Duncton Tales

  “We’ll fight such moles!” declared Hamble. “Crowden always has, and it will do again.”

  “But did you meet this mole Rooster?” asked Privet of one of the refugees one day. The fact was that they were curiously reluctant to talk too much of Rooster, or to say anything of their previous history in the Dale.

  But this one said, “Me? I saw him delve. I lived among his delvings. What need to see a mole when you’ve lived so, for there we knew him better than he did himself.”

  “What is this delving that he does?” asked Sward excitedly.

  But it was a question none of the refugees could easily answer. They looked vague, and shrugged, and searched for words they could not find.

  “He is a Master of the Delve,” said one eventually.

  “What’s that?” asked Sward.

  “I don’t know,” whispered the mole, “it’s something that he is. He hurts nomole nor ever will. They say that if he does so he will die. A Master cannot fight or kill except himself, he delves.”

  “Rooster, Master of the Delve …’ whispered Privet in the darkness of the burrow where she told her tale, where now, though it was black as night, the first dawn birds could be heard up on the surface of Duncton Wood. “Each time I scribed his name, or that word ‘delve’, I felt a tremor of destiny upon me. The idea of meeting him, a Master of the Delve, stirred me in a way that I had never known …”

  She stared at each of them in turn, and they moved not, like shadows that were divorced from everything but the distant time and place to which she had taken them, and with which she was the only link.

  “It seemed that all my life had been moving towards the decision I made one night then, at such a pre-dawn time as this. In my innocence of such things I decided that Rooster might be the mole to delve a place of protection for our Library. Therefore, I, Privet, weakest of moles, would set forth alone across the Moors, and using the information those refugees had given me, I would find him, and ask him to come to Crowden. He would delve for us, and teach us if he would. He might even lead us. Yes, that’s what I decided to do! Of course, I told myself it was only for the Library that I was going: how could a mole like me have guessed that deeper passions than libraries stir young females to set off on perilous missions across the Moors?”

  don’t understand what you mean,” said Whillan, as innocent now as his mother had been then.

  “She means love, dear,” said Fieldfare cheerfully. “For Rooster!”

  “Ah!” said Whillan in a bemused and academic way. “Of course!”

  There were smiles and then more silence, until Chater stirred and said what all were thinking, and speaking as if it was now Privet was making such a decision, not long before: ‘But mole, you’re not a warrior or fighter, but a female and a scribe. You’ll not survive on the Moors in winter, or among the grikes, not all alone. This part of your tale I’ll not believe!”

  There was a murmur of assent at this from all but Stour, until Privet nodded, and smiled and said, “Yet that is what I had decided to do. Then and there! With no word to anymole, for they would only stop me! Well, it was time I was impulsive, and I had not forgotten that sense of freedom I had felt when I had first set paw upon the Moors, nor my father’s plea for me to leave Crowden. It all seemed to make sense then in that dark hour.”

  Things often do,” said Drubbins wryly, “at that hour! The true light of dawn returns a mole his common sense.”

  “Well, be that as it may, I rose from my burrow and set off for the East End there and then. My only fear was not the Moors but getting through the defences, but by then I had seen enough to remember them. My training as a scribe had given me a good memory. It took time, and I had to hide from the watchers more than once, but eventually I got out at last to the Moors and —”

  “And?” said Fieldfare impatiently.

  “Hamble was there waiting for me! ‘You!’ he said, laughing. He had long since been warned that a mole was skulking among the defences and had guessed it was one of the refugees wanting to escape the confines of Crowden. I explained as resolutely as I could what I was doing. He told me I couldn’t. We had an argument … I wonder if all ventures begin in such a way?”

  “Some do,” said Chater, glancing at Fieldfare with a grin. Above them a blackbird scurried near and called. Dawn was coming fast.

  “We argued until at last I told him it was for me as it had been for him when he had gone out to bring the refugees into Crowden. ‘I will do it, my dear,’ I said, ‘whatever you do.’

  “‘Well then,’ he said at last, resigned, ‘you’ll not do it without me. I’ll go with you, or you’ll not go at all.’”

  “For an innocent female, as you called yourself, you didn’t do badly!” declared Fieldfare approvingly.

  “It gets worse, I’m afraid,” said Privet contritely. “For then Hamble said, ‘But we’ll need a guide, and there’s only one mole can give that service — your father Sward, and don’t tell me he’s too old. He’s hankered after travelling the Moors again for years and a mole like him will find his strength again when he needs to!’”

  “Well!” declared Fieldfare. “Hamble’s certainly a mole who knows how to get things moving.”

  Privet laughed. “He always was.”

  “And he helped you go to find Rooster?” asked Drubbins.

  “Of course,” said Privet, but the calm way she tried to speak was belied by the shadows of new memories that now crossed her face.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Although alarm and horror spread through Crowden when the news broke of Privet’s and Hamble’s foolhardy venture with Sward on to the Moors to contact Rooster, it was too late to send a party off to bring them back.

