‘No. Where?’ asked Mandrake, puzzlement taking over from curiosity.
‘Ah! I thought… nothing. I must be wrong.’
Mandrake got up and came closer to Rune. ‘What did you think?’ he asked more intensely.
Rune demurred. Then he said, ‘At any rate if there is anywhere in the system where danger and treachery can have least effect it is in the Westside. Most of the henchmoles come from there. Very loyal to you and the system.’
‘Danger? Treachery?’ There was a hint of irritation in Mandrake’s voice, a touch of anger.
‘We must always be prepared for them, you have taught me that.’ Rune stopped again and Mandrake waited for him to go on. Eventually he did, but deliberately on to another subject.
‘Autumn is starting, Mandrake. A time of change. But what a summer! You must have been proud of Rebecca, then.’
‘Proud?’
‘Such innocence, in the summer. Such warmth, when the sun was shining. So beautiful, then. She’s not here in Barrow Vale now?’
‘Should she be?’
‘She was. After she left her burrows a few days ago. But perhaps she’s gone back there now, and I’m wrong.’
‘Wrong? What is that you’re saying, Rune? Come on, out with it.’
‘Fears are not always founded in fact. They are best left unspoken until they are known to be true. And then a mole may root out danger and treachery.’
‘Treachery? Rebecca? What do you mean?’ Mandrake was becoming angry, though not exactly with Rune himself, since nomole had been more loyal to him.
‘What mole did you fight?’ persisted Mandrake.
‘A mole I hope that Rebecca has not met,’ replied Rune, adding quickly, ‘but we will soon know… if Rebecca is back in her tunnels, I mean. I did not want to worry you about fears which, though black as shadows, may yet be groundless. You have other things to worry about and I am ever concerned to keep such smaller worries from you.’ Rune scratched himself again and smiled weakly at Mandrake, grimacing as if in pain.
‘What mole?’ asked Mandrake.
‘A Pasture mole,’ said Rune.
‘You killed him?’ asked Mandrake.
‘I wish I had. But there was more than one. Perhaps I killed one of them.’ He paused as if he were thinking and Mandrake waited impatiently for him to go on. Finally, he did.
‘We must be more wary of the Pasture moles, for they are getting subtler in their ways of attack, subtler than they once were. You know what I think, Mandrake?’
Involuntarily Mandrake came closer, thinking that at last Rune would say what was on his mind.
‘I think that a Pasture mole likes nothing more than to take a Duncton female, the younger and more innocent the better, and to have her for his own, hard haunch hard into soft young haunch. To take her in the safety of the wood’s edge and to leave her to litter in shameful secrecy a brood of squawling Pasture pups in the heart of Duncton Wood.’
As this image hung between them, a henchmole poked his snout through the entrance into the elder burrow in which Mandrake and Rune were talking and, seeing that they were silent, whispered: ‘Rune, sir, Rune! She is not there!’
‘Who is not where?’ thundered Mandrake, directing the frustration he felt at Rune’s careful vagueness at the henchmole, who stumbled and stuttered and looked desperately at Rune for help.
Rune merely lowered his snout and shook his head sadly.
‘Well?’ demanded Mandrake of the henchmole.
‘Er—well—it’s Rebecca. She’s not in her tunnels.’
‘Where is she, then?’ roared Mandrake.
‘I… we… don’t know, Mandrake, sir,’ whispered the henchmole.
‘Rune?’ Mandrake turned aggressively back to Rune.
‘This was what I feared. This was what I hoped could not be true. Ah, Rebecca!’
‘Get out,’ shouted Mandrake at the henchmole. Then, turning to Rune, he said, ‘You had better start at the beginning, Rune.’
‘There is not much more to say now, Mandrake. Only things to do… But you know why Rebecca came to Barrow Vale?’
‘Why?’
‘September is a time of change. Leaves may be a delicate green in June, but by September they decay. Some moles mate in September… some moles like it, want it… then. Or now, I should say.’
‘Mating… Rebecca… now…’ The elements were beginning to combine into swirling red and black poison in Mandrake’s mind.
‘On the wood’s edge, near the pastures,’ went on Rune, adding hastily, but deliberately not hastily enough, an explanation of what he meant: ‘That’s where I’ve been. Fighting Pasture moles who had taken a Duncton female into their darkness and done to her what she allowed them to do. Treachery and danger.’
‘You mean Rebecca?’ asked Mandrake, enraged but fascinated at the same time. With each word that Rune now spoke a picture of his Rebecca, his daughter Rebecca, his untouched child, hardened on the edge of his mind where nomole at first likes to look, but to which a jealous mole may easily be drawn. A picture of fur and darkness, of moving haunches and talon scratches on backs, of moist snouts long and pointing and open mouths, and white teeth and sensual smiles in the dark of a forbidden burrow. And his Rebecca among them. His daughter!
‘Rebecca? With Pasture moles? I hope not,’ said Rune. ‘I’m certain she couldn’t,’ he added, but with too little conviction to satisfy Mandrake.
Rune’s plans ran deep, deeper perhaps than even he realised. He recognised Mandrake’s jealousy for Rebecca because he had felt something of it himself, though being cold and cerebral, his was the jealousy of non-possession rather than of blood right and lust, as Mandrake’s was. He thought of Rebecca and Cairn, and his eyes had the black glitter of the owl face in Hulver’s tunnels, for evil takes its greatest pleasure in tearing the innocence and happiness from the face of joy.
‘Did you see her there?’ demanded Mandrake, now shaking with anger and the need for action.
‘I heard a female there, taking her pleasure with a mole or moles. A Duncton female from the scent. Thrusting her open haunches to a male, or males, from the pastures. She was there… but whether or not it was Rebecca I cannot be sure.’
‘Rebecca?’
‘Perhaps it was another female, but I cannot be certain,’ said Rune.
His Rebecca. His child. Her haunches open to another male… Mandrake shook with the thought of it until finally he shouted the words that Rune most wanted to hear. ‘Take me there and let me see!’
Yet even then Rune pretended to hesitate. ‘Perhaps it is but a mistake, a silliness on my part. It was raining, a heavy storm; the senses play tricks in such weather. I may be very wrong and nomole would wish harm on a mole such as Rebecca, sweet Rebecca, less than I.’
‘Take me there,’ ordered Mandrake with a terrible coldness in his voice that warmed Rune’s heart.
Night-time, and Rebecca and her Cairn slept on. Nighttime, and the urgent pounding of Mandrake’s heavy pawsteps grew nearer and nearer to the wood’s edge. Night-time, and up in the black and barkless wastes of a dead elm, the yellow eyes of an owl stared down and down at the wood floor beneath, talons itching round the branch they clasped as it waited for the sight and smell of prey.
Mandrake and Rune finally broke out on to the surface of the wood, near the pasture, just before dawn, when the only sound is the distant squeal of a field mouse or bank vole taken by a tawny owl. At such a moment only troubles wake a mole and make him toss and turn in his half-sleep; only a cold wind disturbs the wood floor and makes a bramble thorn rasp against its own hard stem; only a cold moon casts a light, though even that is fading as the moon sinks down beyond the distant vales.