Duncton Tales (69 page)

“I finished my scribing of the long time we had had together, and Rooster visited the tunnels and finished things off he had been unable to do before. We spent long hours together and talked of the days in the future when we might make tunnels together and have young.

“Yes, we talked like that. Talked, but did nothing more. Sometimes he wanted more; sometimes I did. Spring was coming after all!”

“And …?” said Fieldfare, ever curious about such things, and liking mole to find happiness through having young, as she and Chater had.

Privet shook her head. I’m sorry, Fieldfare,” she said with a smile, “but we never did express our … passion. It was there all right! But the time wasn’t right, it was too soon. Rooster was still angry, and the loss of Glee and Humlock seemed to hold him back from many things, including that, though he never talked of it. And he still feared the feelings he had had of wanting to “hurt” his father Red Ratcher, for he knew he would have done if he had had to defend the Charnel moles against attack. And then, where would his responsibilities as Master of the Delve be? He knew a Master must
never
hurt another.

“As for love … he seemed to think that wanting me, loving me with all of him, was so powerful and dangerous that it felt like wanting to hurt me. He knew no different, and how could I, so innocent, so young, explain? I was almost as ignorant of such things as he was.”

“So you never knew him, never made love, and never pupped?”

A dark look went across Privet’s face. “No, I never knew him, as you put it, Fieldfare. But I
did
have pups. I did!”

There was an astonished silence in the burrow at this late and unexpected revelation. The dawn wind rattled vegetation at the tunnel portals, and somewhere across the Wood something crashed down.

Privet’s friends were still, and silent, as she began the last part of her tale.

Despite its frustrations, the period following Longest Night on Hilbert’s Top before they felt it was safe to set off for Crowden was one of relief and happiness for Privet and Rooster. From the moment his delving for the future of them both had been made and they had gone on to the surface it seemed that a great weight had been lifted from his mind.

An important and original delving had come to him, and he had no doubt it had the blessing of the Stone, and that made him believe that the loss of his friends in the Charnel, and his guilt at not being able to return to see if they were safe, or could be reached, was something he need no longer feel. The Stone would watch over them better than he could, and its purpose was something he could not question or comprehend. He believed that they were still alive, and had the consolation of knowing that they were for ever safe from the world of trouble and danger into which the escape had led him — and which had already claimed the lives of so many others from the Charnel.

Perhaps, after all, such moles as they, the one so disabled and the other so distinctive in appearance and vulnerable, were never meant for the real world and could not long have survived in it. At least they had each other, and their companionship and love was more than most moles had, as he understood from all that Privet had told him.

Stirring in him too was something he had not felt so powerfully before, because of the dark seclusion of the place he had been in: spring. As the snows melted away from the Top, and all across the Moors the white gave way to sodden greys, and then in late February to brighter colours of renewing heather and green bilberry shoots here and there amongst the hags, Rooster felt the mysterious stirring of the new season.

The rooks had begun to arrive, and down in Chieveley Dale they saw the stream run white and then blue, and grass began to turn a brighter shade of green as other birds, too far off to identify, began to flock down there, and the striving sun to lighten all before its weak rays.

It was on such a bright day that scurrying about, their paws restless and their minds full of the coming journey over the Moors, Rooster suddenly found the text that Privet had sought when she first came, hidden in some obscure spot beneath one of Hilbert’s delvings. What it was she had no doubt, and even before she opened its old cover, and reached out a paw to touch its small, neat scribing, she knew that what she touched was meant for her, just as her father Sward had told her.

Its first words were just as he had remembered them, and as she had in her turn learnt. Her grandmother Wort, once the Eldrene Wort, had scribed, “I have found the sanctuary of the Stones again and I am thinking what it is I must say to you. You whose name I do not know, you whose life was all my purpose, you for whom my little life was meant …”

So Privet began to ken Wort’s Last Testimony, a text surely meant especially for her, to tell her of a love that came back from beyond the Silence, a love Wort had wanted to give her daughter Shire but which was denied to her, and so a love that lived on only in scribing, awaiting the moment when it might be kenned and known.

Rooster watched her begin that kenning and then quietly left her alone as the first tears came, knowing that there are some griefs, some discoveries, a mole best experiences alone. He stanced up near the Top, and watched the hours of that day through, as the sky lightened and became pale blue, and the wind shifted, and warmth began to spread all across the Moors.

“Time,” he muttered to himself, “time to leave.”

Only later was he aware that Privet had crept to his flank and was stanced quietly down, her eyes red from crying, her paw wanting to be held.

“I want to go from here now,” she said.

“The text …?”

“I’ll leave it in the chamber you made. Also what I’ve scribed about us since I’ve been here. Just us will do for travel; we’ll leave all our past behind.”

“Can go
now
,” he said.

The warm wind rustled at the Moor’s edge.

“Good,” she whispered.

They turned together and went back down to the chamber.

“Where’s your scribing and the Testimony?” he said.

“Buried it in the wall,” she said. “Your delving will protect it.”

“Won’t, Privet. But I’m going to seal up this chamber and protect it with Dark Sound.”

“What about the mole …?”

