Rune’s plans ran deep, deeper perhaps than even he realised. He recognised Mandrake’s jealousy for Rebecca because he had felt something of it himself, though being cold and cerebral, his was the jealousy of non-possession rather than of blood right and lust, as Mandrake’s was. He thought of Rebecca and Cairn, and his eyes had the black glitter of the owl face in Hulver’s tunnels, for evil takes its greatest pleasure in tearing the innocence and happiness from the face of joy.
‘Did you see her there?’ demanded Mandrake, now shaking with anger and the need for action.
‘I heard a female there, taking her pleasure with a mole or moles. A Duncton female from the scent. Thrusting her open haunches to a male, or males, from the pastures. She was there… but whether or not it was Rebecca I cannot be sure.’
‘Rebecca?’
‘Perhaps it was another female, but I cannot be certain,’ said Rune.
His Rebecca. His child. Her haunches open to another male… Mandrake shook with the thought of it until finally he shouted the words that Rune most wanted to hear. ‘Take me there and let me see!’
Yet even then Rune pretended to hesitate. ‘Perhaps it is but a mistake, a silliness on my part. It was raining, a heavy storm; the senses play tricks in such weather. I may be very wrong and nomole would wish harm on a mole such as Rebecca, sweet Rebecca, less than I.’
‘Take me there,’ ordered Mandrake with a terrible coldness in his voice that warmed Rune’s heart.
Night-time, and Rebecca and her Cairn slept on. Nighttime, and the urgent pounding of Mandrake’s heavy pawsteps grew nearer and nearer to the wood’s edge. Night-time, and up in the black and barkless wastes of a dead elm, the yellow eyes of an owl stared down and down at the wood floor beneath, talons itching round the branch they clasped as it waited for the sight and smell of prey.
Mandrake and Rune finally broke out on to the surface of the wood, near the pasture, just before dawn, when the only sound is the distant squeal of a field mouse or bank vole taken by a tawny owl. At such a moment only troubles wake a mole and make him toss and turn in his half-sleep; only a cold wind disturbs the wood floor and makes a bramble thorn rasp against its own hard stem; only a cold moon casts a light, though even that is fading as the moon sinks down beyond the distant vales.
Cairn stirred. He knew that his time with Rebecca was almost up. Rebecca moved even closer, even more content. She had mated and she would litter. She knew it with sweet certainty. But she knew that Cairn, her love, was restless and that dawn was coming. He wanted to return now to his own system to find the tunnels he felt safe in and talk again to his brother, Stonecrop.
Rebecca and he had come together in joy but both wanted to part now, as mated moles eventually must. Rebecca sighed, nuzzling him close and smiling, for she was thinking of the pups he had given her, while Cairn smiled to think of Rebecca with her pups, tumbling and playing with them, suckling them to her body, against whose soft warmth he now lay.
Close by, and getting closer, massive Mandrake and Rune crept along the edge, Rune pretending to snout his way there with difficulty, though knowing very well exactly where he was leading Mandrake.
‘Here,’ hissed Rune.
‘Where?’ demanded Mandrake.
‘There.’ Rune pointed, his talon indicating the entrance to Rebecca’s temporary burrow, the disturbed earth rough and shadowy around it in the dim, cold light.
Meanwhile, for Rebecca and Cairn the minutes that had once seemed hours now turned to seconds as their time together sped by. Soon it would be dawn and they would part. They began to talk the sweet goodbyes of lovers, but as they did so, there was a snarl and a roar and it seemed as if the tunnel outside their burrow was filled with the movement of a thousand predators. It was Mandrake who, remembering what Rune had told him, or seemed to have told him, had broken the sullen stillness of the last of the night and moved hugely into the tunnel leading to the burrow with his talons ready to kill, and kill powerfully, anymole, male or female, that showed its snout.
Moments after this sudden disturbance, and as Cairn instinctively turned with his talons to the burrow entrance, there came the scent that Rebecca knew too well and which made her cry out in fear. The odour of Mandrake. It was strong and aggressive and angry, and it put fear into the heart of even Cairn, who waited now a second time to defend his right to Rebecca. But this time he did not laugh, and when Rebecca started to tell him who it was, he pushed her back and away, for he knew he would need all his concentration to survive this fight.
Somewhere further down the tunnel there was movement and they heard the deep rasping voice of Mandrake saying ‘Stay out on the surface, Rune, for this is my task. I will kill them myself.’
