Duncton Stone (91 page)

“I was born in Siabod, mole, and I am a warrior through and through. So may the Stone grant that I die. But you, why, mole, you are a Duncton mole and in you, despite your bravery, I see another way. Therefore, though we have need of you, and this is your system, you shall not come with us. Stay here with these... pilgrims. Wait for Maple’s coming, which cannot be long delayed. If I do not live, tell him that I was loyal to his cause to the very end. Then, mole, pray for me at the Duncton Stone and wish me well.”

Such were his last words to Cluniac. Perhaps in his final moments he remembered his refusal to let the Duncton mole come with him that day with gratitude, and felt that the Stone had been with him then, as he hoped it was with him now.

Perhaps... but we do not know.

But there was nothing uncertain about the pomp and circumstance with which Quail was led into the Clearing to take his place near the Stone. Squelch preceded him with a motley choir of younger moles, followed by Brother Inquisitor Fetter, the choir humming while Fetter chanted the first part of the Ministry of the Word – as Sturne and Snyde had redrafted it within the Liturgy of Prime.

“Almighty Stone,

With grace you sent Balagan, First Mole

Who was Prime,

Father of White Moles and precursor;

With grace you decreed the Blessed Boswell

To he the Father of Beechen, who came to us

And gave his life for us.

By the same grace,

Show us obedience, through you...

Discipline, through you...

Silence, through you...

And prepare us for the transformation

Of our blessed Elder Senior Brother,

Quail of Avebury,

Into Prime.”

These, more or less, were the words Fetter uttered, and it must be said that as he did so and the chant continued, and Squelch moved the choir’s humming on into a counter-pointing song, a certain sense of awe and majesty came over the proceedings.

Subsequent reports have sought to persuade us that the unholy ceremony that was now beginning, and would not be complete in all its ghastliness until the following dawn, was wholly without true purpose or merit. It was, such commentators argue, merely about the exaltation and elevation of a foul mole, and nothing more at all, and had no virtue.

But they are wrong, and misunderstand not only the subtle and brilliant achievement of Sturne in subversively transforming a vile ceremony to something redemptive, but also that it is in moments of life’s greatest darkness that the Stone’s Light may shine forth at its most bright. This was the paradox of those crucial hours which were indeed about death and rebirth, of which the elevation of Quail was but a context, and a parody.

However, despite the ceremony’s confident beginning all was not quite well. The Stone was larger and more impressive than Snyde remembered it, and the Clearing rather wider, and the trees that formed it rather taller. Which meant that all in all, a mole like Quail, striving as he was to look grand, even holy, despite his hideous swellings and baldness, managed only to appear paltry, foul, and dwarfed. This last impression was strengthened by the fact that though there
was
a crowd of moles, it was of a size to spread along only one part of the Clearing’s edge.

Snyde was very displeased by this, and calling a temporary halt to the proceedings, he whispered fiercely to Fetter to put things right. Much annoyed, the Brother Inquisitor had to scurry about and draft in some of the guardmoles from about the High Wood. But this was easier said than done, for though more guardmoles were summoned, to make things look busier, yet the space was vast, and seemed to grow vaster as little by little the light gave way towards dusk, and the Stone grew more massive in the gloom, and the beech trees seemed more towering still.

None of this appeared to affect Quail at all; having been brought before the Stone, he now stanced by it with his swollen eyes shut, muttering incoherently to himself. And dwarfed though he was by the Stone, and the High Wood, there was in fact no denying that he was, in some strange, ghastly way, impressive.

Equally, there was no denying that the moles who would be offered up in sacrifice as blood and flesh, which is to say Thripp and Privet, looked very unimpressive indeed. Though Thripp was stronger-looking than in the Wildenhope days, by virtue of being fattened up for the ceremony, he was old, and his head was low, his eyes downcast.

Privet seemed to have retreated into some inner place, leaving her body grey and slumped, and her face wan.

Though their eyes had pierced Quail to the heart when he had seen them for the first time a day and a half before, now they seemed dull and dim, and tired. Which perhaps he sensed, for at the end of Fetter’s chant, and while Snyde was having the crowd augmented and re-arranged, he looked up, searched among the moles, saw them, noted how they did not look at him, and drew himself up somewhat and felt more confident.

The Ministry of the Word was now resumed by Fetter, with Skua beginning to play a part in such a way that it was made quite plain that he was the superior of the two. This effect was achieved by having Fetter utter interminable canticles of obscure mediaeval texts, the last line of which Skua would repeat more loudly, much as one mole might crunch up a worm only to have his superior take up and eat the juiciest morsel.

If there had been any sense earlier that Duncton Wood was besieged by moles beyond the cross-under, whose numbers had steadily increased in recent days and who must surely before long break into the system by persuasion or by force, it was not much felt by the Stone that evening and even less so as the ceremony continued.

For as the liturgy unfolded, interspersed with chant and song, a kind of enchantment fell about the Stone which allowed no concern for what went on beyond it.

The world beyond, indeed, was becoming inconsequential, and all that mattered was the here and now of the ceremony itself. Most fortuitously, it was at this time, and with the lack of numbers still worrying Snyde, who had imagined something more glorious for a ritual whose ending, he secretly hoped, would be with him, that news of the emergence of Pumpkin and the others was brought to him.

