Even as Merrick weighed up these devious thoughts an idea, yet half conscious and half formed, came to him and he found himself saying, “Eldrene Wort, I am sure you are aware that one of the difficulties we have in administering Ashbourne and providing extra quarters is that the Master is planning strikes against followers. They have already started in the south, and guardmoles and others are coming north to be ready for the assault on evil Beechenhill.”
As Wort’s eyes lighted up at his use of the phrase “strikes against followers’ and then positively glowed at the mention of “evil” Beechenhill, he quickly added, “You probably know that it has been one of my long-standing ambitions to be the mole that is responsible for the final annihilation of that wretched system.”
He turned to the two senior guardmoles who had come to give him support in this curious confrontation, and nodded at them in such a way that they echoed his sentiments about Beechenhill with frowns and a general eagerness to rid moledom of the pestilence of the Stone.
Wort, who now looked as if tasty morsels of worms had been placed before her after a long fast, said, “The holy Word must indeed long for the destruction of Beechenhill, whose notoriety is known to us in the south and is something, I am forced to say, we do not understand. You cannot have will enough for this task! But sideem Merrick...” Merrick smiled and came closer, all friendliness now, all willingness to help.
“Eldrene?”
“These strikes you mention against followers. I had understood, indeed it is no disloyalty or betrayal to say I understood from the Master himself, that they would not be started quite yet....”
“No, no, eldrene Wort, they began in February, earlier than originally intended, and I understand they have been going on at an ever increasing pace.”
“Successfully?”
“Very. But naturally it is most frustrating that we here in Ashbourne have not been told positively that we can attack Beechenhill.”
This was a little misleading. Ashbourne had been told not to mount an attack until given the word, and it was reasonable to assume that this was because the Master wanted to oversee it himself.
“Of course, the Master will be well pleased when it is done,” he added, turning the talon in the wound of Wort’s over-weening ambition towards the Word.
Wort could not resist saying confidentially, “Sideem Merrick, I have good reason to think that the Master may soon be with us. He had a particular interest in the capture of the Stone Mole and instructed me to let him know when it had been effected, which I have done.”
“How glad he will be to know of it. And how I envy you that honour, Wort, indeed I do! If he is coming here – and clearly you have his ear in a way I could not hope to have – what pleasure it would be for him to arrive and find Beechenhill taken.”
“Taken and laid waste by the order and vengeance of the Word!”
“The Word triumphant at the Beechenhill Stone!”
“Oh yes,” said Wort, filled with sudden passion, “the blood of followers desecrating the Stone’s face, the blood of followers red upon the talon of the Word....”
“This Stone Mole....”
“Stone Mole?” said Wort immediately, and Merrick thought he had lost her again for her eyes narrowed as if she sensed a threat to her jurisdiction.
Merrick kept smiling and said, “Beechenhill would be a fitting place for the Word to end the life of such a mole. If he is the Stone Mole, what more fitting judgement than to desecrate the Stone with his life? If he is not, but merely a vile and evil imposter, then no punishment is too great for him, and the sooner the better.”
“Holy Word, our mother and our father,” cried out Wort suddenly, “guide us here in this hour of need and doubt, to find the way thou desirest us to go that we may go that way in thy name and no other.”
Merrick nodded in an agreeable kind of way at the end of this impassioned prayer and said, “But, eldrene Wort, such a course is not open to us, is it? No, no, tempting though it would be I cannot let my guardmoles loose on Beechenhill.”
“The Word shall guide you, sideem Merrick!” declared Wort with conviction. “You shall do what you must do and be guided by the Word.”
“Would that I had your confidence, Wort. Would that I always knew my way forward with the Word. Sometimes we are faced with problems that seem beyond the possibility of mole to resolve... but no matter. I shall not burden a mole who has barely ended such a long quest as you have. Another time.”
“We are put into moledom to help one another,” said Wort, warming to her new-found role of spiritual counsellor, especially to a sideem, “and if there is anything....”
“Yes, there seems to be a problem. Is it anything or is it merely a figment, like a nightmare that seems real at the time but afterwards is not, though the taste of horror remains?”
“Nightmare? Is it a matter of the Stone? My dear sideem Merrick, if it is advice you want....”
Merrick signalled to the two guardmoles to leave.
“No, no, Wort... you must forgive me if I seem awkward. There has been something much on my mind for these two days past. But....”
Wort stayed silent, Merrick affected to decide suddenly to tell what he had hoped to tell all along. He opened his mouth, he glanced over his shoulder, and he said, “I should not.”
“Sideem Merrick, is it a blasphemy you know of?”
“Worse.”
“Worse than a blasphemy?”
“Supposing, eldrene Wort, just supposing I told you I knew where another lived, what would you say?”
“I would say, ‘Does it matter?’ And if it did I would ask the name of this other.”
“To the Master it matters.”
The Master! A new way to serve him! The eldrene’s mouth moistened at the prospect of a satiation of her spiritual greed.
“Then I must ask, sideem Merrick, the name of this mole that matters to him.”
“The Mistress Henbane,” said Merrick quietly.
“Where?” said Wort with undisguised greed.
