Duncton Found (58 page)

“Is the Duncton Stone
very
big? And... and what’s it look like?” one youngster asked him, for he had never seen a Stone at all and could not imagine what it might be like.

“It’s not big to me, nor to anymole who trusts it,” replied Beechen. “As for what it looks like, nomole could quite agree for it’s hard to see it all at once, and each time you see a new part of it what you saw before seems changed.”

“Oh!” said the youngster, pondering this. “But it
would
be big to me, wouldn’t it?”

The mole’s mother smiled and others laughed sympathetically, for they sensed, as Beechen did, that the youngster was afraid of this Stone the adults talked of. They, too, had been afraid when their parents had first talked of the Stone.

But Beechen did not smile or laugh, for he saw the youngster was truly afraid, and was not able to imagine that such a thing could be anything but big. And, being big, he felt it was not for him.

Beechen, ignoring the adults, snouted about the ground and found a small stone which he took in his paw.

“How big is this?” he asked the youngster.

“It’s not big, it’s small.”

Beechen asked the youngster to stance very still and placed the stone in the hollow between his shoulder blades.

“If you were the Stone and this little stone was the top of it, would it be big?”

“Only just, and then not
very
big!”

“But when you’re adult and you’ve grown, won’t it be bigger then?”

“Only just,” said the youngster, shifting about and trying in vain to see the stone on his shoulders, “because I’ll be bigger then myself.”

“And what will it look like?”

“Me mostly, if I’m still the rest of it!”

“That’s how the Duncton Stone is to moles who see it right, it’s how the Stone always is. It is there as that stone on you is. It grows as moles do and is never far beyond their reach; and they need only know themselves as they can be to know what it looks like.”

Beechen took the stone from the youngster’s shoulders and placed it among the others on the ground.

“Which one was it?” asked the youngster.

“What is thy name, mole?”

“Milton,” said the mole abstractedly, staring at the stones. “Which one was it really? This one?” He picked up one of the stones and held it up.

Beechen shook his head.

“The stone I touched is not yet ready for you to find, Milton. The search for it shall take you and many like you where you may fear to go and there you shall find it.”

By the beginning of November, Beechen had been warned by several moles of the growing danger of what he was doing. The more he travelled, the bigger the crowds of followers that began to collect about him when he agreed to speak to them, the greater was the fear that the grikes would come to know that here was a mole who was beginning to be seen as more than a “Stone-fool’. Indeed, everywhere he went there were now those who openly called him “Stone Mole’, and there was an alluring but dangerous sense of excitement, of escalation, of
massing
towards the Stone.

“It will only need one more big gathering like this,” Sleekit observed at Frilford, “and the whole of the vale will know the Stone Mole is come. One more healing, one more preaching, one more
something
that shows you are truly of the Stone. Is this how you want it, Beechen? Starting something here that we have not the power to finish?... I know the grike guardmoles – they will take you and you will be lost to us, as your father Boswell was lost so long ago in Whern. Lost, or worse.”

“What do you think, Mayweed?” Beechen said.

Lately Mayweed had been subdued and quiet and Sleekit had confided that it was because their route had lately taken them towards Buckland.

“Think, Sir? Me, Sir? Humbleness? Confusion’s what I think. All going round and me here, Mayweed, without much to do. Boldness has become a leader of moles before my very eyes and I am amazed and task-less. Give me something to find and I shall find it. Leave me nothing to do and darkness and confusion beset me, and the thought of Buckland does not help as, no doubt, my comfortable consort has already whispered in your ear. “Poor old Mayweed,” sensuality herself has said, “now nerve-racked.” She is dead right as usual.”

“Well,” said Beechen, suddenly dispirited, “for myself I’m tired. In Duncton there was always somewhere a mole could be himself, but being here, there and everywhere is being nowhere. I think I need some peace, and comfort. I miss Duncton!”

“You’re surrounded all day long by moles who need you,” said Sleekit. “
You
need a period of retreat, and if you had one then this excitement around you would die down and we could choose our moments better.”

“Our moments for what?” said Beechen sharply. “Now is the only moment for mole,
now.
The mole who thinks only of tomorrow forgets today.”

“You know the warnings about Fyfield we’ve had, and Cumnor to the north. That leaves Buckland to the south, where Mayweed
would
die if he had to go again, and west round Fyfield to the Thames.”

“Yes, the Thames,” said Beechen softly. “I only saw it from a distance in Duncton. Everymole I meet who’s been there talks of it. That and Fyfield I would see. Yes....”

“If Mayweed finds a place that’s quiet and safe would you go there for a time?” asked Sleekit.

“If there’s peace there, and something that I seek, then yes I would.” He looked at Sleekit deeply and said, “Perhaps it’s for yourself and Mayweed you need it, not for me.”

“For us all,” said Sleekit with a smile.

Mayweed stared at them both, first one, then the other, and then he leered in a general way all about and said, “Ha! Humble he has a task again! His snout tingles! He shall away and come back another day! He feels himself again. Too many moles, too much of following, too much noise. Madam mine, I love you but I really think I ought to go. Farewell, embrace me, let your touch linger, show this innocent what passion is so that he has reason to come back!”

Sleekit laughed and went close to Mayweed, her healthy fur mingling with his thin, patchy coat, their paws touching, their snouts snoodling, their eyes smiling. Anymole seeing them – and Beechen was the only one who did – saw true partners there, perhaps the strangest and sweetest, and thus far the most secret, in all moledom.

“Don’t go near Buckland, my love,” she said, worry in her voice.

“Anywhere but, the exact opposite, contrariwise I shall go, let’s see... now, yes... there!”

