As the rain finally eased across Duncton Wood and gave way to a cool evening, Tryfan began to tell Beechen of the events that led to his birth there before the Stone.
Feverfew stayed on as witness to the truth of what Tryfan said, and sometimes when his memory was doubtful or faulty gave her own account, for history is never certain, and its tellers rarely perfect.
Again and again on a particular point of detail Tryfan would say, ‘You’ll need to look at Spindle’s account of this, for he was the one who insisted on scribing things down and leaving good records behind, and though many of the texts were hidden where they were scribed and must one day in more peaceable times be recovered, when he settled in the Marsh End with me he scribed more general accounts of things as they had been, saying that one day it might be useful. Sooner than he thought, I imagine! The pace of moledom has increased since I was your age. But even so, between us Feverfew and I can tell you of the things that matter most and the details can wait until you know scribing …’
Of his journey to Uffington Tryfan spoke, and of Boswell; of the coming of the grikes and the long eclipse of the Stone’s light by the darkness of the Word; of the journeys with Spindle and the exploration into the heart of the Wen where he first met Feverfew. Then after that to Whern, and the return to Duncton and the star in the sky that presaged Beechen’s birth.
As night fell and the moon rose, Tryfan told Beechen with affection of the many moles, many still unknown and their tasks still unfulfilled, who carried in their hearts the light of hope and faith that one day a leader would come to show them the way out of the darkness which, as many were beginning at last to see, they had helped make for themselves. So he led their talk to the Stone Mole’s coming.
‘You know who the Stone Mole is, don’t you, Beechen?’
Beechen nodded, and stared at the moonstruck Stone.
‘It is me, isn’t it?’ he said simply. Then he added with a touching humbleness, ‘But I am just mole. I’m not special. But …’
As he paused Tryfan went closer to him on one flank and Feverfew on the other, and all three stared at the Stone and the dark sky beyond.
Beechen continued softly: ‘Sometimes I seem to know I’m more than me and it makes me frightened, but excited as well. I feel there are moles waiting for me but I don’t know where or how I am to find them. When I touched the Stone I knew that some of those others were there helping me. But …’
Beechen turned to look at Tryfan, and then at his mother, and there was fear in his eyes, and tears. By that light he looked barely older than a pup.
‘I don’t have to leave yet, do I?’
‘No, not yet,’ said Tryfan, barely able to contain the confusion of feelings he felt before Beechen’s mixture of fear and simple acceptance of a task whose difficulty and greatness he already sensed. ‘You’ve things to learn, things that we in Duncton can teach you. Your task for now is to listen to other moles you meet and learn from what they say and what they do.
‘In the old days youngsters left in the years after Midsummer – those at Duncton went out on to the Pastures and a few, like myself, left the system altogether. I first left Duncton in September and I think your time to leave will be when autumn comes as well, but the Stone will guide you on that. Perhaps some of us will come with you, for you will have much to do and will need help as I did. But there too the Stone will help you as it helped me find Spindle and Mayweed and many others I grew to love. Why mole, leaving’s a fear-making thing but ’tis a challenge as well, and there’re moles waiting to cross your path and bring you much you never dreamed of.
‘But meanwhile you must take leave of your mother for the short time to Midsummer, during which I will take you about the system so that you get to know its tunnels and the moles who live here. We shall live in the Marsh End, and before Midsummer comes you shall learn a little of scribing. Afterwards you shall learn much more, and it may not be easy for I sense there is but little time. The summer years, perhaps, but not much more. I had longer than that with Boswell but never felt I had learnt enough! But for now get some sleep. Dawn comes and we must take our leave soon.’
At one time Tryfan had assumed that the Stone Mole would come ready made but now he understood that his own task with Beechen was to prepare him as best he could, with others’ help, for whatever challenges might present themselves. For that it was certainly better he left his home tunnels and lived among other moles.
Tryfan’s natural protectiveness towards Beechen had already made him fix on the Marsh End Defence tunnels as the best place for him to be. It was the repository of all Spindle and he had scribed through the long winter moleyears before this summer, and in the atmosphere of texts and learning Beechen must find out all he could of what moles had made of the Stone, and what, too, they had unmade.
