Duncton Found (68 page)

The ground was mainly sloping fallow fields and heath, the earth frosty cold, the route westward and down into the great valley of the River Thames which stretched out below them.

It was plain from the outset that Beechen was in no mood to talk, or even to travel willingly with them. He kept pausing and staring across the great misty vale below and then up and down it.

His mood was in sharp contrast to that of the others who, with the prospect of a place of rest before them, seemed to have found new energy and cheer. Mayweed and Sleekit chattered about this and that as if they were young moles again. Buckram seemed to find much to talk about with Tubney, and so it was only slowly that they all began to realise that Beechen was not himself at all.

He stopped. Sleekit went back to him, and saw to her surprise that he looked tearful, he looked vulnerable, his face looked both young and fatigued at once. All the party stopped then as Sleekit spoke to him. Of what he told her we can only guess – of a sense that he was outcast from them perhaps, of a strange restlessness, of a desire to be alone, and... of the mole he had seen so briefly in Hen Wood, one he should have gone back to, one whose gaze he could not get from his mind. One he was going to find – yes, that was it: now!

He stanced up purposefully to set off back upslope then and there.

“Beechen...” began Sleekit, at her most understanding and diplomatic. But whatever she said had no effect. He had seen a female, henchmoles were coming, she was in danger, he was going to find her. And he was going alone.

“She wasn’t ‘just’ a mole, was she?” said Sleekit.

“I don’t know what she was,” said Beechen unhappily. “She seemed like moledom itself to me. I wish... this is ridiculous. I’m sorry....”

The Stone Mole behaving like... like the young mole he still truly was! “He is mole first,” Tryfan had said, and now they saw it. It was as if, after a long trial in which he had had to be Stone Mole to everymole, he wished now to be “but mole”.

Naturally all of them, and especially Buckram, were against any notion of Beechen going off by himself.

“I saw a mole,” said Beechen again, wishing he had more strength, wishing he could inspire himself as he could others, wishing they would all go away.

“Female?” Mayweed half whispered to Sleekit, who nodded.

“Then good luck to boldness. His friend me, Mayweed, fell in love with sweet Sleekit here at the blink of an eye, at the flash of a talon! Go and find her! Bring her to us! We shall warn her against it but give her our blessing! As for danger, of course there’s danger, dire danger. But for the folly of youth the world might not change at all. Let danger be welcomed! Remember that humbleness himself trained Beechen here in route-finding from a pup, and he’ll be safe. A mole needs to be alone sometimes. Adventure! Danger! Risk! ’Tis the making of life’s blood.

And if true love is the end result what a tale we shall have to tell! We shall decline into our staid ancientness in Bablock and from the safety of our pleasant place thank the Stone that we no longer feel the confusing rushes and faints that drive a mole, otherwise sensible, perhaps even divine, to rush about the place looking for that most elusive and changeable thing that graces moledom’s sunny ways – a female to love; or, worse, being pursued by that most ferocious monster a male can encounter, a female
in
love. But humbleness jests and leers knowingly and says to one and says to all, let the poor lad be, he’ll be unlivable with until he has been, and then when he comes to his senses he’ll be unlivable with again. But there we go, puzzling life. To Bablock then, and he can follow, downhill all the way! Ha, ha!”

Once Mayweed’s flight of romantic fantasy was over, he gave Beechen some instructions about the easiest way down to Bablock.

“Now, I’ll watch
you
go,” said Beechen, who felt much better for talking to his friends. He stanced on the bare ground as the others, with general muttering and reluctance, despite Mayweed’s words, went on down the slope.

“But I don’t like to leave him,” poor Buckram could not help saying. “He saved my life.”

“Warm-hearted but misguided mole,” said Mayweed, “he may well have done, but if you kept him here now he would make your life insufferable.”

They looked back to wave farewell, but where Beechen had been was nomole now. He had gone.

The second night after the departure of the followers through Hen Wood was even clearer than the first, and the air grew colder and colder as all warmth seemed to flee southern moles and lose itself among the winking stars.

As dawn came the leaves crackled with frost, and every blade of grass at the edge of Hen Wood was bowed under the weight of white crystals.

Mistle stared out at the pale chill scene, her back paws still warm from the earth in which she had rested through the night, but her pink snout tingling with the cold. Despite everything Mistle did not feel as lonely and depressed as she might have, and indeed a wave of entirely new feelings came over her.

What she felt most of all was an unfamiliar mix of relief and guilt. Relief to
be
alone, and free; guilt that she did not miss Cuddesdon more, or seem to worry for him.

But ever since she had so briefly caught the Stone Mole’s gaze, and once she had got over her panic at losing Cuddesdon, the sense of freedom had steadily increased. After the henchmole had left and she dared move off once more she had decided to press on west, for that had been the way the Stone Mole was going and perhaps Cuddesdon had gone that way too, though the more she thought about it
his
inclination would have been to go east towards where he had been told Cuddesdon was.

Well, that was as maybe. The Stone would decide... and with that consoling thought and tired out, she had made a safe burrow, concealed it, and slept the first night through. The next day she had woken to movement, sensed mole about, heard scurrying, seen two large moles in the distance who looked like guardmoles, and lain low for half the day.

At midday it grew suddenly colder, and the branches of the trees seemed stuck quite still against the pale blue winter sky. Silence had fallen all about and she felt, or sensed – indeed she felt she
knew
 – that the guardmoles had gone and it was safe to move on.

The enforced idleness seemed to have cleared her mind and made her calm, and she moved out across the surface to the west slowly, enjoying the darkening violets of the late afternoon shadows, and the sharp crackle of leaves underpaw.

