“I was born on the night that star showed,” she whispered at last. “Violet told me about the star and she thought that one of the litter my parents had would be special. After I was weaned she picked me out, persuaded them to let her have me and reared me herself... It was him we were trying to help, it was
him.”
And she wept again, and Cuddesdon held her and knew that he had been right: it had been meant that they should meet, for the Stone wanted them to make their way towards the Stone Mole together.
“We had better cross the stream before it gets dark and start our journey,” he said gently.
“Yes,” said Mistle. Then without asking if he could swim she went down to the stream and, checking only once to see that he was close by, she swum out into it, head high, and her eyes on the darkening eastern sky beyond the far bank.
When they reached the far bank they clambered out and she said, “You see, you can swim. It’s not difficult.”
“You’re right,” agreed Cuddesdon, shaking the water off his fur.
Then they climbed the bank together and were gone, leaving only the poppies swaying against the evening sky to say where they had been.
Chapter Fourteen
A glorious high summer, so long heralded by the clear days of June, duly came, and the lovely vales and glades of Duncton Wood settled into days of warmth and hallowed contentment.
It was as if the wood sensed that it too had its final role to play in Beechen’s rearing, and must show him its finest part so that when his time came to leave he took such memory of it that he had only to speak of the wood where he was born and all who heard it would feel its textures and see its light.
Each dawn seemed ushered in by the soft call of wood pigeon, echoing and re-echoing among the leafy branches high above the wood’s floor; until, the air grown warm with sunshine, the pigeons shifted high above, and a moment’s flap of wings here, or a shudder of flight there, marked the real beginning of the day.
Then, far below, moles awoke and peered about, and listened to the sound of scurrying birds astir once more, as night foxes slipped out of sight, and badgers returned to sleep in their setts on the Eastside slopes.
The tunnels sounded merrily with the movement of moles, and the dry summer surface stirred with busy paw and hungry snout as they groomed and ate and began another day in a succession of summer days that seemed to have no end.
At noon, when other creatures quietened, the moles looked about for company and, choosing a spot where the sun came down – and was likely to do so for a good while more – settled to talk and gossip, or just rest together in companionable silence. What pleasant thoughts those old outcast moles then shared, regretful at times, no doubt, but finally thinking that if a mole had to end his days somewhere far from home then such a summer in such a system as this was as near to dream come true as he might have.
That good summer, when Beeches roamed freely and in safety through his home system and was generally made welcome where he went, memory and nostalgia were in the air. Those moles who had survived such hard lives at the paws of the grikes and now found themselves cast together in old age in Duncton discovered a new harmony after the Midsummer rite, and in the long years of summer felt it safe to talk pleasurably again of a past many had sometimes found painful to recall.
Most sensed that, like it or not, they were near their end. They had survived plague, the invasion of their systems, outcasting into anarchy, dreadful murrain and disease, but now the Stone (and for some, like Dodder, the Word) had granted them peace and security in a system time seemed almost to have forgotten, and into which the grikes no longer came.
Tryfan had rightly sensed that they would be willing to impart to young Beechen what knowledge and wisdom they had or he could discover, and so it proved. It was as if he was their only future, their only immortality.
If a mole seemed weak and likely to die then others would seek Beechen out and say, “Mole, visit this one now... she be close to her time and would talk with you before she goes...” Others, too shy and timid to seek Beechen out, would find their friends had brought him to them, and that he seemed almost timid himself, and not at all the fearsome mole the name “Stone Mole” might have made them expect.
“Why, you’re but a mole like us...” they began in wonder, as he took stance by them and reached out and made them feel more themselves than they had ever felt.
What was it that such moles said to him? What wisdom did they, often unknowingly, impart? Why were so many anxious to tell him of themselves?
These questions, asked even then, before Beechen’s task made his name known to allmole, will find many different answers as this history tells its tale. But we may guess now that it was of modest things they spoke, of memories that meant much to them, some happy, some troublesome, which had been restless in their minds and needed telling.
