Mayweed grinned and said, “See how he has drifted off... he must ask the questions but is afraid of the answers we will give. Youth, patriarchal Tryfan, is a touching thing but aren’t you glad you’ve left it far behind?”
Tryfan smiled.
“When I was first told by Boswell that one day the Stone Mole would come, I thought he would come complete, full grown, ready to guide us. But....”
They stared across the woodland floor to where Beechen, seeming so young in the soft May light, touched a root, gazed up at a branch, scented at some leaves and then simply settled down to look out through the speckled shade that spread over the wood’s wide floor.
Tryfan continued, “But he has come newborn, a pup, and is in all our care. Each one of us in Duncton must give to him what we can, striving to teach him all we know, whatever he asks we must answer it truthfully. When moles fear answering questions asked it is because they fear something in themselves, and do not trust what the Stone ordains. Answer his questions, Mayweed, and tell others in Duncton to do the same. For soon now he will leave the home burrow and I shall take him to the Marsh End. There, as Midsummer comes, I shall teach him scribing as I taught you at Harrowdown one Midsummer that seems long ago. Be not afraid, Mayweed. Here he is among good moles, moles the Stone wished to be here. We are his guardians and until he is ready to guide and teach us, we must all be his teachers.”
They watched Beechen for a little longer until, aware perhaps of their silence, he came running back to them, his eyes alight with the beauty of the wood.
“He’s teaching me to route-find,” Beechen told Tryfan, going close to Mayweed.
“Then you have found the best mole in all of moledom to teach you,” said Tryfan. “Now come, your mother would talk with you.”
As they left, Mayweed watched after them, trouble still in his eyes. He stared at Beechen’s still slender haunches, but finally his look was for Tryfan.
“You I’ll watch until you have no more need of me,” he whispered. “This mole Mayweed loves Tryfan, and what great Spindle began in Uffington this mole will conclude. Who knows what ways lie ahead, but while you trouble yourself with the Stone Mole’s rearing, I’ll trouble myself with watching over you! Slower now you are, Sir, your fur patchy like mine, and Mayweed sees ways ahead for you which may be hard to find and fathom. But humbleness will be there.”
Then, as the two moles stopped at an entrance to go down, Beechen turned and looked back across the wood to the place from where Mayweed watched them. He saw Mayweed, and for a moment his body was quite still and his left paw a little raised. Mayweed saw the look in his eyes, and knew it. It was the look of love, terrible and strong, and before it a mole might quail. And at his raised paw there seemed a light, and Mayweed knew that he was blessed and that moledom would be guided, if only it knew how to see, and hear. That time was yet to come, but for now, here, in beleaguered Duncton, the moles had a task to teach a young mole all they knew, and it was a great and good one.
As June began they all noticed that Beechen grew withdrawn and difficult, asking questions to which he seemed not to listen to the answers, staying near moles he seemed not to want to address, making silence, making sudden outbursts. If there had been other youngsters about it might have been easier for the adults there, since he could have vented his confused needs.
Now, too, he began to wander far, but he seemed not to want to talk to anymole and none reported talking with him, though sometimes he was seen over on the Eastside or near the Marsh End. He seemed not to attempt to go near the Stone or out on to the dangerous Pastures and he came back to Feverfew for rest or food, but she knew his time with her was very nearly done.
“I am muche afeard for hym wandering far,” Feverfew would say when she and Tryfan had time to be close.
“We all are, my love, but it is of more than shadows in Duncton that we fear for him. It is the darkness of which the grikes are a part that I fear. I know Whern’s ways. Rune may be dead, as Mayweed and Sleekit witnessed, but Henbane will have taken charge. Mistress of the Word! She will have cursed her father for not killing Boswell when they could have done. Now his son is come, which surely they must suspect, they will not rest until they have taken him. The day will soon come when they know or guess he is in Duncton Wood and he will have to escape from here. Now he has things to learn, and we must try to teach him, for that is our task. I shall take him to the Marsh End, my dear, and there teach him what I can of scribing, and then too other moles of Duncton – the many who have waited so long and patiently to see him, and who have left him well alone – shall come to tell him what they can. If he is the mole I think he is, he will listen well, and learn, and what he learns from us will give him much that he needs to know when he goes out in moledom and takes word of the Stone.”
