Duncton Quest (36 page)

“He’s a mole of surprising knowledge,” Tryfan told Skint and Smithills, “and though he will not have tunnelled as such in the Holy Burrows, he will have studied what he saw there, and certainly learnt something of Buckland’s tunnels from Brevis, who was his master.”

“Aye, well, we’ll hope then,” said Skint. “If it works he’ll find out a lot that even Mayweed can’t discover, for Mayweed’s listening is cowardly and surreptitious whereas a tunneller must know what’s going on and be in the thick of things. Mind you, I don’t know what they want tunnellers for since most of that work has already been done. He’s a braver mole than he looks, that one, but...” and Skint shook his head, “I’m sorry, Tryfan, but you’d best not hope for too much. Now, if you don’t mind, Smithills and I want to talk alone.”

Tryfan was disappointed but not surprised. He knew that neither of the two clearers trusted him yet, nor had reason to, and if there was going to be trouble in the Slopeside, they would want to keep their group, which already included Willow and Munro as well, as small as possible.

So he felt very alone now, and for several days after was restless and irritable. The guardmole had soon returned and moved him to his new beat, which lay some distance from Skint and on the way to Smithills’ patch, and was one of the last pockets of burrows needing clearing. Here he established himself in a burrow he made clean and good, found wormful soil and began to eat well and rest as much as he could, for he felt it likely that if he was going to have to survive alone he would need to recover his health from the long ordeal in the burrow-cell. So he was careful to observe all of Skint’s advice on cleanliness.

One evening, after he had done two hard sessions of work and was doing his best to meditate, there was a scurry nearby and Mayweed appeared.

“I know you’re sad, I imagine you’re worried sick, clever Tryfan, Sir, about splendid Spindle.”

“I am,” said Tryfan, glad to see the strange mole.

“Don’t be,” said Mayweed, with commendable brevity.

“Have you seen him?” asked Tryfan eagerly.

“Dead, Sir? No, Sir! So he must be living, Sir! Muddling along I should say because he isn’t a tunneller is he, devoted Sir? You can’t fool Mayweed. But he’s something more than that, like yours truly here, Mayweed is: a survivor, living not dying, thinking all the time
that
mole, very clever and intimidating to a humble, ignorant mole like me, merely Mayweed. So don’t worry, Sir. I have not seen his corpse yet and don’t expect to! Mayweed did not recommend your good self to tell them that the inestimable Spindle, your friend, was a tunneller for nothing. Mayweed sees a mole, and Mayweed knows. Spindle looked to Mayweed, when this pathetic mole first saw him, as if he had an eye for the veins of a system. We’ll find out soon enough good Sir.”

With that, Mayweed made to go, but Tryfan called him back.

“You’ll watch out for him won’t you, Mayweed?”

“Kind Sir, you have been good to me, I am good to you. I have done nothing but watch out for him these long days past, Sir, but... things are happening. Dark musterings of moles Mayweed likes not. Mayweed’s weak and not a fighter with talon and tooth. Mayweed’s scared, Sir, and frightened now. Harder for Mayweed to get information. Tunnels chock-a-block with moles who could kill him with one talon-thrust, so Mayweed’s somewhat restricted which he doesn’t like, not at all. Doing his best, but currently his best is somewhat roundabout, to say the least, ha! Troubled times now.”

“Skint will look after you if you let him. He likes you!”

Mayweed scratched himself and shook his head as if trying to avoid the embarrassment that was attaching itself to him.

“No, no, no, Tryfan, Sir,
you
will look after me if I let you!” He grinned and then smiled toothily, and added, “Conundrum that! Mayweed likes such! Mayweed will get news of Spindle for you!” and with that, and a too-loud laugh, Mayweed was gone, leaving Tryfan feeling hopeful for the first time in days. Then Tryfan smiled to himself and settled down. If Mayweed was to be the first follower that he and Spindle gathered to themselves, their followers could only get better! Then he scolded himself for thinking such a thing, for all moles are equal, however pathetic some might seem. But then, he thought, Mayweed was not nearly so pathetic or weak as other moles seemed to think. He might be a worthy and respected follower indeed on the long march towards the Silence of the Stone!

A few days after this, as Tryfan returned from taking a corpse to the surface, he was surprised to find an elderly female shivering and miserable in some corner near peripheral tunnels where she should not have been. She was confused and seemed to have been trying to escape but did not quite know where to go. He guessed who she was and gently said, “Where are you going, Willow?”

But this only confused her more, and she seemed to think she was back in her home system and that she knew him well.

“Oh aye, it’s you again, you come to fetch me now! Wind good outside, is it? Shall you take me there?” And she giggled, her voice weak and old and yet contriving somehow to make her sound young and happy, as once she must have been, long, long before the dark days that had overtaken her, and now were killing her.

“You can’t go outside here, Willow. There’s moles about won’t like it,” he said, taking her shoulder to guide her back down to safer tunnels, and perhaps over to Skint’s burrow, for that mole would look after her. But she would not go with Tryfan, and protested when he tried to make her. He was frightened that the commotion she was beginning to make would attract a patrol above, so he crouched down in a leisurely way, hoping to calm her, and was relieved when she did the same.

