Duncton Tales

by William Horwood

  “It is a night for staying aburrow and telling tales,” he said. “A night when only moles with urgent business or malintent go forth. You, Privet, came to this system a full cycle of seasons ago and know that you have our trust. We have all seen how deep your feeling and experience runs concerning matters we so far know too little about. We ask you now to tell us what you know. I think perhaps we seven may never be as one again, and that after this night, and with the coming of the dawn, a trial will begin for each one of us whose outcome nomole can know. Much comfort and good may come from sharing what you know, which knowledge will provide us all with light to guide us on our separate ways in the days so soon to come. Therefore we wait in silence, Privet, to hear what you may say.”

  Privet glanced nervously at them, reached out a paw to Whillan, and said in that quiet way she had, “The place and time to which I must take you is far, far from here. Of you all, perhaps only Chater, being a journeymole, can begin to imagine what the Moors of the north are like. Whilst only the Master Librarian, and perhaps you, good Drubbins, whose memories are long and experience of mole so wide, can truly guess the nature of the times of which I must first speak.

  “So though I will do my best to tell my tale that all may make the most they can of it, if there are parts one or other of you do not understand, then tell me, and perhaps with others’ help I can make it plainer still …”

  Then began Privet’s telling of Rooster’s tale, which was scribed down at the time by Whillan on Stour’s instruction and with Privet’s agreement. Scholars in later times have expanded parts of it, corrected details in others, but no subsequent research or recounting has ever bettered the extraordinary tale as she first told it. Nor has any ever doubted that the emergence of Rooster, Master of the Delve, out of the dark Moors whence he came, and into the ken of moledom as a whole, marked one of the great turning points in moledom’s modern history.

  Privet had believed, sincerely too, that her concern was with a Book of Tales, but now she herself told a tale that might make moles see that Book as being a way towards another, greater one, the long lost Book of Silence whose coming allmole sought.

  PART III

  Rooster

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Bleaklow and Saddleworth Moors form the northern Hank of the High Peak, though moles who live in systems about its fringes and know it best give it the more ominous name of the Dark Peak.

  To its north, through those fastnesses which moles traditionally believed impassable, lies the dreaded Whern, harbinger of the moles of the Word, for so long a source of vile imposition upon moles of the Stone.

  To the south are Beechenhill and Ashbourne, and famed Arbor Low, that circle of Stones which most accept as marking out the end of wormful moledom, and the true beginning of the north.

  Whichever way a mole approaches the Moors, whether from the sunnier south or glowering north, they rise up formidably into rank peat bogs, and gullies, in which brown-stained rivers race, and slurp, and suck to death all living things that fall, or slide, or are pushed into them.

  Dark are the Moors, high, worm-poor, desolate, nearly unvisited, forsaken, terrible, corrupting of a mole’s spirit, a place of desertion and death. It is the last place in moledom where mole would choose to live. A place indeed to which even a guilty mole fleeing from his righteous persecutors, might, if he knew its full terrors, and realized its final desolations, choose to balk at entering.

  For make no mistake, a mole enters the Moors, climbing in among the peat hags, searching among the dried-up heath and noisome pools, seeking whatever scraps of food and distort worm he can find. Or she, perhaps.

  Once into them, a mole soon feels he may never get out again. This is truly a place of death and ending, for if a stranger ventures here, and loses his way among the high hags that hem him in, he’s as like to starve as to be picked off by the ragged rooks that are the only form of life that seems to thrive. Though even these are skinny, errant, aged things driven from the easier and more desirable pickings in the valleys below by their plumper and more powerful peers. Has-been rooks clinging meanly on to life, feeding off other vagrant creatures that crawl, and limp, and snivel their way about.

  What moles then could ever wish to live there?

  Until the wars of Word and Stone ended with the Stone’s victory, nomole lived there that was not mad, or bad, or both. But afterwards … afterwards one group of moles was glad of any sanctuary it could find, even Saddleworth or Bleaklow Moors.