“That mole’ll be all right. Will have strength to break the seal and go through Dark Sound.
Must
.”

“And then?”

“Will hear the delving we made for us. Hear all of me and some of you. Will know what to do then. But …”

Before she could ask what his hesitation might mean he went to the wall, peered at the place where she had buried the texts and vainly tried to conceal her delving, turned to her with a grin, and with a few fast delves concealed the place properly beneath more delving.

“No mole will ever find that place again!” she said, staring at the convolutions he had made and becoming unsure where it was herself.

“Mole who comes will. Delving tells him!” said Rooster with mischievous glee. “Delving can be fun! That’s what Glee said!” A dark look briefly crossed his face. “We’ll go,” he said sombrely. “You first, then I’ll seal behind me.”

She took one last look, and then turned and left, going up slowly to the surface as he did his mysterious work, and running the last part, for she heard a grim confusing sound which made her want to flee to the fresh air above.

“That’s the Dark Sound he’s making,” she said, shuddering, and wondering at the complexity of the mole she loved, who could be so gentle, and yet had it in him to create such savage sound. “May the Stone protect him from himself if he ever loses control of the anger and loss he still feels!” she whispered, staring at the dark rocks of the Top, and at the raven that hovered there and turned on its back in the wind, all strange, and then was gone.

“Rooster!” she cried out, suddenly afraid. “I want to go. Now!”

“Rooster too!” he said, emerging from the portal for the last time. “We go now!”

His paw was gentle on her flank, as they wended their way through the outcrop on the Top, and then emerged into the balmy airs of spring, and pointed their snouts southward.

A sudden gust of wind rushed at the entrances to Fieldfare’s tunnels. Then wind-sound through trees, and the crack of branches across the Wood.

“Listen! Moles!” said Maple, stancing into alertness. Silence!”

At first they could hear nothing, but then there came what sounded like a distant call of a mole. Then even before Maple was up and through the portal, they heard the drag of paw, and the call again, and they realized that what had seemed distant was simply muted because it was weak.

Weak, and desperate, and not far off. The sound of an injured mole calling out for help with his last breath before losing consciousness.

Maple signalled to Chater and Whillan to come with him, and together they went out swiftly.

All waited in silence, listening, and Privet looked in despair. They heard talking and then a pause, and after that the sound of the moles coming slowly down the tunnel helping a mole along.

Then in they came, Maple in front supporting Pumpkin, who at first was hard to recognize. His fur was wet and in disarray and there was blood about his face, and a nasty injury in his shoulder. He was only half-conscious, yet trying to speak, and his paws and belly were muddied and torn, as if he had crawled right across the Wood.

“Where’s Husk?” said Privet with sudden urgency, trying to run out of the tunnel and up into the Wood. “He’s in trouble at Rolls and Rhymes, he needs our help.”

Maple held her to stop her rushing off.

“Let him recover himself and talk, mole, you’ll gain nothing floundering about the wood distraight. Now, Pumpkin, can you tell us what happened?”

“Whatever it was it was while I was talking,” whispered Privet, much distressed, “and I should have been there, not here. I should not have left Husk alone!”

“What’s apaw, Pumpkin? Whatmole did this to you? Where’s Husk?”

“Dying,” whispered Pumpkin at last, wincing as he shifted to try to ease the pain.

Try to tell us what happened,” said Maple.

It took Pumpkin some time more to find strength enough to talk, and when he did what he had to say was grim indeed.

“Newborns came to Rolls and Rhymes,” he gasped. Texts all broken and destroyed. Husk … dying where I left him.”

“Where did you leave him, mole?” asked Chater urgently.

“Where he asked me to take him: at the Stone.”

“You’ve come from there,
now
?” said Stour.

Pumpkin nodded wearily, close to tears. They just came. Six of them. Too many for us. I tried to dissuade them, and even offered to fight them, me! Keeper Husk said not. They hit him. They began to destroy his tunnels to let the storm and rain do the rest. When they were gone there was nothing we could do and he asked me to take him to the Stone and then do my best to come here … I’m sorry, I could not do more.”

“You did more than many moles did, Pumpkin,” said Stour. This night we have seen how history turns, and turns again and now a long night has begun, and we are of it, all of us. Now listen each one of you, for this is what we each must do. Drubbins and I will go to the Library, for that is where I should be. You, Maple, will accompany us, to protect us if need be. You, Pumpkin, shall stay here with Fieldfare, who will tend to your injuries until we are ready to decide what we should do with you.

“You, Privet, will go to the Stone with Chater and Whillan, and find out what state Husk is in. We must hope that he is not in as bad a state as Pumpkin seems to think — injuries can seem worse than they are. Then you will go to Rolls and Rhymes and having done that with all due caution, join me in the Library.

“Now we have work to do this dawn and we must do it fast. But when we come together in the Library I shall tell you what tasks — what great tasks — I believe await us all, and how it may be that the tale Privet has told us, of delving and of Rooster, may have prepared for what may soon begin, unless this night’s Newborn destruction of Rolls and Rhymes means it has begun already. Of the rest of her story, for good and ill, we must await the telling until times are more propitious. Away!”