Duncton Quest (28 page)

Now began the dark and desolate period of Tryfan and Spindle’s time at Buckland which scribes, retelling those historic events, have usually passed only briefly over, perhaps because the two moles themselves later had other, and more difficult, matters to attend to. But an account does exist, and it was truly scribed by the one mole who was witness to those terrible weeks that Tryfan and good Spindle suffered in the burrow-cells. His name... but let his name be told in due time, as it became known to each of them.

They were taken from their first interview with Eldrene Fescue by a long route deliberately chosen to expose them to the scorn and talon-thrusts of those guardmoles who happened to meet them on their way. So that by the time they arrived at the burrow-cells, which lay then at the damp south end of Buckland, they were half unconscious and bleeding from the many buffets and wounds they had received.

The cells were hewn in the interstices of soil between flints and rocks in which, centuries before, twofoots had lain underground. They were narrow, barely big enough for a mole to crouch in comfort, and they were deep, down in sterile subsoil that dripped moisture and chill, even in those summer months. Several guardmoles were there watching the tunnels outside the burrow-cells, and the prisoners were separated so that none easily knew how near or how far others might be.

There was about the place the smell of blood, and excrement, and hopelessness; and others were there unseen but often heard. For there was evil in that place of interminable darkness followed by dim light, followed by darkness once more. Screams of pain, the laughter of grikes... all melded into one as the days (or were they weeks?) passed by. At intervals, but not regularly, Tryfan was dragged out and interviewed, sometimes by grike guardmoles, sometimes by the eldrene Fescue, and sometimes by the Sideem Sleekit. He saw nothing of Spindle and, apart from a last whispered word of reassurance and blessing, had been able to say nothing to him since their appearance before the eldrene.

They were brought food erratically – and never wholesome worms. Instead they found such fare as maggots, or rotting rat, or the entrails of sheep infested with vile worms. At first Tryfan refused to eat, but when he realised he was beginning to weaken he made himself eat the foul stuff and ignore the guardmoles who peered in at him saying nothing. At least it gave him strength to resist their questionings, or at least give little enough away. There were fleas, too, glinting in the gloom, and for water Tryfan was told to lick the slime that dripped and trickled down the flints that formed two walls of his cell.

Escape there was none: the subsoil was too hard for burrowing, the guardmoles too many to fight, even had his strength been good. But he knew he was weakening for lack of air and exercise and yet his resolve to survive, and to resist the ministrations of the eldrene about the Word, did not fade. Rather it grew stronger, and from clues they gave – small impatiences – he surmised that Spindle was alive and resisting as well, inhabiting a cell somewhere nearby.

He knew, too, that others were there, for he heard the guardmoles shouting at them, he heard punishment, and twice he heard screams after struggles to the surface which, he guessed, was the dread sound of a snouting.

Some guardmoles were less aggressive and uncommunicative than others, and gradually as the days wore into weeks he learnt a good deal about Buckland, and the grikes. For one thing, he learnt that there would have been more snoutings but for the imminence of Longest Day and the intention of Henbane to visit the system then and conduct a ritual snouting of Stone followers.

It was confirmed, too, that the system was to be a centre for guardmole training and activity and that it was being prepared for this. More than that, he learnt that the Slopeside, which formed the northern part of the system, was presently still being cleared of plague corpses – a dangerous and perilous task, for most of the moles doing that work died eventually of disease, and a disease whose name was whispered in disgust and loathing: scalpskin. Though what this was, or what it looked like, Tryfan did not know since in all his induction into healing he had never once heard of the complaint.

“How are these clearers directed, and by which moles?” he had asked one of the more friendly guardmoles.

“Zealots of one Longest Night,” was the reply. “Young moles willing to lay down their lives in the cause of the Word. Strong must they be, and believers. If they survive their term they are given a good command, and if not, well, glory will they have.”

“What glory?” Tryfan had asked.

“Names scribed on the Rock in Whern where the Word be spelt. This is a glory Word followers strive for, to have their name so scribed. Names that will live for ever more. Aye, and that’s an honour.”

But what Rock this was, and where the Word might “be spelt”, Tryfan did not know, but it was one of the things he vowed to find out if the Stone spared him. And he had no doubt that Spindle, a more curious and persistent mole than he for facts, would, should
he
survive, make it his business to find out.

