Duncton Tales Page 16

  So Fieldfare set off directly downslope, with that sense of mounting and most pleasurable freedom a mole gets when she puts her normal daily cares behind, and goes off on a risky adventure from which there is no turning back.

  “I’ve not talked to that mole Bantam in ten moleyears at least!” she said cheerfully to herself as she went. “But she’s something important and maybe that’s done her some good. I’ll seek her out for a start, and at the very least I can spend an hour or two in her company before returning to the Eastside. What fun it will be to have something to tell Chater for a change!”

  It would have been hard for anymole, intent upon getting in among the Marshenders — who had become even closer since they veered the Newborn way — to have chosen a better day than Fieldfare had done. For arriving that same afternoon, tired and hungry, she found the Marshenders in a mood of excited expectation and open to visitors.

  So much so, that strange though she was to most of them, they seemed not a bit surprised to see her, believing, as she quickly deduced, that she had come to witness for herself the visitation of some special moles whose imminent arrival was the cause of excitement all over the Marsh End. Indeed, other Duncton moles, mainly ones who lived on the edge of the Marsh End and who half accepted the Caradocian way, had come for that very reason, so Fieldfare’s arrival seemed less remarkable than it might normally have done.

  The cause of the excitement was that a group of Senior Brothers of the Order had been expected for some mole-months past and that very day news of their imminent arrival had come, and Chervil himself had set off upslope that very morning to the south-eastern Pastures to meet them. The Marsh End Newborns were now waiting excitedly for his return with the visitors, about whom they knew nothing but that they were Senior Brethren and were bringing joyful news that would end at last the Newborns’ self-imposed isolation in the Marsh End away from the Duncton Stone.

  Chervil! But that’s Thripp’s son! thought Fieldfare, her heart suddenly in her mouth to find herself so near so sinister a legend. For a moment she thought she should flee back upslope to the Eastside, but then, since the name of the day was dauntless she felt she should continue as she had begun and see things through. It would be quite a thing to be able to tell her Chater that his beloved had seen Senior Brother Chervil, Thripp’s son, with her own eyes! And anyway, she felt hungry again, and fancied a nibble.

  Worms aplenty were available and the Marsh End was in festive mood, and Fieldfare was at leisure, for the time being at least, to take in the scene. She had not been in those tunnels since she was a youngster, and the place seemed more modest, less dank, and less forbidding than it had then to her young eyes. Even so, the soil was darker and more moist than that upslope in the main part of the system, and the trees smaller, and the ground-cover thicker and muckier, making the surface ways winding and enclosed, and likely to confuse a mole who erred off the communal paths.

  “Greetings, Sister!” moles said brightly when they saw her, approaching with smiling eyes and adding with irritating cheerfulness, “This is a happy day, come celebrate with us!”

  At first Fieldfare was uncertain whether these invitations were general to the day and season, or specific to a place and time within the Marsh End. Certainly the further she advanced along the Marsh End’s main surface communal way, past entrances down into its tunnels, the more she came across the sight and sound of festivity of anything but a sombre religious sort. The Newborns, it seemed, could enjoy themselves.

  Eventually she was stopped by the sheer force of numbers of one such group of brothers and sisters whose members had sprawled across the way, and through whose songs, prayers and eating it would have been hard to pass without seeming rude.

  “Have a lobworm, Sister, and rejoice in the Stone’s bounty!” a fellow-sister said to her, giggling as she presented Fieldfare with a broken lump of worm. “It’s a miracle, isn’t it, the Senior Brothers coming this day and … this.”

  Fieldfare looked in the direction indicated, which was a side turn off the main way, and she was astonished to see a massed tangle of shining healthy lobworms in a pile as big as a mole, and moving moistly. Fieldfare liked her food, but there was something over-generous about this mound of worms to which, in its juicy repulsiveness, the gluttony of the Newborns was a ghastly counterpoint. For the self-same paws that were soggy with the entrails of half-eaten worms were raised from time to time to the sky in supplication to the Stone, while those same stuffed and overflowing mouths were mumbling dribbling prayers of thanks.

