Duncton Quest (7 page)

The earliest rumours of the coming trouble reached Uffington in August, when travelling moles from the systems to the north arrived and confirmed what had followed in the wake of the plagues that had troubled moledom for many years: the coming of a new terror in the shape of grike moles.

The plagues themselves had caused division in Uffington, some scribemoles saying that their most ancient task was to heal, and that allmole would benefit if the scribemoles were seen to be fearlessly going out to bring help and preach the Stone’s Silence. But others, and they were the more dominant, said the role of the Holy Burrows was to set an example by prayer and learning; the plagues were, surely, a punishment for moledom’s loss of belief and faith in the Stone over the past decades. The scribemoles need do nothing; the Stone would decide the future.

Spindle’s master Brevis was one of the spokesmoles for the former group and argued for scribemoles going forth and doing healing work – but the final word was with Medlar, the Holy Mole, who had aged in recent moleyears and in that hour of crisis erred to caution and non-action. So, along with the heat of that summer, dissension, uncertainty and a fatal paralysis came to Uffington.

Then, in August, there began to come to the Holy Burrows ominous stories that missionary moles of the long disregarded Word were rapidly spreading from the north in the wake of the plagues and were now within reach of Uffington itself. Three of the seven Ancient Systems – Caer Caradoc, Stonehenge and Rollright – had already been taken over and the scribemoles in the Burrows began to feel that they were gradually being surrounded.

These invading moles were called “grikes”, though what the derivation of this name was, none at Uffington, not even the oldest scholars, was able to establish. All that was known, from the ancient reports, was that the original grikes were dark of fur and snout, clever, lithe of body and strong. They had little humour but much self-confidence, the frightening confidence of moles who know they are right, and were inclined to talk calmly but forcefully. If provoked they did not hesitate for one minute to fight, and to claim as they did so that right must be on their side.

Grikes, it seemed, were not believers in the Stone and despised those who were. They were, rather, followers of the “Word” and it was their duty to preach the Word, to convert moles to it, and to make Stone-believers see the folly of their ways, however it had to be done.

The Word was not unknown to Uffington. Although its disciples evidently believed that it was of divine origin, scholars in the Holy Burrows had established decades before that the Word was the work of a corrupt and evil scribemole of early medieval times whose name was Scirpus. From a system in the north had he come, a young, unlettered mole driven by faith in the Stone to make his way alone to Uffington. There had he learned scribing, and become a great scholar whose commentary on the early Treatise of Dark Sound remains a classic of its kind. But his interest in this dark side of the Stone had deepened and become obsessive, and his work had lingered too long in the Stone’s shadows and the darkness that surrounds its light. Scirpus, the records showed, grew impatient and disenchanted with the existing teachings at Uffington, and, claiming revelation and enlightenment he scribed the infamous Book of the Word. This strange, obscure text, which expounded a mixture of dark love and ominous prophecy, was essentially one long blasphemy against the Stone. It claimed that the Word came first and would be last; that the sound of Silence was dark sound; that moles must atone in blood if they are to be saved of the Word; that to deny the Word is to deny Truth and should be punishable; that it is the first duty of moles to teach the Word for the good of moles; that the Word is the Truth.

His position at the Holy Burrows unfortunately gained considerable credibility by the actions of the eccentric Holy Mole of that period, Dunbar. Until Scirpus’ emergence as the author of his own evil Book, Dunbar had been an exemplary scribemole of great achievement and courage. He had travelled far and wide, but had himself come to Uffington from the north as Scirpus had, and this perhaps gave them a common sympathy.

