Duncton Tales (23 page)

As all this happened Fieldfare noticed that the moles about her were uttering a humming, snoutish sound from the back of their half-open mouths in a rhythmic way, and seeming to say a word which sounded like ‘oohhhnnnn oohhhnnnn oohhhnnnn!’ Doing this, they seemed utterly indifferent to the fate of their aged friend and yet they must have had some consciousness of her because as soon as the males had silenced her — as Fieldfare assumed they had — they suddenly stopped. It seemed to her that the humming was their way of blocking out the fact that something unpleasant was happening which they wished to know nothing about.

For a moment there was dead silence again, but even as Fieldfare dared look up to observe everything the better, Bantam reared up and screamed out, “Stohh oohhhnnnn!” and the humming chant began once more.

So that was it! Stone!

Half opening her mouth in semblance of joining the others, and half closing her eyes that her curiosity might not be noticed, Fieldfare watched and saw what she could.

Bantam was not much changed from when Fieldfare had seen her last; a little thinner perhaps, and her eyes, always forbidding, a little more so. It was plain that she held some sort of position of authority here in the Marsh End, and judging from the immediacy of the others’ response, she was regarded either with great respect, or great fear. Having seen the speed and ruthlessness of the old female’s removal Fieldfare had little doubt which.

Meanwhile there was some pushing and shoving at the entrance down which she herself had come, where it seemed that the same gluttonous moles she had met earlier were now being forced in by the ‘guards’. Indeed, a wave of movement crossed the chamber, and brought the moles into even closer contact with each other, such that Fieldfare realized with sudden fear that she could barely move, and that she would find it quite impossible to get out of the chamber before others did.

Even as Fieldfare began to panic, and lose all idea of observing what was going on as she began to be desperate to get out before she was crushed further, Bantam cried out, “Be still! Brother Worthing will speak a final prayer of thanks and then we will ascend to the surface to meet the Senior Brothers. For they have come at last among us, praise the Stone! Be still, or risk the dire crush of indiscipline.”

Just as movement had gone like a crushing wave across the throng a moment before, now a blessed stillness descended upon it, as each mole heeded Sister Bantam’s word and one by one stanced still as death, so that Fieldfare could breathe again. Panic she still felt, and that grim phrase of Bantam’s, “the dire crush of indiscipline’, seemed to throb in her mind as her blood throbbed in her ears until the panic subsided.

The good Brother Worthing’s prayers she heard not, grateful only to be alive and know how relieved she would be to be outside again. Then, when the prayers were over, the guards stanced aside to reveal ways out through which they now unhurriedly directed those moles nearest to them.

As suddenly as the crush had come it eased away, and Fieldfare, beginning to shake with delayed shock, was herself at last able to stagger up a short tunnel, and out to the cool and infinitely pleasant surface of the Marsh End once again.

But she was mistaken if she thought that her tribulations were over and she could thankfully go home at last. They had only just begun. The same dark and silent young brothers who had been the guard-stewards below ground were now in place to herd the hapless moles into a clearing some way from the entrances down to the communal chamber.

The clearing, which appeared to be newly made, had recently delved ground about it which rose up on all sides but one, giving those in it the sense of being enclosed and vulnerable to anymole who took a stance up on the raised ground, which Sister Bantam almost immediately did.

Casting her imperious eyes across the throng she said, “Brothers, Sisters, be still before the coming of the Senior Brothers …”

Then, from the far side of the raised ground, five males slowly appeared and with the sun-bright sky behind them they seemed like moles rising from the ground itself and bringing with them light. At this Fieldfare felt for the first time that sense, so alarming, so grim, that it might be much harder to find a way back out of the Marsh End and the ministrations of the Newborns, than it had been to get there.

No sooner had this thought crept uneasily into her mind than the one mole she recognized amongst the live, Brother Worthing, who had said prayers earlier, advanced and addressed the assembly.

“Brothers and Sisters in the Stone,” he began, “we are gathered here to welcome three moles whose presence honours our small community in Duncton Wood, and whose coming this day marks a new and exciting era for true followers of the Stone. Brothers, Sisters … Senior Brother Inquisitors Fetter, Law and Barre.”

