Duncton Tales (36 page)

“No!” wept Shire.

But cold paws pulled her into Crowden’s tunnels, and speaking no more words, Wort turned away, and began her final trek up into the Moors.

But two moles stayed at the portal of Crowden, both males, both young then, who seemed of no consequence at all. The older of the two wept openly for Wort, and stared at the scribing her pup had made. All was broken and scored by Wort’s frantic paws as she had turned to go.

“Shire”: scored out.

“Uffington”: scored out.

Avebury, Rollright and all the others but one scored out.

That last was untouched and clear, and as the two moles looked down at it a special light caught it and held their gaze,

“Duncton Wood,” whispered the mole to his younger companion, and as he did so they both saw that its scribing seemed to shine and shimmer even more. “We shall remember. And, too, what she could scribe but was not allowed to: Beechenhill.”

“We shall remember what her mother said, “whispered the other, a thin mole with wild fur and a roving intelligent look in his eyes that ever gazed up and away from the confined tunnels of Crowden towards the Moors above.

Then he went a little way after Wort and watched her slow and terrible trek away from the only life she had ever made, and he said, “Stone, guide her, protect her, and bring her to thy Silence, for surely you have forgiven her. As best I may, I shall heed her final words and watch over her daughter, and one day tell her that her mother loved so much that she gave up what she most loved.”

“That was well said, mole,” said the older of the two, “very well said.”

“The older mole’s name was Tarn,” said Privet through tears that the others shared with her at this memory, “a junior in the Library who never gained much rank or respect. Yet what little love there was in my mother’s upbringing in Crowden, what little light, Tarn gave it. And later, when he felt that what he gave Shire was too little, and too late, he gave her something more, for he summoned a vagrant mole from off the Moors and guided him towards a task and a fulfillment.”

Then a soft smile broke like sunshine across Privet’s face and she nodded to herself with pleasure at Tarn’s memory and what he had once done.

“Was that the second mole, the younger of the two?” asked Whillan softly.

Slowly, Privet nodded. Then she smiled again and said in a firmer voice, “Yes, indeed it was. His name was Sward, and he was known as Sward the Scholar. After decades of wandering about the Moors, making a great collection of texts, and recording much that moles told him of those strange dark years, old Tarn got Sward to come back and settle down in Crowden. As I said, Shire was my mother.”

“And Sward?” said Whillan intensely, as if he already knew.

Yes, my dear, Sward was my father, and what love, what patience, what good humour I may have had in raising thee.

I owe to him. But before I tell of that I must tell of Wort’s final act and affirmation before she died, and of how the Stone came to answer Sward’s prayer on her behalf; and I will speak too of Shire’s bitter life, and say more of how I was born.”

She turned to Stour then and said, “Master Librarian, you have asked me to tell you what I know of Rooster, but I must ask you to be — patient whilst I tell of these things that came before. For I believe that in some strange way, the events of which I was both product and witness all those years ago, were guided by the Stone. What seemed to me then malchance and fell circumstance, and caused suffering to many moles, myself included, was the Stone’s will and of its mysterious pattern for ill and good, for darkness and for grace, of which we are a part.

“As it was my destiny to be raised in the shadow of the Moors, so was it Rooster’s. Our paths crossed for a time; that gave meaning to my life which until the mention of his name earlier this day I thought I had lost for ever. But now … I begin to see that what seemed finished continues still, and a pattern of grace is still there waiting for moles to find and help fulfil. So, I must tell of these things preceding my meeting Rooster just as the Stone guides me, and then of how the delving arts were preserved against the vicissitudes of time and faithless moles. Moledom will, I believe, one day find its recovery through him, though the last mole in moledom to even guess such a thing would be Rooster himself.”

“Tell it as you will, good Privet,” said Stour, “for the night is deep and will be long, and its wild winds too strange and unsettling for mole to sleep.”

“I will,” replied Privet with the smile of one who has found courage to trek a hard journey, and will see it through right to the end.

Sward the Scholar! What legends came to be attached to his name in the decades following the pup Shire’s sad deliverance to Crowden, and Sans’ guardianship. Sward the Vagrant! Sward the Eccentric!

Perhaps, most truthfully, Sward the Obsessive, for once he had served his apprenticeship in Crowden’s Library, the confines of that worthy but parochial system became too much for him to bear and the discovery and recovery of texts was his only passion. How often he tried to persuade his good friend Tarn to accompany him on his journeys over the Moors! But how he failed! For kindly Tarn was not a venturesome mole, but liked the dull safety of routine library work, the pleasures in his life being of the quiet and loving kind that come with loyalty and love not to work but to a partner who loved him equally, whose name was Fey.

These two were Sward’s only family, and the true starting point for all his journeying, and the true end as well. While he, living a vagrant’s life out on the dangerous Moors, chased by the grikes who had hegemony there, sometimes in danger for his life, always with adventures to report, and texts to hoard in his secret place up near the Weign Stones, was
their
journeying, their portal on the world beyond.

In time Sward gained such respect for his scholarship and harmlessness that even the grikes let him be, even the dreaded Ratcher moles who lived over on eastern Saddleworth at infamous Charnel Clough.

Strange decades those, when the moles of the Moors turned in upon themselves and none, not even those like Sward, thought to venture beyond their edge. How could they know that all moledom was the same through those long decades of recovery from the wars of Word and Stone? It was not a time of travelling.

