Duncton Tales (5 page)

Since Duncton lacked any hierarchy culminating in a system of elders up which Snyde could climb, he early chose to enter the one institution in the system in which such an opportunity existed: the Library. Here was a hierarchy of aides, scriveners, scribes and Keepers that an ambitious mole could exploit, and that is what this most ambitious Marshender of his generation had successfully done. By dint of hard work, manipulation, and sheer persistence, Snyde had risen to his present position as Deputy Master, second only to Stour, and was in line to succeed as Master when the time came; which, since Stour, like his good friend Drubbins, was ageing, seemed likely to be sooner than later.

Snyde’s work prevented him living any longer in the Marsh End, for the daily trek would have been too great, and he had taken burrows on the slopes below the High Wood and uncomfortably near (from her point of view) those of Fieldfare, who though not a mole who easily disliked others, disliked Snyde.

“He has a sneezley, snoately, insinuating way has Snyde, and when Chater’s away he comes avisiting, and prying, and touching,” she told Privet.

Privet had wriggled in discomfort at this description and asked what special expertise Snyde had in the Library, a question Fieldfare could not answer. But the truth was he had chosen the academic study of modern history and, later, the arcane world of Word, Sect and Schism, because he believed these would serve him better in his insatiable ambition to reach the pinnacle he desired. To this end Snyde, unlike Privet, was an indefatigable creator of monograph studies on the fields in which he specialized, including the only recent work on that traditionally dangerous and controversial subject, Dark Sound.

But while Fieldfare had nothing good to say about Snyde, she had nothing but praise for a younger mole called Maple, who came from burrows near Barrow Vale itself. He had all the best attributes of a mole who would in the old days before peace came have been a fighter for justice and right causes: physical strength, common sense, and decisiveness. His manner was open and easy, his form fairer than most of his generation, and his fighting ability — so far only for territorial skirmishes and the occasional settling of disputes between others — had developed into something widely respected. Moles said of Maple, who was a nephew of Lavender and a mole Drubbins had taken to his heart, that it was a pity that the system had no need for warriors, for he seemed wasted where he was.

Since he had no opportunity to fight, or lead others in battle, Maple had made it his interest to study such matters in Library texts and had kenned every text on warfare ever scribed. Drubbins said of him that if ever the need for battle or war arose — and Stone forfend that it should — Duncton would be well served by Maple’s leadership.

These, then, were the moles who in their different ways, and different areas, held sway in Duncton Wood at the time of Privet’s coming. Most, indubitably, were moles whose nature and background led them to thoughts and actions for the good of the community and towards the light of the Stone, but a few, like the infuriating and powerful Bantam and the cunning Snyde, seemed turned towards darkness and trouble.

We have one more mole to describe, though his domain was not the Wood itself, where, though he was known, he was very rarely seen, but the great Library. This was old Stour, Master Librarian, and arguably the best-known Duncton mole in moledom. In his younger days he had been fierce and fearsome, equalled in reputation and respect within the Wood only by Drubbins himself, and unequalled outside it, where his reputation as the mole who had promoted scribing and books far and wide was unrivalled.

But those days were long gone, and Stour had not set paw outside the system for nearly two decades. Now he was old, and in recent moleyears, since October, had gone into retreat in the Library itself, and even there he was almost never seen.

This
was the mole that shy Privet — perhaps naive Privet! — was most eager and most excited to meet once she had slept off her long night’s chatter with Fieldfare, and felt ready at last to begin the first day of what she hoped, for unspoken reasons of her own, would be a new and very different life.

Chapter Three

“The Master? You want to see him?
Every
new visitor who fancies themselves half a scribe wants to see him, but very few succeed!”

With these unpromising words Privet learned from the first aide that she met in the Duncton Library who was not too busy to talk that it might not be as easy as she had hoped to meet Master Librarian Stour. Since the prospect of such a meeting had borne her onward for so long through the moleyears of her trek to Duncton Wood, she could not hide her disappointment.

“But I have a text to give him I have brought all the way from Beechenhill.”

The aide, a mild and elderly male, was sympathetic, and added in a gentler way, “You’re not the only one, believe me, looking for tasks in the Library, who brings some text or other in the hope it will win them favour. It’s been near impossible for anymole to see him since November, when he went into retreat. He never seems to come out of his study cell these days and some even say he’s dead, or languishing. So I very much regret to tell you that it’s Deputy Master Snyde you’ll have to see, may the Stone help you. No doubt he’ll put you to work on some mundane task to see what you’re worth.”

It seemed that enthusiasm and knowledge were not enough, nor even a burning mission to find out about the Book of Silence: persistence was needed too.

Though a good deal older than Privet the mole gave the impression of vigour and intelligence, talking quickly, and seeming restless. He had short grey fur, and a lean wiry body gained through years of moving texts about, one of which he carried as they talked.

“My name’s Pumpkin, and if you need help in the future don’t hesitate to ask. I presume you will be over-wintering with us? This place is run peculiarly, and there are books and texts here that nomole would ever find if he or she didn’t know where to look in the first place! What’s your speciality?”

“Mediaeval and Whernish work,” said Privet.

“Really? Oh!” said Pumpkin doubtfully. “You can scriven then?”

Privet nodded. She knew that down here in southern moledom, scrivening, as the ancient scribing of moles of the Word centred on grim Whern was called, was little known, and she had hoped that it might be a useful skill in Duncton. But what Pumpkin said next dashed her hopes about that as well.

