Duncton Wood Read online

  It was strange and exciting for him to see Boswell in this setting, for he saw how well he fitted here and, as it seemed to him, what enormous peace and authority emanated from Boswell. Bracken might not be able to tell what was being said, but he could sense that nomole there was going to attack Boswell and that was all he was really worried about. When the others had first come, he had been ready to leap forward and defend Boswell to the death.

  Without warning, the chanting suddenly stopped and all the moles seemed to relax. Especially Quire, who had been fretting about behind Boswell and now said to one of the moles, ‘I’ve got it, here it is, the book he wants.’

  But before there was time to reply, there was a stir and a sound from one of the side chambers. Two older-looking moles came forward, both with calm, severe expressions on their faces, and their look about the library brought an immediate hush to all the moles there. They stepped to either side of the chamber entrance and a mole came forward in whose presence Bracken felt an immediate awe. He wanted to lower his snout in a gesture of submission and, indeed, he did so, but he could not help keeping his eyes open at the extraordinary scene before him.

  The mole was old and thin, with a frail, silver-grey coat of fur that was patchy in places and the most kindly eyes that Bracken had ever beheld. Bracken had seen him before, or thought he had: he was the mole who had seemed to be at the entrance to the Holy Burrows watching them as they entered the libraries. As he entered the chamber, the other moles cleared a path between him and Boswell, and Boswell, snout low, stepped forward a few paces towards him. And they then had a chanting exchange in the language Bracken could not understand.

  ‘Steyn rix in thine herte,’ said Boswell.

  ‘Staye thee hoi and soint,’ said the Holy Mole.

  ‘Me desire wot I none,’ replied Boswell.

  ‘Blessed be thou and ful of blisse,’ finished the Holy Mole. A blessing, thought Bracken. That’s what it was!

  Then the Holy Mole smiled and Boswell stepped forward, and for a moment they nuzzled each other.

  ‘Well, Boswell, so you have returned. By the Stone’s grace you have come back!’

  Boswell seemed unable to say anything, but looked at the Holy Mole almost with disbelief in his eyes.

  ‘Yes,’ said the Holy Mole, ‘it really is Skeat, your old master. Look what they’ve done to me!’ He laughed, a delightful laugh, very like the one that Boswell, in his moments of puppish delight in something, sometimes let forth.

  ‘Well, well… I said the journey blessing when you left and here you are, so many moleyears later, to prove that a mole may trust its power. Have you nothing to say to your Skeat? Those few of us left who remember you are going to want to hear your story very much; and those others here, whom you will not know, will surely profit by it.’

  ‘Skeat, I…’ As he said this, there was a slight gasp among the other moles and Skeat raised his paw, smiling.

  ‘You’re meant to call me “Holiness”, but… these are strange times and anyway, if I’m not mistaken, you were relieved of your vows.’ Then Skeat spoke to all of them rather than to Boswell, and said, ‘Remember he has not been here for many moleyears—perhaps more than twenty—and has forgotten our ways. But then it is not our ways or rituals that express the truth in the Stone but what is in our hearts. The Stone has sent Boswell back to us, for what purpose none can tell, though I have my own ideas. But the Stone will not mind if he calls me Skeat, or any other name for that matter.’

  Turning to Boswell he said, ‘However, bringing a mole who is not a scribe into the Holy Burrows is just a trifle daring, even for you, Boswell. Who is he?’ With that, Skeat turned slowly to where Bracken crouched in the shadows, thinking nomole knew he was there.

  If a yawning crevice could have opened up and swallowed him there and then, or if the rows of books could all have collapsed on him, hiding him from view, Bracken would not have minded in the least. Fifty marauding moles, twenty weasels, ten owls… anything but the sudden exposure to the gaze of all those scribemoles.

  He stepped forward reluctantly, out of the darkness by the tunnel entrance, hardly daring to breath and, not knowing what else to do, he kept his snout low and waited.

