Duncton Quest (8 page)

But before that, while Brevis was still away and before the full significance of the grike rumours was really understood at Uffington, two travelling moles arrived at the Holy Burrows whose coming was more ominous than could ever have seemed possible at the time.

According to Spindle’s account, they gave false names on arrival, and the unsuspecting scribemoles, welcoming anymole who might give them information about what was going on in the outside world, accepted them rather too readily. Historians since then have added the fanciful report that the Blowing Stone sounded deep warning notes on their arrival, though Spindle did not remember such a thing. But it might well have done, for those moles that came to Uffington were none other than Weed, agent and adviser to the highest grike leadership; and the female Sleekit, as cunning, scheming and askew a mole as ever lived below ground, or on its surface.

The two claimed to be on a Stone pilgrimage and to have travelled from a system some way to the north. The Holy Mole saw them and was impressed by them. Weed already had some scribing, though of a crude kind, which he said had been taught in their system more than a generation before by a scribemole of Uffington who had come there and died in it. Yet one or two of the scribemoles were doubtful of them, and Spindle overheard them expressing concern about Weed’s script which had deviations of an unfamiliar and sinister kind which they did not like. What these were Spindle himself could not properly know, not being a scribemole, but he afterwards remembered, when he had to handle some of Weed’s work and his talons ran over it, there was a certain cruelty in the style, a leftward slant, a hint, even, of dark sound.

Of the two, Weed, as moles later knew him to be, was the dominant. Physically he was not immediately striking, being of average build and having motley fur. His snout curved a little to the left, which gave anymole talking to him the feeling that he was turning all the time. He smiled a lot, and his eyes seemed warm unless a mole could catch them unawares (which was very difficult) and see that when he was not engaged with another mole, and thought he was quite alone, they were as dark and cold as pure flint. A curious thing about him was this: when he ate worms there was not a single sound – not a crunch, not a suck, not a lick. One moment the worm was there, pink and succulent, next thing that worm was gone.

But the most disconcerting thing about Weed, which all moles who got to know him reported on, was that it was hard, however much a mole might suspect him of evil and duplicity, not to like him. Those eyes, though cold, had intelligence, even humour, and he had a quick wit and winning way and, as fast as another mole might think, Weed gave the impression without saying or doing very much, that he thought faster, and knew more.

When Weed wanted a mole to talk – and Weed was a mole who positively thrived on information, gossip and rumour – he would say “Yes?” in a way that was difficult, if not quite impossible, not to answer without giving more away.

“This way here, now that’s the Lower Route, yes?” he might typically have asked – for he had a great desire to know all the routes and ways into and out of the Holy Burrows, which moles more worldly wise than the scribemoles of Medlar’s time might well have recognised as reconnaissance.

“Yes?”

Why yes of course it was,
that
one the side route, and
that
one the middle lower route and and and... and then, when the poor questioned mole thought he had completely finished and had nothing more to say at all, Weed would wait until the silence got embarrassing and then say, “Ye... es?” and somehow a mole could not help adding more, even things he had forgotten he knew, just to fill up that unbearable silence on the far side of which Weed waited, his eyes so pleasant.

Sleekit was a different kind of mole and as a female her admission into the Holy Burrows caused some consternation. There were precedents, however, for travelling females accompanied by a male were allowed to stay in the visitors’ burrows, and even, if the Holy Mole was willing, permitted to view some of the communal burrows and meeting places.

Sleekit was the kind of female whose elegance of fur and carriage, and annoying calmness of voice, was such that other females are intimidated by her while males, impressed by an outward show, tended to be struck speechless or fawning in her presence. Other wiser moles might have seen beyond her elegance to the strange mix of coldness and vulnerability it sought to hide. She was sharp of tongue, and clever, and moles watched what they said in her presence. Her real role – one of the select sideem of the grikes, watchers and schemers and spies – could not possibly have been guessed at the time she arrived in Uffington. But the scribemoles, with the exception of a few of the more worldly ones, were so impressed by her good looks and her seeming interest in what they did that they almost fell over themselves to inform her of their ways and the work they did; and well, very well, did she mask her true intent, which was to complement the information that Weed was gathering about what texts they had, where they were kept, and what the scribemoles’ routine was.

