Duncton Rising (78 page)

Let us see thy radiance

And hear thy silent call.

Eternal Stone,

Be with us this most holy night

And teach us to renew our love

Of friends, of kin, of life;

Lead us out of the darkness

Into thy eternal Light.

Eternal Stone,

Be with us now.”

The prayer released them all and at its end they sighed, and whispered, and Hobsley said, “Haven’t heard that spoken properly since my first Longest Night. If I remember right there’s a few more prayers...”

“Not many!” said Privet with a smile. “Where we come from moles are relaxed about such things.”

“There’s no time for chatter!” said Whillan suddenly, turning on Privet and the others.

“What must do? You decide!” said Rooster.

“Must... must...” Whillan said, or tried to say.

“What, my dear?” asked Privet, coming closer. Indeed all of them came closer but for Rooster, who had backed away to stance down near a tree and was watching, his eyes black voids, his expression excited.

“Delve,” said Whillan faintly. “But I don’t know why.”

“Yes, yes, yes!” roared Rooster, rearing up. “Privet, you stay by Stone, here. Not there, do not go there, dangerous there. Here only with the others. Pray. Pray. And pray again.”

“For what?” she asked.

“Duncton. And we, Whillan, what’ll we do? You know, mole, you know well. You know all of it, deep, deep, deep inside. Beginning now to find it.”

“Delve,” said Whillan again. “It’s all I know.”

“For what?”

Whillan shook his head. “Don’t know that; don’t know...”

“You do,” said Rooster. It was a command.

“The fallen Stone,” said Whillan. “There, somewhere there. Where sounds come from.”

Rooster came close to him, took his paw, and held it to the Stone. “Not fallen,” he said gently, “not fallen at all. Waiting, waiting since a Master of the Delve came in times long, long past.
This Stone has yet to rise.”
He sounded as awed as they all looked, and muttered to himself, “Ancient delving skill that. Very hard. That’s why I’ll need help. But Whillan, remember to obey all. Yes?”

Whillan turned to him, nodded, and asked, “What must we do?”

“Said before, you did; delve. They pray, we delve, and together we make a Seven Stancing in the cold night, through to the cold dawn. Ancient and modern, here and far, in earth and on surface, old season and new; all, all, ail turning. Stone will rise. Moles who need help will be helped. Listen!”

All of them heard it now, the distant rumble and chatter and echo of time from beneath the Stone. Calling them – no, urging them...

“Come, mole,” said Rooster, “will show you. You must help. Even Master can’t do this alone.”

They were suddenly gone into the shadows, first to where Rooster had stanced before and then beyond.

He called back to Privet: “Us delving below, you praying above. Privet, mole. Stone to Stone across the ages. Stone to Stone across the country. Mole to mole, now and now, and now again. Begin.”

As Privet began to pray, and those remaining with her touched paws and circled in the spot Rooster had indicated, he thrust his paws into the ground with a grunt, and began to delve. Deeper and deeper until he was gone, calling Whillan to follow him into tunnels and delved sound nomole had known since they were first made.

Whillan found himself staring down an echoing, whispering tunnel, lit with a filtering of moonlight.

Rooster put his paw on Whillan’s shoulder in the darkness. “Master made this place long, long ago. Now a Master is back again with work to do. Come and help me, mole, with the raising of a Stone.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

There are few molish traditions more recently nor now more widely established than that which moles generally call Night of Rising, which comes three days after Longest Night. It is a time of thanksgiving and hope, when the secular jollities and celebrations of Longest Night finally give way to a time of contemplation and prayer. Now the community has dispersed once more to face the trials of winter, and in smaller groups of family and friends, or even by themselves, moles take time to forsake the warmth and comfort of their tunnels and go to the surface and petition the Stone on behalf of all those who that night, and in the coming winter years, may through no fault of their own be in need of special support, and comfort, and faith.

“Yes, Stone,” a mole on Night of Rising might be inclined to say, “I have had my tribulations and my difficulties, but here I am, in my system, near the entrance to my tunnels, safe, secure and in good community. Therefore on this special night I pray for those in peril, those who are not secure, those beset by danger and difficulty, and ask that in whatever way you can you let them know they are in my thoughts.”

Such a caring mole might well conclude his simple prayers of Rising like this: “Stone, you alone can judge to where my prayers should be directed. Send them there, let them be a comfort and support to those who need them. And Stone, bless the moles of Duncton Wood!”

Oh yes, one thing is certain on Night of Rising – all prayers end with the blessing to the Duncton moles, for it was with them and their need, and their great bravery not so long ago, one third night after Longest Night itself, that the first Night of Rising came to be.

More is known about that particular night than about most nights. For historians are given to researching and scribing down the details, however obscure, of days and nights and periods of significance to moledom. Such has been the fate of the first Night of Rising which occurred that night when Pumpkin was so nearly murdered at the Marsh End and when Privet, Whillan, Rooster and the others in Hobsley’s Coppice sensed that their help was needed in Duncton Wood, and with the Stone’s guidance, found a way to give it.

Yet, before we journey on through that unforgettable night in the company of these groups of moles, we may pause briefly to remember others who, the historians have shown, were strangely aware that same night that Duncton was in peril, and its moles in mortal danger, and that they needed the help that prayer and benediction can give, from however far off.

In fabled Beechenhill, for example, despite the dangers of being discovered by the Newborns who by then had occupied their system and library, three followers went to the Stone and prayed, driven by a need they felt but could not then understand.

