Those moles who have never been to Beechenhill may wonder how it was that this system held out so long against the Word. But moles who have been that way, and lingered to stare at the running streams, or been beguiled by the light mists that make the same elusive valleys seem different each time they are travelled, will understand. Beechenhill is not an easy place to find, let alone invade.
Even if a force of moles made their way towards its higher parts, and negotiated its labyrinthine and confusing limestone tunnels to reach the point where the system’s modest Stone rises and looks on the hills and vales all about, their coming would have been long observed, and the moles they sought long gone.
It is indeed a blessed place, and upon its surface and its tunnels the Stone must have cast some very special light in that early time when the Stone created moledom and Balagan, the first White Mole, came.
Not that Beechenhill had in times past avoided its share of plague and trouble, or more recently not felt a warning of the darkness coming. Indeed, ever since that strange day in June when Wharfe had so suddenly left his sister and companions and been driven by a kind of madness to rush and touch the Stone, it might be said that Beechenhill had been on its guard.
Beechenhill moles, always close to the Stone and its auguries, took such things seriously, and they did so then all the more because Wharfe’s touching of the Stone had been followed by rearing storm clouds in the northern sky, and a dreadful downpour of rain so violent that it drove dangerous torrents of water into the tunnels and killed seven moles – four drowned in their chambers before they made a move, two dashed by torrents against protruding rocks and one more, though nomole knew how she died, Squeezebelly himself found her staring at the raging sodden sky, dead as if she had seen something that made her want to live no more.
The rain stopped, the ground soon dried, but that storm left a pall in all moles’ hearts that seemed to blight the summer and left a warning all about. Great Squeezebelly became a thinking, planning mole, sensing trouble ahead, bad trouble, trouble worse than anything he had known before.
But for that, at least, his system’s long and noble history of dissent had prepared him well. In his younger days his father had taught the lower routes of tunnels and surface to Squeezebelly intimately, and shown him all the likely routes an invader might take, and the options of retreat and hiding which Beechenhill moles could exercise to confuse and demoralise even a persistent invader.
Despite his girth he made sure he knew his system still and it was knowledge that Squeezebelly had used well and wisely in the difficult years it was his fate to live through as leader of the only system of significance in the north which successfully held out against the grikes.
Rune was already dominant in Squeezebelly’s youth and the evil potency of the Word and its moles’ ways well known to the Beechenhill moles who made forays down to the lower slopes of the Dales and saw the terror, destruction and cruelty that followed in the wake of Henbane’s long drive south.
It was through this dangerous and fraught period Squeezebelly matured, and few moles were as indomitable as he in defending the Stone, the system, and the moles in his care, against the evil Word. By making it easy for invaders to lose their way in the alluring slopes and vales that lie below Beechenhill, and difficult for them to gain access to the higher ground, the Beechenhill moles preserved their sacred autonomy.
But more than that, through some happy mixture of topography and climate, of aspect and geology, of history and living tradition, the Stone had blessed that happy place and, despite all, its moles remained open-hearted yet not easily fooled; cunning, yet not secretive or sly; physically strong, yet not aggressive and bullying in their ways; realistic and yet never forgetful of the love they felt for the place in which they lived and the sense of faith to which they had been reared.
All these great attributes Squeezebelly personified, and added to them a humour and rough good nature which sometimes hid other qualities he had: intelligence and common sense, and an ability to see that nomole must ever for a moment stance back into laziness nor forget that if the Stone is to be properly served then it demands never-ending attention and self-honesty.
These were the qualities which made him the mole he was, and built for Beechenhill a reputation that went wherever moles went, whether friends or foes, for all spoke alike of it in awe.
As the years of Henbane’s rule had gone by, and Beechenhill had become more and more solitary in its resistance to the grikes – who rationalised their failure to subdue it by talk of its unimportance – those few moles remaining who held fast to the Stone in their hearts, and loved liberty of spirit even before their own life, were drawn to Beechenhill as an afflicted mole will always go where warmth and welcome is, and shelter too.
It was through such fugitives that the moles of Beechenhill and the one who led it so ably, despite their isolation, were able to keep in touch with moledom’s strifes and troubles, and to know much of what went on.
It was always a surprise to visitors that while grikes had so far found it hard to penetrate the higher tunnels of Beechenhill, wandering strangers and followers of the Stone usually succeeded in doing so in safety, despite the grike patrols about it.
One reason was that Beechenhill maintained good relations and contacts with moles in neighbouring systems that, outwardly at least, were of the Word. Such moles were used to spotting vagrants of the Stone and guiding them into safety in Beechenhill. At the same time, the system had developed an effective network of watchers, mainly young moles, male and female, who knew the tunnels and were deputed to hide themselves around the periphery of the system, keep in touch with friendly neighbours and guide newcomers upslope if they were adjudged to be safe and not spies.
