“Privet, I think perhaps that this folio —”
“Stop fussing, mole.”
“But Privet, I really must insist, I must!”
She stopped her frantic work at the Book, paused, turned to him, and a weary, patient look came across her face. Reluctantly her scribing paw relaxed, though she kept glancing back at the work she was doing, as if it must be done, and now.
“What season is it, Pumpkin?”
“Mid-January, Privet, and it’s cold down here and I really wish —”
She coughed, and for a moment had difficulty drawing breath.
“It is cold, you’re right. I shouldn’t be here. I should be in that snug burrow you and Rooster made for me.”
“You’ve never used it, Privet, and it’s really not that far. There’s moles aplenty will bring you food, and if you want company —”
“Company!” she exclaimed with a dismissive laugh.
“... or peace and quiet —”
“Peace? Quiet?” Her eyes were as sharp as her voice, and as she looked about the draughty echoing place, in which the ever-present wind-sound threatened always to turn dark, a haunted look came into her face.
“I’ll have those things when I have finished this. Finished it. The Book... cannot wait.”
Pumpkin stared at the Book, once pristine, now worn and torn, some of its folios already falling out, and its covers stained by what he was quite sure were tears.
“No, no, Pumpkin, I’ll stay here for now. I must, you see. Bring me worms, and later you can help me to the surface for some air. January, you say?”
“Snow has begun to fall. All is quiet across the High Wood.”
“Quiet!” she repeated, the worn smile returning.
Her eyes went to the folio he had brought; which was so scratched and scored that it might as well have long since been thrown away.
“I am... afraid of it, Pumpkin,” she whispered. “Bring it here.”
He went to it and, with evident difficulty, quite out of proportion to the scrappy thing’s seeming weight, he took it up and carried it to her, panting.
“Was it so hard to bring it from the Library?”
“Master Librarian Sturne helped me. It was where it had been left, and Light was there, Privet, and I was so much afraid.”
“Yet you brought it to me?”
“I am your aide and I shall always be, even if I disapprove of how you scourge yourself.”
“‘Scourge’, now there’s a fine old word... ‘Forsoth he scourgith euery sone that he receyeuth’, as the scholar Wyclif once scribed. There, I have not forgotten everything!”
Her eyes wrinkled with some remembered pleasure of study and scholarship when she was young, but looking at her Pumpkin thought she had never looked so old, or so ill. She was ill: she coughed, she stared at nothing, she saw nomole but him, not even Rooster, and...
“Look! I’ll scribe it in the Book! There, see, behold!” She scribed the word “scourge”. She laughed, but bitterly and with terrible sadness. “How is my Rooster? Does he miss me? Does he ask after me?”
“He does, and alone of them all he understands.”
“Yes, yes I know he does,” she said. “And Hamble and Fieldfare?”
“They are well together.”
“And no word of Whillan?”
“None since the last. He over-winters at Cuddesdon with Loosestrife. The moles Humlock and Glee are back there now as well.”
“Have you seen Loosestrife?” she asked eagerly.
“I have been at your flank every day, Privet, since you started this scribing.”
“Unscribing,” she said.
“Since you started... Loosestrife has not come to Duncton Wood. Whillan will bring her in spring.”
“When the snow has gone?”
She paused, idly reached out her paw and whispered, “Scourge.” She scored out what she had just scribed.
“So, you brought the last folio of the Book of Tales to me, which I believed was the first folio of the Book of Silence. Well, perhaps it is. Whatmole knows? I don’t. I am lost, Pumpkin, lost and lonely.”
“I know, Privet. Come with me to the burrow we made, rest for a while, a few days, then —”
“Then I shall never have strength to begin again and complete my task.”
“Nomole can work so hard. No scholar I have known worked so hard as this and made a book worth half the name.”
She laughed with real warmth at this. “Listen, mole. I went to the surface today.”
He looked genuinely surprised.
“Oh, I did, while you were gone for the folio. I went up into the High Wood and saw the snow begin. I also saw Weeth. He was going to the Stone. Why? He’s not one to pray.”
