Duncton Stone (88 page)

There was silence, uneasy and concerned. There might not be dishonour in it, but allmole there felt that there must be a better way than doing nothing.

“‘Maple’, you said; and ‘Rooster’?” said Pumpkin.

“Yes, Pumpkin, I am sure it was their names that were spoken. But I could see very little – only the backs of ranks and ranks of Newborn guardmoles down by the cross-under, through which it will be very hard for moles to battle their way.”

“Then it is up to us, isn’t it?” said Pumpkin. “You know, perhaps we have talked so much that we have missed the obvious thing...” His voice wandered a little, as did his eyes, and all there recognized that this was Pumpkin thinking, thinking hard and yet trying not to think: this was Pumpkin reaching out for all of them beyond the words they said, for guidance from the spirit of the High Wood and the moles of Duncton past, and present, and future.

“You all know that until October it was my habit to go alone to the Duncton Stone to pray, as it had been all my life. Through good times and bad, through conviction and doubt, when I have been happy, and when I have sometimes been sad, though that affliction has fortunately not often been mine, why, it is to the Stone I have turned.”

“We know it,” they said.

“I have gone to it and bowed my snout down to it and I have said, ‘Stone, listen to me, for I have lost touch with the Silence that is in my own heart. Stone, help me, for I cannot help myself always. Stone, put your grace into me, for without you I am nothing.’

“My dear friends, with a prayer such as that I have often begun a contemplation before the Stone, and the Stone has not failed me. It has listened, and found an answer, though often the answer was not one I expected; it has helped me, though often I did not accept its help with gladness; it has shown me its grace, and I have found meaning.

“We have debated, and we have found no solution. We have agreed to act together, though we do not know how to act. And now I know only that I must turn to the Stone, as so often before, and pray to it, and seek its guidance.”

“But Pumpkin, that’s all very well and fine,” said Elynor, “but we’ve been through it so many times already...
tell
him, Hamble.”

Hamble scratched his head and shrugged a little, perhaps understanding rather better than Elynor what Pumpkin was getting at, and said, “You wouldn’t last long up on the surface before you were caught, Pumpkin, and what good would that do? If they didn’t kill you outright, they’d arraign you, or whatever it is they do, and then we’d have to try and rescue you as well.”

Pumpkin sighed and said, “We’ve made it all too complicated, like moles generally do, and it isn’t complicated at all, and that’s what I was trying to say. I want to go to the Stone, just as I always have. That’s all. Unfortunately I can’t, and do not want to even try to persuade any of you to go with me.

“Perhaps we were right to try and find a solution as a community, one we could all agree on. Well, we haven’t, and now I’ve made up my mind what I want to do, and I don’t suppose it is what anymole-else wants to do. You’ve been good enough to call me your leader since we first came here, and although I felt a little flattered I’ve never felt it was a task I’m fitted for. I’m a library aide, pure and simple. It’s what I’ve always been since I became adult, and it’s how I want to end my life.

“Well, now, so long as Privet was out of Duncton Wood I was happy to try my best to be your leader. Now she’s back and she needs help, it’s as a library aide I must go to her. I hope she’s up by the Stone, because then I can serve it and her at one and the same time.

“I have no speeches to make, or anything much else to say. She’s waiting and the Stone’s waiting and I must go to them and take what chances with the Newborns I must. These things feel right to me, and if my faith in the Stone is justified, as I think it is, and if my duty as a library aide is worthwhile, which I believe, then there is no other decision I can make, or want to make. So I will leave you now.”

“Pumpkin,” muttered Hamble, at a loss for words.

“You cannot go up to the surface alone,” said Elynor, “you won’t —”

“I must, my dear, and I shall,” said Pumpkin firmly.

How small he seemed, how suddenly frail, as with the gentlest smile of farewell he turned into the light of the slipway up to the exit and began to ascend to the surface.

“But,
Pumpkin
...”

But he meant it, and had said his last, and would not be persuaded otherwise.

“We
can’t
let him go alone,” cried Elynor to the others, “and I won’t, however foolish it seems.”