  All moles could do was stare up from the safety of Crowden’s ramparts to the Moors and the drizzly cloud that rode on the wind there, and ponder on the stupidity of youth, and reflect what a loss the system had sustained: its most promising young campaigner, and its best young scribe. As for Sward, he always was a daft mole anyway, and had not been the same since Shire and Tarn had died. Perhaps it was best that he was away; but then, if any mole could guide Hamble and Privet back to safety, it was he.

  The fears for the trio’s safety were well justified, as they themselves might soon have agreed had they known what they would find if fate and fell circumstance combined to deliver them to Ratcher’s moles. But they did not, and proceeding on to the Moors oblivious of what lay ahead, they were concerned only to make their way towards the secret system of Chieveley Dale as quickly as they could, and then find clues to Rooster’s whereabouts.

  They journeyed in single file, with Sward taking the lead, Privet in the middle and Hamble at the rear. Sward knew the first part of the route quite well, and went south-east across the Moors to keep well clear of the great stretch of water that floods the vale eastward and might have hemmed them in if grikes were about.

  They travelled in silence, partly because of the need to go unobserved, but also because each in different ways was greatly affected by the emergence from the limitations of Crowden and its Vale on to the wider expanse of the Moors.

  Sward was simply happy, for the Moors had been his life, and only as he set paw on them again, and scented once more the dank clean smell of peat, and heard the curlew’s cry, did he realize how much he had missed such a sense of freedom for so long. He felt liberated from what he had come to regard as his responsibility to Shire and through her to his texts, and now it seemed he had only this final task of bringing Rooster to Crowden to delve a safe place for the texts, before his life’s work was done and he was free to live only for himself once more.

  Hamble, for his part, felt not liberty but responsibility, though it was a feeling he welcomed. He knew he was the warrior in the group, and that on him would fall the task of protecting the other two should danger threaten. Not for the first time he looked at Privet’s slight form as she picked her way through the heather and peat hags ahead, and felt affection and liking
for her, as well as a wish that he might have loved her as a mate would. But that had never been and he was content to travel out on this first great venture from Crowden with the mole he now regarded as his greatest friend.

  For her part, Privet felt nervous of where she was, but safe: for she trusted her father Sward’s knowledge of the Moors, and knew that she could have no better fighter at her flank than Hamble, if fighting were needed. But that much known, her thoughts moved on swiftly to other things: the sense of escape from her home system was one of them, the realization which grew as the day went by that moledom was vast indeed, and thus far she knew so little of it. With each step she took, Crowden seemed to grow less important, and less like the place in which she wished to spend the rest of her life. Had not Sward often mentioned Beechenhill as a place to which a scribemole might go, and fabled Duncton Wood? Of course he had, and now with beating heart she began to see that if she could come out on to the Moors, why, she could go almost anywhere!

  But more powerful than such ideas by far was her growing sense that this journey to find Rooster had something of destiny about it. All that she had heard of him, and all the circumstances that had given her the impulse to come on to the Moors, made her think that in some way her life and his were bound together. So it was that in those first hours of their journey, until nightfall brought them to a halt, it was dreams of love fulfilled that Privet had, the natural but naive dreams of one who has never loved or been fully loved, but who has ached and hoped for it, and secretly prayed that one day it might be.

  That love was not so easy, that the chances of finding love in such a way and such a place were slim, that Rooster was not by all accounts a mole a female would especially love in that way,” did not concern Privet. She was young and inexperienced, she was abroad on a dangerous venture, she was with two moles she trusted, and she was seeking to find a third whom she believed it was her destiny to meet. Thus far doubts did not, could not, play a part in the dreams that drove her on.

  It was in the middle of the next day, after crossing rougher and more wormless ground, that Sward judged it right to veer north-east to drop down and cross the stream that flows down that part of the Vale.

  “We’ve passed by the lake now, and the harder part of the journey’s to come,” he said, pointing a talon north across the Vale below them towards a bleak black rise of ground that stretched interminably out of sight and higher than where they stanced.

  “That’s Pikenaze Moor,” he explained, “which I have traversed only once before. Beyond it lies the greatest challenge on our journey to Chieveley Dale, the rising fastness of the Withens Moor where many of the grimmest battles among the grikes and others were fought in decades gone by. Stone knows what dark deeds were committed there — it was a place I swore I would never cross again and certainly not alone. But with a strong young mole with us like you, Hamble, and with your common sense, Privet, I suppose an old mole like me should not be nervous.” He shrugged and smiled wryly.

  They had crossed the stream and trekked halfway up Pikenaze Moor before dusk came and Hamble suggested they should delve a temporary burrow. All were tired, and a little concerned by the prospect of travelling on to Withens Moor on the morrow.

  So far there had been no sign of recent mole, though here and there they had come upon traces of temporary burrows such as the one they themselves delved now. These were not parts that moles dallied in, the less so that the wind was never-ending on the higher parts, and the heather among which they hid hissed about their heads, and creaked, and made a mole feel there were others lurking about when there were none.

  They all woke with the dawn, feeling they had not slept at all, and after the briefest of groomings and a quick bite at the sour-tasting worms they found, they were on their way up to the top of Pikenaze to view the next part of their journey.