In the weeks after Scirpus presented his Book of the Word to the Library and invited other scribemoles to read and comment on it, Dunbar remained silent, despite the storm of anger and acrimony the Book immediately created among other scribes. Contemporary reports make clear that Dunbar never gave his full approval of the Book, but he did not demand that Scirpus be forced to withdraw it, saying only (to quote a historian of that troubled period), “Cum broders, by the pawe him tak, for dirk and drublie hertes need loffe. Yef youe doo nat then so shall I! Fro this youre lackelufingnesse cums alle our trublie now and I will staye namore but traveyle fro hir.” And when, much shocked – for Holy Moles, once appointed, had never left Uffington before, and Dunbar’s unique decision to leave is one of the great mysteries of the Holy Burrows – his colleagues asked him where he would go, he said he would go with Scirpus, to debate more with him, and if he did not prevail on him to change his views he would be “nought and nowhedyr” – be nothing and go nowhere.

He was as good as his word, and when Scirpus left, the venerable Dunbar went with him, disputing questions of Dark Sound and the Word all the while. Naturally the decision of so revered a Holy Mole to leave encouraged other moles to follow him, and some scribes and many eager young novices went as well.

Contemporary accounts, based on the reports of a scribemole who had gone with the original party but who later left it and after a number of moleyears returned to the Holy Burrows and did penance, say that they took with them copies of the Book of the Word and the Scirpuscan commentary on the Treatise of Dark Sound. It seems that the party stayed together as far as the Rollright System, which is to the north of Duncton Wood. Scirpus had by then won many of those who had gone with Dunbar over to the way of the Word: there was a dispute, a fight, and only by the loyalty of moles close to Dunbar did the old mole escape. In the confusion the single scribemole who subsequently got back to Uffington escaped as well, but he was soon parted from Dunbar and on his own.

The mystery of where the Holy Mole and the pawful of moles with him subsequently went was not solved until some centuries later, when more adventurous generations of scribes established from place-name evidence and oral stories that Dunbar, or a mole remarkably similar to him, travelled eastwards, in the direction of what story-telling moles fancifully call the “Empty Quarter”, but whose proper name is the “Wen” which in Old Mole means a malignant growth on the flank of a body, or the side of a tree. A growth that has a life of its own, and drains the life from that on which it grows. Malignant, parasitic... and odiferous, for when it breaks, the smell of a wen was believed to be fatally poisonous to mole.

To the east, it was said, such a place existed, where nomole could live because the noise, the dangers, the very air itself was unpalatable and dangerous to mole. There, it was said, twofoots and other great vile creatures roamed of whom the many grim tales were the stuff of which a young mole’s nightmares are made; and it was the home of the roaring owls.

“But where is it
exactly
?” a youngster might ask his parent, looking fearfully over his shoulder (for such fears always lie behind a mole in the shadows outside a snouting’s range).

But the answer was clearer than that: to the east of the most easterly of the Seven Systems, which is Duncton Wood, a mole gets progressively nearer the Wen, but he had best never get anywhere near where it actually starts... Which was answer enough.

It was towards this supposed place that, much later, travelling scribemoles, bravely reporting on the state of moledom, established that Dunbar had travelled, and probably taken with him a copy of the Book of the Word. Certainly enough records were left behind in the eastern systems to trace his route, until at last specific record of him was lost, replaced instead by stories and legends that he had gone ever more eastwards and was lost for all time in the darkness there. Of his final end, or that of his followers, none knew, but few doubt that it was terrible and grim, and that the fatal Book he carried, and the knowledge he and his few followers had, was forever lost as well.

Why he took the Book of the Word with him, or whether he took any other book, is never told in the legends of Dunbar, though it is hinted at in the most famous of them, which suggests that somewhere in the heart of the Wen he hoped that the infamous Book would be kept until “the schism is complete and ended’. And when that happened a mole would come forth from the Wen who would bring peace to moledom, and a sacred knowledge, and a hope for all moles.

So Dunbar went from history, to remain only in memory as a mole who established a race of mythical Wen moles, beings who live in a place that nomole can reach, far to the east, where to breathe the air is death for a mole. Of course there are many legends of the Wen, and the notion that special moles survive there is a common one, as, too, is the idea that one day, from such a place, a great saviour will come at a time when the shadows are long and dark over moledom and he is most needed. Whatever the truth of that, the legend concerning Dunbar was right to talk of a schism, for many date the beginning of the decline of the faith in the Stone in moledom from the Scirpuscan revolt and Dunbar’s strange departure from Uffington.

