Not that the Inquisitors could bring themselves to announce Pumpkin’s “release” kindly. Oh no, they had to twist their talons in him one more time. One day, with no warning, he was taken forcibly from Barrow Vale and marched upslope to the Library to “help” Sturne.
When he arrived it was not easy to separate Pumpkin from his Newborn guards, but even Newborns will weaken if offered a worm and a cosy place to eat it; awed and impressed by Sturne’s chilling presence they were happy to yield Pumpkin to his care for a short time. Thus able to talk, the two old friends caught up with each other’s news, their low whispers masked by the hissing wind-sounds out of the tunnels of the Ancient System nearby.
“Pumpkin, this cannot go on. You look thin and ill, and your body bears the signs of brusing buffets such as a young mole could not long withstand, let alone an old one.”
“I am beginning to wonder when it will end,” admitted Pumpkin in his mild way. “The joke is wearing a bit thin.”
“Now listen. Inquisitors Fetter and Law do not believe you are genuine and it is now only a matter of time before Brother Barre decides to punish you. You really must escape back upslope soon and we’ll find somewhere to hide you.”
“Splendid!” muttered Pumpkin, his old spirit of irony and good humour evidently not all gone. “What a good plan. “Escape upslope” to where I wonder?”
“The Ancient System,” said Sturne matter-of-factly. “You can hide there as the Master did.”
“Ah!” said Pumpkin, exasperated and annoyed. Sturne did not seem to appreciate that hiding in the Ancient System was not something he relished. “Sometimes, Sturne, you can be very difficult,” said Pumpkin irritably. “Now you listen to me. Have the Newborns you know, like Brother Barre and the others, betrayed any knowledge of how many moles in Barrow Vale are resisting them?”
Sturne shook his head. His eyes were a little gentler than they had been – Pumpkin was one of the few who had ever treated him like an ordinary mole, and he did not mind being admonished by him. He knew he was stiff and formal and nomole more than he wished to know how to be what he was not.
“But, Pumpkin, I did not mean... I mean to say... You mean... to me... I mean a day does not go by...”
Pumpkin patted Sturne’s paw and said, “It’s all right, I understand! Now... what about my question?”
“No, no... I have heard nothing about other moles. Are there such?”
“Many! So many, it makes a mole proud to be of Duncton. We are not alone, Sturne. But if you hear they are really in danger you must let me know. Only one of them is able to talk to me and her name is Elynor, a most worthy kind of mole, though somewhat physically overt if you know what I mean.”
“I’m not sure I do,” said Sturne, looking somewhat prudish.
“Well, anyway, for all that I recommend her to you and suggest you find a means of informing her son Cluniac who’s an aide in the Library in case of likely trouble, and she will inform me.”
“I would much prefer if you would just slip away quietly and save yourself while it is possible,” said Sturne uneasily. “But failing that I’ll send any message I have to. Of course I can’t make myself known to this Cluniac, and I don’t even know him unless... ah yes, a rough-formed mole! I know him! He works in a lowly way about the Library! He would make a better warrior than aide!”
Much more than this they were not able to say. The Newborn guardmoles, their food eaten and afraid they might be judged to be faihng in their duty, came busily along looking fierce and officious.
“It’s the Brother Inquisitor himself, he’s on his way!”
Sturne registered nothing; Pumpkin looked suitably humble.
“All well, Brother Master Librarian?” asked Fetter smoothly, the moment he arrived.
“No, not all well. Brother. The library aide seems to have taken leave of his memory and can’t help me at all —”
“That’s a pity,” said Fetter, cutting him short. “You’ve been pleading to have him back these moleweeks past. Well, now you’ve got him. We’ve done with him what we can. His education is as thorough as it’s going to be and we wish to waste no more time on him!”
“You mean, he’s to return to work in the Library?”