  Where the worms had come from Fieldfare had no idea, though she had heard it said that sometimes in the autumn, after especially hot summer years, there was a second breeding of such lobworms as these in the Marsh End, which resulted in their effusion from the worm-saturated soil on to the surface.

  Perhaps this was the cause of the ‘miracle’ which Fieldfare’s new friends were celebrating, but it was very soon a feast from whose nauseous sights and sounds she wished to escape. But out of the need to seem to be a part of things Fieldfare continued to nibble at what she was offered, whilst searching among the excited mass of moles to see if she might find Bantam or pick up a clue to her whereabouts.

  Failing that, she talked a little to what moles were near and, between gorging and pious prayers, discovered that Sister Bantam was not fer off below ground in a communal chamber, and that Chervil and the Senior Brothers were expected imminently. Mention of the fact, which came from two excited moles who had just appeared along the same route that Fieldfare had taken, had the effect of suddenly sobering up the joyful throng, as if they sensed that whilst celebration was in order, visiting Brothers, especially senior ones, might find fault with the present wormful excess. Having discovered where Bantam was, and sensing that the local festivity she had come across was not the best place to be, Fieldfare hurried on in the company of the two new arrivals, who led her underground to the communal chamber.

  The place was crowded but orderly and since other moles came pressing in from behind her, Fieldfare soon found herself in the midst of what she suddenly realized was a congregation, whose prayerful actions and liturgy were being conducted by a mature male, dark-furred, whom she recognized as one of the Carodocians who had long since come to the system.

  He was stanced at one end of the chamber, intoning prayers of praise to the Stone, which those all around her knew by heart, and cried out zealously after him. Fieldfare could only just see his head and snout, for the throng of moles in front obstructed her view.

  She decided that just as she had nibbled at the worms on the surface to appear to be an enthusiastic part of things, she might as well nibble away at the service underground, to show willing and remain unnoticed by others there. But the liturgy being strange to her she had trouble keeping up with it and no sooner did she bob her snout low, in accord with the others, than they were raising theirs to the roof; and no sooner was she shouting out ‘Stone I praise thee!” than they had fallen silent. Luckily other moles were scattered among the throng who seemed as ill-attuned to the service as she was, added to which there was all about her a certain undercurrent of spiritual chatter or noise, generated mainly by older and scraggy females, who seemed quite carried away by their own fervour. Ignoring the male leader entirely, they were conducting their own special form of worship, which consisted of half-prayers, half-songs, half-praisings, and half-gestures of abasement and joy, all to the apparent indifference of those nearest to them.

  However, although they seemed utterly lost in a zealous world of their own, this proved not to be the case. For suddenly, the male stanced down and disappeared from Fieldfare’s sight and in his place reared up a female, who cried out the single word ‘Peace!” with such ear-splitting and harsh command that everymole in the room fell silent.

  “Why, ’tis Bantam!” exclaimed Fieldfare to herself, instinctively retreating behind the mole in front of her, lest Bantam see her before she had a chance to decide if it was wise that Bantam knew she w
as there. Already grave reservations were coming into Fieldfare’s mind about this whole venture, and she had decided that she had been dauntless enough, and when the right moment came to leave unnoticed she would take it. The silence did not however last for more than a moment or two before one of the oldest and wildest of the fervent females began singing out her joys once more in a cracked voice and disturbing the sudden peace.

  Bantam nodded sharply to an attendant male who, Fieldfare saw for the first time, was one of several who were stanced guard-like at intervals around the edge of the great chamber. Although the other moles held their snouts low in expectation of some new turn in the liturgy for which Bantam’s command of silence had prepared them, Fieldfare surreptitiously watched as the male, also dark, but younger than the seeming leader, pushed his way with a colleague through the congregation and unceremoniously grabbed the offending female and very rapidly and very roughly removed her, dragging her screaming towards an exit at the back of the chamber, and then up an unseen tunnel, whence her screams continued in a muffled way before suddenly, and most sickeningly, coming to a stop in mid-flight.

