Duncton Quest (3 page)

Rooks are more irksome than mortally dangerous to moles, but since the last stage of the journey would be on the surface – there being no communal tunnels up to Uffington – Tryfan preferred not to be the object of the curiosity of rooks or any other avian. Rooks bring kestrel, and kestrel may bring hunting owl; and hunting owl is death. Yet still Boswell did not answer, or even stir.

“What is it, Boswell?” asked Tryfan irritably. “You’ve been crouched there brooding since dawn. Can’t we just get on with it? If you want food before we go I suppose I can find a worm or two about here...” He looked reluctantly around the bleak copse, whose bare chalk surface was littered with beech leaves and was unpromising for worms, and, thinking the better of delaying their start further, he hastily added: “But surely the scribemoles will have food aplenty up in the Burrows?”

Tryfan had often daydreamed of the welcome the scribemoles would give them, and he knew that of all their number Boswell must now be the most honoured and the most revered. The more so because, after so many decades when it had been lost, he was bringing the seventh Stillstone back at last, whose return would herald the coming of Silence for allmole who sought it.

“What is it?” Tryfan asked again, but gently now and with more respect, coming closer and trying to do what Boswell had taught him to do: listen truly to another mole’s heart. For impatient though he was, Tryfan loved Boswell as his father Bracken had, more than the world, more perhaps than the Stone itself, and he would have run any risk and faced any danger, even death itself, to protect and honour him. Such had been his task when they set off from Duncton Wood, and though they had faced owl, water, fox and twofoots, and risked crushing at the black rush of roaring owl whose shining eyes can mesmerise the unwary, yet Tryfan had boldly protected old Boswell and grown from youth to warrior mole in the course of that journey. And wise mole too, who knew when to give Boswell space. So now Tryfan sighed, and settled down beside the beloved scribemole, to let him explain in his own time why he had stopped.

Sensing which, Boswell stirred and scratched himself, fretting at the lichen on the root at his side and snuffling half-heartedly at the humus of leaf and bark and twig. No worms there, just dank wetness.

“I’m not sure, Tryfan, but I fear... I sense... I know not...” and his voice trailed away to nothing, as the grey roots of the tree in whose protection they were hiding turned and twisted and lost themselves in the earth about them. “Or, rather, I know only too well,” he added.

Above them, high in the trees, the March wind caught again at sharp young buds and shook them with memories of winter. Then it turned and swirled and redoubled its strength, to catch at the litter of leaves beneath the trees, and pull coldly at Tryfan’s strong fur, and the ragged white-grey coat of Boswell. Tryfan shuddered and said, “Surely we are so close now that we are within the protection of Uffington. In only another hour or two and we’ll be there, Boswell, safe and protected. Can’t we talk then?”

“Ah! Yes! We can talk then, I suppose, but it may be rather too late. There are things I must tell you before....”

“Before what?” asked Tryfan in frustration at Boswell’s unusual reluctance to say what was on his mind.

“Tryfan,” said Boswell, his voice such a whisper that he seemed almost to be speaking to himself, “I am reluctant to move because I fear this journey’s end will bring our parting. I have tried to teach you what I know but there is so much more... The truth is I don’t want to let you go!”

“But I’m not going! I don’t want to. I want to stay at Uffington and learn to be a scribemole. Is it that I have failed in that, being good only as a warrior for your protection?”

Boswell put his paw to Tryfan’s and said, “No, no that is far from the truth. You have learnt much of scribing, much of ancient lore, and you have learnt well and truly. Already you...” he stopped again, snout low, tensely listening. “Trouble. Grief. Pity. Can you not feel them in the ground? They will mean that we must part. I fear that.”

Tryfan snouted about and said firmly, “I sense nothing of the sort. That’s just your usual doubts and fears, Boswell. Old age!”

Boswell’s eyes smiled. Sometimes Tryfan forgot himself and spoke as a son might, but Boswell did not mind, though he affected a certain disapproval. And it was true: he was not as strong as once he had been, old age brought aches and pains... and unnecessary doubts. There had been many times on the journey to Uffington when it had needed Tryfan’s youth and confidence to carry them forward. White Moles are not infallible.

Boswell peered about him and said, “Well, I fear I am right this time. For one thing I am surprised that scribemoles have not already come out to meet us, for surely news of our coming precedes us. For another... well... the very soil itself feels troubled. The roots, the trees, the wind.”

“That’s just the beginnings of a storm, and so the sooner we —”

“Yes!” said Boswell rising suddenly. “It may well be the beginning of a ‘storm’. An ancient storm and one that will plunge all of moledom into darkness before it is done. But you are right. We had better get on and confront whatever we must in the Holy Burrows.”

“But it can only be a welcome, Boswell.”

“Can it?” said Boswell, his bright eyes turning on Tryfan’s. “Feel the ground, Tryfan, feel it!” And Tryfan snouted low and felt the ground as Boswell had taught him to, clearing his mind of the excitement of arrival and the expectation of the good things to come, and he sensed at last that it was “troubled’.

“Yes, I sense it,” said Tryfan. “What is wrong, Boswell?”

