Duncton Tales

by William Horwood

  Until they entered the Delvings that day Rooster, like his mother before him, had always assumed that the moles they occasionally saw out on the surface were the only moles who lived in the Charnel. In the main they were large slow moles, often partially deformed, but not so badly that they could not move about, find food, or delve simple tunnels in a slow way.

  This body of moles, whom Samphire had first seen from the Reapside when she lived with Red Ratcher, she had thought, as the Ratcher moles did, were the Charnel system. The fact that some were diseased as well as deformed, and that they were seen sometimes to indulge in what seemed ritual sacrifice, or in journeys up-valley towards the Creeds with some vile deformity of a mole who had emerged from the tunnels and whom it seemed they were going to throw into the Reap, confirmed only that the Charnel moles, and their system, were little more than abominations. Since they appeared to be diseased as well, they were to be avoided, and really had only one possible use — to give the Ratcher moles the satisfaction of knowing that they were indubitably superior.

  This perception, which Rooster had learned from his mother, and which Drumlin and Sedum had so far done nothing to deny, and which their own offspring if anything confirmed, had been upset by the meeting with Gaunt, and was quite overthrown by what they soon discovered. For what they found was a remarkable series of tunnels and chambers, each more beautiful, intricate, and complex than the last, in which even more remarkable moles lived and worked, for the most part unseen by the outside world.

  The ‘surface’ moles were not the main body of the system at all, but rather the helpers of those who worked beneath. They were gentle, kindly moles, whose lives were dedicated to serving those whose only skill and purpose was delving, and the preservation of the delving arts. These strange moles, who lived almost perpetually underground, could not have survived at all without the helpers from above, who brought them food, cleared out their runs, and performed many services the delvers’ infirmities and difficulties made necessary. It was, perhaps naturally, the delvers themselves whom Rooster and the others first took note of, since it was in amongst their tunnels and chambers that Gaunt first led them.

  At first sight, to Samphire especially, they seemed shocking to behold. Most were deformed in some way, some grossly so. There were those who, like Drumlin and Sedum, were goitrous, one or two far more so, for their bald round excrescences hung bulbously from their necks, bigger than their heads, making delving with the paw on the flank on which they hung impossible, for it could not get past the growth.

  Others were vilely hunchbacked, with horrific protrusions of joints and bone, and heads that looked as if they had been pulled off their necks and then put back at the wrong angle; others had limbs too small for their bodies and lay at their delving work on flanks or bellies, seeming able only to prod and poke and make no elegant delving strokes at all.

  Others, worse to see, had skulls that were flat and cretinous, or snouts improperly formed so that the veins and mucus normally unseen was all too visible, moving and bubbling beneath a thin transparent skin, and it was hard to know where to look on such a mole for fear of showing horror or disgust.

  There were a few who, at first sight, appeared to have no way of delving at all, since their front paws were so malformed that they were no more than stubs or flaps of useless skin. Yet, with calloused snout, or strange back paw, even such moles could make their mark, and did so, to contribute their delve to that lost place.

  It was not long before Rooster and Glee understood how important the helpers were to them as moles who had the run of the tunnels, and wandered here and there as they were needed, bringing food, carrying helpless moles to their place of work, or shifting earth and stones which their weaker brethren could not move. It was with these moles that Rooster and Glee had their introduction to the system, being quartered, at Gaunt’s wise suggestion, up near the surface and away from their respective parents, under the watchful eye of a ponderous male called Hume.

  Recalling those days later for Privet, Rooster allowed a rare smile of affection and happiness to lighten his face when he mentioned Hume’s name. From him the youngsters soon learned that though the whole purpose of the changes Hilbert’s example brought to the Charnel was the preservation of the delving art for some future time, delvers and helpers held each other in equal regard. In the Charnel all had a place, for all were needed. Hilbert’s genius, it seemed, had been to find for delving a home that had all the best qualities of true community, where moles subsumed their individual needs to those of others around them, and in which delving itself became through the decades and centuries the focal point for moles’ dreams and desires, loves and hates, hopes and despairs.

