Duncton Tales (72 page)

“Well, we’ll all be like that one day, Maple, just remnants of what we were, even you! But I’ll tell you something about that tree. Look at its topmost part, where the trunk broke off. What do you see?”

Maple peered upwards and saw that the highest edge was all rough and blackened, except where some bird, a rook perhaps, had used it as a staging-post and stained it grey. Maple shrugged his shoulders, uncertain what the Master was getting at.

“You see, Maple, coming from the Westside as you do, you would have no reason to know that this tree marks the highest point to which the great fire of Bracken’s day reached. At the base of this very tree a party of moles, stricken by fire and half suffocated by smoke, unable and unwilling to progress further because an elderly member of their party was too weak to continue, crouched together in expectation of death. The fire came roaring up to them and they prayed to the Stone for a miracle of deliverance. Out of the High Wood came a mighty and wrathful wind, sent no doubt by the Stone, and it confronted the fire and fought with it, and after a tremendous struggle over the very heads of those good and faithful moles, when sparks flew, and fires roared and flaming branches fell all about them, the fire was stopped and came no further, and so they were saved.”

All thought of the present danger they might be in fled from Maple’s mind as the old mole deftly recounted this nearly-forgotten incident from the legendary days of Bracken and Rebecca, and he stared among the roots of the old tree, and then up again at the last evidence of the fire.

“There are many such reminders of the past throughout our beloved system,” said Stour, “whose meaning and memory are passed down from parents to pup, from old mole to young, as testimony that ours is not the only generation, ours not the only task, and that many have gone before us, living and feeling, hoping and loving, longing and finally dying, as we must do.”

“Remember this tree, Maple, and that its old dead trunk, which seems to have nothing left to give, can still tell a tale worth remembering to the mole who knows what language it speaks. And though the names of the moles who once sheltered here may be forgotten — and certainly none could remember them when I first heard the tale on this very spot from my father’s mouth — their courage and their faith lives on. Our heritage is something we all need at some time to remind us of our origin and identity. Remember that, Maple, always remember it.”

Maple stared down at the old mole and saw as it seemed for the first time how solid his paws were upon the ground, for all their pale frailty. Before such wisdom, and such truth to the past, all present troubles seemed as nothing.

“Master …” began Maple, for he sensed suddenly that such another chance as this to talk to moledom’s greatest scholar and librarian might never come his way, and he felt time was running out and that all his years of waiting as a warrior in the side tunnels of life were over, and great things, dangerous things, were on them now and that here, right here before him, was the making of memory he might one day need. So …

“Master,” he began, wondering what it was he sought.

“I see you need reassurance, Maple,” said Stour. “Fear not, for though I myself have never been as close to the Stone as I would wish since doubts get in my way, I know it is there for all to find and trust. It will give you no task you have not strength and courage to fulfill, nor place you before any enemy you cannot overcome, so long as its Light and Silence are in what you seek to do.”

“And you, Master? Will you be safe?”

Old Stour smiled, his pale eyes clear, his gaze on Maple like that of a father upon a son: “No, no, I shall not be safe. None of us are ever ‘safe’. But loved in the Stone I shall be, even I who have so many doubts of faith and whom some have called an unbeliever! The Stone’s Silence is my destination now and I shall be safer in retreat trying to find it than if an army of the greatest Siabod moles that ever lived came to look after me.

“But now the Wood trembles for itself, the winds fret, and this old librarian grows cold and hungry and tired. Lead me on, Maple, deliver me up to where I would be ‘safe’! And remember that I loved this system, and value more highly a single morning in its company than all the honours and the power that my years of scholarship and work with moledom’s greatest texts might bring.”

“I will, Master, always!” said Maple fervently.

Soon after that their route grew clearer and they passed into the High Wood, so that a journey that had seemed so slow to Maple at first, was suddenly and regretfully over. The entrance down into the Library loomed and Stour paused one last time to look about the leafless beeches of the High Wood, and through the windswept dells that stretched into the distance to east and to west, over to the south, and back downslope to the north.

