Duncton Quest (2 page)

But now, crouched beneath the rising escarpment to Uffington, Boswell seemed fatigued, though an observant mole might have seen that even if his eyes were only half open as his snout extended over his good paw, they were watchful: the eyes of a wise mole thinking. Tryfan, who crouched at his side and a little behind, looked restless and impatient, a young adult male doing his best to keep his energy and purpose in check; waiting, as a young adult should, upon an elder. While before them rose the hallowed heights of Uffington’s great chalk escarpment, which they must climb before their journey’s end.

Long, long had they journeyed, Boswell and Tryfan, for from Duncton Wood to the Holy Burrows of Uffington is many a molemile, too many to count but in the cycle of seasons and passing of moleyears. And the Stillstone Boswell carried beneath his right paw was burdensome, as true Silence may be.

“Still it blows, still it comes, even here in the very vale of Uffington,” whispered Boswell, dimly snouting up to where the branches of the tree bent uneasily, and to where the sky beyond was grim grey with uneasy cloud.

“But spring’s stirring underground,” said Tryfan, trying to sound cheerful as he hunched his flanks against the cold and sought to keep the wind off Boswell. “We’ve had some good days and weeks, the snow has gone, and so will this wind.”

Boswell only shook his head in doubt, and Tryfan had to admit to himself that in all the long moleyears of their journey this frightening wind had rarely eased. It had been relentless and bitter, and had come to seem like a warning, a wind of danger and wrong purpose. A north wind which carried trouble before it, and stirred faction and dark change wherever it had been. A wind ancient in its dark impulse, deep in its dread effect. A north wind of warped spirits, and one which seemed to want to accompany them even to Uffington itself.

Their journey had been by the ancient secret ways known only to scribemoles, above the vales and avoiding contact with other moles. For Tryfan had had much to learn of scribing and the love of moles, and Boswell preferred solitariness and silence for his teachings, and, as a White Mole, was too conspicuous to be comfortable with other moles unless they were used to him. Indeed, in the one system they had come upon, which was three-quarters empty from the same plague and fires that had devastated the Duncton system before Tryfan was born, the few moles there had flocked to touch Boswell, as if he might heal them of the unease that had cast its shadow upon all systems these many moleyears past. Tryfan had had to rescue him from their attentions and firmly guide him back to the old tracks.

It is a hard lesson for a mole to learn that happiness and contentment, care and love, are experiences which pass like the summer breeze through a sun-filled vale, now here, now gone; and a mole had best enjoy them while he may. The rest – the memory, the hopes, the regret – are but echoes of the happiness that was or the glimmering of love that may be again.

So there came a rime when Tryfan looked back on those moleyears with Boswell, regretting that he had not realised at the time how content he was, and excited, too, to be travelling in the company of one who taught him so much, with such kind and easy grace.

They had not travelled quickly, for Boswell liked to dally here and there, teaching his disciple the patience and the peace that comes with being still.

“It does not matter what you contemplate provided it is something important,” Boswell would say.

“Such as?” Tryfan had asked eagerly in the early months, snouting around as if he might find something important there.

“Well,” said Boswell, “almost anything is important except yourself, but few moles find time to think of anything else.”

Boswell had laughed a laugh that in time had made poor Tryfan angry, for however hard he tried it seemed impossible not to think of himself, or of things or hopes or dreams or ideas that wilfully attached themselves to “himself’.

But then, when Tryfan was quite sure how very hard it was to contemplate something “important”, Boswell took him up on to the surface one day in January to watch the changing light of day through snow. A contemplation that Tryfan became so absorbed in that when it was done, and Boswell ordained that they could return underground and eat, it seemed that a whole day had passed in what, to Tryfan, seemed a few moments. That was the first day that Tryfan had ever felt free of himself and began to hear the sound of Silence. The first time he saw he had contemplated something “important’.

In such quiet ways did Boswell teach him to know how to be at peace with himself so that, as their journey progressed, Tryfan learnt how a mole might meditate and carry always with him something of the Silence of the Stone.

“Can a mole ever hear the Silence fully?” Tryfan asked one day. “Hear it, and still be alive?”

Boswell thought for a moment and said, “Yes, yes a mole can, and perhaps a mole has in the past. It is the greatest thing to which a mole can aspire, to be at one with the Silence. I believe a mole will come who is of it.”

“The Stonemole you mean?” said Tryfan quickly, referring to the legendary mole who, the stories said, would one day come and free moles to hear the Silence for ever. Of
him
Boswell rarely said anything at all, except to say that he would come one day, and that would be a day indeed!

“Ah, no, I am not talking of the Stonemole – his task is different. Through Him will all moles learn to have faith that they might hear the Silence, as scribemoles have faith. No, no, after Him one will come who will have found Silence. Soon after Him... yes, yes, Tryfan, soon then one will come. I know it will be so....”

Old Boswell lowered his snout when he said this and seemed suddenly tired, perhaps more than tired, and Tryfan saw an unusual weariness in his eyes. He turned away, and went off a little by himself muttering as he went, “One will come then, yes, one must come then.” His voice seemed filled with sad hope and Tryfan, surprised at this sudden vulnerability in his master, went to him and touched him.

