Duncton Stone (57 page)

“Aye, I can see shapes now as well as light and dark, but I’ll never see the same way as before.”

“Yes, you will,” Arliss would earnestly reply, “your sight will come back completely.”

“I don’t mean seeing with my eyes, mole. Don’t mean that.”

Suddenly, they woke up one morning and there was the sense of parting in the air. Privet, who often slept longer than the others, was already up and about, and when they surfaced she went off through the grass to peer upslope to the east.

“She’s saying it’s time to leave,” said Hodder matter-of-factly.

They looked at Rees, the so-far unmentioned question in both their minds.

If he was aware of it he did not show it but instead he said, “She’s right, that one, it’s time you went.”

In his rough direct way he quelled their protests with a rasping, “No, I’ll not come with you. Too dangerous. I’ll be slow as yet, and I probably look what I am, a Newborn. And you probably look what you are: followers.”

“But...” said Arliss, fully aware for the first time of what she might have found in Rees, and what she did not want to let go.

“Better not say it,” he said, reaching a big paw for hers and, after a moment’s fumbling, for his sight was not yet clear, finding her. “Better not even think it. You saved my life, and my sight and —”

“You
could
come with us,” said Arliss.

“Tell her,” said Rees gruffly to Hodder.

“You tell her,” replied Hodder wisely.

“I would come, for I’ve no stomach for the Newborn way now. It’s gone from me. But I know whatmole it is travels with you, and one night I felt her paws on my face, and I heard her voice, or thought I did. The Stone made me see something then, Stone help me. I was touched by the future. Heard the voice of Silence. Know it’s true. Won’t deny I feel something for you, Arliss, and even for that brother of yours. But she’s... more important. I won’t help her cause travelling with you. But she needs you two, cos she’s not with us half the time but in that place where I briefly went. You don’t know the strength needed for her to stay there, but I do. I saw that darkness. I wouldn’t have the strength to journey on into it hoping there’s light far beyond.

“Heard of Privet and how she escaped from Wildenhope. Know it’s her here,
know
it, so don’t let’s end on a lie that she isn’t. I wouldn’t betray that mole, or you,
ever, so
you can rest easy.”

“I didn’t think...” began Arliss, who felt a wild rush of emotions through her heart at Rees’ fierce declaration of faith and loyalty to things that were so new to him; and strange comfort too that he could so openly put her second to Privet’s needs, as if, thereby, he was telling her how much he really cared but dared not say.

“We better go,” said Hodder. “Rees and I talked about it last night. Best this way. There’ll be other times when the troubles are over and we can follow our hearts and faith again.”

He turned from the two of them to give them a moment together, and heard Arliss sob as she reached out to put her paws about Rees one last time.

Then, finding Privet a little way off, he said, “We’re going, aren’t we? Not that you’ll say yes!”

Privet smiled and turned back to the other two. She parted them gently, and somehow, as she stanced between them, her left paw to Rees and her right to Arliss, the two knew that somewhere, somehow, the Stone would bring them back together once more.

“Watch her well, mole,” said Rees, peering down at Privet. “I wish you’d stayed long enough for me to see you as you are, and not just as a thin grey shape, which is all I can make out now. But it was your voice I heard, from out of your silence. Wasn’t it?”

Privet reached a gentle paw to his scarred eyes, and he became still, and nodded, and felt at peace.

“You watch over each other!” he called after them. “And don’t worry about me! If I can survive so many days in the company of followers I expect I’ll survive back in the company of my brother Newborns!”

There was an uneasy edge to his wry laughter, but it was Arliss’s final wish that the Stone be with him that he afterwards remembered; and the touch of a mole he had never seen clearly, but who had entered into his suffering heart deeper than anymole before.

“Stone, protect them all.” he whispered when they were quite gone; and his tears were clear now, clear as the water of the stream by which he had learned to begin to see again.