  When the youngsters arrived in the Delvings, and heard the continual roundel of sound about them, emanating from the delvings so many generations of lost moles had made, it was these whispered remembrances of past feeling they heard, the secret feelings and thoughts of individuals, struggling to find their special place in their community, and doing so with each other’s help. Here, where life seemed so frail and so useless, life was the most valued thing of all.

  Like all the other strange moles they met, Hume treated Humlock no differently from any other mole, understanding that touch was the only way he might communicate. Glee’s natural over-protectiveness decreased as she saw Humlock relax among these new friends, and Hume quickly found a task that Humlock could perform, which was helping to shift some of the waste from the delvings below and thrust it out on to the surface.

  It was not long before Humlock was happy to be left alone for long periods provided his task was made clear and others working near him came and made contact with him from time to time, so that Glee and Rooster were able to help the system in ways he could not — taking messages, feeding the more disabled, and, in Rooster’s case, doing some heavier, more complex portage which a mole like Humlock could surely never do.

  In this way the youngsters soon understood how the system worked and saw for themselves how it had evolved its unique methodology for the preservation of the delving arts long after Hilbert, the last Master of the Delve, had passed into Silence.

  The delvers worked in different ‘chambers’ — a group of moles working together, their group names reflecting the fact that the territory of each was defined by a main chamber, and sometimes subsidiary tunnels and chambers.

  There were five such chambers, and these formed the structure about which the days and nights of the Charnel’s endless work revolved. Each was headed by a Senior Delver, and only slowly did Rooster and Glee understand that his name — or rather his or her name, since one was female — which was the name given generally to the Chamber whose work he watched over, was titular, real names having been subsumed to the position their appointment had placed them in.

  So ‘Prime Chamber’ was headed by a dwarf mole called Prime, and his work, and that of the four who worked with him, was begun only as night changed to dawn. Then there was Terce, whose Chamber of the same name was a cheerful, joyous place, where the delvers hummed in the light of new morning, and joked with their helpers and made a mole feel glad to be alive.

  Sext Chamber, and Sext its Senior Delver, was a slower, more contemplative place, with graceful sinewy delvings which calmed a mole and made him pause from the busyness of the morning that had gone before. Rooster liked going there, and enjoyed the measured quiet of Sext himself, who was thin and wasted with disease, and near the end of his delving days.

  The fourth chamber, as the youngsters came to think of it, since its main period of activity was from mid-afternoon to dusk, was run by None, the only female amongst the Senior Delvers, and half-sister to Gaunt. Here things seemed to be completed rather than begun, here moles worked quietly together, advising each other, pondering, with occasional outbursts of annoyance that things were not quite right and that time was running out.

  “Call None over! She’ll advise!”

  How Glee liked None, with her untidy fur and dus
ty snout, and her way of frowning with concentration as she snouted at a problem delve, and considered how best to deal with it.

  “Give me a worm!” she would declare finally, and Glee would happily help her to one — she was goitrous and though she could delve she could barely feed herself — knowing that as she munched it None would find a solution to the problem that had baffled others. But if even she failed she would shake her head and say, “It’s one for Compline, and if he can’t do it nomole but the Mentor himself can!”

  Compline Chamber, and Compline! Last Chamber of the day, whose life saw out the daylight hours and welcomed in the night. Chamber of change and resolution, Chamber to which all moles went if it was peace they sought to soothe a troubled mind. Whilst Compline, a large fat-faced mole, though much younger than Gaunt, had the Mentor’s same wise calm about him.

  A hurrying helper, turning a corner and finding himself faced by Compline, always slowed, and looked a little meek, and tried to move quietly and with more grace, and though admonished by Compline’s natural peacefulness yet felt cheered by it as well, and encouraged. Such were the five Chambers of the Delvings, and the five moles who watched over them, with whom Rooster, Glee and Humlock now found their lives inextricably entwined.

