Duncton Quest (74 page)

Though the molemonths had passed and it was nearly September now, Weed did not doubt that Bailey still remembered things that Henbane would have preferred him to forget.

“Didn’t you think about me waiting? We were going on the surface down to Barrow Vale,” said Henbane shrilly, continuing the argument. “I’m angry with you,” she concluded, mock petulantly.

Bailey grinned.

“I could find you some food, if you like; then you won’t be angry.”

“Well....”

“I can! I’ll get it now.”

And Weed, in the shadows, round a corner, listening and spying, watched Bailey patter by before he peered round and down the chamber and saw Henbane soften and look, for a moment, defenceless, almost molelike. And he, who knew her better than anymole, saw what none had ever seen, or perhaps ever would: Henbane of Whern, happy with herself, playful, affectionate, curled in a corner like a young female pup at play with others.

So Bailey found favour, and the leaner, harder, bigger grike guardmoles could not understand the attentions Henbane showed him nor have guessed correctly what it was that the two did deep in the privacy of Henbane’s quarters.

“Is he...?” they wondered.

“Has he...?” they asked.

“No,” said Weed. Henbane showed no interest in
that
with Bailey.

But sometimes her anger with him was real enough, and expressed in a violent way. Once she struck him in front of Weed, drawing blood on his shoulder. Another time (and, although nomole saw it, plenty heard it and assumed he would be dead by the time she finished with him) she hurled him from a chamber in a moment of pique whose origins none knew and then, so much later, went to find him and cosseted him till it made a mole sick to hear it.

And Bailey dared to smirk. A face, however innocent, can change unpleasantly if it is brought up wrong. Bailey’s had changed. But anyway, more than that, a youngster’s face will always change as autumn comes and blood runs faster, and strength comes to a body whose mind is not yet used to it, and feelings run riot for a time until they settle down. So Bailey now.

He had shown interest, very timid interest, in a female, the youngster of one of the guardmoles – an interest about which the guardmole had complained verbally, having been inclined to thump Bailey but deciding, wisely, not to risk it.

Henbane knew the female, by sight. A silly young thing who had, it seemed, encouraged the liaison and even boasted about it to her friends. So... Henbane was loudly angry with Bailey whose initial smirks had been replaced now by embarrassed hurt and anger, since he had never had such feelings before and they seemed harmless enough to him; and Henbane was being a
pain.

Then he was scared. Scared sick. Henbane had gone cold, which she had never done on him since their first meeting by the Stone, and he felt that cold as if it was a winter freeze, all around him, robbing him of life. And he knew that what he had done, harmless enough though he thought it, would make her do something now. He did not know the words “revenge” and “retribution”, but he suddenly sensed the consequences of them, as a mole might know the cold grasp of an owl’s claws even as he gazes into its looming eyes.

Unjust retribution came that day, and with it the shadows closed a little on Bailey and darkened him.

Scurryings, arrestings, ordering, comings, summonings.

“She wants you,” said a guardmole, insolent. His eyes hated him.

He came. The youngster he had known had a mother, the mother was there. Just a mole, a guardmole’s mate. An imported female from Buckland way.

Henbane was there, powerful and dark. The female was still as death, her fur wilted-wet with fear.

“Watch this,” said Henbane when he came. She looked triumphant,
she
smirked, and her eyes joined all the others that hated him too.

“Please don’t,” he said.

Henbane talon-thrust the female to death. It took only a moment, which made it all the worse. Then, before Bailey could even begin to speak, her daughter, the mole Bailey had so briefly known, was brought in. She was laughing. A guardmole had gone for her and told her there was a pleasant surprise for her....

Her mother dead.
Those shadows reared and closed on Bailey as he heard her shouted cries.

“It was your mother or this Duncton mole to die, one or the other,” said Henbane, “and I thought you would want the Duncton mole you like alive.” She spoke to the youngster, but looked at Bailey.

The youngster was so shocked and distressed that she seemed almost to stop breathing. Then she looked at Bailey and he saw for the first time the desire in another’s eyes that
he
was dead. Henbane purred her pleasure at this cruel scene.

“
Get out
!” she shouted, and they all got out, dragging the body too. All of them but Bailey.

“
You stay
,”
she screamed.

Silence then. Heavy, heavy silence.

“I had to do it,” said Henbane, again and again. “I am sorry to distress you, Bailey, but your actions made me do it. I am fond of you but you must not dishonour that fondness, no?” As she wiped the blood from her talons she wept real tears, which made Bailey cry as well. “Did you have to make me do it?” she said, again and again until it was Bailey saying sorry, and the darkness all about.

For days Bailey barely slept, tossing in nightmares in which a mole, female, stared at him, hated him, rejected him, and that mole was Starling his sister, lost to him for ever; and Bailey cried.

“What is it, my sweet?” whispered Henbane in the dark privacy of his burrow. “Don’t be sad.” She whispered words and ways of saying them she learnt from her dread mother Charlock, who taught her as she was teaching Bailey, and Bailey cried and accepted her comfort, confused and distressed for she was the cause of his hurt, and he felt he hated
her
, and yet it was she who was there comforting him.

