Duncton Tales

by William Horwood

  “Shall I get Stour?” she said one day.

  “No!” he said loudly. “He’ll only blather on about Fat Pansy like he did last time.”

  She could not help smiling. “Last time’ was more than seventy years before. So many decades, such a waste …

  “Did I tell you the story of Fat Pansy?” he whispered, turning painfully to her, his paw out to hers, his unseeing eyes upon her.

  “Some of it,” she said.

  “I’ll tell you the rest then …”

  But he never did, for it was that same day, that same time, that Privet heard mole sounds at the entrance to the tunnels and went out to investigate. It was Fieldfare, and for the first time since Privet had been in Duncton Wood she was not glad to see her friend or eager to talk. Even less so was she when Fieldfare went on about her worries about the things the Master had said at the secret meeting. Why, all that had long since fled Privet’s mind, and now Husk was dying, and in his last days he had to be helped to find strength to complete his work. She could not have stopped, her mind was only on Husk and there seemed so little time.

  But within three days of Fieldfare’s visit, Husk had recovered somewhat and was even grumbling about wanting to get back to his scribing, and Privet was suddenly filled with a sense of guilt at having given her friend so little time. So much so that she could not bear the oppression of the tunnels any more and went up to the surface. It was morning, and misty, and the ground was wet with a heavy dew. But looking up Privet could see the mist adrift among the nearly leafless branches of the trees, and it held that pink warm light that suggested that the late autumn sun was trying to break through.

  She watched the mist lighten all about, and autumn colours come to the branches and leaves above, and then to the surface of the Wood on the slopes above, where sun began to shine through hazily at last.

  But downslope of her the mist was still thick, and resisting the warmth of the sun. Fieldfare had told her that at this time of year such mists as these lingered in the lower parts of the Wood and particularly about the Marsh End.

  The day could be warm and bright in the High Wood whilst down there the chill mists lingered to catch at a mole’s throat, while the day stayed gloomy, and dank. Privet stared that way, shivered with unease, and turned back down to the realities of tunnels she knew rather than a contemplation of tunnels she did not.

  That same dawn Fieldfare awoke and knew that her resistance to the Newborns, which had been waning for days and nights past, was near its end. How hard she had fought the pressures of the Brothers’ ministering in that chamber of subjugation, acquiescence, and death.

  Her strategy of pretending that she agreed with what they said had finally failed, because what they said, to which she and others said, “yes, oh yes” changed, oh it changed. What was right one hour was wrong the next; where cries of “yes!” in response to a question were greeted by food and caresses one moment, they were ridiculed and punished the next, though the question was the same.

  The tiredness grew, for though they were allowed to sleep they were woken at sleep’s deepest point, and dragged with blows and smiles, shouts and caresses, back into this world of contradiction, where there was no right or wrong but what the Brothers said was right and wrong, however much it changed from one moment to the next.

  “The Brothers are always right!” Fieldfare declared — still stubborn and clever enough to think that this nonsense might be the way to survive. But no! More blows.

  “The true way to the Stone is right!” they said. Ah! Yes! The true way. Sleep, that would seem true enough. Escape from the images of Bantam, and the nightmare of snurtish Snyde, and Fieldfare unable to feel anything at all in the long days that shifted into nights, and nights that changed back to days in which the light was so bright, and hurt her heavy painful eyes and felt like talons thrust deep into them. Yes, no, yes, no, she would do anything and say anything if the Brothers would let her sleep. But doing, and saying, was not enough. She must become. Day, night, day — it was enough to break a mole, or drive her mad.

  And that morning, when she woke, the light was dim and she thought that she was going blind. She peered, moved, expected a blow and none came; said yes, said no — no response. She peered, and saw the Brothers across the prone unconscious bodies of those others being punished with her.

  The ‘oohhnnn’ hum was starting; Bantam was there, no sign of Snyde. Perhaps he had never been. The Brothers were beginning a chant to the Stone. She scented the air. Darkish, dankish, moistish, the scent of a Marsh End mist. Memories of puphood. Memories of a mole she had been before … this.