‘Anyway,’ Tryfan told Feverfew a little later when Beechen had gone to sleep, ‘now that summer’s here I feel a scribe’s need to go back to the work I left the day Spindle died and this youngster was born. I’ve a lot to do and he can help me do it and learn a thing or two as well. There’s plenty of moles down Barrow Vale and Marsh End way who’ll be glad to meet him, and he’s a friendly inquisitive youngster and will learn as much from them as anymole else.’
‘I shall miss yew tway,’ said Feverfew, ‘yette does a moule nede silence and tranquylitie after the pasciouns of the sprynge. Watch ovre hym wel, my der, and youseln also.’
‘I shall, Feverfew. Nor should you wander far. Midsummer’s the time the grikes get active once more and no doubt some will venture into Duncton and poke about. Well, you know the system’s ways and how to avoid strangers, and Skint, who knows the ground along the roaring owl way better than any mole, has got watchers organised so we’ll not be taken by surprise.’
They dozed together for a while, paw to paw, flank to flank, snout snuggled into the other’s fur, and dawn light crept through the trees into the rain-damp wood and bathed the sleeping moles in its softness until the rising sun warmed their fur and dried the moisture at their paws, and they awoke once more.
After grooming and a peaceful meal together, the three said a short prayer to the Stone and set off downslope. The confusions of the day before seemed to have left the trees and undergrowth and they were soon back to the runs and tunnels that had been their shared home since April.
The two males said a brief farewell to Feverfew and then, turning from her, set off downslope once more, the feeling of sadness soon leaving as the rich lower slopes of Duncton Wood opened out before them, and a new and important part of Beechen’s life began.
Tryfan’s return to Barrow Vale after so long away, and with no less a mole than Beechen the Stone Mole at his flank, was soon observed and caused great excitement. There had been much talk over the time since April of what Beechen might be like, and those few sightings of him that had been made – and what guardians like Bailey, Sleekit and Mayweed had said – had only added to the sense that he was a mole the system might well be proud of, and one worthy to carry the hopes of the many old and beset moles who had felt until his coming that time and circumstance had passed them by, and they had been outcast to oblivion and hopelessness.
So when word went out that Tryfan and the youngster were fast approaching Barrow Vale – no, had arrived in Barrow Vale – many a mole put all thoughts of summer tunnel delving, modest exploration and a spot of wormfinding to one side, and under the guise of coming to say hello, came to have a good look at how Beechen had turned out.
Tryfan, less sociable now than he might once have been, was not well pleased by the crush of extended paws and pattings on the back, but he took it with rough grace and was glad to see that Beechen was warm and friendly to all he met, though a little too dazed before so many to say much.
A few familiar faces were among the throng, and these Beechen was especially glad to see: Bailey was there, a mole he much liked and whom he knew had a special place in Feverfew’s heart since he had been appointed by Boswell to watch over her coming to Duncton Wood. There, too, he met the quiet but impressive Marram, who wished him well and said that when Tryfan judged the time right he would be glad to tell Beechen about guardmole ways – he had been a guardmole once – and about Siabod where he had journeyed and lived awhile.
‘Siabod!’ said Beechen. ‘I’d be glad to hear about that place!’
They lingered longer than Tryfan might have wished in Barrow Vale and though the intention had originally been to travel on through to the Marsh End that same day, it was decided eventually to stay where they were for the night. Others did the same and as the evening evolved into a night of quiet reunion and story-telling, and later some mirth and revelry mixed (it must be said) with maudlin nostalgia for times past but not forgotten, Tryfan was glad that they had stayed. It did Beechen good to listen to others talking, and to hear the old songs and know what a strange outcast system of moles he had been born into and from which he might yet learn much.
The moles gathered in the great community chamber of Barrow Vale itself where once, Tryfan explained, the elder meetings of the system were held and where the great and notorious Mandrake held court; and where, too, the sinister Rune, then young, first gained power in a southern system and learnt the weaknesses and the strength of followers of the Stone.
‘Before my time,’ growled Tryfan in memory of those days, ‘but Rune desired my mother and she desired him not. For that, much later, I had punishment enough!’ He waved a paw across his scarred face and the moles were silent and serious, for there was not one there but Beechen himself who had not a suffering story to tell about moles of the Word; and the bitterest were those who had been grikes or guardmoles themselves, and whom the Word betrayed.
