Duncton Tales (70 page)

PART IV

The Sound of Silence

Chapter Thirty-Two

It was as well that Stour insisted on Whillan and Chater accompanying Privet across the Wood to the Stone to find Husk, for she herself was in no mood to go cautiously, and think of the dangers along the way.

Her mind raced with doubt and grief, and was filled with apprehension of what she would find at the Stone, even as her innermost being succumbed to the growing realization that the darkness she had in earlier years found so troubling and insupportable in moledom had finally caught up with her in the one place she had hoped she might for ever avoid it.

Of these things, and many others too no doubt, she thought, and tormented herself with them as she hurried across-slope towards the Stone. Only the presence of Whillan and Chater kept her from erring off course, or turning and turning again as the troubles of her mind sought to confuse her. Indeed, more than once Whillan had to put a forceful paw to her flank to guide her into safer and more shadowed ways, and it was left to Chater, so long used to travelling through danger, to stay close by them both, eyes narrowed and head hunched forward, ready at any moment to call out a warning and stance still and protect two moles he regarded as his wards.

Certainly Chater showed no fear, nor felt any, for Pumpkin’s terrible story had angered him, and affirmed the doubts he had felt for some time about the Newborns, and it seemed to him now as if a long struggle was beginning for which he had been as long prepared. Indeed, he felt relief that its time had come, and that surge of energy and purpose a strong mole always feels when the waiting is over was on him, and so his mind was clear.

He noted with approval the calm and reassuring way Whillan took charge of Privet; for a scholar, the youngster was doing well, and it was increasingly obvious that he might have more about him than his thin and gawky appearance at first suggested. For in its mysterious way, the Stone somehow brought moles forward in each generation and prepared them for the time when they would have to take up the challenges of the day, and find words and courage and the will for deeds in order to preserve the light of moledom from the threatening darkness.

Privet herself said not a word; her mouth set, her eyes frightening in their blank intensity as she stared ahead, she seemed not to notice when briar tore her flank, and bramble lacerated her face. It was at the Stone she wanted to be, with Husk, who might yet have survived and need their help. So anxious was Privet to get to the Stone and do what she could for Husk — if only to whisper a melancholy goodbye over his broken body and ask that the Stone accept him to its Silence — and so much were Whillan and Chater concentrating on their self-appointed task of watching over her, that the sudden lightening of the Wood ahead beyond the great leafless beeches that confronted them took them all by surprise, and the little party stopped in its tracks.

“We’re almost at the Stone clearing already,” said Whillan, and indeed they were, for their minds had been so preoccupied with what they might find when they got there that their journey seemed to have taken no time at all.

Chater quickly quartered the ground all about for signs of danger and ambush, while poor Privet, who had been carried this far across the Wood by the strength of her concern for Husk, suddenly faltered and looked thin and weak, and full of fear at what they would shortly find before the Stone.

Until then, none of them had paid much heed to the winds and wet that beset the Wood, but now they had paused in their grim journey, the wild threshing of the high branches of the trees above came to their notice. Now and then wet brown leaves turned and flew through the air above their heads, while off across the High Wood, scurries of wind, like pups playing at the flanks of a parent looming high above, scattered leaves among the beech roots, and caused the branches of holly and the briars of bramble to shake and shudder with their passing.

The immediate way ahead was blocked by the fallen litter of broken branches and bark, and the only thing that seemed permanent in all about them was the presence of the great, dark, grey-green trunks of the beech trees, which rose up and up above them, their sinuous, smooth lines belying their strength. It was westward beyond the biggest of these, their ancient roots spread gnarled and knobbly across the ground, that the Stone clearing lay, and as they stared through the wind-loud Wood towards it, they could just make out part of the Stone itself, grey and shiny like the wet trunks that obscured it, its top blunt and very slightly angled one way.

For a moment Chater allowed himself to take his eyes off the shadows about and the dangers they might hide, and looked in his rough and unsentimental way towards the Stone itself.

“Should have come up here more often than I have,” he muttered. “Shouldn’t have had to wait until all
this
happened … Stone knows, a mole forgets where his centre lies and when he does, a little bit of the system forgets as well.”

Privet glanced at Chater with a sudden bleak smile and nodded her understanding before reaching out a paw to Whillan and touching him.

“You lead us on, my dear,” she said, “for our generation is beginning to need the strength of younger minds and hearts and paws. Stay as close as you have been, for I may need you. Husk is most dear to me.”

Husk is … for Privet, then, he was still alive, still a mole to revere and turn to, still waiting in his wisdom and kindliness, still …

Whillan led them on, head up and eyes alert, breaking through the obstruction and then skirting the roots of the last great beech before entering the clearing and gaining full sight of the risen Stone. They paused again as each of them quickly scanned the surface of the clearing ahead, beginning with the area near the base of the Stone, and then in ever-widening circles among the leaves and litter and indentations of bare chalk and grass which formed the clearing. Chater was concerned still to look for enemies and signs of threat, but Privet and Whillan were looking for Husk; but at first none of them saw anything at all. Just the Stone and the wan expanse of the clearing, and the shifting trunks and branches of the trees.

Then one of those swirling eddies of wind that had lifted leaves over the surface around them in the time just past, came noisily from behind, and went rushing in a melee of leaves into the clearing and across to the edge opposite them, where it paused, turned, lifted leaves once more, and was gone. To there it was their gaze shifted, and there they saw, with a mounting realization that soon had Privet hastening across after it, tell-tale dark movement among the wet leaves. As they got nearer they saw a limp paw, half hidden by leaves, then a thin and wizened snout, and a face bloodied, its wrinkles marked out by dried blood and pain, its eyes but half open as they stared, or sought to stare, up towards the Stone. It was Husk, half buried by leaves driven by the wind. Chater stretched out a paw to hold Whillan back so that Privet might go on alone to find out for herself what the Newborns had done to her mentor and friend.