He waved a paw at each of these in turn and Fieldfare could not say she liked any of them, Barre looking decidedly brutal, Law having a cruel smirk on his face, and Fetter a calm and inexorable assurance. They nodded in that smug way new arrivals of importance often have when they are introduced to a company of moles. But it was not finally any of these three visitors that held Fieldfare’s attention, but the remaining mole, who, she deduced from the fact that it was not necessary to introduce him to the throng, must be Senior Brother Chervil.

His eyes were black and intense, and his presence was strangely compelling in the way that a great rise of rock which seems about to fall because the heavy stormy sky behind it moves with cloud, is compelling. Though large enough, and strong, he was no larger than his companions.

Chervil neither looked at Worthing, nor anymole, nor smiled, but instead immediately hunched a little towards them in a slight movement that seemed massive and binding on them all, and said in a terse, commanding voice, “Brothers and Sisters in the Stone, I have long looked forward to the day I should be able to welcome the Senior Brother Inquisitors to Duncton Wood. It is the last of the great systems of moledom which must be prepared towards the day when the main systems of moledom shall be ready to yield peacefully to the only true way to the Stone, and with your help and faith it will soon be so.”

“Aye! It shall be prepared by us!” cried out the moles enthusiastically all round Fieldfare.

“Join with me in a prayer of thanks to the Stone for their safe deliverance through the traps and dangers of moledom,” Chervil continued, “so many of whose systems are not yet enlightened by the good news of the true way, and where the spirit of indulgence and indolence lingers to corrupt all moles.”

There followed some prayers that Fieldfare found interminable in their length, and irritating in their professions of joy, the more so because now and then, when she least expected it, the moles about her turned to each other and to her as well and embraced with cloying warmth with the words, “Peace!” and ‘Only the true way!” and ’Hail fellow Sister in the Stone!” to which Fieldfare replied with embarrassed smiles and mutterings of her own, which she trusted might be taken as suitable for the occasion.

“I mentioned,” continued Senior Brother Chervil suddenly, cutting across this spiritual bonhomie, “that the spirit of indulgence is rife in moledom still. So too is the canker of dispute and faithlessness, at whose talons I myself have suffered these months past when I have borne witness of the Newborn truth. Aye …’ and here he seemed to indicate a wound in his flank, though look as she might Fieldfare could see none, or nothing more than an indisposition of the fur where once there might have been a tiny scratch.

Nevertheless, this ‘living’ proof of the dangers to which Chervil had been subject and his witnessing of moles who dared to doubt the preaching of a Newborn mole, did not go down well with his listeners, who were incited to cry out in dismay and anger, especially the younger males.

Further mention of certain outrages against Newborn moles only fanned the flames of their anger, as a strong wind makes a fire grow across a wood, until suddenly Chervil raised a paw and said, “Peace. Peace is the only way, an attitude of peace.”

“Peace,” hissed the Newborn rabble softly, and reluctantly.

“However, just punishment to make such moles suffer their own violence is also the Stone’s way, for the Stone is jealous of the truth and will cast down into their own darkness moles who violate its Silence with their babbling doubt and discord,” ventured Chervil, his words rousing the Newborns to enthusiasm once more.

“Aye,” they cried, just punishment of wrongdoers!”

“Recently, it was Senior Brother Barre’s duty to oversee such retribution in a system near here, a place of so-called learning, contemplation and scholarship. I refer to corrupt Cuddesdon. But we know the dangers of such ‘learning’, we have seen the blasphemy of much ‘textual scholarship’. Aye …”

Fieldfare felt the cold shock of recognition as he mentioned Cuddesdon and heard no more as she realized with a start that she was now almost certainly looking at one of the moles who had so nearly killed her Chater.

“Elsewhere in moledom the blasphemous spirit of discord is being dealt with more formally,” continued Chervil, “and so-called leaders such as the infamous Rooster of Bleaklow Moor have been, or are being, brought for judgement before the Stone …”

Rooster! The mole Chater mentioned hearing about. Caught, it seemed, and by now, perhaps, gone the way of those Cuddesdon moles. Fieldfare had heard enough, and though she could not get away, she listened to no more, sickened by a sense of pious righteousness which pervaded the meeting like the odour of a corpse.

