Duncton Wood (98 page)

“Oh, Boswell,” said Rebecca. And what brought tears to Boswell’s eyes was not her nuzzling and love so much as the fact that it was him she loved, and always had, and not the fact that he was a scribemole.

“Rebecca!” he said, “Rebecca!” She was as beautiful as love. And then, turning to his old companion, he started “Bracken, Bracken...” And it was a long, long time before they stopped talking and touching.

What a time then came to Duncton Wood! What excitement! For when the news that a scribemole had come, and none other than Boswell himself, how they all came flocking to the tunnels of Bracken and Rebecca to see and to touch him!

What excitement there was in the preparations before Longest Night
that
December! How especially thorough were so many of the moles in cleaning out and tidying their burrows! How full of hope that Boswell would go their way in the ancient tunnels and crouch near their burrows and talk softly to them as he answered their questions!

Never was there so much song and chatter, laughter and games, both on the surface and below it, as there was that Longest Night. Never did moles revel so much in the old tales, telling and retelling again the stories of Ballagan and Vervain, the first moles, and Linden, the first scribemole, and the stories of the Holy Books.

And, of course, it soon got out that there was a possibility, just a possibility, mind, that the Seventh Book, the lost book, was, of all places,
here,
in Duncton!

“No!”

“Aye, that’s what they do say... you don’t think somemole as important as Boswell himself, who’s one of the most important moles in the land now, would come all this way just to say hello to his old friends and touch the Stone. No! If you ask me, what they say about this Book is right, and it
is
here.”

Once this was established, it was a short step for the Duncton moles to start debating where the Holy Book was – and
that
wasn’t hard to guess. Under the Stone, that’s where. Beyond that Chamber of Dark Sound where no mole goes if he’s sensible, because there are charms and spells to protect it, and strange sounds that frighten the fur off a mole! Oh, yes! You’d be daft to try it!

But being crazy never stops somemoles from trying, and more than one sneaked his way past the Chamber of Dark Sound and into the Chamber of Echoes in search of the Book. Most got no farther than a snout’s length before turning back from fear. But one did go farther and got lost, and he was saved only because he had a friend with him who had the sense to summon Bracken for help – for everymole knew
he
knew the system like no other mole. He had to go in and rescue the explorer, who got a good many cuffs and curses on his way out – and a pat or two of encouragement too, for Bracken knew better than most what courage he must have needed, even if he did get lost.

Tryfan himself did not meet Boswell until several moledays after Longest Night when Bracken introduced them with joy – his most loved of friends and his son by Rebecca. What more could he have asked?

Boswell gazed gently at Tryfan, recognizing him as the mole he had seen on the night of his arrival by the Stone, and knowing much about him – and guessing more – from what Rebecca bad told him. He saw that Tryfan had about him qualities of both Rebecca and Bracken, and bore within himself a great deal of their love. And perhaps he knew that this was the mole he had come to find.

But if he did, he did not show it. Indeed, Bracken was rather surprised at Boswell’s apparent lack of interest and his unusually brief replies to the questions Tryfan asked him.

“There’s not something wrong with the lad, is there, Boswell?”

“No,” said Boswell, shaking his head. “It’s just that I’m afraid for him. You said he wants to be a scribemole. Well, you, of all moles, ought to know how hard that can be. So leave me to find out if he has the character he’ll need.”

Again and again Boswell avoided, or put off, or refused to answer the questions Tryfan repeatedly asked. “How can I become a scribemole?”

“Pray” was Boswell’s succinct answer.

Replies like this made Tryfan upset and uncharacteristically uncertain of himself and led him to go to the Stone even more, or talk for hours to Comfrey, as he wondered what he had done to offend Boswell, who was so pleasant to everymole else.

Yet, for all Boswell’s seeming refusal to talk, Tryfan began to see how much light there was in him and to follow him around at a distance, sometimes helping him with finding food if he needed it or showing him somewhere in the system that he wanted for some reason to see.

One day, and a very long day it was, Tryfan came to Boswell very nervously – his paws almost trembling with tension. Boswell pretended not to notice, but went about the tunnels as he often did, talking here, telling a tale there, saying blessings or sitting still.

“Boswell —” began Tryfan several times, but Boswell didn’t seem to encourage him, and Tryfan did not quite have the courage to finish his question. It was all so unlike him to be nervous, but there was something so simple about Boswell that he felt unworthy to ask him anything.

But then finally, toward the end of the day, when Boswell was growing tired and Tryfan was afraid he would disappear into his burrow and the opportunity would be gone, he summoned up his courage and started: “Boswell?”

Boswell crouched down and gazed at him. But said nothing.

“Boswell... Bracken told me once that you had a master called Skeat. He said he took you to Uffington. He said you admired him more than anymole and that he taught you.”

Boswell nodded: “And very hard he made it for me sometimes!” he said, remembering Skeat with an affectionate smile.

“Boswell?” began Tryfan again. “Could I... I mean would you... teach me? As a master?”

Boswell looked at Tryfan for a very long time, just as once, long ago, Rose had looked at Rebecca when she knew that Rebecca would become a healer and had wished she could take from her shoulders some of the suffering that that would bring.

