Duncton Quest (122 page)

“Knew the Stone?” laughed Hay. “Damn near lived and breathed the Stone after you left. Organised secret meetings, inspired other moles towards the Stone, including a friend of mine called Borage. Well I don’t know what happened to Ragwort but Borage continued his good work and held a session on the Stone which I was fool enough to go to. Got done by the guardmoles for that and when they found I was ill I was sent here with Borage and a few others in the second wave of deportations after that mole Wyre took over Buckland and Beake was sent here.”

“So Borage is here?” said Spindle.

“Alive and dying of sadness,” said Hay. “He’s all right in his way, and he keeps his mouth shut about the Stone. He doesn’t like the way the Stone zealots force their beliefs down others’ throats. Feels he did that himself too much and got moles like me into trouble. He’s got a mate, if you can call her that, but keeps himself to himself. Ashamed you see, of all the moles he got into trouble.”

“Trouble?”

“Blabbed, didn’t he? The grikes threatened him with snouting and he blabbed and gave away the names of those in Buckland who were interested in the Stone. Don’t blame him, mind. I would blab rather than suffer
that.
Nomole really blames him, but few talk to him now. Keeps his snout low.”

“I would like to meet Borage,” said Tryfan, “he sounds a worthy mole to me.”

“Aye, well. Maybe. Anyway, as I was saying, Eldrene

Beake got sent here against her will and eventually scalpskin broke out among her guardmoles and then herself, and Wyre ordered that they had to stay where they were up in those tunnels near the Stone. So they found themselves prisoners too. Got to paw it to Beake, she held things together for a while, but then the scalpskin weakened her.

“Nomole knows what happened up there exactly but one day the grike guardmoles must have mutinied and killed Beake – snouted her up by the Stone and good riddance. Then they broke through their own lines and invaded the worm-rich tunnels of the Westside.

“Very nasty time that, but as I didn’t come until a month later I missed the worst of it. That was all a cycle of seasons ago and a lot’s happened since. “Course, what it was all about was mating and that, and the guardmoles were not going to have celibacy forced on them. Naturally they wanted females, which Beake objected to and so they snouted her and broke ranks to get at the Westsiders. The females were mostly willing enough.”

“So a lot of young were born on the Westside?” said Tryfan.

“
No
young were born anywhere in Duncton, not a single living one. A few abortions, some stillbirths but no living young.”

“Scalpskin?” asked Spindle.

“Aye, makes moles pupless.”

“But not always,” Tryfan said, remembering: how could he forget? “Though often the young are born deformed.”

“Sterile now,” said Hay. “Of course the males blamed the females and the females the males – that’s why the healthy-looking ones were popular. You could be as ugly as a lobworm, but if your fur was clear of sores then you were wanted. Well, they found out that spring that it doesn’t matter: if one or other of the partners had scalpskin, that’s it. Nothing. Not even the hope that being in pup brings. And not just scalpskin. There was this disease from Avebury which is virulent and turns a mole blind and then mad in the end....”

“Murrain,” said Tryfan.

“Aye, that’s it. Well, whatever the reason the moles here were sterile, and by all accounts they have been over a lot of moledom.

“Then in the summer months a lot more died and the guardmoles began to lose sway until by the autumn nomole gave a damn who was who, it was the strongest surviving, and the cleverest. Naturally there was hope of young in the autumn but that came to nothing, just more abortions, more failures, and not even a stillbirth.

“That’s when depression set in. Moles, like Teasel you met, wandering around and going on about the good old days before they came here when they did have young. Without young a system’s dying, isn’t it. Naturally some tried to get out of the place but the grikes by the cross-under were strengthened and any who tried to escape got killed. Plenty have disappeared trying to get out and that’s where the strongest have gone. Now it’s the old and weak who remain, along with a few like me who seem lucky enough to be disease-free but of course we can’t get out. Still, there’s always hope, and that keeps a mole alive.

“Now January’s here, the question of pupping has come up again and there’s many a mole would like to have young but there’s not much chance of it. Things have quietened down, though the Westside is still the best place to be, but there’s no real order there. A few so-called leaders of different sections of the tunnels, plenty of henchmoles, the hardest bunch of females you’ll ever meet but, well, the system – if you can call it that – is dying for want of young. Not that the overall number is down, no, Wyre sees to that. There’s always new moles coming in like you, and the guardmoles are as strong as they ever were down by the cross-under. At the end of spring we’ll probably get a batch of younger moles come in – diseased, troublemakers, Stone followers and the rest and that’s the time to keep your snout low! Meanwhile, there’ll not be much trouble about.

“A few moles will try to get out, females mainly, in the hope of making young. It can drive some moles mad that, not having pups. What’s the point of it all if you don’t make life? The moles here aren’t getting any younger either, so the females particularly are losing hope.”

“It’s like the Wen, Tryfan.”

Tryfan nodded.

