‘Much is going to depend on these two moles, Bracken and Rebecca, and neither of them may ever know it. Somehow you will have to help watch over them until they are strong enough to stand alone, though what you must do I cannot say, but I suspect it will need great courage, which I know you have. But, most of all, you must trust them both, hard though it may sometimes be. In a pup trust is the most natural of emotions; in an adult it may often be the hardest. Without it, nothing can be healed.’
They talked on a little, but Rose had said the most important things she wanted to say and she was tired, so Mekkins saw her back towards her tunnels, as far as the pastures. When she had gone, he wasn’t sure if he knew exactly what it was she had said, but he understood enough to know that he must watch over Rebecca and, if the opportunity ever arose, over Bracken as well. He would go to Rebecca now.
But he was too late. Try as he did in the next few days, Mekkins could get no nearer to Rebecca’s tunnels than the henchmoles who guarded each exit. The most he got from one of them was that Rebecca was being kept in her system by order of Mandrake until she littered.
‘So, she is going to ’ave a litter, is she?’ he said, surprised.
‘Oh, yeh,’ said the other. ‘There’s no doubt of that. She’s already big with it. But it’s more than my life’s worth to let you near her. Well, you know how it is with Mandrake’s orders…’
Mekkins did, but he didn’t like it. There was trouble in the air, and foreboding, and it seemed the worse for hanging about the tunnels which had been so full of life and joy in the summer.
‘Fair enough, mate,’ said Mekkins. ‘But if you get to see her, you tell her there’s Mekkins has been by and that ’e’s always down the Marsh End if she needs ’im. Right?’
‘If I can, I will. I don’t like it any more than you do, chum. Now, you get goin’, Mekkins, because our orders are to keep everymole away, even elders.’
Rebecca lay on her side, trembling in her burrow. She could feel her young moving inside her and sometimes now even see their sudden movements as some tiny limb or embryonic head pushed against the tight soft fur below her belly.
‘Oh, my loves,’ she whispered to them. ‘Oh, my darlings, my wildflowers, may I have the strength to protect you.’
Two henchmoles crouched by the entrance to her burrow, silent, morose and pitiless. They had been specially picked for the task by Rune, acting on Mandrake’s orders.
They had come unexpectedly several days before, just when Rebecca was beginning to rejoice in her litter to come and make the delightful preparations of nesting a new burrow that she had so long looked forward to.
She had tried to fight with them, angry on behalf of herself and her young, but one of the henchmoles had cuffed her so hard across the snout that she fell back into her burrow almost unconscious. She had not been allowed out of the tunnel since, and food was brought to her. She was angry, she demanded to see Mandrake, or even Rune; she begged to be allowed to see Sarah. But it was useless and nomole came to see her. Faced by the henchmoles’ silence and ignorance of her, she was overtaken by a creeping loneliness, and with it a terrible fear for her young.
The most they would let her do, and only because the unpleasantness was too much for them, was to switch to another burrow while hers was cleaned out and new nesting material put there. ‘And this is doing you a favour, lass,’ said one of them unpleasantly, ‘because Rune said to keep you where you were. But I’m buggered if I’m going to crouch in the way of your stink.’
For Rebecca, who was the cleanest and brightest of moles, and whose burrows had always celebrated with their scents and cheer the best of the life in the wood, this was a terrible thing.
As her young grew inside her, she grew more fearful and her eyes, once so bright with joy, took on a sad and haunted look. She whispered for her mother, Sarah, begging her to hear her and come and help. And sometimes her mind wandered from its present pain to that day when she had danced with Stonecrop and Cairn on the pastures in the grass. ‘Oh, Cairn, please help me,’ she entreated, fearing he would never come. Not knowing he was dead.
She tried to maintain her strength, knowing that it would be needed when the birth came, but fear and the desperate hopelessness over whatever it was that was coming began to take it from her. Until, at last, all she could do was to pray, beseeching the Stone to hear her and send its help. Prayers that were mingled with the tears and desperate love she felt for her growing young.
She lost track of time and her sense of things seemed to change. Soon, the only thing that mattered, the only hope she felt she had, was that Mandrake might come to see her. Then, surely, she could make him see!
One day she woke out of her nightmare drowsiness to the sound of whispers in the tunnel outside and the sight of two black eyes looking coldly at her from the entrance. It was Rune.
