This should not be mistaken for simple hypocrisy; it was rather the wise discretion of a modest old mole who had heard (and kenned in texts) a lot of blathering and nonsense in his time and was not inclined to argue. If some mole or other wished to lecture him on the proper way to pray to the Stone, or on the nine tenets of the Newborn way, let him do so, it would have little effect on what he himself thought – “unless of course he’s right, in which case I’ll change my mind,” as he told himself But then, as Pumpkin had observed amongst the often unpleasant and bullying scholars in the Library, moles will use any means to persuade others they are right, or wrong. Or, put another way; it’s how a mole gets to his destination that reveals the true nature of a mole, not the destination itself
Pumpkin, then, was unusually well able to withstand the pressures of Newborn education, but it was not quite this that was to win him such admiration in the heart of allmole, but rather something that arose from a fortuitous meeting some days after his arrival in Barrow Vale. He had already been puzzled by the seemingly disproportionate jubilation of the Newborns at his conversion; and now something else surprised him – the fact that moles seemed to come out of their way simply to look at him. Why he was a curiosity he could not imagine, and in the hurried and harried Barrow Vale of those days, when moles were fearful of saying anything to each other lest they be spied on, reported, and admonished, it was impossible to easily find out.
Several long days after his arrival, and after spending the whole night and half the day in a mass chanting session interspersed with the rote-learning of names spoken one by one by a brother – the idea being to cleanse the mind of wasteful thinking – he returned to the little cell they had allocated him on the Westside, and found a female of four Longest Nights waiting for him, all furtive and frightened in the shadows.
“Brother Pumpkin?” she whispered, coming forward into the light as he stopped and turned her way.
“Yes, Sister?” he said with that mock good cheer which the brothers were expected to affect.
“Brother, do you recognize me?”
He stared hard at her, thinking immediately it was some kind of Newborn trick to catch him out.
“Should I, good Sister?” he said, rather proud of this answer, but sad that fear and doubt breeds evasion and half-truths. In fact he did not recognize her.
She said her name was Elynor and told him they had once met in “easier days”. He had learnt enough to know that this was a coded way of saying “in the days before the Newborns came’, but a mole could not be too careful.
He looked dubious and said, “Well, Sister?”
“Brother Pumpkin, are you truly Newborn?”
He hesitated before he replied. She was a well-made mole, with good features and intelligent eyes, though her face betrayed a fatigue and anxiety that made her look older than she was. Whilst it was clear that this was more than a simple question, he could not tell what lay behind it. Nor could he risk enquiring further without undermining his pose as a believer.
“Praise be, good Sister, but I am, for I have seen the light and the only way.”
“The Newborn way?” said Elynor.
“If you have any doubts I fear I am not the brother to discuss them with. Now I am tired —”
“I have no doubts, none at all,” she said hastily. “I was just, well, glad to hear of your conversion.”
“I am not so famous a mole that others would hear of my conversion. Sister, or be interested in it now.”
“Oh, but you are. Brother Pumpkin. You are very well known. All over Duncton moles have been speaking your name.”
“Surely, my conversion is not a matter for others’ talk!”
“Oh but it is, Pumpk —, Brother Pumpkin, it is!”
“Oh dear,” Pumpkin muttered to himself, “she is trying to tell me something but I don’t know what. And I have had my instructions – none but Sturne must know what I am.”
“Well then. Sister,” he said, turning from her, “I would prefer it if it were not. We are nothing before the Stone.”
Whether or not this last comment was a Newborn sentiment he was not sure; probably not. As he left her he heard her whisper, “May the blessings of the Stone be on thee always.”
“Well, one thing is certain!” he said to himself as he entered his clean, mean little cell. “She’s not Newborn – that was the old way of giving a blessing. She’d better watch out for herself, she’d better... oh botheration, what was it she wanted?”
In the space of a few moments his mood shifted from satisfaction at having maintained his Newborn pose to a feeling of deep dismay at having missed something important. The way she had said “May the blessings of the Stone...” The eagerness with which she claimed so many had heard of him, her final disappointment...
