Duncton Rising (52 page)

There was about the way Thripp was speaking a strange, almost inspired directness, which gave Whillan the sense that he was being taken into the confidence of a great mole and being spoken to of great things. Even more did Whillan understand why others had followed Thripp so long.

“My dream or vision of Duncton came at a time when I was beginning to learn that a mole cannot order and control the spiritual hearts of other moles as I, Thripp of Blagrove Slide, had thought I could. Already attacks were being made on the system I had established, and certain moles, wiser than I in the ways of evil and manipulation, were gaining power. This you must know. It is common knowledge.

“I decided to send my son Chervil to your system, as much for his own protection from moles like Brother Quail as for him to learn something of the place to which I believed I must finally go. I understand that he lived in what you Duncton moles call the Marsh End.”

“Yes, he did,” said Whillan.

“He has told me much of your ways and system of faith and though, unfortunately, he was too well reared by me in the Caradocian Order’s ways – Brother Quail was his mentor for a time – to admit to the possibility that there may be better ways of doing things, yet I detect in his recent report to me of Duncton that he is beginning to see things about Duncton’s way which he likes.”

For the first time a glimmer of a smile passed across Thripp’s face. Whillan could scarcely believe what he was hearing, not only because of the sense of confidentiality that grew with each moment, but because here was the mole who more than any other had created the infamous Caradocian Order actually suggesting there might be alternatives to its sectarian view of things. But thinking is one thing, feeling another, and despite all reason, all logic to the contrary, Whillan could not help being drawn to this extraordinary mole, and felt himself giving up something to him as he spoke on.

“Now, I understand your mother is Privet.”

“Adoptive mother,” said Whillan.

For an instant Thripp said nothing, but only stared, perhaps to analyse Whillan’s prompt correction, and to tell himself, rightly, that this was something the Duncton mole was still sensitive about.

“Privet appears to be a remarkable mole,” said Thripp.

“Yes,” said Whillan, suddenly cautious and protective. Thripp stared into his eyes and Whillan looked away, eager to find something to talk about,
anything
which might fill the gap between him and the Newborn leader.

“Tell me,” said Thripp at last, “how would you describe the “Duncton” way.”

This was something Whillan felt he could talk about, and he willingly began to do so, surprised at his own eagerness as he told Thripp about his home system. There was pride and passion in his words, and it was part of Thripp’s power with moles that he gave them the sense that they had not only his full attention, but full understanding and sympathy. So Whillan talked, and talked a long time, until he discovered at the end there was longing in his words, a longing to return home.

“But not yet?” prompted Thripp.

“No, no,” said Whillan, speaking now as if to an old friend, “I must travel a bit more, and see something of moledom. That’s what Keeper Husk, the mole I mentioned earlier, told me I must do and I will, I will.”

“Your journey began a good time ago, I think,” said Thripp, “and it brings you here tonight to talk as we have done. Indeed, Caer Caradoc, this night and tomorrow, which is Longest Night, is a place of many meetings. Here is a confusion from which will come a new clarity. Here is evil and light. Here the dark progress of a mole with a vision born in Blagrove Slide turns towards light, as the seasons turn on Longest Night. When you are old you will be able to say to your young kin, ‘I was there, I talked with Thripp and he with me. He trusted me with his confidence.’”

Whillan stared at the moonlit mole, wondering at the glistening that he seemed to see in the leader’s deep-set eyes. Wondering too at how Thripp spoke words like “journey” and “talk’, investing them with qualities of length and depth far beyond what they could surely have. Or
could
they?

“Tell them, Whillan of Duncton, that I saw the need for change, and in a meeting with a young mole of Duncton Wood, I began to see the means by which it might be achieved. Tell them what you
think
you saw, and one day you may
know
what you saw.

“But tell me...” and his eyes softened, his voice grew gentle, he looked suddenly alert, “... how is... tell me of Privet.”

“Privet?” repeated Whillan, rather surprised. Had he not already spoken of her in what he had so freely said?