“You weren’t going off and leaving your friend Skint behind?” he said. She thought about this a little and then snouted about and seemed to understand where she was once more.

“To Wharfedale was I bound, my dear. Yes, just there for a while for ’tis dark here and getting darker with each day that passes.”

“To Wharfedale with its river you’re not going!” said Tryfan with mock authority. “Not today anyway, too far!”

“Then tell me,” she whispered, “tell me, my dear, for you’re from there, you are, yes I know I’ve seen you. Tell me of Wharfedale, and how it has been these troubled years.”

There was such longing and need in her old voice that Tryfan quite forgot his own problems and moved closer to her, saying softly, “Why, now in our Wharfedale ’tis summer and the larks they sing high over the moor, and the wind burrs in the heather above us on the slopes. Down here the water runs and the food is sweet and the roots of tormentil and toadflax make the tunnels fresh as morning air. Can you snout them out, Willow? I’m sure you can...” He paused and she screwed up her eyes and pointed her snout here and there as if sniffing at the balmiest, sweetest, freshest of summer winds, rather than at the heavy filthy stench of the Slopeside.

“Aye, I can that,” she said eventually, “and I can hear the patter of the sheep’s hooves, soft as rain; can you hear that too?”

“I can...” said Tryfan, pausing again, for how does a mole evoke in another the memory of a system he has never been to? Well, such words come if a mole is loving enough and ready to let the Stone use him. From some deep good place they come, like clear water from a sunny hillside or the words of reassurance a father knows who has never had need to speak them before; yes, they come, and they came for Tryfan then, drawing perhaps on things that Skint and Smithills had mentioned of Grassington, or stories Boswell had told him of the northern systems.

However it was, Tryfan spoke such words then to lost Willow... “’Tis good is our system and the tunnels so rich, and the young learn to sing those old songs... no system in the whole of moledom is like our system by Wharfedale...” and Tryfan felt the strangest of longings, to travel north and see those systems that were to him but places of stories and legends.

“Aye, my dear,” Willow said, “you’ll take me there; nay, go there now, just for a moment, for ’tis so dark here I feel bereft of the tunnels I once knew.”

“Not yet, Willow, you stay safe here with me and sing a song....”

“Not of Word or Stone, not them. The songs before that, aye which I learnt, I did, I know I did,” she said.

“You sing one now then, Willow, one of Wharfedale...” and his voice soothed her into a cracked old song that once a young female learned before the plagues came, and before what the plagues brought came, and before the shadow of the Sideem and the Word came across moledom and took moles from their homes who never went back. She sang of a home system she had loved, and when she had finished she said, “Will you take me back to my burrow before you return to Wharfedale?” and Tryfan did, leading her slowly down the tunnels to safety, and letting her lead him the last part for he had not been that way before.

“So, now you can leave me,” she said when she reached the entrance to an untidy ill-made burrow, barely more than a scraping, “this is my home now.” She looked at it briefly and then at him and seemed suddenly ashamed of it and herself and said, “I had a burrow once, the prettiest you ever saw.
You
remember...” and she sounded so tired.

“Yes,” he said, “I remember.” And he went forward to her, and laid his paw on her flanks, where the sores were, and then across her aged, furless face, and he whispered, “May the Stone be with thee, and may you know content once more.”

“Don’t,” she whispered, “don’t,” but she did not move away as he touched her. “I’m so tired,” she said.

“Then sleep now, and you’ll feel better when you wake.”

“Yes,” she said, and turned into the darkness of the only place she had left that she could call her own.

Tryfan watched after her, and then turned away and back down the tunnel she had brought him to, not seeing in the shadows the mole that had watched them, and followed them, and heard all that had passed between them.

That mole went quietly down to Willow’s place after Tryfan left and looked in on her and her voice came sleepily out of the darkness, “Whatmole is it there? Is it Skint? Eh? Skint?” And then, “I was going to Wharfedale but a mole stopped me. Young he was and I knew him well, met him once, but I couldn’t remember his name. Did you see him, Skint?”

“Aye, I did. His name’s Tryfan.”

“Tryfan?” repeated Willow shaking her head. “No, that wasn’t his name. He touched me, Skint, here he touched me, and here. He touched me like... like my... it was like I was a pup again. Like that. Like my... What was his name?”

“Tryfan,” said Skint again. “Now you sleep, Willow, we want you rested. Might have to journey. Might have to make a run for it soon and you’ll be coming.”

“Who is he, that mole?” said Willow, mumbling to herself and beginning to breathe slow and deep. “Because I remember being touched like that, yes I do, before, when... I should have asked his name.”

As she fell asleep Skint looked up the tunnel the way Tryfan had gone and there was puzzlement and awed curiosity on his face as he whispered to himself, “That mole? I don’t rightly know... not sure who he is! But... I don’t know.”

If this incident made Skint feel that Tryfan might well be a mole to trust, then another, which occurred a day or two later, made him think he was a mole to respect as well.