Duncton Stone (99 page)

Spurling, Stone bless him, had been something very different, and had that brave mole survived Buckland she would have stanced by her word and taken him into her burrow. But she had always known that it would not have been right. But Hamble was a different proposition altogether. He certainly was...

So she let him tell her that she meant a lot him, though when he suddenly spoilt it all by saying that she was almost like a
sister
to him, why, she felt cross and was very short indeed.

“I know I’ve offended you in some way,” declared poor Hamble, “and I’m sure I didn’t mean to.”

“No you haven’t! What gave you that idea?”

But Hamble was not a mole patient with such play and he did not give her the satisfaction of trying to find out what was wrong.

“I never did like it when moles don’t speak their minds!” he declared. “So either say what’s up or be quiet.”

“Hamble!” she said feebly.

“Well?”

He frowned at her and did not smile when she did.

“I...” But she was at a loss for words. How could she say she thought of herself – or had begun to – as rather more than a
sister
?

He shrugged indifferently and said, “Doesn’t make any difference to what I’ve arranged.”

“What
have
you arranged?”

“I was going to tell you but now I won’t, because it might not happen.”

“What might not happen?”

Hamble grinned and said, “Look, mole, what did we talk about last time, apart from mates?”

There was a twinkle in his eye, or a certain resolution, and she almost quivered at the sight of it. She couldn’t make him out at all.

“We talked...”

“We talked about Longest Night, that’s what we talked about, and about how you liked a chamberful of moles telling tales and what have you. Well, I agree, and so I suggest that come Longest Night you make sure the place is spick and span, and you have a plentiful supply of worms, because I’m going to bring back here, seeing as your place is more comfortable and larger than mine, seeing as you’re an ample mole —”

“Hamble, I’m not that ample!”

“Ample enough for me!” he said shamelessly and chuckling. “Anyway, you be ready to welcome a good few moles.”

“
What
moles?” she implored him.

“All right then, I’ll tell you one, and I’ll be honest with you: it’s as much a surprise to me as it will be to you. But it was his suggestion, not mine.”

Poor Fieldfare felt sudden disappointment. This was not Hamble’s idea at all. This was somemole-else’s. This...

“Here we go again, Fieldfare, I can see it in your face, I’ve said something I shouldn’t.”

“I hoped it was your idea because you cared!” she blurted out, almost tearfully.

“I do care,” he said, suddenly taking her in his paws. “I do care,” he whispered, “and that’s why when Whillan said that come Longest Night he might be willing to talk about all that’s happened to him, seeing as a certain mole or two might be coming to Duncton Wood, I said that I knew a mole would provide a burrow and be only too happy to hear such revelations, and her name was Fieldfare.”

“Did you?” said Fieldfare softly, not letting him let go, and him not wanting to.

“I did,” said Hamble, his back paws beginning to ache from the awkward position they were in, “could we stretch out?”

“Just like that, Hamble?”

“Just like this,” he said firmly.

“Moles might find out,” she said sleepily, much later.

“Might,” said Hamble, “and probably will.”

“Hamble?” she whispered, but he was asleep, and all she could do was to touch his broad shoulders, and caress his scarred face, and to shed a tear of gratitude that there was one thing she knew and that was that Chater would not have minded, not one bit. He would never have wanted her to be alone, but nor would he have wanted her to be with a mole who was not worth something. This mole was worth a lot!

“Chater...” she whispered, her tears for him wetting Hamble’s fur, and soon she slept too, and needed to grieve no more for the mole she had loved so much.

“Fieldfare,” whispered Hamble sometime in the night, his voice rough, his touch gentle.

“Hamble?” she replied, with growing love.

“Mmmm?”

“Something’s occurred to me.”

“Often does,” grunted Hamble.

“You said Whillan suggested coming here at Longest Night. Whillan!”

“Mmmm, I did.”

“But you said he’d have other moles with him. What moles?
Tell
me.”

“If I tell you, do you promise not to say another word and let me sleep?”

“I promise,” she said promptly.

