“Come on, Mistle!” he called behind him, and in the joy and pleasure of his shout she lost the sense of flagging she had had and bounded on, the sweet-scented humus beneath her paws seeming the gentlest surface she had ever run across.
All about the wood seedlings were suddenly bursting up, as shiny as the dog’s mercury, frail-seeming and yet pushing litter out of their way to reach the light above.
“What do you want to show me, Romney?” she called out.
He paused just before breaking through the wood’s edge onto the eastern Pastures.
“Look!” he whispered, creeping forward like a pup who has found a new exciting thing. He parted the brambles in front of them and beckoned her to his flank.
Here the March sun came unimpeded down and she saw among the grass at the wood’s edge the first peeping yellow flowers of celandine. Just two plants of them were out, but others were there, their flowers nearly ripe, their dark green veiny leaves abundant. The stems of the plants already out rose up with the pale yellow petals of the flower spread out like the rays of the sun. Above them, echoing the flowers’ colour, the catkins of a hazel hung, trembling in the light breeze off the slopes.
Romney looked at her, his eyes moist.
“I came this way and saw them and it seemed to me suddenly that winter was over and I saw the real promise of the spring and Duncton Wood. These are just the beginning, aren’t they, Mistle?”
She nodded, unable to speak, joyful for his joy.
“So much that’s good is going to happen here,” she said. “
So
much.” She gulped the fresh air in as if overwhelmed by the excitement of it all and said, “Oh Romney, I can hardly breathe!”
In the days that followed, spring continued to spread its delightful, sudden, sporadic way across the wood, not yet in its full glory, but stirring and rich, and the two moles had much to discover in the magic world that was theirs.
One day then, with March well under way, Mistle said she was willing now to go to the Stone again, for if they were going to perform the rites and say the prayers that Violet had taught her they must begin to become acquainted with their Stone.
“You don’t have to join in, Romney. Just listen and take your time.”
So they went, and on the way Mistle told him of the four great turnings of the seasons, which start with Longest Night and occur again in March and June and September.
“Violet taught me the prayers to say, and I’m going to begin when the March equinox comes. But we’ll start now just by getting to know the Stone, and telling it that we’re
here,
and we have faith in it and in ourselves. The Stone likes to know that
we
know, because it gets tired of just supporting moles who only turn to it when times are hard.”
They reached the clearing and ventured into it a little diffidently, lest there was still evidence of the massacre, but there was not. The winter snows and winds had turned and cleaned the leaves, and owl and rook had done their work.
At the Stone’s base, where so many had died, no trace of mole remained.
“Beechen was born here,” she said, reaching out to touch the Stone. Romney hung back, somewhat intimidated by the Stone’s rising mass and the many dire associations the eldrenes of his youth had inculcated in him regarding it.
“There’s no need to be afraid of it, Romney,” she said, realising his concern.
“You would be if you had been told since a pup that the Stone’s the most evil thing in moledom.”
She was about to reply when, to their mutual alarm and astonishment, three moles suddenly emerged from the undergrowth. They were thickset and fit, two males and a female.
“Stone followers!” said one of the males shortly.
“Don’t just stance there!” snapped the female. “Tell them to scarper.”
“Well, I mean....”
“Oh fine and splendid!” said the female, who had a preening pouty way about her. “If you’re too cowardly then
he
will, won’t he?” She smiled coquettishly at the second male.
“He will!” declared the second male in a voice and with a look that suggested that, though dim, he had a nasty streak in him. Indeed, he came past the female and appeared to prepare himself to attack Romney and Mistle.
The most alarming thing about it all was that the three moles spoke as if neither Romney nor Mistle were there, as if being “followers” had rendered them anonymous annoyances that should be got rid of.
All this took but seconds and Romney, not a slow mole nor a coward, was in the act of putting himself between the grikes and Mistle and assessing his best chances of warding them off and getting away to safety when, to his astonishment and concern, and even more to the alarm of the three aggressors, Mistle reared up in a violent rage, rushed forward, thrust her snout within a hairsbreadth of the preening female’s, and screamed, “How
dare
you?”
