Duncton Quest (120 page)

There was almost a grudging respect paid to them for coming to Duncton of their own accord, but they discovered they were not unusual in making a request to go into the system, for diseased moles had heard – as Wyre of Buckland made sure they did – that for misfits Duncton was the place to go. There they had freedom, and of that moles of the Word made proud, as if they believed that by labelling a ghetto a place of freedom where moles could believe what they liked they could claim that the Word showed a mercy and tolerance it did not really possess.

When they saw that the two moles were not obviously diseased, but that one was badly injured from fighting, and the other a follower of the Stone prepared to declare himself and be outcast in Duncton Wood but otherwise harmless, the grikes were laudably reluctant to let them through the cross-under and inside the system without first making sure they both wished to go.

“More fool you, mate,” one said to Spindle, “though I won’t say I don’t admire you. But if you won’t Atone or offer yourself to an eldrene for teaching, well, there’s nothing for it, is there? It’s Duncton for you. But you must have known that. What of your friend, is he a believer too?”

“He is,” said Spindle.

“Mind you, I can see why
he’s
come. Wouldn’t survive in a normal system anyway without help.” The mole peered at Tryfan’s deformed face.

“Can he see?” he asked Spindle.

“Well enough,” said Spindle, “but I help him when he needs it. He’s clumsy along a route and his worm-finding’s poor.”

“Can he hear?” shouted the guardmole.

“When he wants to,” grunted Tryfan, turning on the guardmole. He could still be very intimidating when he wanted to be, though it was not now his normal way, and the guardmole backed away in alarm. For the most part moles ignored him, but that suited Tryfan’s desire for peace and quiet.

“Remember, once in you don’t come out,” warned the guardmole, staring ahead at the great cross-under. Spindle could believe it. The entrance looked dank and gloomy, and this side of it there were a dozen solid guardmoles, and more nearby.

“I know that,” said Spindle.

“Speak posh, don’t you?” said the guardmole. “I repeat like Wyre’s told us to: you don’t have to go in yourself provided you’re in sound health and of the Word.”

“I was reared of the Stone,” said Spindle proudly, “and I shall die that way.”

The guardmole grunted and showed no more interest in them. He had done his duty and now had others to attend to.

“Take them in then,” he ordered another mole, “and warn the poor buggers what to expect.”

The second guardmole led them by a surface route to the cross-under.

“Don’t mind him, it’s not that bad if you keep your snouts low and don’t try and retaliate. You two don’t look much good for anything so nomole will want you in there. Keep to the Eastside, don’t trespass, head down for the Marsh End, that way you might survive. Anyway the Marsh End’s where the believers go.”

“Are there any guardmoles in there?” asked Spindle.

“Used to be. Beake herself was eldrene here. She died. A lot of the guardmoles got scalpskin and a lot of them died. Well, of course, they had to stay inside and
that
caused a to-do. Wyre’s no fool, though. Sent reinforcements, and it was nasty for a time. Be grateful you didn’t come here then ’cos you two wouldn’t have survived a day. But things settled down. Lot of the fight’s gone out of the moles in there now. They’re just getting old, aren’t they? Dying, that’s all. It’s a cursed system this one. Nomole’ll ever come here willingly to live, not unless they’re idiots like yourself or injured like your mate. No... the only real trouble we get is females trying to get out. Have to kill them or, if we can, persuade them to go back in. Depends who’s on duty....”

“Why is it females trying to escape?”

“Want pups, don’t they?” grunted the guardmole. “Not going to get any in there!”

With no further explanation, and quite without ceremony, Spindle and Tryfan were pushed through the lines of the guardmoles. They passed through the concrete cross-under, and found themselves on the south-eastern side of Duncton Hill whose slopes were slushy with cow-stained snow.

The rumble of the roaring owls came from high above them, and the rise of the Ancient System seemed dark and inaccessible ahead. It was not the return Spindle had quite imagined, nor perhaps one that Tryfan could ever have wished for when they and so many other moles had first left Duncton Wood long before. But it was a return, and with a heavy sigh but no word at all, Tryfan stared briefly up at where the Ancient System was and then did as the guardmole suggested, turned north along the Eastside, and headed for the distant Marsh End.

