Duncton Rising (13 page)

Pumpkin had been about to deny all knowledge of Drubbins recently, that was true. What was also true was that the Inquisitor was clever and there was no point in telling him lies. He – or rather they – knew things. But what things?

Pumpkin stared on and waited, surprised at the sudden clarity of his thinking, and the fact that his fear had subsided, subdued by his anger. They were here to find something out, probably something they did not know; which meant they could not be sure that
he
knew it. He could pretend to be stupid, as he had done already since they had arrived.

“Well, mole? We’re waiting.”

The Brother Inquisitor’s eyes flicked for a moment to those of his friends and then back at Pumpkin. Shiny black talons kneaded the ground at his paws.

“Saw Drubbins before I became unwell. He looked ill and scared. He —”

“And now he’s dead. Did you kill him?”

Pumpkin had recourse to silence again, but his heart was thumping. Drubbins really
dead?
Good Drubbins, wise Drubbins, best-elder-of-them-all Drubbins.

“How did he die?” asked Pumpkin.

Suddenly the meaner-looking of the other two. Brother Barre, came forward, grabbed Pumpkin, and as the others cried out “No, Barre! Not yet! Give him...” Pumpkin found himself being dragged bodily out of the burrow and up to the surface.

“You’re a blasphemous little bastard,” snarled Barre ferociously, “and I’m going to show you the consequences of your thinking.”

“But —”

“We’ll go and see Drubbins and see if reality makes you tell us what happened.”

“Aarghl” gasped Pumpkin, every muscle and bone in his body aching, and his head swirling, as he found himself forcibly taken across the Wood towards the Eastside.

“Where...?”

“To the cross-under, you little turd,” said the Inquisitor.

The cross-under? That was a long long long longhhhh... way way away, and Pumpkin’s body felt so weak, his paws rolling one after another after another and hurting, the Inquisitor’s grip on him painful and the trees swaying by and behind him and he reaching out his paws to hold on, to stop, to try to rest, just for a moment so his eyes could close and free his head from such pain and confusion.

“Rest, Brother Pumpkin, rest...”

A great grey sky loomed up from between the trees ahead, and the ground fell away into the Pastures, which went down and down and down to the cross-under, dark and dripping wet and cold. Probably something frightening was huddled and bloody there. Oh! Had poor Drubbins been driven to kill himself? Had he stanced in the path of a roaring owl rather than face the Newborn Inquisitors?

“Rest, mole, no need...”

How good the voice of the first Inquisitor sounded, almost like a friend, and his touch, which had replaced that of Barre, instead of being a pulling, savage grip, was support, all gentle, kindly and alluring. He could say yes to a mole like Fetter now. Ah, then, was that how the Inquisitors worked – one nice, another vile?

“Rest...” Fetter’s voice said hypnotically somewhere above Pumpkin.

Rest... and the grassy slopes down below fell away because he did not need to go down them but was allowed to stop, to remain here at the edge of the Wood. Pumpkin felt like crying with relief because there was no need to go to the cross-under, no need to see whatever dark thing was there, no need.

“Well, mole?” It was Brother Fetter again, firm and sure of himself. Pumpkin strove to open his eyes and saw a mole, grey and vile violet in the bright light of day. “What do you see?”

Pumpkin blinked, looked again and widened in shock at what they saw – Drubbins, dead. His mouth was set open, the teeth worn and stained, the snout violet, like a bruise, and the eyes red, puffy and only half-closed.

“And is it the Elder Drubbins?”

There is a quality of decency that brute malevolence cannot recognize, for if it did it would wither into something weaker, and a little better. A decency that is simply a powerful sense of what is right and what is wrong, which is so ingrained in some moles” hearts that it is as integral as the innermost growth rings in a mature oak tree.

Pumpkin stared at Drubbins” corpse and knew it was wrong, quite wrong that he had to do so like this; wrong, all of it; wrong, these moles. Wrong! He had been breaking down, but now he was made strong once more by the wrongness of what they tried to do to him. He stared at poor Drubbins and saw the marks of taloning to his chest and wondered what it was in moledom that could make trees as beautiful as those that rose up above them all, whose roots curved out and wound along the ground, the bark grey, the lichen shining green, yet could also make a mole die as Drubbins had; and moles like these... these nothings, who were seeking to bully and break him too.