“Beechenhill.”
Wort greeted this with a kind of fomenting silence, her face twitching, her eyes hungry for more knowledge, her stance almost lusty with the pleasure of what she heard.
“Are you sure?”
“A mole I trust saw her fleeing into Beechenhill several days ago. He is sure it was her.”
“Henbane,” whispered Wort, her eyes narrowing and staring at a distant place where the name of the eldrene Wort of Fyfield seemed to be scrivened gloriously in stars across the night sky.
“She may escape. She may die. Nomole more accurst. Nomole more fitting for punishment,” said Merrick.
“But the Master, his mother. She cannot. Once he put out an order that she be taken. Now... The Master would rejoice to know she’s dead, the Master could not kill her if she is alive. Others...” Wort was almost incoherent in her musings on Henbane and what it might mean.
Then she said, as if in grip of herself once more, “Aye, others of confidence must do that deed. Sideem, I hear the holy Word, I hear it cry damnation on that apostate Mistress of the Word, I hear it cry vengeance on Beechenhill, I hear it cry death to the Stone Mole. These cries I hear as one, as one I hear them brutally assail me, demanding that I hear.”
“But I cannot help thee, Wort,” said Merrick, craftily. “I am restrained by my promise to the Master’s order. But thou with thy authority have been entrusted to act as you see fit. Pray this night for guidance, Wort, as I shall. Pray for us all! Pray for those brave moles of the Word whose lives are lost each day that the former Mistress lives and Beechenhill survives. Yield not to that temptation which the Stone Mole offers thee, to let him live. Be resolute, eldrene, for all of us, and pray for us and for thyself. Seek guidance this night!
“As sideem of this place I give thee full authority to use those tunnels that thou wilt, and demand that thou art resolute in the commands for action thou may in future give to thy worthy henchmoles. Though I cannot my
self command my own guardmoles to follow thee I tell thee this: if they were to decide to follow a certain devout eldrene that I know, and her henchmoles, on a mission for the Word – as observers perhaps, as support, as moral sustenance – this sideem would not, could not, stop them! And if their destination was Beechenhill, why this sideem would rejoice. But it is for the Word to guide thee in such matters, not a mere mole like me.”
With that Merrick turned with a flourish and was gone, to leave Wort to face the most sleepless night of prayer and chastisement she had ever had.
Harebell’s return to Beechenhill with Henbane and the others had nearly turned into disaster on the very threshold of the system, a disaster only averted in a way that left the grike guardmoles who almost trapped them in no doubt that it was Henbane they had seen.
They had finally found a safe crossing over the River Dove, which was in spate due to thawing on the northern moors, and they were ambushed by a grike patrol on the other side. No doubt the grikes had guessed that moles might be forced to use that route and had simply lain in wait, though they could not have imagined that it was the former Mistress of the Word they were about to confront.
But there they were, four large guardmoles against two tired males, Harrow and Holm, and three females, two of them elderly: it was no contest, or should not have been.
“Well, well,” said the commander of the grikes with a cheerful smile, “patience is rewarded with a little group of faithful followers. Greetings... and don’t move.”
But Henbane did move, in an extraordinary display of authority which made all of them, none more than Harebell, understand how it could have been that this mole was once Mistress of the Word and ruler of all moledom.
“Mole,” she said, coming forward with dignity and complete confidence, “I like not your tone, your manner or your intent. Nor shall the Word. And by the Word you and your colleagues shall be accursed if you do not Atone for your insolence against my person and that of my companions.”
It was unfortunate that one of the grikes had seen her before, for there was no question that they would have retreated, so formidable was her manner and the threat she made.
As it was, one of them said, “By the Wor... it is the Mistress Henbane herself.”
“It is, mole, and you are fortunate you stopped yourself swearing by the Word. As thy Mistress I command thee all to stance back and let us pass.”
“But...” began the grike.
“Ssh!” one of those with him said in awe.
Quick-thinking Harebell said, “They should be made to Atone now!” and with that, and her snout in the air, passed on, leading her mother with her.
Harrow had to prod poor Holm in the rump to get him moving again, so terrified was he, but Sleekit, a formidable mole in her own right and well able to think calmly in such moments, made a fitting rearguard to the group, and even gave the patrol a withering stare as she passed. Each of them proceeded slowly up the slope, expecting the patrol to come chasing after them, but it did not and they reached the shelter of the tunnels above without further trouble. Once there Harebell was able to lose any pursuers in the complex limestone tunnels and they were soon picked up by an astonished and delighted watcher and taken on into the main system.
Squeezebelly’s excitement at Harebell’s homecoming was soon overshadowed by the news they brought of the Stone Mole’s capture, and the fact that an attack on Beechenhill seemed certain now that sideem Merrick must know, through the guardmoles who had stopped them, that Henbane was in the system.
Henbane, on the other paw, was more concerned about what her reception might be once moles knew who she was, but Squeezebelly reassured her that she would meet with no hostility if she came in peace, though it might be best if she kept a low snout.
“Surely you can trust Beechenhill moles, Squeezebelly,” said Harebell.
