Duncton Quest (14 page)

Then Boswell turned to Spindle saying, “Remind him, help him to remember, forgive them and the light of Silence may be thine, and those that follow you.”

But it is hard to forgive. In one place, out on the surface, they found an old male taloned in the chest and left to die amongst others already dead.

“What moles are you?” asked Tryfan, who had gone to the mole to see what he could do for him, for Tryfan had been taught healing by his mother, and had learned more of it from Boswell.

“Of Avebury,” the suffering mole gasped, “all of us. The grikes took over the system and then at the beginning of March we set off here, and many of us died on the way. Many others they have killed. They brought us here but they might as well have killed us there! Avebury is no more. All are gone.” And so the mole rambled, putting a paw to his wounds but unable to stop the blood which pressed out between his talons and on to the grass in which he lay. They stayed with him till he died.

So, apparently unseen, they crossed through the Holy Burrows, Boswell seeming to want them to see the ruin of the place that they would not forget.

But late in the afternoon of the second day, a guard-mole caught sight of one of them, others reported the suspicion that alien moles were about and soon it was clear that the grikes were in pursuit of them, for parties were routinely working their way through tunnels and on the surface with such method and efficiency that they were driven out on to the surface, away from tunnel entrances, surrounded by the sense of remorseless quartering of the high ground of Uffington all about them.

The parties communicated with each other by an ominous drumming on the ground, staccato and irregular, and Tryfan, as the strongest of the three and their physical protector, was now very worried. By nightfall they found themselves crouching near the highest point of Uffington Hill. While to the north, beyond the approaching searchers and far below them, the Vale of the White Horse stretched into darkness, eerily visible sometimes when the cloud briefly cleared and the moon emerged at its brightest. Around them the grass flurried with the breeze that drove the night clouds, and the gusts were getting stronger. Change, always change, coming to Uffington; change coming to allmole. And then, low and distant, the Blowing Stone sounded – a single sombre note from out of the western darkness.

“You know where we are?” said Boswell suddenly.

“Of course I do,” said Tryfan rather tetchily, for he felt they had been led into unnecessary danger. Neither Stones nor Stillstones to protect them here; just themselves and they were three against many.

Boswell’s old voice was calm and gentle about them. They had been facing north, towards the ever-cold wind, but now he turned his back on it and surveyed the nightscape of Uffington beneath which lay the Holy Burrows.

“Here have the great traditions and secrets of the scribemoles been kept, the rituals been enacted, the disciplines been undertaken; here an important part of the spirit of moledom was nurtured and the Silence of the Stone heard. Here....

“Here,” whispered Boswell again, his voice filled with a gentle sadness, the sadness of an open heart that gives; a sadness that has longing in it, great longing, aged longing, that reached to those times Tryfan had imagined himself to be travelling down, and forward too, a little impatiently. To the time Tryfan had sensed as well was coming....

“Here, now,” said Boswell. Now. And Tryfan looked about him in wonder.
Now.
And for a moment he understood that word, of the way that Boswell uttered it and in it he knew no fear, and knowing no fear he heard a Silence, great and good, burgeoning all about him so that he sighed and tears came to him. The Silence was now and in the being of it completely, where a mole is not himself any more, nor even a mole.

Then he looked around, a little embarrassed, at Spindle who to his astonishment he saw was yawning and scratching himself.

Then Spindle sighed too.

“I’m tired,” he said. “Too much excitement, too little food, too much travel. Too much danger. I think we should run for it while we still can... but if you two are going to talk about it I’m going to have a sleep.”

Which, to Tryfan’s astonishment, he did.

Then Boswell said, “Honour him, Tryfan, for Spindle will always be at your side to love and support you in your task. The Stone has found him for you, as the Stone found you for me, to be a good companion, to learn and to teach me when I had forgotten what I knew, to touch me with talon and heart, faith and hope. So will loyal Spindle be with you when you need him and when you cannot or will not accept help from any other.”