But watching was a dangerous task and so, knowing that at any time one might be taken by the grikes and tortured for his knowledge of the system, Squeezebelly ordained that each watcher knew only a limited section of the tunnels into Beechenhill. Sadly, watchers were taken from time to time, but this policy had contained the knowledge they revealed and the Beechenhill moles were able to counter any information the grikes gained by rapid adjustments to tunnel alignments and seals.
As for friendly moles, they were vetted on their way upslope, and none would have got through without experienced moles knowing about it. Since watching was a service that all Beechenhill moles must perform for a period, Wharfe and Harebell had both done their turn, though Squeezebelly had been much concerned for them when they did; but he judged they would be better for it and through May they had both performed their duties well.
In all the time of Squeezebelly’s rule only one group of moles had ever succeeded in evading all the grikes and watchers around Beechenhill to make their way unnoticed to the very heart of the system, indeed to the Stone itself. They were Tryfan and Spindle, guided most of the way by the mole Mayweed.
When Squeezebelly heard that a mole had reached the Stone and was talking to Bramble and Betony, his own youngsters, he had laughed in his deep and cheerful way and said, ‘Then by the Stone this is a visit that shall bring great blessing on us. It was meant to be, and ordains the coming of some change to moledom I cannot foretell.’
In this open spirit Squeezebelly had listened on that never to be forgotten day when Tryfan had preached of the way of non-violence before their humble Stone, and he had sensed that somehow here the future for Beechenhill surely lay. He began then to believe it might be possible that in Beechenhill, a system never aggressive but one which raised its collective talons only in its own defence, and that more by retreat and cunning than confrontation, here was the embodiment of how all moles of the Stone should be. For if Tryfan’s words had been right, and nonviolence was the way, the way forward must be for moles to learn to defend themselves when needs must without hurting others. But how can a mole defend himself from moles who seek to kill him and destroy his faith without hurting another?
It was this great and difficult paradox with which Squeezebelly had wrestled since Tryfan’s visit. And if others said there was no answer to it, and where would they be if their fathers before them had not sometimes had to kill the grikes to survive, Squeezebelly found comfort and indirect confirmation that there was a solution to the paradox in the fact that the Stone delivered to him and his system, of all the moles and places in moledom, Tryfan’s two young by Henbane.
When strange Mayweed and dark Sleekit brought those young moles to him and told him the truth of their parentage, Squeezebelly felt he saw at once the significance of it. Few moles would in future be better placed to resolve the conflicts of moledom and find a middle way between the Stone and the Word – between life’s paradoxes indeed – than a mole or moles who had been born of the union of the Mistress of the Word, Henbane of Whern, and great Tryfan of Duncton Wood, the first mole who dared take the light of the Stone into Whern itself.
So he watched over Wharfe and Harebell well, put them under the care of his own two young, and was not in the least surprised that it was Wharfe who, of that happy quartet of friends, emerged as natural leader, a mole who might one day take over the leadership of Beechenhill too.
Of his own pups he was proud, but had no illusions: Bramble was a dreamy mole, whose love and skill was the history of Beechenhill, and who learned and recounted all the tales Squeezebelly told, and knew by heart the names of all the many moles who had over the moleyears visited the system from outside. Betony, on the other paw, was as sweet and loving a female as ever lived, and his only grief for her was that though he watched her love for Wharfe grow and mature over the years, he was wise enough to see it was not returned. Wharfe was made of sterner stuff than Betony, and would only ever see her as a friend.
As for the last of the four, Harebell, she was more graceful, more alive, more alert than any female Squeezebelly could remember, and he hoped that when her time came she would find a mate worthy of her, and her young would be a credit to the system that had adopted her.
In the moleyears of these four youngsters’ maturing, Squeezebelly was often moved to take stance at places he loved in high Beechenhill, and harbour the innocent hope that perhaps Beechenhill was the place which, secret and protected, sacred and much loved, the Stone had set aside to be a last bastion in its hour of greatest need, the place perhaps of its redemption. Here, believed Squeezebelly, great things would be, and he prayed that its moles would be worthy, and those four young ones would be especially so.
It was Squeezebelly who best understood the significance of Wharfe’s extraordinary rush to touch the Stone that June, and guessed that with the torrential drowning of the moles afterwards in tunnels never yet bloodied by the Word’s dark talons, Beechenhill’s trial was beginning; and perhaps moledom’s too.
In the moleyears of summer that followed June Squeezebelly noticed that Wharfe became preoccupied, even sullen, and was inclined to wander off by himself. At first he put it down to that normal change that comes to a mole when, matured, he or she begins to feel the restraints of the home system and, at the same time, to look more seriously for a mate. In Squeezebelly’s younger days such thoughts arose in the dark snug winter years of January, not at the height of summer. But he was a wise and philosophical mole and had observed that the stresses of the plague years and the grikes had made moles, even sensible ones, behave in most curious and untraditional ways.
