Rebecca turned and looked at him, tiredness and loss in her eyes, but a sense of peace as well. Used as Brome was to deference from other moles, he was surprised but relieved to sense none at all in this Rebecca, only a sorrow for the passing of a mole she had obviously loved as well.
‘In our system, it is the custom to let the owls have their way,’ she said, quietly smiling to him as a token of her sense of his loss.
A little discomfited by the directness of her gaze, Brome asked. ‘What’s his name?’ looking at Comfrey. Rebecca said nothing, making it clear that Comfrey was old enough to reply for himself.
‘My name’s C-C-Comfrey,’ he said, looking at Brome with his curious mixture of timidity and interest, ‘and I’m from D-D-Duncton Wood.’ Brome nodded and smiled, but Comfrey went on. ‘My father was Bracken who went into the marshes. H-he’s coming back.’
Brome had heard about the sad story of Bracken from Mekkins, so he smiled again and nodded his head vaguely, thinking that this was some kind story Rebecca had reassured the youngster with, for nomole returns from the marshes. To his astonishment he saw a look on Rebecca’s face that seemed almost angry with him, as if she suspected this thought and wished to underline that what she had told Comfrey was indeed true.
This mute exchange surprised Brome and he looked at Rebecca more closely, his curiosity sliding very quickly into a kind of uneasy awe. Never before had he been in the presence of a mole who gave him the impression that she knew exactly what he was feeling. He saw as well that she was very beautiful, with a coat of dark, silvery grey, whose sheen held the light of a clear sky after rain.
He had a dozen things in his mind to say, but they all fell away before her still gaze and he said what was in his heart: ‘What are we going to do, Rebecca?’ She came forward and touched him for a second, a touch that reassured him, and then she led the way back to Rose’s tunnels where, without another word, they sealed the tunnels together, soil falling on their fur as with burrowing sweeps of their paws they retreated before it. It was the Pasture way of doing things.
‘Will you stay here?’ he asked. It was really a plea, for such a mole could bring nothing but good to the system and the pastures had lost much in the passing of Rose.
She nodded, suddenly weary, for she knew that Rose had left her the task of filling her place as healer, a prospect that seemed unreal and impossible to achieve. There was so much she didn’t know and so many things she wished she had asked. So she would be a healer and for the time being she would stay here, for there was nowhere else she could go—certainly not to Duncton, not yet. It was Brome’s turn to sense what was in her mind, for he came nearer her and crouched quietly, his big limbs stretched comfortably by the untidy seal of soil they had just made as he said: ‘It will be all right here, you know. There are many moles that will need you.’
For a while he hesitated to say more, but finally said ‘There may be problems if they know that you and Cairn…’
Rebecca looked sharply at him and his words froze in his mouth. Rebecca had a power in her he had never seen before in anymole. ‘The only way possible for a healer is to live in the truth,’ she said. ‘Cairn and I mated, and he was killed by Mandrake and Rune, two Duncton moles.’
‘Well,’ said Brome, ‘I will see that all moles know who you are and why you are here. Only you can allay any doubts or fears or hostility they may have.’
‘If Stonecrop were here and I could talk to him, he would understand,’ she said.
Brome shook his head sadly. ‘Stonecrop left the system—he wanted to avenge Cairn’s death—but I persuaded him that it would not be right, or safe.’ Rebecca smiled, for that was just what Stonecrop would have wanted to do.
‘He heard that a great fighter had come to a system said to be quite near here, beyond the pastures, and in company with other moles he went off to find him. The others have come back, but Stonecrop was not with them.’
Rebecca lowered her head. Stonecrop dead, or lost? Another mole gone? Cairn, Bracken, Hulver, Stonecrop, Mandrake. Why so many? She felt as if they were all leaving her, and immediately sensed that the thought was wrong. ‘I’m so self-centred!’ she scolded herself. Then she said: ‘Bracken was with Cairn when he died,’ as if to reassure Brome about Cairn’s death, and through him other Pasture moles.
‘Who is this Bracken? Everymole I meet from Duncton seems to mention him—you, Mekkins, even Comfrey. Was he one of your mates?’ She shook her head. ‘He was a mole who lived in the Ancient System by the Stone—he knew the tunnels there better than anymole ever has. He is a very special mole.’
‘But he’s lost if he’s gone out on to the marsh—nomole ever comes back from there,’ said Brome.
‘He will,’ said Rebecca, closing the subject.
