Sometimes, among the soaring fragments of ash, a delicate white admiral butterfly or garish purple emperor tried to fly clear of the heat and smoke, beating frail wings unnaturally high into the air against the sucking and hurling currents, fluttering the last of its life away before smoke choked it and heat turned the beautiful wings into crumpled ash, and it fell back into the flames, unrecognisable and lost.
Death licked and darted its flaming way among the heavy tree trunks and branches, where, beneath the once protective bark, the larvae of stag beetles and longhorns or scuttling weevils found themselves trapped in the steam of boiling sap, their scrabbling bodies falling still as the fire burned away the life of tree after tree. While on the leaves, and especially the beloved oaks of Duncton Wood, the knobbles and carbuncles of the gall wasps and midges, where tiny young maggots lived in a cocoon of life, were suddenly gone, caught by a devastation more terrible than the plague that had swept through the moles below and one from which none escaped.
Along the wood’s edge, in advance of the flames, the grass was alive with fleeing creatures: dormice, unused to the light of day; squirrels, tails dancing in tune as they ran and then stopped, still on two legs, to see if they could tell where the danger lay before running on again; stoats and bank voles, and, of course, those few moles who had survived the plague had been driven from their tunnels by the smell of danger. Creatures that were normally foes now lost their internecine fears and ran, or hopped, or hesitated, or fled as their nature and instincts told them. Few dared to venture out of cover on to the pastures, most preferring to run on through grass or undergrowth in advance of the fire, and hope that they might escape it.
On the hilltop by the Stone, among the great beeches, Boswell could sense the terrible devastation that was spreading through the wood below. He could smell the smoke, though the terrible pall that now covered the wood as far as the slopes was beyond his range of vision. And he could not know that below him the ancient and noble oaks of Barrow Vale were being taken for ever by the fire. He had heard the urgent wings of carrion crow high in the branches, flapping blackly up through the smoke-filled beech branches and out of the wood. Then the sudden flight of a spotted woodpecker, flying straight out of its territory and ignoring any danger but the fire behind. And an urgent scurrying of such normally unseen birds as nuthatches and tree-creepers, driven out of their cover by panic.
There were other moles with Boswell, huddling by the Stone, most of whom had come to touch the Stone to avoid the plague and stayed there to avoid the danger in the system below. One or two had come up from the slopes, worried by the smoke and unnatural sounds.
Their only comfort was Boswell’s calm and peaceful presence, and to him they looked again and again for reassurance, shivering with fear despite the heat of the day and the smoke, unwilling to flee beyond the Stone. Occasionally creatures ran across the clearing—a squirrel, a stoat from somewhere down on the slopes—but the pawful of moles stayed fast, waiting and waiting in the smell of the fire and the sound of Boswell’s prayers.
The fire finally caught up with Bracken, Rebecca and Comfrey when they were halfway to the slopes. The flames crackled and roared to their left and right, burning branches fell crashing into the flames of the undergrowth, the smoke began to choke them with its heat and they began to turn this way and that in an attempt to progress further. Until at last there was nowhere to go, and the fire was approaching from all around them, Bracken’s fur singed by its sparks and flames.
It was then that they were forced underground again, into the plague-smelling, smoke-filled tunnels. Bracken led them down, past the dead and gaping bodies of moles, seeking out a tunnel or burrow that was smoke-free. To the left, to the right, through narrow tunnels they went, until they found a subsidiary tunnel that was clear—obviously because it led nowhere. Bracken saw Rebecca and Comfrey safely into it before following them and sealing it up, so that no smoke could enter, and then making a second seal for safety. The tunnel ran among the roots of an oak tree, thick and gnarled, and there they stopped, hoping that the danger would pass. They could hear the sound of the crashing fire above them, and worse, far worse, they could hear in the desperate sounds of the roots the useless fight of the tree against the fire that now overwhelmed it. Hissings and sobbings, groanings and cryings as the tree died above them, the roots sweating with its death. Branches crashing and cracking all about. Time stretched from desperate minutes into aching hours, and then on into an unseen dawn and another day.
Occasionally they heard thumps and crashings above them, or felt the tunnels vibrate from some branchfall. But gradually thick silence fell, the only sense of the fire left to them being its smell, which filtered into even their sealed tunnel. The air in the tunnel grew heavy and warm with their confined presence, and fetid, too, though they could not tell it. They sweated and sighed, crouching in silence together, Bracken’s flank to Rebecca’s, and Rebecca’s paw touching Comfrey.
But at least they found a little food—some worms and grubs that had made their way to the tree’s roots. At last the air became so unpleasant that they all wanted to move, and they were encouraged by the arrival of silence.
‘Right,’ said Bracken, breaking the silence, ‘we’re going to try to get out.’
They broke through one seal and then, very slowly, poked a way through the other. The air beyond smelt of smoke but it was clear, and they passed without hesitation into it to find their way back to the surface.
‘Rebecca!’ called Comfrey as they ran down the tunnel.
‘What is it, my sweet?’ said Rebecca, her voice warm and healthy again.
‘There’s no smell of plague in the tunnel!’ And it was true—the dead moles were still there but somehow they were dry and did not seem ever to have been moles.
‘There’s no fleas, either,’ said Bracken in wonder.
It was true—the smoke and heat from the fire had cleared the tunnels of plague.
The entrance they had come in by had gone beyond recognition, for a great branch had shattered through the dry soil and the tunnel was open to the air, its roof torn and black, warm ash and occasional swirlings of smoke playing where the roof had been.
Then they were out, on to what had once been the surface, but now lay black and waste, with not a hint of green in sight; just blackened roots of trees that had become no more than huge black thorns pointing ruggedly to the bare sky.
The surface felt exposed, as it did over on the pastures, and its air was heavy with the passage of the fire. They passed over the ashes of their wood, their black coats making them seem no more than shadows against its dark grey wastes. Where fire still smouldered at a root or branch, the smoke was swirled this way and that by a wind that seemed unable to make up its mind which way to blow. And the air hung heavier and heavier while the sky grew darker and more overcast. Ahead of them there was still an occasional crackle of fire, but it was sporadic and non-threatening and anyway, they could go no way other than up the slopes, for behind them their devastated wood stretched black and defeated, dead of all life.
The fire had stopped by the top of the slopes, turned back by the wider spacing of the trees and the lack of undergrowth. It had smouldered its way up among the first one or two beeches but could not get hold of the carpet of beech leaves or make headway against the massive bare trunks of the trees. One or two were charred, a few more blackened by soot, but none took the fire and it had stopped. It guttered and crackled still, but they were able to pick a way through it without trouble.