Duncton Rising (28 page)

“‘Our pups: what will become of them? The sisters say that only the males may live, to be trained as brothers in the Creed. But the females! Tell me they shall be safe – that you shall see to it.’

“‘There can be no favour,’ were his terrible words, and I knew he had begun to retreat from me. Desperate suddenly to save the lives of my unborn pups I pointed at where I had scribed the names I dreamt they might have.

“‘Look!’ I beseeched him, ‘and ken their names: Loosestrife, that’s my favourite —’

“‘No! No you must not
say
their names,’ he cried out, the names seeming to bring to reality the pups he had made in me.

“‘But...!’ I protested.

“How strange males seem! How much mystery there is for a female in their desires and moods!”

Privet was suddenly smiling again, her eyes alight with a final memory, yet shyness was there too.

“The only way he could think of stopping me saying their names was to grab me, and he did it with a laugh, and despite my protests – feeble and affectionate as they were – he took me one last time, but not in lust, I was too heavy with pup for that! Oh dear, Whillan, am I really telling you, of all moles, these things?”

“You are, madam, or so it seems,” said Weeth, “and you cannot stop now.” And nor did Privet try.

“Well then, he clasped me to him in a pleasant cumbersome sort of way and we, and I suppose I must include the pups as well, made a kind of love, a welcome and farewell kind during which I remember he said, ‘You have shown me happiness, mole, a thing I thought would elude me for ever; I see I cannot grasp and hold it, and that I should not try.’

“Then we slept in each other’s paws, as I had never slept with Rooster, though I had often dreamed of doing so. The sleep of those who have for a time given themselves to each other and, abandoned, let the tide of unconsciousness flow over them, and then ebb away again. When I woke day had come, and he had gone, and I was left alone to wonder what the night had meant, and why it provoked in me thoughts not of fear, nor of consequences to my pups, but of all things,
of all things,
of Silence, and my quest, so long forgotten, after the nature of the Book of Silence. In the stillness and solitude that followed I spoke a prayer for him I have sometimes spoken since: ‘Stone, guide him, and bring him to thy Light and Silence safeguarded.’

“I said that from this time Blagrove Slide became a hell for me, and so it did. But from that time as well, and the saying of that prayer, which might speak for all moles that wander confused and in darkness, I felt that I was beginning the long trek back to light again; in ray own way, I had become finally newborn!”

“Yes, but what mole was he, madam?” asked Weeth, beside himself with curiosity. “Did you not think to ask him?”

Privet shrugged. “He was a mole like me who dared make himself open and vulnerable before the Stone. His name would have made no difference to that. But I pray that one day I might meet him again in better circumstances.”

“And if you had the choice,” said Whillan suddenly, “which would you choose to meet: your Brother Confessor or Rooster?”

Privet stared at him, suddenly still, as if the thought of never meeting either of them had never occurred to her. Then slow tears came to her eyes and rolled down her face and all of them felt how great her loss had been. She would not – would never – answer such a question, because deep in her heart she felt that the Stone could not in its wisdom impose such a choice on any mole. Or could it?

“It is in how a mole faces her suffering that the way towards her discovery of the Book of Silence may lie,” she said, and she smiled at Whillan, sun across a winter landscape, and she could smile because she had been loved. “I never lost either of those moles, but for a time we have lost sight of one another – they and I, and the moles of moledom too.”

Chapter Thirteen

Privet’s pups were born soon after this meeting with her Brother Confessor, and without difficulty. There were four, as she had expected, but her hopes regarding their sex were not quite fulfilled – they were three females and only one male.

“For the first few hours afterwards I lived in helpless fear, expecting moles to come at any moment and take the females from me. But that did not happen, and after some sleep, and some food which the Brother Assistant had earlier laid just beyond my portal, I felt better.