“Hee ys myn sonne,” said Feverfew quietly, for talk of learning and journeying, guidance and the Stone, upset her. She who had borne him did not want to let him go. So as the sun of June brightened and grew clear, Feverfew grew apprehensive.
Today, historians of those times seek signs of what Beechen was to become in the few scraps of stories that are told about him then. Some say he had healing powers young, and even by the end of May was curing moles; others say that he made a journey to the Marsh End and spoke words of prophecy.
But it was not so. Tryfan himself, who left records that make the matter plain, tells us that until a certain day in mid-June, Beechen was pup and youngster like any other with nothing much to mark him out except, perhaps, a certain grace of form and the common sense intelligence of a mole who needed to be told things that mattered only once.
In the last few days before he first touched the Stone, as if he was beginning to understand that he must at last turn his back on puphood for all time, he slept badly and suffered nightmares, but recovered soon enough. Whatever darkness passed through their tunnels in those final nights vanished and their youngster slept as deep and sound as every youngster should.
At last a dawn had come which called Tryfan and Feverfew out into the wood. The whole of moledom seemed to wake about them as they groomed and ate, a day of beauty and change when a mole might take up his task. They felt that in travelling through the dark nights past they had grown nearer each other and nearer a joyful day to come.
“A day of sunshine such as this one,” said Tryfan softly, looking about the wood he loved, “a day when Duncton is found once more. I think I shall be gone by then, and you, my love! Our tasks will be done and other moles will be where we are now, to turn about as we do and rejoice in what they see. Theirs to inherit what we leave behind, as we have, and our parents before us. Theirs to guess at what we knew; theirs to know what we cannot.
“But this sun shall be the same, and it will warm their fur as it warms ours. And the Stone shall be there and be the same. Touching it, they shall be nearest what was good in us. Touching it, we can reach out to what will be best in them. The Silence they strive for will be the same as that which, Stone willing, we will have found.”
Then Tryfan and Feverfew were close and touching, and the light was on them and in the dew about, and all Duncton Wood felt it was at one and, if purposeful, would have no need to doubt.
It was a little later that same June morning that Beechen came to the exit nearby and saw the sun, and all knew this was his day to touch the Stone. Then, with all of moledom waiting as the sun rose high, they had begun the trek up towards the Duncton Stone.
Chapter Three
The same June sun that lit their way that morning shone down its special light in other places in moledom, and upon other moles. Some saw that light well, others darkly.
All moles know – even those whose systems have long been in the control of the grikes and whose faith, if such it can be called, is of the Word – that there are seven Ancient Systems in moledom, where the Stones rise true and moles of faith seek to abide.
Most, like Duncton, Rollright, Avebury and Fyfield, have long been taken over by th
e grikes, and the Stone followers broken and dispersed. Yet even then a very few followers scraped a living nearby hoping that one day better times would come and they could open their hearts to their special Stone and touch it once again.
But two systems of the ancient Seven had been deserted altogether, unoccupied by grike or follower. One was Uffington, where Boswell served his novitiate and where he had been captured by Henbane of Whern and lost to moledom for so many years.
The other was the least known of the seven: Caer Caradoc in the west, where in recent times only a vagrant family of moles had lived, of which only one had survived, living alone and mateless, wandering the hills of the wild Welsh Marches, keeping faith with the few followers of the Stone in those parts who, leaderless and systemless, clung on to their faith with that stubborn obstinacy and pride of place that marks out the moles of those wormless parts.
