Duncton Tales
Page 10
“Why do I feel restless and dissatisfied?” she said aloud, starting up from where they had been comfortably stanced as if she there and then intended to do something.
“I expect it’s because your mind’s too active, Privet. I’m not cursed with your kind of restless curiosity. I’m just pleased if things are all right, and when they’re not I do something about it until they are. It’s the same with you, Pumpkin, isn’t it?”
Pumpkin nodded mildly. “That’s why I never wanted to be more than an aide, you see. If I was a scribemole I’d worry myself to death. Let the others do the worrying!”
“Like me, you mean?” said Privet.
“Seems so, Miss Privet. I can’t think what you’ve got to worry about, you’ve reared Whillan really well …”
“But he’s —”
“Normal,” interjected Fieldfare. “More a mole cannot expect. You see …” She went on to sensibly point out that there was nothing unusual about a mole teetering at the portal of adulthood scribing incantations and indulging himself in moods, especially if üe thought he had good reason to do so. “And he has, my dear, he has! He’s probably worrying about his parentage and that.”
“More than probably I would say, Miss Privet.”
“Hmmph!” said Privet. “Neither Stour nor I ever kept anything secret from him that I know of, and we answered all his questions frankly.”
“Well, you’ll just have to let him carry on asking them until he’s bored with it and goes on to more useful things,” said Fieldfare equably. “Patience, my dear, and a task — that’s the way to stop fretting about a thing. Find yourself a task — or better still find Whillan one!”
Privet grumbled some more, but then the air stilled and evening came on, and Pumpkin told them he knew a place which caught the last of the sun where the worms were good, and they drifted off to find it and talk of other things.
The September days went by. Sometimes Privet would spend time by herself, but for the most part she and Fieldfare would join or be joined by moles like Pumpkin, and young Avens (as he still seemed to them), and, once in a while, others like Maple and Drubbins, to talk, and joke, and share. As the evenings began to draw in they became inclined like others to make their way down to Barrow Vale, and gather there in community, to meet old friends and hear how others’ offspring were doing, or hear what news of moledom the latest visitors had brought.
Fieldfare noticed that at such times Privet fell silent and did not contribute. She suspected that such talk revived old memories that Privet did not wish to think about, though nothing ever had, nor now seemed likely to induce Privet to break her silence about her past.
But in any case the news was more of current things, and in particular of something that much concerned the easy-going and freedom-loving Duncton moles — the latest doings of the Newborns. Once more, it seemed, with the coming of summer missions had been sent forth from Caradoc and had strengthened their position in those systems where they were already established while sending out what they called pioneer cells to lesser systems. Chater was only one of several journeymoles who had confirmed visitors’ reports, in his case after taking a text to Avebury where he found the Newborns now solidly entrenched in important positions in its Library.
Just now Chater himself was away again, but since it was only to nearby Cuddesdon, he would soon be back. Meanwhile September advanced and new visitors confirmed the Newborn expansion, saying the moles in Rollright looked ominously close to going over to the Newborn way.
“The wonder of it is that they haven’t sent a new lot of missionaries to join the raggle-taggle Newborns down in the Marsh End,” declared Fieldfare when she heard this. Other moles in Barrow Vale stopped their chatter and listened, for Fieldfare had a way of putting into words what many felt.
“I mean,” she continued, “Duncton Wood is a major system and you’d think they’d send their blessed pioneers or do-gooders or whatever along to us to convert us lot to their way!”
“No chance,” said one of her friends. “They know we don’t go in for rules and regulations here, and they’re too intelligent to try to make us. So they’re content to have fuss and feud in the Marsh End.”
“Or too well informed,” growled Maple, whose solid presence always added a certain seriousness to the proceedings. “From what Chater told me before he went off to Cuddesdon, it strikes me that the Newborns are merely biding their time because they know we’d resist any attempts at coercing us into anything. They’re waiting, hoping something happens that will make their task easier, though what that could be I don’t know. They’ll get short shrift from me …”
He loomed forward among them, powerful and clear-eyed, a mole in his prime — but born, it seemed, into the wrong age.
“No, Maple,” said old Drubbins the healer, eyeing Maple’s flexing talons, “persuasion’s our way, not force. I doubt if they’d ever find moles able to persuade us to do anything we didn’t want.”
“It seems they “persuaded” the Avebury moles without difficulty,” said Maple shortly. “Moles can talk all they like, but a show of force at the right time and in the right way may be the best defence. The Chronicles show how true that is, and how it’s happened often enough in this very system in the past.”
Light had come to Maple’s eyes, and an impressive stressing to his talons.
“You missed your vocation, Maple!” said Fieldfare. “You should have gone from Duncton years ago to find a system that needed a warrior …”
A shadowed look crossed Maple’s face and he said passionately, “Moles in former times interfered too much in other systems’ affairs. Duncton’s my system and here I’ll stay until the day comes that it needs me to defend it. And if I die without that ever happening there’ll be no happier mole than me. But by the Stone, if I’m ever needed I’ll be here and in no other place!”