One dream, and a strange one, kept Sward a wanderer. It was to find a certain text, one that moles up on the Moors told rumours of, a text written in the last days of her life by Wort
after
she had left Shire in Crowden’s cold care. It had a name: ‘Wort’s Testimony’. And Sward, who as a youngster had witnessed Wort’s last coming to Crowden with Shire, believed that no text he could ever find would be as important as that.

So he wandered on through the years, growing older, his fur going grizzled and grey, and his friends Tarn and Fey despairing that he would ever stop. Until, one winter, he came back, tired and beset, the spark of vagrancy gone from him, and desire to rest and sleep dominant at last.

“He’s ill,” said kindly Fey.

But Tarn shook his head and said,”

“’Tis more than illness ails our friend, for he mopes like one who has seen a ghost.”

Winter set in, Longest Night came, the time of tales and the seasons’ turn, time to cast off the past and turn towards new life once more. On that Night of Nights Sward told his friends why he had come back to stay and why he might never venture forth again.

“I found the text it was my life’s work to seek. I found Wort’s Testimony.”

“Where?” asked Tarn.

“Off across Saddleworth, through the mists and drizzle of the Tops and beyond to Chieveley Dale. Then to a high place called Hilbert’s Top.”

“Hilbert’s a northern name,” said Fey.

“Hilbert was the last Master of the Delve,” said Sward, scholar-like. “He made a place of great grand delvings which nomole but I have visited — except that mole who took Wort’s Testimony and placed it in safety until the years of my life of journeying passed by and led me there.”

“This Testimony …” began Tarn.

“I kenned but its beginning,” said Sward in a voice filled with awe and with shadows in his eyes, “before I saw … I heard … I knew it was of the Silence and that her work, scribed I think near the Weign Stones even as she lay dying there, was meant for the eyes of but one mole alone. Certainly not mine.”

“What did you do with it?” asked Tarn.

“I left it where it was, secret and safe. It was not for me to know more than its beginning; more I could not know and live. But one day that Testimony will be kenned right through by the single mole for whom it was meant. That mole …” His voice grew more hushed as he continued; ‘Tarn, I heard the Silence, I saw the Stone’s Light, and I was afraid. So I came back here, to you, who are my friends, and I have no heart for texts now, nor desire ever to venture forth again. I feel I am on the way to death.”

“And you have nothing left undone?” said wise and humble Tarn. “No more task that the Stone might have set you?”

Sward shook his head.

“And when we were young, Sward? Was there not a vow we made together?”

How silent Sward was then, and how he wrinkled his thin grizzled face, and narrowed his eyes and tried to think of that distant day when Wort had come to Crowden Dale.

“The pup Shire?” he said reluctantly.

“You know well she is a pup no more, but old now, as ourselves, but unhappy. I have done what I could to give her love, but against Sans’ cold and dreadful power it was not much. But now I am old and you have come back and this Longest Night you have told us a tale of fear and awe and something you have seen. But my friend, forgive me, but you think most of yourself. Well, Sward, think this night of Shire …”

“She has no friends,” said Sward, “nor, from all I hear, does she want any. She’s a bitter mole, and has taken over Sans’ librarianship as if she was born to it. What would she want with me? She calls my texts all nonsense, and casts doubts upon my scholarship. She has no need of mole on Longest Night, least of all me!”

“Allmole has need of mole, my friend, especially on Longest Night. No doubt of it, she is alone, and by her own choosing too. Unpupped like Sans, almost incapable of love. And you, Sward? Are you capable? What have you got when all is said and done? Some hoarded texts and a wish to die! No real wish for anything. At the very least you could bring your texts to Crowden, and at the most —” But Fey glanced sharply at him, and touched his paw, and he did not elaborate further.

It was Fey who spoke next: “What Tarn says is true. Is that all your life has been? You saw a young and frightened mole once, and her name was Shire. That Shire still lives. Go to her, mole, tell her about the text her mother made, tell her what you believe this Testimony to be. Mole —”

“I will!” declared Sward, half laughing, half shouting to stop his best friends’ demands. “I will. At least, I’ll seek her out and wish her well of Longest Night and if she bids me leave I’ll … I’ll stay my temper for thee and Fey, who I love more than anymole!”

“Go and do it then!” said Fey with a friendly buffet, “and for goodness’ sake, Sward, eat more, sleep more, care for yourself this winter, for if you go on as you have you’ll not last it out and we two need you! Now, get along with you!”

Thus scolded, and grinning for the first time since his return, Sward set off on what anymole in Crowden would have told him was a hopeless, thankless task.

Enough has been said already of poor Shire and the circumstances of her parting from Wort and adoption by Sans, for anymole with half a brain to guess that she had little chance of being reared as a loving mole. But it was worse than that. Whatever Sans had been, Shire was doubly so. Doubly forbidding, doubly dogmatic, doubly cruel to those she had power over, doubly dour and bitter and withered, and shrunken in her soul. Her only attributes were her skill in matters textual and a gift for teaching scribing and scrivening to those who could stomach her chill manner.

Never, in all her life, until that Longest Night when Sward the Scholar came, had male dared go to her in friendliness. Or if they had, their smile had lasted no more than moments before it withered and died away before Shire’s icy gaze.