Yet where Sleekit went, discord among males always followed, especially among celibate males such as scribemoles. The older they were the worse it became, for there was something about the way Sleekit came close to them, looking so vulnerable and innocent, that stirred in them feelings and produced actions which they themselves, jostling in a rivalrous kind of way for her attention, might have called fraternal, or avuncular, or possibly paternal, but which, in truth, went beyond the acceptable bounds of all three.

Insidiously, like the spread of rotten root disease beneath a raft of mat-grass, the divisions and ructions in Uffington that preceded Brevis’ departure, seemed to deepen with the arrival of Weed and Sleekit.

Not that any mole then saw that they caused it – indeed, none would have guessed it. For were not the newcomers most ardent in their worship of the Stone, and most respectful (especially that young and most caringly intelligent female), and willing to learn?

Were they not also charitable and balanced in their views on the invasive grikes, suggesting that, after all, the stories had been exaggerated and the grikes were a lot better than they seemed? The rumours were unkind and unfair. The grikes were hospitable and learned and lived by a code which, if other moles abided by it, was just and probably sensible for the rougher and more dangerous systems they came from. What was more, they seemed to have evolved a way of dealing with the plague based on strict observance of worship and cleanliness... All of which was just what the scribemoles wished to hear, assuaging as it did their doubts about what was going on in moledom, and giving support to the prevailing view that the grikes were not a real threat at all and scribemoles were best advised to do nothing. So, unknowingly, the scribemoles allowed two leading grikes into their midst, a spying sojourn broken only when suddenly, unexpectedly and dramatically, Brevis returned.

It was in the middle of September, and he came up the slopes from the north, tired, badly cut about with talon-thrusts, and looking as if he had aged a cycle of seasons. Yet he insisted on an immediate audience with the Holy Mole himself. In the course of it he not only gave the most dire warnings of the grikes, and much evidence of their ruthless cruelty, but learned, to his horror, of the fact that two strange moles had been admitted into the Holy Burrows... moles whom he was able immediately to identify from hearsay as Weed and Sideem Sleekit.

But too late: Weed and Sleekit had gone, leaving grim evidence of the urgency of their departure. A cleric, Fawn, and a scribemole, Weld, were found dead on the westside, as cleanly talon-thrust to death as moles might be. Murder expertly done. They must, surmised Brevis, have become suspicious and tried to stop the two fleeing grikes. Yet even faced by this evidence, the scribemoles led by Medlar would not act, for was there not some other explanation possible, and might the two not have been killed by other moles, unknown?

“No!” declared Brevis.

“It is possible!” said the intellectual scribemoles, unwilling to believe that their judgements could be so wrong, and therefore to admit that preparations for defence might now be wise. So, in that prevarication, the fate of the scribemoles of Uffington, and perhaps of the Holy Burrows themselves, came to be sealed.

Yet the story that Brevis had to report was stark and to the point. The grikes had crossed the Thames to the north of Uffington and were rapidly taking over all the adjacent systems to it. It was easy for them to do so since most of the systems had been decimated by the plague.

Whether or not they had used gentler methods of argument and persuasion to convert systems earlier in their campaigns he did not know, but their strength had become so great that they proceeded now with speed, efficiency and brutality. Most moles in a system were so cowed by moleyears of privation and disease that they did not argue when the grikes arrived, and those that did and refused to subject themselves to Atonement and Instruction in the Word were systematically starved, terrorised, broken and re-educated. The few that stood up to such treatment were snouted publicly or, in some cases where conditions were right, drowned by enforced burrowing in mud. In each case a system’s takeover was prefaced by some random snoutings, as if to show everymole that the grikes meant business.

