Duncton Tales

by William Horwood

  It was on such a bright day that scurrying about, their paws restless and their minds full of the coming journey over the Moors, Rooster suddenly found the text that Privet had sought when she first came, hidden in some obscure spot beneath one of Hilbert’s delvings. What it was she had no doubt, and even before she opened its old cover, and reached out a paw to touch its small, neat scribing, she knew that what she touched was meant for her, just as her father Sward had told her.

  Its first words were just as he had remembered them, and as she had in her turn learnt. Her grandmother Wort, once the Eldrene Wort, had scribed, “I have found the sanctuary of the Stones again and I am thinking what it is I must say to you. You whose name I do not know, you whose life was all my purpose, you for whom my little life was meant …”

  So Privet began to ken Wort’s Last Testimony, a text surely meant especially for her, to tell her of a love that came back from beyond the Silence, a love Wort had wanted to give her daughter Shire but which was denied to her, and so a love that lived on only in scribing, awaiting the moment when it might be kenned and known.

  Rooster watched her begin that kenning and then quietly left her alone as the first tears came, knowing that there are some griefs, some discoveries, a mole best experiences alone. He stanced up near the Top, and watched the hours of that day through, as the sky lightened and became pale blue, and the wind shifted, and warmth began to spread all across the Moors.

  “Time,” he muttered to himself, “time to leave.”

  Only later was he aware that Privet had crept to his flank and was stanced quietly down, her eyes red from crying, her paw wanting to be held.

  “I want to go from here now,” she said.

  “The text …?”

  “I’ll leave it in the chamber you made. Also what I’ve scribed about us since I’ve been here. Just us will do for travel; we’ll leave all our past behind.”

  “Can go now,” he said.

  The warm wind rustled at the Moor’s edge.

  “Good,” she whispered.

  They turned together and went back down to the chamber.

  “Where’s your scribing and the Testimony?” he said.

  “Buried it in the wall,” she said. “Your delving will protect it.”

  “Won’t, Privet. But I’m going to seal up this chamber and protect it with Dark Sound.”

  “What about the mole …?”

  “That mole’ll be all right. Will have strength to break the seal and go through Dark Sound. Must.”

  “And then?”

  “Will hear the delving we made for us. Hear all of me and some of you. Will know what to do then. But …”

  Before she could ask what his hesitation might mean he went to the wall, peered at the place where she had buried the texts and vainly tried to conceal her delving, turned to her with a grin, and with a few fast delves concealed the place properly beneath more delving.

  “No mole will ever find that place again!” she said, staring at the convolutions he had made and becoming unsure where it was herself.

  “Mole who comes will. Delving tells him!” said Rooster with mischievous glee. “Delving can be fun! That’s what Glee said!” A dark look briefly crossed his face. “We’ll go,” he said sombrely. “You first, then I’ll seal behind me.”

  She took one last look, and then turned and left, going up slowly to the surface as he did his mysterious work, and running the last part, for she heard a grim confusing sound which made her want to flee to the fresh air above.

  “That’s the Dark Sound he’s making,” she said, shuddering, and wondering at the complexity of the mole she loved, who could be so gentle, and yet had it in him to create such savage sound. “May the Stone protect him from himself if he ever loses control of the anger and loss he still feels!” she whispered, staring at the dark rocks of the Top, and at the raven that hovered there and turned on its back in the wind, all strange, and then was gone.

  “Rooster!” she cried out, suddenly afraid. “I want to go. Now!”

  “Rooster too!” he said, emerging from the portal for the last time. “We go now!”

  His paw was gentle on her flank, as they wended their way through the outcrop on the Top, and then emerged into the balmy airs of spring, and pointed their snouts southward.

  A sudden gust of wind rushed at the entrances to Fieldfare’s tunnels. Then wind-sound through trees, and the crack of branches across the Wood.

  “Listen! Moles!” said Maple, stancing into alertness. Silence!”