Of the other moles who were incarcerated with him in the burrow-cells he knew little, but for the sounds of suffering they made. Talking was not allowed between cells, and nor was one mole allowed out at the same time as another. Yet by peering out from his cell Tryfan occasionally caught a glimpse of some other poor mole taken off for questioning and sometimes, he knew, such mole did not return. His time would come. If not through weakness and death here, then at Midsummer when, he had little doubt, this Henbane would make him one of her snoutings to the Word. And thinking of that, Tryfan knew fear.

One murky and gloomy day, but with light enough for him to see something of what went on, he heard guardmoles’ jeers and laughter as they harried a mole along by the cells. It happened that they stopped within sight of Tryfan’s cell, but were too absorbed with the mole they were tormenting to notice Tryfan watching.

“Oh yeah?” one of them was saying. “Scribe can you? And write your name in rock no doubt. Ha, ha, ha! Very clever.”

“He’s a clever one he is, clever at lying!”

With some difficulty Tryfan made out a mole who, even by that light, he could see was broken in body. His back and flanks were so gaunt that the line of his vertebrae and ribs could be seen through them, and his fur was patchy and torn from ill-treatment. His snout was low and he moved, when he moved at all, with pain and difficulty.

His voice was the barest whisper and what it said, continually, was, “I am, yes, yes, yes. I am. That I am.” A final, desperate, affirmation of the self he had nearly lost in this place of torture. At first Tryfan found it hard to make out the mole’s words, but when he did he noticed immediately that he spoke in the same precise manner as Boswell did and, hearing him, Tryfan was deathly still, and whispered a prayer of help to the Stone.

“What are you, mole? A scribemole or a liar, or both?” mocked a guardmole.

“No, no. Yes, yes, yes. I am, I
am
!” whispered the mole.

“Then scribe on rock for us, mole. Go on, scribe my name. Burr’s my name. Can you scribe that, so my name lives for ever?”

“Nomole can scribe on rock,” said the mole.

At that they hit him viciously saying, “The WordSpeaker can scribe on the Rock of the Word and may one day scribe
our
names!”

And they pushed the mole against the walls of the tunnel and forced him to raise a paw to the black flint.

“Now scribe, mole!” they said, laughing. And they forced his talons pathetically over the flint’s shining surface.

Tryfan, watching, saw that even as they did this the mole not only continued his refrain of, “I am, I
am
!” but contrived to move his other front paw on the floor, to scratch it... or....

He is scribing! said Tryfan to himself, scarcely believing his eyes. But what it was Tryfan could not make out in the half-light.

The grike guardmoles lost interest in their game and drove the mole on, and all Tryfan could do was stare at the spot where he had been, and at the weak scribing left on the chalky floor.

The next time Tryfan was taken from his cell he contrived to pause at the point where the mole he had seen had been, and he ran his talons over the meagre marks the mole had striven to make in the hard chalky subsoil of the tunnel floor.

“I am, I am,” the mole had whispered again and again, and there in the floor, even as the guardmoles had mocked his failure to scribe on flint, he had scribed who he was, and Tryfan touched it, and knew it, and gasped. For the name the mole had scribed was BREVIS, the scribemole who had been Spindle’s master, and who had escaped Uffington before the massacre there by the grikes. The scribemole who had reported on the Buckland system, and whose home system this was. Brevis was alive.

And there in the few moments he had, pretending weakness and confusion, Tryfan scribed something in return, that Brevis might find it and be heartened.

For days after that Tryfan waited until one evening, as night fell, the mole was led down the tunnel again. Tryfan saw that he was weaker now, his paws hardly able to drag his frail body along. He passed over the point where Tryfan had scribed and, as Tryfan breathlessly watched, his paw ran across the scribing he had made, seeming not to recognise it. Indeed he slowly carried on until, a moment later, he seemed to hesitate and pause and reach back as if, from a great distance, the words Tryfan had scribed had been heard by him.

“Come on, old mole,” said the guardmole who was one of the kinder ones. “No dallying.”

