Duncton Rising (5 page)

“Well, I’ll address my remarks to young Whillan here,” said Chater promptly, “and if you others pay me the compliment of listening, so much the better. Now let’s start the lessons right away...”

He looked ahead and wrinkled his eyes as he gazed keenly at the route they were to take. Then he raised his, snout and scented at the air a bit before inclining his head and listening hard for good measure.

“Wakes a mole up to look about a bit before moving a paw,” he grunted, “especially when there’s something in the air that warns him to expect roaring owls to cross his path.”

“Already?” said Fieldfare uneasily. They had crossed under the roaring owl way to get out of Duncton Wood, and later passed under again to get on to their present route, but this was the first time they had to set paw on ground where roaring owls went.

“Already, my love? You’ve got to assume it’s all the bloody time in an area like this! Yes, that sickly, oily smell is their fumes, and these ruts in our path big enough to drown a mole if they get muddy, are their tracks...”

There was a sudden roaring behind them from beyond the high hedge of a ploughed field, and the ground vibrated so much that Fieldfare nearly jumped out of her ample skin.

“Get in the grass and keep your snouts down while it goes by – and don’t worry, it’ll be a slow one,” called out Chater, making sure the others had dived for cover before he himself did. “It’s the fast ones that make no noise you’ve got to fear... “he continued indefatigably as it approached.

The great roaring owl, with its gyrating black paws and shiny glinting eyes, rattled and roared past them and on down the path ahead, and peace came back to the countryside once more; Chater pulled himself out of hiding, ran back on to the path, and looked on the way it had gone.

“We’re not going to follow it?” said Fieldfare, emerging from the grass more slowly, and smoothing her fur back down.

It’s the quickest route we’ll find,” said Chater cheerfully, “and journeymoles like making things easy for themselves. Now there are five kinds of roaring owls and that one was the most benign.”

“I would have thought a dead one is the best,” said Maple, as they continued on their way. He was large, strong, young-looking and alert and though he carried himself with natural authority he was easy with it, and able to be self-effacing and willing to learn from anymole who had something to offer, as Chater had.

“So you might, lad, so you might,” said Chater, “but you’d be wrong. Dead roaring owls have all kinds of holes and havens, tunnels and shelters which no self-respecting creature like a mole would go near, but which certain other living things, like adders for one, and foxes for another, not to mention screech owls and the like, are not slow to use. You’ve got to go carefully with a dead roaring owl, I can tell you...”

So Chater shared his experience and told them all he could in the few days they had together, condensing a lifetime of journeying as he told them how to watch the ways ahead, and to guard the rear, and showed them how to make a scrape-shelter safe for the night, and the best way to approach tunnels which might not be as deserted as they seemed.

“Chater has not yet mentioned another kind of roaring owl way, one altogether bigger than those he has so far led us across,” said Privet, who now she was clear of Duncton Wood was more willing than before to tell of her own experiences.

“Bigger and more dangerous than that which the cross-under out of Duncton Wood passed beneath?” asked Whillan.

“Bigger, certainly, more dangerous I’m not so sure. They are very wide you see, and can be heard a long way off, and sometimes at night the gazes of the roaring owls never seem to end, coming on and on. But I believe they are not so dangerous for a mole who knows how to climb their embankments and follow in the sterile concrete ways along their course. The danger is not the roaring owls, provided you can keep your snout clear of their fumes, but from diving kestrels, rooks, and even, so I have been told, rats.”

“Rats!” declared Whillan with a shudder, his eyes widening and his expression hardening. Rats were creatures he had only ever heard of, for though they had been known in the lower levels of the Pastures below Duncton, they had never come to Duncton Wood itself. But allmole had kenned, or been told, of Tryfan’s famous passage through the tunnels of the Wen, where rats were prevalent and nearly killed him and his companions.

