Duncton Wood Page 59

  ‘No, I can distinctly hear it that way,’ said Bracken, pointing somewhere else and resolutely leading them towards where the sound of the river seemed, possibly, to come from. The mist moved about them, drifting one way, racing another, fading before them so that they caught a glimpse of a scatter of grey rock for a moment before it disappeared again, or a stand of grass appeared to their left or right.

  Then they heard voices, harsh and quick, somewhere ahead; or was it behind? Siabod voices.

  They stopped, snouting about themselves in confusion, and for the first time in their long journey together found they were totally lost. They could hear the river but not find it, and the only reference point they really had was each other.

  ‘Best thing to do,’ said Bracken in a voice that made it quite clear that it was what he was going to do whatever else happened, ‘is to crouch still and wait until it clears. And if those were moles we heard, I hope they find us, because they can lead us to somewhere safe.’

  He looked in the direction of the sky above them, seeking out a lighter part of the mist and hoping it might clear. Then the voices came back, from somewhere else, and there was a sudden rush and squeal of a massive herring gull in and out of the mist above them.

  Time was as obscured as place, and neither mole could have said whether it was ten minutes or two hours before the mist began to clear as suddenly as it had come. First they were able to see a greater distance along the ground as one patch moved off and was not so quickly replaced by another. Then the swirls above them parted for a moment to reveal, quite unexpectedly, a hint of a blue sky. The light brightened around them, and soon they were able to make out the direction of the sun itself, though it was too diffused to show its shape. The mist suddenly cleared to their right, bringing the sound of the river clearly to them once more, and there it lay, quite a way below them; without realising it, they had moved across the valley and a little way up its side in their wandering. They were about to start off towards the river when a voice sang out of the light mist that still lay ahead of them: ‘It’s lost you are, is it?’

  Bracken tensed and stepped a pace or two in front of Boswell, squinting to see if he could make out from the dark rocky shapes and shadows ahead where the mole was hidden. He felt angry and frustrated enough for a fight.

  The mist rolled away and there were four moles ranged on the slope a little above them, the one they had seen and three others, all equally stunted and mean-looking.

  ‘Siabod moles,’ murmured Boswell.

  ‘Yes, we are lost, as a matter of fact,’ said Bracken boldly, ‘and we’d be obliged if you’d tell us where Siabod is.’

  There was a rapid crossfire of talk among the four moles which they could not understand before the smaller one, who had met them already, approached and said, ‘And what would you be wanting with Siabod? It’s not a place you just go to, you know.’

  ‘If you hadn’t scarpered when you saw us before, we wouldn’t have been mucking about in that bloody mess,’ said Bracken, waving a paw at the retreating mist and deciding that a bit of aggression wouldn’t go amiss.

  It went very amiss indeed. One of the other moles stepped forward and said in a high, angry voice, ‘Now don’t you go talking to Bran like that, or you’ll have something else to talk about, see?’

  Bran smirked and stepped cockily forward in a way he had not dared to do when he was alone.

  ‘Well?’ he asked.

  Bracken did not reply because he was engaged in a snout confrontation with the other mole, who did not impress him one bit. He had learned a great deal about aggression over the moleyears and could tell a phoney when he saw one. Also, he was hungry and he was itching for a fight.

  Boswell tried to defuse the situation by crouching down and beginning to explain why they were there by saying, ‘We’ve come from Capel Garmon and are seeking to find Siabod and…’ But it was no use. Bran foolishly darted forward, outraged at Bracken’s apparent ignoring of him, and dared to cuff Bracken lightly on the snout.

  Bracken did not hesitate. With a backsweep of his right paw he knocked Bran off his paws, while with a forward thrust of his left he lunged his talons into the other mole’s shoulder and then swept him to the left with a powerful smack of his right paw. Then, facing the two big moles and rearing up before them, he said between angry gulps of breath: ‘Don’t any of you try anything like that again. Now, where’s Siabod?’