  At first they could hear nothing, but then there came what sounded like a distant call of a mole. Then even before Maple was up and through the portal, they heard the drag of paw, and the call again, and they realized that what had seemed distant was simply muted because it was weak.

  Weak, and desperate, and not far off. The sound of an injured mole calling out for help with his last breath before losing consciousness.

  Maple signalled to Chater and Whillan to come with him, and together they went out swiftly.

  All waited in silence, listening, and Privet looked in despair. They heard talking and then a pause, and after that the sound of the moles coming slowly down the tunnel helping a mole along.

  Then in they came, Maple in front supporting Pumpkin, who at first was hard to recognize. His fur was wet and in disarray and there was blood about his face, and a nasty injury in his shoulder. He was only half-conscious, yet trying to speak, and his paws and belly were muddied and torn, as if he had crawled right across the Wood.

  “Where’s Husk?” said Privet with sudden urgency, trying to run out of the tunnel and up into the Wood. “He’s in trouble at Rolls and Rhymes, he needs our help.”

  Maple held her to stop her rushing off.

  “Let him recover himself and talk, mole, you’ll gain nothing floundering about the wood distraight. Now, Pumpkin, can you tell us what happened?”

  “Whatever it was it was while I was talking,” whispered Privet, much distressed, “and I should have been there, not here. I should not have left Husk alone!”

  “What’s apaw, Pumpkin? Whatmole did this to you? Where’s Husk?”

  “Dying,” whispered Pumpkin at last, wincing as he shifted to try to ease the pain.

  Try to tell us what happened,” said Maple.

  It took Pumpkin some time more to find strength enough to talk, and when he did what he had to say was grim indeed.

  “Newborns came to Rolls and Rhymes,” he gasped. Texts all broken and destroyed. Husk … dying where I left him.”

  “Where did you leave him, mole?” asked Chater urgently.

  “Where he asked me to take him: at the Stone.”

  “You’ve come from there, now?” said Stour.

  Pumpkin nodded wearily, close to tears. They just came. Six of them. Too many for us. I tried to dissuade them, and even offered to fight them, me! Keeper Husk said not. They hit him. They began to destroy his tunnels to let the storm and rain do the rest. When they were gone there was nothing we could do and he asked me to take him to the Stone and then do my best to come here … I’m sorry, I could not do more.”

  “You did more than many moles did, Pumpkin,” said Stour. This night we have seen how history turns, and turns again and now a long night has begun, and we are of it, all of us. Now listen each one of you, for this is what we each must do. Drubbins and I will go to the Library, for that is where I should be. You, Maple, will accompany us, to protect us if need be. You, Pumpkin, shall stay here with Fieldfare, who will tend to your injuries until we are ready to decide what we should do with you.

  “You, Privet, will go to the Stone with Chater and Whillan, and find out what state Husk is in. We must hope that he is not in as bad a state as Pumpkin seems to think — injuries can seem worse than they are. Then you will go to Rolls and Rhymes and having done that with all due caution, join me in the Library.

  “Now we have work to do this dawn and we must do it fast. But when we come together in the Library
I shall tell you what tasks — what great tasks — I believe await us all, and how it may be that the tale Privet has told us, of delving and of Rooster, may have prepared for what may soon begin, unless this night’s Newborn destruction of Rolls and Rhymes means it has begun already. Of the rest of her story, for good and ill, we must await the telling until times are more propitious. Away!”

  PART IV

  The Sound of Silence

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  It was as well that Stour insisted on Whillan and Chater accompanying Privet across the Wood to the Stone to find Husk, for she herself was in no mood to go cautiously, and think of the dangers along the way.

  Her mind raced with doubt and grief, and was filled with apprehension of what she would find at the Stone, even as her innermost being succumbed to the growing realization that the darkness she had in earlier years found so troubling and insupportable in moledom had finally caught up with her in the one place she had hoped she might for ever avoid it.