Chapter Forty-Four

The Pasture slopes that a mole must climb from the cross-under into Duncton Wood before he can turn north and head along the eastern side of the system towards the Marsh End were streaked with icy snow.

Tryfan and Spindle plodded up them and then veered over towards the first trees. They were leafless, dark and uninviting, and the ground under them felt cold and without life. Yet there was an infectious energy and purpose about Tryfan that grew all the time.

“We’re here again at last, Spindle! Back again!”

But Spindle felt nervous rather than excited. He peered about the wood expecting to find aggressive moles watching them from the crooks of twisted roots, and moles he would not wish to meet. Diseased moles, miscreants, deviants of body and spirit. But there was nothing but the gloom of winter, and the only movement was the twist and turn of dead twigs as they fell from the branches high above and settled on the wood’s dead floor.

The impression he had got of Duncton Wood from the grikes was that it was full of moles. But if it was they were doing a good job of keeping themselves hidden away down the tunnels whose entrances they occasionally saw, though there was little sign of passage and use about them.

“What are we going to do?” he asked, meaning what tunnels were they going to seek – old ones to occupy, or new ones to delve.

But Tryfan took his question another way entirely.

“We are going to keep our snouts low to save all our energies for scribing”, was his surprising reply.

“Scribing? Of what?”

Tryfan laughed out loud.

“Of what we talked to Whern,” he said. “I was ordained a scribemole and it’s about time I started behaving like one.”

“But your paws...” said Spindle, for though his wounds had long since healed, Tryfan’s paws had remained clumsy for delicate work. He could travel well enough, but subtler delving or worm-gathering was hard for him, and always would be, and scribing might be harder still.

“No, they are not quite what they once were. But as Boswell so often told me, scribing comes from the heart not the talons. My script may not be as elegant as it once was, but others will be able to make sense of it and that’s all that matters.”

“What will you scribe?”

“I don’t know yet, Spindle. Perhaps of things we’ve done, things we’ve thought. So much was lost at Uffington, and it may be years before those texts you buried at Seven Barrows can be recovered, if they’re still there, so I think we had better start scribing something for future generations of the times we lived through. Somemole’s got to start, let it be you and I.

“But we may have little time, for if the Stone Mole comes then we will want to go to him and serve him in whatever way he asks us to. So we must find a place to work, and work hard. I am eager to begin!”

“But what about the dangers of Duncton?”

“What dangers?” said Tryfan, looking about the empty wood carelessly. “I see none.”

“Well... they’re probably watching us, or waiting to see what we do.”

“Who?”

“Moles,” whispered Spindle, now making himself thoroughly nervous.

“They told us we would not survive the Slopeside but we did. Most would have said it was impossible to survive Whern yet here we are, a bit battered, feeling rather weak, but here all the same – and together. So I think we should be able to survive in Duncton Wood well enough. Now come, we had better start for the Marsh End and see what we find.”

Yet Spindle’s instincts were sound. As they moved off once more a mole followed them, her sightless eyes narrowed, her brow furrowed, her snout inquisitive. She kept downwind of them because she smelt, and because that way she could the more easily scent them....

Sniff, snuff, sniffle, wrinkle and whiskery whiffle: she scented two of them, definitely strangers, strong, tired, one limping slightly with weak paws, talking of scribing, talking of the system as if they were familiar with it, one called Spindle the other as yet unnamed. See where they go and then report. Good worms were the reward for such reports. Or would have been once, might still be. Things not what they were. No. But worth a try. Follow then, quietly. The blind female went straight into a root and fell, and then lay still lest her quarry heard her. They did not. She got to her paws, gathered her strength, and wearily set off again. No, it wasn’t the worms she did it for, it was the reward of company. Pleased they’d be to get news of strangers, and give her a worm or two and maybe let her stay a little and feel, once more, she belonged and that somemole cared. Sniffle, sniff, northward go and follow. She felt so weary, so ashamed of what she did.

