Duncton Stone (38 page)

He let the sodden, stinking body slide off into the torrent and cried out, “Where?” For where was Whillan if that thing that flopped and twisted away was not him?

He trod against the water, turned to look back, and saw something that explained everything, and it was then he understood all of the events of the morning.
Then
it was he laughed the roaring laugh which even those up on Wildenhope Bluff heard above the river’s clamour. They heard, and saw the great mole turned and turning in the water, before, seeming to give up the unequal struggle, he was taken down by the river again and disappeared for ever from their sight beyond the river-banks.

But Rooster himself was now anything but afraid. Twice he had fought the torrent and reached the surface to breathe again, but this third time he did not. He gave himself up to its power – no, to its care – and happily abandoned that long lifetime’s struggle against all he feared. The Stone had shown him he could love, and now what he had seen briefly on the bank meant that the Stone had shown him he could give up and just let go.

“Might drown, but won’t!” was his light and easy thought as he felt himself turned head over heels in the water, like a leaf in autumn wind.

“Can’t die!” he thought as, needing breath, the Stone surged the river beneath him and brought him to the surface so he might take it.

“Can’t if I wanted to!” Rooster almost sang as he was pulled down again, and this time felt not panic and fear but the chill cleansing of the water at every part of his body – at crease and orifice, at face and haunch, at eyes and belly, at curve and cranny. Rooster outstretched his paws into the waters of the river, extended his head and snout back into its great currents, and when he felt his haunches pushed and turned by the crush of the water he relaxed the rest of his body, and let it be pushed and turned also.

He was at one with the torrent, unafraid, its waters his purification as he was rushed along, overturned, thrust up to breathe and pulled down to drown. Now he could only let go the dark confusions that he had grasped at so long, beginning with that first elemental fear of what the Reap in Charnel Clough would do to him if he fell into it. He
was
in it now, and he was alive, never more so, and all the dirt and filth of life, inside him and outside him, was being pulled from him and washed away.

No wonder that he laughed and felt such joy, for no experience he had ever had came near to what he felt now, unless it be that night in Crowden on the Moors so long ago when Privet’s sister Lime first embraced him, and taking him, led him to a new world of freedom and release. But that was more physical than spiritual and could not last for long beyond the chamber where he and Lime had snatched love.

But here, now, in the baptismal flow of the river to which he gave himself up, he was enabled to let go all his past – the killing of his father Red Ratcher, the failure to honour his love for Privet, his loss of Hamble, and much else beside; but more than all that was his letting go of a sense of having failed as Master of the Delve. The task as it was set for him had been too great, too onerous, and now, with the freedom that purification brought he saw something which was both simple and startling: it did not matter that he had so far failed – if he wanted he could start again, if he did not want then he did not need to. The Stone is love, it never demands of moles what they cannot give; the Stone is love, it forgives moles their failings if they truly desire forgiveness; the Stone is love, it will show moles the way to what they seek if they only look. The Stone is love...

So was Rooster tossed and turned by the river, and cleansed of his confusions, and made new-born.

“New-born!” he growled, aware of the irony, the torrent slowing and easing as the river widened far, far downstream where it had taken him. “New-born, and will begin again!”

He stared at the passing trees upon the far bank, and felt his strength now was less than a new-born pup’s; he hoped that if the Stone willed it he might be allowed somehow or other to reach the far shore, to begin to live again.

His paws touched bottom, he drifted on, they touched again, and stumblingly, like a pilgrim mole who has reached the end of his path but has barely strength left to take the last few steps, he staggered up through one of the eddies of the river, and clambered on to land once more.

Trees rising above him. Mud. Drifting stormclouds. His paws and flanks shivering with cold, he tried to keep awake and reach somewhere less exposed, but sleep overcame him. The river’s diminishing roar. A voice. A mole coming out of dusk. The drift back into sleep and the murmuring of the water. A paw touching his head, the gentlest touch he had ever felt. And the voice again.

“Mole! Mole...”

Rooster opened his eyes from a great sea of tiredness and found himself staring into the eyes of an elderly mole.

“Whatmole are you? Whither...?” The eyes were kind and clear.

And Rooster dared say at last what mole he was, and what he always had been, and must always be.

“Am Rooster.”

“Rooster?”

“Am Master of the Delve.”

The mole who found him was Dint, beloved elder of the system of Great Stoke, upon whose western periphery the river had delivered him up.

“Though, I must explain,” said Dint a little later, as Rooster consumed the third succulent worm he had been offered, and stretched his aching limbs, “that we are here in
Nether
Stoke, which as its name implies is lower than the main system, which is on the river terrace some way above us, east of here.”

It seemed that the Stoke moles re-occupied Nether Stoke at the end of each spring when the floods subsided and the tunnels in the water-meadows could be repaired after the depredations of the winter years, when flood and frost routinely ruined many of them, and silted them up.

“I was on the investigative visit one of us elders makes each May,” said Dint, “and the Stone guided me to the edge of the river-bank from where I saw your not inconsiderable bulk stretched out in the mud.”

“May?” said Rooster, for when he hurled himself into the river at Wildenhope it had been April.

“No good doing it earlier,” said Dint, “too dangerous. We lost an elder that way years ago when I was young.”

“Not April now?”

“You seem confused, if I may say so,” said Dint sympathetically.

“Am,” said Rooster with a comfortable sigh. “Confused but content. Will talk.”

“Nothing like it,” said Dint, “to ease the troubled mind. I presume you somehow fell into the river, but that the Stone, wanting you to live, sent you here.”

“Not Newborn here?”

“Trying hard not to be, but with Evesham so close by it isn’t easy. We have what they call a Brother Assistant Inquisitor up in Great Stoke, but he has been made comfortable and ineffective – food and a female is all
he
seems to want. He’s a mole of the spirit all right, but it’s a greedy and lustful one!”