  As he spoke, the answer soared high above him, behind the silent Siabod moles. Beyond the rim of the valley side the mist slowly cleared and rolled back out of the valley, revealing in the distance the cruel mass of a mountain whose shape was streaked with more and more snow the higher the eye travelled, between which rose steep masses of bare, black rock whose details were obscured by distance. Its size and impregnability seemed absolute. Angry grey clouds kissed at its highest peak, a sharp point that made a mole feel very small and distant.

  ‘That’s Siabod,’ spat Bran in a high, shaken voice.

  ‘Good,’ said Boswell quietly, ‘and now that we’ve found it and got to know each other’s strength, why don’t we find a nice safe burrow somewhere and we’ll try and explain why we’re here.’

  ‘What’s your names, then?’ asked one of the bigger moles.

  ‘Bracken of Duncton,’ said Bracken.

  ‘Boswell of Uffington,’ said Boswell, a little wearily because the mention of Uffington rarely failed to have an effect on other moles. It was one of the few systems everymole seemed to have heard of. This time was no exception.

  ‘Why didn’t you say so before, mole?’ said one of them after a long, respectful pause.

  ‘Now there’s a fine thing!’ said Bran, his crafty face cracking suddenly into what was for him a smile. ‘A mole from Uffington! An honour. A great honour.’

  And the four of them clustered around Boswell and led him up the valley side, leaving Bracken to trail along behind, feeling quite forgotten and a little foolish for having been so aggressive.

  Chapter Forty-One

  ‘You’re never going to try to get to Castell y Gwynt!’ exclaimed Bran after he and several other Siabod moles they met had heard their tale. There was a great shaking of heads and muttering in Siabod, the meaning of which was plain enough to Bracken: ‘insane,’ ‘mad,’ ‘crazy,’ ‘foolish,’ ‘idiots’. But behind it all there was awe as well.

  ‘You’ll never do it, mole, you never will.’

  ‘Have none of you ever tried?’ asked Bracken.

  Bran repeated the question in Siabod, because they found that most moles there spoke nomole at all. There was another shaking of heads and a sullen silence.

  ‘One mole tried a long time ago, but he never came back,’ said Bran. ‘You can’t, see? There is evil up there, there is danger like no danger anymole has ever faced and lived through. There’s no food, for they say no worms live that high and there is Gelert the Hound of Siabod.’ Gelert! Was that what Mandrake had muttered to himself and shouted in his threats to Bracken in the Ancient System? wondered Bracken.

  Neither Bracken nor Boswell had mentioned Mandrake in their account, principally because they feared that if they told the full story, it might invoke hostility on them. Bracken had, after all, been responsible for his death. But now…

  ‘Do you know a Siabod mole called Mandrake?’ asked Bracken slowly.

  Bran looked startled, his mouth fell open, he looked nervously at the other moles, and one of them asked him to translate. When he did so, there was rapid talk and looks of surprise.

  ‘Well?’ said Bracken.

  ‘That’s a strange question, isn’t it?’ said Bran carefully. ‘What makes you ask a question like that?’

  Briefly Bracken told him. As he spoke, Bran translated, but the moles never took their eyes off Bracken. The only bit that Bracken glossed over was how Mandrake had died.

  ‘Tell them the truth,’ urged Boswell.

  But Bracken shook his head. ‘Too risky,’ he said. ‘Later, perhaps.’ />
  ‘Well, do you know him?’ asked Bracken again. But before Bran could answer, or would, one of the older moles there came forward with such authority that they realised that while Bran was their spokesman, this mole was their leader. He had seen perhaps four Longest Nights and he was a little on the tubby side, though his face was lined and scraggy as the others’ were. He had intelligent eyes and a firm way with him that brought respect. He spoke rapidly to Bran in Siabod, while gesticulating at them both. Bran nodded rapidly and turned to them. ‘You’re to go with Celyn, see? There’s a mole he says you must meet.’

  With Bran taking the rear, they were led from the surface tunnels in which they had been talking higher and higher up the valley and out on to the surface. They did not resist this move because they had so often had the experience of being met by guardmoles or scouts at the periphery of a system and then being interrogated before being led into its heart and they had taken it for granted that this was what was happening to them when they were initially led into the tunnels lower down the valley. They rarely found out much about whatever moles they had met during such preliminary talks, and no longer expected to. The excitement started once they were led, as they were being led now, into the real heart of the system.

