Duncton Rising (46 page)

Weeth did not, could not, notice that Hamble had retreated a little, and in his worn lined face was a look not quite of respect or trust so much as hope and conviction, as if he saw in Weeth a new direction, a new possibility – even, dare he say it, a new opportunity.

“... and I do not appreciate being raised off my paws by anymole and made to look a fool – least of all by...”

And here, having regained his poise, he paused to give what he was about to say the greatest possible impact.

“... least of all by Rooster of the Charnel, son of Samphire, one-time friend of Glee and Humlock, a mole who lived on Hilbert’s Top with Privet (a mole I would have thought would not have spent five minutes with one who grabs others by the throat and humiliates them), and scourge of the Newborns in the north;
least of all
by a Master of the Delve.”

If Weeth had calculated that this title was the one thing that Rooster could not bear others to use, that his friends avoided and his enemies did not repeat to his face if they wished to stay alive, he was right; if, too, he had guessed in his acute intelligent way that it was the quickest way to reach through the brooding taciturnity of the Charnel mole to the heart beyond, he was right in that as well, though the consequences he could not have predicted.

For Rooster reared up from where he stanced, his rough russet fur angrily catching what little light there was, and his brute, furrowed snout flaring as his mouth opened and his eyes seemed to flame red and angry, and he raised his paws over Weeth’s head.

But Weeth went resolutely on down the dangerous tunnel into which he had so suddenly and boldly entered, and daring to point a paw at Rooster he said, “You want to know about Privet? You want to know about her life since she left you? You want to know about the Newborn threat and what may happen here, this very night perhaps, in Caer Caradoc? Then you must trust me,
believe
me. But by the Stone, I ask myself why I should trust
you.
A Master of the Delve who dares threaten a mole with violence? What horror is this? Well, mole, I shall be silent on those things about which I know you wish me to speak until you decide for yourself whether or not I am a spy for the cursed Newborns. And how will you decide? Let me tell you...”

To the astonishment of the moles watching Weeth dared turn his back on the huge and smouldering Rooster and go to the far side of the chamber where some light cast itself on the rough hard wall. To this he raised a paw and in a swift untidy motion sketched out a scribing of a kind. It was not much, yet it had a certain form, and to Weeth it had meaning.

“I may not be able to scribe much,” he said, turning toward Rooster once more, “but I can scribe my name. There it is.
You
’re a trained Master of the Delve, so they say, so ken it as a Master would, and pronounce as Privet did without recourse to stratagems and tricks what kind of mole I may be.”

There was stunned silence at this, and Weeth stanced to one side to let Rooster go forward to the wall. But Rooster did not move. He lowered his paws, staring confusedly at Weeth in strange fear and incomprehension.

“Can’t,” he said at last, looking round wildly. “Haven’t ever since.
Can’t.”

There was a lost pup in that cry, a desolate soul, terrible loneliness of spirit; the mood in the chamber changed to one of despair, sympathy, and pity to see a mole exposed so publicly to something all there must have known, as Weeth did, he had for so long been afraid to face.

It was Hamble who moved, good Hamble who had known and loved Privet so well when they were young, and whose scarred and worn body now testified that he had stanced flank to flank with Rooster through these long years of fugitive desolation as truly as the truest friend.

He put a paw to Rooster’s shoulder, and his head close to Rooster’s lowered snout, and said, “It’s a fair thing this mole has asked and if you can’t ken the scribing for yourself, ken it for me, for I would like to hear something of Privet’s life if this mole can tell it. And he’s not going to talk until you do.”

Rooster looked up at the scribing, and then at Weeth. “Tell what you know. Can’t ken the scribing. But trust you without.”

For a moment it seemed that Weeth, having made his point, would be satisfied with that, and he even opened his mouth to speak, and began to smile as if to say, “Another time, ken it another time.” But then he saw an appeal in Hamble’s eyes, and sensed a need in these moles that Rooster still led, and he shook his head and said, “You were a Master once, so just for a moment be a Master once again. My scribing is a simple thing which will tell you more than all the protestations of my innocence of spying ever could.”