“Nor I,” said Hamble, frowning and looking about the astonished group. “You must each make up your own minds, but I’m with Elynor in following that... that... that library aide!”

Then they both followed after him, and with sighs, or shrugs, or even the occasional rueful swear-word, the rebels all followed one by one, up into the dangerous light of day, their difficult decision made.

“
Pumpkin
!” Elynor called out after him, for he was already wending his way across the surface between the great beech trees. “We’re coming with you. Wait for us!”

Pumpkin turned and saw that one by one, some irritably (like Elynor), some a little rueful (like Hamble), but all with real trust in their eyes, they were following him.

“Stone,” he grumbled under his breath, “I didn’t
want
them to follow me.”

He turned from them and proceeded on his way, leading as strange a procession of moles as the High Wood ever saw. Until, not so long afterwards, and when through the trees they caught the first glimpse of the Stone and the sound of singing and chanting, there came across their path, and from out behind beech trees to right and left, Newborn guardmoles, many of them.

“Whatmole are
you
?” one of them asked in astonishment.

“My name is Pumpkin, and I am going to the Stone.”

“My name is Elynor of Barrow Vale, and I am going to the Stone.”

“I am Hamble of Crowden in the Moors and I am going to the Stone...”

And as each of them spoke, each felt that they were rebels no more, nor skulking moles, nor anything but moles who could hold their heads high, for before them was the Duncton Stone and what lay between them was nothing, nothing at all, compared to the Stone’s glory, and the Silence it offered.

“You’re going to your bloody deaths, that’s where you lot are going,” said one of the guardmoles.

“No,” Pumpkin replied with what he regarded as simple truth, “we are going to the Stone, as is our right. The Stone is for allmole, whatever and however they believe, not just for a single sect. Therefore, let us pass.” Then, with a twinkle in his wrinkled eyes, Pumpkin dared add, “Better still, moles, come together with us, but come in peace.”

The Newborns blocked their way, angry but unwilling to bring their talons down on the rebels without proper authority; not sure what to do, eventually they sent one of their number on up the path to the Stone Clearing.

“We can wait, for a little while anyway,” said Pumpkin, stancing down where he was, “we have waited long enough.”

But only a short time later the mole came back with a couple of others with him, one of them a senior Brother Adviser judging by the dark look to him, and his natural authority.

He looked at them curiously, and then said the following extraordinary words, with evident reluctance and displeasure: “The Elder Senior Brother will permit these witnesses to his ordination in the Stone. But they are to be quiet, for the ritual of anointment is beginning.”

Pumpkin rose and followed the mole, ignoring the astonished guardmoles altogether. But Hamble, who had seen some strange things in his life, thought this was the strangest of them all, and exchanged a glance with Elynor, who evidently thought the same.

“With Pumpkin,” she whispered to Hamble as they followed on, “wonders never cease.”

“More’s the pity,” muttered Hamble.

Chapter Forty-One

Quail’s pains having grown steadily worse all along the long way from Banbury to Duncton Wood, once there he experienced a new depth of agony. For deep and nagging though his pains had been until then, now they became at times mortally profound, so that there was nothing inside and outside his head, but the pain.

This first occurred in that moment in which (at Snyde’s insidious prompting) he had hoped to know the first beginning of the absolution of the pain – not the opposite. This was as he passed through the High Wood and thence, at last, into the Clearing on its western side, and there set his eyes upon the Duncton Stone.

“I am nervous, Brother Snyde, I confess it,” he said as the trees thinned and the first partial glimpse of the great and soaring Stone was to be had.

“Your release shall begin soon now, Master, for the Stone is merciful. You have taken upon yourself the sins of all-mole, and dared confront the Snake and the Worm, and the Stone shall give you liberty of your pain.”

“Will it?” whispered Quail, racked and shaken by doubt for a moment, and perhaps by a premonition of the new degree of pain to come. “Will it love me?”

“Lean on me, Master,” said Snyde, and he led him into the light of the clearing about the Stone.

There, ready, waiting, stanced Thripp, aged now but staring as powerfully as ever.

“It has eyes, Snyde, that Stone has eyes and they look upon me,” whispered Quail, unsure what he saw.