The chamber of Barrow Vale, so long deserted after the plagues came, was in use again, its floor dust-free and its entrances clear. The sense of age and history that the place had came not so much from the earthen walls as from the roots of the trees on the surface above which gave support and delineation, and in many places – the more comfortable ones – were polished by mole passage or use as resting places, and here and there were pitted and roughened by the sharpening of talons.
Friends of Tryfan, like Bailey and Marram, and Sleekit too who joined the group later in the evening, formed the inner circle of moles near Tryfan and Beechen, along with a few bolder souls who wanted a good look at the youngster. But by far the greater number were those quiet and modest moles, many aged now, who encircled the inner group. Though they spoke little their eyes said much, for they watched Beechen with a touching eagerness and loyalty, and listened to the general talk in some awe.
When Beechen went among them, as he did later with some worms, they were embarrassed and abashed, but mostly pleased that he came so close.
Yet all was not quite peace and tranquillity, for moles do not mix easily in large numbers, and arguments sometimes flare.
One mole in particular seemed to attract a general opprobrium and his name was Dodder. He was an old guardmole, and a senior one at that, who seemed irritable with moledom and inclined to argue with anymole near him, and provoke hostility in others.
‘You’re not stancing here, you mean old bugger,’ said another to him when he first came down from the surface.
‘Wouldn’t want to, Madder. It’s bad enough having to share a chamber with you let alone a patch! You and your kind is what moles like me gave our lives for.’
‘Humph!’
And so on. But outbursts like these were short-lived and as moles finally dozed off and judgements of the night were made, most agreed that it had been a successful coming out for Beechen, and the youngster had acquitted himself well. As for the business of the ‘Stone Mole’ and that, well, a mole got carried away in April by the light of a strange star for he seemed normal enough a mole now he had grown, didn’t he? Nothing exactly holy about him. In fact, truth to tell, it was a bit disappointing that he was so normal …
But when morning came and everymole had to get on with their day, a good few forgot their shyness of the evening before and came forward and modestly wished Beechen well, and, having heard he was to learn scribing down in the Marsh End, they whispered that they hoped Tryfan did not treat him too hard and that he got out into the fresh air from time to time.
‘Thank you,’ faltered Beechen, not sure what he was thanking them for and wondering what they knew or guessed about Tryfan that he did not.
Moleyears later, many remembered their first meeting with Beechen at Barrow Vale, and would say, with that nostalgia tinged with sadness that attaches to memory of a world lost beyond recall, ‘He were but a youngster then, with eyes as wide as a starling’s bill for moledom all about! Whatmole would have thought …?’
But whatever mole did think, one at least had special reason to remember those early days, and his story, but briefly told, must be enough to show that even then Beechen, for all his ‘normality’ and youth, had been touched by the Stone and was already, though he himself probably knew it not, reaching out to touch moledom’s heart.
It happened that morning, soon after they set off from Barrow Vale, that they came across a mole, a thin old male, hiding to one side of their route in the gloom of some nettle stems, as if he had been waiting for them to pass so that he might catch a glimpse of them. It was not the first time it had happened – indeed, Tryfan was used to it on his own account for many of the outcasts had had experiences so violent and sad that they were timid and half-broken things; and if disease had touched them as well, they were embarrassed yet pathetically eager for acknowledgement.
Though Tryfan was no longer a mole who bothered much with the niceties of social behaviour – perhaps because he could not see as well as he once could – he always found it in his heart to greet such moles, though if he could he avoided protracted conversations with them. But a greeting, and a touch, and a moment’s warmth did not seem too much to give.
On this particular day, and after the fingerings in Barrow Vale, Tryfan was more than eager to get on. Certainly, there was timidity in the mole’s gaze, but it was mixed with curiosity and longing too. Tryfan had seen the mole on the night of Beechen’s birth but did not know his name, and he had not been among those in Barrow Vale the night before.
‘May the Stone be with thee, youngster,’ said the mole who, to Tryfan’s relief, did not attempt to say more, or come any closer. Indeed, they were almost past him before Beechen stopped and turned and stared back at the mole.
‘Come on, Beechen,’ said Tryfan, fearing another delay.
But it was too late, and Beechen had gone back to the mole and greeted him.