“We know that, Maple, all of us know it,” said Fieldfare gently. She had watched Maple grow into the great and good mole he was, she had seen Drubbins’ brother Chamfer train him in the ways of fighting, and she had even adjudicated between Maple and her own Chater when, for fun, they had tussled about. Why, she remembered the day well when Maple had succeeded at last in forcing Chater to yield and how her beloved, who knew well how to look after himself, had said, “I swear I’ve never had the honour of fighting a stronger mole than young Maple. It’s not his size, though that’s impressive enough, but the way it’s combined with speed and aggression. Yet he’s the kindest, gentlest mole I know when he’s not fighting. Mark my words, Fieldfare, there’ll come a day the Stone will call him to its aid, for it does not make such a mole for nothing. You’ll see!”
Maple had indeed grown to be indomitable, and looking at him now, with trust and affection, Fieldfare remembered Chater’s words, and wondered if a day would ever come when Maple’s strength was needed, and whether, perhaps, it was better that it never did.
Though Privet said little at such communal gatherings, they invariably stirred something up in her, and returning back to the Eastside with Fieldfare after them she would be taciturn and morose, and her parting for her own burrows would be of the briefest sort.
“If you don’t mind my saying so, my dear,” Fieldfare would say to her after yet another vain attempt to get her to talk and unburden herself at last, “get yourself busy, or find some task or other for yourself in the Library. I can see you’re not happy at the moment, all restless and bothered. It’s very exasperating for your friends!”
“Well! That’s how it is, isn’t it?” said Privet shortly, turning away. “I can’t help being what I am, or feeling what I do, and friends should be able to put up with it. I mean … oh I’m sorry, Fieldfare, I didn’t mean …”
But Fieldfare didn’t mind, and understood. She was inclined to be irritable herself when Chater was away too long, and in all the circumstances, mysterious though they were, it must be much worse for poor Privet.
Later, back at her burrows, Privet would be unable to sleep but woul
d lie at one of her tunnel entrances with her snout extended along her paws, watching the night sky deepen, thinking that her past seemed a very long way away indeed and would not, could not, come back now. Yet there was the restlessness, and memories and images of moles and places she thought she had succeeded in forgetting.
“Yes!” she whispered to herself. “Fieldfare’s right, I need a task and now that Whillan’s off my paws I’ll go to Stour and ask him for one! Yes, I will!”
Yet there was a lack of conviction about these secret determinations, as if Privet felt that whatever task she must next take up, it would find her rather than she actively go and find it.
But, however that might be, it was Stour who sought her out soon afterwards, and not she who went to him. The Master Librarian had every reason to consult with Privet for lately he had been much troubled by Whillan, and not known quite what to do.
For Whillan, now more adult than youngster and almost daily thickening out in that awkward changeling way that such moles have of shedding off their youth in stops and starts and deepening voices, was now more than ever inclined to moodiness.
The reason that he himself gave for this — for he retained a pleasing and charming honesty, even when at his worst — was to do with the tragedy of his birth and the death of his mother and other siblings in the cross-under as witnessed by Stour alone. Though he had been told the nature of his birth when younger, both by Privet and by Stour himself, it now seemed he wanted to go over it again and again, and had even asked Stour himself to take him to the spot in the cross-under where he had been born, and his mother had died.
Few things had ever moved Stour so much as the sight of the young adult crying for a mother he had never known, and a father he would never see, as patiently he told and re-told Whillan the story of his birth. Though because he felt obliged still to abide by the wishes of the dead mother not to tell everything until the time seemed right, which it did not yet seem to Stour, who had to think of Privet as well, he repeated only some of what his mother had said.
“But what does “Whillan” mean?” cried Whillan, anger and frustration mixing with the sadness on his face. “If she knew your name, Stour, and Privet’s, then she must have known a Duncton mole. She must have! Why didn’t you ask her more?”
“Mole …’ began Stour, remembering how hard it had been to ask anything that dreadful day the previous spring.
“You could have asked more!” shouted Whillan. “You could!”
“Mole —” tried Stour again.
“You could!” cried out Whillan, rushing off upslope before Stour could adequately reply.
Later, the Master Librarian wearily reported this encounter to Privet, concluding, “If I were him I think I too would be angry, and perhaps it is the only thing for him. I have no doubt that eventually he will leave the system for a time in an attempt to resolve the mystery of his beginning, and there may be comfort for you in knowing that just such concerns caused Woodruff of Arbor Low, scribemole of the Chronicles, to wander moledom asking questions until he found answers that satisfied him. You too seem still to have your secrets and you may be thankful they have nothing to do with Whillan, for believe me he would wrest them from you if he thought they had!”
He looked sharply at Privet as he said this, leaving little doubt that whatever he had said to Whillan, he too thought it strange that the mole’s mother had known Privet’s name, and virtually identified her as the one who should foster the pup. Nor, it seemed, did he doubt that Privet herself knew what the name ‘Whillan’ signified, for of course he had noticed that only when the name was first mentioned had Privet been willing to accept the task of rearing the pup.
Yet Stour was too wise a mole to force the issue, recognizing even more than Fieldfare that Privet must choose her own time for telling what she wished to of her past, assuming that such a time ever came, which it might well never do.