But neither Bramble nor Harebell seemed to think that was it at all, and the older mole eventually got a better and more significant explanation from his daughter Betony.
‘Something happened when he touched the Stone, but he won’t say exactly what. It’s upset him more than he admits. Do you know what he does when he goes off by himself?’
Squeezebelly shook his head and scratched his ample flank. No he didn’t and his bulk was now so great that he was disinclined to follow younger moles about and try to hide behind thistles to see what they were doing by themselves!
‘Well, I’ll tell you. He’s looking for a mole or moles unknown. He stares into everymole’s face that comes along hoping he’s going to see what he’s looking for.’
‘Which is what, Betony?’ said Squeezebelly, much puzzled.
‘He won’t say. All I know is he’s not looking for a mate because I asked him outright and he said he wasn’t and Wharfe never lies, which is a relief. I think it’s got to do with the Stone.’
‘Ah!’ said Squeezebelly, and decided to wait for Wharfe to tell him in his own good time which, since the mole was looking uncharacteristically miserable, in sharp contrast to the glorious summer, would be sooner than later.
Meanwhile Squeezebelly kept him and the others busy with training and watching tasks designed to strengthen the system’s defences and retreats, and made them develop, as a final safety measure, one or two special routes out to the north and west, in case a full-scale evacuation should ever become necessary. It was not an option Squeezebelly himself would ever take, but perhaps there could be a case for some of the younger moles to be got out one day.
Naturally moles asked him what was apaw, and he told them something of his fears and hopes as well.
‘When or how the grikes might come I know not, but we must be vigilant. Equally, the Stone will give us guidance and we must be ready to hear that too, for the Stone works in mysterious ways and what it wants us to do is not always easy to discover.’
‘But haven’t you any idea at all what we’re looking for?’ asked Harebell.
‘He’d tell us if he knew,’ said Wharfe.
Harebell grinned.
‘He didn’t always tell us we were going the wrong way in the tunnels before we got lost when we were pups! That is before he got too rotund to go the more secret ways!’
All of them but Wharfe managed to laugh, Squeezebelly especially, and he patted his large stomach and said, ‘Pure muscle, my dears, not a mite of wasted flesh at all! But listen. Over the years I’ve learnt most and been challenged best by the followers the Stone has sent here to visit us, Tryfan himself included. They always come in summer, so be observant when they come and see if there isn’t one who can give us a clue to what we’re looking for.’
Summer is ever a time for visitors, moles in other systems growing restive then, and that summer was no exception and a good few moles passed through in late July, and more in August. In return for the warm welcome such moles got they were as usual asked to pass on their knowledge of moledom beyond Beechenhill, and so Squeezebelly saw that his moles were kept informed and outward-looking. It was in August that they had confirmation for the first time of rumours of changes at Whern, and that Lucerne, son of Henbane, had taken over as Master of the Word.
This was news indeed, and inevitably resurrected once more the old stories told of Henbane and her southern invasion, and the graphic accounts given of her by Mayweed and Sleekit when they had brought Wharfe and Harebell into the system with the help of Skint and Smithills, both old friends of Squeezebelly.
Always at such times Squeezebelly had to ask himself how much longer he must keep the secret of Wharfe and Harebell’s parentage from them, and whether he was right to keep them in ignorance at all. He had noticed that Wharfe in particular seemed to have doubts about the truth of the idea that Mayweed and Sleekit were their parents, and in fact had never directly asked if it were true – as if he was afraid of what the answer might be. Sometimes both moles said that they would like to see Mayweed and Sleekit again, but moles were used to wandering and separation, and in those times to permanent loss as well.
So when the news came that Henbane had been deposed and had gone missing, the time did indeed seem to have come to tell them the truth and one day in September the opportunity arose.
It was shortly after Wharfe had returned from a dangerous reconnaissance down the Dove Valley towards Ashbourne, confirming an escalation in grike guardmole activity, and he was in Squeezebelly’s burrow with Harebell and their friends Bramble and Betony.
It was one of those friendly family occasions, when the chatter may be idle but the feelings are close and deep; such a time indeed when moles who love each other may say things that matter much to them. It seemed an ideal time for Squeezebelly to say what he had so long wanted to, and the presence of his own two seemed to make it more appropriate.
But it was Wharfe who spoke first, and quite unexpectedly.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said suddenly, ‘about being so morose all summer but ever since June …’
There was silence in the burrow. He had said at last what all of them had thought at different times, and only Betony had dared raise with him.
‘I should have spoken before.’
Harebell nodded silently.
‘But it’s not been easy.’
‘Never is,’ said Bramble.
‘Let him get on with it,’ said Betony.
‘Well … I don’t know where to begin. Well I do. It was the day I touched the Stone, in fact the moment I touched the Stone. The day it rained.’