  As all this happened Fieldfare noticed that the moles about her were uttering a humming, snoutish sound from the back of their half-open mouths in a rhythmic way, and seeming to say a word which sounded like ‘oohhhnnnn oohhhnnnn oohhhnnnn!’ Doing this, they seemed utterly indifferent to the fate of their aged friend and yet they must have had some consciousness of her because as soon as the males had silenced her — as Fieldfare assumed they had — they suddenly stopped. It seemed to her that the humming was their way of blocking out the fact that something unpleasant was happening which they wished to know nothing about.

  For a moment there was dead silence again, but even as Fieldfare dared look up to observe everything the better, Bantam reared up and screamed out, “Stohh oohhhnnnn!” and the humming chant began once more.

  So that was it! Stone!

  Half opening her mouth in semblance of joining the others, and half closing her eyes that her curiosity might not be noticed, Fieldfare watched and saw what she could.

  Bantam was not much changed from when Fieldfare had seen her last; a little thinner perhaps, and her eyes, always forbidding, a little more so. It was plain that she held some sort of position of authority here in the Marsh End, and judging from the immediacy of the others’ response, she was regarded either with great respect, or great fear. Having seen the speed and ruthlessness of the old female’s removal Fieldfare had little doubt which.

  Meanwhile there was some pushing and shoving at the entrance down which she herself had come, where it seemed that the same gluttonous moles she had met earlier were now being forced in by the ‘guards’. Indeed, a wave of movement crossed the chamber, and brought the moles into even closer contact with each other, such that Fieldfare realized with sudden fear that she could barely move, and that she would find it quite impossible to get out of the chamber before others did.

  Even as Fieldfare began to panic, and lose all idea of observing what was going on as she began to be desperate to get out before she was crushed further, Bantam cried out, “Be still! Brother Worthing will speak a final prayer of thanks and then we will ascend to the surface to meet the Senior Brothers. For they have come at last among us, praise the Stone! Be still, or risk the dire crush of indiscipline.”

  Just as movement had gone like a crushing wave across the throng a moment before, now a blessed stillness descended upon it, as each mole heeded Sister Bantam’s word and one by one stanced still as death, so that Fieldfare could breathe again. Panic she still felt, and that grim phrase of Bantam’s, “the dire crush of indiscipline’, seemed to throb in her mind as her blood throbbed in her ears until the panic subsided.

  The good Brother Worthing’s prayers she heard not, grateful only to be alive and know how relieved she would be to be outside again. Then, when the prayers were over, the guards stanced aside to reveal ways out through which they now unhurriedly directed those moles nearest to them.

  As suddenly as the crush had come it eased away, and Fieldfare, beginning to shake with delayed shock, was herself at last able to stagger up a short tunnel, and out to the cool and infinitely pleasant surface of the Marsh End once again.

  But she was mistaken if she thought that her tribulations were over and she could thankfully go home at last. They had only just begun. The same dark and silent young brothers who had been the guard-stewards below ground were now in place to herd the hapless moles into a clearing some way from the entrances down to the communal chamber.

  The clearing, which appeared to be newly made, had recently delved ground about it which rose up on all sides but one, giving those in it the sense of being enclosed and vulnerable to anymole who took a stance up on the raised ground, which Sister Bantam almost immediately did.

  Casting her imperious eyes across the throng she said, “Brothers, Sisters, be still before the coming of the Senior Brothers …”

  Then, from the far side of the raised ground, five males slowly appeared and with the sun-bright sky behind them they seemed like moles rising from the ground itself and bringing with them light. At this Fieldfare felt for the first time that sense, so alarming, so grim, that it might be much harder to find a way back out of the Marsh End and the ministrations of the Newborns, than it had been to get there.

