Duncton Stone (98 page)

Newborn! And Newborns had killed Furrow. How could she even think...!

But sometimes the heart guides paws more truly than the mind, and so she had dared venture back up to Duncton Wood.

But Maple she never reached. She nearly did, but guardmoles about the place where he lived turned her back, saying he was ill and could see nomole. Then could she see Weeth, for he would remember her and might be willing to help?

“Not seen him about at all, my dear. No, you best leave them both alone for —”

Just then, along the way where she had been stopped,
he
came, large as life, severe, formidable: Sturne.

“Evening, sir!” called out the guardmole. “He’ll be glad to see you I expect!”

Myrtle hid away from him as he went past, her heart pounding in her chest quite painfully.

“Who is he?” she asked, amazed to see him there, and to hear him called “Sir” as well. More than that, amazed at how she wanted to run to him, to put her paws about him, for that look in his eyes, why, anymole could see it was still there. But worse. Her heart wept for him.

“Him? That was the Master Librarian himself, Sturne. A hero if ever there was one. A great mole.”

“Master Librarian?” faltered Myrtle, who could not even scribe. A hero, a great mole... well then, it was no use.

“Mole! Come back! I could tell Weeth that you were here and give him your name. What is your name? Mole!”

But Myrtle slipped away, back by the path she had come down, for she knew that so great a mole as a Master Librarian would never want to be embarrassed by her coming to him and asking him if he was well. He had probably forgotten all about that day. He would not want to know.

So Myrtle slept in some scrape that late November night, shivering and miserable and never knowing that not so far away, as miserable and shivering as she, a hero lay, a great mole, a Master Librarian no less, who would have given his all to know her name, and to know that even so late in life he could be understood and loved, and that he, too, had much to give.

November and December then was a time of suffering. But suffering is not always so plain, or harsh-seeming, as this. More often it is subtle, insidious and so unrecognized that it masquerades as the opposite to what it really is.

Privet was suffering, though she did not know it yet. She had found the Book, she had understood that she was chosen to fill its folios, and so, with vigour, she had begun. With vigour she had continued. With vigour reached December, working day after day at her task, scribing of the many journeys that moles had undertaken in the name of Silence – some historic, some recent, and one of them her own.

Day by day she scribed, and often into night, with Pumpkin servicing her needs of food and conversation, and Sturne providing her with the reference texts she sometimes used. A time of austerity and effort, but one she seemed to much enjoy.

Of course she enjoyed it! The words flowed from her talons, clear as light. Words, names, places, incidents, ideas, beliefs... all leading towards the Stone’s Light and Silence. And as they came she saw ahead towards much deeper things, of which she would in time scribe too. Insights she had had, truths she had never expressed, feelings and senses that she knew – she
knew
 – no other mole had ever scribed down before.

Yes, she could complete the Book of Silence if only the Stone would give her time, and health.

So what was the suffering in that?

She did not know. She would not have understood the question yet.

But Pumpkin did, and one night, as December came, and winter cold shivered at his flanks, he took himself up to the Stone he loved, talking to it as he daily did, saying things he could say to nomole at all.

“Stone, it’s too easy for her and I am afraid. She scribes and scribes as if she fears to stop. I may be wrong, I probably am... but I feel her winter has not yet begun. Forgive me if I’m foolish and presumptuous. But if I’m not, help her, Stone, because I feel that beyond the scribings she has made, and will make yet, is a whole winter of suffering, and it will be Privet’s alone and nomole will be able to help her. Not me, not Rooster, not Hamble, though we all love her. Therefore, watch over her, Stone, and see that she comes home to us safeguarded. And if the Book is not to be, well, Stone, remember it’s her we love, not what she scribes.”

But Pumpkin’s prayers were rarely over so quickly and often as not, having seemed to have finished his supplications before the Stone, and having turned away to go back to his daily tasks, he would remember some other issue or other which he wished to draw to the Stone’s attention. So on this occasion...

“And Stone, forgive me for troubling you further, but there’s Whillan, isn’t there? For, as you know...”

Pumpkin’s concern then, as on many other prayerful occasions through November and December, was Whillan’s absolute unwillingness to talk about what had happened to him after Wildenhope. Of even what occurred
at
Wildenhope he would say nothing, though from things that Chervil and Rooster had said, Pumpkin had a shrewd idea how Whillan had got away to safety.

Even more so after he had put his theory to Hamble who, as it happened, had passed through Wildenhope on his circuitous journey from Caradoc to Duncton Wood and had been reluctant witness to some drownings and worked out how Whillan might have effected his escape.

Pumpkin’s interest in Whillan was more than idle curiosity, for it troubled him that Whillan, like Rooster, barely spoke to Privet, though Stone knew how much they must mean to each other. For her part, Privet seemed wholly indifferent to Whillan, as she did to Rooster, so absorbed was she by the process of scribing the Book.

While for
his
part Whillan was silent and obtuse to the point of obscurity, and a very changed mole indeed. As Hamble himself had rightly said, whatever Whillan was before he left Duncton it was a formidable mole that returned.

“If he has returned,” Hamble continued darkly, “for he’s a look in his eyes that suggests to me his heart’s somewhere else for now. You mark my words, Pumpkin, he’ll be off before he comes back, if you see what I mean.”

Their conversation took place in December, and its context was one dear to Hamble’s heart and something of a puzzlement to Pumpkin – how it might be that weak moles can sometimes triumph over strong.

“For I’m weak,” said Pumpkin with genuine modesty, “but we triumphed over the Newborns, didn’t we, Hamble?”

“We certainly did, and you’re right, you’re not the strongest mole I’ve ever seen.”

By way of illustration of weakness versus strength the conversation turned first to Myrtle’s startling intervention at the cross-under on Sturne’s behalf, though they did not then know her name.

