Duncton Tales

by William Horwood

  Fieldfare felt the cold shock of recognition as he mentioned Cuddesdon and heard no more as she realized with a start that she was now almost certainly looking at one of the moles who had so nearly killed her Chater.

  “Elsewhere in moledom the blasphemous spirit of discord is being dealt with more formally,” continued Chervil, “and so-called leaders such as the infamous Rooster of Bleaklow Moor have been, or are being, brought for judgement before the Stone …”

  Rooster! The mole Chater mentioned hearing about. Caught, it seemed, and by now, perhaps, gone the way of those Cuddesdon moles. Fieldfare had heard enough, and though she could not get away, she listened to no more, sickened by a sense of pious righteousness which pervaded the meeting like the odour of a corpse.

  Yet worse, far worse, was to come, and soon. For the moment Chervil had finished speaking, and as if at some signal, the moles dispersed in all directions, except that some who tried to follow, as Fieldfare did, were held back within a circle formed by the dark-furred guard-stewards.

  Now Fieldfare’s nightmare truly began. For she saw, with horror, that those detained included many of the moles she had first met gorging themselves. There was a short speech of accusation, by Senior Brother Inquisitor Fetter, not wasting any time it seemed, and a shorter speech by Brother Worthing who had officiated underground.

  Then, as Fieldfare realized with mounting horror that she was one of the accused, they were forcefully herded down through a confusing thicket of brambles and sapling alder, all hurried and harried along the way, with some of them, who seemed already to know their fate, whimpering and crying out in fear.

  Fearing the worst, and remembering what had so nearly happened to her Chater, she decided that it was now or never if she was to escape. She thought she chose her moment well, turned into a thicket, rushed through it, but before she knew where she was she was in the firm grasp of two of the guards, and worse, staring into the angry, powerful eyes of Bantam.

  “But you know me, Bantam,” she said with relief. “I’m Fieldfare, of the Eastside. I’m not one of these moles, I’m not even a Newborn …”

  “I know sinners not,” said Bantam indifferently and then, turning to one of the guards she added, “take her to the massing,” and was gone. The massing? Cold fear began to overtake Fieldfare, terrible cold fear.

  Round and about, over and under, through and by … Fieldfare, tired from her earlier journey, was shocked by what she had seen and heard, frightened by Bantam’s non-recognition of her, and intimidated by the buffeting of the silent guards which seemed calculated to hurt and yet not quite draw blood or even make a mark.

  Just as she felt she was about to faint with exhaustion Fieldfare was suddenly and violently pushed down a slipway into the ground ahead of her, the moles in front almost seeming to fall into the earth as she must have seemed to, to those behind her. A rough paw at her rump propelled her further down into darkness and confusion.

  Down, down, stumbling, hurt, lost among screams and fear, the world turned turvy-topsy and most menacing.

  In the murk she saw Bantam again, poised in a side tunnel’s entrance and watching with a curious look of lustful hatred in her eyes. Fieldfare cried out for her to recognize her, saying she was only Fieldfare, an old friend, she was …

  But she was nothing it seemed, and unrecognized. Bantam thrust her talons in Fieldfare’s snout and tears of pain blinded her, and she tumbled headlong past into a great chamber, full, dangerously full, of others all frightened and confused like herself.

  Then, from a raised and guarded area on two sides of the chamber, too high for moles below to gain access to it, and with exits behind which made coming and going by moles up there very easy, a dark brother appeared who began haranguing them for the error of their ways, shouting at them the horrors of the Stone’s judgement, and informing them that mere apology was not enough. As he finished another began and so their arraignment began and went on, and on, and on …

  And so did Fieldfare’s nightmare truly begin. Desperately tired, she was not allowed to sleep; quite unknown, she was accused of every crime; a mole inclined to smile at life, she was now made to whimper out her fears. And she was not the only one. All of them, crushed together, half suffocating, agonizingly thirsty, desperate, and always, always, the dark-furred males, watching, pushing, dragging; and in the dark night that now fell, moles began to die about her. She could hear them, rasping and croaking and calling out for help; dying. She was sure of that.