“Right. He said that he wanted to bring three moles to witness Duncton’s Longest Night. When I asked him what moles, he said, and I quote, and here I’m going to remind you of your promise and assure you I know no more than what he said, ‘One of them is the mole I love, and the others are moles who would like to meet Rooster.”’

“The mole he loves! Two moles to meet Rooster! Hamble, and all you want to do is sleep!”

Hamble growled and put his paws about her and said, “You promised.”

“But you didn’t tell me it would be so intriguing,” she wailed.

Hamble chuckled and held her, and Fieldfare had the good grace, and the love, to laugh and say not one word more until... well, at least until daybreak.

Hamble was as good as his word. On Longest Night, after a celebration by the Stone, somewhat subdued on account of the continuing malaise that seemed to affect allmole at that time, as if it would need the whole of winter and a little bit of spring to recover from the moleyears of trouble and strife just past, a motley but cheerful collection of moles assembled in Fieldfare’s communal chamber.

She had cleaned it all out, expanded it a little, spread the sweet-smelling dried sprigs of fennel about, and got as fine a store of food together as any of them had seen in moleyears.

Rooster was there, of course, and Whillan. Privet, somewhat quiet, came too. Maple would not come, but Weeth looked in and said he could stay for a while, and then even Chervil came, back from his most recent journey. Pumpkin came along with an unwilling Sturne, who said he was never much good on such occasions but had yielded to Pumpkin’s suggestion that it would do him good. Elynor was there, somewhat aged, and Cluniac, back from some mysterious journey he had been on with Frogbit, neither of whom would say a word about it, though the glances they cast at Whillan made it plain enough that it had something to do with him.

The only disappointment was that whatever moles it was that Whillan had hoped would come were not there, which in Fieldfare’s view made it likely that he would not say much, or tell them what they all wanted to know, which was...

“How
did
you survive Wildenhope, mole? You know we all want to know!”

It was Hamble who asked the question, and from the deep silence that settled over them, there could be no doubt that he was right, they
did
all want to know, even if some of them were unwilling to ask.

Whillan glanced at them one by one, his face grave, but his eyes clear and sure. Then he nodded and said, “I did want to tell you before, but there’s a time and place for things, and as Cluniac and Frogbit here know, there were a few things to sort out which were better done by them. Well, that’s been settled and I’m as ready to talk tonight as I’m likely to be, and especially in this company. All the moles I’ve ever loved but two are here tonight. You, Pumpkin, who taught me to scribe. You, Privet, who raised and loved me. You, Rooster, my father, and the mole it’s taken me longest to get to know and love. You, Fieldfare, who told me tales in this very chamber when I was young, and taught me what it was to be a Duncton mole.”

“My dear...” whispered Fieldfare, eyes filled with tears.

How different Whillan looked, how still, and how strong. Not just in body but in spirit, and more than one of them saw then, perhaps for the first time, how like Rooster’s his eyes were.

“In the old days they used to begin tales like this: ‘From my heart to your heart I tell this tale...’ Well, that’s how I want to tell it, and will try to tell it... and I’ll begin with that terrible moment at Wildenhope when...”

Chapter Forty-Six

The talon blow that Chervil delivered to Whillan’s right flank after his sentencing and before taking him down to the river was bad enough, causing him to gasp and collapse: but it was the indifference in Privet’s eyes that killed his spirit. Rooster was more important than he was, then, and all those moleyears of love, all that care, seemed as nothing, and as he collapsed his world collapsed as well.

Chervil’s guardmoles hurried Whillan down Wildenhope Bluff, across the meadows, their paws and voices rough, but he hardly seemed to care. They drew nearer to the river ahead, and he was thinking he must try to resist, yet he did not seem to care.

“Mole,” rasped Chervil in his ear, “listen to me... LISTEN!”

His head was low, the river almost at his paws and he about to be thrown into it. Death, he saw, was a confusion, like life. Death...

“LISTEN, dammit, you’re not that badly hurt. It had to look worse than it was...”

Whillan began to listen.

“It’s the best we can do, mole. There’s a steep drop and for a moment you’ll be out of sight. We’ll seem to throw you but we’ll let you down as lightly as we can.
Listen
now. There’s corpses there, Stone help them.”

