Her snout slowly turned round and down to the bleating thing, ran gently over its body, sniffled at its tiny paws; her tongue ran softly over its dry snout and she curled the protection of her body around it and guided it to one of her teats. The pup fell away, but she tried again. And again. Beginning to whisper words of encouragement as soft as its gentle mews, nudging it to her, pushing her teat to its mouth, moistening her own teat with her tongue to help, giving it her love. Until at last, before the breathless gaze of Curlew and Mekkins, the pup began to suckle, the noise of it filling the burrow like the sound of soft spring rain falling among dry grass.
While behind them, unnoticed in the shadows of the tunnel outside the burrow, Bracken crept silently away. He had used all his skills to follow Mekkins’ desperate race to Curlew’s burrow so that he might watch over the safety of his son. Had
danger loomed, had a badger come by, had Mandrake himself come like a black cloud out of the night, Bracken would surely have given fight, so that his son, carried on by Mekkins, might be safe.
So, unnoticed, he had watched over the safety of his son. He had crept into the tunnel after Mekkins and watched unobserved, only realising, because she was so changed, that it was Rebecca who was lying there when Mekkins said her name. He watched as the pup faltered and weakened, willing him to try again! Until the pup had bleated his heart out in one last cry and Rebecca had at last turned her face gently to him and, unknowingly, taken his son for her own.
Only then did Bracken creep softly away. Out again on to the surface of this dark and wet part of the wood, back up south to the Hill and towards the Ancient System, to which he seemed for ever enchained.
Chapter Twenty-One1
They called the pup Comfrey, after the healing herb that grew by the wood’s edge near Curlew’s tunnels and which, she said, had kept Rebecca alive in the two days Mekkins was away at the Stone.
For many long days they worried over him, all three nurturing and cherishing life into him until he was able to suckle of his own accord, and his sounds were those of the eagerness of a growing mole rather than the desperation of a dying one.
But though Rebecca tended to him, whispering her love to him, it still seemed to Mekkins that some light in her had gone out and that there was a weariness with, or lack of belief in, the very life of which she had once been the greatest celebrant.
When November came, Mekkins could stay no longer and left to attend to Marsh End affairs and, though he did not say so, to see what he could find out about any search that might be being made for Rebecca.
‘I’ll take good care of her, Mekkins, so don’t you go fretting,’ said Curlew as he left. ‘Comfrey will be all right now, a little weak perhaps but even the slightest plants bear flowers. And as for Rebecca, she’ll take time to recover, but recover she will, you’ll see.’
Mekkins was touched by the change that had come over Curlew herself since Rebecca, and then Comfrey, had come. They seemed to have put new life into her and the mole he remembered as being so frightened and withdrawn was now bustling with activity and full of purpose. ‘Things certainly work out in a strange way,’ he thought to himself as he departed, and that was something to take comfort from.
When he got back to the Marsh End and heard what had been happening in the system, he realised how right Rose had been to warn that dark days were coming. They were already there. For fear and terror were taking Duncton over, as the henchmoles, mainly Westsiders, were beginning to get so powerful that they were out of control.
There were random attacks on Eastsiders and Marshenders; there were takeovers of tunnels by henchmole gangs; there was even a killing in Barrow Vale itself, the one place in the system where a mole traditionally felt completely safe on neutral ground.
At the root of the problem was the change that had come over Mandrake, which had started, the gossips were quick to point out, from the night he and Rune had killed Rebecca’s young. In the early days of Mandrake’s thrall, if there had been killing to be done it was done by Mandrake himself. He kept tight control of the henchmoles, whom he selected himself and who obeyed nomole but he. Slowly, subtly, darkly, Rune began to gain power. By acting as a buffer between the henchmoles on one hand and Mandrake on the other, he gained the confidence of both. A mole like Burrhead, who was the leading Westside henchmole, preferred to work through Rune rather than directly with Mandrake, who was too unpredictable. He made a mole like Burrhead stumble over his words and feel stupid; Rune was so much more understanding…
By the Midsummer after Bracken’s birth, Rune had the direct loyalty of all the henchmoles, many of whom had gained their positions by his preferment, and one way or another (mainly by his guile) those henchmoles originally selected by Mandrake were frozen out. Rumours were set against them, for example, so that Mandrake no longer trusted them. At one elder burrow meeting, two of them, whose reputation with Mandrake had been poisoned by Rune’s slanders, were killed by Mandrake himself in front of all. So savagely was it done that only Rune smiled; there was something sensual in death for him.
After the death of Hulver, or, more particularly, ever since Mandrake had been so shocked to hear those words of grace spoken by Bracken—the voice of the Stone, as it seemed to Mandrake—he had slowly lost interest in the power he had won for himself. Nomole doubted he was in charge, not even Rune, but he preferred to let Rune exercise power for him, with occasional excursions into mindless brutality just to show who was in charge.
Most moles in Duncton, including Mandrake, assumed that Rebecca had been taken by an owl along with her litter after their killing. But seemingly worse, for Mandrake, was the fact that his mate, Sarah, who had opposed the killing of the litter from the start, had been taken by owl as well—at the same time as Rebecca. The sudden loss of his mate and daughter seemed to mark the start of Mandrake’s decline into distracted brutality. He would suddenly appear in Barrow Vale and spend hours sitting brooding, while the moles there would quietly disappear. Sometimes he was heard to attack the walls of his tunnels in great lumbering crashes and to mutter to himself in the language of Siabod. Words that sounded like curses, and ravings nomole could understand.
He became obsessed, too, by the Stone Mole, a rumour that had never died out. Indeed, the incident with Rebecca got tangled up with the Stone Mole, who was said (and Mandrake appeared to believe it in some way) to have mated with Rebecca. ‘Oh, yes! Haven’t you heard? The pups Mandrake killed were the Stone Mole’s pups!’
Nomole quite believed this, and yet it was a good story… so rumours feed on themselves.
As for the reports of her death, these were so confused that nomole could really tell what the truth was. Mandrake himself believed her dead but there were others, Rune among them, who were not so sure. Some even said—but this was the wild gossip of those who had exhausted the titillation in every other story—that she had escaped from the system with a single pup who had not died in the assault and was rearing him as a second Stone Mole to come and avenge his siblings’ deaths. ‘Typical Rebecca!’ some said, not knowing that the Rebecca they had known was no more, alive or dead.
Mekkins garnered all these stories in visits to Barrow Vale, for Marsh End was too cut off and unpopular to be a good source for gossip. He trusted the henchmole who had so bravely led Rebecca down to the Marsh End to keep quiet—it was in his interests to do so.
More serious was the possibility that the news of Rebecca’s existence and whereabouts might leak from the Marsh End, where a few moles must have guessed at it. He began to think that if there was any way for Rebecca to leave the system he should find it. For surely if they ever did discover her, especially with Comfrey, then she would be killed. It was to discuss this that he himself decided to risk a journey to the pastures to see if he could locate Rose to ask for her advice and help. He wanted, in any case, to bring her back to Curlew’s burrow to take a look at Rebecca and see if she could inject into her a greater will to live again.