Stour’s face grew grim, as did Drubbins’ beside him, and when in later years Maple recounted that historic moment, he would say that though he had no sense then that moledom’s history was turning there in the wood that day with them, yet something made him look around as well, as if it felt important that he should remember the Wood as Stour then saw it.

“Remember!” the Master had said, and looking around him Maple knew he always would, and that one day when time had given perspective to that moment and that day, he would understand better what it was he had been party to. He moved a little way from his charges the better to look about.

He was brought out of this moment of reverie by the sound of movement, and looking back to Stour and Drubbins once more he found they had turned from the scene about them, ducked their heads, and were halfway through the entrance of the tunnel that led into the Library, and their pawsteps were already echoing ahead of them into a dark future nomole could foresee.

Chapter Thirty-Three

But the future was already happening, and bringing discomfort and dismay to the moles who might have seemed the least endangered of all: Fieldfare and Pumpkin.

After the others had set out on their risky treks across the Wood, Pumpkin had lain meekly enough for a time, recovering from the battering and shock he had received, first with fitful sleep, then with the food and tender loving care that Fieldfare was so adept at providing to anymole that needed looking after, and then with a time of deeper sleep. But then he woke, and he felt refreshed and restless and was up on his paws and eager to be doing.

“Doing what, Pumpkin? Our orders are to stay here and stay here we shall,” said Fieldfare.

“Doing
something
,” he replied, “that’s what. Why, a library aide can’t just lie about with the day advanced, the Master on the way to the Library, with scholars needing help all over the wood and with Rolls, Rhymes and Tales in ruins and awaiting attention. Why, this is a
crisis
, Fieldfare, and nomole is going to say that old Pumpkin failed to serve when he was most needed!”

With this he looked about the chamber for a way out on to the surface, and seeing it, struggled to raise himself up and head towards it. But seeing his intention, and wishing to thwart it, Fieldfare placed her ample frame in front of the only exit and looked determined.

“Maple said we were to stay here until he or Chater came back and that’s what we’ll do —”

“Is that the way out?” interrupted Pumpkin, pointing over her plump shoulder, then trying ineffectually to squeeze by.

“It doesn’t matter if it is, we must stay here, my dear,” said Fieldfare. “Have another worm and
rest
, you can do no good out there.”

“I can do no good in here!” declared Pumpkin, too polite to try to push his way past, even if he could have managed to shift her, and so dancing about from paw to paw. “There’s
work
to do, Fieldfare. Dear me, I can’t just
stay
here.”

“You must, Pumpkin.”

“Let me by!” said Pumpkin, suddenly making a dive for a gap a quarter his size between her rounded flank and the portal’s side. They locked in a reluctant embrace which after only a few moments left Pumpkin breathless and dazed. He was not made for fighting, nor even tussling, and never had been.

“Dear oh dear, this is unseemly and quite unnecessary!” he sighed at last, falling back and pawing at his patchy fur to get it straight again. “How can I persuade you to let me go and do my duty?”

“I’m only doing mine,” said Fieldfare amiably, “and I must say you are making it very difficult …”

But, if she had been about to say more, or Pumpkin about to continue the argument, neither did so, but instead fell silent. From somewhere above them, out on the surface, came a shout and the patter of solid, stealthy paws. Then more such sounds, and the gathering of three or four moles right above their heads.

Fieldfare backed away from the entrance she had been defending, her eyes suddenly afraid.

“They’re Newborns, Pumpkin,” she whispered, “I
know
they are.” Anger, despair, fear and apprehension were in her face.

The pawsteps ran about above them, there was another shout, and the sounds went away, beyond the chamber’s roof.

“They’ve found the eastern entrance,” whispered poor Fieldfare, coming clear of the portal and stancing close to Pumpkin.

For a moment the library aide saw his way was clear to escape, and indeed he considered doing so. But only for a moment, for his sense of duty to the Library was quite overcome by the need, most unfamiliar to such a mole as he who until the night before had never been in trouble in his life, but who now once more … by the need … to defend Fieldfare. Redoubtable she might be, but despite her protestations the night before about having lost all fear, a sense of horror came over her as the stealthy pawsteps and voices began to echo about her tunnels reminding her of her time in the Marsh End and then, horror compounded with horror, to come closer. And with them voices …

“This way!”

