Duncton Quest (32 page)

“Clever, Sir, most alarmingly clever.” The eagerness had gone from the mole’s voice, and he sounded tired.

“Then you want to keep your name from us, and the sight of your body from us, to preserve for as long as you can your sense of our good opinion of you,” said Tryfan calmly.

“I... Good Sir... I —” and the mole was stuck for words.

“Is that your ‘secret’, mole?” asked Tryfan.

They heard him come forward fractionally again.

“Well, Sir —” he began.

“Is it?”

“Yes, Sir,” said the mole simply.

For a long time there was silence between them as some sense of trouble or emotion seemed to afflict the mole until at last Tryfan said once more, and so gently it might have been a May wind across a field of buttercups: “Thy name?”

Then the mole came forward, and he looked at them as if he was ashamed of his very being and he held his snout low and was unable to face their gaze longer.

As he crouched down, in the light before them they saw that his face was bare of fur, and that his sides were hollowed and pock-marked, and his paws scabbed as the grike guards’ had been. His flanks were red raw as the female’s eyes were, though not diseased. Like wounds that had never healed.

If ever a mole was ashamed of himself it was the mole they saw before them now: but not ashamed of an act he had done, but rather of his whole self, inside and out. And yet there had been in his voice, before he allowed them to see him, some other sense of self that was confident and intelligent as if, behind that absurd and flowery use of words, which was so obviously a front, there
was
a mole of confidence, though he did not seem to be before them now.

“Why mole —” began Tryfan, shocked, and instinctively going forward to touch him.

But the mole retreated immediately and said, “You mustn’t touch me. No, no, no, you must not. You don’t want
this,”
and his right paw waved with utter resignation over his flanks and furless skin.

“Thy name,” said Tryfan firmly.

“They called me Mayweed long ago,” said the mole, “and that’s my name forever.”

He cowered away from them even more but Tryfan would have none of it, and reached forward and touched him.

As he did so Mayweed looked down at Tryfan’s talons and uttered a soft “Oh!” in wonder and then “Oh!” again, and he looked up at Tryfan and then at Spindle.

“Not good to touch me, kind Sir,” he said. “No, not good.”

“Who called you Mayweed?” asked Tryfan.

“I – I don’t know. I don’t remember now... I —”

“Who gave you your name? whispered Tryfan, his paw on Mayweed’s shoulder.

“I... she... he...
they
, Sir, but it’s a long time ago and I don’t want to remember. Not that. Don’t touch me like that, Sir, it puts me near my tears.”

“You’re a mole, aren’t you?” said Tryfan.

“Oh, very good that, “You’re a mole aren’t you?” Very good!” said Mayweed, recovering something of his former confidence. “There’s moles and moles, aren’t there?” Well, Mayweed is a mole of sorts, he supposes, but moles don’t usually touch him, in fact never do, except to hit and that’s not the same thing as a touch is it, Sir?”

“No,” agreed Tryfan. “Then why do they hit you?”

“Because I’m Mayweed of course!”

They stared at each other in silence and then he turned away, rather sadly, as if thinking that soon they too would treat him as others did, they would
know,
and yet, as he went on down the tunnel, Spindle noticed that there was a little more vigour and confidence to his gait, as if, only for a moment in his life, that brief touch of Tryfan’s had given him the sense of what it might be to be accepted.

Perhaps this thought occurred to Mayweed too, for he stopped suddenly, turned and said quickly, “Good to be touched it is, Sir, kind and generous and brave, Sir, good and very good! Mayweed will not forget. Mayweed never forgets.”

Then all three progressed on down the tunnel until they came to another chamber, more substantial than the one they had started in.

“Tell them he’s a tunneller!” said Mayweed urgently, indicating Spindle. “Tell them that or he’ll not last long.” Then before they could say anything more he was gone down a side tunnel, and out of sight.

Facing them in the chamber were two grikes, a male and a female, both young and strong looking, and both with the humourless clean looks of zealots who know they are right and everymole who does not agree with them must be wrong. They saw that the male had small sores on his flanks, and the female was losing the fur from her face. The Slopeside must be foul indeed that such moles as these became diseased.

“Word be with thee!” said the female.

“And thee!” said Spindle hastily, covering for Tryfan.

The female looked at them appraisingly. “Mayweed led you here, did he?”

They nodded.

“Don’t trust him,” she said. “A snivelling oily little mole, that one.”

“You’re to be with Skint at the North End,” said the male curtly.

“My friend here,” said Tryfan with as much conviction as he could muster and doing his best despite his weakened state to look as if he had authority, “is a tunneller by birth and training. He —”

“Shut up,” snapped the male. “Mayweed told you to say that. We’re putting you with Skint, who’ll soon find out what your friend is or isn’t.”

“Skint?” said Tryfan.

“Yes. That way.” And they were dismissed northwards up a wide communal tunnel. “And don’t talk or dawdle on the way,” the female shouted after them. “Carry on and you’ll find Skint, or he’ll find you.”