Yet worse, far worse, was to come, and soon. For the moment Chervil had finished speaking, and as if at some signal, the moles dispersed in all directions, except that some who tried to follow, as Fieldfare did, were held back within a circle formed by the dark-furred guard-stewards.

Now Fieldfare’s nightmare truly began. For she saw, with horror, that those detained included many of the moles she had first met gorging themselves. There was a short speech of accusation, by Senior Brother Inquisitor Fetter, not wasting any time it seemed, and a shorter speech by Brother Worthing who had officiated underground.

Then, as Fieldfare realized with mounting horror that she was one of the accused, they were forcefully herded down through a confusing thicket of brambles and sapling alder, all hurried and harried along the way, with some of them, who seemed already to know their fate, whimpering and crying out in fear.

Fearing the worst, and remembering what had so nearly happened to her Chater, she decided that it was now or never if she was to escape. She thought she chose her moment well, turned into a thicket, rushed through it, but before she knew where she was she was in the firm grasp of two of the guards, and worse, staring into the angry, powerful eyes of Bantam.

“But you
know
me, Bantam,” she said with relief. “I’m Fieldfare, of the Eastside. I’m not one of these moles, I’m not even a Newborn …”

“I know sinners not,” said Bantam indifferently and then, turning to one of the guards she added, “take her to the massing,” and was gone. The massing? Cold fear began to overtake Fieldfare, terrible cold fear.

Round and about, over and under, through and by … Fieldfare, tired from her earlier journey, was shocked by what she had seen and heard, frightened by Bantam’s non-recognition of her, and intimidated by the buffeting of the silent guards which seemed calculated to hurt and yet not quite draw blood or even make a mark.

Just as she felt she was about to faint with exhaustion Fieldfare was suddenly and violently pushed down a slipway into the ground ahead of her, the moles in front almost seeming to fall into the earth as she must have seemed to, to those behind her. A rough paw at her rump propelled her further down into darkness and confusion.

Down, down, stumbling, hurt, lost among screams and fear, the world turned turvy-topsy and most menacing.

In the murk she saw Bantam again, poised in a side tunnel’s entrance and watching with a curious look of lustful hatred in her eyes. Fieldfare cried out for her to recognize her, saying she was only Fieldfare, an old friend, she was …

But she was nothing it seemed, and unrecognized. Bantam thrust her talons in Fieldfare’s snout and tears of pain blinded her, and she tumbled headlong past into a great chamber, full, dangerously full, of others all frightened and confused like herself.

Then, from a raised and guarded area on two sides of the chamber, too high for moles below to gain access to it, and with exits behind which made coming and going by moles up there very easy, a dark brother appeared who began haranguing them for the error of their ways, shouting at them the horrors of the Stone’s judgement, and informing them that mere apology was not enough. As he finished another began and so their arraignment began and went on, and on, and on …

And so did Fieldfare’s nightmare truly begin. Desperately tired, she was not allowed to sleep; quite unknown, she was accused of every crime; a mole inclined to smile at life, she was now made to whimper out her fears. And she was not the only one. All of them, crushed together, half suffocating, agonizingly thirsty, desperate, and always, always, the dark-furred males, watching, pushing, dragging; and in the dark night that now fell, moles began to die about her. She could hear them, rasping and croaking and calling out for help; dying. She was sure of that.

“Moles dead …” she whispered, staring at the lifeless eyes of a mole who had died at her very flank. Seeing which Fieldfare knew that she too was on a terrible path now that led to death, or destruction or … acquiescence.

She turned then or later as a mole touched her and whispered most terribly, “Help me, Fieldfare!” and she found herself staring into the eyes of the mole Avens, the one who worked in the library and whom Privet knew. His face was half crushed, his eyes bulged and staring, and the rigour of death began to destroy what life remained in his look of horror. Even as she tried to speak he died before her eyes.

Worse, worse, worse in that darkness. A crooked form came to him, snouted at him, and mounted him, a living mole covering a dead one. It did, they did, and Fieldfare closed her eyes on the nightmares that began.