“Yes,” said Boswell simply. “Though always remember that it is not I who will teach you anything at all, but the Stone.”

The relief on Tryfan’s face was better than seeing the sun rise in the morning or the look on the face of a pup who rediscovers his mother after he thought she had been lost forever.

“Well... I mean... what must I do?” stumbled Tryfan.

“Learn to hear the silence of the Stone,” said Boswell.

They sat in silence for a long time before Tryfan, emboldened by Boswell’s agreement, asked another question. “Why have you come to Duncton?”

“I’m not sure,” said Boswell. “I thought I knew. I thought it was to find the Seventh Book, and to take it and the Seventh Stillstone back to Uffington. But now I find I’m waiting for something, but I don’t know what. The Stone will show us finally, as it always does.”

This sense of waiting now began to grow stronger and stronger in Duncton. It was like the buildup to Longest Night, or Midsummer, only much slower and subtler, yet infinitely more powerful.

Winter set in and January grew colder, and then the snows and freezings of February came. The Duncton moles grew used to the presence of Boswell, who would often go among them, Tryfan in close attendance, and tell them tales of the Stone and of many legends which only scribemoles know.

There were only two things he would not do. One was show them how he scribed —” for that is something a mole must prepare himself for and these tunnels are no longer the place: you have far finer things here!” The second was that he refused to tell them about his travels with Bracken, or to talk about Rebecca – about whom he was often asked.

But apart from those things, there was nothing that Boswell would not do for other moles, or tell them – although the winter affected him badly and Tryfan had often to make sure that he rested and did not overexert himself.

Still the system waited, and as February advanced and the very first stirrings of still-distant spring were felt in the restlessness in the tunnels, there was the feeling that something, something, would happen soon in the system. Something.

Only two moles in Duncton seemed utterly unaffected by this strange tension – Bracken and Rebecca. They lived more and more quietly and joyously near each other and there were long periods during the winter when neither was seen. All moles respected their privacy and even Comfrey, always one to pop in and see Rebecca, stopped visiting them. Sometimes, though, Boswell would talk to them, indicating to Tryfan that it was best if he did so alone, and Boswell would be especially still and quiet for days afterward.

All around them the system they had loved, and to which both had contributed so much, seemed to be waiting; but they, who had once been so sensitive to its moods and changes, never seemed to notice.

   49  

T
HE
bitter weather of February ran on into March until, after several days of more changeable weather, there came one of those dawns that takes a mole by surprise and revives the hope that there
can
be such a thing as spring. Life need not, after all, be permanently damp and cold.

Rebecca knew it even before dawn came and, leaving her burrow only moments after she awoke, went up onto the surface and over toward the Stone clearing. The wood was still dark when she arrived, but it began to lighten as she found a place to settle down as the mauves of the last of night gave way to the first greens and dark pinks of the dawn. On the wood floor, beneath the leafless beeches, the shadows were still black in the deepest root crevices of the trees, but already some of the leaf litter and fallen twigs and branches were catching the new day’s light that came from the east.

Behind Rebecca, to the west, the last of the dark in the sky was going, revealing high scatters of cloud, now gray, then cream, finally white. As the sun started to rise and its first rays pierced through the wood, brightly catching the green, damp lichen on the beech trunks, or the warm brown of the few leaves that had never left the branch, or the dark green of a bramble leaf which somehow took no notice of last year’s autumn, Rebecca stretched and sighed. The air was clear and fresh.

An early spring day! The kind that lulls some moles into thinking that there will not be any more winter! Rebecca knew days like that and that the best thing to do with them was to enjoy their every single moment and forget tomorrow. That could turn into winter again.

But for now there was some blue at last in the sky, and lovely white clouds to set it off, and sunrays that grew warmer by the second and made a mole feel it time to clear out a tunnel or two, or cast about for a mate.

Bracken stirred and stretched in his burrow. He wondered whether to go and find Rebecca, thinking pleasurably about it for a while before deciding not to, not yet. See what kind of day it is, find some food, groom a bit, listen to the wood. Anyway, these days it took him longer to wake up and he liked to stretch and get the aches out of his body.

Outside on the surface, he headed off toward the slopes as in the distance he heard the sound of carrion crows and pigeons, blackbird and robin, and what might have been a thrush. But it was the crows he heard most of all, for there is something about an early spring day in a leafless wood that makes their call carry. And it
was
a spring day!

Soon Bracken’s paws felt as light as a pup’s and he wanted to run, so he did. But as he started down the slopes, it occurred to him that it
would
be more fun running with Rebecca, so he went back to get her.

When he found that she wasn’t in her burrow, he guessed where she would be and with a laugh, took a route by a tunnel that brought him out on the surface a little below the Stone clearing.

With what sighs and dragging steps did he pretend to pull himself up and into the clearing, with what absurdly mopish snout-lowering and tired weavings here and there did he approach Rebecca, who was crouched in spring sunshine near the Stone! She tried not to laugh, but couldn’t help smiling as she first scented him and then heard him. So sad? Not possible, not him, not today.