  “Moles dead …” she whispered, staring at the lifeless eyes of a mole who had died at her very flank. Seeing which Fieldfare knew that she too was on a terrible path now that led to death, or destruction or … acquiescence.

  She turned then or later as a mole touched her and whispered most terribly, “Help me, Fieldfare!” and she found herself staring into the eyes of the mole Avens, the one who worked in the library and whom Privet knew. His face was half crushed, his eyes bulged and staring, and the rigour of death began to destroy what life remained in his look of horror. Even as she tried to speak he died before her eyes.

  Worse, worse, worse in that darkness. A crooked form came to him, snouted at him, and mounted him, a living mole covering a dead one. It did, they did, and Fieldfare closed her eyes on the nightmares that began.

  A scream, of ecstasy, and then afterwards a nasally voice whispering, Take this one away …”

  Fieldfare dared to open her eyes and she saw the dead, abused body of Avens being dragged away. The crush increased and moles about her were crying out their abject agreement to something or other they were being forced to do or say.

  “Yes! Yes! Yes!” they chanted feebly or desperately, or screamed, or sang, “Yes, we know the true way, yes we do! Brothers and Sisters …”

  “Yes Sister?” a mole said fiercely to Fieldfare, looking up into her eyes. Up? Not down? His voice all nasal, his head low, his back contorting away into the obscure dark.

  “I know you,” whispered Fieldfare.

  The crook-backed mole’s eyes widened.

  “Snyde?” she said. It was Snyde here doing these things. Old fears surely, and old dislikes, surfacing as nightmare images … Was it the first light of dawn that made the chamber suddenly lurid and strange, and the motions of moles slow, and their voices drift away?

  “Yes …’ she whispered, that the livid nightmare moles might go away.

  A mole came near and smiled a sneer, and Fieldfare knew it was Bantam who spoke to her. Then Bantam was gone, or her body was, for the voice lingered on, encircling Fieldfare’s mind.

  “She has admitted the Stone to her heart; what others are there now?” It was Bantam’s voice, somewhere, drifting, far, far away, and near.

  And Fieldfare, taken to the very depths of her pain, thought, most strangely, that Bantam was a pup once, she was, she must have been. And Fieldfare remembered then her first birthing, and the pain, like this pain, and how Chater had been there, right there.

  “It’ll end and you’ll forget it,” he had said, in that way of his. Fieldfare smiled, for until now, until this terrible moment in a void she never before knew existed, she had forgotten it.

  “It did end, my dear,” she whispered. “Oh, it did. And this will, yes it will.”

  “Sister, yes?”

  It was Bantam back again.

  “Yes,” whispered Fieldfare with a beatific smile, “oh yes.”

  “You know the true way to the Stone?”

  “Yes,” screamed out Fieldfare, like the rest, “oh yes!”

  For she did, with utter certainty she did, and it was not these moles’ way, not ever, ever, ever.

  “Then sleep,” said a nasal voice, “sleep and be still.”

  This will end and I shall live,” whispered Fieldfare to herself, and then tiredness came, and blissful sleep approached, and the dangerous beginning of forgetting.

  “Sleep,” lured that voice one last time. But Fieldfare did not, must not, would not, not here.

  �
�I want only to sleep,” she had told Chater that long-distant beloved day when she first gave birth to pups.

  “Not yet, my dear, not yet …”

  “Not yet,” she whispered now again … and watched unseen as others fell asleep, and the males went to and fro among the punished moles, and knew that if Chater were here he would have found a way to escape, and if he could she could, and would!

  “Now …” sighed a voice, and in her nightmare images came that preceded any birth, painful or otherwise. Vile images of moles mating. Bantam? Snyde? The one mounted by the crook-backed other. And then more, the dark-furred moles, mounting, taking, punishing in this chamber of dawning acquiescence and just punishment.

  “Yes!” screamed out Bantam, somewhere into Snyde’s filthy extenuated sigh.

  A talon on Fieldfare’s Hank, lingering and exploratory. A male face staring.