  But this time the journey was unusually long and little was said. The system’s peripheral tunnels were very variable, ranging from the crudest surface runs through an unpleasant, wormless peat soil that smelt of marsh to deep tunnels in a soft and sticky dark soil filled with grey, flat flakes of rusty-looking slate. The system seemed to have no clear pattern to it, and frequently they broke out on to the surface into nearly open tunnels through rough grass or amongst heather.

  It was in one of these surface runs that they saw, off to their left, their first full view of Siabod, or Moel Siabod as Bran called it, speaking the words with a shiver in his voice that made him seem almost likeable.

  Now that they could make out its mass unobstructed by the valley side, they saw that it was even more imposing than they had at first thought, with great falls of black rock, misty with distance, rising in ugly snow-covered steps to the summit itself.

  Once above the valley and past the gnarled oaks which they unexpectedly found at its top beyond a stand of coniferous trees, the ground levelled out into an area of flat sheep pasture, green and relatively dry in some places, boggy and soppy with wet peat in others, all interspersed with rocky outcrops. They crossed this on the surface, keeping to a ground cover of heather and young bilberry which the surface runs had been cleverly designed to exploit to the full, until at last they plunged underground once more into tunnels that gave them their first sense of being in a real, complete system.

  In all their explorations and journeys, they had never seen tunnels quite so bare and bleak as these were. The soil was good, considering the miserable, wet peats they had crossed over and the bleached-out, ash-coloured soils that had been encountered nearer the valley, for it was dark and well-structured and had the smell of food about it.

  What was unusual was the way the tunnels exploited the great masses of smooth and jagged slate that thrust through the soil from below, their strata all at a steep angle to the level of the surface itself. Clearly, generations of moles had turned these rocks into natural routeways, burrowing tunnels which used the tilted slate as one massive wall on one side, with bare soil on the other. The effect was grim but powerful, for the tunnels’ roofs—though most were more pointed or lanceolate than flat—were unusually high, and this no doubt created the moist, dour echo that was deeper and more primitive than the echoes drier chalk created.

  Celyn, the older mole who had been leading them, stopped suddenly and crouched down, saying nothing.

  ‘After we’ve eaten, we’ll rest here and sleep in burrows nearby,’ said Bran. ‘There’s still some way to go.’

  Food was brought to them by yet another scraggy, thinfaced mole like Bran, who appeared with a bundle of worms that were mean and grubby little specimens by any normal standards.

  Boswell ate them slowly, one by one, but Bracken, who was hungry, wolfed several down very fast before becoming aware that the champing and crunching of his eating was the only sound in the tunnels about them apart from the distant drip, drip, drip of water off the slate. He slowed down and made a few over-appreciative remarks about the worms to cover the slight sense of embarrassment he felt. Food up here, he was beginning to realise, was a lot harder to come by than in the lowlands. It was not to be eaten too fast.

  Only after they had eaten did they feel free to ask some questions about the Siabod system and where they were being taken. Most of the talking was done in Siabod by the bigger, older mole, and then translated by Bran.

  What they heard about Siabod was familiar enough. The system had been decimated by the plague, which came to it later than to other systems but took a massive toll. The few moles left tended to live in a narrow belt between where they had been interrogated and where they were now, where there was reasonably worm-full soil if a mole knew where to look.

  There was no leader in the system because Siabod moles tended to follow the lead of a group of elders like Celyn. But he was at pains to explain that the system had been kept together during and since the plague by a mole he called Y Wrach—a guttural-sounding name that made the mole, whoever he was, sound like a curse.

  ‘Oh, it’s not a male, it’s a female. Her name is Gwynbach, but most of the moles here have a nickname and hers has always been Y Wrach.’

  ‘And what does that mean in mole?’ asked Bracken.