“Privet,” said Thripp, “your adoptive mother. Is she the great scholar and traveller moles say she is?”

“I’m not sure,” faltered Whillan, who knew her best as the mole who had raised him, and saw her mainly in that light. “She is a scribemole before all else. Before even being a mother... or adoptive mother rather. I expect she’ll scribe of these times one day.”

“You are sure she will survive,” said Thripp quietly – it was a statement, but Whillan, nervous perhaps, inexperienced as yet, not fully aware what Thripp had really said to him, and was trying to convey, took it as a question.

“Of course she will!” he said fiercely.

“She will if moles hear her,” said Thripp gently, reaching out a thin paw to touch Whillan, and still him. “There are those who would give up the world to have been reared by that mole, as you were. The Stone was in your coming to Duncton as you did. It will be in your return.”

But even before Thripp turned from him to signal to the old mole to come over to them, and the interview was over, Whillan was asking himself exactly what he had “seen’, and why he had the feeling that Thripp had seen a great deal more than he had, and knew much of the present and the future that he was not disclosing. At the same time, to add to Whillan’s confusion, he recognized that in what Thripp had said was the arrogance of a mole who had enjoyed power and felt he had lost it; but beyond that, and this was a final attraction in the mole, was the fact that despite everything, despite his illness, Thripp was still struggling towards a right way, and seeking to cast off a wrong one.

“Of course,” said Thripp, suddenly turning back to Whillan, and interrupting his thoughts, “it all depends now on Chervil. We must hope that others see the fight. My days of influence are nearly over, if not already entirely so. The mole who once led much of moledom with his ideas can now count his true followers on the talons of one paw.”

He ruefully indicated the three old moles who attended him. “If Chervil goes the way Brother Quail wishes him to, then it has been in vain. If he turns the new reformed way, then there is a kind of hope. It is, in the end, about Silence. But where will we find that? I have failed to lead moles to it, so what mole can? I have been praying this night that such a mole will come forward.”

Whillan was reminded of the old guide’s comment about Thripp always searching for a mole who might treat him normally and unaccountably felt that in his heart Thripp hoped these two different moles, if they ever existed, might be one.

Thripp was staring at him in that penetrating way again as if he could read his thoughts.

“Sometimes we meet moles too soon,” he said, “and do not know what it is we let go on by. Remember that and be warned, Whillan: I have lost moles I did not even know I loved, and I would give anything to have them again at my flank that I might tell them that I loved them. Be warned, be watchful, lest such regrets come one day to you.”

Thripp looked suddenly weary, and the shaking that he had displayed when they had first seen him returned; his friends came to him, and tended him prefatory to helping him to some underground place where he might rest, and await the beginning of the Convocation.

“Do as my colleagues tell you, Whillan,” commanded Thripp finally, before he was led away. “And when you travel on, as you will, remember that it is the journey into moles’ hearts that matters more than the journey to strange or memorable places. Seek out moles’ hearts and listen to them, and you’ll not have regrets. And, mole...” Thripp waved a paw to call Whillan to him again, and with a glance he directed his helpers to retreat for a moment longer. “When you have no other place to go, when all seems bleak and dark, when despair descends, then, mole, there is somewhere you might go...”

Thripp’s eyes lightened again, and that simple and wonderful smile returned briefly to his face.

“Where?” asked Whillan almost desperately. He felt he had never wanted a question answered so much in his life.

“Oh, yes, I want to say its name. But... it has taken me these long years to learn that I cannot make another see the visions that I see. They have their own, and a mole cannot direct them as he wishes. But for you there is a place... remember me when all seems lost, remember my paw on yours. Pray to the Stone, trust it, and it will tell you where to go, and what to find; it will teach you what to do. Your journey to that place began so long ago – before I, or Privet, or any other mole, even guessed there might one day be a need for a mole to make it. You’ll get there, you’ll find comfort beyond the darkness...” Thripp withdrew his paw, and retreated again to the shadows and was gone.