PART IV

Quail Paramount

Chapter Twenty-Eight

It is with the deepest regret that I must interrupt this tale... just as Privet has set forth on the final stages of her historic return to Duncton Wood, and Thorne and Chervil seem bent on a powerful alliance whose objective is to displace Quail!

Just as, indeed, Maple is set fair to expand his power from the Wolds, whilst the rebels in Duncton Wood, led by bold Pumpkin, are readying themselves for a confrontation with Quail himself...

In short, this tale seems interrupted at its very crux, when all things are poised to turn and change in readiness for the discovery of the truth of the Book of Silence. Yet interrupt it I must, for I have no wish to delude you, who have been so loyal and steadfast a companion on this long journey towards Silence, and have shared with me these discoveries, which together constitute the last tale of Duncton Wood.

For I would not have you think that the voice that takes up the tale from now until its end, is the same you heard before. Sadly, it is not so, it cannot be so...

You will recall that at the start of the text now called Duncton Tales, which is the first part of what historians know as The Book of Silence, I came to Duncton Wood. I was a young mole then in search of life and knowledge, and the answer to a question: “What is the truth of the Book of Silence?” Up by the Duncton Stone I found the aged mole who began to tell me the answer – which telling, with his permission, I scribed down, first as “Duncton Tales”, then as “Duncton Rising” and latterly as “Duncton Stone” – upon the journey of whose telling we are currently embarked.

In the course of time, and the many days and months, and the moleyears of that memorable summer that I spent in the wise company of that good mole, he became my master. I know not when that happened, but it did.

I served him as best I could – fetching him food, helping him to places where he might drink, finding new quarters for him when (as it often did) the mood took him to move on. I did what I could for the wisest mole I ever knew, whom only myself ever called “Master”.

I was much distressed when, for a long time, between the scribing down of “Duncton Rising” and the commencement of “Duncton Stone”, he chose to separate himself from me, saying he needed time to think and to contemplate what he knew (though I did not) would be the final part of his journey to the Stone’s Silence. More than that, he understood that through a period of separation and estrangement I might mature and so be ready to scribe down the last part of the tale. That, at least, was how I reconciled myself to the fact of separation from him.

In that difficult time when he refused to see me, summer gave way to autumn, and the leaves of the great beech trees of the High Wood turned to gold and began to tumble to the ground before the winds of September and October. Then it was that my master permitted me to serve him once more, saying that he was ready now to tell me the last part of the story of the Book of Silence, and confessing to me that he was afraid to tell it. The Silence awaited him now, the Stone rose before his gaze, and he was afraid, and needed company.

So he began the tale that I have faithfully scribed down, which, until now, you have kenned in the confidence that as it began in his voice, so surely would it end. Is not that normally the way with tales?

I do not now believe that so far as the tale of the Book of Silence is concerned my master ever thought that his would be the voice that would end it. Not so much because he knew he was growing weaker as he drew nearer to the Silence, but because he understood something profound about this particular tale, which is this: the last part of the journey to the truth of the Book of Silence cannot be made for one mole by another. The journeyer, the pilgrim, must make it for himself and draw what conclusion from it best suits his need and purpose.

I have said that my master withdrew himself from me between his telling of “Duncton Rising” and that of “Duncton Stone”. When he began again he did so more diffidently, almost fearfully. Then as he told the tale autumn advanced towards winter, and the crisp and golden leaves across the High Wood’s floor grew dark and limp as the cold winds came, and the rains drove down through the leafless trees. My master grew ever weaker, and sometimes, though he summoned me to his flank and bade me scribe down what he said, I could not understand the words he spoke. His voice became weak and indistinct, his pauses seemed to grow longer, his mouth moved in the semblance of speech about moles and incidents that I swear his staring eyes seemed to see, but words there came none.

“Have you got that, mole? Have you scribed that down?”

“Master... I... I...” But I could not lie to him. “Master, I cannot hear the words you speak, I have scribed nothing all morning.”