His face was ravaged by scalpskin, and his paws were swollen, bent and evidently painful. He looked both surprised and alarmed as Beechen approached and half turned to get away. But Beechen was too fast for him and the old mole stopped and his face broke into an uncertain smile.
‘’Twas just to wish you well, mole. Just to see you.’
Beechen stared and said nothing, and the mole said nervously, ‘They say you’re named Beechen. Not a name I’ve heard before but sturdy enough all the same.’ The mole spoke clearly and well despite his natural diffidence. His accent was local and Tryfan guessed that he had been brought to Duncton from a nearby system.
‘What’s your name?’ asked Beechen.
‘Me?’ said the mole. He seemed to hesitate, which was strange since a mole ought to know his name even if he was diseased and inclined towards forgetfulness. ‘My name? ’Tis … why, I don’t know. I …’ and his voice slipped into a fading unhappy cackle as if he regarded himself as so worthless he had even forgotten his own name.
Tryfan was ready to bring this exchange to a halt, and urge Beechen back on to the path into the Marsh End when something about Beechen’s stance stopped him. The youngster had grown suddenly still, as had the other mole, and to Tryfan’s surprise Beechen reached gently forward and touched the mole’s face.
‘Whatever name others have called you, mole, all these years past, it was not the one your mother used. What was your real name?’
The mole held Beechen’s gaze for only a moment or two more before, his eyes softening, his snout fell low and he shook his head a little, as if to shake away a memory too painful to bear here, now, in the light of the present day.
Tryfan felt a tremor of insight and saw that this was a scene, or a version of it, which would be repeated many times in the years to come, as Beechen cut through with a single touch of his paw other moles’ doubts and evasions.
‘Why, mole,’ said the mole, ‘how would you know that? Nomole knows my real name.’
Beechen gazed at him and said nothing and the male sniffed and looked frail, as his troubled, half-blind eyes looked here and there for a comfort they did not find. And eventually he wept, and let Beechen touch him once again.
‘Nay, you’re right. My name … my name was …’ And it was a long time before he was able to say it. But finally … ‘My name was Sorrel once upon a time, but the grikes took it from me and never gave it back. They took my mate and our young and sent me here. Nomole to call me Sorrel now.’
‘Where did you come from?’
‘Fyfield, which isn’t far off as the rook goes.’
‘Sorrel of Fyfield,’ said Beechen softly.
‘Aye, that was me and proud of it. But not now. Look at me now … Look at me.’
Then Beechen spoke, his voice soft but powerful in a way that seemed to still even the leaves in the trees above, and make of the moment something that lived forever.
‘You shall be Sorrel again,’ said Beechen. ‘To a mole that matters much to you, you shall be Sorrel once more. And that mole shall serve me, Sorrel, as you serve the Stone. Now tell me the name of your mate and young.’
‘Her name … her name … They killed her by the Fyfield Stone. Much killing was done there. They killed my own. Her name was Sloe and she was a mole to love. Our young were a female, Whin, and two males, Beam and Ash, taken from us with barely a moment to say goodbye. I told them to remember us and trust the Stone, but the grikes killed Sloe almost before our young were out of sight and … and I trust not the Stone. It took as good a mole as ever crossed my path. It …’
Tryfan saw then the light of day across Sorrel’s troubled face seem to brighten, and his eyes to clear as he gazed up into Beechen’s eyes, though where the light came from nomole could say.
‘Trust the Stone, Sorrel, for it shall bring you peace. There are still things you have to look forward to. For I am the Stone Mole and it shall be. But tell nomole of this but that your name was Sorrel once and is again, and you are proud of it. Tell them only that.’
Then Beechen turned back to Tryfan and they were gone, leaving old Sorrel staring after them and wondering in awe about the mole who had touched him, and whose touch he felt as sunlight on his face.
There, later, others found him and said, ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost, mole. You look …’
‘The name’s Sorrel,’ said Sorrel firmly.
‘Sorrel? Is that so? Now have you heard that that Beechen mole’s about?’
‘Aye, I met him,’ whispered Sorrel in awe. ‘That was the Stone Mole all right. His fur is so glossy the sky shines in it, and his eyes as bright as spring flowers were when I was young. He knew my name which no other knew, and that name’s Sorrel. He knew my name, and touched my face, and told me I was not so old that there weren’t things still to look forward to.’