  Of these things, and many others too no doubt, she thought, and tormented herself with them as she hurried across-slope towards the Stone. Only the presence of Whillan and Chater kept her from erring off course, or turning and turning again as the troubles of her mind sought to confuse her. Indeed, more than once Whillan had to put a forceful paw to her flank to guide her into safer and more shadowed ways, and it was left to Chater, so long used to travelling through danger, to stay close by them both, eyes narrowed and head hunched forward, ready at any moment to call out a warning and stance still and protect two moles he regarded as his wards.

  Certainly Chater showed no fear, nor felt any, for Pumpkin’s terrible story had angered him, and affirmed the doubts he had felt for some time about the Newborns, and it seemed to him now as if a long struggle was beginning for which he had been as long prepared. Indeed, he felt relief that its time had come, and that surge of energy and purpose a strong mole always feels when the waiting is over was on him, and so his mind was clear.

  He noted with approval the calm and reassuring way Whillan took charge of Privet; for a scholar, the youngster was doing well, and it was increasingly obvious that he might have more about him than his thin and gawky appearance at first suggested. For in its mysterious way, the Stone somehow brought moles forward in each generation and prepared them for the time when they would have to take up the challenges of the day, and find words and courage and the will for deeds in order to preserve the light of moledom from the threatening darkness.

  Privet herself said not a word; her mouth set, her eyes frightening in their blank intensity as she stared ahead, she seemed not to notice when briar tore her flank, and bramble lacerated her face. It was at the Stone she wanted to be, with Husk, who might yet have survived and need their help. So anxious was Privet to get to the Stone and do what she could for Husk — if only to whisper a melancholy goodbye over his broken body and ask that the Stone accept him to its Silence — and so much were Whillan and Chater concentrating on their self-appointed task of watching over her, that the sudden lightening of the Wood ahead beyond the great leafless beeches that confronted them took them all by surprise, and the little party stopped in its tracks.

  “We’re almost at the Stone clearing already,” said Whillan, and indeed they were, for their minds had been so preoccupied with what they might find when they got there that their journey seemed to have taken no time at all.

  Chater quickly quartered the ground all about for signs of danger and ambush, while poor Privet, who had been carried this far across the Wood by the strength of her concern for Husk, suddenly faltered and looked thin and weak, and full of fear at what they would shortly find before the Stone.

  Until then, none of them had paid much heed to the winds and wet that beset the Wood, but now they had paused in their grim journey, the wild threshing of the high branches of the trees above came to their notice. Now and then wet brown leaves turned and flew through the air above their heads, while off across the High Wood, scurries of wind, like pups playing at the flanks of a parent looming high above, scattered leaves among the beech roots, and caused the branches of holly and the briars of bramble to shake and shudder with their passing.

  The immediate way ahead was blocked by the fallen litter of broken branches and bark, and the only thing that seemed permanent in all about them was the presence of the great, dark, grey-green trunks of the beech trees, which rose up and up above them, their sinuous, smooth lines belying their strength. It was westward beyond the biggest of these, their ancient roots spread gnarled and knobbly across the ground, that the Stone clearing lay, and as they stared through the wind-loud Wood towards it, they could just make out part of the Stone itself, grey and shiny like the wet trunks that obscured it, its top blunt and very slightly angled one way.

  For a moment Chater allowed himself to take his eyes off the shadows about and the dangers they might hide, and looked in his rough and unsentimental way towards the Stone itself.

  “Should have come up here more often than I have,” he muttered. “Shouldn’t have had to wait until all this happened … Stone knows, a mole forgets where his centre lies and when he does, a little bit of the system forgets as well.”

  Privet glanced at Chater with a sudden bleak smile and nodded her understanding before reaching out a paw to Whillan and touching him.

  “You lead us on, my dear,” she said, “for our generation is beginning to need the strength of younger minds and hearts and paws. Stay as close as you have been, for I may need you. Husk is most dear to me.”