“Pumpkin, you have done wrong and must make amends!” he said to himself. “This mole needed support, not evasion. The pose is not as important as the faith it hides. Come, before it is too late!”
He turned back out of the cell, and thence up on to the surface in the direction he hoped she had gone.
“Oh dear, oh dear,” he muttered as he hurried amongst the trees of the Westside, “if I don’t find her soon I never will.”
But there she was, round a root and across between two trees, and the reason she had not got far was because she was hardly moving at all, so wan and defeated she felt.
“Mole! Mole! It is I, Brother Pumpkin.”
She turned, stared, and a glimmer of hope came to her eyes. At that moment Pumpkin decided to declare himself openly and not prolong the lies. There is a time when a mole must say what he is and risk the consequences, for denial is a kind of self-mutilation from which there is no full recovery.
“Er... Elynor...” began Pumpkin as he reached her, his eyes warm and his face kind, “you were good enough to ask if I was Newborn.”
“Yes,” she faltered.
“Well, now, you put me in a quandary, you really did. On the one paw I have my own task to fulfil for which it is better I am Newborn, but on the other it is very plain to me that you are hoping that I am a follower in the old way. I shall tell you at once that I am not Newborn now, never was in the past, nor shall I ever be so.”
Elynor’s reaction took Pumpkin by surprise, for she reached out and clasped him to her, crying out through tears and laughter as she did so, “I knew it, Pumpkin, I knew you were not Newborn!”
“There, there!” said Pumpkin, easing her off him as best he could and feeling the embarrassment such gentle unmated old males as he often feel in the face of female warmth. “You had better explain what all this is about.”
“That’s easily done!” she said, taking his paw and leading him to the cover of an oak tree’s roots. “You see, there’s quite a number of moles down here in Barrow Vale, and scattered about the system too, maybe up to twenty in all, who’ve kept their faith so far despite everything they’ve suffered. Some others have been lost...”
She named four moles who had fallen foul of the Inquisitors and had disappeared.
“They take them out into the marshes beyond Marsh End,” she said darkly. “But that was in the early days when they made examples of a few. As you’ve seen, most moles have acquiesced.”
“There are always a few who will resist! Especially in a system like Duncton Wood.”
“There are, there are. And in addition to those there are a few in hiding, including some of my own kin. There are moles who don’t want to pretend, and young males for whom the Newborns seem to have a perverse predilection. Humph!” Anger was mixed with contempt and disgust. “Now, you seemed surprised when I said there were many who had heard of your conversion!”
“Well, yes, I am,” said Pumpkin blinking. “For one thing I am merely a library aide, and for another I have done my very best these last months to adopt a low snout.”
“Let me tell you, “Brother” Pumpkin, that you are very well known indeed. Why, all Duncton knew of Pumpkin, library aide
to Master Librarian Stour, long before the Inquisitors showed up. When they did, and the Master Librarian went into retreat again in the Ancient System, and Privet and those others went off on their mission —”
“You seem remarkably well informed, mole.”
“This is Duncton Wood; moles with their snout to the ground can put twice two worms together and make four. Of course, when that Sturne took over...” and here Pumpkin was greatly relieved to see from her look of dislike that at least Sturne’s cover was intact, “we asked ourselves, “Isn’t there anymole in the Library will stance up to them?” There was one of my sons up there, a junior aide called Cluniac.’*
*This is the same Cluniac whose early exploits as a spy against the Newborns have been eclipsed by his courageous exploration in later, happier years of the lands beyond moledom. See his own account North of the North, and Other Adventures of a Traveller.
Pumpkin hastily raised a paw to stop her telling him the mole’s name – too late. He felt the less he knew the better.