“An observant mole can usually smell a rat,” said Privet, adding with an ironic smile, “and a wise mole always can. Now, I hope that Chater will not mind me referring also to the matter of temporary burrows; as he will know, these are an art unto themselves which a travelling mole will do well to master. You see, Whillan, most of the time we use tunnels and chambers whose suitability and security are long established – especially in Duncton Wood, a system blessedly free from pressures from other creatures and two-foots. But a travelling mole must make do with what she can find, and sometimes she can’t find much that’s suitable.”

Chater nodded ruefully, as if to indicate that he too could say a thing or two about unsuitable places in which he had at times been obliged to rest his weary body.

“There was an occasion —” continued Privet.

“You mean, concerning yourself?” interrupted Whillan impulsively, anxious as the young often are to make things clearer and more precise, not appreciating the subtlety of Privet’s tale-telling, which sought to approach the past, even through the remembrance of a brief moment of a journey somewhere, sometime, as if it
was
elusive, just as a journeying should be.

“Myself?” said Privet with a gentle smile, remembering another, less happy self, a self less free than this one. “Perhaps. Yes, perhaps it was me.” She frowned a little, enough to stop Whillan asking further questions, and perhaps to teach him to leave her to tell her own tales in her own way; and to listen, always listen, for the manner of a mole’s speech is as important to the understanding of her heart, if not more so, than what she says.

“On that occasion, the end of a long day’s journeying found that weary mole near a river which she could scent but not yet see. Now, Whillan, as you might expect, the ground was moist, and thereby wormfull and it was the latter fact that made the area appealing as the site for a temporary burrow, and not the former, which warned her away from it; nor even the fact that there was no sign of other mole nor any burrowing creature.”

“I can guess!” said Chater.

“Ssh, dearest!” said Fieldfare, fed up with the interruptions. “It’s Privet who’s speaking.”

Privet laughed. “Chater
has
guessed,” she said. “That mole was woken in the depth of night by a creature that had crept up silently and stealthily, a creature more dangerous than a hunting tawny owl: water. The mole woke up drowning in a swirling blackness of mud, with no way to go that was safe, even if she could have seen or scented or heard which path to take.”

“The river had flooded!” said Whillan, his eyes wide.

“It had surged,” said Privet. “That mole, that tired and foolish mole, was lucky to escape only with a fright and very muddy fur indeed.”

“Aye, I’ve been in the same situation myself,” said Chater.

“Then there’s the question of sound, which of course is lacking in any useful warning kind of way in a scrape made for the night, as opposed to a properly delved tunnel. A mole is easily crept up on by predators in such a situation, and that’s why unless she knows the area and its creatures very well she had best be on her guard, and choose a spot that not only offers some warning of light or sound, but is easily defended as well...”

By such tellings as this they were all pleased to discover that what they had long suspected was true – Privet knew a great deal about journeying, and much too about the history of moledom, mediaeval and modern, and in the days of travel that followed she proved willing to talk about such things, and only fell silent and reverted to her old reticence when pressed too closely about the details of her past after her departure from the High Peak. It was one thing for her to refer to some incident when she was “on the way to Beechenhill’, but quite another to answer any question about what she did when she got there.

“Let her tell things in her own way,” Maple counselled the impatient Whillan privately, and in time she’ll tell you what you want to know, you see.”

One of the recurring themes in what she said – and her remarks were usually addressed to Whillan, just as Chater’s were – was how anonymity and the adoption of a low snout is as good a way for moles to survive as shows of strength and dominance.

“That’s true as far as it goes. Privet,” agreed Chater on the last night before they reached Swinford and the point of parting, “but a mole must know when to show his strength as well as when to retreat, and that’s only learnt by experience. There’s many a tale I could tell you which would have ended bloodily for me if I had adopted a low snout, as you put it.”

“But isn’t it a question of
spirit?”
said Whillan suddenly, frowning in the way he did when some problem or other worried him. 1 mean, all the great moles of the past, like Bracken and Tryfan, maybe even Lucerne
 
—”

“He wasn’t a
great
mole, Whillan!” declared Maple, who opposed all evil, all hypocrisy, whether in the present or the past.