“I hate Starling, she left me,” he muttered, and Henbane smiled and said, “Yes, she did,” and turned that lost mole’s dark feelings on his sister Starling.

And yet, a mole that is loved in infancy, truly loved, never quite loses the light of love from his eyes; and one not only loved of mole, but brought up near the Silence of the Stone, may hear that Silence, though he knows it not and the world has deafened him.

So Bailey.

One day, driven by a madness of despair, he escaped the watching guardmoles and even Weed himself, and made his way to Barrow Vale. He vaguely remembered that when he was a pup he was to go there if he needed to, and
that
was something Henbane did not know. None of them knew. Not
that.
So he went.

He crouched, he cried, and, filled with darkness and guilt, he finally whispered one single awesome word: “Stone.”

No answer. Nothing at all. Just the drag of a breeze above on the surface. Nothing to ease his distress, whose nature he could not understand, nor take away the fear and the love and the dependence on Henbane that pulled his heart this way and that.

In agony he ran out on to the surface.

“Mole! Be still!”

Bailey stopped. He was on his way back, fearing to be seen, never wanting another to know where he had been and here was a mole, barely visible finding him.

“Mole!”

“Whatmole is it?” he asked, frightened.

“Sideem Sleekit.”

He relaxed. Nomole trusted her, but she did not scare him physically as most of the others did.

“I’ve been looking for food,” he lied.

“You have been praying to the Stone,” she said.

“I haven’t!” he almost shouted. And then more quietly, almost pleadingly, his plump sides going in and out breathlessly, “I haven’t.”

The sideem came out of the shadows. She stared at him. He saw no hatred. Nothing much at all.

“When the Duncton moles were here —”

“Yes?” he whispered.

“— did they ever talk of Silence?”

He dared say nothing, but he nodded.

“What is it?” she asked. “This Silence?” Her eyes were wide, and he recognised something he knew because he had felt it before and felt it now, perhaps. He saw fear and doubt and searching.

“Don’t know,” he said.

“Can’t you remember?”

“It’s where a mole’s safe, it’s hard to get to.”

“Where is it?”

“Near the Stone,” he whispered.

“What is it?” she asked again.

It was as if his heart opened and cried out; it was as if Starling was there to run to; it was as if, once again, he was safe, going as once he had up these slopes to the Stone, beside a male called Spindle who was special and told them all about a mole called Thyme. It was as if Thyme was there to go to and he wanted to, he needed to. It was as if the Stone had heard him and would let him hurt it, shout at it, threaten it,
hate
it and still be there for him to feel safe by.

So Bailey cried. Before Sideem Sleekit he lowered his snout with shame and loss too terrible for him to bear, and he cried his heart out. No words, just tears and sobs. But he knew she would not tell, would never, ever tell. He knew he had a friend. He knew more than that: he knew he had made a friend and that something in him was still good, something was there of what he was. He knew that. So he looked at her in wonder and then he left her knowing something good had been.

When he was gone Sleekit stayed quite still. Nothing in all her life, with all her training, with all the power of the Word had prepared her for this. It had started with Tryfan in Buckland when she had been part of a Seven Stancing. For the moleyears since then it had troubled her. It had worsened before the Stone of Duncton, to which, when she first came, she knew instinctively her life had been directed. Now, here, quite unexpectedly, it had found its blossoming with the tears of a mole for whom not one in that subjugated system had anything but contempt. Yet he had cried before her, and given an answer she had sought so long, to a question she had hardly dare ask: “What is it, the Silence?”

But not with words had he answered. There between them had been the Silence, where no words were. And Sideem Sleekit was joyful and wanted nothing more then than to go upslope and give thanks before the Stone. And as she went she knew that Henbane must not know, nor Weed; and that it was more important now than it had been in the moleyears before.
They must not know.
If they did they would not understand, but they would destroy her to find out from some dark instinct they had for what was dangerous to them.

That mole Tryfan had told the guardmole Thrift that the Duncton moles might be found in the Silence. For a time it had maddened Henbane, who liked not riddles except of her own making. Then she seemed to have forgotten it, though Sleekit doubted that she had. Henbane forgot nothing.

But Sleekit understood now why Tryfan might have said it. Of course. For a mole seriously to seek anything in the Silence was to know something of the Silence; and knowing that, a mole might well find Tryfan, but if he, or she, did so, then knowledge of the Silence could only make them wish to join him, not to kill him.

Sleekit laughed, and ran. And she saw beauty among the trees of Duncton and could guess how much a mole who loved this place might miss it. Yet the Duncton moles had gone. Then she saw how dark the Word must be to drive out such moles. And she had a wish to join them by searching for the Silence. Oh yes! Sleekit, a sideem, felt humble. A mole had opened his heart to her, and trusted her, and given her an answer whose meaning was great indeed.

“Help him!” she whispered.

But she knew it was for another mole than Bailey that she prayed. A mole who was female; a mole who was a sideem; the mole who was herself. A mole endangered now.

“Help me!” she said.