Cornered, Rooster stared and shook his head and his paws fretted. “Is Privet happy?” he said at last.

Weeth was silent.

“Privet safe?” whispered poor Rooster.

Weeth stanced down calmly and sighed.

“Need to know,” said Rooster desperately.

“You know what to do,” said Weeth.

Then Rooster, moving like an aged, ailing mole, each paw reluctant, and his breathing heavy and almost painful, moved slowly towards the wall. When he reached it he stared at the scribing, almost as if scenting it.

“Can’t,” he said, hopeful that he might not have to even at the end.

“Must,” said Weeth, “and will.”

Rooster raised a paw, the same he had used to pick up Weeth, and so slowly it was painful to see he brought it across the scribing. As he touched it his breathing eased and his head cocked to one side as if, somewhere from afar, he had heard a sound he recognized, but did not expect to hear. Indeed he half looked round somewhere into the high recesses of the chamber and others followed his wild gaze and peered fearfully into the shadows. But there was nothing, or nothing to see at least. But as he touched Weeth’s scribing a slight sound came, distant and gentle, perhaps no more than a trick of surface wind, but
something,
and it was good and sweet, and it was not captive at all.

He turned back with more resolution to the scribing and most gently, and with the utmost concentration, followed its form across the wall, not once but twice, with one paw and then the other. As he did so the sound across the chamber seemed to swell just a little, and there came to his stance, to his whole body, a kind of peace, as of a mole who has journeyed far, and lost much, but who now has caught a glimpse across the hills of a place that he once called home and might yet reach again.

For a moment more Rooster leaned against the wall, both paws on Weeth’s scribing, and his body shook in what, judging from the soft puppish sound he made, was surely a sob. Then he drew back and lowered first one paw and then the other and turned to Weeth. There was the dark and glittering course of a tear down his face-fur.

“This mole’s not bad, mole’s good,” he said. “Loving mole. Mole’s all right.”

Weeth stared into Rooster’s eyes and for the first time he saw the mole that Privet had loved, and he understood why these other moles had followed him so far, and why Hamble of Crowden, surely a leader, had allowed himself to be led so long. Within this great strange body, this near-monstrosity of a mole, whose eyes were askew, whose paws were gross, Weeth sensed the gentlest soul he had ever known.

“Privet,” said Rooster simply. “Have missed her all my life. Will tell me now?”

“Yes,” said Weeth, his voice shaking with emotion, “I will tell you all I can.”

So he did, to the best of his ability; all that morning, as Rooster and Hamble and their colleagues clustered about him, he told them what he himself had been told on the way from the High Wolds to Caradoc. That done, he explained that Privet, Maple, Whillan and the others were close at paw and likely to be in increasing danger as the time passed towards Longest Night.

Their circumstances, and the reason for their coming to Caer Caradoc, he very soon explained, then spent more time, as Rooster wished him to, on matters to do with Privet, and those parts of her tale that he had been told during the journey. Again and again Rooster asked if Privet was “happy” and “content’, and had she mentioned him and matters relating to him and, if she had, what she had said. Weeth had no hesitation in enlightening him as best he could, and soon found his slightest recollection of incidents along the route from the High Wolds, such as they were, and things she had said – for which his memory was as good as his respect was great – had Rooster and Hamble utterly absorbed.

But one matter in which Rooster was not in the slightest bit interested, and indeed frowned and turned away when it was mentioned, was that of Privet’s rearing of Whillan. When Weeth first mentioned him Rooster assumed that Whillan was Privet’s natural pup, and his jealousy was obvious, but even when it was explained that he was merely raised by her, having been adopted, his disgruntlement continued, for like all moles that harbour romantic love for some mole they have not seen since they were young, he could not bear to think that she might have loved, or been loved by, another, even if it be a foster pup.

Weeth’s task was made yet harder on this point because of the knowledge he had gained from Privet herself concerning her bearing of pups in Blagrove Slide to a Newborn, but this his natural tact and good sense prevented him from mentioning at all. Seeing Rooster’s response now he was glad he had been reticent, and said little more of Whillan either after that.

