‘Disease,’ lied Mekkins, taking a tip from Curlew’s methods of isolating herself. ‘Been dropping like flies in the Marsh End, they have. Often do this time of year, just before the mating season is about to start. There’s not a mole down there doesn’t want to give his support, Rune—in fact, I had to physically restrain a whole pack of them from coming up here. There’s no love lost for Mandrake down our way, you know. But I felt it was too big a risk, mate, too much trouble.’
Rune didn’t like Mekkins—far too disrespectful. Nor did he entirely believe his story. But there were other things to think about and the Marshenders’ failure to help oust Mandrake would be just the excuse he was going to need when it came to doing what he had long wanted to do—wipe out the Marshenders, Mekkins included.
As for Mekkins, he slipped quietly back to the Marsh End, where he had plans of his own to see to. He was well aware of the threat to it and had worked various ideas out, which he now intended to put into practice. At the same time, he had to think how he was going to protect Rebecca and Comfrey now that they could expect trouble down that way, and the first thing he was going to do was to work out where to move them to, for surely where they were was now too isolated and exposed should Rune and the henchmoles choose to take over the system from Mandrake.
It took two days for Mandrake to make his way to the Chamber of Dark Sound, where he stood in the centre and roared out his challenge to the Stone Mole. His noise came back a hundredfold in echoes from the carved wall with the flint owl face at its centre, but had no effect on him. His obsessions seemed to have given him a sublime courage, or ignorance, of where he was and what he was doing. He believed the Stone Mole was there and so he called out to him. He was afraid, but not of a sound that had no effect on him, and the feeling of fear was so alien to him, being Mandrake, that he could only turn and face it with his talons—a courage that few moles would have easily understood.
Violet, wandering disconsolately among the tunnels, heard the roaring and was afraid, but not thinking it came from ‘the big mole,’ redoubled her efforts to find him, hoping he would protect her from everything, and perhaps still help her siblings. She did not really understand that they were dead.
She found him eventually, sleeping in one of the entrances to the great chamber, and without ado, woke him up. Her presence confused him. She wasn’t the Stone Mole. She wasn’t Sarah. She wasn’t Rebecca. He had been a youngster himself. Yes.
She prattled on about Coltsfoot and Pipple and Beech and a big mole. She obviously knew where the Stone Mole was. Perhaps she was a spy. Cunning. But not as cunning as he. He would keep an eye on her, keep her within a talon’s reach. Yes, he would! Better still, he’d get her to show him where the Stone Mole was. Yes. Cunning and clever.
Violet could not understand him. He was alternately kind and angry. He wanted her to lead him somewhere after a stonmole, and she didn’t know what that was. So to avoid him getting angry she led him here and there among the tunnels, her tiny form ahead of his brooding mass as he muttered, ‘Cunning,’ and, ‘You’re a clever one, but not as clever as Mandrake,’ and told her stories about a mole he knew called Rebecca, his Rebecca, who did disobedient things and was with the stonemole, whatever it was.
But they were not alone in the tunnels, for another mole, who knew the ins and outs of the system better than anymole ever had, flitted from shadow to shadow, ahead and behind, looking after them round corners, watching in agonies as Mandrake threatened Violet, watching with relief when he talked more softly to her, and wondering, wondering, how to get her away from Mandrake’s talons.
It was Bracken, who had heard the roarings and had come to investigate. He had recognised Violet as his and Rue’s daughter, and was able, in horror, to piece together something of what had happened from Violet’s pathetic conversation with the demented Mandrake. And he knew that he must act very soon if she, too, was not to be killed.
Outside, the weather was as troubled and changeable as the life of the moles underground. After two days of still coldness the snow had begun to melt, falling with phuts and plops and dollops from the trees, spraying down through the branches, and pitting the snow on the floor of the wood into thousands of minicraters. Here and there a fox’s tracks wove among the trees, and where the badgers lived down on the east side, the snow was roughened and dirtied by soil and debris from their sets.
