Duncton Found (128 page)

Aye, this was so, moles; this was so. Forget it not.

Yet knowing it we may more easily understand the despair the Stone Mole expressed upon the barb, for the scene of violence he saw acted out across Beechenhill as he hung dying seemed to show that violence must ever be met with violence.

What then did he do? Two moles, Holm and Wort, two of those who had helped him touch the Stone that distant June in Duncton when his commitment to moledom truly began, helped him from the barb and laid him down.

He took the form then in which he had been before, a White Mole’s form, and he left that violence far behind thinking perhaps that if he could find but one mole of true peace, one mole who could touch Silence in this life, then through that mole others might know there is a way which ordinary moles can take.

Therefore we should turn our backs on the violence that now erupted across moledom and seek rather to know the way the White Mole might have gone to find that one mole.

But we may guess where it was he went.

In moles’ hearts he searched, in ordinary moles’ hearts. Some by virtue of the Stone Mole’s example, some for the natural love of others that they had; some because the Word’s baleful sound was no more, and they could hear Silence and see the Stone’s light once more.

The full Chronicle of that recovery would be the story of moles beyond counting. Yet one thing is sure. As the moleyears began to unfold after Troedfach’s victory, and his historic decision to turn back to his own homeland, it is to Duncton Wood that the story returns, where the Stone Mole’s heart had been, and where the hope and purpose he had when he was alive might now be found.

Four moles, close related, will tell the story of many more. In their lives, certainly, much of the Stone Mole’s purpose and teaching is bound. To one of them indeed, good Bailey, a great task will soon be entrusted. While for the others of this quartet tasks have been well done and new ones may yet wait. Starling, Lorren, Holm, these are the moles we think of most when we speak good Bailey’s name, and their stories now will surely lead us along the White Mole’s way to waiting Duncton Wood. It is with Bailey we begin.

Mayweed and Bailey first learned of the death of Lucerne a few days after they reached Seven Barrows in late July.

Theirs had been a long and meandering journey of which, as all moles know, Bailey was in time to scribe his own account in which he incorporated many things that Mayweed told him of the history of those times.

As was Mayweed’s way, they had gone where his snout took him and spent so much time with many a mole, chatting and laughing and making friends, that Bailey had finally urged Mayweed to straighten up his snout a bit and make more directly for Seven Barrows.

“Bothered Bailey, you lead us there then!” said Mayweed, and Bailey, very bothered indeed to be leading such a route-finder, did manage to get as far as Uffington, though not without running into all kinds of danger from grike guardmoles and informers.

“Just my luck!” grumbled Bailey, after a particularly gruesome chase near Wantage when they were both nearly caught.

“Exactly, self-destructing Sir, exactly. ‘Just your luck.’ You’re kind, Bailey Sir, you’re well meaning, but you’re still sorry for yourself even after all these years. You attract disaster.”

“Wasn’t me who drowned half Duncton under the Thames.”

“Cruel, cutting and unfair, Bailey, and all you’ll do is come cringing and creeping to this humble mole and apologise.”

“Well I am sorry, I mean I didn’t....”

“Enough, half-hearted Sir. If you’re going to be nasty, be nasty; if you’re going to lead, lead. Don’t dither because dithering ends up as disaster.”

After that Bailey was more forceful in his leading, and even had the sense when they reached Uffington Hill, and spent the days of Midsummer there exploring the desolate tunnels, to ask Mayweed to take over again. Peering southward towards Seven Barrows, where the light was hazy and odd, he could see he would be out of his depth.

“Bailey, I love you, you have a charm especially your own, like buttercups,” said Mayweed amiably.

From this historic site they eventually turned to head southward only in late July to that different and most mysterious place where the Stones of Seven Barrows rise. This – or rather the tunnels of the forgotten system nearby – is where Spindle, Bailey’s father, was born, and from here he was sent by his mother to serve his time as a cleric in doomed Uffington.

“Much improved Bailey,” declared Mayweed as they ascended the slopes towards Seven Barrows, “humble old me feels good to be here, feels right. You should too: a mole who travels to where his kin were born travels closer to his heart.

“Scholarly Spindle would have been proud to see you here, and I am pleased, in fact I’m even moved, to be here on his behalf and say what a father should say to you.”

“Which is what?” said Bailey, himself well past middle age.

“Bailey, be bold at last, discover a task by which all moles shall remember you, make your mark, enjoy! Loss has lingered about your loins too long! Ha! Good that! Humbleness does not lose his touch with words, even at his end.”

Bailey’s brow furrowed.

“Your end?” he said.

“This humble mole’s journey’s end.”

Mayweed looked around at where the stonefields spread, and to the rising Stones among them. They seemed indistinct, all shimmery in the summer sun. Flying insects buzzed and lazed amongst the taller grasses, and over the small stones an occasional ant ran busily.

“
You’re
fitter than
I
am,” said Bailey, for though the journey had slimmed him down yet thin Mayweed always went faster than him, and much more restlessly.

“Never been fitter in my mind, Bailey mole, never! But in my body, well! Enough said! Anyway, I have to go somewhere you can’t follow. I don’t think you’ll want to try somehow. Humbleness has a snout for such things, a thin and raddled snout it’s true, but a snout all the same for... such things.”

“What things?” said Bailey, very concerned now.

“There’s a mole I love....”

“Sleekit?”

“That’s her name, acute Sir. Sleekit.” He fell silent and peered towards the Stones across the fields. Bailey noticed that his head shook a little now, and sometimes when he blinked one of his eyes was slower to open than the other. Age had caught Mayweed up on their journey here, and now it had overtaken him.