“It’s as if all of moledom’s dying for want of young.”

“Well, I don’t know about anywhere else,” said Hay, “but this system is.”

“What about the zealots in the Marsh End?” asked Spindle. “A mole thought we were two of them, whoever they are.”

Hay grinned.

“It’s what I thought for a bit. Down in the Marsh End’s where you find the clever ones, or the ones who think they’re clever. They have to have an argument about something, so down there you either have to be of the Stone or of the Word. Doesn’t make much difference as far as I can see: they’re as bad as each other. They send zealots up to the Eastside to get recruits, because sometimes when a mole’s ill enough he’ll believe anything if it promises relief or help. Get quite nasty if you disagree with them, so what a lot of moles do now is avoid them and let them get on with it. In the end they all get diseased just the same, they all die. Where I suggest you go is on the eastern side of the Marsh End, which is moister and danker but there’s a few sensible moles down there who keep themselves to themselves. Borage is down that way as well. As for me, I was due for a move so I’ll try my luck down there for a time as well. I daresay you’ll have a visit from the Westside moles, and others too if they hear you’re Tryfan.

“Best thing is to be tough and offish with them and they’ll leave you be in the end. Time was when you would not have survived at all without joining them. Now they’re all too old for much fighting, except for a few of the henchmoles who fancy themselves.”

“What about the Stone? Do any moles live up there?”

“No, but the Westsiders don’t let others through to reach it, and discourage approaches from the Eastside, because they say that trekking moles take worms. They’re right, they do. “Course the Stone followers, if that’s what they are, don’t like it, but the Westsiders can count on the moles of the Word to give them help. Bit of a do at Longest Night when the Stone followers set out for the Stone, but that all faded to nothing. Strange that....”

“Yes?” said Spindle.

“Strange sky that night, stars so bright it was like day in the woods. There was a star in the east and talk among some of something going to happen.”

“The Stone Mole,” said Tryfan.

“Aye, the Stone Mole. That was the last time I saw Borage, Longest Night. Creeping about with his mate on the Eastside, heading up for the Stone. It was his mate more than anything, poor thing. She’s like all the rest. Wants young and will never have ’em. Diseased as they come, and as thin as a female can be. Told me that if she could only touch the Stone by that star’s light then she’d maybe have young this spring. I told her she was a fool to try, but... as I said, they’re desperate.”

“And did she touch the Stone?” asked Tryfan softly.

Hay shrugged.

“Maybe she did. Persistent she is. But she would have got a buffeting for her pains, or something worse.”

The last time Tryfan had been in the Marsh End was many moleyears before when, with Duncton Wood already invaded at its southern end by the grikes led by Henbane, the system had been evacuated.

But now was a different time, a different season. The scrubby Marsh End trees stood still and desolate in the fading light, and the cold ground held rafts of snow in its darker parts. Dead vines trailed from the ragged trees, no bird scurried or flew, aching silence reigned and the place was drained of colour and hope.

Underground the earth was dark with moisture, and chill, and what worms they found were withered and pale, every one unpalatable. Spindle cast his gaze about uneasily, uncertain where to settle for the night, and even Hay, a cheerful mole and one they were evidently fortunate to have met, seemed uneasy.

Yet Tryfan, though tired, was positive and glad to talk a little more with Hay, and answer his questions about Duncton Wood as it had once been.

The tunnels where they stopped were communal, or had been once, and word seemed to go up and down them that strangers had come, strangers indeed. For one claimed his name was Tryfan, and the other was Spindle the Cleric himself, whom some had heard of too.

So as night came, and Tryfan talked, others came, surreptitiously at first and then more boldly until the tunnels seemed full of moles, although in truth there were only nine or ten gathered there. One or two of the later arrivals, zealots apparently from the unyielding smiles on their faces and their eagerness to talk, were shushed, for the stranger was talking, and what he said held a mole’s attention.

It was true enough, though Tryfan himself, whose night vision was less good than once it had been, seemed barely to notice the listeners. But Spindle did, and sensing there was no harm in it and might be some good, he signalled to Hay to let the listeners be.

So that night Tryfan talked and repaid Hay’s account of the recent moleyears in Duncton with one of his own, which told of the time in the years immediately before he was born, when the Marsh End had as its elder a much-loved mole called Mekkins. He told of how Mekkins helped Bracken and Rebecca, of how he made trek to the Stone to pray for Rebecca’s life.

But what brought tears to the eyes of many of the listeners – beset moles all of them, gaunt, sad, and ill, lost moles who were shorn of hope and brought to a system of despair – was Tryfan’s account of how Mekkins’ prayer was answered, and how he found a pup called Comfrey, and brought him to the teats of Rebecca here, right
here
in the downcast Marsh End.

There were females among those listeners, thin of flank and dry of teat, who cried openly at Tryfan’s memories of stories told to him, of a system in which pups’ cries were heard. The males, too, were restless and sad.