Nomole spoke, all remembered.
‘I had this feeling as I touched the Stone that there were others touching with me.’
‘But you were alone,’ said Betony. ‘We didn’t reach you till ages later.’
‘I know, but I don’t mean moles you could see, or even moles that were there. It was like …’ And then he tried to tell them what it was like – as Mistle had tried to tell Cuddesdon, as Caradoc had tried to tell Alder, as Glyder had told nomole but Caradoc, who had known already.
Perhaps they found it hard to understand exactly what Wharfe was trying to describe, but when a mole they all knew so well, and who was of them all the strongest and on whom one day soon the responsibility of leadership would fall, when such a mole expressed grief and loss they believed and understood the strength of his feeling well enough.
‘Why didn’t you say before,’ said Harebell. ‘Perhaps we could have helped.’
‘The moles who I felt touch the Stone with me seemed so real. As for the one we were all trying to help, I know he’s real, as real as any of you. I know that somehow one day I’ll meet him.’
‘It’s a him, is it?’ said Betony with relief, as if she half imagined that had it been a female she would have stolen Wharfe’s heart away. They all laughed, as families do at such moments.
‘Has the thought crossed your mind that it was the Stone Mole you were “trying to help”?’ said Squeezebelly.
Wharfe nodded and shifted his stance, his strength and dark fur in contrast to Harebell who was lighter in both colour and weight.
‘I’m sure it was,’ he said. ‘Maybe we’re all of us – us in Beechenhill, followers in other systems, moles like Henbane and that Lucerne in Whern – all part of something that has started with the coming of the Stone Mole.’
‘If he has come,’ said Bramble. ‘It’s such an old myth the Stone Mole one, going right back – seems strange to think it’s happening for real in our generation. But perhaps when a mole like Rune of Whern takes power, or moles like Boswell of Uffington and Tryfan of Duncton Wood start trekking about, then everything follows inevitably from it.’
Silence fell again until, in that indefinable way moles who know each other well sense that one is thinking of something he is staying quiet about, they knew that Squeezebelly was holding something back. He shifted about restlessly and then sighed and said, ‘Well, I knew there would never be a good time, a best time. A mole can’t get everything right!’
‘What is it?’ said Betony immediately, a frown on her face. She had rarely seen her father discomfited.
It was then, quietly, privately, he told them the story of how Wharfe and Harebell had come to the system. From the very beginning he told it, how Tryfan had trekked north preaching non-violence until he eventually reached Whern; how he had met Henbane there; and how he mated with her and then been all but killed by Rune’s sideem. The rest they knew, or had heard from others over the moleyears – of how Mayweed and Sleekit had rescued two of the three pups born, and brought them to Beechenhill, of how … but neither Wharfe nor Harebell heard more, so dumbstruck were they to learn who their parents really were.
‘He was our father?’ said Wharfe in astonishment.
‘Henbane was our mother?’ said Harebell.
‘She …’ began Squeezebelly.
‘You should have told us before!’ shouted Wharfe.
‘Yes, you should, and you must have known as well!’ cried Harebell, turning on Bramble and Betony, both as shocked as their siblings by adoption.
There was anger; there were tears; there was sulking. Then each in their own way grew angry again – now with Squeezebelly, now with each other, and finally with Tryfan. Through it all Squeezebelly stayed sadly calm, pointing out again and again that nomole – not him, not Tryfan – does everything right all the time.
‘But Henbane!’ shouted Harebell in disgust. ‘Tryfan with Henbane!’
‘He was not an easy mole was Tryfan, but none I ever met or ever hope to meet was truer to the Stone than he,’ said Squeezebelly, feeling the anger needed a response. ‘What he had learnt of the Stone he had learnt in courage, and Bramble and Betony here remember better than any of us the preaching he made, and what a great mole he was.’
Betony nodded, her paw to Wharfe’s, tears in her eyes while both Harebell and Wharfe, still appalled, glowered at the rest of them.
‘You would have been so proud of him,’ whispered Betony to Wharfe, and meaning well she added tactlessly, ‘and now I know the truth I can see that there’s something of him in you. He was so dark and big and forbidding.’
Wharfe looked utterly outraged.
‘And me?’ said Harebell miserably, waving a paw over her grey fur and flanks. ‘What is there of him in me? It’s Henbane that’s in me!’
Squeezebelly went to her and held her close in his great paws while she wept, and if there were tears in his own eyes he did not care. When she had quietened he said, ‘I have never seen Henbane, but I met moles who knew her, none better than Sleekit who loved and cared for you as if you were her own. She told me that when this day came and I told you the truth that I must say this. That until the day Henbane met Tryfan, Sleekit would have pitied any pup of Henbane’s. But after that day something of great love and light was born in her Mistress (as she always called her). Something she had never seen before, though it must always have been there.’