But no sooner were they round a corner and out of sight of the chamber than a familiar voice said out of the shadows ahead, “Psst! Me, marvellous Sirs. Mayweed your friend and intrepid guide. Follow me and I’ll lead you there, right to Skint himself! Yes I will, for nothing too!”

Mayweed was as good as his word, though only after a long trek through tunnels of decay and past moles of misery. Yet to the North End they finally came, to find themselves before a mole who had all his fur, even if it was short, wiry and flecked with grey. There was no spare flesh on his body, yet he looked strong, and of all the moles they had so far seen in the Slopeside he looked the healthiest.

“Well?” he said, taking a confident stance in the burrow where they found him.

“Two new subordinates for you kind Skint, Sir, to make your life easier! Intelligent moles they are, easy to train, kind too....”

“Be quiet, Mayweed, and leave.” Skint’s voice was low and commanding, and Mayweed did what he was told.

“And what,” said Tryfan, by now weary with the travelling, “are we to be trained for?”

“Clearing,” said Skint.

“Clearing?” repeated Spindle, who had said little since they had arrived on the Slopeside. “Do you really think we need training for that?”

“Moles need training for everything,” said Skint uncompromisingly, “especially southern moles. Soft lot the southerners.”

“Really?” said Spindle.

Skint gave him a withering look.

“Now, you’ll not make much of a job of clearing in your present state. So, you can have some food and sleep and we’ll start you slow.”

He led them some way off to some unused burrows which, though dusty and draughty, were serviceable enough.

They were immediately joined by Mayweed coming, as usual, from the direction they least expected.

“Food for them? Nice food?” he said.

“Half a worm at most,” said Skint, scowling.

“Yes Sir, half a worm, Sir, immediately, Sir,” said Mayweed, dipping his snout low and generally making obeisance to Skint.

He came back a moment later carrying a fresh worm in his mouth which he was about to bite into two for them when Skint said, “Not half a worm each, half a worm between them.”

“Sorry Sir, silly me, utterly ridiculous me, half a worm
between
them Sir, that’s generous even magnanimous.”

“It is so,” said Skint shortly, crouching down and looking at the two of them as they shared their tiny ration. “Give moles as weak as this too much and they sicken and die. You can leave Mayweed;
now
!”

“Thank you Skint, Sir!” With a brief unctuous smile in their direction Mayweed left.

“You probably made the mistake of being nice to him,” said Skint, “so he’ll be back. If he is don’t fraternise with him, don’t encourage him, don’t have anything to do with him. He’s a scrounger and a nuisance and he’s trouble, and probably an informer to Eldrene Fescue.”

“Does that matter?” said Spindle, whose general annoyance and anger with all they had witnessed had made him bold. “If she’s of the Word you’ll wish her to be informed. Aren’t you the same?”

“Was once. But now? Word, Stone: when you’ve been a clearer as long as I have, and seen the things I’ve seen, it all amounts to the same. Get a job done and move on, that’s the clearers’ motto. Mayweed’s useful because he learns things and can’t keep his trap shut. He also knows his way round this place better than anymole else. Useful that. Now get some rest. If you work hard and don’t try and escape you’ll be as well treated here as anywhere. There’s not more than a few months work left before we move on again, and I daresay the next pitch will be healthier than this place.” With that small hope Skint left them.

No sooner had he gone than Mayweed reappeared, popping his head around from some unexpected quarter and peering inquisitively at them.

“Warned you off me did he, splendidly unkempt Sirs? Said I was a bad lot. Well I admit I look a bad lot, but what can a mole do on the Slopeside? Not what you call wholesome, is it? Not exactly a place a mole chooses to go if he wants to be smart, would you say?”

He was entirely in the burrow now and when Spindle saw him close to, with his bald skin and smelling sores and over-familiar laugh he instinctively drew away in disgust and might have told him to clear out but for a sign from Tryfan.

Tryfan looked at Mayweed with neither dread nor fear, but, rather, some interest. Mayweed stared back at him and the silence lasted some time.

“You’re a sly one, Sir, I can see that. Most clever. You know how to make a mole talk, you do, yes,” he said, his former timidity now apparently quite gone and thrusting his snout to within inches of Tryfan’s. “Haven’t you heard you’ll die in days if you so much as touch a mole with scalpskin, Sir?”

“Scalpskin? What’s that?” asked Tryfan.

“What I’ve got. This!” and he pointed a talon at his bare head. “And this is what it smells like when you’ve got it so bad you’re bound to die...” And he turned his flank to Tryfan and showed him the suppurating sores on his flank.

“How long have you been here?” asked Tryfan, not reacting to Mayweed’s sudden exposing of his sores.

“Longer’n any of them,” said Mayweed, suddenly sulky. “Longer than eternity.”

“Well then,” said Tryfan, “if you’re not dead, there’s no reason why we should die just yet, is there?”

“Oh clever, once-again-brainy Sir, very, very cunningly clever. Clever as a fox, very neat. You’ll die presently, healthy Sir, through madness, through snouting, through scalpskin, through wasting, through seizure, you’ll die. Sooner than later, Sir, kind though you are.”

Tryfan regarded him impassively.