There was a general shout of congratulation at this feat of memory.
“Which means, if I am not mistaken, that there are seven of us altogether, which makes us...” and here his voice dropped a little and became more serious, more reverential, “... seven. Seven in all. Which means... Well, I believe Privet here can tell you what it means.”
“It makes us a Seven Stancing,” she said, “and means our meeting and communion tonight is blessed.”
“I would be grateful, madam,” said Hobsley courteously, now very solemn indeed, “if you could say a prayer appropriate to the occasion. I am sure you can think of one.”
“There is a prayer moles say on Longest Night,” she said, “and I am beginning to think that the Stone has given us back three lost days that we may celebrate tonight together.”
“Say it,” said Rooster. “Make Longest Night be here and now!”
“That’s right,” said Weeth.
“Seems very apposite to me,” said Hobsley.
“And... us,” said Whillan, daring to speak for Madoc too, whose paw he held tightly in his own.
“Well then...”
But before she could begin Hobsley said, “This spot is where I spend the daylight hours, for I like the shelter of the oaks and the view westward towards the setting sun.
Most suitable for an old mole whose days are numbered. But there is a place nearby which I feel I should show you if we are to speak the ancient liturgy of Longest Night. It is but a few paces, in among these trees...”
“Where Stone is,” said Rooster, and even as he said it the mood changed utterly; wind rushed in the trees above, and the first spots of sleety snow drove in among them. It was not that the song and dance had been displaced, so much as that they had faded before a sudden and more urgent need of community. The chatter quietened, the laughter died, and they followed Hobsley into moonlight and shadows, past dark crannies of woodland floor, round the huge contortion of an oak tree’s surface roots, to what, by the night’s starry moonstruck light, at first appeared to be part of a fallen treetrunk, now overgrown with moss and black ivy, whose leaves were white with frost. Or perhaps it was the stump of an old tree, as Weeth suggested, until he saw how it extended massively along the wood’s floor.
Hobsley nodded his head. “Aye, I thought as much myself at first, and that was by daylight. But don’t you notice something about this place, different from where we were just now?” He looked up at the massive trunks all about them, and his voice echoed up among them, and out to the stars. “One day I looked more closely at that fallen “tree”, and you know what? It’s a Stone, that’s what it is, a fallen Stone.”
It was Rooster who spoke first, his voice but a rough whisper.
“It’s a delved place, this. A holy place.”
One by one they went to the strangely overgrown Stone, parting the foliage, peering into its shadows, and staring about behind them as Hobsley had done, as if half expecting to see other moles, or their spirits, nearby.
Only Rooster did not touch the Stone, but he was not idle. He peered here, and snouted there, his paws touched and buffeted at trees in the shadows about them, and too at their roots and the soil itself, until at last he came back to the Stone. He seemed somehow bigger before it, and strangely in command.
“What’s beneath?” he asked Hobsley.
“Haven’t looked. Haven’t thought to; perhaps it wouldn’t be right if I did. This is a holy kind of place, as you say, and the soil’s best left undisturbed.”
Rooster stared at him and blinked. He reached out a paw as the others had done and pushed his huge talons through the pale frosty foliage to the surface of the Stone beneath. It was like a healer examining a sick mole.
“This Stone is waiting,” he muttered. “There’s delving beneath and around, deep delving. Long time fallen. Long time waiting. Rooster feels it. Place of need. Rooster knows. Privet, you say that prayer now, bring light to this dark place, say it now.”
He spoke more powerfully and when she hesitated his voice was a sudden command: “Say it, can’t you feel the need? Longest Night has not been celebrated here for centuries past, so that’s its need. A mole found this place, alone. Delved here, alone. Knew one day a Seven Stancing would be here. Us! Now! Tonight! Listen! This place was delved for tonight.”
He held up a paw and all of them were still, his command to Privet temporarily forgotten. He seemed to hear something, but they did not; and yet so strong was his presence now, and so unpredictable his actions that not one of them moved or spoke.
He looked around at them enquiringly and said, “Hear? Now? No?”
“Yes!” whispered Whillan, “I can hear something, I can...” His face expressed wonder and awe.
“No time, no time, need is now, tonight.”
“Duncton,” said Whillan matter-of-factly. “It does need us, I know it does.”
“Maple?” said Privet. “Do you feel or hear anything? You’re the only other mole here who was born at Duncton.”
Maple said, 1 feel uneasy, nothing more than that. I wouldn’t know it was Duncton. I mean —”
“It is,” said Whillan, as if others doubted him. “Rooster understands. Must act, mustn’t we, Rooster?”
“Was waiting for you to say it,” said Rooster. “Can now, and will!”
Suddenly, and violently, he drove his front paws into the foliage covering the Stone and began to rip it away. It was like watching a great warrior delving up a mole that is helplessly buried and needs rescuing. Up flew bits of black ivy, dead leaves, moss, and whole stems and roots of plants that had begun to grow on and around the Stone. His assault was fast and furious and it was not long before he moved back and pointed to part of the Stone’s face, wet and shiny in the night and smelling of humus and the sap of broken plants. Across the surface he had revealed a thin strong root curving its light-restricting way up from one side and down the other, and this successfully resisted his efforts to move it.
