Duncton Found (131 page)

Rush, a male, was the strongest of the three and, like his father, quick-witted and generally light-hearted – a happy combination – and he established his place up the slopes at the junction of the High Wood and the Eastside, where the soil is drier and chalky and not easy for worms. But he liked the clean line of tunnels there and enjoyed wandering onto the pastures. He was often the one to greet a newly arrived mole, and he knew how to make them feel welcome without being too overbearing about it.

Kale, even as a pup, decided that he wanted to live near Barrow Vale, and was one of the first to go down that way.

Dewberry, the female, seemed, to all appearances, rather dull. She stayed in tunnels near Wren, and there was rarely a day when she did not seek out her mother’s company and the two could be found stanced down together busying themselves – Wren always the more restless, her daughter always the more serene.

Mistle had stayed in tunnels near the Stone, and Romney on the slopes some way below her. They worked well together and when most moles first met them they assumed they were a pair; but it was not so, which was a mystery in the wood since they looked so well together.

Mind you, as Whortle would observe when he was having a rest and an idle chat, she was clever with the males, was Mistle. Take that Cuddesdon for example, now what was a mole to make of him?

Quite a lot, in fact. With his gawky paws and quick, direct manner, Cuddesdon was not a mole others could ignore, and like Mistle herself he was unselfconscious in his belief in the Stone; he liked to say grace before eating, and tried to spend time every day in contemplation by himself.

Sometimes Mistle would join him and, as time went on, others would do so too, particularly Dewberry, who liked to be silent in company near the Stone.

In this way Cuddesdon began, by force of his own example, to establish a pattern of worship in Duncton Wood, but one to which no other moles were forced in any way to subscribe: some did, many didn’t, and of those that did there might be long periods when they did not. But without Cuddesdon building the pattern in the first place, moles with less purpose and will than his own in such matters would never have thought much about the Stone at all.

He lived rather roughly, and wherever he took a fancy to, but there he was, rain or shine, soon after dawn each morning when the wood was waking, to whisper a morning prayer in the Stone clearing, such as one he first learned from Mistle:

“
This dawn

Let us honour you.

Stone, you have raised us freely from the black

And from the darkness of last night

To the kindly light of this new day.

Let your light lighten our heart,

Let your light lighten our desires,

Let your light lighten our actions,

Let your light lighten our faith.

Stone, you have brought us freely to your light

To travel with us through the day

In heart, desire, action, faith, this new day.

Let us honour you

This dawn
.”

Yet despite the fact that it was Cuddesdon who was the outward face of the quiet worship of the Stone in the newly established system, it was Mistle who remained its inner heart. All moles sensed her faith, and from the tales she told and prayers she often made, the description of her as “the mole who lives by the Stone” was a potent and true description of not just where but how she lived.

Slowly but surely she was becoming the mother and father of the new system, and was the mole about whom so much so subtly and quietly seemed to revolve.

But if those who grew to know her realised that neither Romney nor Cuddesdon was likely to be her mate, they naturally wondered who might be, not quite believing the rumour that it was, in some strange way, the return of the Stone Mole she was waiting for.

By the autumn all had heard of the Stone Mole’s barbing, and knew he must be dead. Could Mistle then be waiting for
him
?
Surely not! She was too attractive and sensible to wait on a dream! No, the truth really was – so moles said – that there was a mole who had been out in the wars of moledom and would one day return, a mole of faith who had gone fighting for the Stone.

Gradually then, as young pups like Dewberry and Rush grew to adulthood, this notion of Mistle waiting for a mole to come back took a hold on the system’s collective imagination and the truth of Beechen and Mistle, so far as it had ever been known (and Romney was never one to talk about it), receded and the Stone Mole was no longer directly associated with Mistle.
Her
mole was much more real than that. Indeed, Wren and Dewberry enjoyed themselves describing him, and supposed him to be large and strong and purposeful, brave and good, and yet he had about him (they said) that touch of ruthless dedication which had taken him so far and so long from a mole as beautiful as Mistle!

“He’ll come back one day,” Wren would say, “and that’ll put Romney’s snout out of joint.”

But moles, inclined as they are to get hold of the wrong end of the worm in their haste to make deductions about other moles, were wrong about Romney. It was he who found a mate, not Mistle.

In mid-October, when the winds were beginning to blow lustily and the beech leaves to fly in droves through the wood and deliver a sharp shock to a mole’s snout, there was a sudden influx of more moles. Unlike the ones who had come through the summer, these were older moles and travellers, who often came from afar, having obeyed the instinct that overtook many in moledom after the defeat of the moles of the Word by the Welsh moles.

Like Holm, like Starling, like Bailey indeed, they too had felt an urge to find somewhere that, after so many moleyears of displacement and disarray, might be a home for them. Some of those who now came to Duncton Wood, like Mallet of Grafham, came because they had heard Beechen preach on his way to Beechenhill, and having been much affected by his teachings and being appalled by his barbing, set off for Duncton Wood to dedicate their lives to his precepts.

Others who had met Beechen, like Poplar of Dry Sandford where the great Buckram had been healed, now made their way with their families to Duncton because they began to hear good reports of it, and felt that to find a home in the system in which the Stone Mole had been born would make sense.

A few were descendants of the survivors of the ill-fated evacuation from Duncton led by Tryfan, who had heard tales of Old Duncton, and wished now to see where their forbears came from.

