Duncton Quest (10 page)

“Well,” began Spindle hesitantly, “maybe it would be best... Yes! I shall show you the Stones first and then I’ll show you... yes that’s best.”

He turned into the right-paw tunnel, went along it for a while and then took a slip route up to the surface to a sight that Tryfan never afterwards forgot. For the early morning had advanced just far enough to bring the day to that point of change when the long reaches of night were forgotten, and the dawn is past, but the light of the sun is bright enough only to hint at the beauty in the grass and trees that the full light of day will bring. Indeed, its light among the dewdrops gives the sense that the best, the very best, is yet to come.

But there was about that particular morning far more. For though a chill north wind still blew, now, after so very long, there was the hint that spring was nearby, not far over the horizon, and it quickened a mole’s heart to know it, and made him desirous to stretch the chill of the winter out of his shoulders and flanks, and to shake the lingering cold from his paws and snout, and think of the good things to come as March ends and April begins, bringing with it the yet warmer promise of the month of May to come.

So each in his own way snouted joyfully up at the sky, where for a time that morning streaks of blue ran beyond the driving clouds, and they peered this way and that as if, very, very soon now, they sensed they would see the world anew.

It was only after this pleasant and promising interlude was over that Tryfan began to take in the scene about him, and see how fine and splendid it was. The more so that good Spindle, quite overcome, it seemed, to be in a favourite place of his with moles he trusted, was humming to himself a wormful song and seemed for the time being to have quite forgotten the object of their journey.

Tryfan saw that they were halfway up the slope of a southward-dipping vale whose lines were gentle curves, subtle and aged. Near and far rose Stones, not in any obvious order of circle or line, but spread out across the vale, here and there, like friends that have paused awhile on a common journey to contemplate a springtime view. The Stones, big and small, many fallen and a few erect, stretched away as far as the eye could see.

The colours were, for now, March-dull: the bare earth brown or shining grey where wet chalk stained it. The grassy places were still dominated by the dried-out stalks of the previous autumn, while the distant copses of trees, still leafless, were dark and rather ominous. But below them, where a stream ran, was a line of greener grass, but that was all. No sound, no life but for the wheeling of rooks darkly on the grey horizon, and the grey-white flutter of black-headed seagull over a distant field. And....

“What is it, Tryfan?” asked Spindle, using Tryfan’s name for the first time, and coming close, as one who trusts another will.

Tryfan’s head was tilted a little on one side as if trying to hear again something he thought he might have heard before.

“I thought it was the call of lapwing,” he said quietly. “The last time I heard that was a full cycle of seasons ago over the Pastures alongside Duncton Wood! Now that’s a sound that heralds spring!”

“It does!” said Spindle. “That and the lark which rises over the chalk and drives a mole mad if he’s not got his paws on the ground and in a good mood!” The two moles laughed, shared laughter, and Boswell, behind them, was glad to see them together, and to feel in his old bones the energy they had, and the promise they felt. And he whispered an invocation for them that they might find courage and true purpose in the days and months to come, and trust each other.

Tryfan and Spindle, flank to flank, did not notice him at all, but instead looked excitedly about them, for spring was imminent in the air, still just beyond reach, but
there,
near, coming: and this bitter wind would stop.

The two wandered, chatting a little, out over the surface, leaving Boswell in the protection of the tunnel entrance while Spindle pointed out the features of the place. There were a few taller standing Stones among the many there, but most were small, like a scatter of scree or debris across the lovely curving vales and hills, running east and west, north and south, fields on fields of sarsen stones. Most strange, most wonderful. In places there were shallow pits in which tiny stones seemed to have collected and no grass grew. In other places the sarsen stones peeped out of the soil, like the tip or flank of giant buried Stones. While here and there, near and far, rose the Stones themselves, guardians of those slopes and vales. It made a mole want to wander forever among them, and wander awhile they did, passing among the fallen smaller stones, and staring up in reverence at one of the bigger ones still standing.

“Oh! There you are, Boswell!” Tryfan said more than once, for Boswell, having been left behind, seemed to have caught them up again and even been waiting ahead of them. More than once that happened! Boswell watching over them, content.

“What a strange place this is,” said Tryfan, “a mole loses all sense of direction. I could have sworn you were behind us Boswell...” But Boswell was gone, and only Spindle was there, oblivious it seemed of these confusions. Or used to them, more like. But eventually, one way or another, they all joined up together again and took a stance out of the wind. The early promise of the morning had died a little, the distant streaks of blue sky had gone, the north wind was freshening again. Spring was going to bide its time a little more.

“What is this place called?” asked Tryfan.

“I don’t think it has a name. When I was barely more than a pup I came to this place alone, and rarely saw another mole,” said Spindle quietly. “I would explore the ways among the Stones and sometimes go into the tunnels that moles of Seven Barrows delved long ago but no longer use. They are wormless now, and ruined, but they still give a mole shelter from rain or curious kestrel.”

