It was so bad in some places that moles began to avoid certain of the communal tunnels and even to abandon affected sections of their own tunnels. Many of the Marshenders took the more drastic but effective step of gathering leaves and the yellow flowerheads of the fleabane that few down near the marshes to spread about their tunnels, which had the unfortunate effect on the system of forcing the infestations further towards the centre, where the fleabane did not grow.
Such infestations had happened in summer before, though never so badly, but even this was regarded by the gossips of Barrow Vale as just another annoyance of an aggravating season. Certainly it was not of enough significance to stop Bracken deciding that, once he had had a rest from his tour of the tunnels, he would set off for the pastures to tell Stonecrop and the Pasture moles that they could occupy the ancient tunnels if they really wanted to. Then he would go and see Rebecca, hoping that she would come close to him again.
But he was never to make either journey. As he was about to leave, Mekkins arrived from the Marsh End with some news so strange that he immediately accompanied him back, though taking a roundabout route to avoid the fleas.
It seemed that the day before, three moles had been gathering fleabane by the marsh’s edge, when from out among its dry rustling grasses two strange moles had appeared. Never in living memory or legend had anymole ever come from across the marshes. The Marshenders were hostile—two standing their ground very firmly while the other got reinforcements and sent to Mekkins. Mekkins came quickly and interrogated them. The two strangers were friendly to the point of abjection. They had come a long way, they said; the marsh was caked over with dryness and there was no problem in crossing it. No, they had not crossed over by any route which the roaring owls took—a suggestion Mekkins made to them on the basis of what Boswell had told him about what lay beyond the marshes. No, they had come by some other way, though they seemed confused, or deliberately vague, about where. They kept asking questions themselves—what system was this, they wanted to know, and was everything all right?
Mekkins answered no questions, but let them come into one of the burrows nearest the marsh where he there put some guards on them while he went to get Bracken. His instinct was to kill them there and then, but he felt that their visit was so unusual, and times were so strange, that it was a good idea to give Bracken and Boswell the chance to talk to them.
So all three of them went back quickly to the Marsh End without pause, going right through towards the marsh itself. But before they got to the burrow where the strangers were being kept, they met the three Marsh End moles who had been guarding them coming towards them.
‘Why the ’ell aren’t you doin’ what you should be?’ demanded Mekkins. ‘Don’t you tell me that them two buggers have scarpered.’ He looked very threatening.
One of the three spoke up: ‘It ain’t that they’ve scarpered, Mekkins. Worse than that. They’re dead!’
‘Yes, suddenly took ill last night with Stone knows what, and as soon as you know it, they were gone,’ said another. ‘Both of them?’ asked Mekkins.
‘Horrible it was,’ said the third. ‘In agony they were.’
‘Horrible it is,’ said the first mole. ‘Never smelt anything like it. You go an’ see for yerself, Mekkins.’
The two dead moles presented a pathetic sight. One was still crouched upright on his paws, all hunched up with his snout tight between his forepaws, as if he had tried to protect himself from a headlong wind. His eyes were terribly swollen, while his snout, what they could see of it, was red and sore, and his fur mottled and caked with sweat. The other was on his side, paws out stiff, his mouth agape. His soft, pale belly fur was lank and diseased-looking, and in the soft part where one of the back paws joined his body there was a gaping sore, yellow with pus. It was from this that a terrible stench of death that filled the burrow seemed to emanate. There was one other thing. The floor of the burrow was bristling with fleas whose one objective seemed the same: to get to the open sores on the mole’s body. Some fleas were already there, sucking at the red and yellow patch. Others, satiated, occasionally lost their grip and fell off, their place taken immediately by new ones.
‘But they looked all right when I left ’em to go and get Bracken,’ said Mekkins to one of the guardmoles.
‘Well, we watched over them from the moment you went. Even offered ’em a worm or two, which is saying something these days, but they weren’t interested. Said they weren’t hungry. One of ’em got restless first and started sweating, a smelly kind of sweat. Then the other got all hot and bothered and says something like “We’re cursed, it will kill everymole”. So I asked him what he was on about and he said “You’ll soon find out” and started groaning and cursing while the other one—he’s the one who’s still on his paws— just sort of curled up and then shivered and started scratching his snout as if there was something on it, which there wasn’t. Then they got steadily worse and worse and I sent somemole over to the pastures to get Rebecca because I thought she would help out, but that was early this morning and you’ve got here first. Then the one that was groaning stopped groaning and sort of his breath came faster’n faster and he shivered. Then before we knew where we were they were both dead, one just where he was and the other keeling over and ending up where ’e is now, on ’is side. Well, then we noticed the smell getting bad, and then the fleas seemed to get worse, though Stone knows where they come from because this burrow was pretty clear of ’em.’
‘What did they mean?’ Bracken pondered aloud to himself. ‘“It will kill everymole”… What do you make of it, Boswell?’
They turned to Boswell, who was looking closely at the dead moles. If ever a mole looked as if he knew more than he was saying, it was Boswell at that moment. ‘The best thing you can do for the time being is to seal that burrow,’ he said, not answering Bracken’s question.
‘This ain’t the Pasture system, me old mate,’ said Mekkins. ‘They may do that there, but they ain’t taken over Duncton yet. I don’t want a couple of diseased strangers rotting in my tunnels, thank you very much.’
Just as Bracken was about to step in and settle the argument there was a commotion at the other end of the tunnel and the mole who had been sent to get Rebecca appeared.
‘She ain’t there,’ he said. ‘Gone to deal with something or other over in the far pastures she has, so some berk of a Pasture mole told me. They’re thick as lobworms, them lot. I left a message. Let’s hope he’s not too thick to pass it on.’
‘Right. We’ll wait till Rebecca gets back before deciding what to do with these two,’ said Bracken firmly. ‘Now, can we go somewhere more pleasant, Mekkins, and decide what we are going to do?’
Two hours later one of the moles who had been guarding the two strangers began to sweat. Six hours later he was dead. That same evening a mole came to tell Mekkins that two more who lived near the burrow where the two strangers had died had been taken ill—sweating, irritable, very thirsty and weakening by the hour.