Duncton Wood Page 70

  Tryfan himself did not meet Boswell until several moledays after Longest Night, when Bracken introduced them with joy—his most loved of friends and his son by Rebecca. What more could he have asked?

  Boswell gazed gently at Tryfan, recognising him as the mole he had seen on the night of his arrival by the Stone, and knowing much about him—and guessing more—from what Rebecca had told him. He saw that Tryfan had about him qualities of both Rebecca and Bracken, and bore within himself a great deal of their love. And perhaps he knew that this was the mole he had come to find.

  But if he did, he did not show it. Indeed, Bracken was rather surprised at Boswell’s apparent lack of interest and his unusually brief replies to the questions Tryfan asked him.

  ‘There’s not something wrong with the lad, is there, Boswell?’

  ‘No,’ said Boswell, shaking his head. ‘It’s just that I’m afraid for him. You said he wants to be a scribemole. Well, you, of all moles, ought to know how hard that can be. So leave me to find out if he has the character he’ll need.’

  Again and again Boswell avoided, or put off, or refused to answer the questions Tryfan repeatedly asked. ‘How can I become a scribemole?’

  ‘Pray,’ was Boswell’s succinct answer.

  Replies like this made Tryfan upset and uncharacteristically uncertain of himself and led him to go to the Stone even more, or talk for hours to Comfrey, as he wondered what he had done to offend Boswell, who was so pleasant to everymole else.

  Yet, for all Boswell’s seeming refusal to talk, Tryfan began to see how much light there was in him and to follow him round at a distance, sometimes helping him with finding food if he needed it or showing him somewhere in the system that he wanted for some reason to see.

  One day, and a very long day it was, Tryfan came to Boswell very nervously—his paws almost trembling with tension. Boswell pretended not to notice, but went about the tunnels as he often did, talking here, telling a tale there, saying blessings or sitting still.

  ‘Boswell—’ began Tryfan several times, but Boswell didn’t seem to encourage him, and Tryfan did not quite have the courage to finish his question. It was all so unlike him to be nervous, but there was something so simple about Boswell that he felt unworthy to ask him anything.

  But then finally, towards the end of the day, when Boswell was growing tired and Tryfan was afraid he would disappear into his burrow and the opportunity would be gone, he summoned up his courage and started: ‘Boswell?’

  Boswell crouched down and gazed at him. But said nothing.

  ‘Boswell… Bracken told me once that you had a master called Skeat. He said he took you to Uffington. He said you admired him more than anymole and that he taught you.’

  Boswell nodded: ‘And very hard he made it for me sometimes!’ he said, remembering Skeat with an affectionate smile.

  ‘Boswell?’ began Tryfan again. ‘Could I… I mean would you… teach me? As a master?’

  Boswell looked at Tryfan for a very long time, just as once, long ago, Rose had looked at Rebecca when she knew that Rebecca would become a healer and had wished she could take from her shoulders some of the suffering that that would bring.

  ‘Yes,’ said Boswell simply. ‘Though always remember that it is not I who will teach you anything at all, but the Stone.’

  The relief on Tryfan’s face was better than seeing the sun rise in the morning or the look on the face of a pup who rediscovers his mother after he thought she had been lost for ever.

  ‘Well… I mean… what must I do?’ stumbled Tryfan.

  ‘Learn to hear the silence of the Stone,’ said Boswell.

  They sat in silence for a long time before Tryfan, emboldened by Boswell’s agreement, asked another question. ‘Why have you come to Duncton?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Boswell. ‘I thought I knew. I thought it was to find the seventh Book, and to take it and the seventh Stillstone back to Uffington. But now I find I’m waiting for something, but I don’t know what. The Stone will show us finally, as it always does.’

  This sense of waiting now began to grow stronger and stronger in Duncton. It was like the buildup to Longest Night, or Midsummer, only much slower and subtler, yet infinitely more powerful.