“Raise yours to it, Master.”

Then Quail, turning in dismay from Thripp, saw Privet. She was worn and made thin by the journey into Silence upon which she had embarked. Yet from some place she had reached, which lay far far ahead, she seemed to look back now and her eyes were on Quail’s, and they were even brighter than Thripp’s.

“Its eyes pierce me and sting me and hate me,” cried the stricken Quail, and the new pain came upon him, and he could not be free of it.

“Reach your paw to the Stone, Master, and your pain shall be taken from you.”

Then Quail dared raise his eyes towards the Stone he feared, which he had always feared, dared reach out to it, and touch it... and he screamed and fell back, clutching at himself.

The new pain had seemed to turn and gnash inside him, more terrible than all that had gone before. His face contorted and stiffened, his eyes stared, and his paw reached out for comfort, not from the Stone but from Snyde, that he might know he was not alone.

Oh yes, from Snyde he sought comfort, not from the Stone.

“Take me from it, Brother, for I am not yet ready to be made consecrate...”

Back across the High Wood they took him, and the further he was from the Stone the less his pain, until they took him down into the Library, and made a place of rest for him there, where the texts had been cleansed, and the old ways of thought destroyed. There he might find peace for a time.

“Rest, Master, for the journey has been long. We went to the Stone too soon.” In truth, Quail was so slow and ill that the journey from Stone to Library took until nightfall.

“Too soon it was... For they were there. Thripp was there and
she
was there and unafraid.”

“They suffer, Master,” Snyde lied.

“Do they?” asked Quail, hope in his horrid voice.

Snyde nodded his thin head.

“I suffer, Snyde, I suffer for all molekind,” Quail said, “and I am afraid now, afraid that there will come a time when the pain will not abate.”

“Master, only you have strength for this great trial, only you are blessed to suffer it,” Snyde replied. “Your pains shall be plucked from you before the Stone, as thorns from a mole’s paw, and when your pain has gone from you you shall be... holy.”

“Holy and divine,” corrected Quail, his body made peaceful at the thought of it, and the pains subsiding away even further. “Shall I have strength to survive until then?”

“Yes, Master, you shall. Now, sleep, Master.”

“But I am thirsty...”

They took him to the surface, to a pool of water caught in the ancient surface roots of a tree.

Quail stared into it and cried out, “I see their eyes upon me, evil, horrible, turned and twisted like these roots.”

“Drink, Master.”

Closing his eyes he thrust his toothless mouth down and drank at his own ancient image.

“I am hungry.”

“We shall find you worms.”

“Worms shall not be enough. By the blood of Thripp and Privet shall I be anointed, Snyde, and in their flesh shall I not find sustenance? I yearn for it now, I am so tired.”

“Their living flesh you shall have, Master. Now eat these paltry worms as a sign of your humility, accepting them as a token of the flesh that the Stone shall give to you.”

“Newborn shall I be!” cried out Quail hysterically.

“That, Master, and that... Now come down below to sleep, come to sleep.”

“With you, Brother, that I do not wake alone in the dark night.”

Snyde submitted to Quail’s embrace that night, took pleasure in it, revelled in it, in expectation of the greater pleasures to come. Now Quail held him; soon he would hold Quail. More than hold him, and he would take him, he would have congress with him, he would!

So were Thripp and Privet spared another night before the Stone, waiting, shivering, fed the paltry worm, given no water but that which drizzled down at dawn. He bidden to silence, she continuing to obey it, humiliated in the eyes of the guardmoles who watched over them, yet not by the Stone; nothing now to anymole but themselves.

Quail had been right to suffer when he looked into their eyes, for theirs was an old love, strong as time, and understanding, for each had journeyed far, and each knew there was still a way to go.

Sometime in that night, the nearest guardmoles dozed, the furthest turned away to talk, and Thripp was able to speak to Privet for the first and only time since their separate coming together to the Stone.

“My dear,” he whispered, “I know you cannot talk, and I wish to less and less. But know this, which none could tell you at Wildenhope, not even our son Chervil, though he it was who made it be. Whillan lives.”