  I’m Fieldfare,” she said. “I’m still her …”

  “Oohhnn … oohhnnn … oohhnnn …” they went on, and Fieldfare remembered she had heard this ritual before. Up on the surface … no, in that other chamber. Yes. It went on a bit yet … on for long enough … yes! Oh yes!

  “It goes on long enough for me to escape,” she said, whispering that heretical word ‘escape’ and feeling mortal fear for doing so. They would kill her if they knew she even thought it … would kill her if she tried … But dear Stone, they were killing her.

  Then …

  “Come on, my dear,” she said wearily to herself, “it’s really time you went home at last. Come on …”

  Then Fieldfare did the bravest thing she ever did in all her life. She began, bit by slow bit, to the rhythm of that ritual chant from the far end of the chamber, to crawl unseen towards the nearest slipway up to the surface she had not seen for days. She knew that if she were once seen she would be dead, yet on she went.

  As she reached the slipway, the air grew suddenly cooler, the light brighter yet grey, and she looked back in fear at where the Brothers were gathered in their chant. She could see Bantam facing her way, but her eyes were closed in prayer.

  “Now!” said Fieldfare to herself. “Now I must try!”

  Then she stanced up on her shaky paws, pushed herself forward among the sleeping bodies of her fellow-victims of the massing, and reached the portal of the slipway.

  But, too soon, she let panic overtake her and abandoning caution she noisily ran and scrabbled and pulled her way up the steep ungiving slipway, panicking the more when soil rolled back under her paws, and stones went down and her scrambling made more and more noise. Even as she reached the misty portal out into the real world the chanting stopped below, there was a cry, and she knew, dreadfully she knew, that she had been seen and pursuit of her had begun.

  Out into thick white nothingness she went, utterly confused. Three steps and she could not even see the portal she had just left. Another and she was back at it, with the Brothers coming up …

  She cried out in fear, turned, and ran towards the dark murky bole of a tree nearby, the only shape she could see. The dew was sopping at her paws, and with the cold air her mind began to clear, though she felt almost paralysed with fear.

  “Find another tree ahead,” she told herself, desperate not to run back again towards her captors as she had momentarily before. She took a line on the next tree she could see and ran wildly to that.

  “Follow his trail in the dew!” she heard them cry. “‘His trail!’” Of course! This much she had discovered of the Newborns: they thought little of females — except Bantam, who might almost not be one at all — so little that an escape could only be a male.

  “Well,” thought Fieldfare as she ran, “first I was old, then I was fat, and now I’m male! What would Chater say? Oh Chater … I’m coming home!” This last was spoken aloud, as a gasp that ended as a sob.

  “‘Follow his trail in the dew’,” they had cried. She looked round and saw her trail could be easily seen. Behind she heard their angry pursuit and their hypocritical cries: “Brother, be not afraid of us!”

  She was a Brother too it seemed! But, oh, she was very much afraid. She veered into some undergrowth, knowing that it might obscure her trail better than plain leaves, and then when she saw the bole of another tree sh
e ran up on to it and did her best to scramble round it and then off into a mess of brambles — all the better to break her trail. Again and again she did it, growing tired, trying to get a line upslope in the thickening mist, for upslope was safety.

  Thickening mist! Colder air! But this must be downslope and away from safety; she dared to stop and listen, so far as she was able to for the sound of her own gasping breath. She could hear the Brothers chasing and crashing through the undergrowth. But though they got no nearer yet they veered no further off. It seemed a matter of time before they found her trail again. But which way? The mist billowed about her, now thick, now thin, so that the trees appeared and disappeared around her, and all was muted and strange. Then for a brief moment, the grey light above brightened and panic overcame her once more as she realized that she was only still free because of the mist. Once it lifted she would not stand a chance against her young male pursuers.