  Although Gaunt had realized from the first that Rooster might be a mole of special delving quality he did not confide his hopes to Drumlin or Samphire, though no doubt the Senior Delvers knew something of his thoughts. He and they preferred to wait for the evidence to reveal itself. This it soon did, and it was Hume who noticed it, and reported it with some wonder and considerable excitement.

  It seemed that the mystery of how the great chambers were delved in their higher parts, where the delvings stretched way out of reach of a mole’s paws, was one which the delvers kept to themselves, not revealing its secret to newcomers until they had showed their devotion to the art, and a willingness to dedicate themselves to it.

  Rooster knew nothing of that, and had no reason to know that his time with Hume was by way of an introduction to the system and that, when the time was judged right, he would be attached to Prime and so begin his years of study of the delving arts. He, no doubt, working with the Mentor himself, would guide him through a series of exercises of increasing difficulty, teaching him not only the techniques of delving, but the philosophy as well.

  But from the first Rooster had stared in awe at the walls of the great chambers and asked how those high delvings were done. Gaunt had not answered him, and nor did the delvers, holding their secret back for a time. But Rooster was not satisfied, and in every moment he could spare from his tasks he found obscure places to try out delving for himself, and also pondered the secret of the chambers.

  “How did they do it?” he asked Glee again and again when, tired from his extra-curricular delving practice, he joined Humlock and her in the quarters they had near the surface.

  But Glee had no idea, and nor would Hume help, knowing as he did Gaunt’s preferred way of teaching the arts. His frustration only increased when Gaunt refused to let him start learning delving formally until he had spent more time as a helper. That was the way it had always been done in the past, and the way it would be done now.

  “But want to delve,” said Rooster. “Feel the delving need.”

  “Tell me about this need, mole,” whispered Gaunt.

  “Like my paws know something’s there waiting to be made.”

  “Something?”

  “Shape. Sound. In the walls. In the roofs. In the soil.”

  “And the rocks, mole? Do you feel the need in the rocks?”

  Gaunt’s eyes narrowed as he waited for Rooster to reply, and watched the strange mole, his paws kneading at the air as he sought, in the desperate way he had, to find words adequate to express the feeling, the truth, he felt inside him.

  “Rocks are part of it. Rocks are there for delving to go round. Rocks and stones are centres.”

  “Centres of what?”

  “Don’t know!” shouted Rooster angrily, rearing up towards Gaunt, almost as if he felt the old mole was deliberately punishing him with questions that were impossible to answer. “Like all is part of one. Can’t be!”

  Rooster stanced down again, angry, puzzled, confused, and frustrated.

  “Know it,” he said at last.

  “Mole,” said Gaunt, “will you delve it for me, what you feel?”

  Rooster looked startled, and afraid. “Can’t,” he said, staring malevolently at his paws. “Hume won’t say how high delvings made. Will you?”

  Gaunt smiled softly. “I have heard of your interest in that, Rooster. It pleases me. Natural delvers always want to know the answer.”

  “Tell me!” said Rooster eagerly.

  “You delve your feeling and think about the high delvings at the same time. Maybe one will lead to the other.”

  “Will!” said Rooster suddenly. “But have to be a helper as well. Delvers need my strength.”

  “You’re free to do whichever you like.”

  “Will!” said Rooster again, thumping his bigger paw on the ground.

  “Delve the feeling, mole. Do it!”

  “Will do it!”

  For a few days after that Rooster prevaricated, becoming even more assiduous in his helper duties, working all hours of day and night for others. Then, suddenly, he abandoned his tasks and was seldom seen for several days, occasionally glimpsed by one mole or another, wandering in a morose and pensive way about the chambers, staring and touching them, peering and snouting at them, seeking answers.

