Duncton Tales (7 page)

Occasionally she went down to Barrow Vale with Fieldfare, and stanced down to listen to the chatter and backchat of other moles. From time to time they would try to engage her in conversation, but since she would give little away about her past, and since Duncton moles liked to know such things, she was seen as reserved and, after a time, came to be considered a dull mole with little to say for herself.

Fieldfare, ever curious about her, tried to find out what she could, but after a time gave up trying, believing that if a mole wanted to say nothing there was good reason for it and another shouldn’t pry.

Ironically, it was this reticence which first interested Chater in the new mole, for he knew how persistent Duncton moles could be in general (and his mate in particular) about getting information out of others and thought that anymole who could maintain her silence must have something about her.

“It’s not that I’m not interested, Chater my love, but just that she doesn’t want to talk yet.”

“Yet? You mean never!”

“I don’t agree with you there, not I. A female crossed in love will always talk about it in the end, unless they wither up inside.”

“Ah, it’s unrequited love has brought her here, is it?” he said. “Love my arse! From what I’ve seen of Librarian Privet she looks too withered up for love to me. The passion that’s brought her here, my dear, is
texts
. Believe me, it gets to them. I heard from that daft Avens that she scribed in Beechenhill and you can bet your life she’s here to research some tedious bloody subject or another, not simply to scribe another text to be copied. Texts breed like rabbits. Never be a stop to them. Not ever.”

“My dear,” said Fieldfare stoutly, “I will only say that in all my years I have never met a mole I felt more certain was and is heartbroken and thwarted in love as Privet. And you’ve not seen it because you’re so prejudiced against scholars and the rest — except the Master himself of course — that you don’t give them the time of day or believe they can have hearts and feelings like the rest of us. Also, beloved, I can only say that if you had bothered to learn to scribe you wouldn’t be a mere journeymole and forced to wander mole knows where and deprive me of my proper rights to a mate.”

“Hang on a bit, angel-snout!” protested Chater, taken aback by this outburst, “I only —”

“I shall not, precious one, I shall speak my mind. We have good times together, Privet and I, and I believe that if she would only let others see her as I do then there’s many would be glad to know her more. She’s very knowledgeable.”

“About what, for instance?”

“About texts.”

“All librarians give that impression, my love, but most of them don’t know their arse from their lughole —”

“Chater!”

“It’s true. They talk a lot but when it comes to it they know bugger-all. I mean I’ve travelled here, there and everywhere and know the routes well, and has a single librarian ever consulted me about moledom, about which they scribe their monographs and histories and texts? Not one, my dear, not a single solitary one. Oh yes, they’re very good at theory but no bloody good at getting off their bums and looking for themselves! Take for example —”

“Chater! You know I get upset when you talk like this. Perhaps you ought to consider, my own sweet love, whether or not
you
get off
your
bum and really
listen
to other moles — like my friend Privet, for example. Now when I say she’s knowledgeable I don’t mean she goes on about what she doesn’t know about, like some moles I could mention. I mean that when I ask a question about something she might know about then if she doesn’t she says so, and if she does she tells me a little until I ask for more. Then when I ask for more she tells me still more. Until by the end of it I know a lot and she’s made it easy for me. That’s being knowledgeable.”

“No it’s not, beloved, that’s being a good tutor, which is different altogether.”

“Well maybe, maybe not,” said Fieldfare huffily. “I still say she’s more knowledgeable than some I could think of.”

Chater sighed, and grinned. “You’re probably right there. Next time she tells you something helpful, you pass it on and improve me too. I definitely need improvement, my delightful one.”

“You do,” said Fieldfare softly, bringing her ample body close to Chater’s.

“I do,” he agreed, “so show me.”

“Now?”

“As good a time now is, as any.”

She giggled and sighed.

“I wish Privet had a mate,” she said as she showed him … ‘I’m sure she did have once. If she’s withered, as you put it, it’s not from studying but because she misses him.”

But Chater was not interested any more that day in Privet’s mate but in his own, and it was not long before his mate was interested only in
her
own as well …

So it was that Duncton Wood carried on as it always had, its true history more that of harmless moles like Fieldfare and Chater, living their lives out, loving and respecting each other, safe in a system whose freedom had been won for them by moles long dead.

Duncton absorbed Privet into its tunnels, as it had so many others in the past. Unremarkable and unremarked but by a few like Fieldfare, Privet found her niche and had her dreams, and kept her past to herself. But, as she herself had said to Snyde, the present will become the past as well, and out of that past with its little and its great events, history will be made. And history, at that time, was stalking towards Duncton Wood once more and had in its unremitting sight the shy, the modest, and the unremarkable Privet.

“Me?” she might have said, shocked at such a suggestion.

“Yes, you,” sighed the trees of old Duncton Wood, whose voice moles there have always heard, but rarely understood it was the voice of history.

“One last time we shall need the moles of Duncton Wood, and you, Privet, are of their number now. But more than that, you carry a dream, and moles with dreams, however modest the moles themselves may seem, must discover for good and for ill that the past and the present are inextricable, and unavoidable, however far a mole may run.”

Chapter Four

Privet’s curiosity about Stour, the Master Librarian, had naturally increased the more the molemonths went by in which she did not meet him. She knew where his study cell was for even if Avens had not pointed it out during her first day there, its location was obvious from the way moles in the Main Chamber were inclined to glance up towards the mysterious shadowed gallery from which the Master was supposed to watch them all.

