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.
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 They seemed to have put new life into her and the mole he remembered as being so frightened and withdrawn was now bustling with activity and full of purpose.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.