  Winter set in and January grew colder, and then the snows and freezings of February came. The Duncton moles grew used to the presence of Boswell, who would often go among them, Tryfan in close attendance, and tell them tales of the Stone and of many legends which only scribemoles know.

  There were only two things he would not do. One was show them how he scribed—‘for that is something a mole must prepare himself for and these tunnels are no longer the place: you have far finer things here!’ The second was that he refused to tell them about his travels with Bracken, or to talk about Rebecca—about whom he was often asked.

  But apart from those things, there was nothing that Boswell would not do for other moles, or tell them—although the winter affected him badly and Tryfan had often to make sure that he rested and did not overexert himself.

  Still the system waited, and as February advanced and the very first stirrings of still-distant spring were felt in the restlessness in the tunnels, there was the feeling that something, something, would happen soon in the system. Something.

  Only two moles in Duncton seemed utterly unaffected by this strange tension—Bracken and Rebecca. They lived more and more quietly and joyously near each other and there were long periods during the winter when neither was seen. All moles respected their privacy, and even Comfrey, always one to pop in and see Rebecca, stopped visiting them. Sometimes, though, Boswell would talk to them, indicating to Tryfan that it was best if he did so alone, and Boswell would be especially still and quiet for days afterwards.

  All around them the system they had loved, and to which both had contributed so much, seemed to be waiting; but they, who had once been so sensitive to its moods and changes, never seemed to notice.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  The bitter weather of February ran on into March until, after several days of more changeable weather, there came one of those dawns that take a mole by surprise and revive the hope that there can be such a thing as spring. Life need not, after all, be permanently damp and cold.

  Rebecca knew it even before dawn came and, leaving her burrow only moments after she awoke, went up on to the surface and over towards the Stone clearing. The wood was still dark when she arrived, but it began to lighten as she found a place to settle down as the mauves of the last of night gave way to the first greens and dark pinks of the dawn. On the wood floor, beneath the leafless beeches, the shadows were still black in the deepest root crevices of the trees, but already some of the leaf litter and fallen twigs and branches were catching the new day’s light that came from the east.

  Behind Rebecca, to the west, the last of the dark in the sky was going, revealing high scatters of cloud, now grey, then cream, finally white. As the sun started to rise and its first rays pierced through the wood, brightly catching the green, damp lichen on the beech trunks, or the warm brown of the few leaves that had never left the branch, or the dark green of a bramble leaf which somehow took no notice of last year’s autumn, Rebecca stretched and sighed. The air was clear and fresh.

  An early spring day! The kind that lulls some moles into thinking that there will not be any more winter! Rebecca knew days like that and that the best thing to do with them was to enjoy their every single moment and forget tomorrow. That could turn into winter again.

  But for now there was some blue at last in the sky, and lovely white clouds to set it off, and sunrays that grew warmer by the second and made a mole feel it was time to clear out a tunnel or two, or cast about for a mate.

  Bracken stirred and stretched in his burrow. He wondered whether to go and find Rebecca, thinking pleasurably about it for a while before deciding not to, not yet. See what kind of day it is, find some food, groom a bit, listen to the wood. Anyway, these days it took him longer to wake up an
d he liked to stretch and get the aches out of his body.

  Outside on the surface, he headed off towards the slopes as in the distance he heard the sound of carrion crows and pigeons, blackbird and robin, and what might have been a thrush. But it was the crows he heard most of all, for there is something about an early spring day in a leafless wood that makes their call carry. And it was a spring day!

  Soon Bracken’s paws felt as light as a pup’s and he wanted to run, so he did. But as he started down the slopes, it occurred to him that it would be more fun running with Rebecca, so he went back to get her.

  When he found that she wasn’t in her burrow, he guessed where she would be, and with a laugh, took a route by a tunnel that brought him out on the surface a little below the Stone clearing.

