Duncton Stone (24 page)

At that moment of shock, the deed almost done, Rooster, always unpredictable – which his guards should have remembered – rose up massively in their midst. With a roar mightier than thunder he picked up the nearest to him and hurled him savagely into two more; he buffeted a fourth into a fifth and sixth, and as for the rest they simply froze.

Then, with a last cry of “NO!” he was rushing out of their midst, down the Bluff and out across the fields towards where Chervil and the others, all unawares, watched Whillan’s limp form being swirled round and round in the turbulence before it was rushed on downstream by the torrent.

The guards on the Bluff picked themselves up, collected their scattered wits, cried out for Rooster to stop, and set off after him. But Rooster’s lead was too great, and for so massive a mole he moved with surprising grace and speed. Only as he seemed about to bear down on Chervil and the others, as if to flatten them into the ground, did they hear his roars, or the cries of his pursuing guards, and turn round and see his monstrous approach. To Chervil’s credit, if a mole who had committed so vile an act
can
be called creditable, he tried to stop Rooster. Indeed Feldspar and the others did too, but Rooster was a father trying to save his son that day, and was unstoppable. For a moment they all teetered on the bank, but then Rooster broke free, stared out at Whillan’s body being sucked below the water once more, and dived in after him. He disappeared from sight over the edge as all the others had done, but the running of Chervil and Feldspar along the high bank told those watching from the Bluff where he was and how powerfully the torrent carried him along.

Then the moles could follow the bank no more, and Rooster reappeared and shot out into sight amidst the turbulence as all the others had done. Even now he seemed huge, tossed and turned by the water though he was, and it was plain what he was trying to do as he swam and rose in the water and flailed his paws and looked desperately about for Whillan.

But the watchers could see it was too late, and that Whillan’s body seemed to have gone down for a final time. Yet Rooster struggled on, the turbulence turning him as well, round and round as he tried, and mainly succeeded, to keep his head above the water. Then the full power of the river’s current caught him, pulled him down, shot him up, and took him out of the mayhem of the confluence and on towards the bend.

As he reached it he seemed to realize that he would not, could not, save Whillan’s life, for he was gone now and unreachable. He turned in the water, seemed to look back at all the moles on the surface of Wildenhope, and let out a roar so loud that they heard it above the river’s raging; and then the water surged and he was gone beyond their view, surely beyond anymole’s help. Gone as Whillan had gone, from sight and hope, gone at last into violent waters like those of Charnel Clough, whose horrors had haunted his life, and seemed to have claimed him at last.

“From the blood and the waters of their mothers’ wombs they came, guilty of sin in the original, from which the Stone offered its full and eternal salvation,” cried out Quail in a sonorous, portentous voice, as if he imagined himself to be some Holy Mole from the days of Uffington. “They betrayed the Stone’s trust beyond redemption, and are returned now unto the blood and the waters of moledom itself. Let this mole remain a living example to their guilt and shame.” Here he pointed a talon at Privet.

“Let my fellow Elder Brothers do the same...” and one by one the other Elders raised their talons, some shiny and pointed, some gnarled and old, and pointed them at Privet. “This mole has her liberty, but of the Newborn, and of redemption, and of the salvation of truth and the love of the brethren and the sisterhood of all her kind, she is made excommunicate.”

Only two Elders did not raise their paws. One was Squelch, who wept and crooned to comfort himself The other was Thripp, who stared in a way only one mole dared afterwards bear witness to: he stared with love, and infinite sadness.

Then Quail turned, and one by one the brethren left, and the witnesses and the guards as well, until only Privet remained upon the Bluff. Then desultorily, in ones and twos, the guards who had chased Rooster came back, and after them Feldspar and his sons. They stared at Privet and passed her by, until only Chervil remained near her. Even now he did not show pity or remorse for what he had done, but at least he showed respect.

Privet stared at him, and then past him at the river which had taken first Whillan and then Rooster. How long she stared, and how much she seemed to contemplate. Then she went to Chervil and reached out a thin paw to his and touched him.