Occasionally Snyde or Firkin, or other Keepers like Sturne went up the slipway and disappeared from sight, and once Privet caught a glimpse of one of these talking into the shadows to a mole she could not quite see who must have been there. This was the nearest she ever got to Stour. The corpulent guard disappeared in late January and nomole was left there at all, yet he might as well have been there for all the likelihood there was of anymole daring to set paw upon the slipway.

Sometimes, when she worked into the dark afternoons, she heard strange wind-sounds reverberating from the galleried heights, and knew from her own studies that this was Dark Sound, though of a benign and gentle kind. Dark Sound of the Whernish kind she knew was a killer of moles, unless they were of extraordinary spiritual strength.

As she got to know the more obscure parts of the Library which lay to the west in the direction of the Stone, mainly with Pumpkin’s help, she discovered tunnels in which the stacks of texts petered out, and where most dark, most mysterious, and most dangerous, the tunnels ran on, blocked only half-heartedly it seemed by seals delved a long time since, and now in a ruinous state and choked with rubble, flints and broken soil through which roots twined.

But so afraid were the Duncton librarians of what lay beyond — a fear bolstered by the Dark Sounds that emanated from these tunnels too, especially on days when the wind was gusting northerly — that nomole had been willing, or felt it necessary, to clear these partial obstructions and rebuild the seals properly.

“If I have to get texts from those parts,” said Pumpkin once, “I make sure to do it in the middle of the day when the light is good, and if I possibly can I choose a day when the winds are light. Never go anywhere near there if you can help it when the wind blows from the north,” he added, as if he expected that Privet might, “for it’s then the Dark Sound eats into you and muddles your head. I’ve heard screams from those tunnels, and the sound of moles running, and of talons, cruel talons, scraping on flint, and things I’ll never talk about not ever. Some say Dark Sound is just fancy, but I think it’s real.”

Poor Pumpkin’s eyes were wide with fear and Privet nodded sympathetically.

“I know it’s real,” she said flatly.

“You’ve heard it near-to?” he asked incredulously.

She closed her mouth, looked away, and vaguely shook her head. Pumpkin said no more: like most others who had got to know Privet, he knew there were things in her past she did not talk about.

“Tell me,” she said to change the subject, “doesn’t Master Stour ever come down into the Main Library?”

“He used to regularly when I first came to work here three Longest Nights ago. He was in his prime then and moles trembled at his approach. Sharp as blackthorn his mind was, and he looked like thunder in a mean sky if he was crossed. Of course. that Snyde was just a starter then and Stour didn’t give him the time of day. But the years passed, seasons came and went. The copying became the main part of the Library’s work and gradually Stour grew older, and we began to see him less and less.”

“You said that copying became the main task — what was important before then?”

“Well, the Conclave of Cannock that he inspired and which led to all this copying was years before my time. But before that this place was all collecting and scholarship. These days moles don’t bring discovered texts here like they used to, preferring to keep the originals in their own systems and send copies instead. Except we rarely see even those. As for scholarship, why there’s hardly a mole here worthy of the name scholar — they’re all like that cluck-headed Avens from Avebury, though he means well enough. No, Miss Privet, I hope it’s not out of turn my saying that you’re the first real scholar we’ve had in Duncton in a very long time.”

Privet’s snout turned a darker shade of pink at this compliment and she looked away, much touched.

Then, “What about the Master’s present retreat? What’s the explanation of that?”

Pumpkin shrugged, and scratched his head. Makes no real sense to me. In fact if anything he had been getting more mellow. I even saw him smile once or twice — even at me! I don’t know …”

Privet looked at him quizzically, for he obviously
did
know.

“You’re not half bad at getting others to talk, Miss, even if you give nothing away about yourself!” declared Pumpkin, with a cheerful combination of ruefulness and respect. “I suppose what I was thinking was that last October two of those Newborns came up from the Marsh End and asked to see the Master. Of course they got short shrift from Snyde but old Stour must have been watching up there in his gallery and bless me but he appears all of a sudden and says it’s all right, he’ll see them. Well, they talked for a whole afternoon and eventually those of us who were watching and listening out for what was going on — which included myself, needless to say! — saw the Master more or less driving those Newborns out of the place and saying he was outraged and trust was trust and they would not be welcome back and so on. Stone knows what it was about because I didn’t then and never found out since. But shortly afterwards Drubbins was sent for and he spent a long time with the Master and came out looking grim and it was after
that 
— though I only put two and two together later
 
—
the Master began his retreat. Don’t ask me what he does up there all alone, but there it is. Now he issues orders for texts only through Deputy Master Snyde.”

“But surely a librarian needs to know his texts and folios?”

“He does, better than anymole alive. They say he wanders about the library at night, feeling the texts, and sometimes you’ll catch sight of a shadow among the stacks at dawn, if you come that early. That’ll be Stour. But these days he may not have need of coming here so much.”

“Why not?”

“Well, they say he has his own private library up there among the galleries, and that his work now uses only those few texts and … well, and himself.”

“Himself, Pumpkin?”

Pumpkin shrugged. “It’s only what I’ve heard others talk of, which means to say Snyde because of course old Firkin never breaks the Master’s confidence and Sturne says nothing at all. Doesn’t mean much to me but I heard the Deputy Master talk about the very self-same thing, and not to a librarian either. He was saying that Stour’s work these days concerns the Silence, and that he, Stour, had said the very last thing a mole needs for that is texts. Quote: “Texts get in the way” unquote. Sounds daft to me, and he wouldn’t be the first Master who ends his days mad. It’s the isolation of the job and responsibility, you see. Of course the fancy name they give it is a “retreat” but there’s nothing normal or healthy about secluding yourself from others, is there?”