  With what sighs and dragging steps did he pretend to pull himself up and into the clearing, with what absurdly mopish snout-lowering and tired weavings here and there did he approach Rebecca, who was crouched in spring sunshine near the Stone! She tried not to laugh, but couldn’t help smiling as she first scented him and then heard him. So sad? Not possible, not him, not today.

  With a hesitant cough he finally spoke. ‘I’m lost,’ he said. ‘How do I get back into the system?’ And when she didn’t answer immediately, he added: ‘I’m a Duncton mole, you know.’

  She turned to him, eyes alight with her love for him, and came right to him and caressed him on the shoulder, just as she had on the same day she herself had spoken those words near this spot, the first time they ever met. Did he remember them so well?

  When her paw left his shoulder, he put his own paw there, breathless—still utterly moved by the way she touched him.

  ‘Do you remember what I replied?’ he asked.

  ‘You said “It’s easy” and later you said “I’ll show you.’”

  ‘And did I?’ he wanted to know.

  She nodded. ‘And I think I can remember the way you went,’ she said.

  ‘Show me, Rebecca.’

  And she did. She ran past him, just as he had once run past her, though neither as fast as they had been then, and then by the ancient mole track down the slopes, this way and that, down the hill, until he was quite out of breath following her.

  ‘You stopped by a fallen oak branch because that was where the entrance into the system was, and I asked your name, because I didn’t want you to go,’ remembered Rebecca.

  He smiled, caressing her as she had him. The sun caught her fur, which was as thick and silvery-grey as it had ever been, though her face was lined now. But there was not a single line he would want taken away or changed, for she was the most beautiful mole he had ever known, just as she had always been.

  ‘Rebecca?’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘I want to look at the wood again, the places where our lives were first made.’

  ‘I’m lost, my love, the wood’s so changed. You’ll have to show me the way…’

  ‘I will,’ he whispered.

  Then he ran past her and led her down on into the Old Wood, hesitating at a turn sometimes, stopping still with his head on one side, sometimes whispering to himself, ‘No, it’s not this way,’ until they were back in the heart of

  Duncton Wood and she saw they were near clumps of anemones, not yet in full bloom, though one or two white buds were showing.

  ‘Barrow Vale was somewhere here,’ he said.

  He snouted over the surface, which was open and grassy with brambles at its far edges, until he found a spot where he started to burrow. Then he stopped when he was halfway into it and tried a bit further on, suddenly disappearing.

  She peered down after him into the tunnels of Barrow Vale which nomole had visited since the plague and the fire.

  ‘Do you want to look?’ he called.

  Most of it was still there, the tunnels and the burrows just as they had been, though dusty and unkempt. Empty of sound and with a few scatterings of bones and many roof-falls. A dead place where Bracken had once been leader, after Rune and Mandrake.

  They looked around it together, staying close to each other, and occasionally one or the other would say ‘Look!’ and point to a place they both remembered, where so many things had happened. But the voices of the past did not come back, just a shimmer of memory that was gone for ever almost the moment it returned.

  ‘One day other moles will find this place and recolonise it—they might call it something else, or perhaps somemole will remember being told there was a place called Barrow Vale… but I doubt it. Why should moles remember?’ wondered Bracken aloud.

  They peered into the elder burrows, which were thick with soil dust and partially collapsed from a tree that had fallen on to the surface above, perhaps during the fire.

  ‘It’s strange,’ said Bracken, ‘but when I first explored the Ancient System it wasn’t like this at all. It felt alive there, waiting for something. This all feels dead. It is dead.’

  ‘It never found the power of the Stone,’ whispered Rebecca.

  ‘No,’ said Bracken. The tunnels and the burrows of

  Barrow Vale fell away from him, for nothing was more real, or ever had been, than this love he was in now.

  ‘I love you,’ he said softly, and she felt he had never said it before to her: he said it with the wisdom of his whole life.

  ‘If there was a mole you wanted to bring back, just for a moment here in Barrow Vale, who would it be?’ he asked.

