Duncton Found (53 page)

So he watched over Wharfe and Harebell well, put them under the care of his own two young, and was not in the least surprised that it was Wharfe who, of that happy quartet of friends, emerged as natural leader, a mole who might one day take over the leadership of Beechenhill too.

Of his own pups he was proud, but had no illusions: Bramble was a dreamy mole, whose love and skill was the history of Beechenhill, and who learned and recounted all the tales Squeezebelly told, and knew by heart the names of all the many moles who had over the moleyears visited the system from outside. Betony, on the other paw, was as sweet and loving a female as ever lived, and his only grief for her was that though he watched her love for Wharfe grow and mature over the years, he was wise enough to see it was not returned. Wharfe was made of sterner stuff than Betony, and would only ever see her as a friend.

As for the last of the four, Harebell, she was more graceful, more alive, more alert than any female Squeezebelly could remember, and he hoped that when her time came she would find a mate worthy of her, and her young would be a credit to the system that had adopted her.

In the moleyears of these four youngsters’ maturing, Squeezebelly was often moved to take stance at places he loved in high Beechenhill, and harbour the innocent hope that perhaps Beechenhill was the place which, secret and protected, sacred and much loved, the Stone had set aside to be a last bastion in its hour of greatest need, the place perhaps of its redemption. Here, believed Squeezebelly, great things would be, and he prayed that its moles would be worthy, and those four young ones would be especially so.

It was Squeezebelly who best understood the significance of Wharfe’s extraordinary rush to touch the Stone that June, and guessed that with the torrential drowning of the moles afterwards in tunnels never yet bloodied by the Word’s dark talons, Beechenhill’s trial was beginning; and perhaps moledom’s too.

In the moleyears of summer that followed June Squeezebelly noticed that Wharfe became preoccupied, even sullen, and was inclined to wander off by himself. At first he put it down to that normal change that comes to a mole when, matured, he or she begins to feel the restraints of the home system and, at the same time, to look more seriously for a mate. In Squeezebelly’s younger days such thoughts arose in the dark snug winter years of January, not at the height of summer. But he was a wise and philosophical mole and had observed that the stresses of the plague years and the grikes had made moles, even sensible ones, behave in most curious and untraditional ways.

But neither Bramble nor Harebell seemed to think that was it at all, and the older mole eventually got a better and more significant explanation from his daughter Betony.

“Something happened when he touched the Stone, but he won’t say exactly what. It’s upset him more than he admits. Do you know what he does when he goes off by himself?”

Squeezebelly shook his head and scratched his ample flank. No he didn’t and his bulk was now so great that he was disinclined to follow younger moles about and try to hide behind thistles to see what they were doing by themselves!

“Well, I’ll tell you. He’s looking for a mole or moles unknown. He stares into everymole’s face that comes along hoping he’s going to see what he’s looking for.”

“Which is what, Betony?” said Squeezebelly, much puzzled.

“He won’t say. All I know is he’s not looking for a mate because I asked him outright and he said he wasn’t and Wharfe never lies, which is a relief. I think it’s got to do with the Stone.”

“Ah!” said Squeezebelly, and decided to wait for Wharfe to tell him in his own good time which, since the mole was looking uncharacteristically miserable, in sharp contrast to the glorious summer, would be sooner than later.

Meanwhile Squeezebelly kept him and the others busy with training and watching tasks designed to strengthen the system’s defences and retreats, and made them develop, as a final safety measure, one or two special routes out to the north and west, in case a full-scale evacuation should ever become necessary. It was not an option Squeezebelly himself would ever take, but perhaps there could be a case for some of the younger moles to be got out one day.

Naturally moles asked him what was apaw, and he told them something of his fears and hopes as well.

“When or how the grikes might come I know not, but we must be vigilant. Equally, the Stone will give us guidance and we must be ready to hear that too, for the Stone works in mysterious ways and what it wants us to do is not always easy to discover.”