  These moles were the filthy relicts of the Word, those who through murder or guile, dark chance or strange destiny had survived pursuit by followers of the worthy Stone and then, sneaking, slinking, skulking, like noxious fumes absconding in the night, had made their way to the one place in moledom where not even righteousness and justice followed them: the Moors.

  Most, in their unpleasant way, were strong and competent. Well able, that is, to betray another to make their way, or lie and cheat to escape, or to kill a friend to survive.

  They came from two directions. The earlier incursion on to the Moors was from the south and west, of moles of the Word and their creatures and minions, mainly corrupted Stone believers, fleeing the justice of followers of the Stone. These moles made their home in the marginally less desolate Bleaklow Moor.

  The second and larger group came from the north, and these were grike moles, that darker, dimmer, nearly prehistoric form whose vile genesis and talent for obedience to the Word is described by Woodruff in the Duncton Chronicles.

  These grikes escaped in powerful gangs when their bases near Whern were taken by Stone followers, and fleeing southward they settled initially in forsaken Saddleworth, which lies but a few days’ journey north of Bleaklow.

  Soon these gruesome murdering grikes, driven by a wormless period following drought, crossed the vale of Crowden and went up into Bleaklow. We dare not even think of the chaos their coming caused as, in the darkened secret places of the Moors, grike marauders met the already established relicts of the Word. A decade of anarchy followed all across that wretched place, until under a grike leader called Black Ashop, peace of a kind prevailed. There was law, there was justice: the one simple and clear and created by Black Ashop, the other swift and brutal and meted out by Ashop’s aides. It was the last place in moledom where snoutings continued, but at least the initial anarchy, rape and mayhem ceased as grike learned to live with Whernish mole and a kind of civilizing began.

  Such was Bleaklow Moor twenty moleyears after the end of the war of Word and Stone. A place unto itself, a place where nomole went, a place where moles, guilty of past crimes, hid and eked out a life that some might say was a punishment for what once they had done to innocent moles. While northward, across the Crowden Vale, a few families of brutal and secretive grikes vied for power in their ruthless way.

  As for the rest of moledom, it knew of the Moors only as the name of a vile and lawless place to which grikes and others had fled, and in which they were welcome to stay for eternity. Out of sight was out of mind, and apart from the occasional incursion of Bleaklow mole down to the richer valleys below, the one was not disturbed by the other, and each might have regarded the other as a race apart.

  Yet, for all the dark history of the moles who had made their way to Bleaklow, they were not entirely forsaken by the Stone, and for those few moles there who might somewhere in their dark hearts find a place for Silence and Light, there was the possibility of redemption.

  For one thing, there existed then a small and sturdy community of Stone followers in Crowden, the system that lies in the flooded vale that divides Bleaklow from Saddleworth. This community prided itself on its independence, on its successful defence of itself against successive waves of grike fugitives through the years, but most of all on the fact that to any moles but grikes who would accept the guidance of the Stone, it would give sanctuary. Those who merely professed such acceptance but lived otherwise were soon ejected, whilst more grimly, those who betrayed the Stone, per
haps by treachery towards the Crowden moles after gaining their trust, were killed. In this community the Stone’s justice was rough, and the moles its willing practitioners. But at least new blood was admitted from time to time and this kept the isolated Crowden moles healthier than those who subsisted on the Moors that lowered over them, and in touch, if at a distance of space and time, with moledom as a whole.

  Sometimes grike moles came to its portals and asked to be instructed in the ways of the Stone, but having been betrayed by such a mole in the past, and nearly wiped out, the Crowden moles continued to reject all grikes. But for those other moles who glimpsed the possibility of a better life, and were willing to live with the suspicions of their peers for a time, Crowden was a light to turn to in their time of darkness.