Whether he had been alive or dead, she would have done as she did then, going swiftly forward, speaking his name gently and with love and reaching out her paws to take up his light old head and cuddle it, and snout at it, and say that she had come.

She found Husk alive, but only just. As she held him close he seemed to sigh, and the look of pain on his face eased to one of comfort and content. For a moment Chater and Whillan thought he had just then passed on to the Stone, for his body, which had been shivering beneath its covering of leaves, stilled and went limp. But his eyes opened and half smiled, and turned to look into Privet’s, and then, in a whisper that was like the final rustles of last autumn’s leaves before the winds of new times and seasons, he said, “Memories of old friends, old stories, kept me alive until you came. Knew you would come. Yes, yes, knew that.”

“I didn’t want ever to leave you, Keeper Husk,” said Privet. “I thought you’d be safe, and now you and Pumpkin —”

“He’s safe?” asked Husk, his face darkening until he sensed from Privet’s touch that Pumpkin
was
safe. His face lightened with a soft smile. “Good mole, he is. Would have fought for me. Pumpkin! But against them … against those moles he couldn’t … and I said he mustn’t. All my work, all my scribing, my thoughts —”

“Oh, Husk,” interrupted Privet, “have they destroyed them? Pumpkin said —”

“No, no, my dear, I did not mean that. Paws cannot destroy what a mind thinks and dreams and knows. No, no … I was just trying to say that all my work has been towards not hurting others. The Stone Mole said that violence is not the way. I would not have another hurt on my account. Pumpkin cried when they hit me but when I ordered him not to hit back he was still. Yes, they have destroyed the books, and broken the tunnels down to let the wind and rain add to the destruction of their paws.”

“Oh, Husk!”

Privet bent her head and wept her tears into his frail body and Whillan watched helpless and much moved as Husk’s paw feebly tried to pat and caress her shoulder, as if, even when he was so near death, his thoughts were for her.

“My dear, it’s not as it seems, at all, it’s not …’ His breathing became more difficult and Privet pulled away, sniffed, and with Chater coming forward to help, tenderly examined the wounds that Husk had suffered. In truth they were less severe than they had seemed at first, being deep cuts and lacerations to his head and left flank from talon thrusts, rather than anything worse.

But from the amount of blood, and the way that his skin and fur had broken and folded back, it was easy to see how Pumpkin had been convinced that it was from his wounds that he was dying. To Privet, looking at him now, it was all too plain that what ailed him was the shock of these recent events on his frail body, and exposure to the elements all night long. The assault he had suffered had been less than it seemed, and perhaps the Newborns who had come to his burrows had intended to do no more than frighten him, their true objective being to destroy his books.

Had his wounds been deeper, and his body less frail, there might have been something they could have done, if only to remove him from the clearing to somewhere safer and warmer. But it was all too plain that rather than delaying his death, such a move would more likely hasten it, and anyway, as if understanding that moving him might be half in their minds, he whispered; ‘Leave me be: here, where I can see the Stone; here, where others of Duncton have come to die, or have sacrificed their lives. I feel their great spirits with me now, and am content to end my time in such companionship. My life has been devoted to the scholarship of memory, and I have come to see that I am part, as we all are, of something greater and wiser than I knew.”

He indicated to Privet to have Whillan hold him a little more upright, that he might speak to them the easier. His breathing was coming with increasing difficulty.

“Privet, my dear, and you, Whillan … and your friend, whom I don’t think I know, listen now, for there are some things I wish to say. It seems that Pumpkin has told you most of what happened — of how the Newborns crept up on us in the night with such a force of moles as would have defeated a whole community, not just two bookish moles like us. Then they began destroying my tunnels in frustration.”

“Frustration” repeated Privet.

“Oh yes! They seemed to think they might find something special in your Collection, something they would not name.”

“The Book of Silence,” whispered Husk with a smile, “
that’s
what they came looking for.”

“But surely, Keeper Husk …!” began Privet in astonishment.

“Surely nothing!,” said Husk, with something of his old impatience. “I told them I had no such Book, only a Collection of texts from which, through many decades, I had made up a modest and thoroughly unsatisfactory Book of Tales. They did not believe me and, like all moles who do not understand the nature of a question they have asked, and distrust the answer they receive, being unsatisfied they tried to destroy what they did not understand. But in doing that they made
me
understand …”

He shifted his body a little as if to ease himself from pain, but instead went suddenly breathless, and all he could do for a time was cling on to their paws and stare at the Stone while he struggled for normality once more.

“Do not try to talk to us any more now,” said Whillan, “it can wait till later.”

“W … w … wait?” gasped Husk. “Won’t say much when I’m dead, that’s for sure! No, mole, you remember that it’s now or never in life, now or never. Where was I?”

They made you understand …?” said Privet softly.

“Yes, Privet, yes, my dear. They did. Of course they couldn’t find the Book of Silence but when they started to destroy the tunnels, and bring out my books into the open which I had tried to preserve so long … do you know, after the first shock I felt relief, such relief to see all that clutter go and there at last I saw a tale I had searched for for so long. The one I always said would be the last tale, you
know
, my dear, I told you.”