“But haven’t you any idea at all what we’re looking for?” asked Harebell.

“He’d tell us if he knew,” said Wharfe.

Harebell grinned.

“He didn’t always tell us we were going the wrong way in the tunnels before we got lost when we were pups! That is before he got too rotund to go the more secret ways!”

All of them but Wharfe managed to laugh, Squeezebelly especially, and he patted his large stomach and said, “Pure muscle, my dears, not a mite of wasted flesh at all! But listen. Over the years I’ve learnt most and been challenged best by the followers the Stone has sent here to visit us, Tryfan himself included. They always come in summer, so be observant when they come and see if there isn’t one who can give us a clue to what we’re looking for.”

Summer is ever a time for visitors, moles in other systems growing restive then, and that summer was no exception and a good few moles passed through in late July, and more in August. In return for the warm welcome such moles got they were as usual asked to pass on their knowledge of moledom beyond Beechenhill, and so Squeezebelly saw that his moles were kept informed and outward-looking. It was in August that they had confirmation for the first time of rumours of changes at Whern, and that Lucerne, son of Henbane, had taken over as Master of the Word.

This was news indeed, and inevitably resurrected once more the old stories told of Henbane and her southern invasion, and the graphic accounts given of her by Mayweed and Sleekit when they had brought Wharfe and Harebell into the system with the help of Skint and Smithills, both old friends of Squeezebelly.

Always at such times Squeezebelly had to ask himself how much longer he must keep the secret of Wharfe and Harebell’s parentage from them, and whether he was right to keep them in ignorance at all. He had noticed that Wharfe in particular seemed to have doubts about the truth of the idea that Mayweed and Sleekit were their parents, and in fact had never directly asked if it were true – as if he was afraid of what the answer might be. Sometimes both moles said that they would like to see Mayweed and Sleekit again, but moles were used to wandering and separation, and in those times to permanent loss as well.

So when the news came that Henbane had been deposed and had gone missing, the time did indeed seem to have come to tell them the truth and one day in September the opportunity arose.

It was shortly after Wharfe had returned from a dangerous reconnaissance down the Dove Valley towards Ashbourne, confirming an escalation in grike guardmole activity, and he was in Squeezebelly’s burrow with Harebell and their friends Bramble and Betony.

It was one of those friendly family occasions, when the chatter may be idle but the feelings are close and deep; such a time indeed when moles who love each other may say things that matter much to them. It seemed an ideal time for Squeezebelly to say what he had so long wanted to, and the presence of his own two seemed to make it more appropriate.

But it was Wharfe who spoke first, and quite unexpectedly.

“I’m sorry,” he said suddenly, “about being so morose all summer but ever since June....”

There was silence in the burrow. He had said at last what all of them had thought at different times, and only Betony had dared raise with him.

“I should have spoken before.”

Harebell nodded silently.

“But it’s not been easy.”

“Never is,” said Bramble.

“Let him get on with it,” said Betony.

“Well... I don’t know where to begin. Well I do. It was the day I touched the Stone, in fact the moment I touched the Stone. The day it rained.”

Nomole spoke, all remembered.

“I had this feeling as I touched the Stone that there were others touching with me.”

“But you were alone,” said Betony. “We didn’t reach you till ages later.”

“I know, but I don’t mean moles you could see, or even moles that were there. It was like...” And then he tried to tell them what it was like – as Mistle had tried to tell Cuddesdon, as Caradoc had tried to tell Alder, as Glyder had told nomole but Caradoc, who had known already.

Perhaps they found it hard to understand exactly what Wharfe was trying to describe, but when a mole they all knew so well, and who was of them all the strongest and on whom one day soon the responsibility of leadership would fall, when such a mole expressed grief and loss they believed and understood the strength of his feeling well enough.

“Why didn’t you
say
before,” said Harebell. “Perhaps we could have helped.”