Squeezebelly spoke slowly and with such a sense of concern and tenderness for them all that the atmosphere in the burrow quietened.
‘Sleekit said that as Henbane grew with pup her feelings for her pups – for you – changed from indifference to love; when she felt your movements inside her it was as if she understood something about the nature of a light she had glimpsed long before, and known again only when she and Tryfan had made love. The more these feelings grew, the more afraid she was of the threats to you – not only from the dark intent of Rune and the sideem around him, but from herself, for she knew she had been corrupted.
‘She asked – she begged – Sleekit to take you from her once you were born, even though she knew she would not want it and might resist. She felt she would not have sufficient love for you to fight the corruption she had suffered; she felt she would be unworthy of you. This was a most courageous thing for her to ask, and one that Sleekit said caused her much suffering as the time for your birth came. Yet she said it again and again. Through her contact with your father, Tryfan, she had for the first time seen something of the light, and she wanted her pups to know it too, even though she felt she could not have it in her own life.
‘Be angry with her if you will, but she did more to show her love for you than many parents ever do. And at the end, when you were born and helpless, she fought with her whole strength for you, and made it possible for Sleekit and Mayweed to rescue two of you at least, and bring you out of Whern. Be proud of her as well. As for your grey fur, Harebell, which you think may be as Henbane’s was, well, mole, that tells me only that your mother must have been most beautiful. And if such as Tryfan loved her, and made you in union with her, why then I am sure the Stone in some way blessed their union, and that one day moledom will also see that it was blessed. ’
Squeezebelly fell silent then, and not a mole in that deep burrow doubted that each was much loved by the other, and in some strange way much loved by the Stone.
‘But … this Lucerne,’ whispered Harebell at last, ‘he is our brother. The Master of the Word is our brother.’
Squeezebelly stared at them, and at his Bramble and Betony, and he said, ‘We live in times I do not always understand. Since Tryfan came here I have felt that the Stone has chosen Beechenhill for something no other system will know. All these years, all these decades, since long before I was born, since the coming of the first mole himself, perhaps, the Stone has blessed this system and kept its moles in health and faith, as if it knew that one day it would need a place most fitting to the light it casts, and the Silence that is all its own. More and more I believe this great event is near. I believe it has been nearer ever since the Stone Mole’s star first showed. I believe your strange birth of parents supremely of the Stone and of the Word is part of this event.
‘And if I had to look into the future and say what might be, I would say to both of you that if the day should ever come when you meet your brother Lucerne then more than your own lives will depend on how you conduct yourselves with him. I believe all of moledom will tremble in that hour, and in time all moledom will know of it, for better or for worse.
‘Your father preached before our Stone, and spoke of the non-violent way. I do not know what that way may be, yet always I strive to find it. Where he is now or what happened to him I cannot tell. Your mother was the very head of the violence that the Word wreaked across moledom, yet she gave you the chance of life before the Stone, and now she has power no more, but more than that I do not know.
‘What I do know is that I, and through me Beechenhill, was entrusted with your lives. We have reared you here as best we could, in a community which knows the Stone’s light. Why, if either of your parents could see you now, as I can, then I think they would be as proud of you as you should feel of them.’
So Squeezebelly spoke, and nomole could doubt that he had fulfilled his task in those two moles. They looked at him with love, as Bramble and Betony did, and though they did not think it then, they one day would: that they may have lost first their parents, and then the two moles who saved and reared them, but in Squeezebelly they had found a mole who had ever showed them as much of love and faith and honour as the truest parents ever could.
‘And now,’ he said, ‘I think you must decide if you are to keep this secret or tell other moles. We shall all do as you wish.’
‘Secret,’ said Wharfe, ‘though I hate to take that way.’
‘Secret for now,’ said Harebell, ‘though I hate it too. But moles might not understand …’
‘For now only,’ said Wharfe. ‘But one day we must tell.’
‘So be it,’ said Squeezebelly. ‘Bramble? Betony?’
‘We shall not tell,’ said Bramble.
‘I shall never say,’ said Betony with a smile towards Wharfe.
The number of visitors to Beechenhill had been declining since news of the changes at Whern had come into the system and by mid-September no visitors at all were seen, and few even heard of.
The weather had worsened, and as autumn came across the southern Peak, grike patrols increased in the peripheral areas, not only in the east and south, but more ominously in the less populated west and north as well.
Then, like shadows gathering, the news filtering into Beechenhill became more grim. A watcher went missing on the eastern side; two vagrants who, it seemed, had been trying to reach Beechenhill from the normally safe west were found slain by grikes.
Then in the last third of September news came from followers in Ashbourne that a great massing of moles was taking place, and soon after that an account of the snouting of the eldrene of Ashbourne, and three of her guardmoles, one of whom Squeezebelly knew to be a brave and secret supporter of the Stone. It was a great blow, for Ashbourne was a system that was traditionally friendly towards moles of Beechenhill and it seemed that the new regime of the Word was being thorough in its job if it was killing its own when they were deemed to go astray.