He had been named Caradoc by his father, after the Stones whose destiny it was to have him as their guardian, and already he has played a part in our history, for he it was who first guided Tryfan’s emissaries, Alder and Marram, on to Siabod where for good or ill they went to show the besieged Siabod moles how they might best resist the grikes.
Of that we will soon know more, but now, today, this June, we discover the ragged and hungry Caradoc climbing the steep slope towards the Stones that are his birthright and his burden.
For days before had he travelled, driven by some inner need, from the western hills into which he had wandered, back to a system moles, and time, seemed long ago to have forgotten. Through honeysuckle ways he went, among the meadowsweet, and then finally up the remorseless bracken-covered slopes above which Caer Caradoc looms dark, its flat fell top out of sight from below.
Slowly at first and then with quickening step he was drawn back up to where his life began and where, he had no doubt, it must one day end.
In those days none but those in Duncton Wood itself knew who the Stone Mole was, or even whether he had come. That secret so far was Duncton’s own to be revealed only when and how the Stone ordained. Yet many across moledom guessed that somewhere he had come at last for a star had shone, and while grikes and unbelievers protested that it was but a phenomenon of the skies, the followers were sure it was more than that, and that the star was the Stone’s own sign that its mole had come and soon their faith would be tried and tested hard and they must try to be ready.
Such a believer was the vagrant Caradoc, and such was his fervour that those few friends he had and trusted with his thoughts said privately among themselves that Caradoc saw signs of the Stone in everything, even the passing sheep!
Caradoc cared not, and when that inner call came to return to the Stones he loved most of all, he had heeded it. Now, this June morning, as he returned at last, the light seemed especially clear, and the ground to tremble with purpose and hope.
The going was rough, and lesser moles might have cursed the dew that encumbered their paws and made them slip as they struggled upwards. But faithful Caradoc saw only the bright light caught in the glistening drops and was glad that he had health and strength to climb the slopes before him. He lingered sometimes to catch his breath and admire the special green of the leaves of tormentil and wonder at why it was he almost smelt the sense of change in the air that morning. Then his breath recovered, and with the prospect of the Stones themselves and the flatter fell getting ever closer, he went steadily on, speaking out his prayers and offering his faith and life aloud, as moles who spend too much time alone sometimes do.
If the seeming weakness of his harried body belied the evident strength of his spirit and ability to press on it was because of a special belief he had – and which he expounded to all moles who would listen – that one day to this deserted, bereft place, where most moleyears the wind blew cold and the snows lay hard, to this very place the Stone Mole himself would come. Aye, and he’d give his blessing and these long years of Caradoc’s lonely faith and courage would find their reward. For surely, inspired by the knowledge that the Stone Mole had come even here, moles would return once more to Caer Caradoc, and though the soil was not so wormful as in the vales below they would make the system live again.
A few more yards, a little more effort, and there he was once more, before the Stones he loved. To those who knew the Duncton Stone, the Caradoc Stones were modest enough, but to Caradoc himself, who knew no other and whose faith was great, no Stones were more grand, nor ever could be. Certainly, though modest in size, their stance was noble and sure, and few prospects in moledom are more striking than the vales and hills they watch over, east and west, north and south. He felt his heart lift in joy and his faith renewed, for this was a good place to be, one where a mole might feel himself well found and know that one day, if moles had strength enough, then moledom could be made aright once more.
Aye! The sun shining among these Stones, and the breeze across the glistening grass and in among the bracken and bursting heather, why that gave a mole good faith! Yet more than that struck Caradoc as he looked about over the hills and finally to the mountains of the north and west where, visible that day, the mass in which distant Siabod and Tryfan rose. He gasped at a sense he had that today – today and nearly now! – there was great power in the earth and a trembling promise of life and death, of light and dark in which, if a mole was to know the Silence which was a follower’s best intent, then he must look to himself afresh and not flinch from whatever task he now faced. Aye!