  Husk is … for Privet, then, he was still alive, still a mole to revere and turn to, still waiting in his wisdom and kindliness, still …

  Whillan led them on, head up and eyes alert, breaking through the obstruction and then skirting the roots of the last great beech before entering the clearing and gaining full sight of the risen Stone. They paused again as each of them quickly scanned the surface of the clearing ahead, beginning with the area near the base of the Stone, and then in ever-widening circles among the leaves and litter and indentations of bare chalk and grass which formed the clearing. Chater was concerned still to look for enemies and signs of threat, but Privet and Whillan were looking for Husk; but at first none of them saw anything at all. Just the Stone and the wan expanse of the clearing, and the shifting trunks and branches of the trees.

  Then one of those swirling eddies of wind that had lifted leaves over the surface around them in the time just past, came noisily from behind, and went rushing in a melee of leaves into the clearing and across to the edge opposite them, where it paused, turned, lifted leaves once more, and was gone. To there it was their gaze shifted, and there they saw, with a mounting realization that soon had Privet hastening across after it, tell-tale dark movement among the wet leaves. As they got nearer they saw a limp paw, half hidden by leaves, then a thin and wizened snout, and a face bloodied, its wrinkles marked out by dried blood and pain, its eyes but half open as they stared, or sought to stare, up towards the Stone. It was Husk, half buried by leaves driven by the wind. Chater stretched out a paw to hold Whillan back so that Privet might go on alone to find out for herself what the Newborns had done to her mentor and friend.

  Whether he had been alive or dead, she would have done as she did then, going swiftly forward, speaking his name gently and with love and reaching out her paws to take up his light old head and cuddle it, and snout at it, and say that she had come.

  She found Husk alive, but only just. As she held him close he seemed to sigh, and the look of pain on his face eased to one of comfort and content. For a moment Chater and Whillan thought he had just then passed on to the Stone, for his body, which had been shivering beneath its covering of leaves, stilled and went limp. But his eyes opened and half smiled, and turned to look into Privet’s, and then, in a whisper that was like the final rustles of last autumn’s leaves before the winds of new times and seasons, he said, “Memories of old friends, old stories, kept me alive until you came. Knew y
ou would come. Yes, yes, knew that.”

  “I didn’t want ever to leave you, Keeper Husk,” said Privet. “I thought you’d be safe, and now you and Pumpkin —”

  “He’s safe?” asked Husk, his face darkening until he sensed from Privet’s touch that Pumpkin was safe. His face lightened with a soft smile. “Good mole, he is. Would have fought for me. Pumpkin! But against them … against those moles he couldn’t … and I said he mustn’t. All my work, all my scribing, my thoughts —”

  “Oh, Husk,” interrupted Privet, “have they destroyed them? Pumpkin said —”

  “No, no, my dear, I did not mean that. Paws cannot destroy what a mind thinks and dreams and knows. No, no … I was just trying to say that all my work has been towards not hurting others. The Stone Mole said that violence is not the way. I would not have another hurt on my account. Pumpkin cried when they hit me but when I ordered him not to hit back he was still. Yes, they have destroyed the books, and broken the tunnels down to let the wind and rain add to the destruction of their paws.”

  “Oh, Husk!”

  Privet bent her head and wept her tears into his frail body and Whillan watched helpless and much moved as Husk’s paw feebly tried to pat and caress her shoulder, as if, even when he was so near death, his thoughts were for her.

  “My dear, it’s not as it seems, at all, it’s not …’ His breathing became more difficult and Privet pulled away, sniffed, and with Chater coming forward to help, tenderly examined the wounds that Husk had suffered. In truth they were less severe than they had seemed at first, being deep cuts and lacerations to his head and left flank from talon thrusts, rather than anything worse.

  But from the amount of blood, and the way that his skin and fur had broken and folded back, it was easy to see how Pumpkin had been convinced that it was from his wounds that he was dying. To Privet, looking at him now, it was all too plain that what ailed him was the shock of these recent events on his frail body, and exposure to the elements all night long. The assault he had suffered had been less than it seemed, and perhaps the Newborns who had come to his burrows had intended to do no more than frighten him, their true objective being to destroy his books.