  ‘His name is Bracken,’ said Boswell, ‘and without his help I would not be here now and nor would there be anything to report of my quest for the seventh Book.’ At this there was a sudden excited buzz of whispers among the moles. The seventh Book! So Boswell was one of those who had gone in search of it so long ago, thought the new scribemoles, who were wondering what this was all about. They gazed on Bracken with awe.

  ‘He has also come to give thanks to the Stone for a mole who survived the plague. I have reason to give thanks to her myself, as many moles have.’

  Skeat stepped forward towards Bracken, going up to him and touching him gently on his left shoulder, just where another mole had touched him once, long, long before, after they had met by the Stone. The feeling he had had then was the same as he had now, and he looked up into Skeat’s eyes as if no other mole existed. He was close to tears.

  ‘What is the mole’s name?’ asked Skeat gently, so quietly that it was almost like a private conversation.

  ‘Rebecca,’ whispered Bracken.

  ‘May the Stone protect her and bless her with strength. May you both have strength for the trials to come.’

  No other mole heard him say this blessing, not even Boswell, and Skeat himself was surprised to find himself saying it. But there was something about this mole Boswell had brought to Uffington that made him see again something that he had often thought, though most scribemoles and even masters forgot it: the Stone very often works through moles who are far from Uffington’s peace and prayer, who may themselves never understand the Stone or, indeed, may not even trust it. Such moles may show a courage far greater than many a scribemole shows in their pursuit of truth and their fulfilment of the tasks the Stone has set. Their pain and suffering may be as deeply felt and as spiritual as a scribemole’s, or one who worshipped the Stone. Skeat sensed that Bracken was just such a mole.

  Skeat turned back to Boswell and said ‘And what of your quest for the seventh Book? Did you succeed…?’ His question tailed off into nothing and an excited hush fell over the scribemoles who were listening.

  ‘I have not found the seventh Book,’ said Boswell, a ripple of disappointment running round the moles in the library, ‘but Bracken of Duncton’—they all looked at Bracken—‘has, I believe, seen the seventh Stillstone. He knows where it is and has shown me.’

  There was absolute silence in the library.

  ‘It is in a sacred place, a protected place, and one into which nomole may simply go. Only a mole or moles graced by the Stone, as Bracken was graced, may go there and perhaps nomole in our lifetime will ever be able to enter there again.’

  ‘A strange beginning, Boswell, and a story which, when you both have rested and eaten, you had better tell me of in full. There is much, too, for you to hear, and if you are as you once were, you will ask me a dozen questions for every one I answer! But not until you have eaten and rested.’

  With that Skeat raised one paw briefly to them all and said, ‘In worde, werke, will and thought, make us meke and lowe in hert. And us to love as we shulde do.’

  As Skeat left, Bracken noticed that one of the two moles who had come in with him took the book Quire had been searching for and carried it off after the Holy Mole.

  Then, thinking that if he wasn’t ‘lowe in hert’ he was certainly low in strength, Bracken willingly followed one of the scribemoles as he led them away to two simple burrows in the chalk soil where they found food was provided, and they were left to eat and sleep. Bracken found it hard to fall asleep for thinking about the strangeness of the Holy Burrows, and finally got up to go and have a chat with Boswell. But he found him fast asleep, head and snout curled on to his crippled paw as they always did when he was sleeping peacefully. Bracken did not disturb him but returned to his own burrow. It
was only the memory of the private blessing Skeat had given to Rebecca and himself, and the consecration he felt that it imposed upon their love, that finally brought him the peace he needed before he, too, fell into a deep sleep.

  In the course of their subsequent conversations with Skeat, which were held over a period of many weeks in a simple chamber along the tunnel that led to the Holy Burrows, with just one other mole in attendance, Bracken and Boswell were to learn much more about how the plague had ravaged the systems in general.

  It had started in the north and travelled steadily southwards, killing about nine out of ten moles who came into contact with it. It was regarded by the scribemoles as a judgement on moles by the Stone and, to their credit, a judgement on themselves as well when it struck Uffington, killing as many there as elsewhere.