As usual Privet gave nothing away, but observed with a slight smile, “For moles who’ve never had pups of our own, Master, we seem wise in matters of rearing!”
“You more than me I think,” replied Stour. “But perhaps decades in the Library as Master is not so different as a few moleyears as a parent.”
Privet looked at him for a time and resolved that the moment had come to ask him to give her what he had once promised.
“You were going to give me a task … Well, Master, I submitted without complaint to the test of raising Whillan and now I wish to develop other talents in myself. I am ready for a task that will stretch me. I have had enough of copying, and the matters I am asked by others to research are usually of but small consequence.”
“Yes, indeed, Privet, I understand. That is the other reason I came today, for there is a task I have in mind. But for you to understand it I must ask you to join a few of us at a meeting in Drubbins’ place this afternoon. I would prefer that you did not mention the fact of such a meeting to anymole … Is that understood?”
He seemed severe, and concerned, and she was much mystified.
What is the meeting about, Master? It might be easier for me …”
“I think it best to say no more now, mole. Saying nothing to anymole, come to Drubbins’, and once you have heard what needs to be said you shall have your task.”
“Yes Master,” she said obediently, for Stour was at his most magisterial.
“As for Whillan and worries of his past, I think it might be better if we found a task for him as well. It would help if he was busy and indeed I have something in mind for him.”
“Yes Master,” agreed Privet, smiling at this repetition of the advice that Fieldfare had often given her.
Privet was both puzzled and excited at the Master Librarian’s visit and invitation, and she busied herself inconsequentially through the morning and early afternoon until it was time to set off for the low Eastside where Drubbins’ tunnels were.
Just as she left she was very surprised to be visited by Avens, whose stay at Duncton had extended longer than he had originally intended, not from any newly-discovered zeal in scribing and scholarship, but from the comfort of his life there and the difficulty he had in summoning the energy and enterprise to set off back to Avebury, from whence he had originally come. He had in any case found himself a niche in the Library as something rather better than a librarian and yet not quite a scholar — a mole willing to help others out with work they were doing and even on occasion to work as little more than a humble aide, and one too who always seemed to know what others were about.
“Have you heard, Privet? There’s to be a Meeting at Barrow Vale, summoned by the Master Librarian himself, and as I’m going down that way I thought you’d like to come with me. It’ll be the first for a long time.”
Privet was greatly surprised at this news, considering that she herself was attending a meeting also called by Stour, but remembering the Master’s request for secrecy she gave nothing away and simply said that she would probably come to Barrow Vale later on. But several times on her journey through the Eastside she met moles who repeated Avens’ claim, and she began to think that it was she who was wrong about the time or day, not them.
So she approached Drubbins’ tunnels with some uncertainty in the late afternoon, half expecting to find nomole there at all, to find instead that several moles were there already, all quiet, all waiting, all expectant.
There was Drubbins himself, as peaceful and cheerful as ever; and Maple too, restless and serious, his greeting brief and formal. To Privet’s surprise Fieldfare was there as well, but when Privet whispered, “Do you know what this is about?” her friend only shook her head and replied quietly, “Not really, my dear. I only know that it concerns news of Chater, but that he’s all right, thank the Stone. I think …”
“I do not think they will be long,” said Drubbins suddenly, “but they will not wish to be seen, you see.”
But who ‘they’ might be, Privet could only whisper to Fieldfare, “Do you know who else is coming?”
But soon after this there came the sound of two more moles approaching, and in at last they came — Master Librarian Stour in the company of none other than …
“Bless me alive!” declared Fieldfare utterly astonished, “’tis my love Chater!” But while this loud announcement served to lighten the mood in the chamber, as did her eager rush to him despite so many others being thereabout, her joy was quickly displaced by dismay and concern. For Chater was badly cut about the face, and wounded in the shoulder.
“’Tis nothing now, my duck,” he said gruffly, “for Drubbins saw to it yesterday and ’tis better than it was.”
“Yesterday? You were here yesterday?” said Fieldfare, mildly affronted by this discovery.
“Yes, well, there was a nasty to-do in Cuddesdon, and important things to tell the Master, so when I got back I went straight to him and found him, thank the Stone, before others saw me.”
“I thought it best, Fieldfare, I didn’t want others in the system knowing, or rather certain others,” said Stour, coming forward and taking charge of the proceedings once Fieldfare and Chater had exchanged their natural and warm embraces, and Chater, to some extent at least, had calmed and reassured his love.
“I will come straight to the point,” Stour said, looking round at each of them in turn. “You will be wondering why you are here and quite what it is you have in common. Well, of that latter, that is easily said: I trust each one of you. Each of you has different qualities and skills, which I have had time to appreciate and trust. Some …’ and here he nodded towards Drubbins, “I have known all my life, and others …’ and here it seemed to be Maple that he looked at, “I have known since you were born or, in your case, Chater, since you came to the system. As for you, Privet, I have known you for the least length of time, but everything you have done causes me to trust you, and I know that you are trusted by others here.”