Duncton Stone (21 page)

The Elders waited in silence, until at last, slowly, aided by Brother Rolt, Thripp himself appeared. His fur was lustreless, his pawsteps shaky, his head atremble, and his eyes, peering from beneath a worried frown, looked a little lost, a little helpless. It did not seem possible that this sick old mole, once so great, had been able to talk so clearly and passionately to Privet the night before. Yet there he came, right past her without a word, muttering angrily as he caught sight of his son –
their
son.

Chervil turned impassively towards him, staring with a studied insolence which seemed to say, “Your time is done, old mole, your brief moment is past, your life is run. The future is for moles like me.”

Thripp seemed almost to wither with dismay before this look, and he stumbled, turning pathetically to Rolt for physical support without which he might have fallen.

Certainly no such help came from Chervil, who stared coldly at his father’s discomfiture, and then whispered to Feldspar, who nodded at whatever was said, and then smiled in a cruel way as they both glanced at Thripp, before giving their respectful attention to Quail and Skua.

With Thripp’s arrival the waiting was over, and the Newborns’ lengthy ritual of accusation and declaration of punishment began, led by Brother Inquisitor Skua.

“It is my solemn duty to pronounce condemnation, and sentence with commendation, upon eleven brothers gathered before us here today; and to pronounce condemnation and sentence without commendation upon a further seven brothers gathered here. And upon two more brothers, who have forsworn their vows and shown no remorse unto the Stone, there shall be condemnation and sentence severe, and the Curse of the Elder Brothers that these two shall be deprived now and for eternity of Silence and the right to hope for Silence.”

Skua’s voice had grown gradually louder and harsher as he spoke these words, and his eyes, as sharp in their look as his snout was in form, stared unremittingly at the condemned. Quail’s face was blank throughout; he even looked slightly bored; but Chervil’s expression betrayed a hint of malicious pleasure at the grim ritual.

Meanwhile the guards had arraigned the prisoners in a row, with the single exception of Rooster who, no doubt in expectation of his giving trouble, was held separately by four strong guards. But it did not take an especially numerate mole to work out that eleven and seven and two made twenty, and that left three to go. Whillan looked a little fearfully around at Rooster and Privet as if to say, “Well, we know who the three so far unsentenced are, don’t we? But maybe... Maybe we’ll get off with a warning.”

The bitter wind, and the cruel roar of the river, did not hint at anything so easy as that. Nor did Skua’s face.

After this pause, calculated perhaps to give the prisoners time to think such thoughts as appeared to have preoccupied Whillan, Skua continued thus; “The three remaining miscreants shall suffer the just punishment of those whose blasphemy is original without the intercession of vows, though broken, or innocence of Newborn ways. These three stand accused of a sin so grave that its punishment is put beyond our jurisdiction, lest by punishing them we sully and besmirch our clean paws.”

“How then shall they be judged, Brother Inquisitor?” intoned Quail, in the kind of voice that made it obvious that he knew very well how they were to be judged.

“By their own hearts,” responded Skua.

For some reason which was beyond the present comprehension of Privet and her friends, this response brought a collective sigh of horror and pity from both accusers and accused, which was, in truth, the most frightening thing that had happened yet. The only thing worse than a horrible and cruel punishment is imagining what it might be, and from the way allmole there now looked at Rooster, Whillan and Privet, it was quite plain that nomole there would wish to be in
their
place, not even those who seemed likely to be about to die in whatever vile way the self-righteous and cant-ridden Brother Inquisitors had contrived. But this part of the ritual had not quite finished.

“How shall they be sentenced, Brother Inquisitor?” intoned another Elder Brother.

“By their own mouths,” responded Skua.

“How shall they be punished, Brother Inquisitor?” said Chervil.

“By the eternal suffering of their spirits,” hissed Skua.

“And if they judge not, and sentence not, and punish not of themselves?” whispered Thripp in a quavering voice.