And had he been a foolish mole, or given to fancies, he would have sworn that she looked at him not with hatred, or contempt, or even fear; but with love.

“Mole...” he began.

But she shook her head to silence him, and turning north left him, going slowly from Wildenhope back the long, long way she had come only a few days before – when Madoc was her friend, and Whillan and Rooster still lived. Until she was gone from sight, and Chervil was alone.

“What mole are you?” he whispered after her in awe.

But the wind across Wildenhope Bluff, and the distant river’s roar, gave him no answer he could yet understand; and all he knew was that something of the truth of Silence had been taught him that day and it was as dark as it was light, and the journey it foretold frightened him. A journey upon which only one mole had courage and faith to venture, and her name was Privet.

As Chervil Watched after her there was the same sadness in his eyes as there had been in his father Thripp’s; and this was not the mole of cruel resolution, and frightening purpose, who had shown himself so willing to support Quail earlier.

Dusk began to fall, and still he stanced staring at the way she had gone, only moving when with a quick scurry and a surreptitious glance about to see he was not observed, Brother Rolt suddenly appeared.

“Tell him it was done as he ordered, Stone help us all,” said Chervil heavily. “Tell him that seeing the mole Privet afterwards and saying nothing was the hardest thing of all.”

“She is gone?”

“Gone north, Stone help her.”

“Oh, the Stone will help
her
,” said Rolt ruefully, “it’s the rest of us you should be worrying about.”

Chervil allowed a small smile to play across his face in the half-light. “I am, I do. But as my father is wont to say, ‘There is a way if only we can find it.’”

“He thinks he
has
found it!” said Rolt.

“Hmmph!” growled Chervil. “Now go, Rolt, lest others see us talking.”

“Master Chervil,” whispered Rolt gently, and the two moles looked at each other with an affection of moles where one has known the other from birth, and cared for him always, and the other knows it.

“You were staring after her, weren’t you?” said Rolt, peering into the darkness.

“Yes,” said Chervil, “and praying for her as you taught me to pray for moles who are brave and full of faith. But Rolt...”

“Chervil?”

“You’re staring into the darkness too. What is it you and my father know about this Duncton mole? You know something, that’s for sure.”

“Nothing, I know nothing, and if I do you know better than to ask.”

“It’s true that you never reveal my father’s secrets, so I won’t ask. But you know something. And that mole makes me feel...”

“What does she make you feel. Chervil?” asked Rolt quietly. Dusk was advancing rapidly into night, and off to their right flank the river’s roar seemed louder.

“I... don’t... quite know. Tell me!”

“One day, mole, I shall.”

“A promise from the loyal and circumspect Brother Rolt?”

“I shall tell you when your father needs me to, and may the Stone see that I am right! For what it’s worth I suppose it
is
a promise.” The grass rustled about them, darkness was all around, and when Chervil looked again, Rolt had gone.

“What mole are you?” he asked again into the depths of the night into which Privet had long since disappeared. He frowned, he muttered, he scratched himself, he sighed, and again and again he shook his head. Until at last, and suddenly, he laughed aloud.

“Well,” he said to himself, “at least one mole has finally got the better of Quail, which shows the way forward for the rest of us!” and he went down into the deceitful tunnels of Wildenhope once more.

PART II

Strivings

Chapter Twelve

Of the many mysteries that frustrate historical enquiry few are more puzzling than the way in which rumour and truth travel moledom faster than the swiftest journeymole. Indeed, in happier days before the Newborns became so destructive a force, and Chater was still alive, the Duncton journeymole had often remarked to his beloved Fieldfare that he could not understand how it was that matters only just occurring in Duncton Wood when he left were common currency in the system he was destined for
before he arrived
.

“And I don’t dawdle lass, nor do I talk overmuch!” he would add in an aggrieved kind of way.

“Well, I don’t know I’m sure, my dearest,” Fieldfare would reply, “I expect it’s the birds.”

“Birds be buggered, it’s a bloody mystery, that’s what it is!”

“Chater! You know you don’t use language like that in Duncton Wood...”