Similarly, at the Fyfield Stone, the vagrant mole, Tonner, reported feeling that he must go at once and touch the Stone and whisper Duncton’s name.

“I did so throughout that night, though it was a foul one with blizzard winds driving freezing snow into my eyes and under my belly,” he is recorded as saying.
*
Tonner was one of many moles who felt the need to actually touch a Stone that night and to keep on doing so right through to dawn. But, as everymole knows, the most striking example of it was at Seven Barrows. A mole might have thought that the community there had experienced enough excitement for the season, with Fieldfare’s disappearance and recovery, but it too played its part on the first Night of Rising.

*
Quoted in both standard works on the subject; Bannock of Avebury’s popular
Rising Tales;
and Bunnicle II’s reference text
The First Night of Rising
.

Uffington Hill, on whose gentler southern flanks Seven Barrows lies, is so much higher than the vale it dominates that in the winter years the weather is harsher up there, and snow falls earlier and lies longer. That December was no exception, and the ill-tempered weather of the Night of Rising brought heavier and more violent blizzards across Uffington than elsewhere in southern moledom. The winds that heralded the snow had begun a day or two earlier, so that the community of Seven Barrows had grown used to the sounding of the Blowing Stone, which lies just east of Uffington.

That particular night the soundings were, as Fieldfare observed to Spurling, “becoming steadily more insistent. Why, traditionally the Blowing Stone is only ever meant to have sounded seven times once, but I swear it has sounded a lot more than that tonight.”

Spurling nodded and said, “Yes, but not regularly, as in the tales of former times. Even so...”

“Even so, we should pay heed to it!” said Fieldfare. She had fully recovered from her experience among the Stones before Longest Night and now seemed full of energy and purpose. “I think we should go up on to the surface despite the weather and just, well... listen. Be. Pray, perhaps.”

Most agreed with her, and up to the surface many of the Seven Barrows moles went, huddling together in the lee of the barrows themselves for warmth, and company. The deep haunting note of the Blowing Stone as it was caught by wind sounded over them quite frequently, and as the evening gave way to night ever more so, and more erratically, like some mole caught and lost in deep caverns who calls and calls more urgently for help, and his voice echoes and re-echoes ever more loudly.

It was Noakes who suggested that perhaps one or two of them might venture across the stonefields to the nearest Stones because “touching one seems the right thing to do tonight”. They debated it this way and that, as was their wont with Spurling as leader, and finally decided all of them would go. So they did, watching over each other, across the wild stonefields to the first great Stone, and then to the second which rose nearby, gathering, touching, and praying into that strange forbidding night when moles all over moledom sensed the need to help; though whatmoles needed them, and where, they did not yet know. And still the Blowing Stone sounded, and still it grew more insistent, and the wind gathered strength, and the night grew dark and dangerous.

Yes, a historian could cite many examples such as these to show how so many followers were affected that terrible night of trial. He might well conclude, before returning again to Duncton Wood and the plight of Pumpkin and his fellow followers, with a reference to the evidence from Caer Caradoc. For even there, whose windswept Stones were so high, so wild to the wind, so bitter cold, that it was dangerous to venture out – even there two moles came out to help. Perhaps
especially
there.
And here alone across all moledom that night, Duncton’s supporters were not Stone followers.

It was the Elder Senior Brother Thripp, assisted by Rolt, who battled his way out to the Stones, and stared fiercely into driving snow, which beat into his thin, lined face.

“Forgive me. Master, but now we’re here what do we do except freeze to death?” shouted Rolt into Thripp’s ear, the wind’s howl being so loud.

“Wait,” rasped Thripp.

“Humph!” muttered Rolt, pulling himself round into the shelter of one of the Stones as wind and sleet rushed by. It seemed to him that whatever it was Thripp was watching out for he could not hope to see it.

“Wait for what?” said Rolt at last, reaching a paw out to support the Elder Senior Brother, and pull him in to shelter as well for a time. Thripp’s shoulder and flank were covered in icy sleet.

“For something you’ll never forget, mole,” said Thripp purposefully, submitting to Rolt’s ministrations as he wiped the freezing wet off him.

Rolt stared out at the other Stones, and the livid night sky beyond the driving sleet.

“Nomole else will be out on a night like this,” he said. “It’s bad for you, Elder Senior Brother, it’ll do you no good.”

“You may be right about it being bad for me, that’s true. But nomole else? You’re wrong for once, Rolt, very wrong,” said Thripp, battling his way out into the sleet again, and snouting this way and that. He peered round the Stone and back at Rolt again. “She’ll be out tonight, Privet will. And the mole Rooster, he’ll be out. Oh, and many more. The seasons have turned and the Book of Silence wants to begin its long journey home. This test had to come, and allmole is part of that; allmole must help, but thus far it is only the followers who understand. Wait, Rolt, and watch. Tonight we moles struggle for our destiny.”

Rolt sighed, thumped himself to keep warm, and watched over his Master with affection. Tonight, as on all the nights and days he had served Thripp since he was a young brother in training, there was nowhere else he wished to be.

“Touch the Stone, Rolt!” cried out Thripp suddenly, venturing out further into the open, and lowering his head against the wind. “Touch it, mole!”

Rolt did, and what he felt and sensed beneath his paw, and saw in light about the Stones, made him begin to understand why Thripp had said that this was a night he would not forget.

“Touch!” screamed Thripp over the wind as he stanced up against the wild spirit of the night, and turned his snout south-eastwards, towards distant Duncton Wood, and muttered its name to himself, as if he was beginning to understand that an enemy might be a friend.