“How many Stones are there here?” asked Tryfan.

Nomole knows or will ever know,” said Spindle. “Not for want of trying to find out though! I’ve started counting them many times but a mole grows tired... too many here! Too many to count!”

“But the standing Stones,” said Tryfan. “Surely those you could count.”

“That’s what I thought,” said Spindle, “and I can tell you how many there
aren’t.
Not less than six no more than seven!”

“‘Not less than six nor more than seven?’” repeated Tryfan, his face puzzled. “You mean there’s either six or seven?”

“Yes I do mean that,” said Spindle.

“Well, which is it?” said Tryfan.

“Come and see for yourself,” said Spindle with the weary patience of a mole familiar with a problem which he knows another is going to find impossible to solve.

He led them underground, through tunnels ruined indeed, for many of the chambers were open to the skies, or had fallen in and a mole had to climb out on to the surface for a time before picking up the tunnel’s line again. They soon came to the buried flanks of one of the standing Stones, the one Tryfan presumed they had already passed, judging from the direction in which they approached it. Then another – the green rust-yellow side of the sarsen stone familiar to Tryfan from the Duncton Stone. And a third, its sides rising high above them before the roof closed in, and the tunnel curving away around its edge so that a mole going round it, as they did, could not quite work out its subterranean dimensions or shape.

“How many so far?” asked Spindle.

“Why, three of course,” said Tryfan.

“Perhaps,” said Spindle strangely.

So they progressed through more tunnels, the next two Stones being further afield and the route they took confusing, for they crossed and recrossed themselves more than once.

“Must be a better way of visiting each of them underground than this,” grumbled Tryfan.

“Must there?” said Spindle.

Each of the bases of the Stones was quite distinct, in colour or shape, and each had a tunnel that went right round them and then onwards, though never straight on but, rather, at a swinging angle that made it hard for a mole to judge quite where he was relative to the others.

Finally they had visited the base of seven Stones and touched each one, feeling its humming height rise above them up through the soil and on towards the sky, sentinels to the faith of moles, emblems and harbingers of Silence. Spindle brought them back out on to the surface.

“So,” said Tryfan as they took a route to the surface, “seven in all. Why not say so immediately? No point in making a mystery where there is none!”

“Yes, I quite agree,” said Spindle, “except that... er... well. See for yourself!”

They had surfaced through some gravelly soil and now found themselves some way to the west of where they had first gone underground, with the standing Stones at varying distances all around them.

“There you are,” said Tryfan easily, “one, two, three...” But his voice began to falter. “Four, five, six...” he concluded, turning around again and staring at each of the Stones in succession. “Well I’ve made a mistake that’s all. There were seven, weren’t there?”

“Underground there were,” said Spindle. “But, here, on the surface, one’s gone missing.”

“That’s ridiculous,” said Tryfan impatiently. “Look. One, two, three...” but however many times he counted them, and from whichever direction he started, and even when he went here and there checking what he saw and
even
(finally) when he went underground once more to count them subterraneously again, he could not find the seventh Stone on the surface, nor work out which of the seven underground ones was “missing’.

When he was tired, confused and ill-tempered and had rejoined the other two (who had long since crouched quietly to munch worms), Boswell looked uneasily about them, and spoke almost for the first time that morning.

“Perhaps now is the time for you to tell us what more you know, Spindle,” he said.

The wind about them stirred and seemed troubled and urgent, the day more cloudy above, the air sharper once more, and there were slight spits of rain in the air. Then Spindle began to tell them.

It was in the middle of the attack by the grikes on the Holy Burrows when, in spite of every effort he and his master Brevis could make, the two of them became separated. Faced by an onrush of grikes, Spindle had turned down a tunnel and run, and found that Brevis was no longer with him.

But in what Brevis must have realised might be a final separation, the scribemole had thrust something into Spindle’s paws. He only looked at it a little time later when, finding himself in some nomole’s land of quiet in the assault on Uffington, he found he was carrying the report Brevis had been scribing. It seemed to him then that nothing could be more important than that he did not allow it to fall into grike paws, and so, harried and chased and in danger of his life, there seem to have been born in Spindle, but a humble cleric, the conviction that he must save what texts he could from the Library itself, and not just the one he found himself carrying. Knowing the tunnels as he did, he was able to make a cautious way towards the Library through tunnels filled with mayhem and slaughter. Somehow, miraculously as it seemed to him, he reached it, and found it so far intact. There were a couple of elderly scholars posted at the portal protecting it and when they saw him they allowed him in. Shortly afterwards grikes approached and the scribemoles ordered him to retreat into the deeper recesses of the Library. It was then he heard dark sound for the first time, for the guardians of the Library must have used their talons on the defensive scribing by the portal which was later to confuse Tryfan for a time.