Duncton Found (134 page)

Earlier that evening, after all the moles had given up any hope that some last journeyer would reach the cross-under and had gone off to start their Longest Night, a mole had come that way. Cheerful he was until the moment he set paw to the southern slopes, when, not unaccountably at all, he started feeling weary and depressed.

Bold Bailey had come home at last, after his moleyears of travel and self-discovery when he had left Seven Barrows, but now something about the chilly cross-under took his boldness right out of him. He knew what it was, and had been fearing it for days. It was guilt, which was especially affecting to him since that Night of nights when, a cycle before, he, Bailey, had fled and hid when the grikes came and massacred Feverfew and the others, and blinded Tryfan. He alone survived unscathed and now, as he began to climb up towards the place to which in all of moledom he most wanted to go that night, he felt gloom, depression and anxiety come upon him, and what had been Bold Bailey become Poor Bailey once again.

Yet he struggled on, hoping perhaps that if there were a few moles about, especially Mistle of Avebury whom he had liked, they might cheer him up. Yes! That was it! They might... and so Bailey had gone on.

When he reached the High Wood he had heard the moles about the Stone and crept guiltily towards them, hardly daring to show his snout because he felt so bad about himself.

He reached so near that he could almost touch a mole as he parted some twigs, peered out, and found he was staring straight at the face of Lorren. Lorren! Gulp! And next to her – the shock and surprise even greater – Starling. Oh no, Starling! Gulp again!

But... but! How ashamed of him they would be, for surely they must know he had run away in the moment of Duncton’s crisis. And then... and then, what about the dreadful things he had done in the past? They were sure to have heard of them. He had been Henbane’s pet for many years; he had renounced the Stone to save his life and taken to the Word; he had lived in Whern and, for a time at least,
enjoyed
it.

Now here they were, his adoptive sisters Starling and Lorren, looking older it was true but no less sisterly than they always had.

No way! thought Bailey to himself. I can’t! I am so ashamed!

So there he hid as the night darkened and the little community of Duncton Wood celebrated Longest Night so cheerily (as it seemed to him). But he could only hide, and watch, and dab and sniff at his tears. It got worse as it went on, for the more he stared out at Starling the more she began to look like she had when they were young, and there was nomole in the whole of moledom whose embrace he wanted more. Yet in the circumstances she was the very last mole he could run to. Then there was Lorren, and she looked even grubbier than she had done when they were young and yet she was just the same. No, happier!
Plumper
 – that was it. “Oh Lorren,” he whispered achingly as he stared at her, “I wish I didn’t feel ashamed. Starling, I wish I knew
now
how to be bold. But I don’t because I’m not bold, and I’m no good to anymole at all.”

Then he had taken out that little stone he had carried all the way from Seven Barrows over so many moleyears and miles, so proudly at the time, so sure that this would be a worthy thing to bring back to Duncton Wood, and placed it on the ground in front of him because he felt he no longer deserved to carry it.

Then he lowered his snout and wept all unseen and uncomforted into the leaf litter, and listened to the celebration in which he so much wanted to join. Sometimes he heard Starling laugh, sometimes Lorren spoke, and once they sang, and once, most dreadfully, they said a prayer for absent friends and kin, and he was sure he heard Starling say “brothers too”. His tears were all the worse that he could not let them hear, and so, silently, snout so very low, he sobbed that celebration away.

But when much later on they all went off, laughing and joking, to the communal chamber underground he raised his snout and thought, I could just go to the Stone and say a prayer for
them.
Which is what he did, and how heartfelt it was. Then, thinking how far he had carried it, he hurried back into the wood where he had been, took up the little stone and brought it back and placed it before the Stone.

“Stone,” he said humbly, “I carried it all the way for you from Seven Barrows. Well, it’s not much, and
I
’m not much of a mole after all, but there’s something of me in it, and so I’ll leave it here. Maybe if Starling and Lorren come out again tonight they’ll stance down near it and you’ll tell them I was here. I wish
I
’d led a better life. I wish
I
’d had more courage like other moles. I wish, I wish....”

But he could not say more, but turned from the Stone and ran from the clearing, downslope on and on, past so many familiar places in the dark where he would have liked to stop. On he ran to Barrow Vale, where, years before, his father Spindle had taken him. He did not stop but, weeping still, and feeling that his life must be over now, and that he was nothing and worthless and
poor
Bailey indeed, he ran into the Marsh End and on towards the dangerous Marsh beyond.

Once out of the wood he stopped and wept some more, because at that very spot he had emerged, muddied right through and only just alive, after he had nearly drowned when the tunnel collapsed as Duncton was evacuated.

“I wish I’d died then!” he sobbed, weeping wildly, bumping his head on the ground in absolute misery.

He heard a coot’s call, he heard the mallard fly unseen in the night. Ahead of him in the dark he felt the surge of the dark Thames there, and to it, wildly, across the soft ground he ran, determined now to end it all and do at least something thoroughly and well.

He reached the river edge, peered out into the darkness, contemplated the flowing water, and was just wondering what part it would be best to throw himself into when he heard the one thing that could have brought him to his senses.

“Help!” cried a bleaty voice. “Help, Help!”

There was a floundering in the water not far off, a rustle and bustle of sedge and mud, and a gulping and a spitting and general splattering.

