‘The mole I have come with, who brought me safely here, is Bracken from Duncton which, like Siabod, is one of the Great Systems. Nomole may be trusted more.’ Y Wrach nodded gently, snouting over towards the shadows where Bracken crouched in silence.
‘I will tell you of Mandrake, the mole of Siabod; I will tell you of changes that nomole may judge. I will ask you a favour of the great Stones of Siabod… ’ So Boswell began to tell their story, speaking in the traditional rhythmic way of scribemoles for whom truth is more important than time or effect, and who speak as moles can only ever truly speak, from one heart to another.
When Celyn reached the name of Mandrake in his translation, Y Wrach sighed very slightly and seemed to mutter to herself, peering blindly at Boswell and then round at the rest of them in the burrow, seeming suddenly to find more strength in her body and to hold herself more and more erect. Her face bore the pride of a difficult promise fulfilled. She spoke a few words in Siabod which Celyn translated almost as she spoke them.
‘Alas, Boswell, that you are not a female, for then, perhaps, there would be less need of words. Tell me of Mandrake whom I saved on the mountain, tell me it all and I will tell you its truth.’
So Boswell began the tale, telling of Duncton and of all Mandrake did there. Telling of Rebecca and speaking of Rune, sometimes softly referring to Bracken for details that he did not know or could not remember having been told.
Until at last, in a voice as hushed as night-time snow, he told of the fight by the Stone and of the death of Mandrake.
There was a sigh from Y Wrach as he told of this and a shaking of her old lined head. Then Boswell continued, telling of the seventh Stillstone, of the death of Skeat, of the plague, and of all the things that had happened to bring them to Siabod. As he spoke, Bracken saw for the first time that, looked at in the way Boswell had told them, all these things were linked to Mandrake. But then he thought that in another way they were linked to Rebecca, or to Boswell, or to Uffington. And the Stone. Their story was all one.
There was a long silence before Y Wrach began in her own turn to speak. As she did so, she seemed to rear up and grow in size, the great slab of slate that formed one side of the burrow seeming to shrink behind her, a black backdrop to her grey and wrinkled form. She spoke in a singsong voice, different from the one she had first spoken in, and the words seemed to come not from her but through her, from a different generation of moles and from a mole who was young and speaking reluctantly through a body that had nearly done with life:
‘Hen wyf i, ni’th oddiweddaf…
Crai fy mryd rhag gofd haint…
Gorddyar adar; gwlyb naint.
Llewychyd lloer; oer dewaint.’
‘Ancient am I, and do not comprehend you…
I am wasted from painful disease…
Loud are birds; streams wet,
The moon shines; midnight is cold.’
The Siabod she spoke was more rhythmic and musical than that Bracken had first heard from Bran and the other moles down in the valley. And as Celyn’s translation began, her own words seemed to form a wonderful, melodic accompaniment to his own rendering of it, so that the sense came from him, but the power and poetry of sound came from her.
At first Bracken found it hard to follow what she meant, until he realised that he was not listening to a series of logical ideas or explanations of anything so much as to the outpouring of images and memories from the heart of a mole who had struggled with age for many long moleyears and whose life is better explained by the running of a stream than by the exposition of a scribemole. At the heart of all she said was her faith in Mandrake, or in the life force within him, whose power she believed would not have withered in the dull safety of burrows and tunnels, having survived the blizzard from which she saved him.
‘Mandrake, I knew your nature,
Like the rush of an eagle in estuaries were you.
Had I been fortunate you could have escaped,
But my misfortune was your life.
My heart was withered from longing.
The buzzard has plunged on the heath,
Your black fur lost in the slate
Of Siabod, or the hound’s howls,
Of Gelert, black as Llyn dur Arddu.
I am wasted, disease has seized me.
Mandrake, what part of you hears me?
For you are coming again
From the slate where you went,
Black among shadows. I hear you.
Wind tosses starry flowers,
Snow drips among green fern.
No more will the buzzard see me,
But I will come in a circle,
A gyre of triumph; bare like the hill,
No fur, no grass; weak talons, soft rock.
This leaf, the wind whips it away.
Alas for its fate,
Old, born this year.
Young, reborn next.
So will you come back,
So will I come back,
So will you know me,
So will I laugh at the black slate of Siabod,
Though my heart withered from longing
In this life that you left me,
And wind swept the last trees from the mountain.
So did I laugh in the blizzard that found you.
Lakes cold, their looks want warmth,
Ravens scatter in Castell y Gwynt,
Beak on the ice where your talon went,
Where the Stone’s silence warned you
And Tryfan stands still.
I am wasted with melancholy tonight
That I was not there with you,
Nor can ever be. Another will go
And you will come back.
Let the Stones see another
In Castell y Gwynt
Where the winds howl through cracks
But Tryfan stands still.’
As the chanting music of her voice fell away, Celyn spoke the final words and then there was a long silence, Bracken never taking his eyes from her as the images she had invoked of age, and of quest, and of Mandrake, to whom she spoke as if he were still alive, melded in his mind and soared to the Stones of Siabod where he knew he must go.
But most of all he felt her love for Mandrake and her sense that in some way she, who had saved him, had yet failed him. And in hearing her speak, and understanding this truth behind her words, he understood at last Rebecca’s love for Mandrake, which was the same. He remembered again, as he had so many times, that terrible cry by Mandrake when he was by the Stone, a cry he had heard but not known how to listen to. How can a mole answer such anguish? Where does he find the strength? So he looked on Y Wrach anew and wondered if there was anything that he might say to her, anything that would bring her some comfort.
‘Tell her about Rebecca,’ he said suddenly, his voice breaking the silence. And then, turning to Celyn, he said, ‘Did you tell her?’
‘She knows,’ said Boswell softly, and Celyn nodded.
‘No,’ said Bracken, ‘I mean you must tell her I love her,’ for he knew it was the only way of letting this mole, who had waited so long, know that there was something of Mandrake that another mole loved.
‘Tell her,’ said Bracken to Celyn.
Celyn spoke softly to Y Wrach, who put out to him an aged paw which he held in his own before she turned and faced Bracken directly. Then she came over to him slowly, her back paws moving with difficulty, and touched his paw with her own.