Duncton Wood (56 page)

Another time. Rose suddenly broke a long silence in which she had seemed to be sleeping and said “You can tell what’s wrong with a mole by the way they stand. Illness and disease, even that which starts in the mind, always shows in the body. The easiest things to heal are injuries after a mating fight – give them a push here, a shove there, and a word of encouragement all over and they’re soon as right as rain. How I used to love to get my paws on those rough, westside males!” They both laughed at the thought, and Rose explained: “You see, they use their bodies for fighting so much that they can feel what’s wrong better than most moles, and they soon go back into place. As a matter of fact, fighting isn’t as bad as some moles make out. It teaches a mole to appreciate what he’s got. Too much fear and too little action spoils a body. That’s what was wrong with that Bracken of yours!”

As the weeks passed and February reached its chilly end. Rose began to encourage Rebecca to make sure each day to find time to crouch by herself and “not think” for a while.

“What do you mean. Rose?”

“You just do it, my love, and don’t think about it. You’ll find that every burrow has its best spot for crouching and doing nothing and in my burrow it’s over by that plant where the horehound scent’s so pleasant. You can start right now. You just go over there and close your eyes and don’t think, while I do my best to tidy up a bit. But don’t mind me.”

As Rose slowly moved about, Rebecca tried, but after a few minutes her voice came to Rose across the burrow. “It’s impossible not to think! Thoughts keep coming to replace the ones I’ve just got rid of!”

“Yes, I know,” said Rose unsympathetically, “it
is
trying. But you won’t find it helps to talk.”

That first time Rebecca managed it for only ten minutes before she gave up in exasperation, claiming that she had better go and see what the youngsters were up to. But Rose kept her at it and gradually, as March progressed, Rebecca found she was positively looking forward to her time of not thinking every day.

When this happened, Rose, who was only repeating what her own teacher had taught her so many years before, started to suggest that instead of thinking of nothing, she try thinking about
one
thing each time. It was the spear thistle that grew on the pasture above Rose’s tunnel and would soon be showing life again that she had to think about first time. Then, variously, such things and ideas as oak trees, owls, stones, the Stone, darkness, talons and warmth.

One day Rebecca started to weep when she was doing this, and Rose let her, glad to see that at last some of her grief was leaving her. Later, Rebecca spoke about it, saying, “I remembered running up the hill one day, after Cairn had left to fight Rune – I told you – and it was raining and I was running. I was so confused, running this way and that until somehow I found I was up at the Stone...”

“Somehow?”

When Rose interjected like this, Rebecca knew it was important to find an answer. How
had
she found her way up the hill? She thought back, and she was among those great gray beech trees again, with the rain falling between them and she was turning, running... why, it was the beech trees swaying with her, urging her this way and that, swaying her back to the light at the top of the hill where the Stone was, as if
they
knew where she should go and were telling her...

“Was
that
it, then?” she asked herself and Rose.

“Only you can really tell, my dear. But I know that the trees and plants tell me many things I wouldn’t otherwise know. Sometimes I think they help to guide me to a mole who needs help – otherwise I can’t think how I’ve so often found my way so quickly to a mole. If you doubt me, go on, to the surface in Duncton Wood after a really bad storm, when the trees have been whipped and shattered by the wind, and branches have fallen: you can feel that the trees are shaken and desolate by what has happened, for their feeling is in the very air, mixed with relief as well.”

So, bit by bit. Rose passed over some of the heritage of her wisdom to Rebecca, who one day, she knew, would take over her task of healing.

By mid-March, the two youngsters, particularly Violet, were growing increasingly independent. Violet was already growing fast and had managed to make friends with some pasture youngsters from an autumn litter, so they saw less and less of her, though she came back to sleep in Rebecca’s burrow most days.

Comfrey still liked to stay near Rebecca, though lately he had taken to sleeping in a burrow of his own making. Inspired by Rose, he had grown increasingly interested in herbs and flowers, and was forever asking when he would be able to go out on the surface and see more for himself.

“You’ll have to wait a week or two more yet before the first ones start coming, my sweet thing,” said Rose, “though I expect you’d find a few snowdrops here and there now. And winter aconite. But soon there’ll be celandine and bluebells and after that, in April, there’s ground ivy, bugle, all sorts of ferns starting up and oh! you’re so lucky!” Rose suddenly looked sad and nostalgic, as if she knew that she’d never see such delights again.

“Of course you will. Rose,” said Rebecca. “The warm weather’s nearly, here now. Why, there’ll be the sound of pup cries in Duncton soon, and probably in the pastures as well...” But Rebecca couldn’t go on. Rose was looking at her with eyes that said she knew how old she was and how near the end. And Rebecca could never say anything but the truth to Rose.

Now, subtly, their relationship deepened and changed. It was as if Rose felt there was no more she could tell Rebecca – her beloved Rebecca – and now she must trust to the Stone that Rebecca could find her own way. There were long hours of silence between them; times when the best words were silent. A time when Rose showed Rebecca that she trusted her and in doing so helped Rebecca learn to trust in life again. A time when Rebecca began to see, and fear, that she might soon have to take over Rose’s task of healing. Oh! She knew so little! A time when Rose’s sleep grew longer and more troubled with pain, and her talk began to wander and her sense of peace to deepen, so that the very burrow seemed to hush and grow more still: its shadows darkening, its aromas and scents more delicate and distant, and Rebecca now rarely leaving Rose alone as she slept in her nest.