  She controlled her panic, waited for the mist to thin again, stared along the ground to gauge the slope, and saw that it went upward more to her right paw than her left. She listened, heard nothing to the right, and more slowly now began to progress as silently as she could upslope.

  Once she was moving again, and realized the mist was her ally and that the Brothers were not too close behind, she felt more calm. Slow and steady was the way, and not to think of getting caught. Creep away and hope the mist would not thin too fast; and hope that the Stone was with her now.

  The Stone! How blessed did it seem, how precious to her now. She whispered for its help, went from the safety of one tree to the next, or from one bramble patch to another, looking behind to be sure that her trail, still clear enough in places, was broken here and there. Her breathing recovered something of itself, but with that came growing tiredness once again.

  “Oh, oh, oh, I want to sleep,” she whispered to herself, turning right and then right again and realizing that for a moment she had slept and veered back the way she had come. The trees circled her about; she paused again; her pursuers cried out through the mist that they had her trail, and sounded suddenly near, so near.

  “Here’s his trail again! This way!”

  It was a female voice: Sister Bantam’s. Nothing could have put more fear or energy back into Fieldfare’s failing paws. She stirred her self forward, desperately watching the ground ahead to be sure that it still was the upslope way, but she was tiring, and the roots across her path seemed now like great and awkward obstacles which caught at her and slowed her progress. The mist thickened once again, cooler, and she plunged on into it, on and on, the cries closer behind, her paws bloodied by thorns and brambles and rough roots, another tree ahead, help me Stone and —

  Her heart seemed suddenly to stop.

  The ‘tree’ turned into a Brother. Staring, waiting, and most terrible of all, smiling from out of the shining gloom.

  “Sister!” he said, welcoming her back to his vile world.

  She cried out in fear, turned, sought out the thickest of the mist in whatever direction it lay, and ran back into it, the wrong way she knew, and him chasing and others near all chasing, all nearer, coming from her right and left and from behind and she caught now with only the wrong direction in which to go.

  Her breathing came in desperate gasps, her paws fell almost out of control ahead of her, her whole body ached, and when she heard them cry, “She’s just ahead,” she knew that not many moments of her liberty remained.

  Not just physical liberty, but freedom of the mind as well. The freedom of which old Stour had spoken and which had troubled her so much. With their cries with the sound of them just behind, with her final sliding, turning, hopeless steps she knew that nothing more was left. Fieldfare would be no more.

  The mist loomed white and lighter above, a tree ahead seemed to fall towards her, and she cried out at last, cried out hopelessly. A mole, another Brother, another … Chater.

  “Help me,” she gasped with her final breath before they came. “Help me!”

  Oh yes, oh …

  “Oh Chater …” she whispered as she fell.

  For the briefest of moments his paw touched her flank and then her face, gentle, warm, real, beloved. Then he looked past her with an expression on his face so frightening, so terrible, that it seemed a nightmare in itself.

  She fell, and turned, and looked back where he stanced, his paws spread out to stop them coming on. She saw them stop, three and four, then five of them. Brothers, dark-furred, panting, a dark and angry mass. Then Bantam joined them, eyes staring out with hate.

  “You!” she hissed, more than hatred in her eyes. Female to female, as if in seeking to escape she, Fieldfare, a female too, had affronted something especially deep in Bantam’s corrupt imperious soul.

  Yet they, and even Bantam, were all stopped as one by Chater’s roar.

  “You cannot …” Fieldfare tried to say to him, her brief moment of hope quite overcome by the sadness that he too would now be caught, and that it was she who had brought him here to this.

  The mist thinned, the trees above caught sun, all poised in a long and silent moment of confrontation in the Wood. And then, the final horror, as a huge paw descended on her shoulder from behind, and she screamed and swung round and the mist began to turn to darkness before she saw looming as high above her as the trees it seemed, great Maple.

  Huge Maple.

  Towering, solid, oh bigger than a tree, darker than their dark, more terrible than their terror. Maple and Chater.

  “Stance where you are, Fieldfare, and leave them to us,” he said.