“What would you tell me?” he would ask, and they might reply, “’Tis barely anything, mole, hardly worth the mentioning, but when I was young there was a tunnel, see, beyond which I had never dared to venture. Then one day...” And so they would start, and tell him how they learnt to learn. Others spoke of love known, some of regret.
But some spoke only of trouble, of something they had done which they wished might be undone... and more than one, and those not just of the Word, told of murders made or hurts they had inflicted which, had they their time again, they would not do.
“Never forgiven myself, never, never,” a mole might weep. “Can’t get it out of my mind, that I did
that.
You think twice, Beechen, before you let anger or fear overtake you, think a hundred times. Love’s the only way, though I should be ashamed to say it for I’ve never given much love to anymole... Aye, hurting hurts most the mole that does it....”
Beechen listened and nodded, and sometimes he wept too, and not a mole talked to him but felt better for doing so, and better able to face the days still to come his way.
No accurate record exists, or could exist, of Beechen’s wide wanderings those summer years. We know only that he adopted two centres to which he returned frequently, and from which he would set out re-fortified. One was the tunnel system of the mole Madder, whom he had met when he had first gone a-visiting, and whose quiet surfaces seemed to provide him more than anywhere else with places to be at peace. When he was there his only company, apart from Madder, was provided by Dodder and Flint in whose new unity moles saw proof of
Beechen’s gift for bringing harmony where there had been disorder. There was a general understanding that when Beechen was at Madder’s place he was to be left alone.
The second centre to which he retreated was the old Marsh End Defence, to which, after Midsummer, Tryfan had retired once more to complete his scribing of a Rule for community. There Beechen resumed his studies of scribing by snouting through the texts Spindle and Tryfan had left, as well as those texts which Mayweed, in his eccentric way, had contributed. Beechen himself scribed of the moles he spoke with during those summer years as if by so doing he transmuted what they had told him into something of himself.
But to make such scribings was not the only reason Beechen returned to the Marsh End, for it seemed to have become clear to all that the old mole needed help now to find food on difficult days, and Beechen would watch over him when he chose to take a quiet stance on the surface and, for hours on end it seemed, reflect on the passage of another day’s light and the ever-changing cycle of decline and revival in the wood’s life.
When Beechen was in residence with Tryfan these were tasks the young mole took upon himself. But when he travelled forth as Tryfan had bid him, and learnt the many wisdoms others in the wood chose to impart, strong Hay stanced close by Tryfan, with Skint and Smithills to back him up when sleep or other duties called him away. And then, in August, Feverfew moved into the Marsh End Defences.
We have said that Beechen travelled about the system “in safety’, and so he did, but only by virtue of the labours of other experienced moles who watched over him. In a sense
all
the moles had become his guardians, but so far as external dangers from the grikes were concerned it was primarily the now frail Skint who directed things.
Nomole knew the system’s defensive needs better than Skint, who, when Henbane invaded Duncton, had given Tryfan and Mayweed the time they had needed to lead the moles who lived there then to their fateful escape.
Now Skint was older, and the moles available to him who had strength and skill for watcher duties were but few, so their task could not be one of active defence but, rather, simply of watching out for signs of grike activity near the cross-under, and preparing a warning system against the day when the grikes entered the system once more.
It was Skint who mainly kept such fears, and precautions, alive, for he was always distrustful of the grikes, however certain it seemed they would now leave Duncton alone.
“The day the Word is forgotten is the day we can stop being on our guard, and that day is a long way off,” he would say. “As long as I’m alive I’ll keep half an eye open for its dangers.”
Skint used various moles for watching duties, with Marram and Hay in the fore, and Mayweed and Sleekit as formidable roving sources of intelligence. Teasel, who had survived the original anarchy that followed the system’s outcasting by spying and passing information from one rival outcast group to another, was a useful ally, and her loyalty to Tryfan and natural good sense made her a mole Skint trusted.
