Duncton Tales (18 page)

There was a long silence at the end of this account which, though Chater’s basic indomitable nature had made it at times seem jocular, became a silence of dread and horror as the moles contemplated the realities of all he had told them.

Chapter Nine

“Before we consider the implications of Chater’s report,” began Master Stour once more, “let me now tell you the outcome of my own contemplation for so long on whether or not moles should fight. It would be easy to conclude from what we have heard that since Chater would probably not be with us had he
not
fought back then there are some situations at least — the defence of life for example, whether one’s own or another mole’s — where fighting is justified.”

Stour let this thought sink in before he stanced forward towards them all and said quietly, But I think not. Finally, I must think not. Perhaps no community in moledom has in recent history been so involved in what I might call just struggles as our own. Few who know the Chronicles ever doubt that the Stone followers were right to fight and kill in defence of their cause. I do not say that at that time, in those circumstances, those moles were not right. I
do
believe that now we are in different circumstances and we must each ask ourselves in the privacy of our tunnels, and thoughts, what the consequence of “just” fighting is. For myself, I believe that its inevitable consequence is more fighting. One mole’s just war provokes another mole’s just revenge. War makes war. Like youngsters who tussle and tumble together, and eventually fight, the fighting continues until one wins. Yet resentment always remains with the other side. One day that resentment erupts like a poisoned talon wound, and war starts again.

“This was not the Stone Mole’s way, and we should never forget that it was in his name that finally the defence of the Stone against the Word was made. It was in his name that the war was ended. But he never, not once in his life, hurt or struck another mole. He was a mole at peace with moledom. It was moledom that waged a war on him. Yet never did he raise his talons to strike back.

“My friends, I think the time is coming now when Duncton moles must show others that the bravest and most courageous way is to do as he did and not to strike back; not strike at all. To lower the snout before the foe.”

Stour paused again, and the others stared at him, quite still. All but Drubbins, who nodded his head slightly and whispered, “Aye!” But his view seemed to be a minority of one, for others, Maple and Chater especially, shook their heads.

“We, who are the inheritors and beneficiaries of the courage of our recent ancestors in Duncton, should now remember that it was not given only to the Stone Mole to be at peace with others. It was Tryfan’s way too, in the end — his final pacifism a hard-won discipline for so great a warrior. And others too took his view to its ultimate and chose death rather than resistance. It has greatly concerned me that these lessons of the past have been forgotten. In the aftermath of war was a numbness about this recent past, a forgetting, and moles have been slow and idle about trying to understand what the Stone Mole taught us. Now because of this absence of leadership and thought by any others, moles like those of Caradoc have emerged unchallenged, with their false interpretation of what the ministry of the Stone Mole means for us all. If we disagree with it, and
I
do, then if we simply fight against what they say we do no more than unthinking moles who strike out when a foe strikes them, but ask not the reason why, nor offer something better instead. In short, if we simply fight we are no better than
what
mole we fight, and in some ways rather worse.

“We need therefore to have a view of what the meaning of the war of Stone and Word was, and what the Stone Mole would have us do. We need to have the purpose and courage to think for ourselves at last — just as great Tryfan taught we should, and just as we are so eager, and so proud, to claim we do in Duncton Wood. I believe that part, perhaps the central part, of any statement of our purpose and faith should be that we will never fight with the talons of our paws again. Instead we must begin to dare to fight with the talons of our minds, and the talons of our resolve, and the talons of our faith.

“This will need great example, and great leadership. The example must begin with ordinary moles, moles like ourselves, who must resolve to “fight” only in the peaceful moral way I have described. Great must be our courage to do it, and perhaps great our sacrifice.

“As for the leadership I mentioned, of that I am not so certain. It will not, it cannot, come from me or moles like me. I, like Drubbins here, am of a dying generation. It must be from among younger moles that leadership will come. Somewhere, some day, a mole will emerge who will have the youth, and energy, intelligence and love, to lead all moledom forward in an interpretation of the Stone Mole’s ministry and life. It is nearly a century now since that time, and moledom is ready now for this new direction. But I say this to you: that leader will not come out of nothing. He will learn from and be conditioned by the example of peace and love which it is now our task to demonstrate. My sense is that this is the last and greatest task facing the moles of Duncton Wood, whose heritage is great and whose tasks and responsibilities are ours now.

“I ask not today that any of you should agree with me, or even state that you disagree. I ask that you do as the Newborn mole Wesley inspired me to do: think, live in yourself a little, dare to ask the hardest questions, dare to wonder why it makes a mole feel so afraid and so alone to contemplate raising only the talons of peace in his own defence. Dare to turn to the great Stone, and listen to its Silence, and seek an answer to these questions there. Talk to others.”

“Master, we have had such conversations already in Barrow Vale. You are not alone in your thoughts, though there may be few there, or even here, who seemed to agree with you.” It was Privet who spoke, but others nodded their heads at what she said.

“Then it is well,” said Stour, “for all I ever wished to be was a librarian, neither more nor less. But what I have found is that I must be mole as well!

“Now, what of Chater’s fight against the Newborns at Cuddesdon? It would have been well that he could have escaped without raising his talons. But supposing he could not, and the choice was kill or be killed? We are his friends, he knows that I love him and respect him. I believe he loves and respects me. I can ask only this …” Here Stour placed his old paw on Chater’s bigger, stronger one. “I ask only that you and he ponder why it might be that he should not have killed, or maimed, or struck another, even if it meant he died. Because if enough of us show such courage, and a fearlessness of death, then I believe we come nearer to the Stone Mole’s way than any dogma or bullying or fanaticism that the moles of Caradoc might try, and that finally the day will come when such evils will wither before our fearlessness.