  He found a small chamber high up and away from the main area, one abandoned decades before by some learner delver who, the story went, had died. There were a few crude delvings about those walls, and the sound they made was hardly anything at all. The place was light, secluded, and here Rooster began to try to delve his feeling as Gaunt had told him to. Others heard what he was about but left him to it, surprised that Gaunt had let him go off by himself without assigning a mentor to him from among the experienced delvers, nor even trying to explain what the Delvings were about.

  But then …

  “He’s a bright one, that Rooster,” Hume reported to Gaunt and a few others one day, “he’s got the high delvings worked out.”

  “He knows how they are made?” said Drumlin in surprise.

  “He’s beginning to make some, all of his own,” said Hume.

  Gaunt wisely let him be, only hearing bits and pieces of what he did and how Rooster was beginning to plague the Senior Delvers and trying to run before he could even crawl.

  “He’s got Glee up there working for him now!” declared Hume, grumbling at this sudden loss of another promising helper.

  “Have you been to the place where he delves?” asked Samphire, who like Gaunt felt it wisest to leave well alone, but like any mother was also curious to know what he was up to.

  “More than my life’s worth,” said Hume. “But I’ll tell you one thing — he’s been about the place asking the delvers about this and that. He’s discovered that some are good at one thing, and some good at another. It’s like he knows what he wants to learn.”

  “Aren’t you curious, Gaunt?” asked Samphire with a smile. “And the Senior Delvers?”

  The easy way the two moles had had with each other from the start had continued. Indeed Samphire had become helper to Gaunt himself, a role Drumlin was especially happy to see fulfilled.

  “Beauty and the beast!” she would say fondly to them both.

  “There’s no beast in Gaunt,” Samphire would confide. “He’s the gentlest mole I’ve ever known, except that his mind’s so strong. All his power is in that.”

  “You only say that because he’s not teaching you to delve. How do you think he’s got Rooster delving like he is? Now just you wait a short while longer and you’ll see how tough my father Gaunt can be.”

  She did not have to wait long. A few days later Hume brought the astonishing news that Humlock had joined Rooster and Glee in the
ir endeavours in the chamber Rooster had found. They were using him to help transport material Rooster had delved, guiding him out to the surface and showing him how to dispose of it by touch.

  “Hmmph!” said Gaunt, apparently displeased.

  “But that’s good, surely, getting Humlock involved,” said Samphire.

  “Good in theory, fatal in practice. He’ll get too big for his paws before long. I think the time’s come for me to have a look, and I’ve a feeling that that’s just what Rooster would like.”

  Gaunt was right. Soon afterwards Prime came to see him and the two had a long and private consultation. Then the other Senior Delvers were called and all six moles went into a huddle which the whole system knew about. Then it dispersed, leaving only Prime and Gaunt to summon Drumlin and Samphire.

  “We have come to a conclusion,” said Gaunt, “which is that we will visit Rooster’s delving. We understand … well … we shall see for ourselves. Come …”

  “Aren’t you going to warn him you’re coming?” said Samphire. “Rooster’s a mole likes his privacy.”

  “The Delvings are for allmole, not for one,” said Gaunt quietly.

  It took them some time to climb the long way to where Rooster had made his delving, and at the steep last part Samphire helped Gaunt along, while Prime, his little paws scrabbling to heave him on, huffed and puffed and glowered as they went.

  At last they came to a tunnel from which the noise of delving came, and entered it. There was a rough-hewn chamber used for spoil, in which Humlock, a begrimed and dusty Humlock, stanced in silent thought. Quietly the moles went on, until eventually an elegant and recently-delved archway led them into a medium-sized chamber whose walls were delved with all kinds of strange, stark indentations, whose sound was rough and cheerful, and whose light, cleverly using the fissures above, was both dark and bright, shifting and strange. Most astonishing of all, above them and some way out of reach of even the largest mole’s paw, were delvings, high delvings.