  Too old this one to bother with, too fat for me …’ and the talons let her be, and the voices, sneering, drifted off.

  Too old! Too fat! Could Fieldfare laugh madly to herself? It seemed she did. And she was glad of this rejection, for fearful though she was, and tired beyond words though she felt, it made her feel that never in her life had she ever felt more herself, never ever had she felt the value of life so much. Never had she felt so undaunted.

  “Chater, my beloved,” she said to him she loved so much, addressing him as she sometimes did as if he were there at her flank, “I’m coming home to you even if it kills me getting out of here!” And then a great black cloud of sleep mounted before her eyes, all dark, all forgetting; and whispering an ecstatic ‘Yes!” in case any guards were listening and might doubt the nature of her faith, she slept.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Where is Fieldfare?” said Chater, as calmly as he could.

  Then, “Where is she?” he roared.

  And then: ‘If harm’s come to her in my absence, if …” he threatened.

  “We don’t know,” said Drubbins, “because only with your return have we discovered she’s missing.

  If she’s missing. She could have gone visiting friends or kin in your absence. She could —”

  “Fieldfare is always here when I get back. She knows when I’m coming, as surely as a tree knows when it’s leafing. As for friends and kin, she’d have left word for me.”

  “Well, mole,” said Drubbins, who had gathered with several others at. Chater’s summons in his burrow on news of Fieldfare’s disappearance, “she’ll not be far, for I saw her myself only three days ago.”

  Chater, Maple and Whillan had returned from their expedition to Rollright only that morning, and in Stour’s absence somewhere deep in the Library, delivered to Drubbins a brief account of their alarming discoveries, before Chater had gone to his tunnels and found that his beloved Fieldfare was absent. His search for her had soon developed into a hunt, and Stour had been sent for urgently at the library.

  “Whillan here has been down to Rolls and Rhymes where his mother is,” said Chater, “and reports her seeing Fieldfare the day before yesterday, so she can’t be far. But I’ve just heard from a mole I packed off down to Barrow Vale that she’s not been seen there for days past.

  “All he could talk about was news of a Meeting being called by the Marshenders, of all moles. That’s all I need at a time like this and bearing in mind what we heard about in Rollright! Where can she be? I’ll not be answerable for what I do if she’s been harmed, and bugger Stour’s calls for peace and tranquillity.”

  Chater’s voice had risen, and he looked decidedly shaken for a mole who was normally well in control of himself and others, and who had just carried through a most dangerous mission with Maple and Whillan.

  “Chater!” said Drubbins sharply, “calm down and be quiet. Raising your voice and threatening others will help nomole. You’ve just trekked back to Duncton from Rollright in only three days, barely stopping for sleep, and you’re tired. Fieldfare’s unlikely to have gone far and there’ll be a simple explanation —”

  “You don’t understand,” said Chater more calmly. “I know my Fieldfare. Something’s wrong, very wrong, and she may need help. I was uneasy about going off to Rollright immediately like that, for she’s a mole likes to natter and talk things through and I never gave her the chance. She was probably worried by things the Master said, and worrying herself sick about me, though time and again I’ve told her not to fret because I can look after myself. Now she’s gone and done something she wouldn’t normally and she’s in trouble, and we’ve got to … we must …”

  “We must think,” said a clear voice, “and think carefully.”

  It was Stour, come into the chamber where they had gathered with old Pumpkin, the mole who had tracked him down to some obscure part of the Library, and brought him as quickly as he could over the surface to Fieldfare’s and Chater’s tunnels.

  “Now,” said Stour, quickly taking control of the gathering, “if there’s a simple explanation for what’s happened to her then she’ll reappear soon enough and nomole will be the worse off, except for you, Chater, and your frayed nerves. But if she’s in trouble —”

  “She is in trouble,” said Chater.

  “Then if she’s in trouble we will get nowhere by rushing about. There’ll be an explanation, and it will be one we can find evidence for. Then we can act. Now, who was the last mole to see her?”

