Duncton Tales (4 page)

These surely were glorious years, and ones which would have warmed the heart of the great Duncton-born scribemole Tryfan, a mole who, though he said of himself that he made mistakes aplenty, yet led moles forward through the affliction of the Word, and scribed as his last gift to moledom the Rule of Duncton, which had become the Rule many other systems chose to follow for the proper conduct of their community life.

A Rule which despite its name was remarkable, not for its rules and strictures on how moles should live, but for its insistence that communities should never exclude dissidence, never cease to listen to follies of youth, of age and of obsession, never cease to learn to change; for in constraint, in judgement, in unthinking regulation and law, is communal death and not, as the proponents of such laws so often argue, the true maintenance of ordered life. At the centre of Tryfan’s Rule was this: an open faith in the Stone, but with a tolerance and trust for everymole’s right to reject the Stone if they wished. This freedom of faith was Tryfan’s greatest gift to the generations that followed him.

But by the time Privet came to Duncton Wood these recent glories and new traditions of tolerance were under threat once more, not from outside, but from within. The war of Word and Stone had created successive generations of moles who were tired of fighting and reluctant to raise their talons once again. Worse, they were reluctant even to see that they might need to do so.

In such a situation dangerous sects like the Newborns easily thrive, and moles may come to see too late that they are on the way to losing their liberty once more …

But first, and before we take up our journey at Privet’s flank, for moles who know not the system on which the Duncton Chronicles was centred and in which so much recent history was made, and for those who wonder what happened to it in the years following the events described in the Chronicles, we must learn something more of Duncton Wood itself.

Moles familiar with Duncton’s history will readily appreciate that the wormful soils of its Westside attracted many of the moles who recolonized the system after the wars of the Word were over, and that from the conflicts for space and territory that inevitably ensued, the bigger and more enterprising moles tended once more to adopt that part of the Wood as their own.

But while in Bracken’s day these more aggressive moles had extended their power on into the Wood beyond their natural territory, such was the spiritual strength of the whole Duncton community since Tryfan’s day that this had not happened again. So far as there was expansion from the Westside it was out on to the Pastures, which in former times was a separate and disliked community. Now it was cheerfully occupied by moles of the new Duncton stock, and communal tunnels between the Wood and Pastures ensured a ready and frequent interchange of moles. Indeed, if anything, this expansion of Duncton’s traditional boundary had made Barrow Vale, which lies in-wood of the Westside, even more central to the system as a whole.

Barrow Vale itself, with its extensive communal chamber supported by the roots of trees which twisted and turned into a myriad of antechambers, nooks, and side burrows, remained the natural place for moles to meet and chatter, debate and fall in love. The runs and burrows around it formed an area that was the second most occupied part of the wood, and here older, more experienced moles had settled, and there was an air of sociable content about the place. It was to this part all visitors came or were soon directed, and here, adopting a tradition from Uffington’s greatest days, several burrows were set aside for visitors, each with its own entrance, and all wormful enough to permit visitors and pilgrims to stay awhile in peaceful comfort.

Over on the less productive Eastside, where the trees and undergrowth thinned out above the poor soil, the more austere and reverent chose to live. Some of these found tasks in the Library under the direction of Stour (who himself lived in those parts), but others were there simply because they were wanderers by nature who liked a location near the cross-under below the southeast slopes so that they could come and go as they pleased without being observed, and live quietly undisturbed.

We have already seen that tunnels at the northern edge of the High Wood were used as the Library of the system. Of how this came about we shall have more to learn, but for now it is only necessary to say that the chambers and tunnels taken up with these texts (which also gave room to the copiers who serviced other systems and who formed an important daily function of the place), vast though they always seemed to newcomers, were in fact only a small part of the Ancient System as a whole.

The rest of it, the greater part covered by the High Wood, consisted of the unknown and long-deserted tunnels which once, before scribed history began, must have been a great system indeed. Of how it came to be deserted moles were, are, and always will be told fanciful tales. But we may guess that the real explanation for its desertion lay in some change of climate and soil that had robbed the area of its worms. For there were few of them about, and those thin and sour of taste, and even hungry moles avoided them.

So apart from the chambers and tunnels of the Library, the Ancient System remained barren and deserted of mole, and its tunnels, filled as they were with the sinister carvings which generated Dark Sound to confuse moles who ventured there, were visited by no sensible mole.

Although in Bracken’s and Tryfan’s day there had been some venturing down into these old tunnels, in the decades of peaceable content, since then they had become forgotten and feared once more. The very existence of the famous Chamber of Roots which protected the Stone’s base, and into which nomole but those with a true heart and absolute faith dared venture, was known to none but a very few, except as legend, and a place that once was great. But there was something fitting in the fact that the Stone rose through tunnels now empty of mole, and silent of daily busyness, toil and strife. Ghosts there were, and shadows to frighten a mole, and strange sounds from the few entrances that still remained.

Moles chose to travel only the surface of the Ancient System, and that in awe, and they reached the Stone Clearing with gratitude, properly reminded that life is but short when set against a mole history in which whole systems of moles could be lost and forgotten.