She looked at him as sharply as ever she had.
“It’s Maple. He was praying for him. He is not well.”
“He is dying, mole. Therefore...” She paused to think, weighing something up. “Therefore, bring him to me.”
“But Privet —”
“You want me to have company. I shall have company. And anyway, I have advice to give, which shows how ill I am, for moles should avoid giving others advice – which you would do well to remember, my dear. But... Pumpkin?”
He came closer and she reached out to him.
“Stay with me, mole, for all the days ahead,” she whispered with sudden fearful urgency. “Stay close, for I shall have need of thee!”
“I shall.”
“So!” she exclaimed, her mood suddenly lighter. “You shall take me to this burrow you and Rooster made for me, I shall sleep a little, and you shall bring Maple. And Weeth. Then I shall return to work. There! A compromise!”
“Privet, Maple is not well at all.”
“I know how he is, Pumpkin, I know it well. That is why I should see him now.”
He helped her slowly down the tunnels back to his own tunnels.
Nor was Maple well, as was plain when Weeth brought him to her. His head was bald now, as Quail’s had been, and his paws were swollen.
And he smelt.
“Maple,” she whispered when Weeth helped him into the burrow, which was off Pumpkin’s own in the Slopes, on the edge of the High Wood.
“Privet,” he rasped. “I did not want to come. But for you...” He looked at her with eyes that spoke of suffering.
“Listen, my dear, I have a task for you. Will you do it for me?”
“For me?” he growled. “I can do nothing for anymole. I am dying and I know it.”
“But will you do this for me?”
Somewhere in his face there came the faint look of purpose that he had once had when he was well, and leader of the followers. Then it began to fade.
“Well?”
“I am not Maple now.”
“No, mole, I know what you are and where you are. Yet still I have a task for you, for the mole you are now.”
“If I can, Privet, for you I’ll try.”
“Then listen, and you too Weeth, for you’re to go with him. Go to the Redditch Stone, which lies south of the Midland Wen. There, many years ago, a mole who helped heal me, herself was healed. Her name is Sister Caldey. Go to the Stone, ask for its help, and if you have faith it will guide a healing to you.”
She fell silent, and looked intently at Maple.
“And that is my task!” he exclaimed with a hollow laugh, as if he had never heard anything quite so ridiculous. “Go to the Redditch Stone, Weeth, in my condition, that’s all we have to do! Oh, thank you, Privet! What a simple task!”
“No, my dear, that is not your task. Your task is to return to Duncton Wood, or send a messenger, to say that you are whole again. I need to know you’ll do that for me.”
The laugh fled from his face as a look of self-pity replaced it, and he would have wept if he had not been angry. He tried to speak, winced from some internal pain, turned away, shaking his head in disbelief, and was gone.
Weeth remained a moment more and Privet said with a
smile. “He is not the mole he will be, Weeth. I remember when we first met you near Evesham you talked of opportunity.”
“I did, Privet, and it was true. There is opportunity in all things.”
“Then help him find the opportunity in this. Caldey founded the Community of Rose. Find her, mole, he has only to ask for her help and she will give it. But he must do the asking.”
“Madam,” said Weeth in his old way, “you are peerless but not perfect. In fact, you look awful. Thin of flank, gaunt of cheek, red of eye, and wilting of snout. Therefore, I trust before Maple or his messenger comes back from Redditch you will take some of your own advice and get well!”
For a moment Privet looked genuinely startled, but then, and just as genuinely, she laughed aloud and would have continued to do so had she not begun coughing.
“Wee... Weeth... mole... mole! Oh dear!” Her eyes streamed as she controlled the cough and caught her breath, but she was still smiling. “Gaunt of cheek! Thin of flank! I am not a —”
“Young mole any more? But you could be, Privet! Let opportunity be your word of the day! And... thank you. I shall see him safely there despite the winter weather.”