Skua turned to him triumphantly and said, “By the brother that asked of the judgement shall they be judged; and by he that asked of punishment shall they be punished.”

It was towards Chervil that moles now looked, for he had been the brother to ask about punishment. He, it seemed, might be the one to carry out the sentence.

But now, for the first time, proceedings did not go quite according to plan, for Thripp, encouraged perhaps by his little intervention, now spoke again.

“Brothers, it is usual on these occasions to call upon moles to witness punishment,” he suddenly said, even as Skua opened his mouth to continue the ritual.

“There are none easily available,” said Quail sharply, visibly annoyed, in the way moles in charge of a public occasion sometimes are by some old buffer interrupting the smooth flow of things.

“They are not necessary,” added Chervil coldly.

“Oh! But they are!” said Thripp in a firmer voice. “It is the custom to have witnesses, not from mere tradition but because justice must not only be done, but must be seen to be done by the ordinary brothers and sisters of moledom.”

Quail sighed and said, “The former Elder Senior Brother speaks the truth, showing that we all have something to learn. His knowledge of Caradocian custom and tradition must be respected since he established it. On this occasion let us listen to him yet be mindful that all can be changed. Fetch witnesses.”

This was perhaps as gracious as Quail could be in the circumstances, and Privet, who still had faith that all might finally be well, could only hope that Thripp had a reason behind his request.

The witnesses, when they came, were a motley bunch, with two or three females among them, dredged up no doubt from the lower regions of Wildenhope, for such an infrastructure as that certainly needed minions to keep it going. These, it seemed, were they, and very reluctant about it they were too, barely daring to glance in the direction of the Senior Brothers, but looking with some sympathy it seemed at the condemned.

The custom satisfied, Skua now carried matters rapidly forward, mixing incantations and accusations, prayers and condemnations in a most confusing way, which left justice far behind. Until at last, with the morning advanced, and the spitting rain now turned into a depressing drizzle, the first accused was called forward for execution of sentence. The name of this hapless mole was given as Brother Normand, though that particular name was “herewith ordered to be struck from the Book of Brothers’ Names’.
*

*
It is one of the great losses to Newborn research that of all the Newborn archive material rescued from Caradoc and Blagrove this Book is one of the few that are missing. The indefatigable Bunnicle of Witney has argued convincingly that the Book was destroyed or stolen by moles wishing to keep secret their former status as brothers. But see Cluniac of Duncton’s chilling theory (in his
North of the North
, and
Other Adventures of a Traveller
) which proposes that a group of Newborns, led by a Brother Inquisitor, whose survivors and offspring settled in an unidentified system “North of the North” has possession of the Book of Brothers’ Names, which they retain as an icon to evil glories past.

Brother Normand might once have been a strong enough mole, but like so many of the others he was now thin and haggard, and his eyes were pinched with pain. He came slowly forward, half dragging his hurt limbs, half pushed by his two guards, and he did not raise his eyes to look at Quail, whose task it was to pronounce the sentence.

The wind hissed among the stubbly grass of Wildenhope Bluff, and the distant river roared, as Quail said, “You are guilty of blasphemy and the breaking of vows, and judged beyond saving. In the name of the Stone you will be taken from here by your guards and punished in the fitting way. From the blood and the waters of your mother’s womb you came, guilty of Sin in the original, from which the Stone offers its full and eternal salvation. You have betrayed its trust beyond redemption, and will be returned now by your brother guards unto the blood and the waters of moledom itself Quail’s voice was strong and terrible, and a shudder of chill horror went through the gathering, and especially the witnesses.

The final part of the ritual now took place as Skua came forward and intoned what appeared to be a cruel formality: “If any there be would stance in the place of this mole and beg his liberty let him come forth. If it be not granted then that mole too shall receive the punishment.”