Once, a few weeks past, Bailey had noticed that Mayweed’s old sores had begun to open again.

“Yes, yes, yes,” Mayweed had said, “you are right. Tryfan closed them up with healing love, and later Sleekit kept them closed with her own special love. Without those moles this pathetic and much hurt body that is mine would long since have died. But, well, the Stone was kind to me and put loving moles my way.”

“It wasn’t the Stone, it was you yourself!” Bailey had burst out. “Nomole is more loved than you, Mayweed, and you know it. You have been... you’ve been like a... like a... I don’t know what you’ve been like!”

“Blubbering Bailey,” Mayweed had said, his own voice close to tears, “if I’ve been like anything to anymole, I’ve been like a humbleness and, you know, all moles need one of those. But now... my sores have opened because I’m old and because the mole I love is far from me and I fear – I know, Sir, I know – I shall not see her again. I miss her, Bailey, I miss her enough to die.”

That’s what Mayweed had said on the journey there, and now Bailey saw him staring out towards the Stones. His sores were worse than they had been then, and hurt him (though he would never complain of it), and Bailey knew it was of Sleekit that he was thinking.

“Yes, Bailey mole, I have to go somewhere now.”

“Where?” said Bailey.

“Innumerate mole, how many Stones do you see across those sunny fields?”

Bailey looked and counted, not once but twice.

“Six,” he said.

“There’s seven, Bailey sir. Seven, seven, seven.”

“I can only see six,” said Bailey firmly. “I
can
count.”

Mayweed grinned and said quietly, “Ah, but can you see? It seems not. And that’s why you can’t follow me there. Later perhaps, when you’re old and thin and scabby like me, but not yet. Anyway you’ve got better things to do, haven’t you?”

“Like what, Mayweed?”

“Learning to be truly bold. Sometimes, Bailey, humbleness thinks you’re dim, but he imagines that it’s an impression you give because you had a deprived puphood. Not as deprived as mine, but we mustn’t boast. Ha! Mayweed jokes! Ha, ha, ha! Well, before I go, I think I can find time to point you in the direction of the task I think will suit you. Anyway I’m curious myself, always was. Curiosity will kill me. That’s a joke as well, though it’s true enough.”

Bailey’s eyes drifted off across the fields again, but hard as he tried he could not see where he looked, nor see more than six risen Stones.

“She is there, you know, and she and I will watch others come and stay until the seventh comes,” whispered Mayweed. “Humbleness won’t be humble then, nor anything else; but just himself with those he has loved so much... He drifts in thought, he doesn’t want to leave you but he thinks he ought to go... He’s said that before! Humbleness must be very near his end if he’s repeating himself! Quick, quick, quick....”

Mayweed, leering, grabbed Bailey’s paw and hurried him from the stonefields and began snouting about the Seven Barrows themselves.

“Nearly bold Bailey, stay there! Mayweed, that’s me, has to remember what Spindle told him once, corroborated by great Tryfan... yes! No! Tum-te-tum-te-tum...” He wandered off and Bailey stanced down patiently, looking about and trying to imagine his father Spindle as a young mole here. Did he run up and down the barrow slopes? Did he venture out into the stonefields? Did he ever think that life would take him so far from where he was born?

His reverie was interrupted not by Mayweed but by the arrival of a worried-looking mole with unkempt fur who wandered up short-sightedly and stopped suddenly.

“Mole?” he said.

“Yes, Bailey’s the name.”

“That’s a relief. You looked like a vole from a distance. There’s another one about, I can hear him.”

“That’s Mayweed.”

“Humph! What are you doing here?”

“I’m not sure really. I’ve sort of come along with Mayweed.”

“‘Sort of come along’. What’s that mean?”

Mayweed joined them suddenly, saying, “It means, untidiness, that our friend Bailey here is a sloppy mole when it come to speech. Mayweed’s the name, being humble is the game. Whatmole are you?”

“Furze. Live south of here. Came because I wanted to.”

“To what?”

“Celebrate. But didn’t think I’d meet another mole, let alone two.”

“Share, share, share, exasperating Furze.”

“Lucerne’s dead. Henbane’s dead. Heard it yesterday.”

After a very long pause Mayweed said, “That’s it, is it, investigative Furze?”

“Yes,” said Furze. “It’s enough. It’s more than enough I should have thought.”

“How did the deceased die, a mole might wonder?

Whatmole did the deed? And where? These are questions that spring to mind.”

“Well they don’t spring to mine. Humble. What springs to my mind is good riddance.”

“Ha! He calls me Humble and he thinks ‘good riddance’ – learn from him, Bailey. Learn. Furze, share a worm with us!”

And so he did, all evening and all night, and they chatted of much and especially living alone, and they discovered that Furze had seen Mistle and a mole call Cuddesdon pass by moleyears before.

That night Mayweed spoke of what he knew of Seven Barrows, and told Bailey and Furze the story of the Stillstones, and how Tryfan and Spindle had come to this very place, and with great difficulty, hurled the seven Stillstones out across the stonefields, where they lay, even now, waiting to be found by moles who would be part of moledom’s discovery of Silence.

Bailey was spellbound, but Furze said, “Humph! Moles of the Stone are a superstitious lot.”

“Moledom needs more moles like you, unfuddled Furze,” said Mayweed, “but not too many. Mayweed asks if you have a task?”

“Minding my own business mainly,” said Furze.