“Exactly,” said Fetter, his eyes glittering with menace and leaving no doubt that neither he nor his fellow Inquisitors had much liking for or faith in Pumpkin, and that if he put a paw wrong it would be the end of him.
Pumpkin tried not to dance around the Library with pleasure, but Sturne succeeded in looking almost displeased.
“But I trust I may be harsh with him. Brother Inquisitor?”
“The harsher the better, I should say,” said Fetter. “Now, can’t you find some task for him, for there’s much more important matters for us to discuss.”
“With pleasure,” said Sturne, turning to Pumpkin with the briefest of triumphant glances, and able, for once, to feel completely sincere. “You had better be very careful indeed. Library Aide Pumpkin, for if you’re not I’ll withdraw the support I’ve so long given you!”
“Yes, Acting Master!” said Pumpkin eagerly, understanding perfectly well that this was a very real warning: the Inquisitors had let him come back hoping that he would give himself, and others, away. Well, he would not, not ever! “I will do the best I can. Acting Master, the very best!”
“I don’t doubt it,” said Sturne with heavy sarcasm intended for Fetter, as he gave his brave friend a menial task and sent him off to get on with it.
Chapter Sixteen
The day following their interview in Evesham with Chervil, Snyde summoned Privet and the others once more and, accepting with ill grace that Weeth was now of the party, told them that the Newborn guards would shortly be leading them on the long trek to Caer Caradoc.
“It will be hard, for I understand that Senior Brother Chervil now intends to make up for the time your delay has cost us. Longest Night is not so far off when set against the distance we must travel, and I am told the weather may worsen as we climb into the hills of the Welsh borderland.”
Snyde sounded like a mole acting under the restraint of orders to be nice – indeed he looked as if he would have been glad to be rid of the lot of them – and there was little doubt whose orders he was following. He prefaced his next remark with a smile of sorts (which might easily have been mistaken for a wince of pain, for trying to be pleasant caused him great distress), and did his best to straighten himself up a bit, and look like a mole others might respect. He tried even to soften his unpleasant snouty voice.
“I must order you all, including you, Weeth, who for the purposes of the journey and our stay in Caradoc I appoint as library aide, to desist from argument, provocation, or discourtesy towards any of our hosts.”
“Hosts!” exclaimed Maple.
“Aye, hosts they are. Brother Maple. Their ways may be different from Duncton’s – and I have spoken to some of them. Librarian Privet, and asked them to tone down their remarks about females. But we must respect their different views, and indeed on my journey with them I have seen nothing untoward in anything they have done, nor received anything but the greatest respect and consideration. I am not, as you know, a travelling kind of mole – the Stone made me fitter for study and scholarship than something so physical and tedious as journeying – but they have shown consideration by the easier routes they have taken, and the rests they have allowed. All this is especially due to Senior Brother Chervil and you will therefore treat him with especial respect...”
There was more of this from Snyde then, and in the days following, as they trekked north-west across the Vale towards hills which never seemed to get closer. They quickly discovered that Chervil and several of his Senior Brothers were no longer of their party, having set off earlier; some said he had gone ahead to Caradoc, others that he had business to attend to along the Welsh borderland which must be settled before the Convocation itself. Either way it meant a change of mood among the moles, for Chervil had left in his place a
s most senior Brother, the Brother Inquisitor Slane, a mole who was impossible to talk to, who surrounded himself with younger brethren, and set a rigid routine of travelling and rest, travelling and rest. The vast plain of the Vale had looked flat when they first saw it from the top of the High Wolds, and beyond it they had fancied they saw Caradoc; but it turned out very different to moles travelling across it. The soils were wetter and the ways less straight than the high, dry routes of the Wolds, and their trek soon turned into a daily slog.
Then, when they reached higher ground at the far side of the Vale, they found that after two days their route again dropped down to another Vale, that of the River Teme, whose flat and winding north-western course was wetter still as it led them slowly up into Wales, with higher territory on either side. It was the kind of ground that after a day or two none of them wanted ever to see again, and there were times when all longed to rise out of the valley to a place with views, and open skies, and earth that gave a paw support, rather than clogging its talons with damp soil and clay.