“My time was so taken up with tending to the tiny things, cleaning them and suckling them, that I was lost in my own little world, and my fears receded, almost as if they lay beyond the portal and would not disturb me. The pups grew well, and began to crawl here and there as I suppose pups will, and I grew to love each one and began to see that each was different in some way. One lively and loud, one serious, one small and quiet, whilst the male, though no bigger than his sisters at that stage, was more inquisitive and exploring, and as the days went by more ready to push the others out of his way to reach my teats. But all were mine, and I loved them all.

“I was aware some days later that I was watched one night, and I guessed that it was my Brother Confessor – his Assistant had also dared to poke his snout around the portal once or twice, though he had been so intimidated earlier that he said nothing. But at least he gave me a quiet smile when I thanked him for what he had tried to do, though he answered none of my questions. Still there were no threats, and I began to fall into a dangerous and complacent state, believing that the rumours about females being taken away were untrue, and that somehow my Brother Confessor had taken pity on our pups, if not on me. What was to happen to me afterwards I did not even think about.

“The days passed, and my pups were beginning to take pieces of chewed worm as well as milk, and even, as it seemed to me, to answer to the names I had given them. Their eyes had long since opened, and they gazed on me so brightly, so full of trust, and dabbed at each other with their soft weak paws, and pushed and shoved, and began to play, or frowned as they struggled to climb over each other, and over me...”

Privet paused and smiled, and Weeth nodded and sighed, thinking of times of pupping he had heard of But then shadows came back to Privet’s face, and a drawn, defeated look.

“It was after my pups were weaned that they came at night, the moles who took them. Three females, one of whom I knew well – she was that same informer I had met at the beginning of my stay at Blagrove Slide, made senior now. Two held me, and the third took up my pups one by one. I screamed, my pups bleated, the females cursed me in the Stone’s name as a reprobate and transgressor, and then they were gone, and I was alone.

“I tried to chase after them but the Brother Assistant came to the portal and blocked my way. My friend had become my foe.

“‘You cannot follow where they are going. Sister Crowden,’ he said, ‘and it is best you do not try.’ I screamed and cried and beat him, and hit him, but he held me back, as gently as he could, saying again and again it was for the best, and that I could never understand.

“‘They even took the male pup!’ I shouted, grasping at some semblance of justice, as if taking the females was all right, but the male...

“‘They took
him,
especially,’ said the Brother Assistant. When I demanded to know what he meant he did not reply, as if he had said more than he should. I did not understand his meaning then, and I do not now.

“I turned back from the futility of fighting and arguing and retreated into my own loss; my pain as well, for though the pups were weaned my teats were swelling and taut. I cannot describe the numbing grief I felt as the night continued, so quiet, so normal; my world had been taken from me, and I was powerless to help my pups. That night I journeyed into a darkness and beyond, and saw myself as I was, a trapped mole who had failed her pups and herself. Yet I dared to think again. I dared whisper to myself that there was no Stone!

“Dawn came and I turned to the wall of what I now knew to be my cell, and defiantly I began to scribe the names of all the moles I had ever known, one after another, after another. Wort, Rooster, Hamble, Shire, Lime... and when for a moment my memory of moles failed me, I scribed the names of places I had been. I screamed and shouted the words that I scribed down and the Brother Assistant came briefly to watch and then went away again. I did not care.

“By that scribing on the wall of my cell I repossessed my past and brought it to my present. The last words I scribed were the names I had given my four pups, names I held more dear than any I had scribed, names I have never spoken from that day – but for sweet Loosestrife, which I spoke to you just now. Oh, they were the names of life I made and lost.”

Privet stared at her paws, her mouth trembling before she looked up once again.

“By scribing the names of moles I had known and loved I was delving them into existence as Rooster had taught me to, and thereby informing the Stone that they
were,
because they were something of me, and I was alive. My pups
were,
and nomole, no faith had the right to take them from me. I felt that by scribing their names I was protecting them, as also I was protecting those other living moles I loved, like Hamble and Rooster, and even Lime, even her. I felt too that in those moments of scribing I was using almost the last of the strength that had kept me alive so long. It was as if the Stone had allowed me to conserve something of my true self for a final moment of trial and effort, and that there and then that moment was about to be.”