‘What things?’ said his friend.
‘Things a mole’s promised not to talk about until they happen.’
‘Did he really know your name without telling? Are you sure …?’
‘He did,’ said Sorrel.
Thus many of the stories and myths about the Stone Mole started, with simple moments when the truths of hearts were exchanged, and Beechen reminded moles of who they really were. Such simple stories would, in time, evolve to accounts of healing and of prophecy, of magic and of miracles; and perhaps become unstoppable, even by a whole army of trained grikes. Truly, the Stone Mole was coming, and his name was Beechen.
In June, the Marsh End’s secrets show themselves best to moles who are ready to struggle through the thickset undergrowth and debris to where the sun filters among moist greenery and the sweet secrets of pink saffron and the last pale flowering of hellebore.
Yet even in summer this is a part of Duncton Wood that has a dark and clandestine aspect, for the beeches of the higher wood disappear to be replaced by the smaller and closer growing alder, sycamore and stunted oak, all underlain by mucky undergrowth and rotten fallen branches.
A place whose wintertime depression still hung about in the darker pockets of its surface, and where Beechen hurried closer to Tryfan as the older mole went on, and looked about himself a little nervously. Stone Mole or not, he was still an ordinary mole at heart and prone to the natural fears younger moles feel in strange new places.
But the few flowers about cheered him, and a bright cluster of wood-sorrel, their frail green stems and delicate white leaves trembling against the dark of a fallen branch stopped him still with pleasure. But it was the luminescent green of the moss at the boles of the trees that fascinated him most, and the way it seemed to catch and intensify the light.
Then, as if that was not enough and the Marsh End wished to put on its best display for him, they came upon a bank of ramsons along the hollow made by a stream that drains down into the marshes beyond the wood.
Tryfan had to tell him their name, for Beechen had not even heard of them before, and he showed the youngster how the leaves, if crushed, gave off a bitter-sweet smell that healers like.
‘My mother Rebecca first met Rose hereabout. She was the last great healer from the Pastures, who taught my mother all she knew of that craft, and she in her turn passed it on to my half-brother Comfrey.’
As Beechen stared in wonder at the ransoms’ star-like flowers, Tryfan told him about the Marshenders, the moles who once upon a time were both feared and reviled by other Duncton moles.
‘My father Bracken told me that his father, who was a Westside elder, used to say, “Where frogs and toads and snails go out, there you’ll find Marshenders out!” But they were not really like that at all.’
Which was true, for the very nature of the place – damp and dark and worm-poor – made for a special breed of mole: quick-witted, fiercely loyal to their own kind, thinner and less strong than the big Westsiders but with intelligence, humour and persistence enough to compete with other Duncton moles. In Bracken’s day, indeed, Mekkins of the Marsh End had been one of the system’s most respected and resourceful elders.
But to moles outside the Marsh End he was an exception: to them, who feared that place, Marshenders seemed a secretive bunch, whose tunnels were poor and whose natures mixed ill temper with a fearful mystery. A place to avoid, moles to avoid in a group, but moles to bully and push around if they could be got at one by one.
‘None left now though,’ sighed Tryfan, who had inherited a special affection for the Marsh End from his parents, both of whom had reason to be grateful to the place.
‘Mind you, enough Marshenders survived the evacuation of the system that if ever the day comes when those Duncton moles who remember the place, or had memories of it passed on to them, can return then I’ll warrant Marshenders will reclaim their own before any other part of the system is reclaimed! That’s the kind of moles they were.’
‘What moles live here now?’ asked Beechen, looking about the shady place and glad that Tryfan was there to be his guide as they moved on again towards the special tunnels Tryfan planned to make their home for a time.
‘When the outcasts were sent in weaker moles ended up here, it being a place where the stronger would leave them in peace. The Westside was always the most wormful part, while over to the east sturdy no-nonsense moles who keep themselves to themselves always used to live. Little community there! But here, now? Old moles, I think. Many sadly diseased with nothing left but memories of a time of trouble and change like that mole Sorrel whom we met. There’ll be more of those before we’ve done! When Spindle and I first came there were still a good few who preached the Word, and some even who preached the Stone. Well, for some argument was as good a way of surviving as anything else. Lately, I’ve heard the place has settled down and been depressed for lack of pups.