  But there was another light on the Moors to lead moles towards the Stone. For there rises, in the very heart of Bleaklow and almost at its highest point, the Weign Stones, a place of sanctuary for moles lost in that heart of darkness. Unvisited for decades, perhaps centuries, before those fleeing moles came after the wars, the Weign Stones were known only in myth and legend to moles who lived in the small and humble lowland communities that lie adjacent to Bleaklow itself. By the time of which we speak, most moles might justifiably have doubted that these fabled Stones existed at all.

  Yet there they were, unvisited but waiting, a last chance for moles whose lives seemed otherwise irredeemably lost to discover the Silence and Light that all moles may find if they but seek for it. These great Stones, stolid and massive as they are, do not rise as tall as the great Duncton Stone, or those of Avebury. They are, relative to those, squat and strange, and some might think are not of the Stone at all. Yet in its wisdom the Stone takes many forms, and there on Bleaklow its form seems fitting enough, for strange though they are, more lowering than light, more inelegant than beautiful, their circle offers peace from the endless bitter winds that blow, and kindness to the spirit of a mole who visits them in openness and humility.

  In the years after Black Ashop had imposed his tyrannical peace across Bleaklow and Saddleworth and as he and his henchmoles began to grow weary and old, the moods of anger and fear that had beset the Moors so long were replaced by strange despair and lethargy. Moles who despite all had still taken pride in grooming themselves and keeping their barren tunnels clean, now began to let them and themselves go. Moles who had once survived only because they were cruel and aggressive to anything that moved, now turned away from violence, snouts humble and low. Eyes that had been bright grew dim, eyes that once had a glimmer of hope were wan, eyes that had once looked boldly, now looked away.

  The seasons drifted by in rains and grey skies, winds blew through tunnels that were unrepaired, males turned from females and did not mate. It seemed that a plague of spirit came upon the Moors then, as if the crimes and sins of moles to which it had given refuge could be borne no more, nor moles escape the truth, which was the darkness of themselves.

  A terrible change then, and one made worse by the arrival still in Saddleworth and Bleaklow, from north and south and east and west, of dribs and drabs of moles, of outsiders, or sad moles, upon whom the shadow of life had fallen hard. Like moles who are dying slowly, and desire no company, nor know where to seek solace, they came to the one place in moledom where their scant bleak needs might best be met.

  These were the shades and troubles of the past, moles or the kin of moles now dead, whose malfeasance during the war of Word and Stone had stayed secret to all but themselves or the pups they had borne. Now, dreadfully, unable to bear their secrets any longer, they came to pay the penance of their lives. Despair was in the very wind of the Moors, and melancholic resignation.

  It was then that a mole came to Bleaklow, unseen and unknown, and chose to live at first on Saddleworth Moor. She was thin of fur and gaunt of face, and her body bore the marks of punishment and suffering. Scarred and maimed of paw, if she travelled it was only by night and by shadows, and many were the names she gave, and none.

  Of her past nomole knew, nor could any have easily guessed. At first sight of her it was a wonder she was alive at all, for how could so slight and weak-seeming a mole have survived so long? Yet, vulnerable though she seemed, there was a clue in this: nomole, not even the vilest and fiercest of those who first saw her in Saddleworth, touched her.

  Indeed, even when her wanderings took her into the infamous Charnel Clough, the stronghold of that Ratcher clan of grikes who had won the struggle for dominance on grim Saddleworth, she survived. She wandered on to Bleaklow and yet again, among moles themselves tainted by sin and despair she seemed more tainted, and exuded such misery of spirit, such desperate desire to escape herself, that to touch her would have been tantamount to becoming something of her. Far though those moles had gone down the way into darkness, none felt they had gone that far.

  This anonymous mole was an outcast among outcasts, who seemed to have journeyed all moledom in search of inner peace until she reached a place from which she could journey no more. Moles knew only that after leaving Saddleworth she had tried to gain acceptance among the community of Stone followers at Crowden, but though she had been willing to accept fully the Stone, they had rejected her for reasons unknown and she had drifted on up into Bleaklow Moor.