The two males backed off immediately and the female looked utterly stunned.
“Have you any idea where you are?” shouted Mistle, bringing her right paw forward and prodding the female in the shoulder. The female opened her mouth to reply but was no match for Mistle in voice or ferocity.
“You’re in Duncton Wood, and you’re before its Stone,
and
you’re forcing me to disturb the peace.”
By now the first of the two males had recovered himself. He pushed a paw between the two females and seemed about to buffet Mistle away. Once more Romney came forward to intervene but Mistle was proving quite capable of looking after herself and, turning to the male, she brought her paw hard across his snout.
“Don’t you dare get fresh with me before the Stone, or anywhere else for that matter. Go on, get out! We don’t want moles like you here. Go on,
out
!”
To Romney’s amazement the three moles, at first thrown in to disarray, then looking uncertainly at one another, finally retreated before Mistle’s anger. But even then she did not let them merely slink away, but followed them through the wood among the beech trees, harrying them, stopping them answering her back, prodding them unpleasantly.
“It’s not that we don’t want moles here,” she cried out as they hurried from her blows and invective, “but we’ll not put up with
your
kind of insensitive asinine aggression. Go on, hurry up, I haven’t got all day, and I’m not stopping until I see your rears scarpering, as you put it, downslope towards the cross-under. Yes, and
especially
yours, playing your games with these two males and don’t think I don’t know what you’re about! If they’ve got any sense they’ll tell you to get lost! Go on...!”
She finally stopped harassing them halfway down the south-eastern slopes and the only comment any of them made as they escaped was from the first male, who looked dolefully past Mistle at Romney and said, “Better you than me, mate! You wouldn’t catch me setting up burrow with her.”
“No you would not!” said Mistle. “Out!”
She turned back upslope, still angry and raging it seemed, and it was not until they had reached the wood again that Romney caught her up and she turned to him, half laughing and half crying, and then shaking as he held her, and said, “Oh Romney, they really went! They really did!”
“Whatmole wouldn’t, Mistle?”
“I don’t know what came over me. But the moment I saw them it was as if I knew what I must do. But I’m not
like
that.”
“Remember, no ‘buts’,” said Romney. “And I think we’ve just seen you
are
like that. Like a mother protecting its pups you are in this system!”
“We’ve got to start as we mean to go on. Moles must know where they stance.”
“Next time you might get ten grikes, not just three.”
“The Stone will protect us...” Her voice faded, her eyes grew alarmed, she seemed to cock her head on one side as if listening, though he could hear nothing, and she whispered, “Romney!”
Her face became full of fear. Romney sometimes felt he could not keep up with her.
“What is it now?”
“I don’t know,” she said quietly. “I don’t know. Lead me back to the Stone now,
please.
Please, Romney!”
How different the quality of the wood seemed to Romney as he led Mistle urgently through the wood and she at his flank, almost leaning on him, gasping and distressed.
How much more awesome the Stone seemed to him now, yet how much closer to it he came. Something in her earlier defence of their wood, something in her need now, made the clearing a comforting place, a haven and a base, an end and a beginning.
“Stone,” Mistle said, staring up at its face but not touching it, “protect now those who need thee. Give them courage. Give them strength. Help them. Guide them.
Let them feel thy love, and the love of those who love them. Stone, I feel thee close to me. Let those who need help feel thee close as well. Give them the strength you give me, remind them of thy love. Stone, hear my prayer.”
She bowed her snout before the Stone, she trembled, she sighed in despair, she was silent and her paw reached out for Romney’s.
“What is it, Mistle?” he said. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s Beechen,” she said, “he needs us again like he did once before. He
needs
us....”
Romney took her in his strong paws, and held her as she shook and wept and prayed.
“Needs who?” he asked, not understanding. But she made no reply.