‘By the absence of anymole along our path, I think that most are too shy to challenge or greet us. The more characterful moles tend to be like the ones we met last night in Barrow Vale. But never underestimate moles who live in dank places – they may not seem much but in my experience, for all that they have but mean tunnels and few worms, they’re more friendly and hospitable once you get to know them than most moles you’ll meet.’
Soon after this they veered eastward and Tryfan began watching out for something above the surface of the wood.
‘An old dead oak. Can you see it? That’s our destination, for it marks the place we called the Marsh End Defence. Get Skint to tell you all about it. Now, wherever is it …?’ And Tryfan went forward slowly, and screwed up his eyes to see a little better.
But it was Beechen who finally spotted the tree, and forward into the thick undergrowth and great fallen branches at its base they went, to be met by the strongest mole Beechen had yet seen and who, judging by his open face and outright pleasure to see them, was a mole known to Tryfan.
Yet he did not immediately address him but, rather, turned sternly to Beechen and said formally, ‘Whatmole are you and whither are you bound?’
It was the old traditional greeting and Beechen stammered somewhat over his reply, looking quickly to Tryfan for an affirmation he did not get. That mole was smiling broadly.
‘Well mole, what’s your answer?’
‘My name’s Beechen, and I’m bound … here,’ he said.
‘And where are you from?’
‘The Stone,’ said Beechen. ‘We were there yesterday morning.’
‘You’re meant to ask my name now,’ said the mole with a grin. And then sternly once more: ‘Do it!’
‘Well, um, what’s your name and … and whither are you bound?’
Tryfan laughed and waited for the mole’s reply.
‘Hay is my name, and as for where I’m going, nowhere fast is the best answer I can give.’
Then Hay touched paws with Tryfan and the two, who had not met since Beechen’s birth, settled to a talk and an exchange of news. They had not been at this many moments before Tryfan turned to Beechen and said sharply, ‘Don’t stance about doing nothing. Get some food and don’t get lost. Darkness falls quickly in the Marsh End and the owls roost low.’
Beechen did so, interrupting his grubbing-out to listen to ominous rustling of wings in the branches above, and the unfamiliar calls of waterfowl across the unseen Marshes nearby.
He returned to the two old friends and gave them worms.
‘Feverfew’s glad to have some time to herself again I should think,’ Hay was saying.
‘Aye. Bringing up even a single pup’s hard work, and she’s looking forward to a summer’s rest. She misses the Wen and Starling, who was a good friend to her after I left for Whern. But … moles from their own systems, why, it’s the story of most moles here. I’ll warrant Feverfew will not be idle for long, but out and about meeting others now she’s free of this mole here!’ Tryfan buffeted Beechen affectionately. ‘But what of the others Spindle and I knew?’
‘Well, now, a good few did not survive long after April and the Stone M … Beechen’s birth. But Borage is still about, and his once troubled mate Heather is more at peace, though pupless still. She’s turned to the Stone and been newborn. Far too earnest for my taste, mind you.
‘Old Teasel’s going strong and no doubt you’ll see her soon enough. She’s up towards the Eastside, and still has her sight …’ He said no more, feeling it best not to mention the first miracle associated with Beechen, which was the restoration of Teasel’s sight on the night of his birth.
‘But there’ll be time aplenty for us to talk. I’ve heard it said you’ve come back to teach Beechen scribing, and good luck to you both! Too much like hard work for me! And no doubt but you’ll be doing some scribing of your own?’
If Hay expected an answer to this he got no more than a grunt, for Tryfan was not inclined to talk about the things he scribed, nor had he been even to Spindle himself. He scribed for posterity, against a day, he had said more than once, when most moles would be able to scribe and the art was something allmole took for granted and did not elevate, as in his view the scribemoles of Uffington had wrongly done, into a mystery.
‘I heard you two were on your way, but I’d been expecting you sooner,’ said Hay, not in the slightest put out by Tryfan’s unwillingness to give anything away. He had got to know Tryfan better than most and the two moles had great respect for each other. ‘You’ll find the tunnels are well aired and dry. Mayweed’s been by sometimes and he’s made sure the texts and folios you left behind are well protected and that no roof-falls or wall-slides have marred them.