Boswell reached out a paw and touched Tryfan gently on the shoulder, and drew him a little away from where Spindle slept. The ground was stealthy with vibration, and the air over Uffington heavy with darkness.

“It is nearly time now, my dear Tryfan, for you and I to part.”

Tryfan tried to protest, but Boswell’s touch on him tightened as he stilled him and said, “You have learnt what I have taught you well....”

“But I know so little,” whispered Tryfan. “Hardly a thing! I can barely scribe, and there is so much more to know....”

“Then knowing that, you know much indeed,” said Boswell. “Now listen to me, and listen well, for there are teachings a mole must utter but once lest too much is lost in the telling. It is in the doing with awareness that the learning comes. You say you have learnt little, well, let us see what this “little” is!”

Boswell laughed suddenly, in that joyous way he sometimes did in which he seemed a pup again, and Tryfan smiled as well, remembering suddenly the first months with Boswell when again and again he had asked him to teach him something –
anything
 – and Boswell had laughed and told him he had started doing so already and one day Tryfan would know it.

“But what?” Tryfan had asked.

“You’ll know when you stop trying so hard to learn!” Boswell had said and now,
now
, Boswell was asking him, “So what have I taught you?”

Perhaps Boswell’s voice was raised a little then, perhaps it was not a night to sleep, for unseen by either of them Spindle stirred, and his eyes opened, and he saw them close and heard them talking as he lay still, listening. He suspected that Boswell knew he heard, and was sure that the Stone did, but it was right that he did, for through him the first teachings of Tryfan, the greatest teacher of his generation, might one day be known to allmole.

“What have I taught you?” repeated Boswell.

Tryfan settled quickly down, grounding each paw one by one as Boswell had taught him and said with confidence, “To think true thoughts, a mole must learn not to think at all!” Boswell had once told him, mysteriously as it seemed then, “Ground the paws, one, two, three, four, use the paws and the feel of the earth to forget the troubled mind, the tired body and the doubting spirit – all misguided, all unreal! Ground the paws with mindlessness and true action comes! But ssh! Don’t tell anymole!”

Now Boswell was crouched before him, and Tryfan, placing his paws in that special way he had done a thousand times before was thinking of not thinking, and thinking that....

“Tryfan!” called out Boswell suddenly and sharply. “State the First Teaching!”

“The First is that where my paws are, where I am, there is goodness and light, right there!” said Tryfan, a part of him astonished at his own words, another deeper, truer part not surprised at all. “The light is waiting to be seen, right here, here! And it is that good light that makes a mole laugh out loud because he made such an effort to see something always before his snout.”

Boswell nodded, grinning, as if happy, at last, to share a secret he had wanted to speak of.

“And then?” he said.

“The Second Teaching is that a mole who believes that defending his burrow, his system, or even his life, is more important than putting one paw in front of the other towards the Silence of the Stone, is a mole afraid. And a mole afraid is a mole in fear, and a mole in fear cannot fully see the light. So the most important thing is where this paw goes next.”

Tryfan raised his right paw and looked at it, grinning too, the paw raised between them like some object that was waiting to be told what to do.

“And where does it go next?” asked Boswell.

“Here,” said Tryfan, putting it back down in exactly the same spot from which he had raised it. “To moledom’s most distant burrow and back!”

“Quite so,” agreed Boswell. “Fear makes a mole take short steps, fearlessness brings the greatest steps of all: from light to dark and back again. Fear is grey and cloudy, a muffling of sound, a dimming of light and shadow, a half-life of tentative steps, each one harder than the next.”

They were silent for a time, paws grounded, sharing Teachings that the great scribemoles kept secret only because their simplicity deludes a mole into thinking they can be learnt, as worm-finding can be learnt. But these were teachings a mole
becomes
... and Spindle heard them, and knew them to be so.

“And then for the Third?” asked Boswell.

And then, and then... “A mole cannot learn alone. He must know another, and others too, perhaps, and so far as he opens his heart to them so is he able to learn.”