“The Newborns say that things improve after the Ludlow system,” Weeth was able to tell them, “after which we turn to higher ground and Caer Caradoc will then not be far off.”
So Ludlow became their goal, and hopes of it kept them going day after day, as weary mole followed weary mole, and each strove to keep up with the one ahead.
During these long days they rarely saw Brother Inquisitor Slane himself, and assumed he travelled ahead or behind with another group of Newborns, perhaps because here and there along the way it was necessary to cross roaring owl ways, and stretches of marshy ground, and smaller groups were safer in such places. But nightly he would appear briefly in their chamber, and stare silently at them for a moment before asking if they had any problems, or wished to make complaints. It seemed he had strict instructions to abide by, to do with ensuring that they were comfortable – as comfortable, that is, as moles could be who were being forced to travel faster than they ever had before. But it needed courage to complain to Slane, and as it was, none of them felt any great need to do so.
Occasionally Snyde was not with them, and when they saw him again he took smug pleasure in explaining that he had travelled that day with Slane, who had wished to share his company for “purposes of consultation”. Any notion of Snyde sharing intelligence he had gained about the Newborns with his fellow Duncton moles was not entertained at all – Snyde had never consulted any but cronies on his rise through the Duncton Library, and he was not going to start now. He seemed a mole without a single redeeming feature, except, perhaps, the fact that he showed stamina and did not complain of the rigours the speed of their journey imposed on them. In addition to his brief duty visits, they occasionally caught sight of Slane in the evening, particularly if the stopping-place chosen was in a smaller system with little chance of seclusion. On these occasions he nodded politely to them, but it was noticeable that if Privet was among those he had to pass he too betrayed the Newborns’ general inclination to be ill-at-ease with females ranked higher than mere mate, or mother.
The expected deterioration in the weather occurred the nearer they approached to Ludlow, and so what they gained in the improvement in the soil as they broke free from the River Teme’s floodplain, they lost in the heavy rainstorms that now began. This gloomier weather, with cloud and blustery December winds, slowed them down, and the days were growing shorter too with the inexorable approach of Longest Night. There were few incidents of note, and over the Duncton moles and Weeth there descended a fatalistic sense that for the time being they could do little but trek on, in the hope that the Stone’s guidance would come when it was needed. How many more days’ travel they had ahead of them the Newborns did not say, and Snyde was unable to get anything more certain than that it would be a “good few more days yet, but certainly in time for Longest Night”. That might normally have been a comfort, but for Privet and the others the Longest Night approaching now seemed charged with fateful trial and danger for them, and for all moledom.
It was Maple, always sensitive to such things, who first noticed that as the valley narrowed and they drew nearer to Ludlow, some of the Newborn guards were growing restless and irritable, and their discipline began to break down. It was hard to say how it became evident – except that Slane showed his snout about more, and some of the younger, tougher-looking Newborns, who had until then been only at his flank, were now dispersed among the more ordinary brothers as if they expected trouble to erupt.
The brothers themselves were silent about what was apaw, but there was a sudden halt to their progress one afternoon and the Duncton moles were taken underground for their “protection’; on the surface above there was much hurrying and scurrying, shouted orders and urgent whispered conversations in which Slane himself was involved. This unexplained stoppage went on for some time, until eventually they were allowed up to the surface again, and told they would trek on into the dusk “to make up for lost time”.
Nothing more was said, but two days later the party veered upslope from the valley of the Teme to where the Ludlow system sits below a promontory called Rockgreen. It was not a place Privet and the others were ever likely to forget, for that night there was much movement about the tunnels they were in, more whispers, more goings-on, until when the daylight came and the Duncton moles emerged they found a system in considerable, almost festive, excitement. Slane’s tough minions went about looking pleased with themselves, flexing their talons, and stopping still with studied menace to their stance.