‘Other moles stay well clear of the place out of respect for Spindle’s memory and your privacy, but there’ll be disappointed moles in the Marsh End if you hide yourself away as you did in the winter years.’
Tryfan chuckled.
‘I doubt that we’ll be doing that. Beechen here’s eager now to get out and about and I fear my task will be keeping his snout at his scribing!’
Beechen grinned, and seemed more cheerful than he had been on the way partly because Hay offered hope of new company and friendship, but also because, as he had just learnt, this was a place to which Mayweed came as well, and might come again.
It was therefore with a cheerful heart that he followed Hay and Tryfan into the undergrowth which hides the entrances down into those special tunnels, and then dropped underground.
The tunnels were clean and dust-free and the burrows off them neat and ordered. The soil and subsoil was dark and rich, the soil of a moist place of vegetation compacted through time so that, as Tryfan led them down into deeper levels, the walls hardened and the floor as well.
But a place of strange and confusing windsound, quite unlike anything Beechen had ever experienced before, and he made sure to keep close to the other two moles for fear of becoming disorientated.
‘Mayweed’s creation, with Skint’s help,’ explained Tryfan over his shoulder, hurrying on, eager now to get back to the texts he had deserted for so long. ‘Even if an alien mole found his way in not only would he become very confused, but others already here would hear him long before he reached them and make their way out by the special escape routes that Mayweed designed. We can hope that such precautions are now unnecessary and that these tunnels will never be invaded, nor need to serve for the purposes of defence and covert attack again. Anyway, since my experience in Whern, and on that long journey home which I could not have made without Spindle’s help, I … I have not wished to fight again, or encourage others to do so.’
They came to a cunningly concealed entrance down to a new level and Hay went no further.
‘Time to go,’ he said. ‘But you know where I am, Tryfan, and I’ll be offended if you don’t come and see me soon. As for you, Beechen, don’t let him work you too hard. I’m not so sure scribing’s good for a mole, especially in the summer months when there’s a lot to see and do in the wood. You come and see me as well – he’ll tell you where to find me. As for food, you’ll find worms aplenty near the high tunnels, and I’ll be about anyway.’
He was no sooner gone than Tryfan was off down the nearly vertical drop to the next level and then to right and left, down and then along, until quite suddenly the confusion in the windsound died and, after a moment of utter darkness as they dropped to a new tunnel level, they were in a wide and peaceful tunnel, one end of which opened out into the hollow trunk of the great tree Tryfan had pointed out on the surface.
From this a gentle light filtered in, and a yet gentler breeze. The subsoil there was lighter than that above, leached by rains in centuries past and bearing ash and black burnt stems of vegetation, evidence of some ancient fire that must have razed the wood long before the tree, itself now dead, had even been a seed.
So does the present grow from the past, so does the present itself grow old.
It was in a further level below this one that Tryfan and Spindle had decided to spend their last moleyears together working, hidden from sight, secret, protected, to make texts whose future neither could know nor guess.
Down to that hallowed place of scholarship Tryfan now took Beechen. The old scribemole was much moved to see the place again, and stopped in the peaceful light and stared about at where white, dead roots formed walls and buttresses to burrows, and at where the tunnel widened to a chamber in which texts and folios were impressively ranked into the shadows.
‘I haven’t told you much of Spindle, have I?’ said Tryfan gruffly, his mouth trembling and his head bowed. ‘I miss him more than I can say. He was as good a friend to a mole as ever friend could be.’
Tryfan went slowly forward among the texts, with Beechen just behind and saying nothing. The great mole reached out a worn talon here and there. He touched a text, he peered in at an untidy burrow.
‘Mine,’ he said. ‘And that’s Spindle’s,’ he added, pointing a little way further on. ‘You can make your place there.’
Like Tryfan’s burrow, the one Spindle had occupied was delved towards the hollow trunk and an opening into it brought in light and fresh air. The burrow was much tidier than Tryfan’s, with a small raised area for sleeping, and a high dais on which, Beechen guessed, Spindle had done his scribing. The only untidy objects in the place, apart from the thin layer of dust that lay over everything, were the three folios of bark that lay askew over the dais which looked as if they had been left by a mole who was due to come back imminently.
‘He was working on those before he left for the last time. That was during the day of the night you were born.’