Rooster appeared to contemplate the twin evils of gluttony and lust and finally said, “Lies are worse. Denying Stone bad. Lust? I had it for a mole called Lime. Gone now. Greed? Eat when I can, don’t I? This Newborn Inquisitor, he needs love.”

Dint grinned and Rooster laughed.

“Not from us!” he said.

“So...” said Dint judiciously, after studying Rooster in silence for a little and then staring at the slow muddy eddies of the Severn as if for inspiration, “you’re the Master of the Delve. The one we’ve heard talk of for many a moleyear past.”

“Am,” said Rooster.

“The Master who comes from the Moors up north somewhere where the giant Ratchers roam, and the water tumbles in great torrents off the mountain-tops.”

“Do, sort of,” said Rooster.

“And you’ve killed more Newborns single-pawed than anymole in moledom.”

“Might have. Shouldn’t have. Have been punished, have lived, and now can atone for what I did.”

“‘Atone’ is something the moles of the Word used to say,” said Dint. “It’s not a word that’s pleasing to my ears.”

Rooster shrugged. “Atone is righting wrong the best way a mole can. I’m not good with words. Words are awkward in my mouth. Words argue with each other in me and make dark. Privet knows words. One day she will speak and scribe for me and I will delve for her and between us in the centre where we are, where there’s no speech, no scribing, no delving, there will be our Silence which is our love. Couldn’t die because of Privet; she won’t die because of me. But Whillan...”

“That’s her lad,” said Dint. “That’s what moles say. Killed at Wildenhope, along with you.
They
say.”

“He didn’t die.
I
didn’t die. Whillan’s not Privet’s son.”

Dint looked both sympathetic and unbelieving. Some rumours take deep root and sprout into great errant trees of whispered tales which moles are reluctant to alter. They like them as they are and they become part of their internal landscape. The idea that Whillan was not Privet’s son somehow spoiled the inherent tragedy of the story of the Wildenhope killings, as
he
had heard it. He did not want to let the idea go. But there was something compellingly true in all Rooster said, so much so that Dint, an experienced elder and so a good listener was asking himself, even as Rooster talked, “Why has the Stone made
me
find this mole? Assuredly he is the Master he says he is. Assuredly he is Rooster. And it is certain that if the Newborns learn he is here then there’ll be a whole horde of them on their way from Evesham before they can say “Quail”!”

It said much for Dint that he did not also immediately conclude that the best thing for Stoke was to get Rooster as far away as possible as quickly as he could. No, he saw it only as an honour and opportunity that Rooster had so mysteriously, if unceremoniously, been delivered to Stoke, and that upon his modest and nearly forgotten system had fallen the responsibility of watching over a Master of the Delve.

“Not Privet’s son?” repeated Dint automatically. He was playing for time as he pondered what to suggest that Rooster now did, for there was something about the delver that was ungovernable and wild. It had been a relief, for example, that he had said he would not try to “love” the Newborn Inquisitor, for it would not have surprised him in the least if he had said he
would.
And then, Dint thought worriedly, how could I stop him. This is not a mole anymole
stops.
So, naturally, Dint was paying little attention to Rooster’s words, so involved was he in the thorny problem of how to cope with him.

“No,” said Rooster, “Whillan’s
my
son.”

“Your son,” said Dint faintly.
His
son, he repeated to himself. Oh dear, this is all quite beyond me. He was trying to save his son at Wildenhope. One great branch of the errant tree of rumour concerning the killings had cracked and fallen, but now another, bigger one was thrusting forth in its place.

“Do Masters of the Delves have sons?” said Dint, genuinely astonished by the thought. “After all. Masters are sort of... well, surely... I mean...”

Celibate was the word he was seeking. Holy as well. Not ordinary. Not prone to that sort of thing.

“Do,” said Rooster. “You look worried. You think I’m in danger. But wrong, very. Am safe here and will stay. Nomole knows I’m here. Will help you. What are you doing here?”

“Ah!” said Dint, unsure what answer to make. He had hoped it was a question he would not be asked. Nomole likes to be asked what he’s doing when what he’s doing is to find the solution to a problem that has no solution. Though perhaps the solution was Rooster! Of course, the Stone
does
provide.

“Delving,” said Dint, wishing immediately he had said anything else but that.

Rooster grinned and dug one of his huge front paws into the ground. It seemed to Dint that soil and vegetation flew slowly into the air. The ground appeared to tremble. The earth shuddered.

“Er, I’m just delving tunnels,” continued Dint apologetically. “Clearing them out, repairing them after winter, that sort of thing. Boring, dull, mundane, not your sort of thing I should think.”

“Life’s “just” tunnels,” said Rooster with an ominous seriousness. Worse, he stanced up and loomed so large above Dint that it appeared that the sky had suddenly clouded over. He raised his paws and clashed them together with terrible relish, and Dint thought the last moments of his life had come.

Perhaps Rooster saw the effect he was having, which was why he made a doomed attempt to ease Dint’s mind.

“Ratcher moles aren’t giants,” he said. “
I’m
a Ratcher mole.”

“Ah!” said Dint, trying to creep out from under the shaggy shadow of Rooster. “You are?”

“Am. And now...” said Rooster, his paws still huge and dangerous against the spring sky as he peered down at poor Dint.

“Yes?” squeaked Dint.

“I feel the delving need.”

“The delving need,” panted Dint, scrabbling out of Rooster’s shadow and into the sunlight again. “You feel it?”

“Do,” said Rooster, “
very
much.” Then frowning ferociously (as it seemed to Dint) he said softly, “Wouldn’t harm you, Elder Dint, wouldn’t harm anymole. Anger’s gone, been washed all away.”