It was against this darkening background that Squeezebelly ordered a retreat into the more central and safer part of the system of moles who lived around its edges, while moles like Wharfe were sent out on missions to watch for grike movement and change. There was a sense of fear about the tunnels now, and all knew that the dangers Squeezebelly had warned about for so long might be soon upon them.
But for several days, and then a week, and then two weeks nothing happened. Several of those out on missions returned and reported no grike moves against Stone followers. The tension eased and there came that dangerous sense that the danger was past, and soon surely the Stone would send them better news. And so at first it seemed.
Wharfe had been sent to the north-west with three other moles including Bramble, and they had ventured a good many miles beyond Beechenhill itself and seen some evidence of grikes and even patrols up the Manifold Valley, which is the complex western boundary of Beechenhill. But beyond it, on Grindon Moor and north to Revidge Heath, there were no grikes.
It was as they turned back to make the long trek home, and were seeking a safe passage across the Manifold at Ecton, always a grike outpost, when Wharfe had turned a corner among the rough grasses above Ecton that he found himself face to face with a greying tough-looking mole. He seemed alone and regarded them gravely and kept utterly still, appraising them without fear or aggression. Wharfe had rarely seen a mole in such circumstances so self-assured, and asked with typical Beechenhill calm, ‘What is your name, mole, and whither are you bound?’
The manner of the mole’s reply, as much as its content, took them by surprise, for though he was one to their four he spoke quite without fear and indeed with considerable authority. He had a strong northern accent, and had he not spoken slowly they might have had trouble understanding him.
‘Neither my name nor my destination need concern you yet. Where are you from?’
‘Ours is the power to ask,’ said Wharfe with a smile.
‘’Tis of no consequence,’ he said coolly, settling down and smiling back in a way that they found disconcerting. Wharfe had a most uncomfortable feeling that he was out of his depth, and certainly he did not know quite how to proceed. The mole, who though a good deal older than him was evidently fit and powerful, eventually said after the silence had grown uncomfortable, ‘We could stance here facing each other all day and learn nothing.’
‘Or you could respond to our greeting and give us your name and destination,’ said Wharfe.
The mole said nothing.
‘Or at least where you are from,’ added Bramble.
The mole seemed to think about this and finally made a positive decision to reply. But it was clear he felt neither threatened nor under duress.
‘I’m from Mallerstang,’ he said, watching Wharfe for a reaction.
Mallerstang … a name a mole would not easily forget, and one that stirred a memory in Wharfe of something told him once. Mallerstang! Aye, a memory of something Squeezebelly once said.
‘You know the name, or have been told it,’ said the mole matter-of-factly, as if he could read Wharfe’s mind. ‘Then let me speak another name: Medlar. Mallerstang and Medlar. What stirs in your memory now?’
Bramble, whose love of legend and history was well known, whispered something to Wharfe who listened, nodded, asked a question, and looked at the Mallerstang mole with surprise.
‘I see the names mean something to you,’ said the mole to Bramble.
‘They do,’ said Bramble. ‘Medlar was a mole from your system who came this way long ago. He came with another whose name we cannot remember.’
‘Roke,’ said the mole.
‘That’s it!’ said Bramble. ‘Roke!’
At the mention of this name the mole’s look softened and he smiled with pleasure. He turned from them and called out, ‘Come, it is safe, these moles shall not harm us. ’ To the surprise of Wharfe and the others, all used to trekking and the arts of hiding, two moles who had seemed but shadows in the grass rose up and came forward and stanced one on each side of the mole’s firm flanks.
‘My name is Skelder,’ said the mole. ‘This is Ghyll,’ he said of the mole on his right, a younger male of two Longest Nights. ‘And this is Quince.’
Though little smaller than the other two, she was more slight, and like them had about her a peaceful air and open, honest look combined with purpose and intelligence. She was about Wharfe’s age.
‘Roke was my kinsmole,’ said Skelder, ‘and as your friend may know he travelled south with Medlar as far as a system called Beechenhill. There they stayed for a time before Medlar travelled on and Roke returned to Mallerstang. He had good memories of Beechenhill and said it was a blessed place and worshipped the Stone most truly.’
‘What is it you want?’ asked Wharfe.
It was Quince who spoke, her eyes on Wharfe’s. ‘Sanctuary,’ she said. ‘Do you know where Beechenhill is?’
‘We are of Beechenhill,’ said Wharfe not moving. ‘Why do you seek sanctuary?’
‘The grikes have destroyed our system,’ said Ghyll, ‘and we are the last survivors.’ Wharfe stared at them horrified, a horror made all the worse by the resignation in their eyes.