It was when they were halfway across the Eastside and it became easier to take to the tunnels than stumble on over the surface that Tryfan and Spindle began to come across evidence of other moles.

There was the smell for a start. It reminded them of the Slopeside, foetid and unclean. Then there was the rubbish of roof-fall and litter drift, all uncleared. Then there was the scurry of paws and the snouting of snouts, not out of curiosity but fear and disquiet. Moles who did not wish to be seen, or contacted, or even disturbed.

Finally there was mole, squatted down and facing them.

“Who’s there?” it said. “It” because they could not be sure if it was male or female, so rough and wild its fur, so filthy its face, so formless its sore-ridden body.

Spindle was alarmed but Tryfan advanced, quite willing to talk to the mole.

“In peace we come...” he began, but the mole turned and dragged itself away, muttering.

They went on, none challenging them. Moles stared at them from burrows, with hollow eyes and gaunt faces, and fur that was dry and patchy. Some of the moles seemed sightless, others utterly unaware, and more than one was dead and rotting where they crouched.

“Scalpskin?” whispered Spindle.

“Something more, I think,” replied Tryfan. “It is murrain, a form of plague.” His voice was sad and concerned.

“These poor moles,” he whispered, staring at them, and watching as they retreated from fear or shame as they came near.

Some tunnels were deserted yet wormful, others held many moles as if in their suffering they preferred to be close together. None spoke but to themselves in rasping whispers, or groaned and seemed confused and agitated when the two moles went by.

It was only after they had passed through two such grim concentrations of suffering moles, and were nearly through the area where traditionally most of the Eastsiders had had their burrows, that they found themselves approaching a mole who did not go away.

She had her back to them and seemed not to have heard their approach. Certainly she started suddenly when they came within her view, but did not run off. She looked prematurely old and gaunt and sunken of eye but she had no sores upon her haggard body.

“Come on then,” she said, shouting as if she was deaf, “you can take what I’ve got but it ain’t much.” She led them down a poky tunnel to a pathetic cache of worms, which she crouched beside indifferently.

“We don’t want your worms”, said Spindle, repeating it more loudly as she was clearly a little deaf.

“What you come for then?” she cried, peering suspiciously at him.

“We’re going to the Marsh End,” said Spindle.

At this her manner changed from servility to contempt and she reared up at them, her broken talons flailing, and said, “From the Marsh End, are you? Well, what are you disturbing me for, then, with your do-gooding and interfering? Bugger off, the pair of you! It’s bad enough in this dump without the likes of you wasting our time. I’ve got all the bloody faith I need, thank you, and you’ll find others think the same. Promises get a mole nowhere.”

They retreated, and though they tried to pacify the mole and asked her who she thought they were she was not interested, and eventually her rage so overcame her that she began to cough in a terrible hacking way, and phlegm dripped from her mouth.

“Bugger off!” she screamed again and they did.

Others seemed to hear the female’s tirade and gain courage from it. They shouted at Tryfan and Spindle and drove them off, saying they were not welcome.

“Who do you
think
we are?” Tryfan managed finally to ask one of them.

“Frauds!” he screamed, and then he laughed and was gone, his laugh a madness of sound in the stricken tunnels.

They got themselves to the surface and there a younger mole, and male, crouched waiting for them.

“So?” demanded Spindle, angered by the reception they had had. “And who do they mistake us for?”

“Well,” he said slowly, “you
look
like Westsiders, being fit and well and that.”

“Fit!” exclaimed Spindle.

“Well!” said Tryfan.

“It’s what I said. So what if you’ve a bit of scarring to the face? Doesn’t stop you functioning, does it? Got a brain, haven’t you? Can think, can’t you?”

“So if we’re not Westsiders, who did you think we were then?”

“Marsh End zealots, of course. Preaching the bloody Word, going on about the frigging Stone, blathering on about what’s to come and doing nothing about the here

and now. No thank you, not interested. I live my life and keep my snout low and bugger the lot of you!”

“We’re neither Westsiders or zealots,” said Tryfan quietly.

“Who are you then?” said the mole.

“I think they call us outcasts.”