As he had said this, he had disengaged from Sleekit and performed an extraordinary turn or two before, as he cried out the word “There!” he pointed his talons to the far north-west.

“Where’s “there”?” said Sleekit.

“Peace and quiet, the river, and what Beechen most needs,” said Mayweed.

“We need peace too,” said Sleekit.

“Madam! Farewell!” and with a laugh and affectionate grin he was gone.

Sleekit stared after him for a few moments and then, turning back to Beechen, she said, “I hope the Stone will one day find you such love as I have found.”

“The scribemoles of old Uffington were celibate,” said Beechen with a rueful grin, “and I suppose I’m a scribemole of sorts. Though after snouting through Spindle’s accounts of the goings on at Uffington there’s reasonable grounds for thinking that not all scribemoles were celibates at all.”

Sleekit sighed and settled down.

“I know all about celibacy,” she said. “As a sideem I was meant to be celibate and was so too, for years. Even now when Mayweed calls me sensuous I feel I’ve sinned. I think I withered without knowing it in those years. But I must admit that after I left Whern....”

“With Mayweed,” said Beechen.

“... after Mayweed and I left Whern things were rather different. I can remember what celibacy is like, and strangely I can imagine going back to it, though I wouldn’t from choice. I’ve learnt so much with Mayweed – though I suppose we must seem an odd pair.”

“No odder than any other pair when you get to know them. I mean my mother and Tryfan aren’t exactly matched, are they?”

Sleekit laughed and said, “If followers could hear you – it’s not how they would expect the Stone Mole to talk!”

“‘Stone Mole’! I’ve no wish to be anything other than what I am – that’s what Tryfan taught me, and Feverfew too.
They
certainly weren’t celibate! And my father, Boswell, if he
was
my father....”

“Was?” said Sleekit.

“Well,” said Beechen a little defensively, and looking embarrassed too, “it’s not something Feverfew ever talked about. But if he was he can hardly have been celibate!”

“Feverfew wouldn’t talk about it, but Bailey was there.”

“All he remembers was the Stone’s light and my father... Boswell calling out for Feverfew.”

“You don’t really want to be celibate, do you?” said Sleekit.

“Well, I mean, well... no!” declared Beechen, looking rather young again.

She laughed again and patted him amiably on the shoulder.

“If they ever scribe of you, my dear, and they will, then I’m sure they’ll not scribe of this. They’ll want to think you pure. I’ll say one thing for the Masters and Mistresses of the Word: celibacy was one pretence they did not bother to maintain, though that was the only one!”

“You see,” continued Beechen earnestly, still lost in his thoughts, “the moles I meet are most of them paired or mated or have had pups, or if they haven’t they want them, and I feel they have something I don’t understand.” He looked almost comically baffled, but Sleekit was sensitive to how serious he was being. She remembered Tryfan saying that the Stone Mole was
first
“but mole’, and had to be, if he was to touch other moles’ hearts. Only after that was he the Stone Mole.

“You know much that they do not understand and which they need to be led towards, just as you led Mayweed and myself through the Chamber of Dark Sound in Duncton,” she said.

Seeing that this did not satisfy the ache in Beechen’s heart she added, “Mole, the last thing on my mind at the moment I met Mayweed in Whern was love and mating. I could not have even dreamed of it happening. Others I know dream and search for it all their lives and never find it. You have told many in the time you have been in the vale of how a mole should not search for what he has not got, but rather be patient with the Stone, and trust that it will give him what he needs when he needs it. If love is to come your way it will come.”

“I know that,” said Beechen softly. “I believe ’tis so. Yet the longing I sometimes feel... remember the mole Poplar, and the family he had and sought to protect? How
much
he had, how much. Yet not all moles know it. Surely mating and pups are the greatest gift the Stone can give a mole, for it is not for everymole to choose celibacy, or to be a scribemole or a sideem. But when moles touch a pup that is their own, then if they have eyes to see, and a heart to feel, they may know the vulnerability and strength of life itself. How can anymole who has truly touched his own pup hurt another? How can he not feel love for all others? Somewhere there the Silence lies.”

“I never had a pup of my own,” said Sleekit, her snout low.

“But you chose another way towards the Silence, and through moles you’ve known found moles to help you there. And anyway, you raised two of Tryfan’s young, which is the next best thing.”

Sleekit’s eyes softened in love and memory.

“Wharfe and Harebell. I named them myself.”

“I sometimes feel they are the nearest I shall ever have to brother and sister and I’ve never met them.”

“There was a third, Beechen,” said Sleekit darkly. “I saw him with my own eyes.”

“I know it,” he said. “I know it well. May the Stone help them all.”

“Aye,” sighed Sleekit, “and my Mistress Henbane, too. As for Poplar, the mole you mentioned, remember how much
you
gave him, Beechen.”

They fell into silence, thinking their thoughts, until Beechen said, “The darkness that so many feel
is
coming, Sleekit. I am often afraid, fearing that I shall not have the strength for whatever it is that I must do. I see the love you and Mayweed share and feel that when that unknown future moment comes I fear so much, experience of such a love as you have had would strengthen me.”

“Well, Beechen,” Sleekit said warmly, “one thing I know. If love comes to you then such dark thoughts as these will fly away in the face of it! At least, they will if what you have is the same as what Mayweed and I have.” She looked away towards the direction in which Mayweed had pointed and then gone, and said, “Do you think he’ll be safe?... I mean....”

It was Beechen’s turn to laugh.

“The mole that guided Tryfan into Whern and you out of it can be trusted to wander about in these parts by himself safely enough. It’s the kind of thing he’s been doing all his life.”