“Can I do anything?” he asked softly, and Boswell turned to him and stared at him and his old eyes filled with tears.

“No, no, Tryfan, you learn well and you give me love and support. Out of faith one will come, after the Stonemole, after that and then I... then I...” and Boswell wept. And as he wept it seemed the very tunnels wept, and the trees and grass above, and moledom itself, and Tryfan was distraught as well.

“I don’t understand – “he began. “I don’t... I can’t....”

“I know you can’t,” said Boswell at last, and in his eyes now was tenderness for the young mole, and love for him, and understanding, and Tryfan wept in his turn.

After that Boswell said no more, and for hours he was silent, contemplating some great sadness or joy, his body crouched and hunched, and his faded patchy fur ravaged as if he carried the whole of moledom in himself and was waiting until somemole came to help him.

Many times in that long wait did Tryfan of Duncton start forward towards Boswell, but always he stopped, sensing that for now his task was only to watch over him from a distance, helpless before the great trouble and struggle that seemed to have set upon him. Then dawn came, warmth, another day, and that unresolved shadow seemed to pass back into the darkness and confusion out of which it had come.

In such ways Tryfan learned that there was more to a White Mole than the simple goodness that was all most other moles saw in him, and if Boswell seemed weary at times it was less because of his age than because there was much in moles that might weary a mole who has known Silence. And, so long as Tryfan was able to see that Boswell’s care for other moles and his tolerance of the weariness they sometimes brought him was the result of the love he gave to them, so he came to love Boswell more, and might one day love other moles as well.

But there were things Boswell chose not to talk about, in spite of the hardest questioning from Tryfan, and one of them concerned the task that Tryfan himself might be given should he ever be allowed to be a scribemole. For Tryfan knew that all moles, whether scribemoles or not, have tasks ordained by the Stone, the fulfilment of which expresses the fullest potential of their strength or their intelligence, or simply their ability to live. For scribemoles, however, the tasks may be more formal, and in the gift of other more senior scribemoles to ordain until the time comes when a scribemole’s task is self-ordained, a solemn undertaking indeed, demanding – as it seemed to Tryfan – weighty consideration and self-knowledge.

Of this, even if it were true, Boswell would say little and answer less, observing that the sooner Tryfan stopped worrying about his task the sooner he might be ready to fulfil it. Yet in the final molemonths of their journey, when they came down from the chalk heights to the vales and met other moles once more, he could not but notice that Boswell directed him humbly to learn what he could of everymole and what concerned them, as if, in that direction, his task might one day lie.

As they had neared Uffington, one theme more than any other had run through the chatter of moles they met: the coming of the “Word” which was seen as a message of strength and power, hope and security in a troubled world. Yet its existence, its very meaning indeed, was no more than a rumour among moles, and one that for a long time Tryfan assumed to be but the idle gossip and hope of moles who, having been afflicted by plagues and fire, now projected their hopes of the future in the coming of a deeper wisdom than the Stone itself, and called this wisdom the Word. It
was
coming, many a mole told them as they neared Uffington. “Aye, and when it does all will be well again, and these Stone-forsaken northern winds quite gone and spring return!”

So moles did say, hunching against the bitter winds that seemed to afflict a mole wherever he turned in those dark days, as bitter snout-shrivelling wind as ever was.

Then too, in those post-plague days, there were many rumours, telling of dark, dangerous moles travelling from the north of which the wind was the harbinger, casting fear into moles’ hearts and making many a system, already decimated and afflicted, places of fear and unwelcoming to travellers like Tryfan and Boswell. But Boswell did not dismiss this kind of gossip as mere superstition.

“The Word?” said Boswell. “Yes, it’s coming. Not too soon, I hope, for you have much to learn before that.” But more he would not say, leading Tryfan back one last time to solitary routes as if to protect him from other moles and further knowledge of those lengthening shadows in which rumours of danger and the Word were intertwined. Then, somehow, in those final weeks of travel Tryfan came to see that whatever his task was it had to do with the coming of the Word, and that it was awesome, and that he had much to learn if he was to fulfil it; and that Boswell would reveal its nature to him when the time was right....

In the last days of their journey, Boswell had begun to talk to him differently, saying, “You must tell them... You will show them...” and even, “Your task may be to make them see...” as if all that he had taught Tryfan had been only so that he, Tryfan, might pass it on. As if
he
might be a teacher as Boswell was. And this troubled Tryfan, for the whole history of the journey, so far as his learning was concerned, was the discovery of how little he knew, and how little he had to say to other moles. Which, when he admitted it to Boswell, the scribemole laughed aloud at saying how true but how hard
that
truth was to teach!

So, in a spirit of humble confusion (as Tryfan was later to describe it), and after some last weeks of complete seclusion from other moles and with the north wind blowing cold and bitter as ever, they had reached at last the eastern end of Uffington....

... And thinking of the journey past and the task that might be ahead of him, Tryfan began to see that Boswell’s hesitation to start the final climb to Uffington might simply be reluctance to admit that the journey was finally done, and that change might be upon them.

“We had better move,” said Tryfan staring once more about the copse in which they had taken stance. “The morning is advancing and there are rooks about.”