Privet and the others found themselves drawn along with the crowd in a state of numbed disbelief, and after several early attempts to slip away, which the guards prevented, they settled into a blank kind of state as they went up on to the surface, and found themselves following others across the grassy slope. The hill rose high above them, far beyond where anymole went, for the main area of the punishment was lower down, and two lines of moles were already forming downslope, with laughter, ribald comment, and curious jerky taloning into the air as if practising for what was to come. Their voices were ugly, their faces more so, the eyes half smiling, half filled with a hungry desire that seemed almost sexual. Beyond, the day was grey and wintry, the sky covered in high cloud, the grass bent and battered by harsh winds.
“There’s only one mite of consolation in all of this, if it helps,” whispered Weeth. “In less busy times the two culprits might easily have not been punished here, but sent to Wildenhope which lies to the east of Caradoc and is its secret place of interrogation, torture and punishment. Here at least it will all be over quickly. But in Wildenhope...” He was able to say no more, but the name of the place hung grimly about them like a menacing storm.
They found themselves approaching a group of senior moles, which broke open and revealed Slane himself. He nodded at Snyde in a half-respectful, half-dutiful way, and darted a glance at Privet, and then at Whillan, Maple and Weeth.
“A punishment is due and we are here to witness it. I trust we can continue with our journey tomorrow without further interruption. I do not expect further dissension among those whose duty is to stance by their vows and our customs.”
“We do not —” began Maple.
“Frankly, I care not what you think, mole. You are, so far as I am concerned, a mere traveller. If I had my way you would have been discarded before now, since the Deputy Master here, and his colleagues, have no need of your protective services.”
He turned dismissively from them and went upslope towards the top end of the line of moles. For their part Privet and the others were led downslope to an area where a good number seemed to be who, like them, were not to take part in the strettening, but had been brought as witnesses to it.
Even so, as the line shifted back and forth, more moles arrived, and the chattering continued, they found themselves uncomfortably close to where the victims must soon pass on their way downslope amongst those who had been told, or ordered, to strike powerfully at them as they went past.
“Each must make his blow,” whispered Weeth to explain what was going on, “and those Senior Brothers scattered down the way are there to see they do. Each will be inspected afterwards, to see that they have anointed their talons with the victims’ blood, for all must bear responsibility for the punishment. It is the Newborns’ way.”
There was a sudden hush across the hill as the chattering stopped; moles turned, as if by some collective instinct they knew that shortly the victims must appear. Whillan was filled with horror and dismay at such communal cruelty; Maple with disgust, Weeth with pity, and Privet with the recollection of other violence she had seen, when she was a young mole living on the Moors, the like of which she had hoped never to see again.
There was a collective sigh, then an ugly hum of deep voices, as the waiting moles saw Newborn guards dragging two young males from a tunnel. They were so weak from fear or shock that they had to be supported as they went. They came near enough the Duncton group that their sweating fur, pale snouts and wild desperate eyes could be easily seen. One was gasping uncontrollably, as if each pawstep were a mighty effort; the other was crying silently.
“Be warned,” whispered Weeth, “you must not try to interfere. If you do nomole can say what the outcome would be, for Newborns in this state cannot be easily controlled, and Slane may not wish to try. Do nothing.”
“Nothing but suffer,” whispered Whillan, his face drawn, his eyes terrible, his snout pale at the unfolding horror of it all.
The prisoners were taken upslope to where the line started and there held out for all to see. There was talk, there were announcements, even a liturgy of sorts, and lastly there was hypocrisy as Slane spoke of “this last opportunity for the moles to win the Stone’s mercy”. That would be, it seemed, if they survived; if they did not it meant that the Stone had not wished them to.
Silence suddenly fell, and stillness, and then a sound such as none of the Duncton moles had ever heard before, an ugly rasping beat across the slopes, a chant.
“Be-gin, be-gin, be-gin...”
All but one of the Duncton moles pulled back, wishing to turn away from this terror, this vile face of moledom, as if sensing that even to witness this shame was to be touched with collective guilt – to look was to collaborate. The exception was Snyde, who craned forward as the guards did, his face shining with desire to see what was going to happen, and his moist ugly mouth began to whisper the chant others were now thundering out: “BE-GIN, BE-GIN, BE-GIN!”
Then they did begin; the murderous chant died away into an ugly gasping shout, and upslope of them the two lines of moles closed in; a scream was heard, as in a surging wave of paws and grunts and eagerness to be among those that made the strike, the first mole began his treacherous descent. The scream came from his companion, held back by Newborn guards and forced to watch the torture of the first as running, stumbling, taloned forward and falling he came downslope, ever nearer where the Duncton moles were gathered just behind the line.
They watched as moles’ paws stamped and pressed against the ground to gain a better purchase for the thrust they were preparing to make as the wave of taloning forced the victim down towards them. Sometimes a bloodied paw was seen above the line, or the turn of a half-crushed snout, and a mouth open in agony and gasping blood. Then there he was, frozen in a moment of horror before them, his eyes half torn out, his face and body horribly mutilated, yet living still, and crying out from that agony for help – help that nomole, no Stone, no thing could give. And the roar, the blood-lust roar of moles degraded by the desire to kill making their thrusts or, the lowest and last remnant now, still fretting to strike their blows into the ragged broken thing that was driven on towards them, near to death.
