‘In the sense you mean, it is untrue,’ said Boswell, breaking the silence in which he had been lost for most of the time since the plague came upon them. ‘These moles do not understand that the Stone is not a power by itself. Its power is invested in each one of us, whether it is a power for good or for evil. If you touch the Stone with faith, perhaps that does release a power, but only one that exists already inside you. For all your cynicism, Bracken, you have that power as well.’
‘Can I stop myself getting the plague?’ asked Bracken bitterly, thinking of the many who had died. ‘Could they have?’
Boswell was silent, which turned Bracken’s bitterness into anger. He felt, as so many other moles did themselves, that the plague was in some way a judgement on him. But his feeling was the stronger for his being leader of the Duncton system and, though no other moles said it, he felt responsible for what was happening. Like Rebecca, he felt the terrible frustration of not being able to relieve the suffering, almost as if it was a guilt. He turned these feelings back on Boswell, and through him on to the Stone.
Boswell was silent.
‘Where is this power of the Stone when it is most needed?’ demanded Bracken angrily. ‘You’re clever at making the Stone seem important, but when it’s needed, really needed, what good is it? Why does it let this happen?’ Bracken waved his paws around the tunnels of Barrow Vale, now full of frightened survivors of the plague, in a way that took in their fears and took in as well the dead, the stench of the dead and the distant moans of the dying.
‘Well, Boswell?’
But Boswell was silent. He knew the Stone was inside Bracken and one day he would know it. The plague was no more a judgement on the system or the moles in it than the idea that the sun was a bonus for living a good life was true. The plague was a part of life, as death was, but Boswell did not know what words could express such thoughts in such a place as this.
‘I will go the Stone myself,’ he said finally.
‘To pray?’ mocked Bracken. ‘Or to touch the Stone so you don’t get it…’ His voice trailed off as he heard his own tired bitterness. He was so weary, and suddenly afraid now that Boswell was going to leave. Impulsively he went up to Boswell and stopped him leaving.
‘What will happen to us all, to the system?’ Boswell looked at him with those bright dark eyes that held such understanding and warmth to anymole willing to raise his own eyes and look into them. He understood Bracken’s anger and torment, for he loved him with a love that grew stronger and fiercer in him day by day. He knew that a mole like Bracken might be angry with the Stone as well as in love with it. Indifference was the greatest threat.
‘I will pray for you, Bracken, for Rebecca and for all moles…’ But Bracken turned away again, thinking that prayers would be of no help to the moles in his system who had died already and to whom he had been unable to offer any protection. Yet his heart sank to see Boswell go. He wondered if he would ever see him again.
Four days and many more plague deaths later, Bracken had a visit in Barrow Vale from a Marshender. His message was stark and simple: Mekkins was dead. Just like that. Mekkins was gone.
‘Rebecca was with him but she couldn’t do nothing,’ said the Marshender, who had seen so much death that even Mekkins’ death had not affected him. ‘What mole can? It’s the Stone’s curse, and we’re powerless against it.’ Mekkins!
There was no need to be told how, or when, or where. The fact of it was enough to take the last strength from his body and for despair to take him over. It was as if some thief had sneaked into his burrow in the night and taken something from him without him seeing it and which he could never recover. Nothing could have underlined the tragedy that had overtaken the system more than this. Mekkins! Who had talked to him only days before, who was always aggressive and full of life; who had done so much for him and Rebecca and so many other moles.
He rose up from where he was crouched and began to roar in his shock and rage, raising his talons and bringing them down on the walls of the elder burrow, gasping out in his anger, grunting in his effort to attack and attack the earth around him, spittle forming on his mouth fur. He wanted to do something, anything, but there was nothing. He wanted to run roaring through the tunnels to the Marsh End, but what was the point?
The Marshender watched him. He had seen it all before. Anger, rage, prayers, the whole bleedin’ lot. A bit of roaring and raving wasn’t goin’ to do no good. Still, didn’t hurt, either. Better tell him the rest.
‘Rebecca’s got it as well. She’s got the plague,’ said the Marshender.
Horror and fear rushed over Bracken’s fur, then icy calm. ‘Where is she?’ he asked urgently.
‘Stone knows,’ said the Marshender. ‘She was only just took with it when I left—sweatin’ she was just like the others. I reckoned it was the plague. I scarpered. I mean, if the healer gets it, then Stone help us all.’
Bracken was gone before he could say more, running down through the system towards Mekkins’ tunnels, for that was where she would be. Running and running as if death were chasing at his paws. Running and running through the flea-ridden, death-smelling, stifling tunnels with sweat in his fur and terrible visions of a dying Rebecca mixing with pictures of a dead Mekkins in his mind, and prayers, more wild and desperate than any he had ever felt tempted to utter running through his head. ‘Keep her alive,’ he begged as he ran, ‘keep her alive. Spare Rebecca… take me. Take me,’ as he ran and ran.
She was not in Mekkins’ burrow, where only Mekkins’ body lay, hunched and sore-ridden like the rest. Oh, Mekkins! Mekkins!
Rebecca! He looked around wildly, not knowing where to go, trying to think, trying to recover enough to think. Rebecca! He ran from tunnel to tunnel, seeking a mole to guide him to where she might be, meeting mole after mole who looked at him stupidly when he asked, ‘Where’s Rebecca?’ for they had problems of their own and how would they know where she was?
Why hadn’t she come to him? Where would she have gone?
He began to run towards the pastures, thinking that she must have returned to her burrow, but only when he was nearly to the wood’s edge did he remember that he didn’t know exactly where she lived there—up near the higher pastures? Down where Rose once lived? And anyway… he paused in his running, sweat now shining in his fur and his breathing desperate with effort… it didn’t feel right. He felt as if he was running away from her. He turned south, towards the Stone on top of the hill, the evening air in the tunnels around him heavy with dry heat and asked aloud, ‘Where are you?’ He wanted to call for her and hear her answer. He wanted Rebecca.
Where would she have gone? He crouched down and closed his eyes, thinking himself into her mind as best he could and wondering where she might have gone. The Stone? Barrow Vale? Where else was there?
Only one place, and it came to him quietly as he himself had once gone there. Curlew’s burrow. The place she had gone when she had been so ill before and where, by the grace of the Stone, she had survived to take care of Comfrey. She must have gone there. He was so certain of it that a peace came to him as he got up and set off eastwards across the Marsh End to the most forsaken part of the system. By the grace of the Stone… he prayed to it subconsciously, feeling guilty at asking it to keep her alive when he had doubted it so much. ‘If you keep her alive,’ he bargained, ‘I’ll go to Uffington to give thanks. I’ll do anything… only keep her alive.’