Whillan came round all right then, not from mention of the corpses, but from sight and smell of them. He retched.

“You must throw one in, so the moles watching on the Bluff see it and think it’s you. Now there is no more time – do it, mole, and then Stone help
you,
for you’re on your own. It’s the best we can do.”

He was lifted up, hurled outwards, restrained at the last moment and swung thumping down, down into slippery mud, down into the smell of death with the dangerous rush of water no more than a paw’s breadth away.

“Throw a body in!” a voice shouted down.

“MOLE, DO IT NOW!”

He did it, tugging and pulling at the greasy swollen thing, shoving and pushing it, and at last heaving it into the racing water. It sank, floated up again, turned in the eddies and was suddenly torn away out into the flood.

“Stay out of sight until we’ve gone. Then... then... shit!”

It was, as Whillan later realized, Rooster charging down, over and out, a huge black shadow against the sky. Rooster taken in the water, taken under it, along with it, grasping at that corpse, and then turning, roaring, looking back and seeing
him,
and knowing he was alive.

And Whillan knowing Rooster, his father, who had tried to save him, must surely die.

“YOU...!” Rooster had roared when he saw him huddled clinging to the base of the bank, alive among the corpses, and he even seemed to laugh. Then as suddenly as he came, he was gone.

“Disappear mole, that’s the best you can do!” It was Chervil looking down at him. “Leave Wildenhope, go far from here, go to... Mallerstang. Thripp says go
there
.”

With that last strange unforgettable suggestion Chervil moved out of sight, leaving only the wind fretting at the vegetation on the top of the embankment high above. Darkness came, and bleeding, hurting, shocked, Whillan found himself alone.

He did not dare climb up the bank, even if he could have done at so steep a place, for fear of being seen. So he clambered along its slippery base, slipping into the water, chilled and desperate, along and round and into the smaller stream. Then, he slept, woke, then slept again, shivering.

Finally, a day later, hurting and aching, confused, he crawled at dusk to drier land and hobbled away into anonymity.

Or nearly so, for there was one place he could go where he was known and might be safe: Hobsley Coppice. There he went, and old Hobsley cared for him until the wound in his body had healed, if not the wound in his heart.

Spring came among the trees, but it seemed sterile to him. He saw the buds, the leaves, and heard the birds, and felt the first warmth of the rising sun, and yet he knew none of it. It was closed to him, or far off down a tunnel whose end would surely take him moleyears to reach. Hobsley advised him to go north, saying that if he had heard of a place called Mallerstang at all, northwards was where it had been. Somewhere or other.

But Whillan chose to go west to Siabod, like Bracken before him. If there was anymole left with whom he could identify it was Bracken of Duncton Wood. So, one day, after a brief farewell and not even looking back, though he knew he would never see Hobsley again – but what did he care, nomole and nothing meant anything to him – Whillan set off for Siabod.

It was mid-May when he reached there and he barely remembered a step of the way, or a single one of the moles he had talked with, or fought with, or stayed with. Not one.

Then Moel Siabod was before him, dark and well-guarded, and he found the first gleam of light in the tunnel he was in, in the sense that here he would find something alive in himself again. He stayed for molemonths, and one day a mole he knew came to him. Female, beautiful to him but unreachable now, and with pups running about her: Madoc, once his love, once the mole the rest of his life was for.

“Whillan.” And he remembered afterwards the way she said his name.

Whillan...

“That’s not my name now.”

“You’re fleeing from the Newborns. Stay here.”

He shook his head and said, I have no name.”

“What happened to Privet and Rooster and —”

“They died, they all died at Wildenhope.”

Madoc smiled and shook her head. She had heard a different tale. Whillan was not himself.

“Whatmoles are these?” he asked, pointing at her pups.

“Mine own,” she said, her eyes steady on his, “by Squelch and yet mine own.”

“What are their names?”

She whispered them, one by one, all Welsh, and all but one quite unpronounceable.

“Morwenna,” she said finally, naming the darkest one with the brightest eyes and the most beautiful form.