It went on by, the last struck it in its blood-sodden face, and it collapsed into a final crawl of death, limbs twitching and struggling as if it sought to creep away to a safety it could never find, to a peace which, in life at least, it could never more know.
“Stone, help that mole,” whispered Privet, tears streaming down her face. Whilst beyond her, straining to get free of the guards that he might take a closer look, and hurl his maddened abuse at the broken mole, Snyde pushed, and tore, and slavered in his lust. Obscenely his excitement showed beneath his belly, between his twisted back paws. Never had he known such potent delight.
Then another roar and the chant again, as the second strettening began, and down, down the slopes towards them came that sickening frenzy of moles taloning a companion into senselessness and death. Down, down, as the sweat-streaked twisted back of Snyde, chafing at the restraint he was under, struggled to stay still, and the others watched the slow-motion descent of a second mole they could not help. This one seemed to seek to cry out, gabbled, broken words that started deep and turned to a scream, which ended as it had begun so helplessly so many moleyears before, as but a pup’s cry for its mother – a mother it had so briefly known. As Privet watched the cry was silenced most cruelly by a thrust of a taloned paw into the mole’s torn and gaping mouth; laughter followed, cruel and filthy and corrupt.
“Why?” whispered Whillan, “why...?” The victim went on by, slumping through the last moles in the line and into the blessed unconsciousness of death.
But the worst was not over yet, for suddenly one of the Senior Brothers nearby cried out, “He taloned not!”
“I have blood on my paws! I did!” screamed out one of those who had stanced in the line, and had seemed to strike.
“He taloned himself to make it seem he
did! Punish him, moles, in the good Stone’s name!”
For a moment the accused mole stanced clear of all those about him, looking desperately around for a way of escape. Since he was facing the Duncton moles, and almost within reach, they saw his face, his wild eyes, his fear; and it was also clear that what the Senior Brother had said was true: he had a talon-thrust in his belly which he must have inflicted upon himself as one of the victims went by, hoping thereby to avoid having to strike a stretten blow. In the midst of evil then, there was still good. But its reward...?
Briefly the mole looked into Maple’s eyes, saw his sympathetic horror, and seemed about to appeal to him for help. Too late; the nearest of the Newborns had already raised his paw to strike his erstwhile friend, and with that the blows rained on to him from one side and another so that he seemed to dance in his agony from side to side, back and forward. His fur turned red, and his body began to open, as if breaking from inside. The crowd surged round him, he tried to scream, and then was pushed or carried right in amongst where the Duncton moles stanced so deathly still, and his bloody face thrust into Privet’s flank.
As she turned and reached out to him, her paws the only gentle touch offered to him on the slopes that day. Maple stanced forward and with one massive heave pushed the Newborn moles from him. Had he struck they might all have been attacked, but he only pushed, and then when others surged forward once again in anger he grasped the first one and threw him back. A circle of moles formed around him, where he stanced protectively about Privet and the stricken mole.
She whispered to the dying victim, a prayer to the Stone, the gentle Stone in whose name this foul thing had been done, and she reached out and touched his torn face, that the last thing he might remember was what, perhaps, he had never known as an adult – a female’s touch. Indeed, perhaps few moles there had seen such gentleness before, for they pushed away and back, not from fear of Maple, and Weeth, who was equally angry, but from Privet’s loving-kindness, that gave the lie to their self-righteous pious anger. Whilst behind, Whillan turned away, and might have wept had he not seen the last of the horrors of that dreadful day, a sight more terrible than all that he had so far seen.
For downslope of them, where the victim-moles had finally fallen dead, was Snyde, broken free at last, unnoticed by anymole but Whillan. Bent, twisted, grinning, sadistic, evil of body and of expression, he stanced powerfully over one of the dead moles, as with gasps of perverse joy he struck his now bloodied taloned paws again and again into the dead face. Yet worse Whillan saw, for Snyde stanced in a potent sickening way, his body thrusting as he struck, like a mole whose greatest pleasure was mounting death itself, and his haunches gathered blood to his excited shivering flanks as he thrust into the gaping bloody holes of the dead, and his paws rose towards the sky as he screamed out his climactic filthy ecstasy.
Then the moment was over, seen only by Whillan. Slane appeared, and the Newborns were ordered to disperse; the Duncton moles, utterly disconsolate, were taken from a scene that only Silence itself would finally obliterate from the minds of those who witnessed it; and those who, journeying in times to come, stare across the empty grassy slopes of that hill in memory of moles whose lives, and deaths, were part of a journey westward to Caer Caradoc.
Chapter Seventeen
A long, slow, and subdued line of moles left Ludlow later that day, and not one amongst them was likely to go wandering. What all had witnessed, and all shared, was exemplary enough to prevent that.