That sense of decency arose in good Pumpkin’s heart and mind, and tears came to his eyes to see such an elder as Drubbins brought to such an end.

“Well, Brother Pumpkin, and why did you do this?”

“Brother” Pumpkin shook his head slowly and lopsidedly, because he wanted to seem stupid, and frightened, and confused, but what he was doing was quietly and most clearly saying farewell to Drubbins on behalf of Duncton Wood and its community, and commending a mole who had given so much to his fellow moles, to the Silence and everlasting sanctuary of the Stone.

“Did talk to him,” said Pumpkin at last, as pathetically and weakly as he could. He was surprised to feel pity for these moles; pity that they should lead such evil, pointless lives. They could not, they must
never
win their war against the followers of the Stone.

“Did he tell you about Stour?” said the Inquisitor. How soft and gentle his voice now, and how eager, too eager.

“Master Librarian Stour,” said Pumpkin, as a librarian’s aide would.

“Yes, Brother, Master Stour. Well?”

“Drubbins said he had been frightened when he talked to you. He told me my master had gone to Caradoc and left Sturne in charge...”

Pumpkin blathered on, telling things which were true, the kind of things a stupid mole might think Inquisitors would like to hear. He was pleased to notice out of the corner of his downcast, abject eye that the brothers were beginning to look bored, at which point he ended abruptly by saying, “Don’t like Sturne.”

“But as your Acting Master, you will obey him?”

Must,” intoned Pumpkin.

“And us, for the Stone’s well-being in this place?”

“Yes, Brother,” said Pumpkin as eagerly as he could.

But oh dear, oh dear, oh no... his attempt at idiocy seemed not to have worked, for Barre came to him then and gripped him once more, saying words that the others did not gainsay: “I’ll take him down to the Marsh End for final education.” Then Pumpkin did feel fear, deep, deep fear, and all began to swirl in darkness once again as he was taken unresisting away from the Wood’s bright edge, away from that body, to start downslope towards the misty and dreadful Marsh End where Fieldfare had so nearly been lost to the High Wood for ever.

Then suddenly a different voice spoke out: “Brothers, I heard you might be here. I would suggest
this
mole stays with us. We have need for skilled Library Aides if the Stone’s work in the Library is to be completed by Longest Night.”

Pumpkin knew the voice but in his fright and further confusion at being stopped yet again he could not remember the name. He opened his eyes and found himself staring into the chill regard of Keeper Sturne. There was a look of contempt on Sturne’s face.

“Wanth to workh in Library,” said Pumpkin, “thash all.”

“If you say so. Brother Sturne,” said Barre, almost hurling

Pumpkin from his grasp. “But I don’t trust moles like him. Alien spirits can rise again. The snake in the doubting heart is hard to dislodge.”

“I shall watch him with due care,” said Sturne, “and when his task is done I agree that it will be well if he is educated in Newborn ways.”

“Yesh,” said Pumpkin, relief flowing into him, and feeling that saying something positive might help; “educaishe me ash mush as yewh ligh.”

“He’s ill anyway,” said Sturne. “Perhaps you can detail one of the Brothers to take him back to his quarters until he is fit to serve our cause in the Library.”

“Yesh, yesh,” said Pumpkin, slumping on the ground before Sturne. Why, despite all, did he feel reassured by Sturne? Just because he had saved him from being taken to the Marsh End, or was it something more?

“Drubbins is dead,” he said, tears pricking at his eyes. But Sturne’s eyes stayed clear, and cold, and quite dispassionate.

“Recover yourself quickly, mole, your skills are needed. We will take it as errant and perverse if you do not report for duty very soon.”

“Oh I will, I will, shurr,” said Pumpkin most eagerly, as Sturne firmly led him away.

The next Pumpkin knew was finding himself huddled and confused on the surface back near his burrow, with an image in his mind of Brother Barre stanced over Drubbins’ body, his eyes blank, black and cold and Pumpkin thinking that it was
he
who had killed Drubbins, definitely, but the Stone was where retribution would be, must be, could only be. Moles must not take punishment of others into their paws, only the Stone could do that. Silence would be
that
mole’s hell.