Indeed, something is known of the fate of Scirpus, that most dark of moles. After the split from Dunbar he trekked northward, back towards the system from which he came, and so charismatic was his leadership that many joined him. His trek north became a march, which many joined, and he led them to a place which lies beyond the Dark Peak and the inhospitable moors where nomole had lived. Yet there Scirpus brought his followers, a place of enormous tunnels and rushing water, and dangers uncharted. It had no name, but in time moles gave it one after the mythical evil system of legend and story, where malevolent giant moles were said to roam: the System of Whern.

It was there that Scirpus developed the first Scirpuscan Community, and it became notorious for its harsh discipline and punishment. There he first tried out ideas later incorporated into the set of principles (which he later called a Rule, the Rule of the Word) by which systems should be ordered, establishing clear hierarchies (which are anathema to faith in the Stone) and punishment to death for transgressions of the Rule – such punishments as snouting which no true believer in the Stone could even contemplate practising.

There, so it was said, Scirpus scribed anew his Book, but adding to it dark prophecies which forecast the end of the Stone and the ascendancy of the Word. Trouble would come, and strife, doubt and argument; then fear and a final decline of faith in the Stone. Plague would come, Uffington would be destroyed and then moles would Atone at last, and under the direction of a great leader the Word would be the saving of moledom.

So scribed Scirpus, and through the decades the memory of him waxed and waned. From time to time followers of Scirpus emerged from the north, usually in the wake of periodic plague, claiming the hour of the Word had come. Some for a time ran their own systems as Scirpuscans, where the dark arts of the Stone were said to be practised, and where the Word was preached. Scribemoles had over the generations bravely investigated the Scirpuscan movement in the north – “bravely” because many did not come back – and in the time of the Blessed Arnold of Avebury, one of the longest serving Holy Moles, a successful war was waged against them. They were routed from their new systems and driven back to the very edge of Whern itself, and up into its bleak and wormless heights. Whether or not any survived, none knew for none dared follow them, and whether they reached the notorious system of Whern again, if such existed, none knew either.

Nor did there seem need to know, for Scirpus and his followers were forgotten in the centuries that followed. So much so that, when the Stone did go into decline, few remembered the dark prophecies. Nor did many connect the coming of the plagues with any chronology of doom for moledom. Moles in danger of their lives, their systems in collapse, do not dwell long on memories of a sinister medieval scholar, and a Book all copies of which were thought to have vanished long ago.

So when stories of the grikes came at last to an already enfeebled Uffington, none there immediately associated them with Scirpus, even when it was said that these grikes preached the Word.

But then, at the end of that August, there came to Uffington two direct accounts of the methods these northern missionaries were using – one from a devout female of the Lovell system, which lies north of the Thames; a second from a youngster who, somehow or other, had reached the Holy Burrows, and who came from Buckland, the system of Spindle’s master Brevis.

Both moles reported that the grikes massacred any who did not agree to follow the Word, and even though, out of fear, moles agreed to do so, many were terrorised or given “Atonements” which involved physical abuse.

When the grikes had come to Buckland, they had killed many moles, forced others to convert to the Word, and then driven the few braver moles who refused to concur with the Word up the slopes above Buckland to Harrow-down, a small adjacent system known for its devotion to the Stone.

There, on the pretext of some ultimate transgression, the grikes snouted all the moles, using the barbs of the wires that surrounded Harrowdown Copse. The youngster managed to hide and then escape, making for the distant Holy Burrows as the only possible sanctuary he could trust. But his memory of the sight and sound of such horror left him in such fright and despair that he shook constantly, and could not be left alone. He died three weeks after reaching the Holy Burrows.

Naturally the scribemoles were distressed at these stories, but none more so than Brevis. He and six others decided to defy the edict of Medlar and set out to investigate what was happening, each travelling to a different system. They agreed to return before the end of September and then prepare a report for the Holy Mole on what they had found. In the event, only one of them was ever heard of again, and that was Brevis....