  “Fieldfare,” he had said. And then, “Leave them to us …’ and Fieldfare knew the rebirth of herself and all the possibility of life once more.

  Maple passed her, stanced huge alongside Chater, and then together they charged, but slowly, powerfully, like storm clouds mounting in the sky. Beyond them Fieldfare watched the mass of Newborns break. She saw their shock and fear. The Stone had failed, was failing them, and they were afraid.

  The mist thinned more, the nearly leafless trees found colour, the sky was pale and misty blue, and then downslope, through the wood, back into their rank mist the five Newborns fled. The last was Bantam, who turned with eyes narrowed and red, and hissed the single word as a threat to wither a mole’s soul, “You!” Then into the mists she too was gone.

  Then Chater turned, reached out his paws to her as she reached out to him. Tears she did not shed. Fear she did not feel. Anger she did not speak. She felt only a mortal certainty.

  “They must not be allowed to be,” she said. They are a sickness in our Wood. We must not …”

  Then, wondering, Chater and Maple led her from that place.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The misty weather that had helped make Fieldfare’s escape possible clung on mysteriously to Duncton Wood for three more days. Nights when the mists deepened — days when the sun broke through once more to glisten in the heavy dew among the old trees of the High Wood, whilst down in the Marsh End the mist stayed thick and the air cold and the Newborns, who knew some upset had occurred, dared not speak of it, but looked round sharply at the dark vague forms that shifted through the wood, and wondered what they were.

  Long and ominous days of waiting, when leaves in the highest branches broke free and fell solitarily down, their sound clear in the hushed Wood, and blackbirds rustled wetly unseen and flew off nomole knew where.

  Evenings when the Newborns mustered through the chill mists to listen to the zealous prayers and plans of the Senior Brothers to bring a reformation to a system they saw as wayward; evenings when the apprehensive few in the Eastside and the High Wood wondered when, and how, the change they sensed would come.

  It was during the morning of the fourth day after Fieldfare’s safe return that the weather began to break. The trees of the High Wood stirred with a decisive wind, the mist shifted and was gone, and moles saw that autumn’s colours had fled with it and left behind a dank, dull, pre-winter Wood that shook before
the wind. At noon the wind veered and began to blow steadily from the north and those eerie, fearsome, unsettling sounds that come to the tunnels of Duncton Wood when such winds blow, began to come again. Throughout the Wood, moles of the old ways of the Stone and Newborns alike felt fretful and uneasy, and wondered whatmole it was who seemed to be trespassing malevolently at the portals of their tunnels.

  “’Tis only the wind.”

  And so it was: the wind of destiny. For already a mole had hurried up to the High Wood from the Marsh End, male, dark-furred, a nameless messenger from Senior Brother Chervil to Master Librarian Stour. Now, the message delivered, he was on the point of leaving.

  “Tomorrow then, at noon,” he said. “The Senior Brother will wish to know then whatmoles will be in the delegation you send.”

  Stour, with Snyde expressionless at his side, nodded his understanding and acknowledgement, and confirmed that on the morrow he would come to Barrow Vale again.

  “It is certain then?” persisted the Newborn messenger.

  “As certain as this northern wind,” said the Master coldly.

  Snyde watched the Newborn leave and frowned. “He is insolent, Master Librarian, and yet you treat him with courtesy.”

  Stour shrugged, his eyes alert, but said nothing.

  “And you will do as this Newborn Chervil bids?” persisted Snyde, the ugly bones of his crooked back tight and sharp beneath his fur.

  Stour shrugged again. “Courtesy costs me nothing,” he said softly. “Eh, Snyde? You are too quick to feel resentment, and always have been. A fault of yours, you know.”

  “Yes, Master Librarian,” said Snyde bleakly.

  Stour turned to him and Snyde did his best to hold his gaze, but eventually it slipped away to somewhere shadowy.

  “Tell me, Deputy Master, what do you know of the Newborns? What do you feel for them?”