Duncton Tales

by William Horwood

  “Hang on a bit, angel-snout!” protested Chater, taken aback by this outburst, “I only —”

  “I shall not, precious one, I shall speak my mind. We have good times together, Privet and I, and I believe that if she would only let others see her as I do then there’s many would be glad to know her more. She’s very knowledgeable.”

  “About what, for instance?”

  “About texts.”

  “All librarians give that impression, my love, but most of them don’t know their arse from their lughole —”

  “Chater!”

  “It’s true. They talk a lot but when it comes to it they know bugger-all. I mean I’ve travelled here, there and everywhere and know the routes well, and has a single librarian ever consulted me about moledom, about which they scribe their monographs and histories and texts? Not one, my dear, not a single solitary one. Oh yes, they’re very good at theory but no bloody good at getting off their bums and looking for themselves! Take for example —”

  “Chater! You know I get upset when you talk like this. Perhaps you ought to consider, my own sweet love, whether or not you get off your bum and really listen to other moles — like my friend Privet, for example. Now when I say she’s knowledgeable I don’t mean she goes on about what she doesn’t know about, like some moles I could mention. I mean that when I ask a question about something she might know about then if she doesn’t she says so, and if she does she tells me a little until I ask for more. Then when I ask for more she tells me still more. Until by the end of it I know a lot and she’s made it easy for me. That’s being knowledgeable.”

  “No it’s not, beloved, that’s being a good tutor, which is different altogether.”

  “Well maybe, maybe not,” said Fieldfare huffily. “I still say she’s more knowledgeable than some I could think of.”

  Chater sighed, and grinned. “You’re probably right there. Next time she tells you something helpful, you pass it on and improve me too. I definitely need improvement, my delightful one.”

  “You do,” said Fieldfare softly, bringing her ample body close to Chater’s.

  “I do,” he agreed, “so show me.”

  “Now?”

  “As good a time now is, as any.”

  She giggled and sighed.

  “I wish Privet had a mate,” she said as she showed him … ‘I’m sure she did have once. If she’s withered, as you put it, it’s not from studying but because she misses him.”

  But Chater was not interested any more that day in Privet’s mate but in his own, and it was not long before his mate was interested only in her own as well …

  So it was that Duncton Wood carried on as it always had, its true history more that of harmless moles like Fieldfare and Chater, living their lives out, loving and respecting each other, safe in a system whose freedom had been won for them by moles long dead.

  Duncton absorbed Privet into its tunnels, as it had so many others in the past. Unremarkable and unremarked but by a few like Fieldfare, Privet found her niche and had her dreams, and kept her past to herself. But, as she herself had said to Snyde, the present will become the past as well, and out of that past with its little and its great events, history will be made. And history, at that time, was stalking towards Duncton Wood once more and had in its unremitting sight the shy, the modest, and the unremarkable Privet.

  “Me?” she might have said, shocked at such a suggestion.

  “Yes, you,” sighed the trees of old Duncton Wood, whose voice moles there have always heard, but rarely understood it was the voice of history.

  “One last time we shall need the moles of Duncton Wood, and you, Privet, are of their number now. But more than that, you carry a dream, and moles with dreams, however modest the moles themselves may seem, must discover for good and for ill that the past and the present are inextricable, and unavoidable, however far a mole may run.”

  Chapter Four

  Privet’s curiosity about Stour, the Master Librarian, had naturally increased the more the molemonths went by in which she did not meet him. She knew where his study cell was for even if Avens had not pointed it out during her first day there, its location was obvious from the way moles in the Main Chamber were inclined to glance up towards the mysterious shadowed gallery from which the Master was supposed to watch them all.

  Occasionally Snyde or Firkin, or other Keepers like Sturne went up the slipway and disappeared from sight, and once Privet caught a glimpse of one of these talking into the shadows to a mole she could not quite see who must have been there. This was the nearest she ever got to Stour. The corpulent guard disappeared in late January and nomole was left there at all, yet he might as well have been there for all the likelihood there was of anymole daring to set paw upon the slipway.

  Sometimes, when she worked into the dark afternoons, she heard strange wind-sounds reverberating from the galleried heights, and knew from her own studies that this was Dark Sound, though of a benign and gentle kind. Dark Sound of the Whernish kind she knew was a killer of moles, unless they were of extraordinary spiritual strength.

  As she got to know the more obscure parts of the Library which lay to the west in the direction of the Stone, mainly with Pumpkin’s help, she discovered tunnels in which the stacks of texts petered out, and where most dark, most mysterious, and most dangerous, the tunnels ran on, blocked only half-heartedly it seemed by seals delved a long time since, and now in a ruinous state and choked with rubble, flints and broken soil through which roots twined.

  But so afraid were the Duncton librarians of what lay beyond — a fear bolstered by the Dark Sounds that emanated from these tunnels too, especially on days when the wind was gusting northerly — that nomole had been willing, or felt it necessary, to clear these partial obstructions and rebuild the seals properly.