These new moles found the system already established but brought with them experience, their own histories, and a willingness to occupy other parts of the system than the Eastside. Now it was that the wormful Westside began to attract moles, and the slopes between Barrow Vale and the High Wood where Kale, Wren’s son, was already established, and he became an advisor and help on tunnels and territory to many a new mole.

But the Marsh End remained unoccupied, for few moles saw its attractions and many were positively frightened of it, as if, each system needing its darker place, this northern part of the wood fulfilled that need.

Mistle, who knew that in the old days the Marsh End was a community rich in lore and its own rituals, would have liked to encourage more of the newcomers down there, but though a few tried it none yet stayed.

“They will in time,” she said, “for the Stone likes to see a system well occupied. But we have still got far to go before we’re ready.”

“Ready for what, Mistle?” Romney asked.

Mistle smiled, and Romney guessed: ready for
him
when he came back. But of that, by then, they did not speak, for whatmole but Cuddeson perhaps would understand?

It was at the end of October that Romney’s life changed, and moles like Wren came in for a surprise, for that was when Lorren, formerly of Rollright, came to Duncton Wood and with her, her daughter Rampion. We who have journeyed through the Chronicles already know their tale and unlike the new inhabitants of Duncton will not be surprised that the first thing Lorren did when she was through the cross-under and up the slopes was to say, “Rampion, take me north! I’m not going to talk to a single solitary mole until I have snuffled my snout in the moist Marsh End soil, and scented its once familiar air!”

So down there they went, with Rush for company since he had come to greet them and liked their down-to-earth manner.

When they reached the Marsh End Lorren sniffed and said, “What memories it all brings back! We should have come here years ago, Rampion. I think I’m going to cry.”

“So you lived here before?” said Rush.

“Born and raised here I was, in the days of Tryfan and Comfrey, and would have been back sooner if travelling had been safer around Rollright. Now let’s go and look at the Marsh itself....”

They wandered on, and Lorren had to be supported when they got to the northern edge of the wood and looked at where Holm had been born and raised.

“I’m sorry,” said Rush, “but I think a lot of your generation lost mates.”

“‘A lot of our generation lost mates’? Humph!” said Lorren, looking up at Rush with indignation. “Holm was never lost in his life. As for ‘our generation’, young mole, we’re doing very nicely and we don’t need moles of your generation, or even Rampion’s here, to suggest anything otherwise, thank you very much.”

Rampion and Rush exchanged a grin.

“As for Holm,” said Lorren more quietly, “he’ll be coming back now the troubles are easing. He said he would and he will, and since we’ve moved from Rollright and wandered about a bit avoiding guardmoles and saving ourselves he’ll not find us where he left us. Now I know my Holm and he knows me, and where he’ll come when he finds I’m not in Rollright is where he thinks I think he’ll come! Which is here, to this Marsh where he was born and which he loved and where Mayweed first found him. And here in the Marsh End, within sight of it, is where I’m going to stay until he does, and a lot longer after that!

“However, Rush, before I talk about myself, Rampion and I want to know everything you can tell us about the moles in Duncton Wood, don’t we, Rampion? Starting, because Rampion won’t ask and she’s itching to know, with the important question of whether or not a mole called Romney is still here.”

“He is,” said Rush, “and very much so, and if it’s half helpful, he doesn’t have a mate.”

“That’s a relief,” said Lorren, “isn’t it, dear?”

Rampion smiled with the loving but weary look of a mole whose mother cannot help but tell all and sundry about their family’s affairs.

Nevertheless Lorren’s instincts were right because the romance of Romney and Rampion was the talk of the autumn, and they all watched as Mistle “lost” Romney to an older mole (and was left all alone), and then agreed that as Romney had been a guardmole and Rampion was definitely of the Stone there would be problems... But even before all the ins and outs had been fully discussed, possibility became reality and the two moles took tunnels together on the slopes. “As far from that Lorren as she could be!” every mole pointed out and said that Lorren would be lonely.

But Lorren was not having any of that sort of nonsense. The friendship she soon developed with Wren, and the willingness with which she talked to younger moles like Kale about the old days, soon diverted them to other topics of the moment.

But in truth the gossip and back-biting that many systems develop was not prevalent at Duncton Wood, and there was a good reason for it: if there was one thing Mistle did not and would not do it was to gossip about others behind their backs. Moles tried it once with her, and got a very sharp reply. From the first Mistle set the example that the system came to live by.

Aye, Mistle could be sharp if she needed to be and nomole was going to get her to do something she didn’t want to do.
She
could be relied on to stance up to a mole even when others didn’t, or couldn’t.

Like the time in early December when two pairs of Cumnor moles who thought they were the bee’s knees came up the slopes and, without a good morning or a please and thank you, made their way straight across the wood – and “right across Romney and Rampion’s patch without even a greeting” – to the wormful Westside, and proceeded to occupy some tunnels.

A noisy, mucky, bullying lot they were, but moles must live and let live, and that’s what the new moles of Duncton did. But then there was a bit of an argy-bargy when Poplar was going a Whortle near their tunnels and it might have been worse if Poplar hadn’t quietly stanced his ground and stayed passive. A lot worse! Nor was that the first time. But the next time... Mistle herself went down all alone.