“It is so,” said Boswell. “For this reason have novice scribemoles always been placed with a master, who teaches them by word and by deed. Who the master is is of little consequence if the novice is willing to learn. It is a question of having an open heart that may feel all the beauty and the love and the sadness that is there where a mole places his four paws.”

“For the Fourth,” continued Tryfan, wondering at where his words came from and thinking that perhaps it was some magic of Boswell’s who was in some way really talking, “there is discipline. At the centre it is, for the fourth is centre to the seven, three one way, three the other. Discipline forms the walls on either side of the way that leads to Silence and itself is neither the way nor the light, nor even important. Discipline is not the impulse to move along the way, and is therefore of no value in itself, but it stops a mole from straying off the path.”

Boswell nodded, and touched Tryfan gently once more, as if to remind him that a mole is more of a mole if he touches another and to acknowledge that his words showed he had learned much, and was ready to teach now in his own turn.

“I have instructed you in discipline, and you know what I know. Discipline comes from the practice of prayer and meditation, at the centre of which is the Stone and its Silence. Such discipline is like walls indeed, but invisible walls, silent walls, powerful walls, which give a mole security to resist the clamourings that seek to divert his attention as he follows his proper way. Meditation is not a closing up but an opening out, and a mole should do it with his eyes open to the world about him. It is easy enough to shut yourself away, and sometimes important too. Why, I myself shut myself away in a silent burrow nearby this very place. But true meditation is now and always now, whatever else a mole may be doing, and it encompasses those around him. A mole who would be disciplined should contemplate his four paws on the ground. That is the true scribemole’s way,
your
way.”

“But I’m not a scribemole!” said Tryfan rather alarmed, but Boswell waved him silent, and then nodded for him to continue what he had been saying before.

“The Fifth,” said Tryfan with a little hesitation, “the Fifth...” And before him came the memory of old Boswell’s special love of the rising sun before which he would crouch, his eyes open, his glance going this way and that to enjoy the morning spectacle of life reborn to light, of joy and colour replacing dark and shadow. “... The Fifth is to find the way that leads to the great eastern sun and away from the dark of the setting western sun. Most moles chose the shadow of setting, unsearching but for cover, unseeing but for dark, where the eyes and the mind play tricks. But with the rising sun comes light and truth, and only in that way may the Stone be truly seen, its Silence truly heard. Awed but not afraid should a mole be of such light, this you have shown me.”

Boswell nodded, and together they were silent for a while, contemplating the Fifth Teaching that Tryfan had uttered, and feeling that great light in their hearts. For a mole should know that when Tryfan spoke of the eastern sun he meant a sun far greater, far brighter than the real one. He meant one in a mole’s heart, whose place and glory is found only through a devotion to the way, and an avoidance of the tempting shadows along its route, which indiscipline makes seem real and worthy refuges, when really they are traps and tunnels with no purpose.

Yet, when Boswell spoke, and he did so very quietly, he brought Tryfan towards a strange reality indeed. “Yes, yes,” he said, “this great light awaits all moles, but few know it, and fewer yet are ready to believe it. You must show them, Tryfan, show them by a journey, and a journey that will be to the east, towards that rising sun. Yes, that will be it, so all moles may know. To the east they wait for you, moles of the past, and moles of the future: a journey that will bring more in its wake than you can ever know!”

Tryfan tried to interrupt him, but Boswell waved him silent again and continued, though now speaking so low that it was almost to himself, as if he doubted that even Tryfan, whom he had trained in the ways of meditation and scribemole wisdom, and loved as his own pup, would fully understand what he was saying.

“But you must not forget the west, where darkness is and where Siabod, the strangest and darkest-seeming of the Seven Systems is. To there your father went, and of there is your name made. From there will shadows come, subtle clever shadows that seem like light, but a light whose bright reflection is lined with the black of the eyes of a mole whose spirit is dying. In Siabod Rebecca gave birth to sons, your half-brothers. They and their kind are your kin, Tryfan, and they will come now, for Rebecca’s love is in them, and great Mandrake’s strength, and something too of Bracken’s faith, and the moles that follow you will need them.