As ever, it was Weeth who wheedled out of a Newborn what was going on, but when he came to his friends to report, his expression was anything but excited and festive.
“There’s going to be a strettening,” he said grimly.
It was a word the others had heard before but could not quite place until Privet remembered with horror that it was what the Cuddesdon moles had once done to Chater when he had journeyed to that system, and it had almost been the death of him.
“Yes, that’s exactly what it is,” said Weeth, “and this is just the place to do it. They like a hill to send the victims running down, for then they cannot control their movements quite so well, and the moles they run between have a better hope of making more damaging blows.”
“Who are the victims, and what have they done?” asked Whillan.
“I don’t know their names, but I’m told they absconded two days ago, and that was what the fuss was about when we had to stop and go underground. They were caught yesterday and brought back into the system last night and arraigned by Brother Inquisitor Slane at dawn. They will be strettened on the northern slopes of Rockgreen at midday.”
“But what did they abscond for?”
“They were trying to get to Bowdler, which lies close by Caradoc. It’s where the females are kept, and no doubt they believe their mothers and siblings to be there.”
“Mothers? Siblings?”
“Where do you imagine the mothers and sisters of Newborn male pups go?” said Weeth. “They may have further uses, and sisters grow to be potential mothers. Thripp is a planning kind of mole.”
“We thought they were... killed,” said Whillan faintly.
“Oh, did you?” said Weeth. “Sadly the Senior Brothers are not quite so straightforward as that. They do not like to sully their paws with anything that can be clearly called killing, as you will find out with the strettening when you witness it.”
“Us?” said Maple, outraged.
“The word they like to use in such affairs is exemplary – and examples are no good if they are not witnessed and well kenned by those they are intended to warn against misdemeanour. If Chervil was here he would have the sense to keep you out of the way, but Slane is a different kind of mole, being a Brother Inquisitor pure and simple. You will be expected to attend.”
“And if we do not?”
“You will be made to. I have fortunately only witnessed two strettenings, and at one of them, when a mole refused to watch – he
was not Newborn – he too was strettened and did not survive. The mood on these occasions gets unpleasant, or as the Inquisitors say complacently, “over-eager”. In short, murderous. You will be ill-advised to object in any way, but there is no rule against closing your eyes – it is only a pity that we cannot close our ears as well.”
“So, Bowdler is a place...?” said Whillan.
“... the place, rumour has it, to where mothers and sisters that are judged fit for further use are dispatched after the spring birthings in Caer Caradoc. It would not do to have such disruptive influences too near; at least, not until the male pups have been educated and taught to despise all their female kin. But some moles, it seems, harbour weak notions of seeing their mothers, if only once. Those who have been caught were two such moles.”
There was no time for further explanation because Snyde came bustling in, accompanied by several Newborns, and looking more cheerful and excited than they had ever seen him.
“You may have heard...?”
“We have heard, and we do not wish to go.”
“Oh you must, you must,” said Snyde, his twisted head turned eagerly towards Maple, and his moist thin tongue flicking out and in, “and you will. It is for our good.”
They argued, and Snyde grew angry, but the Newborn guards impatiently cut the talking short, as if eager to get out to see the fun. They ordered them to the surface in such a way that it would have been impossible to refuse without a fight, and fighting against such numbers, on such an occasion, seemed most unwise.
“Our day will come,” said Maple through gritted teeth, as he reluctantly followed the Newborns out into the communal tunnels. Even without their guards they would have had no difficulty finding where the strettening was to be, since the tunnels were abuzz with moles, and the air was alive with that distinct and unpleasant excitement whose only name is blood-lust, born of a situation in which punishment and killing are deemed to be justified. The normal pretences were gone, and allmole was happily off to stance down that long killing route of talon-thrusting moles which the victims of the Newborn punishment must run.