“The moles who I felt touch the Stone with me seemed so real. As for the one we were all trying to help, I
know
he’s real, as real as any of you. I
know
that somehow one day I’ll meet him.”

“It’s a him, is it?” said Betony with relief, as if she half imagined that had it been a female she would have stolen Wharfe’s heart away. They all laughed, as families do at such moments.

“Has the thought crossed your mind that it was the Stone Mole you were ‘trying to help’?” said Squeezebelly.

Wharfe nodded and shifted his stance, his strength and dark fur in contrast to Harebell who was lighter in both colour and weight.

“I’m sure it was,” he said. “Maybe we’re all of us – us in Beechenhill, followers in other systems, moles like Henbane and that Lucerne in Whern – all part of something that has started with the coming of the Stone Mole.”

“If he
has
come,” said Bramble. “It’s such an old myth the Stone Mole one, going right back – seems strange to think it’s happening for real in
our
generation. But perhaps when a mole like Rune of Whern takes power, or moles like Boswell of Uffington and Tryfan of Duncton Wood start trekking about, then everything follows inevitably from it.”

Silence fell again until, in that indefinable way moles who know each other well sense that one is thinking of something he is staying quiet about, they knew that Squeezebelly was holding something back. He shifted about restlessly and then sighed and said, “Well, I knew there would never be a good time, a best time. A mole can’t get everything right!”

“What is it?” said Betony immediately, a frown on her face. She had rarely seen her father discomfited.

It was then, quietly, privately, he told them the story of how Wharfe and Harebell had come to the system. From the very beginning he told it, how Tryfan had trekked north preaching non-violence until he eventually reached Whern; how he had met Henbane there; and how he mated with her and then been all but killed by Rune’s sideem. The rest they knew, or had heard from others over the moleyears – of how Mayweed and Sleekit had rescued two of the three pups born, and brought them to Beechenhill, of how... but neither Wharfe nor Harebell heard more, so dumbstruck were they to learn who their parents really were.

“He was our father?” said Wharfe in astonishment.

“Henbane was our
mother
?” said Harebell.

“She...” began Squeezebelly.

“You should have told us before!” shouted Wharfe.

“Yes, you should,
and you
must have known as well!” cried Harebell, turning on Bramble and Betony, both as shocked as their siblings by adoption.

There was anger; there were tears; there was sulking. Then each in their own way grew angry again – now with Squeezebelly, now with each other, and finally with Tryfan. Through it all Squeezebelly stayed sadly calm, pointing out again and again that nomole – not him, not Tryfan – does everything right all the time.

“But Henbane!” shouted Harebell in disgust. “Tryfan with Henbane!”

“He was not an easy mole was Tryfan, but none I ever met or ever hope to meet was truer to the Stone than he,” said Squeezebelly, feeling the anger needed a response. “What he had learnt of the Stone he had learnt in courage, and Bramble and Betony here remember better than any of us the preaching he made, and what a great mole he was.”

Betony nodded, her paw to Wharfe’s, tears in her eyes while both Harebell and Wharfe, still appalled, glowered at the rest of them.

“You would have been so proud of him,” whispered Betony to Wharfe, and meaning well she added tactlessly, “and now I know the truth I can see that there’s something of him in you. He was so dark and big and forbidding.”

Wharfe looked utterly outraged.

“And me?” said Harebell miserably, waving a paw over her grey fur and flanks. “What is there of him in me? It’s
Henbane
that’s in me!”

Squeezebelly went to her and held her close in his great paws while she wept, and if there were tears in his own eyes he did not care. When she had quietened he said, “I have never seen Henbane, but I met moles who knew her, none better than Sleekit who loved and cared for you as if you were her own. She told me that when this day came and I told you the truth that I must say this. That until the day Henbane met Tryfan, Sleekit would have pitied any pup of Henbane’s. But after that day something of great love and light was born in her Mistress (as she always called her). Something she had never seen before, though it must always have been there.”