Chapter ELEVEN - Old Ground

The Owsla party made its way out into the slate-grey dawn, followed by a number of the other rabbits who had come to see them off. These onlookers did not, however, include Vernal, who had stubbornly remained in his burrow despite the best entreaties of the others to persuade him that he would be welcome to accompany the Owsla on their journey.

Bigwig paused at the mouth of the hole and gazed levelly at the torrents of water cascading from the overhanging roof of the burrow entrance, and shook his ears in some irritation.

"It's rather cold outside, I'm afraid," he said to the others matter-of-factly, "and I don't much like the look of this rain."

"He sounded just like Cowslip when he said that," remarked Hawkbit to Speedwell with amusement, just a little too loudly. Bigwig rounded on him angrily, and it was only Hazel's intervention that saved Hawkbit from a cuffing.

"Now look here, Bigwig," said Hazel, "We really could do without any of that, you know. You need to be concentrating on keeping safe on this journey. And Hawkbit, do try not to be such a chump, there's a good fellow."

Mollified somewhat, Bigwig rejoined Holly, Silver and Bluebell as they set out for the hole where they had buried Blackavar. Although still fresh in their minds, it seemed so long ago now, and there was a general feeling among the rabbits that they should not rest until the mystery of their friend's death was solved.

As on the previous occasion, Kehaar had agreed to act as guide-cum-lookout for the rabbits, although the sheeting rain meant that visibility was inevitably affected, forcing the gull to fly lower than he would have liked - Bluebell had even suggested that he might prefer to swim along the streaming turf. As he put it, "We've had a go at being water-rabbits: Kehaar can be a grass-bird."

"Dam' rain he come, is no good for see," remarked Kehaar, wheeling widely around over the rabbits' heads as they made their way towards Ashley Warren Farm. There was no extra weight to be carried this time, but nevertheless each one of them felt a burden in their hearts that could not be fully removed until their job was done. Something was missing, too - on the previous journey there had been a strong yet intangible feeling binding them together, while here, despite their companions, in some unutterable way they each felt alone to a greater extent than they had ever known.

The journey to the grave-hole was largely uneventful. The only elil to come near were a couple of foraging kittens from one of the nearby farmhouses, who were swiftly chased off by Kehaar, the gull loudly contemptuous of such small animals being thought of as a threat by the four large rabbits. Otherwise, the wet and cold had conspired to give the rabbits a relatively easy passage.

"Here," said Silver at last. "I can see we're at the hole - but look at it!"

It was a terrible sight. All around the entrance to the burrow, the earth had been thrown up in great heaps, seemingly without rhyme or reason; and the entrance itself, so carefully stopped up a matter of days before, gaped open like some great door into the bowels of the earth itself. There was no sign of Blackavar's body.

Holly turned to Bigwig.

"This can't be any animal's doing," he said in a disbelieving tone. "Only men could have wrought such destruction, surely?"

"And what might 'this' be?" came a sudden voice from behind one of the earthen heaps.

Bigwig's fur rose immediately on his neck. He knew that voice well, knew who must have called to him - yet he knew equally that it could not be so. A mixture of anger, fear and sheer bewilderment took hold, and he fought to keep his head clear, for he knew in his deepest heart that here was an enemy more dangerous and black-hearted by far than Stitchwort, even than the great General himself. He looked up to see a large, dark-furred buck crest the top of the heap and gaze down at him with a kind of amused contempt.

It was Vervain.

* * *

Back at Watership, Hazel and Vernal were alone in a burrow. Vernal would tolerate the other's presence, and even talk to him, so long as the question of his refusal to accompany Bigwig's group to Blackavar's grave-hole was not brought up. If Hazel ignored this restriction, or even attempted to ask Vernal the reason for it, Vernal would become angry and even violent, once striking out at Hazel so suddenly that he was almost knocked to the ground. Hazel did not respond to this directly, but merely continued talking on a different subject.

"Vernal," he asked, "how well did you know Silverweed?"

"Not all that well," replied the other in a flat tone. "Strawberry has told me about that poem Silverweed recited to you, and how apparently it was originally some sort of eulogy for me; but that surprised me a little, if truth be told, as we'd never had much to do with one another. Silverweed always seemed a bit withdrawn and even gloomy, I thought. I liked to be happy."

Hazel took in this information, and continued.

"Do you know what happened to Silverweed after we'd gone?"

"Only what Strawberry told me; you'd have to ask him for the full details. But apparently he became more and more withdrawn and - well - strange. Some of the rabbits began to wonder if he was going tharn in the head, and there was some talk of driving him out. But Cowslip wouldn't have it."

"I thought there was no Chief Rabbit in that warren?"

"There wasn't. But that worked both ways, because it meant that on those few occasions when a rabbit did have a strong opinion on something, there was very rarely any opposition worthy of the name. There just wasn't the organisation for it, you know. So Cowslip standing up for Silverweed like that stopped anything really happening, other than a bit of grumbling."

"Even so," said Hazel, "it seems awfully strange. Anyway, what happened after that?"

"He died," replied Vernal simply. "Not the wires, either. A dog got him. Strawberry said that everyone had been very surprised, because he'd always seemed to be able to keep out of trouble - rather as this Fiver fellow does in this warren. I suppose it must have been just one of those things."

Hazel felt that he was not getting anywhere, so excused himself, and went to find Fiver, who was playing bob-stones with Blackberry a little way off. The two were closely matched, Fiver's intuition and Blackberry's more analytical mind sparking off each other, and were regular opponents at the game.