‘We have travelled far to get to you,’ said Skelder. ‘We knew of no other system to go to. We thought your system might be safe. We thought …’ He spoke with such sincerity and lack of self-pity that Wharfe knew he spoke the truth and was deeply of the Stone. Indeed, all of them were moles for whom faith had put into their faces, and into their stances, all that was noble in moles, all that anymole might trust. He had been doubtful and kept them talking while he assessed them, but neither he nor his companions would question them more.
‘Come, we shall guide you to Beechenhill,’ he said. ‘It is two days from here by the route we shall take to avoid grikes.’
But luck was not with them, for though they passed Ecton and the river safely, on the slopes of Ecton Hill they ran into a patrol of grikes. It was an ambush and well planned and Wharfe thought ruefully that perhaps they had talked too long in the open when they first met these moles and had been seen.
The grikes, five in all, followed their normal strategy and charged suddenly and violently. Strike first, ask questions after was their usual tactic and one before which Beechenhill moles were inclined to retreat if they could, and if they could not then to act stupid and escape later. Each was a tactic that had worked for generations, but on this occasion it could not work. The grikes were large and fearsome to a mole, and perhaps because they were outnumbered seemed intent on causing injury. When the questions came, if they ever did, it might be too late. On the other paw the only route for fleeing was downslope back towards Ecton, and Wharfe knew that there were plenty of moles there he would not like to meet.
But as all these thoughts flashed through his mind and he prepared to meet the onslaught of the approaching grikes, the three Mallerstang moles, as if impelled by a common mind, began to move as one. The effect was, Wharfe afterwards remembered, most odd, as if he and all the other moles but those three were not moving at all, while the Mallerstang moles seemed to drift forward in a movement so fluid that between its beginning and its end there seemed barely nothing at all, but for a paw striking a grike here, a talon caressing a grike snout there, and a shoulder buffeting a grike over there. All in silence. Then normality returned, and everything was still but for the sound of the breeze in the moorland grass, and the heavy, pained breathing of grikes.
Two of the grikes were unconscious on the ground, a third was lying still and staring as if made mute and quiet by what he had seen, a fourth was picking himself up and beginning to flee, and the fifth was fleeing already, long past them down the slope.
‘They are not hurt, and will come to very soon,’ said Skelder calmly. Ghyll and Quince moved to his flank. ‘Come, lead us from here quickly before they do so.’
Soon they reached tunnels Wharfe knew and then moved on swiftly to Beechenhill. In the rare moments they paused, Wharfe tried to get Skelder and his comrades to explain how they had stopped the grikes, but they only shrugged and said they did not like to hurt moles, it was not their way.
Their arrival at Beechenhill caused considerable excitement, and as soon as they had eaten and rested they were brought before Squeezebelly in the main communal chamber of the system near the Stone. When Squeezebelly heard who the moles were he greeted them warmly.
‘Mallerstang?’ he boomed. ‘Of course I know of it! Medlar and Roke? They came here before I was born but my father spoke of them. But …’
Wharfe told him briefly of how it was the three had come to Beechenhill and he looked at them sombrely.
‘I could have wished your visit here to be in very different circumstances,’ he said. ‘Tell us what happened.’
Skelder told them, slowly and terribly. Of how the peaceful Mallerstang moles, whose system lies on the slopes above Horton-cum-Ribblesdale, had heard of the coming of a group of grike guardmoles and sideem, led by a mole of Whern called Clowder. Of how their elders had been tricked into meeting these moles and trapped in a place where they could not defend themselves at all, and all killed.
Of how the other Mallerstang moles who, though adept at individual and small-group combat, were not experienced in group warfare and were successively massacred.
‘Face any one of us with two or three of those moles and we will disable them without hurting them,’ said Skelder with feeling, ‘but face us with such a disciplined and ruthless force as that and we will always be defeated.’ His account wore inexorably on …
Chamber by chamber the grike guardmoles massacred the Mallerstang moles, who made the mistake of massing where they could be caught. Unused to group confrontation, not willing to flee into alien country, they stayed where they were and, in tunnels now struck down by an eerie silence, were killed as if paralysis had overtaken the whole system.
‘But didn’t more of you flee?’ asked Wharfe, appalled.
‘It is not our way,’ said Quince simply. ‘We talk, we retreat, we tire those who oppose us. Then we let them live among us, and they see our way is right. There are – were – many moles in our community who came from grike stock, and many other kinds of moles besides. We do not fight, we do not flee; we show. In the face of such absolute violence we did not know what to do.’
‘Then how come you three survived?’ said Bramble.
‘Chance. The turn of shadows. As the random fall of rain across a field may leave a patch dry, so we three were missed. We heard the killing, we stayed still when we realised the numbers involved, and we were missed. We were not even together, but separate, in places overlooked. When the grikes went we found each other, and when they came briefly back with moles of Horton, we hid. That was the worst moment. We heard them killing prisoners. That was the worst.’
