Turning to Boswell he said, ‘However, bringing a mole who is not a scribe into the Holy Burrows is just a trifle daring, even for you, Boswell. Who is he?’ With that, Skeat turned slowly to where Bracken crouched in the shadows, thinking nomole knew he was there.
If a yawning crevice could have opened up and swallowed him there and then, or if the rows of books could all have collapsed on him, hiding him from view, Bracken would not have minded in the least. Fifty marauding moles, twenty weasels, ten owls… anything but the sudden exposure to the gaze of all those scribemoles.
He stepped forward reluctantly, out of the darkness by the tunnel entrance, hardly daring to breath and, not knowing what else to do, he kept his snout low and waited.
‘His name is Bracken,’ said Boswell, ‘and without his help I would not be here now and nor would there be anything to report of my quest for the seventh Book.’ At this there was a sudden excited buzz of whispers among the moles. The seventh Book! So Boswell was one of those who had gone in search of it so long ago, thought the new scribemoles, who were wondering what this was all about. They gazed on Bracken with awe.
‘He has also come to give thanks to the Stone for a mole who survived the plague. I have reason to give thanks to her myself, as many moles have.’
Skeat stepped forward towards Bracken, going up to him and touching him gently on his left shoulder, just where another mole had touched him once, long, long before, after they had met by the Stone. The feeling he had had then was the same as he had now, and he looked up into Skeat’s eyes as if no other mole existed. He was close to tears.
‘What is the mole’s name?’ asked Skeat gently, so quietly that it was almost like a private conversation.
‘Rebecca,’ whispered Bracken.
‘May the Stone protect her and bless her with strength. May you both have strength for the trials to come.’
No other mole heard him say this blessing, not even Boswell, and Skeat himself was surprised to find himself saying it. But there was something about this mole Boswell had brought to Uffington that made him see again something that he had often thought, though most scribemoles and even masters forgot it: the Stone very often works through moles who are far from Uffington’s peace and prayer, who may themselves never understand the Stone or, indeed, may not even trust it. Such moles may show a courage far greater than many a scribemole shows in their pursuit of truth and their fulfilment of the tasks the Stone has set. Their pain and suffering may be as deeply felt and as spiritual as a scribemole’s, or one who worshipped the Stone. Skeat sensed that Bracken was just such a mole.
Skeat turned back to Boswell and said ‘And what of your quest for the seventh Book? Did you succeed…?’ His question tailed off into nothing and an excited hush fell over the scribemoles who were listening.
‘I have not found the seventh Book,’ said Boswell, a ripple of disappointment running round the moles in the library, ‘but Bracken of Duncton’—they all looked at Bracken—‘has, I believe, seen the seventh Stillstone. He knows where it is and has shown me.’
There was absolute silence in the library.
‘It is in a sacred place, a protected place, and one into which nomole may simply go. Only a mole or moles graced by the Stone, as Bracken was graced, may go there and perhaps nomole in our lifetime will ever be able to enter there again.’
‘A strange beginning, Boswell, and a story which, when you both have rested and eaten, you had better tell me of in full. There is much, too, for you to hear, and if you are as you once were, you will ask me a dozen questions for every one I answer! But not until you have eaten and rested.’
With that Skeat raised one paw briefly to them all and said, ‘In worde, werke, will and thought, make us meke and lowe in hert. And us to love as we shulde do.’
As Skeat left, Bracken noticed that one of the two moles who had come in with him took the book Quire had been searching for and carried it off after the Holy Mole.
Then, thinking that if he wasn’t ‘lowe in hert’ he was certainly low in strength, Bracken willingly followed one of the scribemoles as he led them away to two simple burrows in the chalk soil where they found food was provided, and they were left to eat and sleep. Bracken found it hard to fall asleep for thinking about the strangeness of the Holy Burrows, and finally got up to go and have a chat with Boswell. But he found him fast asleep, head and snout curled on to his crippled paw as they always did when he was sleeping peacefully. Bracken did not disturb him but returned to his own burrow. It was only the memory of the private blessing Skeat had given to Rebecca and himself, and the consecration he felt that it imposed upon their love, that finally brought him the peace he needed before he, too, fell into a deep sleep.
In the course of their subsequent conversations with Skeat, which were held over a period of many weeks in a simple chamber along the tunnel that led to the Holy Burrows, with just one other mole in attendance, Bracken and Boswell were to learn much more about how the plague had ravaged the systems in general.
It had started in the north and travelled steadily southwards, killing about nine out of ten moles who came into contact with it. It was regarded by the scribemoles as a judgement on moles by the Stone and, to their credit, a judgement on themselves as well when it struck Uffington, killing as many there as elsewhere.
Skeat had been the only master to survive and had accordingly, by the tradition of precedence, been elected Holy Mole—a position he had neither desired nor expected and one he accepted with reluctance. One reason for this was that he sensed, as others in many different systems had, that the time in which they lived was one of great change and destiny. They needed a Holy Mole of greater wisdom and experience than he, and one who had seen into the silence of the Stone far more deeply than he felt he had.
But with such thoughts, genuinely modest as they were, he did himself an injustice: Uffington, and through its example all systems, needed in that troubled time a leader who was strong enough to impose the unity and trust the conditions of devastation demanded, while wise enough to dispense with the rigid and sometimes inflexible rituals of the past.
It seemed that many of the plague survivors had felt, as Bracken had, that they should visit Uffington to express their thanks to the Stone. Most had been unable or unwilling to do this in person, preferring to visit the nearest Stone, from where their prayers of thanksgiving came to Uffington. That many such visits had been made was known, because some scribemoles had, like Boswell, survived and made their way back to Uffington, while a very few nonscribes had come as well. Bracken was one, but there had been others.
‘We have had a visit from a mole who knows you both and has spoken well of you: Medlar, from the north.’
So he had got here, after all! The news excited Bracken, who was now a little less awed than he had been at first in Skeat’s presence and who, since Boswell wasn’t going to ask, boldly asked the question himself.
‘Where is he?’
‘It will not be possible to see him,’ said Skeat with a certain finality to his voice. ‘May the Steyn rix in hys herte,’ he added, words that seemed to have a special significance for Boswell, who started a little at it and muttered a blessing under his breath. It was this that warned Bracken against asking outright where Medlar was, and this too that gave him the uncomfortable feeling that there was a lot about the Holy Burrows that he did not understand, and never would.