Brevis reported that the grikes were well-organised and disciplined. There was a system of guardmoles, elders and eldrenes – female elders. Their method was to take over a larger system and herd the remnants of smaller systems into it. Since almost every system had plague dead who had been left to rot where they died and their tunnels sealed off, the grikes had a policy of clearance carried out by “clearers”, usually diseased, demented or vagrant moles ostracised and feared by others. These lived apart in “congregations” and cleared out a system by taking corpses to the surface. The grikes used clearing as a punishment, knowing that many clearers soon died of plague or developed other diseases.

Brevis, who, at great risk to himself, had infiltrated his home system of Buckland, and had even begun to receive instruction in the Word, had succeeded in establishing what the aims of the grikes were in coming to Uffington: nothing less than the destruction of faith in the Stone.

And if Uffington had indeed unwittingly played host to grikes like Weed and Sleekit it was important that they did something
now
warned Brevis. Invasion was probably imminent....

But incredibly, the ever-cautious Medlar insisted on a written report before elder scribemoles could consider what action to take... and only Spindle knew the full depth of Brevis’ anguish. To leave the Holy Burrows in defiance of the Holy Mole was one thing – indeed, Boswell himself had done it on occasion – but to lobby for action before an elder meeting and against a Holy Mole’s clear directive was another. So for two days and nights Brevis worked to scribe his report.

Spindle later remembered the near desperation with which Brevis laboured, knowing that each extra moment that he took was another moment lost, each extra minute and each hour... and in the only brief time he took off, he had warned – indeed
ordered
 – Spindle that if the grikes came he was to flee immediately, and if he was caught he must, however much he disliked doing so, pretend to reject faith in the Stone and accept the Word.

The warning was just in time, and Brevis’ great fears fully justified. Up the northern slopes they came, across the western heights, through the eastward tunnels, by way of the southern vales; dark they were and silent, ferocious in their assault, efficient in their attack, ruthless in their killing. Few questions, little mercy, and their purposes quite clear: to find the original Book of the Word that was believed to be still in the Holy Burrows, to trace a mole called Boswell, and to so decimate Uffington that it could be a place of reverence no more.

They used two poor tortured scribemoles to identify the other moles in their effort to find Boswell, moles who were reluctant at first to name their brothers but who did so when their eyes and ears and genitals were pierced with talons until those two screamed out that they might be put to death, so great was their pain and suffering. Oh yes, they were put to death all right: for those were the two who, so much later, Boswell and Tryfan had found hanging in a snouted death upon the barbed wire on the surface.

A few, including Brevis and Spindle, escaped the first attack. Spindle was soon separated from the others, caught, and, when it was discovered he was not a scribemole yet knew the tunnels well, he was spared. As for Brevis and the others, they were undoubtedly caught and killed, for Spindle heard it braggingly spoken of by the grikes, of how the escapees had been found near the Blowing Stone and there savaged to death and left for owl fodder. (A fact which, sadly, Spindle was later to confirm, for he saw what remained of the bodies themselves, though so broken and eaten were they by then that he could not recognise them individually.)

But that was later. First Spindle and other clerics had to suffer the scrutiny and cruelty of the grikes, as they interrogated them all, killing some quite arbitrarily. Spindle himself pretended to simplicity and a willingness to believe in the Word, and he was spared. He was asked many questions about the Library and the location of other libraries if such existed. He knew of none and gave little away. Again and again he and other clerics were asked to look at the bodies and see if they could see the mole Boswell – and it took a long time before the grikes were convinced that long ago Boswell had left for Duncton Wood and had not been heard of for many a moleyear. The grikes were not forthcoming about why they wanted to find Boswell, but it was clear they wanted him alive.

They seemed concerned, too, to find the copy of the Book of the Word which the Library was supposed to contain, but none knew of it, and it was not found. They seemed uninterested in anything else, for they were brutish, unsophisticated moles, intent only on killing.