  “If I have to get texts from those parts,” said Pumpkin once, “I make sure to do it in the middle of the day when the light is good, and if I possibly can I choose a day when the winds are light. Never go anywhere near there if you can help it when the wind blows from the north,” he added, as if he expected that Privet might, “for it’s then the Dark Sound eats into you and muddles your head. I’ve heard screams from those tunnels, and the sound of moles running, and of talons, cruel talons, scraping on flint, and things I’ll never talk about not ever. Some say Dark Sound is just fancy, but I think it’s real.”

  Poor Pumpkin’s eyes were wide with fear and Privet nodded sympathetically.

  “I know it’s real,” she said flatly.

  “You’ve heard it near-to?” he asked incredulously.

  She closed her mouth, looked away, and vaguely shook her head. Pumpkin said no more: like most others who had got to know Privet, he knew there were things in her past she did not talk about.

  “Tell me,” she said to change the subject, “doesn’t Master Stour ever come down into the Main Library?”

  “He used to regularly when I first came to work here three Longest Nights ago. He was in his prime then and moles trembled at his approach. Sharp as blackthorn his mind was, and he looked like thunder in a mean sky if he was crossed. Of course. that Snyde was just a starter then and Stour didn’t give him the time of day. But the years passed, seasons came and went. The copying became the main part of the Library’s work and gradually Stour grew older, and we began to see him less and less.”

  “You said that copying became the main task — what was important before then?”

  “Well, the Conclave of Cannock that he inspired and which led to all this copying was years before my time. But before that this place was all collecting and scholarship. These days moles don’t bring discovered texts here like they used to, preferring to keep the originals in their own systems and send copies instead. Except we rarely see even those. As for scholarship, why there’s hardly a mole here worthy of the name scholar — they’re all like that cluck-headed Avens from Avebury, though he means well enough. No, Miss Privet, I hope it’s not out of turn my saying that yo
u’re the first real scholar we’ve had in Duncton in a very long time.”

  Privet’s snout turned a darker shade of pink at this compliment and she looked away, much touched.

  Then, “What about the Master’s present retreat? What’s the explanation of that?”

  Pumpkin shrugged, and scratched his head. Makes no real sense to me. In fact if anything he had been getting more mellow. I even saw him smile once or twice — even at me! I don’t know …”

  Privet looked at him quizzically, for he obviously did know.

  “You’re not half bad at getting others to talk, Miss, even if you give nothing away about yourself!” declared Pumpkin, with a cheerful combination of ruefulness and respect. “I suppose what I was thinking was that last October two of those Newborns came up from the Marsh End and asked to see the Master. Of course they got short shrift from Snyde but old Stour must have been watching up there in his gallery and bless me but he appears all of a sudden and says it’s all right, he’ll see them. Well, they talked for a whole afternoon and eventually those of us who were watching and listening out for what was going on — which included myself, needless to say! — saw the Master more or less driving those Newborns out of the place and saying he was outraged and trust was trust and they would not be welcome back and so on. Stone knows what it was about because I didn’t then and never found out since. But shortly afterwards Drubbins was sent for and he spent a long time with the Master and came out looking grim and it was after that — though I only put two and two together later — the Master began his retreat. Don’t ask me what he does up there all alone, but there it is. Now he issues orders for texts only through Deputy Master Snyde.”

  “But surely a librarian needs to know his texts and folios?”

  “He does, better than anymole alive. They say he wanders about the library at night, feeling the texts, and sometimes you’ll catch sight of a shadow among the stacks at dawn, if you come that early. That’ll be Stour. But these days he may not have need of coming here so much.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, they say he has his own private library up there among the galleries, and that his work now uses only those few texts and … well, and himself.”

  “Himself, Pumpkin?”

  Pumpkin shrugged. “It’s only what I’ve heard others talk of, which means to say Snyde because of course old Firkin never breaks the Master’s confidence and Sturne says nothing at all. Doesn’t mean much to me but I heard the Deputy Master talk about the very self-same thing, and not to a librarian either. He was saying that Stour’s work these days concerns the Silence, and that he, Stour, had said the very last thing a mole needs for that is texts. Quote: “Texts get in the way” unquote. Sounds daft to me, and he wouldn’t be the first Master who ends his days mad. It’s the isolation of the job and responsibility, you see. Of course the fancy name they give it is a “retreat” but there’s nothing normal or healthy about secluding yourself from others, is there?”

  “Has he never had a mate?”

  “Never to anymole’s knowledge. No, never. Fell in love once they say, but now the only mole who’s old enough to remember the truth, and sensible enough not to exaggerate, is Drubbins.”

  The two moles fell into one of those companionable silences, thinking about all they had talked of until Pumpkin repeated suddenly, “‘Texts get in the way’. Odd that.”

  “Yes …” said Privet softly. “But not perhaps if it’s the Silence that you’re trying to understand. In fact …”

  It was Pumpkin’s turn to look at her quizzically.

  “I was just thinking, Pumpkin, that it’s the most sensible thing I’ve ever heard said about searching for the Silence. ‘Texts get in the way’. Yes …”

  “Miss, why did you come to Duncton? When you first came you asked about the Books of Moledom. I notice that you’ve not mentioned them since, but several times I’ve seen you looking through the copies in the stacks.”

