Rebecca lay still as death on the far side of the burrow. The bodies of her five young lay about the burrow, tangled up with nesting material, scattered like leaves. He picked his way with a beating heart among them and it was only when he was close up to her and he heard the soft moaning of her breathing, distant as a falling pulse, that he was sure that she was still alive.
What use his message now? For a moment he wanted none of it, telling himself, ‘I don’t know what the hell this has to do with me. Stone knows what I’m doing here—they’ll kill me if they find out. What a bloody mess this is!’
Then he cuffed her lightly with his paw and said gruffly, ‘Here you—you wake up. Got to get you out of here quick. Wake up! Come on, lass…’
Rebecca stirred and was then awake instantly. She started to scream and he cuffed her again, none too softly.
‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ he said, ‘but we’ll both cop it if they find me here, so shut up!’ She fell silent, looking at him fearfully.
‘I know a mole who can help you,’ he said more gently. ‘Name of Mekkins. He tried to see you before… before this bloody thing happened.’
Rebecca did not respond.
‘Come on, love,’ he said suddenly, gruffly gentle, ‘you can’t stay here. Got to get you away…’ He quickly pulled her to her paws and, talking desperately fast so that her attention would not wander to the dead litter about her, he hurried her out of the burrow, down the tunnel, and up to the entrance. But when she got into the night air, she seemed to come round to understanding where she was and what had happened. She started to shiver violently and sob out words so shaken by her distress that it was a long time before he could make out what she wanted. ‘I c-c-can’t leave them there,’ she seemed to be saying. ‘I c-c-can’t.’
He was impatient with this, very conscious that the noise she was making might easily attract the attention of a mole like Rune, prone to skulk about at night, or even an owl. But hard though he tried, she would not leave. At last he said brutally, ‘Right! You’re on your own, then! I’m off…’ and off he went.
But not far. His heart wouldn’t let him. Instead, he crouched in the protective shadow of the root he had first hidden by and watched over her, thinking that she would soon come to her senses. But what he then witnessed was the ancient and instinctive ritual of a bereft mother.
She turned back down into the tunnel and after a long wait, in which he almost decided to leave her to her fate, she came back out into the night. She was carrying one of her dead young by the scruff of the neck, just as a mother carries a squalling pup. This one hung down limp and dead, and she laid it on the surface by the tunnel entrance. Then, one by one, she brought out the other four and laid them where the wind might touch them and the owls come and take them.
Then he watched as she crouched in the shadows by them, whispering words of love and sorrow, chanting the ancient songs of the bereft, whose words and sounds of loss have no need of being set down or learned, for they are written in the depths of every soul.
Then she crouched down with them to wait for the owls to come. But he was not going to wait for that and ran back over to her and said, ‘Come on, Rebecca, come on, love. There’s nothing more you can do. There’s nothing left to do.’
He became angry again and said: ‘If you don’t bloody well come now, then I really will push off. I’m only doing this for Mekkins. Come on!’ And, more or less dragged along by him, she went with him, shaking and sobbing to leave all she had left of her litter behind in the night, tiny and pathetic on the cold surface of the wood.
No record has been kept of how this unnamed henchmole succeeded in leading Rebecca down to the Marsh End and how he protected her from the Marshenders until Mekkins was found. But it is in such forgotten moles as he, as well as in those whose names are recorded in the books of Uffington, that the actions of truth and love fulfil themselves. So, nameless though he is, let him be remembered.
Mekkins took one look at Rebecca, out of whom all spirit of life had gone, and knew without being told what had happened, and what to do.
Half pushing, half carrying and constantly urging her, he took her towards the east side of the Marsh End, where the soil is dank and the vegetation heavy; a place in the wood where nomole goes and fallen wood rots unnoticed.
‘Where are you taking me?’ she whispered hopelessly, more than once.
‘Somewhere Mandrake and Rune will never find you, and where you’ll have time to find your strength again.’
‘I don’t want to be alone,’ she sobbed, ‘not here in this terrible place.’
‘It’s all right, Rebecca,’ he soothed her, ‘you won’t be. There’s a mole there will help you. She’s known trouble herself and will know what to do.’
But Rebecca became afraid again and refused for a while to go on.