The pasture moles seemed to sense that Rose’s work was nearly done, for they shushed the youngsters in the tunnels outside and the pasture moles spoke in low voices, and brought food to save Rebecca from having to get it.

Some of what Rose whispered to herself aloud in those last days Rebecca understood; other parts she remembered, and somehow made sense of in later years when she had greater wisdom; and some made no sense at all.

She was old Rose now, her breathing shorter and shallower, her snout hardly moving, the bliss of having Rebecca near her in the dark, moving gently in her burrow soothing her pains, laughing still with that Violet, naughty minx, and Cairn of Bracken of the Ancient System my love my sweet thing she said to him do you remember? Bracken up in the dark tunnel where I lost so much strength giving it to Bracken so he could learn to love so many moles had come her way one by one so much fear so much unnecessary things. Rebecca knew everything already poor child she didn’t know no good telling her sweet child her Bracken she would love.

“Rebecca! Rebecca!” she whispered in the burrow where the scent was sweet.

“Yes, my love,” said Rebecca. Her fur on mine, nuzzling me my love my words her love in me Rebecca Rebecca shivering a shiver where’s your Bracken who I saw, where...

“What is it. Rose?”

“Where’s Bracken do you know where... Bracken?”

“I told you, Rose, he’s gone, he’s gone, but I know he’s safe I can feel it like the beech trees, like I knew before when...”

“I went to him” On the hill and you helped me you did...

“Yes, Rose, sleep. Rose, sleep my dearest Rose.”

I stayed by the Stone afterward looking darkness in the night great trees beech trees sway and roots and I knew it was you and Bracken around us you and Bracken Rebecca you and Bracken would he around us all...

“Yes, Rose.”

You wept at last and I knew it would come like you did to the hill your wet tears had to come on your face on my fur at last. Now. No need my dear no need.

And her old voice died away, leaving only the sound of Rebecca’s tears, muffled by sweet Rose’s fur.

“Where’s Rose gone?” Violet asked the guardmole, who hesitated because he didn’t know.

“She’s gone to the St-Stone,” said Comfrey, angry with himself for always stuttering on the word that mattered most.

“How do you know?” asked Violet.

“I just d-do,” said Comfrey, who
did
know, because Rose told him once that all the plants come from the Stone and plants were no different from moles and he said where do they go when they wither and die in the winter and she said they go to the Stone, which is everywhere, so they must do, and that’s where Rose has gone. But it’s no good telling Violet that, because the words wouldn’t come out right.

But he could tell Rebecca, because she knew and he could find her up by the entrance on the surface in the sun where she went afterward and was now. He would run, he
was
running, running into tears, and he couldn’t help it. Oh, where was Rose, he sobbed.

Rebecca would know.

   28  

I
T
took Bracken, Boswell and Mullion until the middle of April to make their way to the Nuneham system – a time in which Mullion frequently threatened to leave them because “Bracken obviously does not know the way and all this Stone stuff is a load of nonsense,” as he put it.

Bracken himself did not say much. He could feel the Stone’s pull but was not confident enough about it to be willing to argue with Mullion, if he did not want to follow him. Boswell had more faith than either of them, and it was his moderation, and occasional calling of Mullion’s bluff – for the pasture mole really did not want to go it alone – that kept them together.

They faced many difficulties and dangers: the country they had to cross was mainly wet and low-lying and often slow to cross, while since it was the mating season they had to avoid penetrating too deeply into any of the systems they came near. But gradually Bracken found that the pull of the Stone got stronger and stronger until there came a day when they asked a mole they met if he knew where Nuneham was and he answered, with a look that showed he thought they were stupid, “Aye, this is it. It was Nuneham you said, warn’t it?”

Bracken immediately asked where the Stone was and how hostile Nuneham moles were likely to be.

“Oh, well, I wouldn’t worry about that too much. Nuneham ain’t what it was, you know. The river’s moved in the last few generations and flooded the place out so much that there isn’t a system worth speaking of any more. Just a few old-timers like me who keep their snouts out of trouble.... You’ll find the Stone yonder.” He waved a talon westward down the tunnel where they had met and scurried off in the opposite direction.

“Here!” shouted Mullion after him. “Wait a minute!” He ran off after the mole and Bracken and Boswell heard him ask “You got any idea if there’s a mole here who’s a fighter, come from the north?”

“You’re not the first as has asked that, I can tell you! Well, there is and there isn’t. I never met en myself. Plenty comes to find en and most go away disappointed. Some claim they found en, but won’t never say where or when.”

“Where do you think we could find him?” asked Mullion.

“Beyond the Stone, that’s where most things be,” said the mole. “There was several moles like you come on through here not so long back, couple of weeks it war. Big like you they was. They found en and they didn’t.”

“What do you mean?” asked Mullion.

“Well, now, there was four of en and I met three of en after, up by Stone as it happens, and they said they looked about and they reckoned en didn’t exist. But one of en oo warn’t with them anymore, he was waiting a bit longer to see and not going back with the others.”

“Where to?” asked Mullion excitedly.