Had not Fetter been so heavily engaged, and stanced in the centre of the Clearing before Quail, the news might have reached him first, and the outcome been very different, very peremptory, and very violent. But it did not, and Snyde, hearing that Pumpkin had been caught, and regarding him as of no real consequence but as fodder for the coming ceremony, gave instructions that he and his rebel companions be brought to the Clearing and placed near the other captive moles.

“Tell them they shall be obedient, and silent, and that if they are not they will be killed forthwith,” he said.

Which they did not for one moment doubt, and came along most obediently and silently, surprised to be alive at all, and to be witnesses to what was taking place.

What Snyde could not then tell, nor any other Newborn there, was that their coming, and particularly that of Pumpkin and Hamble, was
part
of what occurred. Chance, or the Stone perhaps, placed both those good moles within sight of Privet, who until then had kept her snout and eyes cast down. She looked up, she saw them, she saw the love and wonder and delight and most of all the support in their eyes and a shudder of relief went through her. She said nothing, but glanced at where Thripp stanced and he, too, looked up, and following her gaze to her dear friends, understood as well that for the first time the trust that each had so long placed in the Stone might be rewarded. Thripp too seemed to shiver with a kind of awed apprehension, and his eyes were beacons of faith shining in the gloom.

“I think
that’s
Thripp,” whispered Hamble, and Pumpkin nodded, sure that it was, but quite unable for more than a moment to take his gaze from Privet, in whom he saw such change; he was now quite sure – as sure as faith itself – that if the Stone would allow him, he would serve her as aide to his dying breath.

Of the participants in the ritual one alone saw these things, and understood their great significance, and that was Sturne. He had seen Pumpkin’s coming with wonder, he had gazed on Hamble with curiosity, for he had only seen him once before when he first came to the system, though he knew of him in so many other ways, and he saw that with their arrival a new purpose and intent came to Privet and Thripp. In seeing this he knew that the Stone was with them now, urging them on, and that by communion of their spirit they might together subvert the ceremony that had now begun.

Then, suddenly, like the unexpected cracking of a great branch in an ancient oak, Snyde’s voice was heard.

“Those who have authority to do so have chosen Brother Quail, born of Avebury, and a mole of worthy life and sound learning to be Paramount and Prime among the moles of this earth.

“Of those present note before the Blessed Stone, who have sight of this venerable and humble mole, and know that he has suffered the trial of Snake and Worm, and that his body bears the marks and pain of that suffering, we ask this question: Is it your will that he should be ordained?”

There could be no denying the power and authority with which Snyde spoke, and as his voice rose at the end of his question the assembly shouted, “It is! It is our will!” And if, among those shouting, some of the rebel followers found themselves involuntarily joining in, a mole should not be surprised, nor even censorious.

For as they did so, and Pumpkin, Elynor and Hamble heard them, these three began to understand what Sturne had already realized, that the more they entered into the spirit of things, the more in some mysterious way they might succeed in subverting the ceremony.

Nor did these three have to wait long for a chance to join in again, for Snyde followed up the first question with a second.

“Of those here present we now ask in all solemnity, will you uphold Quail, born of Avebury, in his holy ministry?”

“We shall! We shall uphold Quail in his holy ministry!” they all cried out, and Pumpkin and the others loudest of all. Only Thripp and Privet were silent, and they cast down their eyes once more.

The Presentation of Quail having been made, and he having looked up once more at the crowd that proclaimed him worthy by their assent, he turned for the first time to face the Stone. He did so with some difficulty, Fetter and Snyde having to come to his flanks to help him, and all could hear the pain in his rasping breath, and sense the truth in Snyde’s reference to his suffering. Several of the Newborns in the crowd, carried away by a genuine sense of awe and occasion, were leaning forward where they stanced and whispering to him, and offering their paws towards him, as if to give him support and encouragement. In him, it seemed, they really did see something of themselves; in him, as well, they believed the power of the Stone might soon be made incarnate.

Skua now moved slowly towards the Stone and took his place between it and the gasping Quail, every bit the Senior Brother Inquisitor. The time for the sevenfold inquisition had come, though had Snyde had his way it would have been eightfold. But there they were, and there Skua was, gaunt in the evening gloom, the Stone rising most impressively above him. Quail, his back to the crowd, snout low, seemed like a supplicant.

Skua paused, no doubt for effect, but in that pause the crowd noticed for the first time, perhaps because there came the slightest of breezes to the branches high above, and then down to the surface below, an odour:
the
odour indeed, which all had heard about but of which few had suffered the full-blown scent. They suffered it now and it was a most wretched and retch-making thing, like the smell of excrement mixed with the bile of a dying mole. So bad was it, so foul, that there was a tremor through the crowd, a sort of group recoil, which was steadied only by the resolution of the guardmoles, and a sudden departure from the rite by Snyde.

Sensitive as he was to danger and attuned to all that was best for his own purpose, he swung round to face the crowd, raising his paws as he did so, and declaimed, “Blessed are we to suffer the odours of his corporeal decay as now he who shall be Paramount and Prime commences his lonely journey towards the Dark Night, casting off the rottenness of his weak flesh to assume the holy form of the White Mole he shall become.