Duncton Stone (5 page)

But at the heart of his discomfort was the fact of Whillan’s unnatural ability with the sounding of the delve. Even experienced delvers he had known at the Charnel were rarely able to reach out and touch a delving line with such unconscious ease as Whillan. Rooster had known he himself had such abilities, and they had become far greater when he was trained... but that a youngster like Whillan should have so sure a touch puzzled him. He had instinctively said little of it to Whillan, and as the mole-months went by in Hobsley Coppice he felt sure this was right. There are some journeys moles make better if they travel without set directions, and powerful as Whillan’s talent was it might easily decline and wither if a mole he did not like showed interest, or dared to give encouragement.

Privet agreed, but could not understand it all. Far worse, so far as Rooster was concerned, was the sweet longing that Whillan’s soundings, and the existence of the delvings in the Coppice, put into his own heart. Whilst he still had no doubt that he could not – must not – delve ever again, the delving need remained, and Whillan, unconsciously, exacerbated it.

“My dear, being here with you is like sleeping at the edge of a storm,” said Privet one night. “What is it?”

“Whillan.”

“What of him?” If Privet was a little short it was not just tiredness, but the same irritation that Madoc felt when
her
beloved spoke of Rooster.

“He was in the delvings beneath the risen Stone. Today. Again. Angry.”

“What about?”

“Didn’t ask! Not for me, all that. He sounded them. Privet...”

“My love?” She came closer and held him to her.

“Remembered Glee and Humlock, remembered the days when they were. Whillan should be a delver. Would have been.”

“Teach him then. Tell him now. I’m sure if you —”

“No, no, no. Stone will tell him right way. But – like shadows of trees, Whillan and I.”

“Shadows?”

“One great, one growing. Sun shines, shadows reach. One needs protection of other to grow. Now needs the great one to fall. Me and Whillan are those trees. He’s a
delver,
Privet. Where did he come from? Why was he sent?”

He said the word “delver” as if it were a curse – which to him it was.

“Rooster’s afraid for Whillan. Don’t want him to suffer my life. But...”

“But he suffers already?”

“Sometimes. He doesn’t like me. Why should he? I don’t like me!”

Rooster did not quite laugh, nor quite cry. Privet felt both emotions in him in the darkness.

“You will delve again one day, my love,” she said sleepily.

“No,” rasped Rooster.

“You promised.”

“Didn’t.”

“To make me a home. One day you said you would.”

“Yes,” said Rooster miserably, “did. But didn’t say when.”

“You will one day because... because...”

Privet slept and Rooster stayed awake, eyes open in the dark, his paws restless.

“... because you’ll need me to,” he whispered at last before he slept as well, words he only half-knew he said, whose source was a place of wisdom deep in his heart, lost in the silence all moles possess but few have the strength to reach.

Even before the spring thaw came, Privet had sensed that the little group of moles of which she had been the quiet centre was beginning to break up. Certainly Maple and Weeth would not stay with them long once they were clear of the influence of Caradoc, that was agreed. But though the rest would remain with her until they reached Duncton again, she felt an unspoken withdrawal from everymole, including Rooster. It was not a feeling she liked, for she felt she was being disloyal to friends, but increasingly she needed space to explore her deepening sense of the Stone’s Silence.

But this feeling of... of
removal
 – and how exasperated she was that she could not find quite the right word for it – had been building up ever since their journey from Duncton, which now seemed so long ago. It was as if, despite herself, an invisible wall was being created around her through which she could see moles and moledom clearly enough, but from her side of which their world seemed muted and in some ways inconsequential. She was, she felt, in preparation for something, but what she knew not.

The “removed” world she began to find herself in was not by any means one of peace and tranquillity – a fact which historians of the time know well enough from the record she kept of that winter interlude.
*
It is less
what
she scribed that revealed the conflicts and doubts – not to say fears – in her mind than
how
she scribed it, for in many places, and especially just before the departure from the Coppice, her normally neat script declines into a disjointed untidy scrawl as if she already sensed the grim nature of the task the Stone was setting her. In places these records even changed to Whernish scrivening as Privet began to wrestle with the philosophical and spiritual problems of Dark Sound.

*
Privet’s records are preserved now in the Library of Duncton Wood. They were originally retrieved and edited by Cluniac of Duncton as
The Hobsley Coppice Archive
and form part of the Collected Works of Privet of Crowden. But Bunnicle of Witney’s
Privet: Before the Silent Storm
offers a fascinating and now generally accepted interpretation, drawing heavily and most usefully on Cluniac’s definitive text.

We can only guess that Rooster’s proximity and the sense of love and security he engendered within her gave Privet the courage to turn her snout towards the challenge only she in all of moledom had then seen might come. But we may believe too that like anymole who sees the approach of darkness and is reluctant to face it, she hoped it might “go away” – and no doubt that hope was fostered by the arrival of spring in mid-March, and the prospect of “escape” once more into the world outside.

So it was that each of the moles had good if different reasons for welcoming the coming of spring, and entered into a last few days of preparation with excitement. Indeed, such was the busy-ness and jollity among them all that a mole might almost have thought they had just been given their liberty after a period of imprisonment. But perhaps that is the sense that a blue sky and balmy winds, and the hurry and scurry of new life overhead and underpaw puts in all moles when spring comes.

This sense of a new beginning was increased all the more by Maple’s decision to delay a day or two longer, just to ensure that winter really was over and they were not caught out in the open along the way by some sudden final freeze-up of the kind so malevolent a winter as they had just lived through might spitefully throw at them.