  “It was Privet, but two days ago, at noon, and briefly,” said Whillan. “I’ve just come from there and …” and Whillan reported the brief exchange that Fieldfare and Privet had had, concluding, “the strange thing was that my mother wasn’t in the mood for talking, either today, or two days ago to Fieldfare, by the sound of it. She’s so involved with work in Rolls and Rhymes and with helping Keeper Husk it is almost as if she didn’t want to know. But I don’t think she can tell us more anyway.”

  “Did she say if Fieldfare said anything special to her, about what she was doing, or …?” began Chater.

  “She said that Fieldfare wanted to talk about something the Master had said … but I don’t know what. My mother said they had not talked for more than a few moments, which was about as long as she gave me!”

  “Hmmph!” exclaimed Stour. “We’ll not get much more from her, though I think it would be sensible if one of us went down and talked to her again. Perhaps you, Drubbins … Now I know of only one unusual thing in the past few days and that’s what Drubbins here saw the same day as Fieldfare was last seen.”

  “Aye,” said Drubbins. “I saw a senior brother up on the south-eastern pastures, and saw three moles, all Newborns by the look of them, come upslope from the cross-under and then head off towards the Marsh End. They even greeted me, as a matter of fact.”

  “And …?” said Chater impatiently.

  Drubbins shrugged.

  “They were male, dark, humourless: Newborns to a mole. What more can I say? I was collecting husks of scentless mayweed at the time and had better things to do than interrogate Newborns. Not a task I’d be much good at anyway.”

  “Anything else?” said Stour, looking round at them all. He was a mole who seemed almost to blossom and lose years off his known age in a crisis. These molemonths past he was proving himself as a leader of the system, as well as the Library.

  “About Newborns?” said Drubbins. “Well, there’s a report that a Meeting has been called by the Marshenders down in Barrow Vale in a day or two.”

  “It does seem that the Newborns have suddenly become active again,” said Stour, “and it does seem too that Fieldfare disappeared at about the time they became active, doesn’t it? Though that hardly constitutes evidence for anything.”

  “It does suggest that the Marsh End might be worth a visit,” growled Maple, quietly. “If Fieldfare is in trouble of some sort then that surely is the only place where mole might conceivably harm her. But of course if it’s predator that’s hurt her, owl perhaps or fox, or if she’s been hassled by weasels, then surely other moles would have heard her cries?” />
  Stour nodded seriously. Duncton moles rarely had trouble with predators, for their tunnels were hard to get at, and their surface routes so organized that they were protected by overhangs of undergrowth and fallen branches, and where they were exposed there were always escape routes nearby into tunnels below. But then … that thought did not bear thinking of.

  “If there is to be a Meeting in Barrow Vale summoned by the Newborns,” said Drubbins, “then it would be only right for us at least to go down to it, Stour. Also, we may more easily hear word there of Fieldfare, than wandering round the system asking moles.”

  “Yes, and what is more,” added Stour himself, “such a Meeting might be a very good time for others of us to visit the Marsh End, which will be less watched over by the Newborns than it normally might be.”

  A thought which made Chater leap to his paws, proclaiming this the best idea yet, and he’d set off right away, and by the Stone he’d clobber anymole Newborn bastard who had so much as —

  “Chater!” said Stour warningly. “Chater! Rushing about will achieve nothing. If Fieldfare’s disappearance has got something to do with the Newborns, and your expedition to Rollright produced some new information, then it might help us all to know what the three of you discovered. The more facts we have the better.”

  “It won’t have much to do with Fieldfare, will it?” said Chater impatiently. “Since Rollright’s there and Fieldfare’s here.”

  “But it might,” said Whillan suddenly and very firmly, stancing forward and staring around at each of them.

  Stour looked at him with interest since he had not seen him since the expedition to Rollright. He saw immediately that there was a hint of new confidence about the young mole, which did not surprise him since ventures and expeditions beyond the system usually changed a mole.

  “Perhaps you can tell us briefly what you discovered,” said Stour evenly.

  “A good idea,” said Maple, “since Chater’s all topsy in his mind and Whillan here did well, very well.”