Rebecca made her own tunnels quite near where Rose’s had been—but how bare her burrow seemed compared with the cluttered, untidy place that Rose’s was! How she missed the scents and smells of a thousand different herbs!
She saw little of Violet, who had a sort of a burrow of her own nearby but was rarely seen near it for she was quickly getting absorbed into the Pasture system and even beginning to speak in the quicker, higher intonation of the Pasture moles. Comfrey stayed near—big enough now to make his own burrow, digging it into a long and winding shape, quite unlike any burrow Rebecca had ever seen before. He preferred her not to enter it, and, like Rose, seemed inherently untidy, though always clean.
The fascination with herbs that Rose had inspired in him persisted, and his first long expedition away from Rebecca and the burrows arose out of it. He heard her say one day that she missed the smells of herbs and looked forward to the day when she could go back to Duncton and get some. The following day he disappeared. He returned two days later with a lot of noise and deposited outside her burrow a pile of fresh light-green leaves.
‘It’s ch-chamomile,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘Just the leaves. The flowers aren’t out yet, b-but when they are I’ll get you some. The leaves smell fresh.’
Something else happened that same day that made her feel that at last the clouds that had been above her so long were beginning to lift. There was a timid scratching near her burrow, and when she looked outside, a young and nervous-looking female was standing there in a worried sort of way. She started back when Rebecca appeared and seemed to find difficulty saying anything. She looked very miserable.
‘What is it, my love?’ asked Rebecca gently. The female stayed where she was, dug her talons nervously in and out of the soil of the tunnel floor, and eventually managed to say, ‘Violet said you would help.’
Rebecca went forward to her until they were almost touching and asked ‘Are you a friend of Violet’s?’ The female nodded, but said nothing. ‘What’s worrying you?’ asked Rebecca gently.
For a moment the female swayed back and forth, her eyes fixed in a mute appeal on Rebecca, and then she burst out, ‘I don’t know!’ in a voice of despair and started to cry. Rebecca touched her with her paw, felt that her fur was clammy and cold and her head too hot, and somehow she caressed her, held her, touched her, and the female slowly calmed and settled down. Rebecca found herself whispering healing words softly to her, nothing talk, talk about the herbs she wished she had, talk from one heart to another whose individual words are of no account. Until eventually the female got up, eyes bright, and with barely a word went off down the tunnel, leaving Rebecca quite exhausted.
A few days later a male came, saying, ‘You helped a friend of mine and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with me, and I don’t know why I’m here, in fact, I think I’ll go away again, it hurts here, well not there exactly, I don’t know why I didn’t see to it before, for years actually…’ And so, by word of mouth, Rebecca’s work as a healer gently began.
Rune finally launched his attack on the Pasture system in mid-June in a spirit of cold curiosity. Like every other aggressive mole in Duncton, he was interested in finding out what the pastures, and the moles who lived in them, were like. This factor, coupled with a few well-chosen words to his henchmoles about how ‘Pasture moles periodically murder our females and youngsters’ and how ‘the pride of Duncton Wood is threatened by these cowardly moles’, and so on and so forth, was sufficient to give the henchmoles the motive they needed to pass over the wood’s edge and on to the pastures, and from there to make the trek to find tunnels down which they could mount their attack.
But Rune was no fool and he was well aware of the dangers inherent in leading a body of moles who had no experience at all in warfare. So he was also curious to see how the henchmoles would perform as an attacking group and to find out what lessons he might learn for future, more serious affrays.
His caution was wise. The assault on the pastures might well have been a complete disaster had not the Pasture moles been as ill-prepared for a sudden night attack as he was in making it, and had he not had a superiority of numbers. His objective was to locate and kill a few Pasture moles and this was only achieved by the henchmoles with a great deal of rushing about, shouting, bumping into each other, wounding one another by mistake, and generally inefficient turmoil. They killed four moles, wounded seven and frightened a dozen more.