Then with a mischievous grin Weeth was gone, and the following morning, the first in which Privet awoke in a warm snug burrow away from the Ancient System for many a molemonth, Pumpkin reported that Maple and Weeth had slipped away out of Duncton at dawn, with only himself to say farewell.
“Let us pray that no more snow falls, and that worse winter weather is delayed, or their journey will be too hard. Maple looked so ill, and his paws are so swollen. I love him, Pumpkin, and I love Weeth. I have missed moles... so much.”
“Well, there is no need to go back to the chamber and your task today.”
“No, none at all, my dear. Tomorrow, perhaps; but today I would like to talk with Sturne.”
“He will be only too pleased!” declared Pumpkin, astonished at this transformation in Privet and hoping that “tomorrow, perhaps” might be more perhaps than tomorrow. “I shall go and get him now.”
Pumpkin hurried off towards the Library, himself feeling something of a new mole, for it was many a morning since he had done anything other than make the long trek through the tunnels of the Ancient System, whose Dark Sound might now be a little easier, but always left him oppressed and exhausted.
Halfway to the Library, however, doubts set in. Would she still be there when he and Sturne got back? Or would the obsessive urge to scribe, or unscribe, which was even worse in Pumpkin’s view, get the better of her?
“Mole! Mole!” he called out, spotting a pilgrim wending his way over the surface of the High Wood towards the Stone.
“Hail, Brother, and hallelujah!” cried the pilgrim.
“Yes, well, that’s all very well but I have a task for you.”
Pumpkin gave him directions to his burrow, and told him to go and watch over the mole he would find there, and, since she was inclined to wander off, to keep her talking.
“In the name of the Stone shall I do it!” declared the pilgrim with such cheerful enthusiasm that the moment after they had separated, and Pumpkin set off towards the Library once more, he began to worry that he might have made things worse.
He need not have worried. When he and Sturne arrived back at his tunnels they were filled with the sound of chatter and laughter, and the unlikely sight of Privet surrounded by five pilgrims and wanderers all talking away at once.
“Good Brother!” yelled the mole he had first spoken to, “I met some friends and brought them along so that our frail sister here felt even less like wandering off!”
Pumpkin sighed, Sturne frowned, and the visitors stayed far too long for all but Privet, who listened to everything they said, laughed with them, answered their questions about her “illness” and her “brother” with equanimity, and was almost tearful when they left.
“You wanted to see me, Privet,” said Sturne when they had gone.
“I wanted to look at you, mole, and I have done so since you came. You did not join in.”
“I am not good on such occasions,” said Sturne tersely. “I like the peace and quiet to study and order texts.”
“Ah, peace and quiet again, Pumpkin. It seems in somewhat short supply. I have heard of all you did during the Newborn occupation, Sturne. Pumpkin told me. He tells me everything.”
“Pumpkin talks too much,” said Sturne drily.
“Do you not smile too little? I know that is a fault of mine as well.”
“Smile,” said Sturne, unsmilingly pondering the word. “It happens to me sometimes.”
Pumpkin laughed. “Incorrigible, but my friend,” he said with a shrug.
“Pumpkin smiles for me,” said Sturne, in all seriousness it seemed.
“Well, mole, in the months ahead we must learn to smile together.”
There was a lost look in Sturne’s face, a dry and bitter look. Followed by a yearning. And Privet, who knew that sterile landscape of the heart from whence such looks come, saw and understood to what aridity Sturne’s life had brought him.
“We could pray,” she said simply, adding with a light laugh: “Today I am doing all those things I find no time for while I stick to my task, which makes a mole think, doesn’t it? So... we could pray.”
Why did Pumpkin feel a tremor of apprehension in his heart then? First Maple, now Sturne. Whatmole would she next want to see, and talk to? It felt as if she was saying goodbye.
“I leave the praying to Pumpkin, like the smiling,” said Sturne coolly. “Not that I don’t have faith, but words —”
“Well then, we won’t pray, Sturne, but invoke,” said Privet, cutting across his explanations. “You can ken Whernish, can you not?”