“But I... but there’s...” Brevis whispered, wanting to reach back to Tryfan’s scribing and yet, perhaps, not quite daring to, and he was pushed on.

But Tryfan knew – or hoped – that Brevis would return that way later, and watched on. Until at last, seeming even slower now and dreadfully weak, he was dragged past by the guardmole.

“Rest,” whispered Brevis as he reached the spot again. “Rest a moment...” And so he contrived to pause at Tryfan’s scribing.

“Just for a moment then,” muttered the guardmole.

Tryfan saw Brevis run his talons over Tryfan’s scribing, not once, or twice, but three times, the guardmole suspicious but not interfering, for he would not recognise scribing himself. Brevis was still and seemed wondering, and then, from his cell, Tryfan softly spoke out the words he had scribed. Ancient words they are, and magical, the words of greeting one scribemole makes to another, words Tryfan had never spoken as a scribemole before, nor ever, perhaps, imagined that he would have the chance.

“Steyn reine in thine herte,” he said.

Then Brevis turned to the darkness from where Tryfan’s voice came and spoke out the proscribed response, using the same old language, his voice full of awe:

“Staye thee hoi and soint.”

“Me desire wot I none,” replied Tryfan, wondering if the guardmole would intervene. But he seemed bemused by the language the two moles were speaking, and stilled perhaps by the peace between them. More than that he was taken aback by the evident strength that, so suddenly, seemed to infuse the body of the old mole who moments before had seemed near death. For his snout was up now, and his body alert, and he spoke out the last line of the greeting firmly, and with a love that silenced any protest the guardmole might have wished to make, and which also brought tears to Tryfan’s eyes:

“Blessed be thou and ful of blisse,” said Brevis, adding for good measure, in a voice full of joy: “Blessed be thou, mole, whatever thy name!”

It took some moments more for the guardmole to find his senses, so suffused did the tunnel seem with light and strength.

“Eh now, what’s this?” he said. “No talking, you know the rules.”

“He’s a friend,” said Tryfan from the darkness, the Stone giving his voice the power of command and persuasion. “Just for a moment....”

“Well, then...” said the guardmole doubtfully, retreating a little and letting the two moles talk.

“Whatmole art thou?” said Brevis, his voice full of wonder.

“A friend of Boswell, Tryfan my name.”

“Boswell! Does that mole live still?”

“He lives as the Stone lives,” said Tryfan.

“And your name is Tryfan?”

“Tryfan of Duncton. And one you know is alive, and here in these cells. His name is....”

“Good Spindle!” said Brevis joyfully, though scarcely able to keep his stance now, so weak was he and affected by Tryfan’s words. “I thought I heard, I
knew
I heard his voice. Tryfan of Duncton, I have prayed for such a moment. But art thou...?” He pointed a talon back at the scribing on the floor but did not speak the word “scribemole’.

“By Boswell made at Uffington.”

“Then blessed is this moment, blest be this day! I thought I was the last!”

“And I!” said Tryfan, tears coming to his eyes again. “And I.”

Then the sound of other guardmoles approaching could be heard and Tryfan whispered urgently, “Be of faith. We will have need of thee, Brevis, for this is your home system and you know its tunnels. Have faith!”

“I have faith I’ll be snouted at Midsummer,” said Brevis. “It’s what they’re keeping me for.”

“Well, then, we must set you free of this place. And in any case there are other tasks, more important tasks, and you will be needed now, for there are few of us.”

“Do they know what you are, Tryfan?” whispered Brevis, even as the guardmole roughly took his shoulder to pull him away. The other guardmoles were near at paw.

Tryfan shook his head.

“Boswell wished it so,” he said. Then he said to the guardmole with a voice of authority, “Treat him well lest one day you answer for not doing so!” And there was something about Tryfan that was to be obeyed, and, with a final exchange of blessings, the two scribemoles were parted. Then Tryfan turned back into his cell, and, drained of strength, thanked the Stone for the coming of this hour.

Chapter Twelve

For the next few days Tryfan remained buoyed up in a state of hope and confidence at the discovery that Brevis was alive. But no more meetings proved possible, for Brevis was not brought past his cell again, and despite questioning of the more friendly guardmoles he could get no news of him, nor of Spindle either.