“At least you’ll not pose a threat to Snyde, who has not the least interest in scrivening. Just as well — he doesn’t like moles who know more than he does about something he thinks important. You should have been here when Old Duckett of Cannock turned up last October. He’s the one did the work on the modern role of elders in the Midlands which Snyde had ripped to bits and said was a load of old rubbish, to put it somewhat inelegantly. Well! Right to-do that was! Duckett accused Snyde of withholding important texts and the Master had to intervene. Dear me! What academic moles do in the name of truth! Ha ha ha! I wouldn’t give this job up for all the worms in the Westside! No, it’s a laugh a minute down here. You can rely on Pumpkin here never being anything other than an aide, Miss Privet.”

“Well, as you say, my own interests are hardly likely to conflict with those of scholars like Snyde,” said Privet a little ruefully.

“I’d call him
Deputy Master
Snyde if I were you,” said Pumpkin with a wink. “He likes moles to respect his rank. You’ll find him down there somewhere in Modern, through this part which is called the Small Chamber, to the Main Chamber itself. No, down there … As for mediaeval and Whernish work I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll ask about and see if I can’t find some texts that have not been looked at in a while that might interest you. Anything you’re thinking of in particular?”

Privet hesitated and then said, “The Books of Moledom, where are they kept?” Her voice fell to a hush at the mention of these awesome texts, copies of which were in all the main libraries of moledom, but the originals of which were held somewhere in Duncton Wood. Of the seven Books only six existed, for nomole had ever proved the existence of the Book of Silence, the last of these mysterious Books.

“Them?
Everymole
asks about
them
! They’re kept in deep-delved chambers beyond the Master’s study cell into which nomole but the living Master may go — daren’t go, because the place is protected by Dark Sound. Mind you, once in a while the Master will bring one of the Books out for study, and I’ve seen them then myself, even had to carry one once. The Book of Healing it was, and I felt queer for days afterwards. Put the fear of the Stone in me I can tell you!

“But fat chance you’ve got of seeing the Books at the moment. Best to wait until the Master dies, get on the right flank of Snyde, and hope for the best. Of course there
are
copies, and he’ll expect you to study those first.”

“I’ve studied all of them,” said Privet.

“Have you now,” said Pumpkin with renewed respect, for it was a well-known fact that moles
said
they were going to study them but few ever did. There was something about the Books of Moledom that burdened moles not yet ready for them. But a mole who claimed she
had
studied them was probably telling the truth, and anyway there was the ring of sincerity about all that Privet said and did.

“Well then perhaps if you’re lucky —”

“Pumpkin!” called a voice from a nearby chamber, “stop chattering and bring that text to me!”

“I must get on, Miss,” said the aide, lowering his voice and giving her another wink.

Pumpkin shifted the text he had been clutching throughout this exchange from one paw to the other, pointed a talon down the length of a crowded, high, dark chamber, to indicate again the way she should go, and went on his way, leaving Privet to pause and take in the extraordinary scene.

Even the approach down into the Library from the surface above had awed her, so hugely delved were the tunnels, so impressive the high arches where the main tunnel joined what they modestly called the Small Chamber.

This great place, which was bigger by far than any library Privet had been in before, was lit from fissures in the murky roof high above, and held more texts than she had ever seen in one place. It was obvious from the hushed comings and goings of aides and librarians that the chambers that ran off it, some large, others narrow and confined, all held more material. The texts themselves were in shelves arranged in stacks, and the librarians had study places all higgledy-piggledy among them. At the fer end the chamber narrowed into a curious soaring fissure at the base of which, like ants hurrying to service a nest that lay beyond, moles came and went, their paws echoing, and their voices muffled and subdued.

Nomole noticed Privet as she diffidently made her way among the stacks down the length of the Chamber, staring at texts when she could, but catching sight of few she knew. Why, where she came from … But she banished such thoughts. Her past was over and done with. Her life was beginning again now in the present, and her future was what she could make of it.

For a shy mole, with little confidence left beyond matters textual, she felt she was doing well.

“Can you tell me where Sny … I mean Deputy Master Snyde is please?” she asked one of the less busy, more friendly-looking moles.

“No idea,” replied the mole, not looking up from the text he was working at. Abashed, Privet travelled on, arrived at the fissure that led to the Main Chamber, gulped, and followed a mole carrying a text through it.

She emerged into a cavernous space, most beautifully lit about its high roof, where the tendrils of plants and white fibrous roots of trees carried light from without, and reflected light from surface fissures. Beneath this grand, arching roof what was surely the main part of the Library stretched away, so huge that she realized that it made the ‘Small’ Chamber she had just come from seem small indeed. The Main Chamber was hushed, organized, busy, a place to inspire a mole to work and study, and to subdue the uninitiated into awed silence. Moles of both sexes and all ages worked here, and though it seemed at first to Privet that they were scholars studying texts it was soon very plain to her that they were, for the most part, only copyists.

“This is where …” she whispered to herself.

So! This was where the great work of copying moledom’s classic texts was done, the texts which by an ordinance of the Conclave of Cannock over thirty moleyears before must be disseminated throughout moledom. It had been initiated by a small group of scholar scribemoles led by Stour himself, driven by memories of the war of Word and Stone, when the light of Stone was so nearly lost for ever. What the decision at Cannock meant was that this great Library, the greatest in moledom, would eventually be replicated in the eleven other chosen sites, which included the Ancient Seven.

Most of these copies would be taken forth in the spring and summer years to the other libraries by journeymoles like Fieldfare’s Chater. It was a great enterprise, one that would take several more generations of moles to complete, but when it was completed it would mean that all moles, wherever they lived, might have access to all the scribed knowledge, history, thoughts and traditions of moles gone by. In such an enterprise, Stour had successfully argued, lay the way to the creation and preservation of freedom in moledom for evermore.