He said no more. The Secretary General was used to this mannerism and kept his patience. Eventually the young man went on:
“Except I think maybe it could have been her. That girl. I didn’t see her, mind. But it could have been.”
He was looking closely at Delamare as he said that. His employer sat at the desk and wrote a sentence or two on a piece of headed paper before folding it and capping his fountain pen.
“Here you are, Olivier. Take this to the bank. Then have some rest. Eat properly. Keep up your strength.”
The young man opened the paper and read it before putting it in his pocket and leaving without a word. But he’d noticed something he’d seen before: at the mention of the girl, Marcel Delamare’s mouth trembled.
* * *
* * *
Lyra put the rucksack down on the floor and sank into the old armchair.
“Why did you hide when Dr. Polstead came through?” she said.
“I didn’t,” said Pantalaimon.
“You did. You shot under my coat as soon as you heard his voice.”
“I just wanted to be out of the way,” he said. “Let’s open this and have a look.” He was peering closely at the rucksack and lifting the buckles with his nose. “It’s certainly his. Same smell. Not the sort of cologne that Miriam’s father makes.”
“Well, we can’t do it now,” she said. “We’ve got twenty minutes to get back to St. Sophia’s and see Dr. Lieberson.”
It was a meeting that each undergraduate had with her tutor near the end of term: an appraisal, a warning to work harder, a commendation for good work done, suggestions for vacation reading. Lyra had never missed such a meeting yet, but if she didn’t hurry…
She got up, but Pan didn’t move.
“We’d better hide this,” he said.
“What? No one comes in here! It’s perfectly safe.”
“Seriously. Think of the man last night. Someone wanted this enough to kill him for it.”
Lyra saw the point, and pulled back the worn carpet. Under the floorboards there was a space where they’d hidden things before. It was a tight squeeze, but they got the rucksack in and pulled the carpet back. As Lyra ran downstairs, she heard the Jordan clock chime for eleven-forty-five.
* * *
* * *
They made it with a minute to spare, and had to sit hot and red-faced through Dr. Lieberson’s appraisal. Apparently Lyra had worked well and was beginning to understand the complexities of Mediterranean and Byzantine politics, though there was always the danger of thinking that a superficial mastery of the events was as good as a fundamental understanding of the principles at work underneath. Lyra agreed, nodding hard. She could have written it herself. Her tutor, a young woman with severely cut blond hair and a goldfinch dæmon, looked at her skeptically.
“Make sure to do some reading,” she said. “Frankopan’s good. Hughes-Williams has a very good chapter on Levantine trade. Don’t forget—”
“Oh, trade, yes. Dr. Lieberson, the Levantine trade—sorry to interrupt—did it always involve roses and perfumes and things like that?”
“And smokeleaf, since it was discovered. The great source of rose oil, attar of roses, in medieval times was Bulgaria. But the trade from there suffered from the Balkan wars and the duties the Ottoman Empire imposed on traffic through the Bosphorus, and besides, the climate was changing a little and the Bulgarian rose growers found it harder to cultivate the best sort of plants, so gradually the trade moved further east.”
“Do you know why it might be suffering now?”
“Is it?”
Lyra told her briefly about Miriam’s father and his problem with obtaining the supplies for his factory.
“That’s interesting,” said Dr. Lieberson. “History’s not over, you see. It’s happening all the time. The problem today would mainly be regional politics, I imagine. I’ll look into it. Have a good vacation.”
* * *
* * *
The end of the Michaelmas term was marked by a number of ritual occasions, which varied from college to college. St. Sophia’s took a narrow-eyed view of ritual in general, and with an air of “If we really must” produced a slightly better dinner than usual when celebration was unavoidable. Jordan, on the other hand, held a Founder’s Feast of great splendor and culinary excess. Lyra had always looked forward to the Founder’s Feast when she was younger, not because she was invited (she wasn’t) but because of the chance it gave her to earn a few guineas polishing the silver. This task had become a tradition of its own, and after a quick lunch with some friends at St. Sophia’s (during which Miriam seemed to have cheered up a great deal), Lyra hurried to the pantry at Jordan, where Mr. Cawson, the Steward, was getting out the dishes, the bowls, the plates, the goblets, and the large tin of Redvers’ powder.
The Steward was the senior servant in charge of all the college ceremonies, the great dinners, the silver, the Retiring Room and all its luxuries. Lyra had once been more terrified of Mr. Cawson than of anyone else in Oxford, but recently he’d begun to show signs of quite unsuspected humanity. She sat at the long table with its green baize cloth and dabbed a damp cloth into the tin of powder and polished bowls and dishes and goblets until their very surfaces seemed to swim and dissolve in the naphtha lamplight.