Now Chater was gone, but the truths he spoke and the mysteries he observed lived on, and the speed rumours travel was one of them.

So it was that whispers of the killings at Wildenhope seemed to travel across moledom in April and May faster than a single mole could journey; and failing immediate confirmation or denial by any harder evidence, they had time to breed and multiply in the atmosphere of uncertainty and fear which the Newborn Crusades from the major systems had deliberately begun to create. There were several aspects of the Wildenhope killings that caught moles’ imaginations and caused them to talk of them in pity, in anger, and, most underminingly of all from the point of view of Quail’s ambitions, in hope.

One was the fact, so the stories went, that most of the moles arraigned at Wildenhope were Newborns of long service,
who did not deserve to die.
Quail’s and Skua’s cynical exercise in exemplary punishment was seen by others far distant as simple brutality, and provoked a sense of the betrayal of natural justice which overrode any fear and abject obedience Quail might have hoped the events at Wildenhope would instill.

Another was the nature of their deaths, by drowning, which to moles is a frightening and foul way to die. It is true there had been drownings enough before as a punishment – the very fear of it was the whole point – but somehow moles throughout the land perceived those particular drownings as excessive and unnecessarily cruel.

Further, there was the matter of the three Duncton moles involved in the killings, and here Quail’s insensitivity and historic stupidity were on display for all to discuss, whether the version of events heard by moles in distant systems was correct or not.

The facts were (as moles heard it, in hushed whispers and in the context of outrage earlier described) that an innocent youngster of Duncton Wood, Whillan by name, had been publicly drowned by Quail’s guardmoles. Worse, his mother (as they heard) had been forced to witness it. And, just as bad and
most
ominous, Rooster, famous rebel and Master of the Delve, had died in a vain attempt to save the youngster’s life. It was this double connection with Duncton and Rooster, both of which held a very special place in so many moles’ hearts, that made the story so terrible – and unforgivable. Quail and Skua, though they did not then know it, had, as it were, been seen to talon themselves with their own evil; the wound might possibly heal, but it would leave a scar across their reputations that would seem revolting to any who saw them, or were asked to act on their behalf.

If Maple was looking for allies to strengthen his so-far minute force, he found a great one in these rumours. Or, put another way, if the more intelligent and competent commanders on the Newborn side were wondering if they would find serious challenges to their Crusade, they knew, when they heard of Wildenhope, that Quail had created one and made their task more difficult.

Yet on the Newborn side perhaps only two moles immediately understood the full implications of what had happened, and these were Thripp himself, and the recently side-tracked Brother Commander Thorne. Thripp saw, even as events at Wildenhope unfolded that day, what they might mean, and he had hoped that matters might fall out as they did. He saw with his own eyes the looks of horror, and heard with his own ears the muted cries of dismay amongst the witnesses Quail and Skua had reluctantly summoned for the occasion.

Unlike them, Thripp guessed that their response of sympathy towards the victims would surely be repeated by many like them across moledom –
if they were told.

But here we come to the point where historical evidence helps diminish a little the mystery of how rumours travel and thrive. For we know now that within hours of the killings, Thripp had contrived to obtain from Snyde the one thing which, he suspected, would be needed to transform rumours into an idea, and then a hope, and finally an astonishing triumph of spirit, against which Quail might find it very hard to fight.

Thripp had fully expected the opportunity to arise, but had been unable to guess what form it would take. But in his own inspired way he had communed with the Stone, and the Stone had answered him:
another mole will show the way; listen to that mole, trust that mole, and act for that mole...
and even as Privet, the only female Thripp had ever known happiness with, the only mole he had instinctively felt was his equal, even as she declared herself for Silence, he saw that Quail’s ambitions and the corruption of spirit he had wrought might
thereby
be laid waste.

When the rituals were over, and even as elsewhere in Wildenhope Quail and his fellow Senior Brother Inquisitors agreed that the time had come to close-confine Thripp for good so that (in his senility, as it was argued) he could cause no more trouble, Thripp succeeded in achieving one last mischief; and it was the greatest of all.