At the same time, Rebecca was rarely seen anywhere near Barrow Vale, a fact made far more of by Boswell and Mekkins, who discussed it together, than it was worth, since in her own time Rose had rarely bothered with Barrow Vale. When moles need healing the best place to do it, she used to say, is in the privacy of their burrows, not on public view in Barrow Vale.
Rebecca had stayed on the pastures in the tunnels she created for herself after Rose’s death, and little had changed: Comfrey still lived nearby, still strange and nervous, with a great love of herbs and plants and unwilling to let Rebecca go too far from him for too long: partly, perhaps, from his own insecurity, but also, though Boswell was never to guess it, because in his own way he protected Rebecca from despair. Sometimes he would travel off in search of new herbs, but he had a knack of making his path cross where Rebecca was— and seemed, too, to sense what herbs she needed, for often he would appear suddenly in some remote corner of one of the systems with the very herb she needed for some healing process. There was a great trust and peace between the two, and by virtue of his attachment to her Comfrey went unmolested wherever he wished in the systems, which allowed him to develop in time as wide a knowledge of where the medicinal plants of the two systems were as anymole had ever had.
Violet had now been completely absorbed into the Pasture system and lost all contact with Rebecca and, of course, Bracken.
But as for Rebecca coming to see Bracken, it just never happened, and it wasn’t the kind of thing a mole would want to raise with Rebecca. A healer does not have problems as far as anymole else is concerned. And even if she had, Rebecca gave no sign of it at all except to Comfrey, who saw far more than even she ever suspected.
What was worse for Boswell was that he saw clearly how Bracken’s coldness about Rebecca affected the way he thought about the Stone. Bracken no longer revered the Stone but became inclined to make ironic or cynical remarks about it—‘It’s all an illusion, which may please some moles, but they’ll soon grow out of it,’ or, on an occasion when Boswell dared to suggest that it would be a good idea to go to the Stone to pray for rain, ‘If it sends rain, Boswell, it’ll send a flood; that’s the way your Stone amuses itself when it answers prayers.’
As for visiting the Stone, or the Ancient System, which Boswell still desperately wanted to do in Bracken’s company, there was no quicker way to make Bracken coldly angry than to suggest it. There was only one absolute rule with Bracken, and that was that nomole was to visit the tunnels of the Ancient System, in any circumstances. They could go to the Stone if they wanted, though it was probably a waste of their time.
Boswell was at first very frustrated by all this, not only because he loved Bracken as he had loved nomole, but also because he wanted to pursue the quest he had come to Duncton Wood to fulfil—to find the seventh Stillstone and the seventh Book, which he was convinced were there. He would talk to other moles he met about the system, seeking out the oldest ones with longest memories, trying to find clues in the stories they told that might guide him forward. He would even tell them about Uffington if they asked, or he thought it might encourage them to revive memories of their own system. He might have been tempted to visit there himself but for the sense he had that it was Bracken, and Bracken alone, who would guide him there.
But as time went by a curious thing happened: Boswell began to lose the urgent desire he had first felt to find the seventh Book. He began to sense that there are some things, great things, which a mole should not reach out his talons for. He must learn to sit still and trust that they will come to him. This discovery served only to increase his awe of Bracken—for was it not Bracken’s very recalcitrance that made him see it? He began to wonder whether, in some strange way, the Stone was working through Bracken far more powerfully than anymole could ever have dreamed of, which made him seek ways of quietly making life as caring and loving for Bracken as he could. Nothing gave him more pleasure than the fact that, despite Bracken’s ill temper and contradictions, he never once told Boswell to leave him, but always seemed pleased in his awkward way for him to be there.
So it was quite without seeking it that Boswell discovered his first dramatic clue to the existence of the seventh Book. It happened when he decided for himself to go to Rebecca in the pastures and see if he could not work some kind of reconciliation between her and Bracken. An idea which, had he known Rebecca better, he would never have been innocent enough to try.