“Will you tell us what all their names were?” asked Whillan. “It is as if they are part of my past too, the shadow siblings who were with me when you reared me.”

Privet turned, and speaking as if to him alone she said, “My dear, when you were very young, too young to know what it was I said to you, I used sometimes to speak their names, imagining for a moment you were they. Just for a moment... The smallest of the females, the one the least likely to survive, was Brimmel, which is the Whernish name for brambles such as those that grew down by Crowden Lake. I had shared happy times with Hamble there in the autumn, when their shiny leaves turned red. Her two sisters I named Sampion and Loosestrife, and I confess that Loosestrife
was
my favourite, don’t ask me why. But she had a way with her, she was the one in whom I put all my dreams and hopes of living life differently and better than I had done, with more courage and more joy.

“Pups are all different, Whillan, even when so young, as one day you will find if the Stone blesses you with them.”

“And the male pup?” asked Whillan.

“I never could find a proper name for him,” she said, “not a name worth having. I think I was intimidated by the knowledge that of them all he was the only one likely to survive, even if it was as a Newborn brother. I used to call him Mumble, and that was the name I scribed on the wall. He used to mutter and mumble to himself in an endearing kind of way as he pushed and shoved his way about, and perhaps his sturdiness, which contrasted with his sisters, reminded me of Hamble, and so “Mumble” came readily to me.”

“‘Mumble,’” repeated Whillan, almost with embarrassment, as if greeting a mole he had heard a great deal of but had never met before. “And Brimmel, and Sampion, and Loosestrife.”

“Yes, they were my pups,” said Privet steadily, “and then they were taken for ever from me.”

It seemed that by speaking the names aloud that dawn Privet had allowed her pups to be real once more, however brief and anonymous their lives had been.

“They’re good names,” said Maple.

“Are they?” whispered Privet with real delight.

“They are!” said Weeth, his eyes brimming with tears for what might have been.

“Well, well...” said Privet, sighing and struggling to control her emotions. “What happened next? Yes, it was then that
he
came to the portal of my cell, summoned by the Brother Assistant no doubt, and as I turned and faced him I saw his eyes were on my scribing, with the same appalled horror as before.

“‘Where are our pups?’ I shouted at him, quite hysterical.

“He winced at my use of the word ‘our’ as if he wanted to deny that
we
had a part in them.

“‘What is this?’ he said, ignoring my question and advancing on my scribing.

“‘They are the names of moles and places that I love,’ I said, adding as a deliberate provocation, ‘and if
you
can ken, then you will find the names of our four pups at the end.’

“‘I can ken,’ he said sharply, and I understood in that moment that he was a mole to whom pride was important.

“‘Then ken,’ I challenged.

“He hesitated between the ignominy of obeying a suggestion made by a female, even if she was one to whom he had dropped his guard for a time, and appearing a fraud if he did not show he could understand what I had scribed.

“He raised his paws to the wall and following my scribing with his paws. He did it very quickly, like a mole well used to scribing, and he did not go over the same markings twice. He turned to me and to my astonishment repeated what I had scribed name by name, like liturgy he had learned by rote.

“‘Hamble, Rooster, Wort...’ until he reached the last of all that I had scribed, ‘Loosestrife.’ Then he went back to Wort.

“‘Wort?’ he said. ‘The Eldrene Wort?’

“How I was tempted to tell him who I was, the one thing I had not told, and what that made his pups, but even in my anger I knew it would endanger even the male pup’s life. Such progeny as that would not be acceptable to so dogmatic a mole of the Stone. So I remained silent, and a flash of anger crossed his face, and then pity, as brothers often responded when sisters had transgressed. It is a look that turns a sister into something less than mole.

“‘The last four names you spoke are the names of our pups,’ I said at last, ‘and you have taken them.’

“‘I have taken nothing. You have given them up to the Stone.’

“‘You have taken them from me, and their lives are now your responsibility. If you let them die, in body or in spirit, you are nomole of the Stone, for you kill something of yourself.’