“But I told you so much, mole, I took you to pl... places... mole...” And he would grasp my paw as if he were a frightened pup, and weep for something he had rediscovered for a moment and now believed was irretrievably lost, for want of my scribing it down.

“I spoke, yet no words came,” he whispered later, and in wonder. “We are approaching Silence now, mole, do you see? Do you see?”

“Master... I...” was all I could whisper, which was not much.

“You will, mole, one day you will, and then you’ll be ready to complete the journey of the Book of Silence which I set you off on so long ago.”

“Master, I cannot journey on through this tale without your help. Your words, your memories, are the tale, and without them I can never reach the end. I cannot journey on alone.”

“Privet journeyed on alone, didn’t she? Eh, mole? Didn’t she?”

“But she was Privet, and I... I am...”

“And what are you?”

“An ordinary mole.”

“We are all of us ordinary moles, and it was for us she journeyed, not to show us the way, for that is for us each to find, but to show us how to journey, and that it could be done by any one of us. That is by far the greater gift.”

“But Privet was strong of purpose.”

“No stronger than any other mole can be.”

“She was courageous.”

“Yet not with a courage others cannot seek and find.”

“Oh, but she was wise!”

“Her wisdom was to trust the Stone, and that we all can do. She showed us how, mole, she showed us how.”

“Master, did you know Privet?”

I must confess at once that I knew the answer to this question, for others in Duncton Wood had often told me the story of the mole I simply call, and call still, my master. Yet he had never told me the story in his own words. Now, as winter seemed to have overtaken him, and he seemed less and less willing to proceed with the great tale he had begun, I sensed I might have no other chance to hear him talk about himself.

“Yes, mole, I knew her,” he answered, nodding his lined head, and blinking his crinkled rheumy eyes into the gentlest softest smile I ever saw upon his face.

“Master...” I began again, with the remorselessness of a scholar-scribe, scenting the end of a quest long since begun.

He raised his paw in sweet admonishment and I stopped and smiled in return, ruefully.

“Mole,” he whispered, “come near to me. Now listen, for soon I must leave you. Yes, yes, it must be so. I am tired now, and have lived far beyond my years, sustained only by your ministrations and my need to tell you of the coming of the Book of Silence. Now I hear the Silence ever louder in my old ears, and see the Stone’s Light ever brighter, and I do not wish to turn from it more. I am ready to go to the Silence now and have told you almost all I need to.

“The rest you will understand better without my intercession, and your final steps towards the truth of the lost and last Book must be taken alone. Yet, one final thing I shall tell you before I leave, for I doubt that what they’ve said about me in Duncton, and down in the communal tunnels and chambers of Barrow Vale, and what they have told you about my own part in the coming of the Book, is quite as it was...”

“They said you were brave, Master, and that without you —”

He waved his paw impatiently for me to be silent and I obeyed.

“Brave? I was not brave. The Stone was always with me, and Privet and Rooster, and all those moles. No, no, I was not brave. I fulfilled the task ordained me by the Stone, no more, no less, and so I was a part of the coming of the Book. That is all, a part. By ourselves we are nothing; together we are life itself. That is what Privet had to discover, and it is what she taught us all.

“Now, listen, and let me tell you while I am still able the one thing nomole-else knows, for I have never spoken of it until now. What you have heard are guesses, what I shall tell you is the truth. Of the rest, and the parts played by so many others after those terrible summer years when Quail seemed in the ascendant, and a bitter anarchy spread across moledom, you must discover for yourself.

“But of the days when I met Privet, and understood the nature of the Book of Silence, I shall tell you now. Therefore, mole, listen... and touch me if I seem to slip away, keep me with you until I have done and then, when the sound of Silence overwhelms me, and the. Light of the Stone becomes too bright for me to resist it, lead my old body to the Stone, settle me there, and stay with me until I have gone, for I shall be afraid and will need you near.