On the final night they all gathered for the last time in Hobsley’s chamber, and talked and talked. It was like the night of their arrival, and each had his say and told his tales. For all of them there was no more impressive memory, nor greater testimonial to how far they had come, than when Rooster talked for what felt a final time about friends he remembered from the days of his training as a Master of the Delve. How relaxed he was, almost expansive, and how well he seemed to have put his past behind him.

“But miss them, miss them much. Mole must learn to do that and not die. Miss Gaunt, my teacher; miss Samphire, my mother; miss Glee and Humlock, my friends. If ever I delve again...” And how hushed the moles were when he said those words, how surprised
he
was that they slipped out! “... then will delve my love of them into delves for ever. Can never see them again, but can delve their voices and their being; can make them heard by others; can make them remember.”

“I hope you will one day, Rooster,” said Weeth, speaking for all of them, and feeling that their time with Hobsley would have been worthwhile for this unexpected turn alone. “There’s many a mole will be grateful if you do!”

“Won’t, not now,” whispered Rooster, “but glad to think for a moment that I might!”

The next day they said goodbye to Hobsley and his Coppice by the risen Stone at which they had first foregathered. Privet spoke a prayer or two, and tendered her scribings of the molemonths past to Rooster to secrete in the delve chamber below – a task he performed with Whillan’s help, both forgetting their differences in the good cheer of the moment. Old Hobsley said his farewells tearfully but confessed readily enough that he was looking forward to a little solitude once more.

“You take care, Hobsley!” said Maple.

“Aye!” echoed the others, feeling, as they embraced him and said their individual farewells, that they were saying goodbye to days and nights of a companionship, and an interlude of peace, which they might well have cause to remember with nostalgia in the difficult months ahead.

They set off in the early afternoon, following Hobsley’s clear directions, and intending to travel to the south-east as fast as they could. The journey was tiring but uneventful, a time to adjust themselves to a different pace of life, and to all the exciting sights and sounds of spring. Although the ice and snow had gone days before, except for isolated pockets on higher north-facing slopes, the ground was wet with thaw, and ditches and streams high and noisy with meltwater. Their fears of Newborns were constant and real, but they were forced to be wary too of predators, especially from the sky. For now the white-billed rooks flocked and flew, their raucous cries all about the huge treetops in which they made their nests, their black-eyed gaze greedy and spiteful; but worse were the silent wide-winged flights of tawny owl at dusk, with their hunting stoops at travelling moles, and their shrill and frightening calls at night.

But by the time the party reached Wenlock Vale, and the formidable prospect of ascending the looming Edge beyond it, they had grown used to the hazards of travel once more, and the initial aches and pains of journeying had gone. It was here that their first challenger and contact from mole came when an aggressive male charged out at them as they unwillingly crossed part of his mate’s territory. She had, it seemed, recently given birth to young; with apologies, and blessings in the name of the Stone – the Newborn Stone – they passed hurriedly on their way. He stared after them suspiciously, and Maple felt that the sooner they were up and over the Edge and able to separate the better. A party of six moles at such a time was too large to pass without question and comment. Twice more they were challenged in the Vale, and that was twice too many for Maple.

“The sooner we get away from here the happier I will be. None of those moles may have been Newborn guards, nor even practising Newborns, but they’ll want to keep any Newborns who visit them sweet. You can be sure that news of our passage through will reach some officious Newborn sooner or later. We’ve got our fitness back and have taken it easily so far; now we’re going to have to push harder. We’ll tackle the Edge itself tonight.”

A subdued hush fell over the group, for they had reached the foot of the Edge that afternoon after an uncustomary daytime trek, and as night fell its vast west face seemed to loom higher and steeper above them.

“Better sleep,” growled Rooster behind him, “better rest.”

Which they all did but for Weeth, who was first watch, close and hidden in a scrape near a deserted two-foot way.

Maple woke them all just before dawn, and they began the climb in earnest as the sky above their heads, reluctantly it seemed, allowed streaks of dull grey to break into its darkness. They trekked upward all day with barely a break, finally collapsing into temporary scrapes at dusk to sleep.

But it was only next day, when the top was reached and they moved out of the trees and on to the gentle east-facing slopes of the Edge that they really began to feel they had left the Newborn threat behind. Naturally there would be danger ahead, but now surely they were beyond the immediate influence of Caer Caradoc, and the time was coming for Maple’s and Weeth’s departure north for Cannock, while Privet and the others continued eastward towards Duncton Wood by as obscure a route as they could find. Ahead and below them stretched another wide, flat valley along which the River Flade flowed southward. Beyond was a further rise of higher ground in whose undulations and remote valleys they could hope finally to lose themselves.

“Hopefully, we can journey by way of systems untouched by Newborns as we did in the Cotswolds on the way to Caer Caradoc,” said Privet.

“But the Newborn missionaries seeking to spread their creed probably set off for their destinations at the first sight of spring, as we did,” said Maple. “That’s a good reason for Weeth and I to find out what’s apaw in Cannock now, before others get there. Then we’ll turn back south for the Cotswolds.”

“One day perhaps,” said Privet, looking round them one by one. “One day we will all be together again in circumstances very different from those we face now.”

There was a sudden brief fading of light across the face of the long wood behind them, and a cold rush of wind through its trees, and Maple said quietly, “Say a prayer for all of us, Privet, that we may one day return to Duncton Wood safeguarded.”