“All I’ll say then was that he came down to Barrow Vale one day and says, ‘There’s Library Aide Pumpkin declaring himself Newborn, but if he’s Newborn I’m an owl. You can tell he’s not by the twinkle in his eyes. The Inquisitors can’t, and nor can other Newborns, because they don’t have a Duncton sense of humour.’”
Pumpkin grinned and said, “And I thought I was doing so well.”
“You have, you have! But we were sure you weren’t Newborn, and your example over these long months has given us few who have pledged to resist the heart to continue to do so. The Newborns suspected, mind, but you never gave them cause to doubt you for one moment, and you could not be replaced. Though how you could work alongflank such a one as that Sturne I can’t imagine.”
“Oh, with difficulty,” said Pumpkin, hoping that in the shadows where they talked the twinkle in his eyes would not be observed. “A most unpleasant mole, that one!”
“So we believed, or chose to believe, that you alone of the senior workers in the Library were resisting the Newborns, and what heart that gave us. Oh Pumpkin, you can’t imagine how good it was to know you were there! Without you few of us would have survived this long.”
“Without me?” repeated poor Pumpkin faintly, as she squeezed him tight once again and then let him go all ragged and breathless.
“But then we heard the terrible news you had converted, and then when you came here, it seemed to be so.”
“Well, now you know I haven’t,” said Pumpkin mildly, “and nor, as I said before, was I. Ever.”
“That will mean so much,” said Elynor.
“But it would not be a good idea if others knew for certain that all this Newborn business of mine is a pose,” said Pumpkin. “I would prefer it if I had to speak to no other mole about it.”
“None but me shall know for certain,” replied Elynor. “It’s enough they think it might be – that will keep them going. But for how long?”
“How many moles feel as you do?”
“Just over twenty, with those in hiding.”
“Well, then we must do what we can for them.”
“Of course, the reason the Newborns were pleased by your conversion was that they suspected you but could not quite prove it. Now they think they’ve got you.”
“Yes, yes,” said Pumpkin, suddenly uneasy to be out in the open with a mole who, for all he knew, others might suspect was a doubter. “You must do what you will with what you know. If you think it best to tell them that I remain untainted by Newborn thinking then do so – but I shall deny I ever talked to you, and you should deny it too.”
“Mole,” said Elynor with sudden concern, “it will get worse, you know, far worse. They have been concentrating on the Library so far, but now that’s done they’ll be giving us recalcitrant moles their full attention.”
“I know it will be hard. I know others have already died, and many disappeared. Perhaps I shall be among them.”
“If you stance strong, Pumpkin, us others will. We’ll be there beside you in spirit.”
“Like true Duncton moles!” Pumpkin’s eyes were suddenly alight with excitement, for he was beginning to realize that in its eternal wisdom the Stone worked its wonders in the simplest ways, and through ordinary moles surviving extraordinary circumstances with faith. In modern times Duncton moles had never failed to play their part, and in his own small way he would now make sure he did not fail to play his.
“Keep in touch with me then,” he said quietly. “Only you, mole, none other. I shall deny all others.”
“Then may the Stone be with thee,” said Elynor more quietly still, watching after the grey mild form of Pumpkin, a little stooped now, and a little slow; she thought she had never known a braver nor a truer mole than he.
There now began in Barrow Vale a struggle of spirits which, though it was as powerful and awesome in its way as any war, was silent, secret and unspoken. The Inquisitors Fetter and Law had heard of Barre’s apparent success in turning Pumpkin to the Newborn way, but they had their doubts. The curing of souls, especially intelligent ones that have erred almost from birth and been reared to a culture as insubordinate and liberal as Duncton’s, is never an easy matter, and it seemed to them unlikely that of all of them Brother Barre should be the one to succeed with Pumpkin. Fetter himself had always believed Pumpkin to be less dim and ingenuous than he made out, if only because as library aides go he was one of the best – and Master Librarian Sturne did not suffer fools for long.
Therefore Fetter instructed that despite his age and protestation of faith Pumpkin’s education should be of the most rigorous and ascetic kind. He suspected that the solid core of resistance they had met in Barrow Vale had always focused on one mole, though only now did he think it might be Pumpkin.