  Image on image came to her as she thought of the question, and remembered the moles she had loved. Rose? Mekkins? Cairn? She hesitated for a moment and then said another name to herself—‘Mandrake?’ She shook her head.

  ‘Hulver,’ she whispered finally.

  ‘Why?’ Bracken asked, surprised, for it wasn’t a name he would have expected her to say.

  ‘Because it was near here just before a June elder meeting that I met and talked to him and he mentioned your name. It was the first time a mole ever mentioned it to me.’

  ‘What did he say?’ asked Bracken.

  ‘Nothing much. But…’ She stopped to think about it. What had he said? It wasn’t that he had said anything, it was that he had somehow shown her, without either of them seeing it, that he loved Bracken. Now how did she know that?

  Suddenly Barrow Vale was over for them. The tunnels were just tunnels, any tunnels, and they had no more need to see them. Bracken led the way out, back into the spring sunshine, to the surface, where Rebecca started off towards the Marsh End.

  ‘But it’s miles!’ said Bracken.

  ‘Oh, listen!’ said Rebecca excitedly, for from far away towards the north they could hear the soft cawings of nesting rooks.

  They didn’t go into the tunnels at the Marsh End; there was something too derelict about the place without a mole like Mekkins to greet them. But they wandered as far to the east as Curlew’s tunnels, which they couldn’t find but whose position they could guess at roughly. They remembered the fire, the flames, and then they remembered the plague. They wondered whether to go back west towards the pastures or perhaps… but there was no need. The memories were falling away from them. It was Rebecca Bracken wanted, and she was there in the early spring warmth with him; it was Bracken Rebecca wanted… ‘And he is here, here with me now,’ she thought.

  ‘There’ll be bluebells soon and daffodils after the wood anemones.’

  ‘These trees will leaf again,’ said Bracken, ‘starting with the chestnut over by the pastures.’

  ‘It’s gone,’ said Rebecca. ‘Comfrey took me there last summer.’

  ‘It’ll come back. They’ll all come back.’

  They crouched down near some tiny shoots of dog’s mercury; they found some food; they dozed in the sun; morning slid into afternoon, as time started to matter no more.

  They were dancing together in the wood they loved, but which, they knew, was no longer theirs. Its trees were blurring, its plants waiting to delight the hearts of other moles, its scents and sounds, lights and shades, darkness and nigh
t and returning dawns were all one thing, Rebecca; Bracken, my love. Were they tired? They didn’t feel it, not when they were so close and the woods and the lovely spring day were fading.

  Were they old? Yes, yes, yes, my sweet love, by the Stone’s grace; or young as two pups, if you like. Young enough to make love with a touch and caress and nuzzle of familiar paws and claws and fur that feel as exciting as the first spring day, whose light catches a mole’s fur if she’s in love, or he’s in love to see it, Rebecca; Bracken, you came back; we’re here now, my love.

  There was a tremble of wind among the buds of a sapling sycamore; the sun was lost behind returning cloud. Evening was starting early and the light had the cast of a storm about it.

  ‘Will you show me the way back?’ whispered Rebecca.

  ‘Will you help me?’ he asked.

  Bracken turned to the south towards the top of the hill where the Stone stood. He went slowly and calmly without one moment of hesitation or doubt, climbing steadily upward towards the slopes, and then up them over towards the top of the hill. Sometimes he turned around for a moment to check that his Rebecca was close behind, but really he would have known if she wasn’t there, for they moved steadily together, like a single mole. Sometimes they rested, and there was no need to hurry.

  Up on the slopes they met Comfrey, who began to say a greeting but stopped when he saw them. There was something about them that didn’t need words. Below them, in the Old Wood where they must have been, he heard the wind begin to sway what trees there were and scurry at the undergrowth.

  ‘Rebecca?’ began Comfrey finally.

  But she only looked at him and touched him for a moment as if to say it was all right, he didn’t need her now, it was all right, and as they passed him by, he thought how old they looked and how full of joy.