The cold grey weather continued, and everything made the Duncton moles morose and sad; they had nothing now to look forward to at the end of a journey that seemed to have gone on too long, and whose outcome was so uncertain. Whillan in particular was cast down, appalled by the deaths, and the final obscenity he had witnessed – or was only now beginning to believe he had witnessed, so shocking was the fact of it – of Snyde and his defilement of the corpses of the strettened moles. He travelled a little apart and in silence, answering no questions from his concerned friends, feeling himself too shamed and too tainted even to tell them what he had seen.
Then one afternoon, with Caradoc now but a day or two away, news went among the journeyers that Senior Brother Chervil was back, come to lead the moles into his father’s unholy stronghold. Privet had not forgotten her wish to talk to Chervil again, and since the strettening at Ludlow her desire had been increased by a kind of angry despair at the futility and injustice of what had happened. What was a sect worth if it killed moles who disobeyed its rules from a natural desire to see mothers and sisters whose society they should never have been denied in the first place? How could such force be justified? Or such hypocrisy, which pretended that strettening was not a sentence of death at all, and it was the Stone’s will if a mole survived it, or did not? These and many other questions and accusations Privet turned in her mind, and wished to put to Chervil, feeling perhaps that once they reached Caer Caradoc it was unlikely she would get a chance, and more than likely she would not see him again to talk to privately, as she might now along the way.
The following dawn she woke with a sudden start, wide awake, as moles sometimes do, with the feeling that if the dawn was a clear one she might enjoy it alone. She had cherished her moments of seclusion on the long trek across the Wolds, but since joining the Newborns there had been no chances for such privacy. In any case they were normally well watched by their “helpers” and it was hard to get away. However, in this later stage of their journey, and especially since Ludlow, the guards seemed to have understood that they had no intention of fleeing, and had left them more alone. So it was that Privet was able to rise quietly amongst the slumbering bodies of her friends in the communal chamber, and slip up a side tunnel unchallenged and out to the surface above. The dawn was indeed as beautiful as it had felt below ground, with a clear sky, and cold air, and shining dew on the stems of the grass of the sheep pasture where they had stopped.
They had arrived as night fell and so it was only now with the dawn, as she turned and looked about, that Privet saw that the hummocky ground below gave way to a view of a winding valley, filled for the moment with slowly drifting mist. As the sun rose its light caught the mist and turned it silver and shimmery in the dawn, and here and there across it trees rose, like islands out of a gentle sea. Where Privet stanced the sun cast its weak winter rays on the rough ground about her. She moved a little way from the exit, disturbing some rabbits which bobbed upslope and out of sight. She followed them, partly to get a better view, partly to increase the pleasant sense of being alone, of renewing herself. But as she moved round the corner of a little rise of ground, out of shadow and towards the sun once more, she was astonished to see, stanced quite still and with his snout towards the rising sun as he stared down at the still, misty valley. Chervil, all alone.
Her first instinct was to retreat, not from fear of him but because she could see he was taking time alone as she was, and would not wish be disturbed – or observed. But since she was now to one side and still in shadow, and the sun was full on him, she had the advantage, and the chance to look at him in a way she never had before, so she stayed where she was, remembering too that this was perhaps the only opportunity she might have to talk with him alone, and perhaps reach into his Newborn heart in a way that would be impossible with other moles about.
He seemed a different mole out on the surface, stanced quiet, thinking about nomole-knew-what – not so commanding as when others were about; just an ordinary mole born to take an extraordinary role. He was well made, and his paws were set and firm, his fur unmarked by scars. Neat, well ordered, a little too sombre perhaps, as if he had never quite laughed out loud. A mole, it seemed, who knew his mind and accepted his destiny; yet in such a moment as this, when he thought himself unobserved, might there be a brief pause for doubt, and a fleeting wish to be a different, more ordinary mole?
Such were Privet’s thoughts, and her hesitation turned to impulsive decision; feeling it wrong to intrude, whatever mole
he was, she was about to move quietly away and rejoin her companions when suddenly Chervil turned absently towards her, thinking still of whatever had been behind his silent gaze across the valley. As he did so, and his look caught hers, she saw not a Newborn mole, or one in command, but a younger mole from whose face the dogma and rule of strict belief had lifted. He seemed to see her not as a member of the female gender that he had been taught to despise, but simply as a mole, a female mole, who might tell him something he did not know. Only for a moment did this vulnerable, open and almost longing look remain; then it was replaced by one of extreme dismay at having been seen as he was, and by her of all moles.
“Well?”
How self-possessed he was again, how distant – but what she had seen briefly, the mole behind the Senior Brother, was now part of her knowledge of him, and he could never deny it. The Stone had shown her the way to reach beyond Chervil’s facade, and this she knew was as it wished things to be. Better than questions and evasive answers, better than playing with words; she had seen the mole behind the mask of authority, and both of them knew it. Privet stared at him and felt a power over him, and no need to reply to his second puzzled and peremptory, “Well?”
She smiled beyond the mask, beyond the role he played, and said, “I have come out to see the dawn rise as you have, mole, as I did sometimes when I was young, when I saw it across the Moors. I disturbed you, as your presence disturbed me, but for a moment stolen from the long trek to Caer Caradoc I will speak to you as mole should speak to mole.”