“Will I?” said Whillan, himself returning to the shadows on the other side of the clearing.

The old mole came over to him looking fretful. “That was far too long, far too long. But if he is interested in a mole he gives them time. For some reason he was interested in you. I can’t imagine why, but there we are. Genius has its own way. Now, you and your friend had best wait patiently well out of sight – and pray.”

“You said Privet will come this way?” said Maple, glancing doubtfully towards the steep slope beyond the Stones.

“Brother Rolt will do the best he can, yes. But nothing is certain, nothing. And Chervil has proved so difficult, even intractable! He was not like that as a pup, nor ever before he went to Duncton. That place disturbs a mole.”

“This place disturbs me,” said Maple.

“Well, we have no time for that,” said the mole impatiently. “There are more important matters apaw this night. Yes, there certainly are.”

With that, and enough left frustratingly unsaid for a single night, the so-far anonymous mole turned back to the Stones, and was lost among their shadows, presumably to support what now seemed the failing life and cause of Elder Senior Brother Thripp.

While Whillan mused on the final and strangest impression that Thripp had made on him, which was that the Elder Senior Brother had given him advice which was not only wise and good, but was appropriate as well, such as only a mole who is close kin can give.

“What is it, mole?” whispered Maple later, who knew him so well.

“I feel,” said Whillan quietly, “for the first time in my life, as if I have spoken to a mole who was my own father.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

The calm that had come to Privet when she had first been taken into captivity in Bowdler by the sisters, and which had been replaced somewhat by understandable fears and concerns at the appearance first of Brother Quail, and then from out of her distant past of Brother Holt, returned once more when Quail’s attendants had taken her and Madoc to a different chamber, and told them to wait. A guard was posted at the entrance, and there were others lurking about. “Sister Hope” was instructed to stay with her, and call out for help should it be needed. Quail went off in one direction, Brother Rolt another, and they were told nothing of what was to happen to them.

While Privet took the opportunity to be still, eyes half closed, Madoc was up and about and all of a flibbert for wondering and fearing what was going to happen. But Privet felt that most such worries had long since been dragged from her and sometime recently, very recently indeed, she had begun to let the last ones go. Her calm therefore was deep and comforting, and gave her space to feel for poor Madoc, who could not be expected to be other than she was, which was very worried indeed.

“The Stone is with us, my dear, and will see us right and I... I am sure it will do so before long,” was the best Privet could say.

She had been about to add that she felt she was preparing herself for some major change or event, but since she did not know what it was, or could possibly be, the thought would have been lost on Madoc, and have served to confuse her still further.

“How come you know Brother Rolt?” asked Madoc a little later, a fact which had enormously impressed her. Never in her life had she seen a sister embrace a Senior Brother. Relations, mating, that was a different thing, but a loving gesture, well! It added to the wonder of everything that had happened since she had met Privet, and made her even more determined to stay close by her, and follow her in all she did, wherever it might lead.

“He helped me once in Blagrove Slide,” replied Privet, “and I believe he will help me again.” But more than that she would not say, retiring into her thoughts in a way Madoc found disconcerting, and she herself simply surprising. From where had this sudden talent for being quiet come? She had no idea.

Rolt came to them not long after this, nodding to the guard outside and telling him that for the moment he was not needed.

“Brother Quail instructed me specifically to stay, Senior Brother,” said the guard.

Rolt shrugged. “Do so by all means. Brother, but with me here, and Sister Hope, I doubt that our prisoner will try anything, or if she does, that she will get far. So, if you want a comfort break on what might be a long night I suggest you take it.”

“If you say so. Senior Brother, I will!” said the guard gratefully. “I won’t be long.”

Rolt watched after him to see which way he went and the moment he was out of earshot he turned to Privet and said, “If you stay here you will not survive the night.”

“Senior Brother Chervil personally promised me safe passage.”

“Hmmph!” said Rolt, turning to Madoc and eyeing her warily as if to ask if she could be trusted. If Privet had doubts about Rolt at all they were dispelled by that gesture.