  No sooner had this thought crept uneasily into her mind than the one mole she recognized amongst the live, Brother Worthing, who had said prayers earlier, advanced and addressed the assembly.

  “Brothers and Sisters in the Stone,” he began, “we are gathered here to welcome three moles whose presence honours our small community in Duncton Wood, and whose coming this day marks a new and exciting era for true followers of the Stone. Brothers, Sisters … Senior Brother Inquisitors Fetter, Law and Barre.”

  He waved a paw at each of these in turn and Fieldfare could not say she liked any of them, Barre looking decidedly brutal, Law having a cruel smirk on his face, and Fetter a calm and inexorable assurance. They nodded in that smug way new arrivals of importance often have when they are introduced to a company of moles. But it was not finally any of these three visitors that held Fieldfare’s attention, but the remaining mole, who, she deduced from the fact that it was not necessary to introduce him to the throng, must be Senior Brother Chervil.

  His eyes were black and intense, and his presence was strangely compelling in the way that a great rise of rock which seems about to fall because the heavy stormy sky behind it moves with cloud, is compelling. Though large enough, and strong, he was no larger than his companions.

  Chervil neither looked at Worthing, nor anymole, nor smiled, but instead immediately hunched a little towards them in a slight movement that seemed massive and binding on them all, and said in a terse, commanding voice, “Brothers and Sisters in the Stone, I have long looked forward to the day I should be able to welcome the Senior Brother Inquisitors to Duncton Wood. It is the last of the great systems of moledom which must be prepared towards the day when the main systems of moledom shall be ready to yield peacefully to the only true way to the Stone, and with your help and faith it will soon be so.”

  “Aye! It shall be prepared by us!” cried out the moles enthusiastically all round Fieldfare.

  “Join with me in a prayer of thanks to the Stone for their safe deliverance through the traps and dangers of moledom,” Chervil continued, “so many of whose systems are not yet enlightened by the good news of the true way, and where the spirit of indulgence and indolence lingers to corrupt all moles.”

  There followed some prayers that Fieldfare found interminable in their length, and irritating in their professions of joy, the more so because now and then, when she least expected it, the moles about her turned to each other and to her as well and embraced with cloying warmth with the words, “Peace!” and ‘Only the true way!” and ’Hail fellow Sister in the Stone!” to which Fieldfare replied with embarrassed smiles and mutterings of her own, which she
trusted might be taken as suitable for the occasion.

  “I mentioned,” continued Senior Brother Chervil suddenly, cutting across this spiritual bonhomie, “that the spirit of indulgence is rife in moledom still. So too is the canker of dispute and faithlessness, at whose talons I myself have suffered these months past when I have borne witness of the Newborn truth. Aye …’ and here he seemed to indicate a wound in his flank, though look as she might Fieldfare could see none, or nothing more than an indisposition of the fur where once there might have been a tiny scratch.

  Nevertheless, this ‘living’ proof of the dangers to which Chervil had been subject and his witnessing of moles who dared to doubt the preaching of a Newborn mole, did not go down well with his listeners, who were incited to cry out in dismay and anger, especially the younger males.

  Further mention of certain outrages against Newborn moles only fanned the flames of their anger, as a strong wind makes a fire grow across a wood, until suddenly Chervil raised a paw and said, “Peace. Peace is the only way, an attitude of peace.”

  “Peace,” hissed the Newborn rabble softly, and reluctantly.

  “However, just punishment to make such moles suffer their own violence is also the Stone’s way, for the Stone is jealous of the truth and will cast down into their own darkness moles who violate its Silence with their babbling doubt and discord,” ventured Chervil, his words rousing the Newborns to enthusiasm once more.

  “Aye,” they cried, just punishment of wrongdoers!”

  “Recently, it was Senior Brother Barre’s duty to oversee such retribution in a system near here, a place of so-called learning, contemplation and scholarship. I refer to corrupt Cuddesdon. But we know the dangers of such ‘learning’, we have seen the blasphemy of much ‘textual scholarship’. Aye …”