Then Caradoc went forward to touch the greatest of the Stones, but even as he reached up to do so he pulled sharply back, hesitant and fearful, looking about him as if there were shadows near and he should protect himself. But though there was nothing, only light and his imaginings, he crouched down before the Stone, and decided not to touch it yet.
“Not time,” he muttered, not knowing why and taking a humble stance. “No, it’s not time yet. But I think it will be soon. There’s something about the light this morning that tells me that I’ll know what to do and when.” He fell silent and kept his snout low. His flanks shivered a little though the day was warm.
“I’m scared, that’s what I am,” he said to himself, “and I want others near me. A mole can’t go on alone forever.”
Then he spoke a prayer: “Send moles, Stone, send moles who have been vagrants as I have, send them to Caradoc. Send them one day that they may see the light as I do, and share the beauty of the Stone. Let those nearby come to Caradoc and those near other systems go to their own. Send moles to this place and make it live again. Grant it, Stone, if it be thy will. Grant too that I may find a mate and know the joy of seeing my own pups run and play among these Stones which in all my life have only known one pup’s laughter, which was my own. Grant it if it be thy will.”
So Caradoc prayed, so he waited, and the sun was warm in his fur and though he saw it not himself – for his snout was as low as his humility was great – that sun made his fur shine as it never had before, as he waited for his time to touch the Stone again.
While Caradoc waits we must travel on, to visit a system whose name we have heard before, but whose dry grass ways and proud Stones we have so far left unvisited. We must venture there to witness the beginning of a life of dedication to the Stone, by a mole who shall in time be much loved, much loved indeed.
If a mole might choose a day he might first travel where we go now, let it be a June day such as this, when the sun shines bright and blue harebells blow across its chalky grass and the great rising beeches of its knolls cast welcome shade across its venerable Stones.
It is to great Avebury we have come, set most southerly of all, a system with history and holiness enough that it should be no surprise that from it a great mole might one day come.
But long now has been noble Avebury’s suffering, long and remorseless. For to it the plagues came hard, and after them the grikes visited in force, killing most of its adult Stone followers and perverting its young towards the Word to make them derelict of spirit, and much
demeaned.
In all the chronicles of grike outrage few are as sad as that inflicted upon Avebury, whose young were forcibly mated with moles of the Word, and whose happy rhymes and rituals and dances of seasonal delights were reviled and mocked, their performance made punishable.
But there lived in the grike-run Avebury tunnels one old female who could just remember the time before the plagues and the Word, which meant she could remember the Stones themselves, and was the last surviving Avebury mole to have touched them.
Her name was Violet, a worthy Avebury name, and by that June morning, when the Stone Mole in distant Duncton was being taken to the Stone, she was old indeed, and near her time. She had escaped punishment and Atonement of the Word by feigning vagueness and stupidity, but those few who knew her well knew she was more than she seemed, though none could ever have guessed how much.
The grikes let her live because she pupped well and reared her young clean, and she had in her time given guardmoles sturdy, well-found pups. But latterly, growing older, thinking her mating days were done, the grikes had let her go among the few pathetic local males who remained. With which she mated nomole knows, but into pup she went, fecund to the last, and in the cycle of seasons before the June we come to Avebury, she pupped a final litter.
She reared them hoping that among them would be one with whom she could share her ancient irreplaceable secrets of the Stone. But though she was hopeful for a time of one, named Warren, he insisted on becoming a guardmole and so she could not trust him to be silent. She knew the Word used sons against mothers, for that is in the vile nature of its way.
Somehow she survived the winter years, and come the new spring, the very same the Stone Mole had been born, Warren mated, and had young. Violet, growing blind now, was allowed to visit them, and when she did and she touched them with her withered paws, she felt the Stone’s grace come to her, and knew there was one among them the Stone’s light had touched. A female, sturdy and good, who soon showed a nature Violet knew well indeed for when, so long before, she herself was young, before the grikes came and moles ran free among the Avebury Stones, it was her own.