But he shook his head sadly, and said he was not sure that he could any more. The pressures of the winter years, the failure of Wharfe to return and the sense of the omnipresence of the grikes had created divisions in the system which even the combination of Harebell’s safe return, Squeezebelly’s good sense and the thawing of the snows and return of milder weather could not cure.
“To make it worse,” Squeezebelly said, “something has happened which I knew was a possibility in such circumstances. Indeed, I’m surprised it has not happened before. Very few of the females have got with pup, very few.”
“The same thing happened in Ashbourne when the grikes first came, according to my mother,” said Harrow.
Squeezebelly nodded. “Yes, that’s right. I heard that too. It’s hard for a female to get with pup if she’s worried, and downright impossible if she’s afraid for her life. But that’s how we all are now, so it’s not surprising that females aren’t fertile.”
“Well, Squeezebelly...” began Harebell, unable to contain her own news longer, though she had intended to. “There’s another who is. I’m with pup!”
It was true enough, but as is the way of such things, Henbane was the only one to know and Harrow, though he might have guessed, was the one to look surprised. Holm stanced up, looked about in the usual way he did before speaking, seemed about to explode, and said, “Good luck. You’ll need it!” and shut up again. They were the first words he had spoken in nearly three days.
Harebell giggled and there were a few moments of lightness and cheer among the otherwise beset group.
“Well, if I had any doubts before, I have none now,” declared Squeezebelly, “we’re going to have to evacuate some of us from Beechenhill, certainly younger moles, the few females in pup, and older moles of both sexes. It’s the only way for us to survive as a community without fighting.”
“Where will we go?” asked Harebell.
“The Castern Chambers,” said Squeezebelly, quickly explaining about them to the non-Beechenhill moles there. “There’ll be a communal meeting about it, there’ll be a lot of complaints, Bramble will sound off again as he has for molemonths past, but believe me it will have to be done.”
“And what of Beechen? What can we do for him?”
Sleekit asked the question, but in their hearts all there knew there were no easy answers, and that Squeezebelly was unlikely to allow heroics.
“If the Stone Mole had been taken forcibly,” said Harebell, “it would be different. And he expressly asked that we do not take any violent action.”
“Something might be possible with surprise and a good disciplined assault,” said Henbane, who in her day had been, alongside Wrekin, a great leader in campaigns.
But Sleekit shook her head.
“I have travelled with him ever since he first left Duncton Wood and again and again he has begged his followers not to resort to violence. I have known him almost from the moment of his birth and never seen him strike another mole. He would not want moles hurt on his behalf. It is against all his teachings. The only good thing is that he has Buckram with him, and he’s a mole of resource. He might find a way to get him free. But Beechen wants no violence.”
Holm nodded his head vigorously, and then shook it.
“Yes, no violence,” he said.
“We have followers among the grikes guardmoles in Ashbourne,” Harrow said. “If, as I think, that’s where they’ve been taken, they might get help, or perhaps moles will try to get a message to us. They’re likely to know where we are now that Henbane has been seen coming into this system.”
But it was small comfort to Sleekit and the others, who could still barely comprehend that Beechen had been taken from them.
The meeting that Squeezebelly called was rowdy and unpleasant and it was as well that Squeezebelly decided that Henbane should not be there, for even in her absence it was plain that he had underestimated the hostility felt against her. Truly, the pressures were showing and Beechenhill was not what it once had been.
Bramble was the main cause of trouble, first attacking the whole notion of Henbane being allowed in the system at all, an
d then going on to suggest that she could be exchanged for the Stone Mole.
When Squeezebelly stopped this suggestion short, even though several other moles seemed to agree with it, Bramble went on to argue that if they were going to evacuate they should do so immediately and then the males could return and fight it out.
“Fighting is not to be our way. It is only by not fighting that we have survived, as you know well, Bramble.”
“There’s others here who agree with me,” said Bramble, indicating Skelder and Ghyll, who had changed their tune considerably since they came as refugees from Mallerstang. Their peaceable philosophy had gone, and they were all for using their fighting skills now to attack the murdering grikes.
But Quince bravely spoke up against them, and others too, and it was plain that by a small majority the Beechenhill moles believed they should leave the system, at least for long enough for the few females who were with pup to have them somewhere safe. They all knew about the Castern Chambers and they would be safe there for a time.
As for Henbane, it was clear, too, that had she not been the much-liked Harebell’s mother, and had Squeezebelly been a weaker leader than he was, she might not have survived long in Beechenhill.
Squeezebelly had been especially glad to have the support of Quince, for she had been subdued and upset since Wharfe’s departure on what would surely be a vain search for Betony, and he had feared she would go the bitter way Bramble had. But she was tougher than Squeezebelly’s son, and bore Wharfe’s loss well. She was a mole who seemed to flourish in adversity. He prayed that one day Wharfe would come back to her, for she was the kind of mole of which the future must be made.
“We shall begin the evacuation over the next few days,” said Squeezebelly finally, “and Quince shall oversee the care of the females who are to pup. We should aim to be clear of the system by the March equinox, and until then our watchers shall be doubled and warned to be especially vigilant and all moles should keep in close touch. If we need to go quickly we want no stragglers.”