But the story did not only bring Mandrake and Rune hotpawing it back to Barrow Vale; it also brought Rebecca, who, since her meeting with Rose, had grown much more independent. Perhaps having her own tunnels had something to do with it as well, for she seemed to throw off any sense of the constraints that Mandrake’s bullying and rules of conduct had put on her and started living with a joy and spirit that Duncton females rarely showed. If there was laughter in the system, hers were the tunnels it seemed to come from; if there were tears, hers was the place where a mole might find comfort; if there were moles having a good feast, hers was the place where they had it.
In no sense was Rebecca wilfully disobedient to Mandrake, about whom, and to the amazement of all moles who knew her, she never had a hard or harsh thing to say. ‘I love him,’ she would declare, as if such a love could forgive the many cruelties and unkindnesses all the system knew he had imposed on her. Which, indeed, it could. The fact was that Rebecca did not seem the least affected by Mandrake’s attitude to her. But however great her love for him, her love for life and for living was greater. It was as if she was driven by a force for joy and love quite out of her control, and anymole who came into contact with her fell under its spell and got carried along by it. She seemed not only to affect other moles, but other creatures and plants as well, as moles like Mekkins, who took to visiting her, soon noticed. The trees, the plants, the creatures of the wood—all seemed brighter and happier around Rebecca’s burrows. Hers was the place where the nightingale sang; hers was the place where the sun seemed to shine; nowhere else did wood violets look quite so lovely in the sun.
And Rebecca herself was the picture of health and happiness. Her coat was full and glossy, catching even the most delicate of summer dawn lights in its sheen, and beautifully warm and dark when the sun shone full upon it. She had grown since the spring and was big for a female, equal in size to some of the smaller males, and though not so graceful as her mother, Sarah, she was a thousand times more feminine.
She would touch and rough-play, and cry ‘Look!’ pointing to some rambling eglantine or scurrying beetle whose beauty and life caught her eye, which she always seemed to want to share with another mole. But for many, her enthusiasms were sometimes almost embarrassing in their exuberance, for it doesn’t do for an adult to dance and play too much, does it?
So that sometimes, when Rebecca was quite alone and lying still in the evening or watching the light change in the early morning, there was a subtle sadness about her of which she herself was barely aware, and if she had been, she could not have known its cause. Sometimes in her dreams she wished that she might meet a mole who would play and dance with her and make her laugh and sing with the same abandon to life that she gave to others.
There were only two moles who understood this unseen sadness in her life. One was Sarah, who was now more a friend than a mother and who, though more sedate than Rebecca, would sometimes giggle like a pup while they lost themselves in each other’s fun. The other was Mekkins, who, since that day in July when he had conceived such a powerful affection for her, had often stopped by near her burrow and spent some summer time there. Of all the males she knew, he was the one with the greatest force for life, the only one whose wit was sharp enough and whose humour was wide enough, and whose experience was sufficiently great, for Rebecca to feel in his presence an expansion of herself that she did not feel with the others. She loved his Marshend language and irreverence.
Curiously, it was these two, who loved and cared for Rebecca most of all, who were the least concerned by the change that started to come over her at the end of August. She began to become restless and stayed for moledays down in her burrow, seeing no joy in the fading summer sun, no fun in the flocking of starlings and pigeons that were the early heralds of autumn. For the first time since she had left her home burrow she became angry with other moles, snarling at them if they came too near or presumed (as they had often done before) on her good humour and generosity. Sometimes, when she heard another mole coming, she would hide herself and not answer its calls.
But Sarah and Mekkins understood in their different ways. The fact was that Rebecca was beginning to need a mate. Or rather a mating and a litter, since Duncton moles rarely pair for more than a few moledays.
When Mandrake had forbidden her to go near a male in the spring, she had had a craving for a mate and a need to celebrate the busy life she saw about her with the feel of a litter inside and the joy of pups in her tunnels. There had been times in early June when the sound of other females’ growing pups had left her feeling bereft and lost. But these feelings had faded as the summer advanced until, at the start of September, this much stronger and more specific desire for a mate came to her.
Then sometimes she would remember, with a dark excitement, the time Rune had followed her down into the tunnels, chasing after her, and she had been scared, knowing what he wanted. She hated him and yet (and this she could not understand) again and again the secret memory of the mating ritual he had started and Mandrake had stopped short, coupled with the dark, assured malevolence of Rune, came back to her.
It was Mekkins who, in the middle of September, brought her the sensational news that the Stone Mole, as the Eastsiders had first called him, had been sighted by a female called Rue who, at this very moment, was telling everymole in Barrow about it.
‘Course it’s a load of rubbish. I mean, it’s got to be, hasn’t it? You’ve only got to look at this mole, and I’ve seen her, to see she’s as nervous as a pup and would think a dormouse was a monster. They say that she’s been through a hard time… ’ Mekkins knew perfectly well that it was Rue whom Mandrake had turned out of these very tunnels to make way for Rebecca, but knowing Rebecca as he did, he realised that if she knew, she would be the first to go impetuously rushing off to offer Rue back her tunnels. Rebecca would learn in time that there were some things a mole couldn’t do much about.
Mekkins went on: ‘Anyway, it’s had the inevitable effect of making the Stone Mole rumour the number-one talking point all over the bloody system.’ He laughed, and Rebecca shared his laugh.
Rebecca believed that the Stone Mole was Bracken, with a conviction born of the faith first put into her by Hulver just before the June elder meeting; as for Mekkins, he almost believed it too, and the very least that Rebecca’s certainty did for him was to remove him from taking part in the gossip about the Stone Mole and make him see most of it for the nonsense it truly was. This objectivity about something everymole else got worked up about was perhaps characteristic of Mekkins anyway, for he had maintained his unique position as a buffer between the Marshenders and the main system only by the extreme independence of his spirit and actions. He was perhaps the only mole in the system uncorrupted by any fear of Mandrake.
It had been the Eastsiders who had first labelled whatever it was up in the Ancient System the Stone Mole. Mekkins told Rebecca that story and thrilled to see the pleasure it gave her to have her belief that Bracken was still alive confirmed. He was puzzled that she should be so concerned about a mole she had never met, but with Rebecca, well, she was concerned about so many things so enthusiastically that one more shouldn’t be a surprise. And she had explained the impact Hulver’s conversation had had on her.