near enough to the community chamber where moles met to see and hear what went on.
She had grown used in Whern to secret ways and tunnels, and to using spying points, and had some delved in Cannock too. There was little that went on she did not know about, and all was passed on to Lucerne, and much to Terce.
And Cannock had its fearsome place as Whern did: somewhere about which moles did not care to speak.
It lay downslope to the east of Cannock where underground water flowed and had made a place of fluted chambers, deep, moist, echoing, uncomfortable. Under the direction of Mallice it had been delved and sealed in such a way that cells existed there in which moles were easily kept. The one thing they did not die of there was thirst, for water dripped and oozed and formed sucking pools and sumps. These last gave it its name – the Sumps, which was a reminder to anymole that heard it that like the Sinks of Whern it was not a place from which a captive mole easily emerged alive.
The Sumps ran to various levels. The lower tunnels were always chill and damp because into these the water flooded sometimes when heavy rains fell outside: an event accompanied by a roaring and racing of water sound. The air was fetid in the deeper ceils, and the light all gone. A mole incarcerated in those cells suffered a life of perpetual darkness, in which the only sounds were the menacing roaring of the water, and the occasional drag of paws when a prisoner from a higher level brought down some stinking food.
Some of the higher cells were comfortable enough, and there were those who, confined but briefly in the Sumps, never guessed the horrors and agonies of moles who survived in the murk and blackness deeper down.
The Sumps’ power and organisation was vested in three moles: Mallice, most powerful of all; Drule, who was in charge of the guardmoles who ran it, and was their scourge as well; and Slighe, who kept the records of the prisoners there meticulously, but never visited it for very long himself.
The Sumps served three different uses. One was as a punishment to moles of the Word who had been lax, indolent or blasphemous. A second was as a place of torture of those moles who might have information Lucerne and those who served him needed. A third was as a place of secure confinement for moles, mainly of the Stone, who though not judged and punished might have a use at some time in the future, or be better “lost”.
And lost was the word, for only Slighe knew the names and locations of all the moles confined, and if he made a slip – and he did – or lost interest in a mole, that mole was truly lost, and left to die in darkness and unloved.
By November the Sumps was in full use, and its wretched tunnels groaned and echoed to the sound of suffering moles who screamed, or coughed or bled their life away. It was a place that drove moles mad and Drule, the expert on its punishments, had quickly discovered – initially to his cost – that confinement in the Lower Sumps drove a mole insane if kept up too long. Twelve days was enough for most, though some had been permanently affected after only eight. Its most efficacious use was as a threat, meted out on those who had been sent down to it before and knew its horrors.
Perpetual darkness, rotten food, the real threat of drowning are enough to make a mole hallucinate and imagine horrors worse by far than any a torturer can inflict.
The Middle Sumps was where most prisoners were kept, eking out their days in crippling dampness, suffering the sadism of the guardmoles, malevolently forced to share cells with moles who hurt or raped them.
The Upper Sumps merely took a mole’s liberty, and was slow to harm him physically. Yet even here was a place, a chamber more than a cell, in which certain moles were taken for bloody questioning – for access to it was comfortable and easy for moles such as Lucerne and Terce who had no desire to sully themselves with the realities below.
In the Upper Sumps as well those most pathetic prisoners of the Word in Cannock, youngsters of adult inmates, were kept since they were not strong enough to survive the rigours of the damper cells. Usually alone, always afraid, and if unwanted then fearfully abused. To these poor creatures Slighe came and, if they were male, he would use them and abuse them unto death itself through his perverted lusts. As for Drule, he had the pick of females there and having had his way would pass them on for guardmoles to use. Few of them survived.
How much of this did Lucerne know? Mallice knew all, or if she did not then she was blind and deaf, for she frequently visited the Upper Sumps, and on occasion the Middle Sumps as well. The reason? One word will be enough: torture. Aye, that was what she liked.
All done, all of it, in the name of the Word. But then it might be said that when a mole was sen
tenced to the Sumps he or she is no longer mole. Only this explains why guardmoles, who in their quarters elsewhere in Cannock could play happily with their young and be affectionate with their mates would, when their leave or break was done, return and be monsters to mole once more. Yet guilt was alive – for how else does a mole explain the fact that nomole spoke of the Sumps?
We too would like to turn our backs from all awareness of the place, but we cannot. A mole we know, and one we were beginning to learn to love, was confined there.
Betony.
Squeezebelly’s daughter. Sister to Bramble, adoptive sister to Harebell and Wharfe.
Poor Betony. Suffering Betony. By November she was near death.
Aye, it was Mallice and her guardmoles who had snatched Betony from Beechenhill. From the moment she had realised exactly whatmole she had, which was some hours after her encounter with the party of watchers in which Betony had been, Mallice did not linger, but turned her snout towards Ashbourne, and thence to Cannock feeling her task in Beechenhill was now well done.
Betony was already half broken when she reached the Sumps, for on the journey there Mallice had tortured much information out of her.
Being the sideem she was, Mallice revealed the source of her startling revelations about Wharfe and Harebell being Lucerne’s siblings, and living in Beechenhill, only after Lucerne’s appetite had been whetted....
“Oh, and Master, one more thing. We have a rather special prisoner, my dear. One you will much wish to see.”
“Then bring him here.”
“It is best we visit her,” said Mallice, “she is not fit to travel far. She has hurt her paws.”
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