“Kill the bugger then,” said Barre.
“Ah now. Brother, we do not want martyrs here. If there is a mite of weakness in him, and if the snake is coiled in his heart, we shall find it.”
In the terrible winter days that followed, when bitter winds gave way to a snout-numbing rain, and that froze into a savage frost. Pumpkin was singled out for the harshest possible treatment. Permitted no sleep, deprived of proper food, he was humiliated again and again in the communal chamber of Barrow Vale as he stumbled over the lines of creed and liturgy he was forced to learn. His paws grew thin, his cheeks grew hollow, his eyes red-rimmed and staring, as day by slow day one Inquisitor after another intimidated and bullied him. He was laughed at and reviled, and more than once his snout was bloodied and he was made to crawl away publicly from the severe talonings and buffets they meted out to him.
It was not enough that he proclaimed theirs the true way, for they said the snake of doubt was still hidden in his heart, and that insubordination poisoned the blood that flowed in his veins.
“Admit you are wrong, mole! Admit your hypocrisy! Confess the sins of pride and resistance!”
But though poor Pumpkin was declining in health before their eyes, he never once weakened in his resolve to call the Newborn bluff. The harder they hit him, the louder his declarations of faith in their ways; the greater the humiliations they imposed on him, the more willing he seemed to declare his humility and unimportance before the wise Newborn way; and the more horrible their punishments, the more passionate his protestations that they must be right since the Newborn way was always right.
But the true insubordination of Pumpkin’s brave stance was this: the more he declared the wonders of the Newborn way, the more he demonstrated to those who knew of his masquerade how rotten, and how vile it was; the more he agreed that theirs was the way to liberty of spirit in submission to the Stone, the more he showed the withering narrowness of that kind of faith. Yet more than all of that: the more he confronted their assaults with agreement and acquiescence, the more he gave heart and encouragement to those twenty or so moles in Duncton at that time who stayed fast in their attachment to the old ways of the Stone.
It was a resistan
ce, and a most courageous one, that the Newborn Inquisitors could not easily deal with because it was silent and undeclared, and the more they tried to “educate” the more they had the sense that they were failing in some indefinable way on which they could not put a talon.
Not that many of the senior Newborns ever understood the problem – Brother Barre, for example, remained convinced for a long time that Pumpkin was converted simply because he said so so fervently. But Quail’s appointment of Brother Fetter to Duncton Wood had been a wise one – Quail knew his history, and felt it likely that if there was going to be resistance, systems like Duncton and Avebury were likely to spawn it, and therefore sent his very best Inquisitors to these.
“I smell the odour of deceit and mockery in this system,” hissed Fetter late one night, “and the more these Duncton moles like Brother Pumpkin declare themselves Newborn the less convinced I am. Proof is what we need, and proof is what we shall find, and when we do then the Stone shall demand resolute action.”
“My snout tells me something similar,” said Brother Law, “and never have I known the snake to be so subtle in his twinings as in this system. We have cleansed the Library, and now we must cleanse the mole, however final we must be.” The way he pronounced “cleanse” was like talons scratching down the face of a broken flint.
Brother Barre opened his mouth to disagree, and then slowly closed it again, his pig eyes blinking – perhaps, after all, they were right.. How disappointed he would be if his judgement of Library Aide Pumpkin had been wrong, as his fellow Inquisitors were beginning to think. But if so, Brother Pumpkin would soon find death a happy release from the pains and tortures of just punishment for having made a fool of him.
Yet, despite these suspicions, the Inquisitors did not act directly on them, perhaps out of respect for Sturne, who had so long protected Pumpkin from their attentions. Instead they decided to allow Pumpkin to return to the Library, thinking no doubt that he might give himself away and confirm their suspicions. At the very least his education had now become counter-productive, and as Sturne had frequently remarked, the Library could ill afford to manage without so valuable an aide.