“No, not a great mole. Maple,” said Whillan immediately, his eyes gleaming with the excitement of intelligent debate, “but he was one who knew how to hold power for a time, and therefore his history is worth studying. No, what I mean is that a mole who has sway over others, many others, can never maintain it by strength alone, though I suppose he may win ascendancy by tyranny at first. But to retain it, to use it, he must have something more, and that’s what I mean by spirit. Belief. Faith. Isn’t that what kept you going. Mother, through all the trials you’ve talked about? For anymole can see you don’t have much physical strength and never will have!” It was one of Whillan’s touching habits that in moments of animation he sometimes called her “Mother”.

“Yes, my dear, you could call it spirit...” She stanced up and moved away from them a little to stare into the dull, dank November night. “Others, wiser than I shall ever be, have called such spirit,
love.
As time overtook them, and the physical strength they had when young began to wane, it was love that gave them strength and authority, love for other moles before themselves, love for life. That is what the Stone Mole taught long ago, and it is what abides in the Stone’s Silence and Light for those who have courage to contemplate it.

“And lack of such love is, perhaps, the Newborns” greatest weakness. I do not doubt their sincerity or sense of right purpose, but somehow, somewhere, they have lost their sense of love for those they see as weaker than themselves.”

She paused for a time, and a slight mist drifted upslope from the Thames valley below, which they would have to cross on the morrow.

“Now, Stour,” she whispered,
“he
has such love for mole. So many years others thought him severe and cold and yet... he has love for us. As the Stone Mole had. I have begun to pray for Stour in his dark and lonely struggle every day, and will until the day comes I see him alive again, or know for sure that he is safe and secure at last in the Stone’s Silence.”

How hunched and small she seemed, and yet how strong the sense of thought and concern she gave out, the embodiment perhaps of something of the spirit she had talked to them about.

“My dear,” said Fieldfare, going to her in her motherly way, “grand ideas are all very well, but as well as loving others a mole must be loved. Without my Chater here to live and strive for, to worry over, to hold through the dark nights, why, I’m not sure that I’d be able to love others at all. Love begins in the home burrow.”

“Yes, yes, of course it does, Fieldfare, and always will,” replied Privet. “Some moles are blessed with a love as you and Chater are, whilst others... our opportunity comes and goes, as mine has gone...”

The others fell silent when she said this, hushed indeed, for they hoped she would continue to speak more personally. She did not disappoint them.

“I told you enough of Rooster, and of my time up in the High Peak with him, for you to know that I grew to love him, with a passion too great for one as innocent as I was then, and as shy, to know what to do with! Often have been the times when I wished I had behaved differently, and given myself up to that passion, in body, as well as heart and spirit. Don’t look so surprised, Whillan! I’m not quite as inexperienced in such matters as my reluctance to talk about them, or my failure to mate in Duncton Wood, might lead you to think!”

“Er...” began Whillan, as embarrassed as he was surprised at this sudden revelation, “um, yes!”

Privet laughed, and almost seemed to wink at Fieldfare, who of all of them seemed least surprised. But the moment passed, and to their general regret Privet revealed no more then about her “experience”. Instead she thought a little and continued, “I loved Rooster far more than I knew at the time, far more perhaps than I care to admit even now. It was as if he was my whole life, a part of me; and I know that despite all I was part of him. But love was not a word we knew or understood, and the dark winds that blew in our youth across the High Peak, which are part of the same winds that blow across moledom today, caught us up, and scattered us apart, like fruit that have grown together on the same high, forgotten branch and tumble in the autumn winds, and roll far asunder, their seeds dispersing to make new life which, perhaps, one distant day, will grow near once more...

“Yet we can still feed our love for others from the memory of what we once knew, and hope that our pups and wards – our seed – might fare better than we did in the search for individual love. Meanwhile, we must strive to learn that greater love for moles the Stone leads us towards... we must!”

This strange metaphor of love and quiet declaration of intent moved Whillan greatly, and increased his sense that he had been lucky indeed to have been cared for by such a mole as Privet; even if she only showed him love in undemonstrative ways which used words too often, and touch too little, the example she gave would be with him always, as he hoped would Chater’s guidance in journeying.