“Help!” it said.

Bailey’s good nature got the better of his gloom and, casting his misery aside, he shouted, “Over here! Come here! The shore’s here!”

That seemed to help, and after more shouts and directional calls from Bailey, out of the dark waters floundered a mole.

“Here, take my paw,” said Bailey.

“Where?”

Bailey reached down from his precarious pawhold on the shore and got his talons to the mole who floated and spluttered there, and pulled him out.

He was muddy. He was grubby. He was slimy. He was Holm.

No, so far Holm’s Longest Night had not been of the best. He had always intended to join Lorren at Longest Night and had duly reached their burrow in Rollright some days before, feeling pleased with himself. On the long, dangerous journey from the north he had often rehearsed what he would say at the moment of return and decided that “I’m back!” would do well. But it was all wasted. She was not there, and the few moles he found were only able to tell him that there had been a massacre by the grikes and most Rollright followers had been killed. But Holm’s worry and distress lasted only moments. Lorren and Rampion killed? Impossible. Not them! Rampion would have got her mother to safety and when she could she would... she would....

Holm had a long think.

“What would Lorren think I’d do?” he rightly asked himself. Go to the Marsh End, that was it! But time was short, impossibly short, and the only way to reach it by Longest Night was to do something nomole had ever done before. Now
that
was a thing Holm had often wanted to do. And what had nomole done before? Why swim across the Thames, of course!

Do that, and he’d make it by Longest Night. But go the long, safe boring way by the cross-under to the south and he’d be too late. To see Lorren’s face as he arrived home on Longest Night was almost worth drowning for!

All he knew about the venture was what he had learned when he had tried it when he was young: the river flows fast and it was best to go a very long way upstream and hope for the best.

Which is what Holm did, and having done so, he wished himself luck, dived in and set off. The end of the journey we know, the middle he preferred to forget. Being afloat in darkness, not being able to see, feeling the numbing cold, wondering about pikes at his paws which the legends said had teeth as big as foxes... it was all too horrible, and there was nothing heroic about it at all.

Yet on he struggled, on he was swirled, on he swam until, very tired, he found himself caught up in rushes, his limbs numb with cold, and he knew he was about to drown.

“Help!” he had cried. “Help!”

“Over here!” a voice unexpectedly shouted back, and so, floundering and muddy, very, he ended the adventure nomole had had before.

The two moles looked at each other blankly, and all the more blankly because many moleyears had passed since they had last seen each other, and then Bailey had been barely more than a pup. Yet each found something vaguely familiar in the other.

“Hello. I’m Bailey.”

“H... H... Holm,” said Holm, his teeth chattering with cold.

Holm! Bailey peered closer. Yes, it was possible, it was even likely. This waterlogged and muddy mole certainly looked similar to the mole Bailey remembered. The one who rarely spoke.

“Holm!” he exclaimed. “It
is
Holm!”

“B... Bailey?” said Holm. “Starling’s Bailey? Lorren’s Bailey?”

“Yes!” said Bailey masterfully. “Now come on, you’ve got to keep moving to keep warm. Let’s get you back to the Marsh End.”

The Marsh End! The bliss of those two words to Holm! The tears he shed!

“What’s wrong?” Bailey asked.

“H-H-Happy,” Holm said.

“Aspen juice is what you need,” said Bailey when they got to a warm burrow. “Or foxglove root. Leave it to me.”

The trouble is that both are intoxicants for mole, very. There was no trouble finding them but it was hard to stop imbibing them. And since Holm was cold and
must
for health reasons, Bailey thought he would as well. Just a bit. Just
enough
. Just... too much!

“Bailey?” said Holm.

“Holm, my friend?” replied Bailey cheerfully.

“What were you doing waiting for me on the River Thames is what I’d like to know.”

“Holm,” said Bailey, “you know what I think? I think that’s the longest speech you’ve ever made. Have some more.”

Holm did.

“Well, what were you doing?”

“If I told you you wouldn’t believe me,” said Bailey grinning widely, for his mouth seemed beyond his control.

“Bailey, old chum, try me,” said Holm.

“I was about to kill myself.”

For a moment Holm managed to look like his old self. He stanced up, stared, and after several attempts said, aghast, “You weren’t!”

Bailey nodded in a roundabout sort of way.

“Why?”

“Because... because... well, because. Something about being ashamed of myself.”

Holm half laughed.

Bailey grinned again.

“No!” said Holm falling backwards and wagging his paws with nearly uncontrollable mirth.

“It was when I saw Starling at the Stone earlier this evening,” said Bailey mournfully.

Holm’s paroxysms increased.

“Lorren’s there too,” said Bailey very sadly.

Holm’s paws stretched out in an almost terminal rigor of laughter. His breathing became irregular. His eyes streamed tears. Then for a brief moment he pulled himself together and said, “You know what? If you’d succeeded I’d have had to break the news of your recent death.”

Bailey clutched his stomach at the thought, his whole body shaking with laughter he could not control as he spluttered, “Starling would not have been pleased!”

The two moles lay breathless, aching with mirth, until at last, Holm stanced up and said, “Bailey, you’re coming with me. Now! While you’ve got the courage! You can’t avoid your sisters forever! Come on!”

Which Bailey did, letting the little mole lead him back up through the wood which he had been sure he would never see again.