“Well enough, Keeper Privet,” he said.
“Let me see if I can remember ‘well enough’,” she replied.
“’S mithic tearnadh do na gleannaibh
O’ n tha gruaimich air na beannaibh
’S ceathach diiinte mu na tneallaibh
A’ cur dallaidh air a leirsinn.”
She spoke the words so lyrically that even Pumpkin, who had but a few words of Whernish, caught the rhythm, and perhaps something of the sense.
“Well, Sturne?”
He was still and silent as he thought about the invocation she had spoken and then, without faltering, he said, “It is time now to go down into the dales, for gloom is fallen on the tops, and mists shroud the hills, darkening our vision.”
He fell silent, and Privet did not speak, nor Pumpkin move.
“... darkening our vision,” repeated Sturne, looking to the light by the portal, not into their eyes at all. “I cannot smile. Not before, less now. I cannot.”
Faced by their silence he could not but speak, and speak he did, telling them of wild desert winds in his heart since he had lost sight of the mole who had saved him at the cross-under.
“I never knew, Sturne, I never guessed!” exclaimed Pumpkin at the end of it, angry at himself.
“Why should you know? I never spoke of it, though I might have had you been less pre-occupied – but no matter. It is over and done with. She has gone and thinking about her was no more than a wish to avoid the resumption of my work in the Library.”
“Which is?” asked Privet.
“Restoration of what has been lost through cleansing by the Newborns. There are ways... And, too, the collection of texts scribed in the era of the Newborns, which are many and varied, including, though I hesitate to say it, some remarkable records kept by Snyde. In his way he was a true scribemole.”
“And that is all?”
“It is all I can hope for, Privet,” said Sturne frowning.
“As you are an honest and Stone-fearing mole, Sturne, will you do something for me, and answer me a question?”
“If I can.”
“The request is this. See if you can find in any of the old texts in the Library the name of library aides in Dunbar’s time. Pumpkin is of the opinion tha
t the mole whose body lies near the Book was an aide, and that chamber, so Rooster says, was delved in Dunbar’s time.”
“Ah! Yes! I have been working on that, as a matter of fact. I have two or three names that are possibilities. It would be good to name that mole, though, of course, at best it can only now be conjecture and surmise.”
“Really?” said Privet evenly.
“But why is his name important?” asked Pumpkin. “I mean, he was only an aide after all, and it is the Book that matters.”
“Is it?” said Privet evenly once more.
“I shall bring the names to you here this evening, Privet.”
“Thank you, Sturne. A name might help me now. It is easier to make a Book for one, than for many. So much for my request. The question I have for you comes to this: your good friend Pumpkin here, feeling that I work too hard, and hearing my winter’s cough get worse, feels I should rest for a while. Weeth, whose qualities are many, told me yesterday that I should follow my own advice and ‘get well’. What do you think I should do?”
Sturne turned his icy gaze on her and said, with little hesitation, “You should complete the task that you began. That is your first duty.”
“The Book?”
“Yes. You should finish it.”
“I try, mole, and it is hard.”
“The best deeds are hard.”
“My mother Shire said such things as that. But now I begin to think that she was wrong. It is not that the best deeds should be easy, simply that they should not be hard. A good smile is not hard.”
Sturne’s gaze softened a fraction and he glanced at Pumpkin. Pumpkin grinned and shrugged as if to say, “That’s Privet for you.”
“I shall try,” said Sturne a little too earnestly, “as you should, madam.”
“And we shall help him, Pumpkin,” said Privet when he had gone. “The Stone sometimes needs a little help from its friends. We shall send a missive out by way of the moles who you say still leave Duncton Wood regularly, feeling that they have seen what they can, and no Book worth the name will now be found. We shall seek this mole Sturne has lost. And we shall see if Sturne will smile.”
“Hmmph!” said Pumpkin. “I have been trying to make that mole smile all my life. In fact, the Master Stour himself adjured me to make Sturne happy if I could. Even if we find this mole he’s certain to be disappointed.”