“Like the Stone Mole, wise Tryfan called such courage ‘love’. We must learn to raise the talons of love at last, and put away for ever the talons of fear. This is the challenge we now face in Duncton Wood, and it is hard and grave and terrible.

“But of one more thing must I briefly speak, for it will help you understand one of the courses of action that I, in consultation with Drubbins here, have already taken. When that fateful conversation with Wesley took place, he was eager, too eager, to know the “truth”, as he called it, of one of the Books of Moledom, namely the lost and last book called the Book of Silence.

“It is in the nature of such moles who profess a love of truth, that they have so little faith in other moles to tell it that they do not recognize it when it is spoken to them.

Wesley did not believe me when I told him that of the seven Books of Moledom only six exist. All are in our custody, but as for the seventh, that of Silence, I know no more than anymole …

“Not only did he not believe me, but it was obvious that his view was that such a mole as I, not of the true faith, was not the proper custodian of the great Books, nor of the other sacred texts, ancient and modern, of moledom. So it seems that their desire is not just censorship, but custody as well.

“But why should custody matter? For you might say that there are copies of the six Books already in most of the main Libraries and it’s the words that matter not the actual texts themselves …”

“Oh, but Master, the real Books are what matter, aren’t they?”

“Why so, Fieldfare?” asked Stour quietly.

“Well, for one thing, they are the actual texts moles strived over, and which came here to our free system because the Stone wanted them too. Their being here tells moles all over moledom that something they treasure is safe in the paws of good moles …”

“But Brother Wesley would argue that if they were safe in
his
paws they would be in the control of good moles too.”

“Aye, and no doubt argue that the fact they were in his paws was ordained by the Stone and therefore he was in the right.”

“Let’s get this right,” said Maple as patiently as he could. “You’re saying, Master, that if the Newborns gained control of the six Books they would also gain some kind of authority they would use to impose their dogma on others?”

“Exactly that! The Books legitimize whichever moles have possession of them. Now, as it happens, the kind of faith we’ve always had and fought for in Duncton Wood is free thinking, and moledom knows that well. We don’t use the Books for anything, they simply
are
, and moles rarely see them. By tradition they are looked after by the Master against the day when the Book of Silence is found and all the seven Books can then be placed by some holy mole of the future under the Duncton Stone itself — a dangerous and probably fatal exercise. But we know that already the Seven Stillstones are there awaiting, as it were, the coming of the Books.

“Until the Newborns came along such matters were simple enough — we had a faith that one day things would be made aright, but none of us was arrogant enough to think we were the moles to see matters to a conclusion: our task was simply to watch over the Books, and the system of free faith of which they are a part, and I, as Master Librarian, have been honoured with, as it were, the day-by-day ordering of things, and dissemination of texts and knowledge as laid down by the Conclave of Caradoc so many moleyears ago.”

“All moledom knows you instigated that,” said Drubbins, “and honours you for it. None begrudges you the “honour” of being the Keeper of the Six Books.”

Stour was quiet for a moment, as if to remind his friends that this signal honour was a burden too, one which right there and then he was in some way trying to share a little, and gain counsel about.

“Thus far,” he continued, “I have concentrated on Brother Wesley, and have avoided saying what perhaps is rather obvious, that he finally matters less than the mole who inspired and appointed him — the Elder Senior Brother Thripp of Blagrove Slide.

“I would dearly like to know more about this mole, or to meet somemole who has actually met him — apart that is from Brother Wesley — but that is not possible for a mole like me, though I had considered going on a formal visit to meet him. However, I can reveal that Wesley said certain things about his Elder Senior Brother that interested me, and made me realize that perhaps we should not be as passive about the six books, or even the absent Book of Silence, as we have been.

“I therefore decided to send a mole out under cover as it were, to find out what he or she could — I prefer not to identify the mole concerned, though you may rest assured that that mole is not in this Chamber today, so stop looking suspiciously at each other …

“The results of this investigation were most interesting, and thought-provoking. For one thing it seems that Thripp is not as old a mole as his title ‘Elder Senior Brother’ would imply. For another he is not the oppressive authoritarian mole his Caradocian movement and its representatives would now seem to imply. He is inspirational, he is intelligent, he is the kind of charismatic leader whom others follow.

“Next, I discovered through my sources, that he himself is not pleased with the way in which the Newborns have recently developed, which they have done, as Chater so brutally found out, through a body of zealot moles called Senior Brother Inquisitors, of whom the mole “Fetter” is the first I have ever heard named. I have reason to think that there is a mole senior Inquisitor, we do not know his name, who is behind this new, more aggressive, stance the Newborns are taking. We are faced, in short, by a Caradocian Order which, like all such movements, is suffering a struggle for power which may, in the end, affect us. Indeed it almost did: our good friend Chater might easily not be here today …”

“Oh don’t say that, Master,
please
!” said Fieldfare, putting her paws around her beloved and drawing him protesting towards her as if it was the Master himself who was the enemy.

“But the mole I sent forth discovered even more … We talked earlier about how it could be that the moles, or the order, which controls the Books of Moledom, has a power invested in it by virtue of the fact of possession. It is general knowledge that when Brother Wesley visited the Library here he and I fell out somewhat roughly — indeed, in the end I had to eject him. This was because he not only wanted to see the six Books — I allowed him to see some of them — but also to have the right to take one or other of them away that others of his Order might see and consult them. This he claimed as a legitimate Stone-given right, using some nonsensical reference to other texts to support his claim. When I rejected this he then advanced the not altogether unreasonable argument that we had no more right to hold the Books than any other group of moles, except a historic one.

“When I asked why it did not satisfy him simply to see them where they were — and I invited him to send other scholars if he wished — he said that it was not the Elder Senior Brother Thripp’s opinion that the Books were merely for scholars to gloat over — as he put it. They were, he said, ‘living things that should be freely available to mole’”