There came a time, at the end of May, when Root would seek him out and deliberately intimidate him, trying to make Bracken raise his talons so that he would have an excuse to fight him.
‘He started it,’ Root would tell a despairing Aspen, faced once more by a bewildered, hurt Bracken.
As the days wore on, Bracken began more and more to spend time by himself, exploring away from his home burrow, finding he had further and further to come home again for sleep or worms. In this way he made his way to Barrow Vale one day, but found it too full of other moles, curious about who he was, so he turned away and tried other directions. Another day he went right to the edge of the wood and looked out for the first time on to the pastures, frightened by the open space and massive sky beyond the trees, terrified of the cows who hoofed and pulled at grass beyond the fence.
But Burrhead did not call him cunning for nothing. Bracken quickly realised that his timid appearance and obvious youth allowed him to cross the tunnels of moles who might otherwise be hostile to him. He developed various ways of approaching them, finding that even if they started off hostile, he could usually disarm them by asking a question which established his inferiority and their importance.
‘I’m lost,’ he might say. ‘Can you tell me where the Barrow Vale is from here?’
Or, if he knew their names (which he would try to find out from the preceding mole he had encountered), ‘I was looking for Buckbean because he knows an awful lot about the system,’ and Buckbean suddenly did, indeed, feel he knew an ‘awful lot’ about the system, and would feel flattered and retract his talons—though still standing his ground until quite certain this youngster was safe.
Bracken was to use this approach later and more effectively with the Eastsiders, who were more willing to pass the time of day talking than the Westsiders. But even so, many Westsiders yielded to Bracken’s combination of youthful vulnerability, innocence and flattery to answer his sometimes spurious questions and let him continue his explorations.
The more so because, as Mandrake’s power had increased, he had let it be known that he preferred moles to stay in their territory and not wander around without reason, so a safe stranger like Bracken was welcome for the interest he could bring. It was true, in fact—though the Duncton moles didn’t know it, since they kept to themselves—that there was traditionally more mixing and visiting in Duncton than, for example, out on the pastures.
Mandrake himself came from a desolate system where individuals kept themselves to themselves, but his reasons for encouraging isolation in Duncton were not nostalgic: he knew that the more isolated each Duncton mole was, the better could he control them. And he seemed to have a peculiarly deep-rooted aversion to the Stone.
This all being so, a visiting youngster was more welcome than he once might have been. He could pass on a bit of gossip, he was safe, and Mandrake’s rule didn’t apply to youngsters.
In this way, Bracken was able to learn a great deal about the Westside and something about the system, too. He would hear gossip about the elders, news of the havoc and deaths caused by Mandrake’s henchmoles, among whom his own father was a leading figure, and stories of Mandrake himself.
Of all the things that he heard, it was these that made the biggest impression on him, for there seemed no end to Mandrake’s strength and power:
‘He’s so strong he’s been known to destroy an oak root thick as a mole to make a tunnel.’
‘He’s the best fighter the system’s ever seen and ever likely to see, if you ask me. Do you know, my boy, when he first came to Duncton he killed twelve of the strongest adults before he even set paw in a tunnel? Twelve! Mind you, I wasn’t there myself.’
‘They say the first time he went down the Marsh End he stopped a group of Marshenders from attacking him by just pointing his huge snout at them and staring. Didn’t say a word; just crouched ready and stared. They backed away, tearing at each other to escape. That’s how powerful Mandrake is.’
Mole after mole, females and males, came out with stories like this, so that soon Mandrake assumed terrifying proportions in his mind.
Indeed, Mandrake might well have taken on the mantle of powerful protector of Duncton and its moles in Bracken’s mind had it not been for the fact that his own bullying father was one of Mandrake’s henchmoles and forever going on about the fact. So Mandrake took on a dark and sinister role in Bracken’s imagination rather than a benevolent one.
It was for this reason that Bracken was both surprised and fascinated when, one day towards the end of May, he heard a Westside female say, with the indirectness of a gossip who deliberately invites a follow-up question by the mystery of what she says: ‘Mind you, there’s one mole who can stand up to Mandrake, and there’s nothing, I tell you, absolutely nothing, he can do about it. Not a single solitary thing.’