  It was a grey and drizzly day, and they found themselves looking up a long steep clough with dark looming sides, which led up in the far distance, and more than a day away, to a steep rise on to the highest part of the Moors in that area.

  “Twizle Head Moss,” said Sward grimly. “Beyond it according to the moles we’ve spoken to is Ramsden Clough which we must find a way into if we are to descend to the vale that leads to Chieveley Dale. Now the part I came down when I was here lies to the right where that mist hangs. That’s Withens Edge and not a place for mole. Wormless and vulnerable to rook and buzzard. That way, and on to the east, takes a mole to the notorious Charnel Clough where Red Catcher’s clan resides. We’ll stay well away from that …”

  Privet heard what he said, but her eyes were drawn to the lower part of Withens Moor which lay beneath them in the mist and rain. The white-brown run of a stream was visible, and the fearsome and inexorable climb up towards the distant Twizle Head Moss. It was the widest expanse of ground she had ever seen in her life, and its slow rise to darkness and shifting mists filled her with a sense of desolation. Surely nomole could ever have fought others and lost their lives over possession of such a place? Surely none could live there? Yet no sooner had they trekked downslope to the bank of the grubby brook that drained this vast rising moor than they saw evidence of mole in the form of ruined mounds of stony earth and collapsed tunnels of a mean and meagre kind.

  “The moles hereabouts stick to the brook’s edge as being the most wormful, or least wormless,” said Sward, “and for the same reason we’ll take that route up. Hamble, your eyes are better than mine so you take the lead, but we must be watchful behind, Privet, for the peat hags give plenty of hiding-places here for malevolent moles. But we’re far enough from the Ratcher clan’s place not to run into any grikes that would wish to harm us. The moles who are here will be more curious than anything else, but of course once they see us word of our coming will get about and we may be pursued. So once we start there’s no hope of stopping for long until we find somewhere safe, or moles we can trust to give us sanctuary. It’s many a year since I was here, so much may have changed. But I picked up some useful texts on Withens when I was here in a community some way up this vale whose location I may with luck recognize when we get there.”

  With a brief sad smile for times past, Sward gave way to the younger Hamble, and with Privet taking up her place between them once more they set off upslope among the mass of hags and pools, wet moss and ferns, through which the Withens Brook rushed down its miserable way.

  Times had changed and so had the place. Nowhere did Sward remember, and feeling increasingly despondent on his behalf, Privet steadily plodded on, marvelling for the first time in her life at the adventures her father must once have had, and the courage too to have travelled in such places alone.

  “I’m sure it was here …’ said old Sward at every new turn in the stream on whose higher banks they travelled, “or was it … yes, it was just ahead.”

  But it was not, though several times more they found signs of itinerant mole and each felt that life was not far away. Until the rain that had spotted down upon them through the day thickened into drizzle, the winds grew gusty, the temperature began to drop, and Hamble decreed that the time had come to find shelter for the night.

  It was while they were exploring the hags surrounding a little terrace of drier ground above the brook that Privet saw movement and Hamble went ahead alone to investigate, his two friends huddling together among the peat to shelter from the now driving rain as best they could. Then suddenly Hamble reappeared, his face set grimly.

  “Follow me,” he said, without further explanation.

  They did so, wondering, turning away from the stream to a half-hidden and tortuous path that they would never have easily found except by chance, or prior knowledge. It was running with water, and the rain dripped from the heather that overhung the hags through which it went. They turned a corner and the path widened into a shallow black pool on one side of which, blanched by water and picked clean by rooks, a dead sheep lay, its grey wool spread grotesquely over the hag on which it had stumbled its last, all
sodden with rain and filthy with peat.

  Hamble hurried them past this and they climbed a short grassy way on to a higher terrace carved in former times by the stream which now rushed noisily below. The terrace had all the bumps and pits of an ancient system, and a fresher scent of life than any they had so far found.

  “It was here!” cried out Sward suddenly. “The community I knew was here!”

  Even as he said it, Hamble pointed ahead of them to one edge of the terrace where the ground rose steeply into heathery moor once again, and there among the shadows they saw the bedraggled forms of a few wretched moles.

  Privet gasped in astonishment and sudden fear, for it was plain from their size and dark fur, as well as their short snouts and lumpy paws, that the moles were grikes. But these were no rapacious monsters, nor fearsome warriors, just moles brought by starvation and disease to the very edge of their lives.

  Instinctively Privet held back with Hamble, for both had spent a lifetime that spoke of grikes as dangerous killers, but just as instinctively old Sward went forward, with a gesture of greeting, and a quaint nod of respect.

  A single mole, older than the others and with grizzled grey fur, broke clear of the pathetic group and came towards Sward with a grimace that Privet took to be a smile.

  “You’re welcome, mole, as any living mole would be. But we’ve little to offer.”

  The grike spoke mole, but in a thick accent which Privet found hard to follow. To her surprise her father replied in Whernish, raising a paw and then going forward and smiting the other mole’s outstretched paw. They spoke quietly for a moment or two but with increasing intensity until suddenly the grike reared up with what Privet took this time to be a laugh, though it sounded deep and threatening to her, before he said, “Bugger me but it’s Sward! Well!”