"I say, you chaps," said Hazel, "if you wouldn't mind leaving off for a moment, I'd like to have a talk to the pair of you."

"If you're going to ask me to talk to Vernal," said Fiver, "then I shouldn't bother. I've had a go myself, and it's like talking to a rock once you get onto anything to do with Bigwig's party. I've tried and tried, and I just can't see what's under there. I know there's something, something deep and important - but there's a sort of a cover that he brings down whenever I get close. I don't even think he realises he does it, and if you mention it he either gets angry or just looks blank."

Hazel scratched an ear reflectively, and decided to join in the bob-stones game for a while.

* * *

The two old adversaries stood stock-still, staring into one another's eyes, for what seemed like an age, until Holly appeared from further down the hill. He too was shocked at the identity of the newcomer, but on recovering himself growled loudly and bared his teeth. Silver and Bluebell joined him, with Kehaar circling conspicuously overhead - something which Bigwig was gratified to see made Vervain somewhat nervous. Holly moved closer, and spoke.

"Now you listen to me, Vervain. I don't know how it is that you're alive, or what you're doing here, but I do know this: if you do not leave this place, now and forever, you will die here. You can see that we outnumber you four to one, and that we have the white bird. You would have no chance." Vervain remained where he was, and Holly repeated his threat: "Go, or you will be killed."

Vervain still made no move, but replied, "You're making a bad mistake. I can tell you what happened here."

Bigwig made to lunge at him, but Holly stopped him, saying, "Well then: out with it."

Vervain twisted his features into a fearsome grimace, and licked his lips before speaking.

"I bet you weren't expecting to see me again," he said in a tone of sneering amusement. "Everyone seems to think the elil got me, just as they did for the General. Oh, I don't doubt that he's a goner; he was no match for that dog, whatever he might have thought. But there wasn't much point in me going back to Efrafa: I could see that there was no future for me there under that traitor Campion. So one night I slipped away from the others - they were hardly in any shape to worry about one rabbit more or less - and lived as a hlessi for a while.

"Of course the elil - pfeffil, mostly, where I was - knew I was around, but what most rabbits don't seem to realise is that they're generally very amenable to a bit of flattery - if you can speak a couple of words of their language, it works wonders. So I got hold of a couple of orphaned kittens and made them teach me some Feline. I couldn't learn much, just a few useful phrases, as they weren't alive for very long. But it was enough. From then on, all I had to do to avoid trouble was to set one cat against another. 'Sort of thing El-ahrairah did at his trial, if you remember.

"As for this - all these heaps of earth - I did it. I expect you'll want to know why. Oh, that's easy. I was in the area - never mind how or why I came to be here - and thought I could smell rabbit. Not just any rabbit, either, but that wretch Blackavar. I wouldn't forget his smell in hrair years. Oh, don't look so surprised, Thlayli - I had enough to do with him back in Efrafa after all. He held up very well there. Considering."

Vervain paused, and the silence on the hillside was intense, broken only by the steady spattering of the rain on the broken turf. No-one moved, and he continued.

"But when I found him here, unmarked and unbroken, what else could I do? That thing needed to be taught a lesson before it was too late for me. So I set to work digging him out - and ripped him to pieces, as I should have done a long time ago."

At last, Bigwig understood. Vervain himself was dying, not in body but in mind. His whole life had been one of madness, but it had been the cold, sane insanity of pure evil. Now, perhaps, the years of pain and suffering he had inflicted on others had taken their toll. Bigwig felt something almost like pity for one brief instant, before the reality of Vervain's actions in Efrafa reasserted itself in his own head. He looked around at his companions, and then back at Vervain, and his heart was gripped by the icy certainty that they all of them knew how this encounter must end.

* * *

Despite Kehaar's help, all four Watership rabbits had been badly slashed and bitten by the Efrafan buck before it was over. Holly in particular was in a bad way, the muscle in his left front paw badly damaged. He could still run, but not at any great speed, and not without considerable pain. With distaste and disgust, limping and sore, the Owsla pulled Vervain's almost unrecognisable body over to the lane, and left it in the centre of the sodden Tarmac. There, it would certainly be spotted before long, whether by men or by elil none amongst them knew or cared. By the morning, there would be no sign that a rabbit had ever lain there.

Returning to what had been Blackavar's grave-hole, the four friends came together to decide what to do. The rain had grown heavier once again, and sluiced down their fur and whiskers, into their eyes and nostrils. When their breath had returned, talk turned to the great battle that had just taken place.

"Frith and Inlé, there's a rabbit I thought we'd seen the last of a long time ago," said Bigwig with feeling. "At least we've done something to clean the place up this trip."

"And trying to make out he was emulating El-ahrairah!" exclaimed Bluebell. "That buck was a disgrace to Rabbitry."

"The way he talked about Blackavar like that," fumed Bigwig. "Death's too good for him. And if only we could have somehow stopped him finding Blackavar. I think-"

"But this doesn't make sense," interrupted Silver. "Vervain said he'd ripped up Blackavar. But where is his body? The way he went on, you'd think Vervain had left fur and bones and so on all over the place. I think he was lying."

The full import of this took a few moments to sink into the other rabbits' minds. But soon it was abundantly clear what had happened. Vervain had lied to them, knowing that it would mean his death, but knowing also that the implications for the Watershippers would be severe. His final act of madness had been intended as a kind of suicide - but his own was not the only death warrant he had signed. The Owsla were all four wounded, far from home, in bad weather, with the stench of fresh blood all around them. Even Kehaar could not hold off the entire Thousand.