“It goes on down here!”

“I’m sure these are the tunnels where Sister Fieldfare and her consort in sin the journeymole Chater live!”

Sister Fieldfare?

It was enough to freeze Fieldfare into a stance of despairing hopeless fear, in which her kindly face, her generous flanks, her gentle paws, seemed to shrink and wither before Pumpkin’s eyes.

“The Stone will protect us!” he said fiercely, outraged that anything or anymole could have such an effect on good Fieldfare.

“They’ve come for me,” whispered Fieldfare, “as they said they would!”

“The Stone will not have this!” declared Pumpkin stoutly, Fieldfare’s terrible fear his sudden strength. “Stay still and say not a single word!” he ordered. “Leave things to me!”

“To you?” said Fieldfare, looking wildly around the chamber as if in hope of finding something or somemole more substantial than Pumpkin.

“Sister Fieldfare!” came the Newborn call again, insinuating itself down the nearby tunnel and into the chamber where they now stanced in dismay and fear. Hearing it Fieldfare wilted still further, and all her normal resolve was gone, as with one last vestige of courage and concern for others she said hopelessly, “I must go to them and perhaps they’ll not find you …”

“Yes, me!” cried out Pumpkin, brushing busily at his flanks and sleeking his meek face-fur down as if in hope of making himself more presentably fierce. “Leave things to me. Certainly you must.”

It was as feeble a war-cry as ever moledom heard, yet war-cry it was, if only for an army of one, and with it, and with no thought of his own safety at all, Pumpkin turned towards the portal which until then had been denied him by the very mole he was now seeking to protect, and went out into the tunnel to face their Newborn adversaries.

When he was gone Fieldfare sank down to the earthen floor, head low, snout abject, eyes half closed as her spirit began to die. And so she stayed, even when voices drifted down to her, the first being Pumpkin’s.

“Looking for Sister Fieldfare?” he called out.

“We are!” cried out several purposeful voices.

“Well, you’ll not find her here. Wrong tunnel, wrong burrow.”

“And who are
you
?” a cold voice asked. Young, strong and zealous.

“Library Aide Pumpkin and you’re in my tunnels.”

“Brother, would you not welcome us?”

“Welcome you? Me? Old Pumpkin’s glad to see anymole, of course. Ha, ha, ha.” Pumpkin’s cracked laugh was the laugh of nervousness and fear.

“Any other moles down there with you, Brother?”

“Hundreds!” said Pumpkin. “Oh yes, they all flock to Pumpkin’s flank! Pumpkin’s so incredibly popular! Ha, ha, ha! Come and see for yourself!”

There was a dreadful pause, and then these nightmare words from another mole, a female mole, a mole Fieldfare knew.

“We will,” said Bantam, and pawsteps came nearer, and long shadows and the acrid scent of zealots played at the portal beside which Fieldfare crouched. Her fur was spiky with the sweat of terror, her eyes staring, her chest tight, and heaving with the gulping, shallow breaths of panic.

“I thought these were Fieldfare’s tunnels,” said Bantam.

“They were,” piped Pumpkin, “but she consorts now with Chater the journeymole and lives upslope of here.”

“Hmmph!” muttered Bantam, pausing but moments from the portal, her fierce shadow falling upon the floor of the chamber.

Bantam’s snout appeared at the portal; then a glimpse of a paw, then a flank, and in Fieldfare’s chest her heart beat again and again and again, faster and faster, such that it must surely be heard. And she wanted to cry out, “I am here, take me! Release me from this doubt!”

“Here,” said Fieldfare to the portal at last, “I am here!”

But her terror was too complete for her voice to carry far, and before her whispered declaration could be heard Bantam turned and was gone.

Fieldfare could not afterwards remember what happened next, except for some dim sense that she had been rushed out through the tunnels, and out on to the surface to a place of safety, away from the Newborns.

However it had been, she ‘woke’ from a state of shock to the urgent bidding of Pumpkin’s voice, and found herself in the rough shelter of a tangled bramble bush out on the slopes far enough away from her burrow not to recognize the place.