“I don’t know,” Boswell replied simply.

“And why must we part?”

But Boswell did not reply. Instead he irritably set off, limping rapidly ahead with the energy that always surprised Tryfan. With barely any hesitation, and with the escarpment rising to their left, he took them on a route that went by hedgerow and long grass, in the shadow of ancient lynchets and across the dry valleys that ran down off the scarp face.

Boswell stopped only once, pausing briefly in a small wood that edged on to a way up a valley that cut up into the escarpment above them, and muttered, “The Blowing Stone, that’s up there. If this wind rises and veers west we will hear it before long. From here Uffington really begins.”

“Yes!” exclaimed Tryfan, a tremor of excitement in his voice because he could now feel the power of the Blowing Stone which was part of the Uffington legend, and had given sanctuary to many a mole, including his own father Bracken.

“Can’t we just visit the Blowing Stone?” said Tryfan as Boswell started off again. He regretted saying it the moment he spoke because Boswell turned sharply to him and said, ‘
Just
visit it?’ That you cannot do. It is an object of reverence, not idle curiosity.” Then he hurried on, and Tryfan followed behind, looking humbled, but watchful as well for they were on open ground now with the great sky wide above them and he was beginning to feel, as Boswell did, that the air about them was troubled indeed; and by something more enduring than a bitter north wind.

Halfway up the steep chalk escarpment that forms the north edge of Uffington Hill, the ground levels off to the east and forms a great field of pasture. To the right, the west, the escarpment steepens and it was at this stage in their long ascent that there came to them, strong even against the wind, the odour of death. With it came a curious whining sound, sharp and strange, and a rasping or rattling of metal on wood. The combined effect was chilling and seemed to cast a darkness on the light of day.

They stopped together and took shelter in some long grass.

“Stay here. I shall go forward,” said Tryfan with authority, to which Boswell raised no objection. It was Tryfan’s task to see to such matters of danger, and one he did well. Though if he ever imagined that Boswell was waiting in suspense for his return during these reconnaissances, he would have been mistaken – it was Boswell’s habit, at such moments when he could do nothing useful, to crouch comfortably down and meditate, muttering a rhyme or invocation to himself, or even humming some scribemole song.

But he had barely got started before Tryfan was back, his face shocked.

“There is no living mole about, alien or otherwise. So of such we need have no fear. Nor any other living creature except for rabbits out on the pasture. But there is something, Boswell, something terrible. You had better come and see.”

Tryfan led him up the tussocky slope towards the pasture. The odour they had smelt before was clearer but not much stronger – a dry, grim smell. Then ahead were the rising wooden posts of a fence between which stretched barbed wire.

It was from there, as the wind swept by, that the high whining sound came. Closer to, the wire vibrated savagely, seeming to give malevolent voice to the wind, turned its bitter sweepings into part moan, part howl and part scream. An effect which would have had anymole looking sharply over his shoulder as if expecting attack from an enemy.

But though this was bad enough, what was worse was the grim sight that had so shocked Tryfan and brought him running back to Boswell. For impaled on the barbs of the bottom rung of wire, their back feet just touching the grass below, were the bodies of two moles. Wind-bleached bones pierced through their dried skin and fur and their talons pointed up in arcs of agony to the barbs on to which they had been impaled, each one through the snout. The strong north wind swung them back and forth on the wire to give them an obscene semblance of life. The ear-rending windsound seemed like the echo of their screams and final moans.

Boswell said nothing but, advancing slowly along the wire, examined them. Finally he pointed mutely at their paws, each reaching up to the terrible barbs as if... if....

“They were impaled alive,” said Boswell quietly. “Each of them hung here alive.”

For a time Boswell said nothing but then he turned to

Tryfan who saw that his eyes were filled with tears. Behind him hung the moles, and beyond that the rising downland heights of Uffington Hill, above which the sky was angry and bleak. For a time he could not speak. But then, as Tryfan went forward to comfort him in his evident distress, he turned back to the moles and whispered, “These are scribemoles of the Holy Burrows. From their worn talons and the greying fur they were old, too old to live in a normal system, especially in such stressful times as these.”

“But how could they be so impaled?” asked Tryfan.

Boswell shrugged. “I have heard of such a thing with twofoots, trapping creatures live and then putting them on a wire like this. But that is usually near a wood and involves other creatures such as crow and vole. Here, alone, like this... I fear....”

“Yes?” said Tryfan.

“Othermole.”

Tryfan gasped in disbelief and horror. Other
mole?

“
Do not think that mole would not do this as well. The records show that snouting such as this has been done by mole.”

“Whichmole?” said Tryfan, his voice shaking.

“In ages past. As punishment. On barbs of blackthorn, or even wire where it hangs low enough, as here. It is the cruellest death. It is a punishment best not survived, for moles so hurt would be in living death.” Tryfan knew why, for a mole’s snout is more than smell, it is touch and sight as well. If a snouted mole survived he would be so badly maimed he would be defenceless and lost. Only in fights to death do moles talon-thrust at each other’s snout.