Smithills’ role was one of companion and support to Skint, but those who knew him did not doubt that should the need ever arise Smithills would give all that remained of his aging strength to the mole who had journeyed at his flank for so long.
Skint had long since confided to Tryfan that he believed it would be after Midsummer that danger from the grikes would loom once more. They would be free of whatever young they had reared by then and eager for action in the summer years. More than that, summer was the time when, traditionally, the sideem postings were changed, guardmole patrols were rearranged, and what had been static and unchanging since the previous winter was liable to be upset as sideem and guardmoles, eager to impress their superiors and show they could do better than their predecessors, poked their snouts about and caused trouble.
“I’ll warrant that the day will come when somemole or other of ours down at the cross-under will blab about Beechen’s presence in the system, and some over-eager sideem or other’ll hear about it,” said Skint. “Well, if there’s need for a warning I’d like to be the mole to give it!”
Tryfan was content to leave such arrangements in Skint’s capable paws, and knew that such was the good feeling among the moles in Duncton now that nomole would betray them but by accident caused by infirmity or senility. A mole could not prevent such things. In any case, the Stone would ordain when word of Beechen’s presence went forth, and when it did he knew that Skint’s watchers would do as good a job now as they had in times past, and all must hope that Beechen stayed well hidden until able to make good his escape. But if, on the other paw, they were spared grike interference until the autumn years then Tryfan had no doubt that Beechen would be ready to slip safely away from the system, and that some among them would be able to help guide him on his way.
Meanwhile, both Tryfan and Skint knew that one reason for the system’s being left alone was the dread reputation it had gained for violence and infection – indeed, it was part of Skint’s strategy to encourage the more diseased-looking moles, if they were able and willing, to wander down to the cross-under and let it be plain that disease was indeed still rife in Duncton Wood.
Such ventures were not, however, without danger for two or three such moles had failed to return, and the body of one of them had been found murdered next to the cross-under, presumably by bored grikes doing guard duty who were, perhaps, less afraid than they once had been of infectious disease.
So Skint’s precautions seemed sensible and he found just enough willing watchers to maintain an adequate cover of the cross-under and neighbouring areas.
Of all this Beechen was either not aware or not interested, but even then, as later in his life, he showed scant regard for his own personal safety as far as moles of the Word were concerned. He had grown to be a strong mole, not over-big nor especially aggressive, but physically more than competent, and with a grace and beauty that even in a system of normal moles, and not one in which age, infirmity and the ravages of disease were the norm, he would have been striking.
His fur was now more grey than pure black and it lay naturally well, and had such a good sheen that it seemed to glow with light. His snout was sure, his paws and talons well set, his voice male but gentle.
Yet, though others found strange peace in his presence, he was not himself untroubled, and at times seemed distressed as he had been in the last months of his puphood. Those who knew him well knew that in some way he felt that the demands the Stone would one day make of him would be too great, while the strangeness of his conception at Comfrey’s Stone, and the mystery of Boswell’s death there, seemed as something he could not resolve.
Tryfan scribed of his attitude to the Stone then in this revealing way:
I know that when he spoke to others he spoke not of the Stone. I know it because they told me, and told Feverfew, and were enough surprised by it to mention it especially. Several times I heard that moles asked him about the Stone and to this he would invariably reply, “Tell me what you know of it yourself, and would say no more than that.
The truth is that in the very period when so many moles thought Beechen was showing little interest in the Stone his thoughts were almost constantly upon it, and profoundly so. In his periods of retreat with Tryfan their conversations were much concerned with matters of the Stone, arid the indefinable problem the memory of Boswell seemed to present to him. Again and again Beechen quizzed Tryfan on all that he could remember of what Boswell had done and said, and he worked at those texts in which Tryfan and Spindle had recorded Boswell’s words.