  After that she chose to live alone, scraping her food from among the peat hags, and never raising her snout from the dirty sods in which she rooted out her life. If mole approached she hissed and squawked, and cried out her curses on them, and they backed away.

  “What is your name?” moles would call out in jest, for taunting the likes of her was one of the few pleasures they could find.

  A hundred names she gave, a thousand perhaps. Until a day came when that scrawny thing was mocked once too often and looked up into the eyes of her tormentors at last. So strange and wild was her look, so red her eye with tortured grief, so great the sense of bereft vagrancy she evoked, that they backed away and stared. It was then she whispered out a name she had never given for herself before.

  “Call me ‘Shame’,” she said. “I am the guilt of mole. Where is an end to the shadows that follow me?”

  These were her words, and in them was a truth for all the moles who heard her. For guilt at what they and theirs had done was truly theirs as well, and endless seemed the shadows that followed each of them.

  “Why “Shame”?” one cried out.

  “Guilty am I of the greatest crime of all. I it was who killed the Love that came.”

  So spoke the female, and from that day she rose from the filthy spot in which most had expected her to end her days and began to wander Bleaklow fearlessly, speaking not of others but of herself and guilt and shame and sadness at what she was, and in that speaking for them all.

  “But what is your name?” asked mole after mole, for there was a fearful spirit in her that made moles curious indeed. Her true name, perhaps, might serve to assuage the guilt they felt by permitting them the indulgence of saying ‘Her name is not “Shame” but …”

  But what? For sure, “Shame’ is no name for mole.

  So, “What is your true name?” they persisted uneasily, for in the name she had given herself was a name too near their own.

  “I dare not speak the name that once I had,” she would reply, turning to wend her away out among the dark peat hags and be gone. But in speaking as she had the female touched something at the very heart of the malaise that had affected so many on the Moors: shame at the past and present, despair and hopelessness of the future.

  At last Black Ashop, aged now but no less cruel, heard of this mole and sent out his aides to find her. They brought her to him finally, much chastened by her fearlessness, and he listened as others had to what she said. Pig-eyed, he stared, wondering why his talons did not itch to crush a mole who out-stared even him. “Shame’ was not a name he knew. The fugitive in her he recognized, but from what she fled he could not tell.

  He asked, “Must a mole be for ever what you say you are, ashamed of
what they’ve done?”

  A perspicacious question, but then often moles that rise to power as he had done have insight and intelligence of a sort, distorted and misapplied though it may be. The best torturers see deep into their victims’ hearts. But to his question she did not reply.

  “Is there nothing you’re afraid of if you’re not afraid of me?” he said, trying to find her secret once again. From the widening of her eyes he saw there was. Strange and distasteful though it is to tell, Black Ashop found something appealing in her stubbornness. Tyrants are intrigued by those who fear them not, and if they sense a mole fears something more they’ll not sleep until they find it out. So Ashop studied her, and he reached out his brutal talons to her ragged flanks and thought that what he could not know he could at least dominate. Aye, Ashop, in his need to understand, took the thin, unkempt old thing. Yet he knew her no better after it, and so did what all moles do whose lusts are satisfied but whose questions remain unsatisfied: he grew bored with her.

  “Take her to the Weign Stones,” he said with wicked insight, “she’ll fear them more than me. Take her now, and let any of my aides that wish to do so, despoil her there.”

  His aides saw that day that there was about Ashop a touch of the clever tyrant he once had been, and as they turned on the filthy, scraggy female they felt anew the power they once had in his black shadow. Their victim screamed, and struggled, and begged, and asked for anything but that.

  What? Despoiling by the mob?

  She wept, and shook her head, and said, “The Stones!”

  Ashop’s aides dragged her there despite her screams, there where light was, and where a mole might hear the Silence and know that love was not quite dead. If they but knew.