Anger, conviction, surprise and a loud shout will take a mole a long way, Hamble pointed out, if not always
all
the way. So, for example, Myrtle’s initial success in stopping the moles who were about to kill Sturne was relatively easy to understand, without in any way taking away from her achievement.

But the truth is that had not Whillan come when he did, taking his place along-flank her, and turning his calm gaze upon the many moles so eager to strike the first death blow, more than likely not only would Sturne have died, but Myrtle as well.

So therefore, Hamble reasonably asked, how was it that so many moles, all so eager to strike a blow, should have been stilled by Whillan, and then have retreated when faced by no more than his stance and his calm voice, and finally slipped away.

“I might almost say
fled
away, as if they had seen something they recognized as far stronger than themselves. In fact, I
do
say that, Pumpkin!”

It was certainly a reasonable question and only went to show that Whillan was a changed mole. So startling a change indeed that many would say that that young mole, frightened, uncertain, deserted by all including his adoptive mother (as it seemed to him as he was roughly taken to the river by Chervil, Feldspar and the others),
had
died, and was no more.

This much Whillan often said himself. But though it is true that he “often said himself” this is not to say he often spoke. He did not. Never loquacious, the new Whillan was rather less so on his return. He said little and observed much, and resisted all attempts, even by moles who knew and loved him, like Fieldfare and Pumpkin, to make him tell his story.

Others, most notably Rooster, did not even ask him, sensing that when he wished to talk he would do so. As for Privet, the two met briefly soon after his return and her commencement of her great task, and found that they had little to say to each other.

All that Whillan said was this, to Fieldfare: “Privet and I are both still travelling, and as we are on different journeys we have nothing to say to each other. At least we both know it, and that’s a comfort!”

Fieldfare could not make him out at all, and even less could she understand why he seemed prepared to spend time with moles like Squelch, or “that Frogbit” – a mole whose brevity and unwillingness to answer virtually any question she asked she found most frustrating.

All this was made worse for her by Privet’s preoccupation with her scribing, which meant that she was rarely seen, and when she was she seemed in a world far removed from anymole-else’s. That much of what Whillan had said at least Fieldfare understood!

“But Hamble, my dear,” she said later, for he was a mole she could talk to normally, “it is as if the whole of Duncton Wood was occupied by moles who don’t want to say a single thing worth hearing.”

Hamble grinned. He and Fieldfare got on well, and they had a common bond in Chater, at whose death Hamble had been present, and in whose life Fieldfare had found so much love and comfort.

“Your trouble, Fieldfare, if I may say so, is that you like a good gossip and you feel that if moles won’t join in they’ve got something against you. But —”

“Not a gossip, a chat! That’s what I like. And dear me, didn’t Chater used to tell me off for chatting away to a mole and, afterwards, making two and two add up to five about something they had said?”

“Or six, more like,” growled Hamble. “Give ’em time.”

“Who?”

“Moles,” said Hamble. “Most of us here have been through hard times and not all of us have your resilience. But things will improve, you see if they don’t. Duncton will be itself again one day I daresay, though I don’t suppose I’ll be here to see it.”

“Not here, Hamble! And why not? You’re not leaving too, I hope, like so many others?”

“Maybe I will and maybe I won’t. There’s nothing much for me here now, except some of my oldest friends of course! But seriously, I miss the Moors, strange though that will seem to a Duncton mole. But I do. I’d like to have seen the purple heather again, and heard the curlews call, and seen the water in the cloughs racing wild. It’s where I was born and raised, Fieldfare, and I miss it.”

“Ahhh...” purred Fieldfare, “
that
is what I miss!”

“What —?”

“I don’t mean the Moors, my dear, I mean moles talking as you were then. Moles
talking.
There’s nothing like a winter’s night, and a chamberful of well-fed and well-watered moles, some friends and some strangers, sharing a tale and a joke and a song. That’s how Duncton was when I was young, and it was at Longest Night, in a friend’s tunnels not so far from here, in just such company that I met my beloved Chater.”

Hamble nodded sympathetically and said, “Well, Longest Night will soon be on us, and you can rest assured that I’ll tell you a tale or two then, and gather a few moles together willing to do the same.”

“Why, Hamble, that’s very... thoughtful of you,” said Fieldfare, genuinely touched, her snout shading towards pink as she shifted her ample but still comely frame about a bit in a pleasurable and anticipatory sort of way. And, as one thought leads to another, not always in a way that moles understand, she asked, “Tell me, have you never had a mate? I mean – a long-term mate?”

“No, I haven’t,” said Hamble a little shortly, “no time. I can’t say I regret it, for I’ve had an active life. But then I’ve never felt the need. Now I must be off, Fieldfare, I must get going. These nights are... cold.”

She had regretted the question the moment she asked it, and regretted it even more when he set off into the bitter night, not looking back as he usually did and giving her a wave.

“Oh dear,” she said to herself, “oh dear!”

A few days later he visited her again in reference not to her too-personal question about his not having had a mate, but about Longest Night.

“Been thinking,” he said, “and even better, been doing. And better still...”

Fieldfare felt the delicious thrill of the promise of a coming treat.

“... better still, I’ve arranged something.”

“What, Hamble, what?”

“Ah, well, I wouldn’t want to disappoint you, Fieldfare. You mean a lot to me, you see.”

She did not miss the sudden quiet in his voice, and the gentleness. Indeed, after their last meeting she had begun to think that Hamble might become rather more than a friend. The thought of him leaving for the Moors, and that look in his eyes when he said “I’ve never felt the need” – which told her that he
had
felt the need – had set her thinking thoughts she had denied herself for a very long time indeed, namely, that she was not so old that she could not find another mate. More particularly, that she was not too old to take
Hamble
as a mate.