  Skeat had been the only master to survive and had accordingly, by the tradition of precedence, been elected Holy Mole—a position he had neither desired nor expected and one he accepted with reluctance. One reason for this was that he sensed, as others in many different systems had, that the time in which they lived was one of great change and destiny. They needed a Holy Mole of greater wisdom and experience than he, and one who had seen into the silence of the Stone far more deeply than he felt he had.

  But with such thoughts, genuinely modest as they were, he did himself an injustice: Uffington, and through its example all systems, needed in that troubled time a leader who was strong enough to impose the unity and trust the conditions of devastation demanded, while wise enough to dispense with the rigid and sometimes inflexible rituals of the past.

  It seemed that many of the plague survivors had felt, as Bracken had, that they should visit Uffington to express their thanks to the Stone. Most had been unable or unwilling to do this in person, preferring to visit the nearest Stone, from where their prayers of thanksgiving came to Uffington. That many such visits had been made was known, because some scribemoles had, like Boswell, survived and made their way back to Uffington, while a very few nonscribes had come as well. Bracken was one, but there had been others.

  ‘We have had a visit from a mole who knows you both and has spoken well of you: Medlar, from the north.’

  So he had got here, after all! The news excited Bracken, who was now a little less awed than he had been at first in Skeat’s presence and who, since Boswell wasn’t going to ask, boldly asked the question himself.

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘It will not be possible to see him,’ said Skeat with a certain finality to his voice. ‘May the Steyn rix in hys herte,’ he added, words that seemed to have a special significance for Boswell, who started a little at it and muttered a blessing under his breath. It was this that warned Bracken against asking outright where Medlar was, and this too that gave him the uncomfortable feeling that there was a lot about the Holy Burrows that he did not understand, and never would.

  ‘With your visit we have now heard from all six of the seven major systems—Duncton, Avebury, Uffington, of course, Stonehenge, Castlerigg and Rollright,’ said Skeat.

  ‘What’s the last one which you haven’t heard from?’ asked Bracken.

  ‘It’s the great system of Siabod in North Wales. Nomole has come to Uffington who knows what has happened to it in the plague. Perhaps nomole survived, but I think that is unlikely… the Siabod moles are famous, or notorious, for their toughness. Of all the seven systems this is the least accessible and the most difficult to live in.’

  Bracken listened fascinated, for Siabod was Mandrake’s old system, the one where they spoke a different language, even today.

  ‘Is there a Stone there?’ he asked, hoping to find out something more.

  ‘Now that is something we would very much like to know! The records have no account of a Stone on the Siabod system itself, but there is a constant reference to a Stone or stones at a place nearby mysteriously called Castell y Gwynt, and there is a single reference in the records of Linden, referring to the travels of Ballagan to the “Stones of Tryfan” which we think is a group of the Stones in this other place. Perhaps bigger than the rest.’

  ‘Why’s it so important?’ asked Bracken, his mind racing with these mysteries and strange names.

  ‘Because while other systems come and go, the seven great systems have always been occupied and lived in. Some, like Duncton, have been cut off for long periods, but moles there have always finally come forward who have maintained the traditions laid down by Ballagan himself, as you yourselves have now. We do not know—we have never really known—if the moles of Siabod worship at whatever Stone it is that stands at Castell y Gwynt. Their language is different and no scribemole that I know has ever bothered to learn it.’

  ‘Does it matter?’ asked Bracken, rather regretting the question when he saw the look of patient tolerance that flickered over Skeat’s face for a moment.