Rooks roosted high, stirring and flapping their wings but not taking off, and she came to the edge of the wood. She heard solitary roaring owl ahead and decided to stop once more and sleep the night through at the very edge of the wood, and take her chances out on the heathy ground beyond the following morning.

She prayed to the Stone, for Cuddesdon, for herself, and then for the mole she had seen, Stone Mole or no. Increasingly, as she grew used to the image of him in her mind, she thought of him as mere mole, male, with eyes that had transfixed her. The thought of meeting him, let alone talking to him, made her feel nervous and she said her prayers to calm herself, but the prayers slid into reveries, pleasant dreams, silly languid thoughts,
summer-
seeming thoughts, as winter night settled down around her. She watched the stars, listened to the wood behind her, and then sunk down into the warmer soil, and snuggled into her temporary burrow and slept.

So it was there that when she awoke the following morning, she felt fresh, alive and good. She watched the light strengthen across the heath ahead of her as the sun rose behind and filtered through the bare trees of the wood, she saw a ragged lapwing alight on the heath ahead and then take off again, she heard the rooks call and argue, she groomed, she ate, she took her time.

Then, when the air felt good and the time felt right she set off, leaving the wood behind her as if she was shedding old fur, and an old life.

“It’s November, and cold, and yet I feel as if it’s spring!” she told herself in surprise. She thought of Violet, and smiled. How Violet would have liked all this,
all
of it.

Where to go?

Ahead, my dear!

So west she went, until, quite suddenly, the rise eased, the ground fell away, and she saw below her the winding misty vale of what she knew was the River Thames. She could not see its water, for it was lost in lines of leafless trees, misty and mysterious. But north-west of where she was it stretched away and in places the trees along its banks gave way to pasture and meadow and she saw its dark line.

Somewhere on along it, she knew that Duncton Wood must be, the place that Violet had told her to go.

She turned north, and took a pleasant route along the contour line as the heath became fallow fields and hedges crossed over her way. She sensed that to veer upslope north-easterly and go too high might bring her round to Cumnor, but though the sensible thing was to go lower, down towards the river, yet she felt right the way she was.

But she did not feel sensible. She felt
free,
for moledom seemed to stretch out invitingly to her left flank and to her right the ground rose and blocked out the realities of Cumnor and of grikes. Strength came to her paws and she travelled faster, encouraged by the light rather than the warmth of the thin sun that rose behind her, and whose rays were too weak even to warm the ground enough to clear the frost.

A day for today, a time for now, on such a good day she had always wanted to have her first sight of Duncton Wood and now she was beginning to think she might.

Then, suddenly, she knew –
she knew
 – she would, so on she went, seeming to be at one with the ground she touched, and the air she breathed, and moledom all about her.

Twice when dark shadows touched the sky she paused and hid: rooks perhaps, heron maybe; but they were soon gone and she pressed on.

Sometime later she paused again to rest and feed, the air cold but her body warm and pleasant with the effort of travelling. The Thames below was more visible, for the sun reached down among its trees now, and the ground ahead had dropped a little and showed the northern view. On she went, over fields, under hedges, sliding across the frozen water of a ditch, keeping high to avoid the streams that must flow from the slope towards the Thames lower down.

On, on, even faster now, for she wanted to reach wherever it was the Stone was safely guiding her with the sun still high and clear, and the day so bright.

The ground eased ahead, the slope fell off to her right, and there, past a hedge, over a small dip of pasture field, there, oh there was the hill on which was Duncton Wood. There!

The light of the sun was on it, and it seemed to rise so-near that a mole might reach across the great vale that opened out below and touch it. Duncton!

“Duncton Wood.” She whispered the words and her heart felt full of joy. “Oh Violet, I got here, I got to Duncton Wood! Violet, it’s so beautiful!” she said.

She gazed at its great slopes, and up over pastures to where the wood was thick. Then on to its highest part where the leafless beeches were shining grey, with an occasional holly tree among them to give a touch of green. So peaceful.

The hill was steepest to its left or western side, where pastures dropped down towards the river. Beyond there, moledom stretched away.

Certainty, security, a strong sense of something fitting came upon her, and a sense of purpose too.

“I feel as if I have come home,” she said. “Home from home. Violet, where you dreamed of I shall go. One day Cuddesdon will find me up there in Duncton Wood. One day....”

Mole near. Mole. She knew it but was not afraid, for the sun and the cold clarity of the day seemed to have driven fear off the face of the earth. She looked to right and to left and then behind her, puzzling because she could not see mole, yet she felt a presence.

She turned from the place she had taken stance, looked back again, and contoured on a little, her route swinging north-east. She was alert but relaxed, the sun at its warmest of the day, her fur glossy, her paws and talons sure. Mole
was
about. She paused to look at Duncton Wood once more, turned to continue and then suddenly saw him there, stanced ahead as she had been, staring at the distant hill.

He turned even as she stopped on seeing him, and he saw her then. They were too far off to speak, too near to shout, so for a moment they just stared, as transfixed it seemed as they had been in Hen Wood.

Then moving at the same time they started towards each other. She dropped her gaze on him then, from sudden shyness or embarrassment. She looked at the ground, she looked up again, she moved, she looked away, she dared to look once more and there he was, and there she was, smiling, each smiling, and the sun upon them both.

“You’re the...” she began.

“I’m Beechen of Duncton born,” he said. He did not want to be called “Stone Mole’, it seemed. He looked larger than he had in the wood two days before, he looked tired. He was smiling. He....

As so many thoughts rushed through her head she heard herself say, “My name is Mistle, born of Avebury....”