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.