  “I came … I came because …”

  Pumpkin was suddenly very still, sensing that Privet was about to speak personally for once.

  “I came to discover more of Silence. But I thought knowledge of it might be here in Duncton. Does that seem ridiculous to you?”

  “No, Miss.”

  “I think it does exist but we don’t know what it looks like. I think it’s waiting for us to find it and that we shall find it …”

  “Maybe we shall find it when we need to.”

  “Do you really think that, Pumpkin?”

  Pumpkin looked around at the stacks in the Chamber they were in, and at the tunnels leading off it. He cocked his head and seemed to listen for a moment to the endless mutter and patter of working moles.

  “All this copying,” he said in a low voice. “All this so-called scholarship. All this busyness. I watch it and I do as I’m told but I never forget that it will be the Silence that matters in the end and how we reach it. The way I see the Book of Silence is this. There’s six Books so far — I know that for sure. And six is nomole’s number. Seven’s the thing and a Seventh Book there’ll be. You can have all of this, Miss Privet, every last text, because it won’t be anything in the end. But the Book of Silence, that’s the one.”

  The normal look of good-natured cynicism on Pumpkin’s face had been replaced by a look of awed excitement as he imagined seeing in reality the thing of which he spoke.

  “It’s somewhere, as you said, or perhaps waiting to be scribed, but it’s near, it’s near. I would give my whole life for the honour of touching that last Book just for a moment. I mean it! Do you know. I thought there was something more about you than met the eye; a lot more. You’re a bit of a one, Miss Privet, aren’t you!”

  “Am I?” she said, a little coyly.

  “And I suppose I’d be pushing my luck if I asked you what made you interested in the Book of Silence in the first place?”

  “You would, Pumpkin, yes, you would,” said Privet, retreating to her old self.

  Pumpkin grinned, so good-naturedly that Privet could not help smiling back. Somehow both of them sensed that they had formed a bond that day, or perhaps more accurately a pact, and that it concerned the Book of Silence, and that if ever the Stone honoured either of them with the task of fulfilling it they would not hesitate to do so, whatever it might cost.

  “Miss …’ began Pumpkin, suddenly nervous. A whisper of Dark Sound had come into the tunnel where they stanced. Moles desperate. Moles in fear.

  “Miss …’ he said again.

  “It’s all right,” said Privet, suddenly strong, “Dark Sound will not hurt you if you have faith in the Stone, or not at this distance. It’s all right, Pumpkin — if ever the Stone asks that of you it will give you the strength you need.”

  “Will it?” he whispered, shaking his head. “I’m just an aide. Miss Privet, nothing more and nothing less.”

  It was her turn to grin.

  “There’s something more about you than meets the eye too,” she said. And Pumpkin laughed, and the moment passed, but not the memory of their tacit exchange which had to do with the discovery of the Book of Silence.

  January passed into February with Stour still a mystery, and, as she got to know the library and the Duncton system better, other mysteries began making their presence felt as well.

  One of these was the curious fact that there were far fewer ancient texts in the stacks than she might have expected, and she realized that if what Pumpkin had said was true then these probably now formed part of Stour’s personal library. But why would he who was so committed to seeing that other moles had texts made available to them, want to make ancient texts unavailable in the Library of which he was Master? It did not make sense. Meanwhile, however, she must continue to make her way in the Library as best she could, getting on with the tedious task of copying texts from Modern which held no interest for her at all, whilst hoping change would come.

  But at least in mid-February, when the task of copying for springtime distributio
n was nearly over, her real skills began to emerge. A question concerning a partially scrivened script came up, to which she was able to provide an answer, and it became apparent that her knowledge of older scripts, particularly those emanating from the north, was thorough and sound.

  She began to work as a librarian-aide to Sturne, then the Keeper of Rules, and in that capacity was able to help clear up some problems with the much-copied and corrupted text of the Prendine Rule which, with careful scholarship, she was able to show was a merging of two Rules of different dates, and widely different places.

  Obscure though such work was, and unimportant to the main thrust of Modern research in the Library, it established for Privet a reputation for accuracy and dedication, and led her to be chosen to work on the much bigger task of the elucidation of the Farndon Forgery, that brilliant but notorious early Modern attempt to fool scribemoles in Uffington into thinking a contemporary text concerning Stone liturgies was of late mediaeval origin. Unfortunately this work brought Privet into direct conflict with Deputy Master Snyde, whom she had managed to keep clear of since their initial meetings.

  The problem was that Rules needed extra aides to help with work generated by Privet’s researches, and Snyde objected to this channelling of resources towards something he saw as irrelevant to the Library’s main work, and in this matter he won — for all but Privet were removed from the task, which left her working on something that most regarded as a waste of time.

  Yet she rose to the occasion, working longer hours and arriving near a solution to the problem in late February, when spring was almost come, and even librarians’ inclinations were turning to matters of the heart, and stirrings of the body, rather than dry textual interpretations.