Of matters to do with the Newborns it was plain that Rooster and the others were as well informed as Weeth himself, and their information concurred with his that the situation had reached a critical pass and if moles wished to be involved in the forming of a freer moledom, and one that did not give the heavy dogmatic paw of the Newborns total power, they had best not be confined in a deep, dark chamber. All that he said served to engender in Rooster a great restlessness and concern, and when Weeth reached the end of his tale and told how he and Privet had been parted only shortly before he had been led down to the cell Rooster was nearly beside himself with anxiety to get out and help her.

Not that Weeth was fool enough to think that they had not already considered every possible way of escape, and found that there seemed to be none. But to Weeth “seemed” was the operative word, holding as it did the promise that there might, just might, be a way of escape they had missed if a mole could but find it.

His tale done, and with a promise from Rooster and Hamble that they would reciprocate with a telling of their tale since Privet had left the Moors, Weeth took a turn about the chamber to see if escape was really as impossible as his new friends said. He found the walls solid and impossible to burrow, and the portal cleverly designed such that its bottom part was so narrow that only one mole at a time could pass through, and that with difficulty. The walls sloped outward above paw height to accommodate a mole’s body, and had been cleverly devised to make it possible for a single guard to control access; with two or three talon-thrusts he could immobilize any mole trying to pass through, and so block the passage of any behind him.

“That’s certainly the only escape route,” Weeth agreed after making his inspection, “but it’s not unlike the design of a portal in a cell I was once thrown into for a time in a system over near the Wolds. I pondered long and hard about that and a couple of possibilities did occur to me, though...” His voice faded as his thoughts and gaze drifted back to the portal. “I really wanted to hear your tale, but let me just have another look... do moles ever go in and out, for grooming perhaps? And how do they provide you with food?”

“We are allowed out singly for a short time to the chamber beyond and thence to the surface if necessary, and we’ve all thought of trying to escape that way,” explained Hamble. “But we are very heavily guarded and there is little chance of it – and what is more an attempt to escape is dealt with harshly. We have been told that one who tried, not one of our own, died. Sometimes moles are summoned out for questioning or some other purpose, or sent in to join our number – more in, perhaps because they’re getting vagrant moles like yourself who might cause trouble out of the way before the Convocation starts. Food is brought to the portal and pushed in. What ideas for escape did you have during your previous captivity?”

Weeth smiled enigmatically and said nothing, going back to the portal for a time and watching the company of guardmoles beyond, at least two of whom were always on duty at the far end of the portal. During that time one mole was brought into the chamber and Weeth intently watched as he was led to the portal and shoved through it.

“See an opportunity?” asked one of the Rooster moles ironically, when he came back.

“Yes, but one which depends on the mole coming in, a certain kind of mole,” replied Weeth. “But that is outside our control. Nevertheless I shall watch and continue to think. Meanwhile, you were going to tell me how you came to be incarcerated here, right from the beginning.”

Which they did throughout the afternoon, stopping only when Weeth, with a polite nod, turned from them to observe the comings and goings at the portal until, bit by bit, his expression suggested that he might possibly have devised a plan.

But when they asked what it was he only said, “No, no, not yet, not yet! Continue – your tale is so interesting and you appear to be so near the end.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

The sense of foreboding that Chater had begun to feel on his arrival as a captive so near to Caer Caradoc naturally deepened as he found himself being led away into grim tunnels on the afternoon before Longest Night, and was not helped at all by the sharp and sudden sense that far off, somewhere near Uffington, his beloved Fieldfare was thinking of him. He had never in his life been the kind of mole subject to strange fancies, nor one who gave much credence to premonitions or those inexplicable communions between moles who love each other but have been forced far apart by their tasks in the Stone. But the feeling that Fieldfare was nearby in spirit – so near, indeed, that he half expected to meet her round the next corner of the grim tunnel he was being forced down – would not go away, and added considerably to his belief that something extraordinary and final was apaw, and that it would be part of his task to confront it.