Before so cold-eyed a set of Elder Brothers and so ruthless an Inquisitor as Skua, it would have been a brave and foolhardy mole who came forward then. The wind blew, the river roared, and none came. The last chance of the mole who had been Brother Normand was gone. As he uttered a feeble, and hopeless, “No!’, his guards put a paw on either side of him, turned him towards the river, and hustling him down the slope of the Bluff they led him along the raised way across the flooded meadowland. It looked almost as ordinary as a mole setting off from a system, but this journey was final and from it the mole would never return.

Brother Normand was taken to the spit of land which ended in an embankment above the river, with the tributary rushing in on the right flank. Sometimes he seemed to falter, at others he looked back wildly at the watchers on the Bluff, his eyes wide with mounting fear and despair, his mouth opening in what might have been cries for help, which could not be heard at that distance above the river’s roar.

The end when it came was sudden, peremptory, and sickening. Indeed those watching – and it was impossible not to, and therefore impossible in some way for the watchers not to feel the guilt of responsibility for what they witnessed – could scarcely believe what they saw. One moment the mole had reached the end of his last trek, and the next the guards on either side of him had grabbed his paws and with a heave he was able to resist only momentarily, hurled him into the raging torrents of the river below.

“So in the midst of life we are in death,” cried Skua in ghastly exultation; “to whom can we turn for help, but to you, Stone, who are justly angered by our sins. To you then we turn for judgement and just punishment. We entrust our Brother Normand to the talons of thy punishment, that thy cleansing blood of retribution and thy waters of wrath may drown the snake of temptation that has entwined his heart and spirit beyond the help and recall of his Elder Brothers. Take him, and do thy will with him.”

To this pitiless litany was Brother Normand cast into the river, disappearing from sight as he fell below the lip of the bank, before long moments later, Skua’s words chasing after him on the wind, he suddenly reappeared in midstream, turning and struggling in the rushing water before reaching the fiercest of the turbulence and white water where tributary and river met in murderous affray.

There he was sucked down, tossed up, turned helplessly this way and that, before going down one last terrible time, limp, paws helpless, snout submerging, body battered, lost for ever to the living world. Then the waters where he had been closed on themselves in waves and spray, and were gone out of sight around the river’s bend.

The guards stared after their victim, their strong young forms silhouetted against the torrent beyond, and then turned to take the path back to the Bluff where the shocked watchers stanced. Nomole spoke for a moment, nomole looked at another, but some wept silently, and one of the witnesses sobbed quietly to himself.

“Next!” cried out Skua with busy relish, turning to the next terrified victim as if he were a recruit to a Newborn Crusade.

The brother was brought forward by his guards.

“Now, Brother Retter, you have sinned, most grievously sinned and your time of reckoning has come. Elder Senior Brother Quail will pronounce sentence...”

And the nightmare of drowning began once more, to meld in with the one that followed, and then the next, and then another once again. A nightmare journeying to death, and not only for the victims but for those who watched. Nomole is untouched who witnesses such murder as occurred that April morning at Wildenhope. Those who were innocent before are left innocent no more, those who had confidence in life emerge with their confidence shaken; those already brutalized, as Quail and Skua were, end up more brutal still. Life once taken is irrecoverable, and all the witnesses to that day, however free of guilt, became part of a collective shame. It was as well that the sun did not shine, nor the birds sing, nor anything but the killing waters move that long morning: for what happened then was an affront to light, to song, to any hope at all.

A mole might think that a certain boredom would set in by the fifth or sixth victim, or the tenth, or the fifteenth, but it did not. Rather, tension rose higher and more unbearable as the line of waiting victims grew ever smaller.

The atmosphere had somehow darkened with the twelfth victim, the first to be sentenced “without commendation’; and it darkened still further with the nineteenth and twentieth, for these were the two Skua had pronounced were to be “deprived now and for eternity of Silence’.
*
The names of these two are known to us. Brothers Arum and Boden, the only victims so far to show that the spirit of revolt was alive, for they cried out Thripp’s name and asked for his blessing, and muttering, with raised paw, he gave it, while their dear friend Brother Rolt could only weep, and look away.