Skelder shook his head, resigned.
‘Moles cannot stop the rain, or the sun, or the cycle of the seasons, or death. Death has come to our system and so it was long ago forecast. We three are the survivors, and that too was ordained. It was meant to be.’
To Wharfe it seemed astonishing. Why, if such a catastrophe happened to Beechenhill, he would … he would …
‘What would you do?’ asked Quince, her paw on his, her gaze penetrating.
‘Weep,’ he said.
‘We have,’ she said. ‘And when the tears were done, and we saw there was nothing we could do in Mallerstang, we resolved to come to Beechenhill because of what Roke said of this system long ago when he returned to us.’
Nomole said a thing, none dared look at another. What could a mole say in the face of such events?
It was Quince who broke the silence, wanting, it seemed, to move on from memories which hurt so much. She turned to Squeezebelly and asked, ‘Did your father tell you what happened to the mole Medlar?’
‘Oh yes, I know what happened to him, though it was not my father who told me, but a mole of Duncton Wood called Tryfan. His father met Medlar, and indeed was trained in fighting by him.’
‘Defence,’ corrected Quince. ‘Medlar would have called it “defence”, not “fighting”.’
‘Defence then,’ said Squeezebelly with a wry smile. ‘Medlar was a great mole, and he went on to Uffington and there became Holy Mole.’
A look of great joy came to the faces of the three Mallerstang moles.
‘Did you not know this?’ said Squeezebelly.
‘We could not,’ replied Skelder, ‘but Motte, one of the greatest elders of Mallerstang, who prophesied much that has happened, including the survival of three moles from such a massacre as we witnessed, also said this: “A mole shall come out of Mallerstang, and into moledom go, and shall rise to wisdom in the greatest of the systems of Stone and Word.”’
‘Then his prophecy came true,’ said Squeezebelly. ‘You shall all be welcome to stay here for as long as you wish,’ he continued. ‘Beechenhill has benefited greatly over the years from such fugitives as yourselves.’
But if the news these moles brought was grim, the next that came brought the threat of grikes much nearer home.
One evening in October Squeezebelly was enjoying a chat with Skelder, Wharfe and Harebell when they were interrupted suddenly by the urgent arrival of a watcher, one of those who had gone with Betony and two other moles to patrol the south end. He was obviously tired from his journey, and had been injured in a skirmish. In his eyes was a look of great concern.
‘What is it, mole?’ said Squeezebelly, his normal good cheer fading from his face.
‘’Tis your daughter Betony,’ said the mole. ‘She’s taken by grikes.’
Betony! A mole they all knew and all loved. Sweet Betony.
The watcher’s story was soon told. The four of them had come upon a solitary vagrant female on the slopes above Ashbourne. She said she was of Tissington and was seeking passage into Beechenhill with two other moles who were in hiding nearby … It sounded like a simple ambush and they kept her talking while vetting her, much as Wharfe had done when he had met Skelder. She was most convincing and gave a name the watcher later had good reason to think false.
Then, quite suddenly, the group had been attacked by several grikes at once, the female herself being the first to strike a blow. No amount of courage, faith, or attempting to see the shadows of those attacks had saved them. The watchers had been caught, one killed outright, and then they were all interrogated. In this the female, far from being harmless, proved the cruellest of them all and soon seemed to sense that Betony might be especially knowledgeable of the system.
They used the vilest tortures on the other watcher and soon Betony could not bear to see his agonies any longer.
‘She tried to lie, telling untruths to save him, but that female seemed able to detect the subtlest lie, the subtlest truth. My friend was hurt more when she lied, and it was not long before they discovered that Squeezebelly was her father.’
The listening moles looked at each other, horrified. ‘Then the female ordered that my friend be released and Betony was taken away. Even as they turned from us I saw the remaining grikes were preparing to kill us. I shouted to my friend and turned and ran for the tunnels. They chased us but we were in ground we knew. We were able to pick one off, and then they turned back. I … I turned to follow them, but there were too many … I could not save her, Squeezebelly. I could not. I would have given my life for Betony.’ He lowered his snout and wept.
Squeezebelly, Wharfe and Harebell stared at each other blankly. Then Squeezebelly barked out orders to some moles to go to the south end and see what they might find … but all knew it would be no use.
‘What were their names, these grikes?’
‘There were so many … but the female’s name I heard, a different name from that she gave us first.’
‘Yes, mole?’ growled Wharfe.
‘She was called sideem Mallice.’
‘May the Stone protect her if she harms Betony,’ said Wharfe angrily. ‘I shall lead the search for her myself.’
‘She knows so much,’ Squeezebelly said softly. He stared dumbly at Wharfe and Harebell, the possibilities too terrible to speak aloud.