A few days later – Pumpkin never could remember how many – he woke feeling better, and clearer, and knowing he had been taken to the void, and held over it, and had survived, and would survive now,
must
survive.

“I must go to the Library today, and report for duty to Keeper Sturne,” he said to himself.

So he did, but taking it slowly, for his paws and limbs felt very weak, and the distance to the Library seemed very great. He had never in his life felt so alone, so beset by doubt and fear, as in that journey back to work across the surface of the High Wood.

“Stone, help me do what’s right because I’m not the strong mole you seem to think I am. I’m just Pumpkin, Library Aide, nothing more at all than that. So if you’re going to put hard tasks my way give me support, show me how to be strong.”

How modest was Pumpkin’s prayer, how full of humility, how
Pumpkinish.

“
I’ve been ill, Keeper Sturne,” he said, when he finally dragged himself down into the Library’s Main Chamber.

“I can see
that,
mole,” said Sturne, staring at him almost without expression before giving him the briefest of smiles.

Wait a moment, thought Pumpkin to himself.
Almost without expression;
that was how Sturne looked. Which meant there was
something
in his expression, something good, something hopeful. Now that
was
a strange thing, for that little bit of Sturne’s response that was not cold and expressionless was... sympathetic. Then insight came to him. “He’s all right,” thought Pumpkin, in utter astonishment. “Sturne’s
all right.
Sturne’s
not
Newborn. Sturne’s strong, like Stour. Sturne
knows.”

Such was his relief at this so-welcome discovery that poor Pumpkin, overwrought as he had been by the dreadful events of the days past which had left him feeling so isolated and weak, could not help himself at all, but cried with relief

“You’ll work just half the day, I don’t want you damaging texts,” said Sturne coldly. Oh, but how welcome that coldness was to Pumpkin! Yes, yes, yes! He knew Sturne was putting on a show, an incredible, wonderful, brave, courageous show. And for whom? Out of the shadows came Brother Inquisitor Fetter, staring. For
him,
then. For
them.
For all the Newborns in moledom. Sturne was being a true, brave, good Duncton mole, and he, Pumpkin, must do all he could to help. This was the way the Stone was answering his recent and desperate prayer – not giving
him
support, but telling him
he
must give support. Here was surely the greatest task a Duncton library aide could ever be asked to perform! Pumpkin wept all the more, and could only hope that his pathetic tears would be misinterpreted as those of a weak mole, so cowed that he would be obedience itself to any Newborn command.

“Stop crying, mole,” ordered Fetter irritably.

“Yes, Brother,” replied Pumpkin meekly, sniffing back his tears and trying to control his gulps as he turned away to find a task.

“He’s surely on the way to being one of us,” he heard the Brother Inquisitor mutter to Sturne.

“Yes,” Sturne replied coldly, “he’ll be one of us, and I am sure we shall be able to trust him to be malleable.”

“‘One of us’!” declared Pumpkin to himself. “I certainly am, and so intend to stay. One of the resistance, that’s me!”

He began to weep again with relief and joy to know that out of death and darkness and illness had come this clear answer to his prayer, this light of companionable conspiracy, which now shone bright and showed him the way ahead.

“And where does the way ahead lead in the near future?” he thought to himself, as he stumbled and sniffled his way about his tasks. “I think I know, I think Keeper Sturne has told me. For did he not say when he rescued me from the Inquisitors over on the Eastside – for rescue that certainly was! – that the tasks here must be completed by Longest Night. Which, if that is so, means that something must be happening in our system then, something to do with the Newborns. Yes, yes! I may not be a strong mole, or a fighting mole, or a mole of action, but I, Pumpkin, library aide, will do what I can to help now, during and after Longest Night!”

So he urged himself on that first day back at his duties, and humble and insignificant though he may have seemed to anymole spying on him, as the Brother Inquisitor certainly was, the Newborns now had in him, as already in Keeper Sturne, a formidable opponent in their very midst.