  ‘I think so, Bracken. We live in a time of trial and trouble. Worship of the Stone is really at the centre of all moles’ lives, although it has been forgotten by so many. But we in Uffington are to blame for that. There was a time when scribemoles visited each of the systems at least once in a generation and the seven main systems more regularly than that. And from those seven the strength would go out to the others. It is now no longer possible to visit Siabod. We have too few scribemoles even to service Uffington itself, but if we knew that the Stone was at least honoured in all of the seven systems, that would be a start. And we do—for six of them. For these have been visited and by the Stone’s grace even Duncton, so long cut off, has made itself felt again. But Siabod… we know nothing of it. Siabod has always been an exception. It requires a mole of exceptional fortitude of spirit and body to reach it, let alone return from it.’

  Skeat was silent for a while before starting to talk quietly again, almost as if thinking aloud. ‘The systems, the worship of the Stone… it has all slipped into disarray. Now the plague. We have a chance to start again—perhaps we already have, for your visit, like Medlar’s before you, fills me with hope. But what strength it would give us in Uffington to know that all seven of the major systems were centred on the Stone… to know that Siabod, too, worships the Stone! You must both forgive an old mole his dreams. Perhaps this office makes a mole overreach himself. Well, now, to other things.’

  He asked them a great many questions about Duncton, a subject Bracken had not particularly enjoyed listening to Boswell talk about in the library. There was something special about his experience by the buried part of the Stone with Rebecca that made him recoil instinctively from having it talked about in public. However, Skeat seemed to sense this and his manner was so gentle and understanding that soon Bracken was describing what had happened two Longest Nights previously in a detail, and with a passion, that even Boswell had not heard.

  Skeat wanted to know a great deal about the location of the Stillstone after this—how accessible it was, what the Chamber of Roots consisted of, whether any other moles knew of it, and many things more—and his interest and concern extended to the story of Bracken himself, and Rebecca, Mandrake, Rune, Mekkins… they all played a part in the story Bracken was induced to tell. And Skeat was especially interested that Mandrake was said to be from Siabod, and fell silent for a long time thinking about it.

  Then suddenly, it was over. Skeat had finished with his questions and there seemed nothing more to say.

  ‘Leave us now, Bracken, for I have to talk to Boswell alone for a while…’ and Bracken found himself excluded, cut off from the mole with whom he had shared everything for moleyears on end, and at a loose end in a system where the moles were strange and there were long silences, and great spaces, in which a mole like Bracken felt restless and uneasy. He was taken back to his burrow by a silent mole, who responded to all questions with a bland smile and a maddening shake of the head which might have been ‘Yes’ and might have been ‘No’ but seemed most likely to be ‘Perhaps’. Yet when they arrived and the mole seemed about to leave, he hesitated and asked suddenly: ‘
Did you really see the seventh Stillstone?’ And then, before Bracken could even begin to think what to say, the mole added, ‘I’m sorry. I should not have asked such a thing.’

  But Bracken, a little fed up with all the secrecy, said boldly, ‘Yes. I did!’ and added with what he thought was obvious irony, ‘It was ten times as big as a mole and made a noise like a bumblebee.’ Bracken regretted this expression of irritability the moment he had uttered it, for the mole scurried away as if he had been stung by a bee and no amount of calling after him would bring him back. With a sigh, Bracken returned to the burrow, laid himself down, and in no time at all was asleep. He had done more talking than he realised, and there is something about memories recalled in detail that makes a mole tired.

  He was woken up by Boswell saying, ‘Bracken! Bracken! I’m sorry about all that. But it’s not important…’

  ‘What did he want to say to you?’ asked Bracken, but immediately his voice died miserably in his mouth because he could see Boswell stiffen uncharacteristically and lower his snout, indicating that he didn’t want to talk about it.

  ‘I can’t say, Bracken. You must try to understand that there are things here which are impossible to explain…’

  ‘All I understand is that they’ve no use for what they call nonscribes around here,’ said Bracken angrily. ‘All this bloody way and there’s secrets all around. What’s this with Medlar, for example? Why can’t he be seen?’

  Boswell lowered his gaze to the floor, his normally peaceful face troubled with Bracken’s feelings of being excluded, which, of course, he was. Perhaps, though, what had happened to Medlar was something he could explain. Surely it would do no harm.