Finally he looked up at the Stone and whispered, “Mistle, he will come back.” As she stilled against him, reassured, her body weak from the strange day, he looked higher at the Stone, and spoke to himself his first prayer as a follower.
“May it be so, Stone, that Beechen returns one day.”
And he knew then that he would stay in Duncton, that Mistle needed him and he would stay until Beechen came home again.
Chapter Thirty-Three
There was an unpleasant look of self-righteous pride on the face of the eldrene Wort as she finally led the captured Stone Mole, close-guarded by her henchmoles, into Ashbourne.
No matter that thin snow sleeted down; no matter that the only audience was a desultory few of the grike guardmoles who, under the command of the sideem Merrick, had taken over the running of the place after the snouting of the eldrene Winster; no matter that Wort was still uncertain what she was going to do with her prisoner.
She was triumphant. She had done the will of the Word, and the Word would guide her towards what was right. For had not the Word already showed its trust in her, weak though she was, and guided her well until now?
“He has abused my holy name for far too long” (it had seemed to say to her) “and you, eldrene Wort of Fyfield, mole whom I supremely trust for this great task, must take him, humble him, and do with him as I shall command!”
No doubt of it! She had prayed, she had suffered her body to be chastised, and out of her suffering the Word in its endless mercy had directed her; and she had obeyed.
But, oh, how much mightier was the Word than mere mole could understand, how much
cleverer.
One thing only she regretted now: that in her molish failure to have faith in the Word’s might she had felt it necessary to take such a strong force of henchmoles to the Kniveton meeting, thinking there would be resistance. Thinking, indeed, that if there was she would not hesitate to personally attack the mole Beechen and ensure that he did not escape, whatever the cost to herself and her henchmoles might be.
Sheer fantasy and vanity! The Word had put fear and respect into the hearts of the followers, and they had not dared in the face of its might to raise a single talon towards a mole of the Word. Not one!
“Holy Word, forgive me for not putting enough trust in you. Let these blows and talons on my body” – she was muttering this abject prayer as she suffered her habitual chastisement at the paws of one of her young henchmoles – “remind me of my sin and failure. You have entrusted me with the great task and temptation of bringing the Stone Mole Beechen of Duncton before your eternal judgement. Word, who loves me, I beg that I may fulfil this task unto its very end.”
For all her prayers and trust that the Word would see things right, the eldrene Wort had a practical streak and so, feeling certain that the Master would be pleased with what she had done, she had, within minutes of securing Beechen at Kniveton, sent a messenger off to bear the good news to the Master at Cannock.
She had prayed for guidance about what to do next very frequently on the way back to Ashbourne, and had had the henchmoles take Beechen and the former guardmole Buckram, whom she had once punished at Fyfield and wished now she had snouted, away from her, for she felt weak and tempted towards pity and love in their presence.
So now here she was, Wort, mere eldrene of Fyfield, empowered by the Master himself to have sole decision upon the moles Beechen and Buckram. The question was what was she going to do with the Stone Mole until such time as the Master got her message and came to Ashbourne? If indeed he was coming.
Despite her posturings of modesty, it was a blow to her vanity that the only mole at Ashbourne who showed the slightest interest in her arrival with the Stone Mole was the resident sideem in the place, Merrick of Hawe, one of the new sideem, and the kind of mole Wort did not like: cold, close and – worst – dubious of her authority.
But Merrick had already been insulted by the way eldrene Wort had ensconced an unpleasant group of taciturn henchmoles in Ashbourne before she had set off to Kniveton, and so on her return with Beechen he was waiting to assert his authority.
The encounter was unpleasant and extended since neither mole was willing to yield to the other. At issue was which of them was to have control over the Stone Mole within Ashbourne. Merrick quickly discovered what many others had since Wort had begun her resolute progress north in pursuit of Beechen: that a mole with the purpose of the Word in her heart, and sincerity, however misplaced, in her eyes, and an overriding belief that what she was doing was more important than anything else in moledom, is not easily thwarted.