“Listen now,” he said, moving forward and thwacking the Stone mightily with his paw. “Hear it?”
And they did, like the rumble of thunder beneath them, like the running of great moles among the trees, ancient sound, echoing and feeding back into the vast chasm of time whence Rooster had briefly freed it.
The moles responded very differently to this performance by Rooster. Maple was simply astonished; Weeth intrigued; Privet calm; Hobsley dancing about with excitement; Madoc overawed; and Whillan... Whillan was touched deeply by the sound Rooster had resurrected. He recognized it as akin to the sounds he had sometimes heard from some of the tunnels of Duncton Wood’s Ancient System, but this sound moved him as a mole’s call for help from across a valley would move others; and when it had gone, and been unanswered, would leave them restless and concerned.
“Now, Privet, say the words,” said Rooster.
Privet gathered them about the small part of the Stone Rooster had cleared, joined their paws, and said this prayer:
“Eternal Stone,
Who makes this most holy night
When seasons turn,
Bring us with thee
Out of the darkness of our life’s winters
To the light of thy spring.
Let us see thy radiance
And hear thy silent call.
Eternal Stone,
Be with us this most holy night
And teach us to renew our love
Of friends, of kin, of life;
Lead us out of the darkness
Into thy eternal Light.
Eternal Stone,
Be with us now.”
The prayer released them all and at its end they sighed, and whispered, and Hobsley said, “Haven’t heard that spoken properly since my first Longest Night. If I remember right there’s a few more prayers...”
“Not many!” said Privet with a smile. “Where we come from moles are relaxed about such things.”
“There’s no time for chatter!” said Whillan suddenly, t
urning on Privet and the others.
“What must do? You decide!” said Rooster.
“Must... must...” Whillan said, or tried to say.
“What, my dear?” asked Privet, coming closer. Indeed all of them came closer but for Rooster, who had backed away to stance down near a tree and was watching, his eyes black voids, his expression excited.
“Delve,” said Whillan faintly. “But I don’t know why.”
“Yes, yes, yes!” roared Rooster, rearing up. “Privet, you stay by Stone, here. Not there, do not go there, dangerous there. Here only with the others. Pray. Pray. And pray again.”
“For what?” she asked.
“Duncton. And we, Whillan, what’ll we do? You know, mole, you know well. You know all of it, deep, deep, deep inside. Beginning now to find it.”
“Delve,” said Whillan again. “It’s all I know.”
“For what?”
Whillan shook his head. “Don’t know that; don’t know...”
“You do,” said Rooster. It was a command.
“The fallen Stone,” said Whillan. “There, somewhere there. Where sounds come from.”
Rooster came close to him, took his paw, and held it to the Stone. “Not fallen,” he said gently, “not fallen at all. Waiting, waiting since a Master of the Delve came in times long, long past. This Stone has yet to rise.” He sounded as awed as they all looked, and muttered to himself, “Ancient delving skill that. Very hard. That’s why I’ll need help. But Whillan, remember to obey all. Yes?”
Whillan turned to him, nodded, and asked, “What must we do?”
“Said before, you did; delve. They pray, we delve, and together we make a Seven Stancing in the cold night, through to the cold dawn. Ancient and modern, here and far, in earth and on surface, old season and new; all, all, ail turning. Stone will rise. Moles who need help will be helped. Listen!”
All of them heard it now, the distant rumble and chatter and echo of time from beneath the Stone. Calling them – no, urging them...
“Come, mole,” said Rooster, “will show you. You must help. Even Master can’t do this alone.”
They were suddenly gone into the shadows, first to where Rooster had stanced before and then beyond.
He called back to Privet: “Us delving below, you praying above. Privet, mole. Stone to Stone across the ages. Stone to Stone across the country. Mole to mole, now and now, and now again. Begin.”
As Privet began to pray, and those remaining with her touched paws and circled in the spot Rooster had indicated, he thrust his paws into the ground with a grunt, and began to delve. Deeper and deeper until he was gone, calling Whillan to follow him into tunnels and delved sound nomole had known since they were first made.
Whillan found himself staring down an echoing, whispering tunnel, lit with a filtering of moonlight.
Rooster put his paw on Whillan’s shoulder in the darkness. “Master made this place long, long ago. Now a Master is back again with work to do. Come and help me, mole, with the raising of a Stone.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
There are few molish traditions more recently nor now more widely established than that which moles generally call Night of Rising, which comes three days after Longest Night. It is a time of thanksgiving and hope, when the secular jollities and celebrations of Longest Night finally give way to a time of contemplation and prayer. Now the community has dispersed once more to face the trials of winter, and in smaller groups of family and friends, or even by themselves, moles take time to forsake the warmth and comfort of their tunnels and go to the surface and petition the Stone on behalf of all those who that night, and in the coming winter years, may through no fault of their own be in need of special support, and comfort, and faith.