  ‘Depends how you pronounce it, see? One way it means “healer” or “spell-weaver”, another way it means “witch”. You’ll see why when you meet her.’

  ‘So we’re going to meet her, are we?’ said Bracken.

  ‘You’ll have to, now. Wouldn’t be right not to, you know. Not after what you said about Mandrake. You see, she’s the one who saved him… ’ And it was then that Bran began to tell them the tale that, long afterwards, Boswell was to scribe so carefully in the Rolls of the Systems and which begins with the now famous words, ‘Mandrake was born and survived in conditions beyond even the nightmares of the toughest Siabod moles…’

  When he got to the end of the chilling story, which carried into the heart of Bracken as he remembered Mandrake’s despairing cry to Rebecca before he was killed by Stonecrop, Bran explained, ‘You see, Y Wrach was the female who found him. She liked wild places, she still does, and she heard him bleating up on the slopes where he had been born and carried him down by the scruff of his neck. They say there were those who wanted to kill him, being the last of a cursed litter, but she protected him and fought them off, dragging him about with her until he grew strong and then, when he did, teaching him to trust nomole, to despise all moles and to fight like no Siabod mole has ever fought. And he grew to be enormous and powerful, like nomole the system’s ever seen before or since. You know what they called them then, being such a funny-looking pair? The “fach” and the “fawr”—the “little” and the “big”.’

  ‘But how can she still be alive?’ asked Boswell. ‘She must be very old.’

  ‘She’s seen six Longest Nights through at least,’ said Bran, ‘and though her senses are failing now, her mind’s as sharp as a talon. Now the moles here bring her food, robbing themselves of it when its scarce, just as she did for that Mandrake.’

  ‘But what happened to him? How did he come to leave the system?’

  ‘He defied her. He was always like that, from the moment she found him, it’s said. Nomole ever understood why she looked after him, for there was never a word of love spoken by Y Wrach. Not to him or anymole. Nor between them. They fought from the start and it’s said that the scars on her snout came from him, made then he finally left her.’

  ‘What did he do?’ asked Bracken.

  Bran turned to Celyn and consulted with him. The two talked rapidly in Siabod for a while until finally Bran came closer to Bracken and Boswell, speaking in a lo
w voice as if he was going to be overheard by the passionless slate walls of the tunnel or the empty depths about them.

  ‘He set off for Castell y Gwynt.’ Bran paused to let the words sink in before adding slowly, ‘That’s what he did, see. That’s what he did.’

  ‘But why?’ asked Bracken. ‘Why?’

  Bran ignored his question, his gaze fixed on some image in his imagination as he continued. ‘He must have gone up through Cwmoer because that’s the only route to the upper slopes, up into the desolate place where Gelert the Hound lives. It was thought, until you told your story, that he must have been torn to death. But he must somehow have got through and then gone on up to the wormless heights of Siabod and on to the holy Stones of Castell y Gwynt.’ Bran paused and there was silence among them.

  ‘But why?’ persisted Bracken.

  ‘Why? What mole can say the true reason why a mole risks death where every other mole fears to go? The reason he gave, it is said, was that the Stone does not exist. There is no Stone. Therefore the Stones themselves mean nothing. He wanted to show that the Stone all moles worship and Siabod moles have always revered is nothing. He wanted at once to show how he despised our fears and mocked our belief. Remember, in those days before the plague, all moles were made to worship the Stone, but Y Wrach taught him not to, at least she told him to take no part in our rituals. But then Mandrake said, What Stone can exist when such suffering as was wrought by his own birth can exist? And after the plague came a lot of us came to see he was right, see?’

  The thought hung about them, each considering it in a different way. For Boswell the answer was as simple and as peaceful as sitting still; for Bracken, who had seen plenty of suffering in his own time, it was a question he had never been able to answer. For Bran, it was not much worth thinking about. They could not tell what Celyn thought at all.

  ‘And she’s still alive, after so long?’ asked Boswell. ‘What is it that she’s waiting for?’ He asked it with compassion, looking not at Bran but at Celyn. Bran repeated the question in Siabod and Celyn answered it very softly.