Another area that was much as it had been in Bracken’s youth, when the Chronicles began, was the low-lying Marsh End to the north. For such grubby and worm-poor ground, the Marsh End attracted extraordinary loyalty in its moles. The present occupants indeed were mostly descended from moles in whose hearts the memory of Duncton had been kept alive by those who succeeded in escaping the scourge of Henbane and her grikes in Tryfan’s day, and who had come back to their ancestral home.

Thus far, then, was Duncton as it had been at the time of Bracken and his kin. But there were differences. In those days of which the Chronicles tell, the tunnels of Duncton were heavy with the threat of Mandrake and Rune, and loud with the rude laughter and mocking jeers of their henchmoles. Such debates as there were then were conducted in a Barrow Vale ruled by fear, for blood was ever on the paws of those that had ascendancy, and behind the chilling smiles of Rune and others of his kind (though thank the Stone there never was another
quite
like him) were eyes that saw innocent pups as things to kill, and they killed them even at their mothers’ teats.

How different Duncton had become in the decades since those fateful days! Laughter and merriment had been the way since then, of moles whose lives were lived with respect for others’ space and wish. Moles reared in a tradition of listening; moles who knew that whatever task they have, whatever skills or weaknesses the Stone and their own endeavours give them, they may find a worthy place in their community.

Through those great decades Duncton honoured its inhabitants, and opened its paws to any who came, giving them a welcome and a place, asking only that they were tolerant of others, whatever their faith or inclination might be. For make no mistake, there was many a mole who came to Duncton Wood (and some reared in its tunnels too) who were not especially of the Stone, and were willing to argue the night away with moles of faith, and prove what points they could.

Such is true freedom, and everymole in moledom knew that Duncton moles would hear another out and argue and share as hard as they could without bearing grudges or making judgements and condemnations.

Another way in which Duncton had changed somewhat since former times was that it no longer had the traditional system of elders which even now many systems have, by force of habit and molish inclination, despite the fact that such a system was not part of Tryfan’s famed Rule.

Indeed, the absence of official elders was a source of wonder to visitors from systems run by a selected few. It was precisely that abrogation of communal responsibility that Tryfan was so much against in formulating his Rule, since in it he saw the beginnings of the very corruption of power that had so dominated his life.

Certainly it was plain to outsiders that Duncton ruled itself successfully without the help of elders. There was no council, no assize, nor any formal routine regular meeting of a minority whose task was, to put it at its simplest, the ordering of the majority. What the system did have was an irregular Meeting down in Barrow Vale, held when moles felt moved to call one, and attended by as many moles as wished to come, but presided over by nomole. Such was Duncton’s unique government, and it was the wonder of moledom.

But naturally, at any particular time there were moles in the system who by virtue of their intelligence or persistence, cunning or good diplomacy, were recognized by others as having something more than average to contribute and so were elders in all but name. Sometimes an individual emerged who combined the right qualities in such balance and good measure that he or she adopted a role that was near to being the very thing Tryfan so disliked: the role of leader.

Such a mole was the great and wise Drubbins, about whom many a tale has been told, and will continue to be told so long as moles enjoy accounts of moles who know how to be both decisive and judicious in a crisis. Drubbins was a large rough-voiced Westsider, with a liking for lobworms and a legendary and abiding loyalty to his gentle mate Lavender for whom he would have moved the earth (and often did!). At the time Privet came to Duncton Wood, though Lavender was already infirm with age and Drubbins was beginning to lose his former energy, this pair was regarded as the first and most important in the system.

But if Drubbins was still first among equals there were other moles in Duncton at this same time whose special qualities put them amongst those to whom others willingly turned in times of doubt or argument, or for leadership. And since these moles shall have their part to play in the story of Privet’s quest, their names and characters should be swiftly scribed down.

There was, for example, Drubbins’ younger brother, Chamfer, who had the same gravelly voice as his sibling, and the same large, rough, companionable frame, though not, it must be said, the same acuity. But what he lacked in perception he more than made up for in good intent and strength when strength was needed, which it was all those times when moles are inclined to fight, which is mainly in the spring over mates, and in the autumn over winter territories. Chamfer’s easy confidence, and benign but firm manner, had often kept the peace in the Westside and Barrow Vale.

The Marsh End at that time had at least two moles who held sway in their different ways over moles of their generation. One of these was the forceful Bantam, pre-eminent among the fecund Marshend females. For a small mole Bantam was remarkably overbearing, interfering, and unlikeable, but she had a way of making moles defer to her and thus had a following. She had in recent moleyears, and following the arrival in Duncton Wood of missionaries from Caradoc, become Newborn, and helped the Caradocians establish the only paw-hold they had in Duncton, which was down in the Marsh End.

The second well-known mole from those parts was Snyde, a clever mole with sharp eyes and a head bent unnaturally low by a slight crook-back, which made him always look as if he were peering and prying about. He had the quick malevolent wit of one whom life has made bitter, but who knows how to make the majority laugh at the minority’s expense. He studied others as an owl studies its prey before it strikes, and had a voice that was thin, high and snoutish. He was the kind of mole who, in a system of elders and factions, would have known how to rise far and fast, playing one off against another and emerging not as leader but as the power and malign intelligence behind a more physically charismatic mole — though only one himself malign would have given Snyde much time.