“Yes, Stone,” a mole on Night of Rising might be inclined to say, “I have had my tribulations and my difficulties, but here I am, in my system, near the entrance to my tunnels, safe, secure and in good community. Therefore on this special night I pray for those in peril, those who are not secure, those beset by danger and difficulty, and ask that in whatever way you can you let them know they are in my thoughts.”
Such a caring mole might well conclude his simple prayers of Rising like this: “Stone, you alone can judge to where my prayers should be directed. Send them there, let them be a comfort and support to those who need them. And Stone, bless the moles of Duncton Wood!”
Oh yes, one thing is certain on Night of Rising – all prayers end with the blessing to the Duncton moles, for it was with them and their need, and their great bravery not so long ago, one third night after Longest Night itself, that the first Night of Rising came to be.
More is known about that particular night than about most nights. For historians are given to researching and scribing down the details, however obscure, of days and nights and periods of significance to moledom. Such has been the fate of the first Night of Rising which occurred that night when Pumpkin was so nearly murdered at the Marsh End and when Privet, Whillan, Rooster and the others in Hobsley’s Coppice sensed that their help was needed in Duncton Wood, and with the Stone’s guidance, found a way to give it.
Yet, before we journey on through that unforgettable night in the company of these groups of moles, we may pause briefly to remember others who, the historians have shown, were strangely aware that same night that Duncton was in peril, and its moles in mortal danger, and that they needed the help that prayer and benediction can give, from however far off.
In fabled Beechenhill, for example, despite the dangers of being discovered by the Newborns who by then had occupied their system and library, three followers went to the Stone and prayed, driven by a need they felt but could not then understand.
Similarly, at the Fyfield Stone, the vagrant mole, Tonner, reported feeling that he must go at once and touch the Stone and whisper Duncton’s name.
“I did so throughout that night, though it was a foul one with blizzard winds driving freezing snow into my eyes and under my belly,” he is recorded as saying.*Tonner was one of many moles who felt the need to actually touch a Stone that night and to keep on doing so right through to dawn. But, as everymole knows, the most striking example of it was at Seven Barrows. A mole might have thought that the community there had experienced enough excitement for the season, with Fieldfare’s disappearance and recovery, but it too played its part on the first Night of Rising.
*Quoted in both standard works on the subject; Bannock of Avebury’s popular Rising Tales; and Bunnicle II’s reference text The First Night of Rising.
Uffington Hill, on whose gentler southern flanks Seven Barrows lies, is so much higher than the vale it dominates that in the winter years the weather is harsher up there, and snow falls earlier and lies longer. That December was no exception, and the ill-tempered weather of the Night of Rising brought heavier and more violent blizzards across Uffington than elsewhere in southern moledom. The winds that heralded the snow had begun a day or two earlier, so that the community of Seven Barrows had grown used to the sounding of the Blowing Stone, which lies just east of Uffington.
That particular night the soundings were, as Fieldfare observed to Spurling, “becoming steadily more insistent. Why, traditionally the Blowing Stone is only ever meant to have sounded seven times once, but I swear it has sounded a lot more than that tonight.”
Spurling nodded and said, “Yes, but not regularly, as in the tales of former times. Even so...”
“Even so, we should pay heed to it!” said Fieldfare. She had fully recovered from her experience among the Stones before Longest Night and now seemed full of energy and purpose. “I think we should go up on to the surface despite the weather and just, well... listen. Be. Pray, perhaps.”
Most agreed with her, and up to the surface many of the Seven Barrows moles went, huddling together in the lee of the barrows themselves for warmth, and company. The deep haunting note of the Blowing Stone as it was caught by wind sounded over them quite frequently, and as the evening gave way to
night ever more so, and more erratically, like some mole caught and lost in deep caverns who calls and calls more urgently for help, and his voice echoes and re-echoes ever more loudly.
It was Noakes who suggested that perhaps one or two of them might venture across the stonefields to the nearest Stones because “touching one seems the right thing to do tonight”. They debated it this way and that, as was their wont with Spurling as leader, and finally decided all of them would go. So they did, watching over each other, across the wild stonefields to the first great Stone, and then to the second which rose nearby, gathering, touching, and praying into that strange forbidding night when moles all over moledom sensed the need to help; though whatmoles needed them, and where, they did not yet know. And still the Blowing Stone sounded, and still it grew more insistent, and the wind gathered strength, and the night grew dark and dangerous.
Yes, a historian could cite many examples such as these to show how so many followers were affected that terrible night of trial. He might well conclude, before returning again to Duncton Wood and the plight of Pumpkin and his fellow followers, with a reference to the evidence from Caer Caradoc. For even there, whose windswept Stones were so high, so wild to the wind, so bitter cold, that it was dangerous to venture out – even there two moles came out to help. Perhaps especially there. And here alone across all moledom that night, Duncton’s supporters were not Stone followers.
It was the Elder Senior Brother Thripp, assisted by Rolt, who battled his way out to the Stones, and stared fiercely into driving snow, which beat into his thin, lined face.