Beechen reached out a paw and touched the folios, feeling strange to see and touch something so palpably of the day just before he was born.
‘I think I shall like this burrow,’ he said. ‘I can feel Spindle’s presence in it.’
‘Aye,’ said Tryfan, ‘he would have been glad to see it so used. Spindle’s interest was history and his life was spent recording things as they happened in the years he lived. He was a scribemole, Beechen, as I am, but he never called himself such and was always modest about what he did. Nomole has yet seen the works he made, none knows them all, not even myself, for I was busy with my own work, and running here and there. Aye!’ Tears were in Tryfan’s eyes but he did not cry, but rather looked about with pride that he himself had known such a mole.
‘Now, here, in this place in the little time we have before you must take up your great task for moledom, I’ll teach you scribing, and here you’ll ken the texts Spindle and I made. While Spindle’s will tell you the history of our times, mine will tell you something of the teachings Boswell your father made.
‘Learn them, ken them, discover how to make your own, but always remember that texts begin with living moles and at their end a mole must put them to one side and go out and live. Unless they help a mole do that they are nothing. A text is but a tunnel made by one mole through difficult territory, so that another may pass through more easily. The difficulty may be in recording it truthfully – as Spindle’s was – or in the Stone-given ability to set down such wisdom as seems to be invested in the lives of moles like Boswell.
‘Neither book, nor text nor folio will so touch another mole that he needs not the touch at first and last of a living paw to his flank, and the true showing of one heart to another, which is the touch of love. This the scribemoles of Uffington forgot, and yet it was their greatest heritage, the thing that gave their work its purpose and intent. I’m not sure Spindle always remembered it either, for all his sterling qualities. But it is a truth Boswell taught me, and for this reason I have left scribing well alone for long periods, to live my life fully, and learn from other moles.’
‘Will you be scribing down here, or just teaching me?’ asked Beechen.
‘A mole can only help another experience for himself,’ Tryfan said. ‘Everything else is empty words. So I’ll scribe and as I do so, in whatever way seems best, you’ll learn, and it will not be easy.’
‘What will you scribe?’ asked Beechen.
Tryfan hesitated before replying, and looked once more at the texts he and Spindle had made. He went among them again, touched some, and seemed to think carefully before replying.
‘Well, mole, it’s not that I don’t want to tell you, but rather that I fear to do so. Boswell used to tell me that a scribemole had best not talk about what he is about to scribe lest he lose the will to do so in the talking, and I shall heed his advice now. But when I have got some way with it, choose your time to ask me again and I shall explain what it is I’m about. I should like you to know it in any case before … before we part as in due time we shall. Perhaps what I scribe you may tell to other moles who otherwise might never know it.’
Tryfan chuckled suddenly.
‘But don’t look so serious and mystified. When I was first with Boswell I thought he had great stores of knowledge he was keeping from me. When he said he had not, and that what he did have was simply ways to show me what I had forgotten that I knew, I did not believe him. “You will one day, mole,” he used to say impatiently.’
‘What was he like?’ asked Beechen.
‘Sensible,’ said Tryfan. ‘Sensible enough to know that such a conversation as this leads but to reveries and idle chatter and a mole with much to learn had best begin to do so. Now, you take Spindle’s burrow there. I have work to do.’
‘But what shall I do?’ asked Beechen.
‘Do?’ repeated Tryfan with a mischievous twinkle to his eyes. ‘Do nothing. Contemplate. Feel the presence of Spindle who once worked hard here and then make the burrow your own. Contemplate on that.’
‘But …’ began Beechen, feeling this was a strange way to start learning anything.
But Tryfan was gone, and took stance in his own burrow and was silent for a long time.
Beechen took a determined stance in Spindle’s burrow and was quite uncertain how to proceed with ‘contemplation’. But he might, perhaps, have succeeded in starting to do that had not the silence of the place been broken suddenly by a scratching sound coming from Tryfan’s burrow, hesitant at first and then with occasional pausings and dour mutterings, increasing in strength and certainty.
‘Scribing!’ said Beechen to himself at last, realising the sound was that of talon on bark. ‘Scribing!’ And he stared at the unfinished folio left behind by Spindle on the day he died, and snouted at it and touched it, and wondered how he could ever make sense of it, let alone find words to scribe there of his own.