“Good going,” said Mr. Cawson, turning a bowl over between his palms and scrutinizing the flawless gleam.
“What’s it all worth, Mr. Cawson?” she said, taking up the very biggest dish, a shallow platter fully two feet across with a bowl-shaped depression in the center.
“Priceless,” he said. “Irreplaceable. You couldn’t buy anything like this now, because they don’t make ’em anymore. They’ve lost the skill. That one,” he said, looking at the great dish Lyra was polishing, “that’s three hundred and forty years old and as thick as two guineas. There’s no money value that would make any sense in connection with that. And,” he said, sighing, “this Feast is probably the last time we shall use it.”
“Really? What’s it for?”
“You’ve never attended a full Feast, have you, Lyra?” the old man said. “Dined in Hall any number of times—High Table often enough—but never a full Feast, am I right?”
“Well, I wouldn’t be invited,” said Lyra piously. “It wouldn’t be right. I’d never be allowed in the Retiring Room afterwards, never mind anything else.”
“Hmm,” said Mr. Cawson, without any expression at all.
“So I’ve never seen what this big plate’s for. Is it for truffles, at dessert?”
“Try and put it down.”
Lyra laid it on the baize, and because of its rounded bottom, the dish tipped over and lay awkwardly to one side.
“It looks uncomfortable,” she said.
“Because it’s not for putting down, it’s for carrying. It’s a rosewater dish.”
“Rosewater?” Lyra looked up at the old man, suddenly more curious.
“That’s it. After the meat, and before they change places for dessert, we take around the rosewater dishes. Four of ’em, and this is the finest. It’s for gentlemen and their guests to dab their napkins in, rinse their fingers, whatever takes their fancy. But we can’t get the rosewater anymore. We’ve got enough for this Feast, and that’s it.”
“Whyever can’t you get it? They grow roses everywhere. The Master’s garden is full of roses! Surely you could make some rosewater? I bet I could. I bet it’s not hard to do.”
“Oh, there’s no shortage of English rosewater,” said the Steward, lifting down a heavy flask from a shelf above the door, “but it’s thin stuff. No body to it. The best comes from the Levant, or beyond. Here—sniff this.”
He took the stopper out of the flask. Lyra bent over the open vessel and found the concentrated fragrance of every rose that had ever bloomed: a sweetness and power so profound that
it moved beyond sweetness altogether and out of the other side of its own complexity into a realm of clear and simple purity and beauty. It was like the smell of sunlight itself.
“Oh!” she said. “I see what you mean. And this is the very last of it?”
“The very last I could get hold of. I think Mr. Ellis, the Chamberlain at Cardinal’s, has a few bottles left. But he guards himself close, Mr. Ellis. I shall try to wheedle my way into his affections.”
Mr. Cawson’s tone was so dry that Lyra was never sure to what extent he was joking. But this rosewater business was too interesting to leave alone.
“Where did you say it came from, the good stuff?” she said.
“The Levant. Syria and Turkey in particular, so I understand; there’s some way they can detect the difference between them, but I never could. Not like wine, not like Tokay or Porto—there’s a wealth of tastes in every glass, and once you know your way round ’em, there’s no mistaking one vintage for another, far less one kind of wine for a different one. But you’ve got your tongue and your taste buds involved with wine, haven’t you? Your whole mouth’s involved. With rosewater, you’re just dealing with a fragrance. Still, I’m sure there’s some that could tell the difference.”
“Why is it getting scarce?”
“Greenfly, I expect. Now, Lyra, have you done ’em all?”
“Just this candlestick to go. Mr. Cawson, who’s the supplier for the rosewater? I mean, where do you buy it from?”
“A firm called Sidgwick’s. Why are you suddenly interested in rosewater?”
“I’m interested in everything.”
“So you are. I forgot. Well, you better have this….” He opened a drawer and took out a tiny glass bottle no bigger than Lyra’s little finger, and gave it to her to hold. “Pull the cork out,” he said, “and hold it steady.”
She did, and Mr. Cawson, with the utmost care and the steadiest hand, filled the tiny bottle from the flask of rosewater.
“There you are,” he said. “We can spare that much, and since you’re not invited to the Feast and you’re not allowed in the Retiring Room, you might as well have it.”
“Thank you!” she said.
“Now hop it, go on. Oh—if you want to know about the Levant and the east and all that, you better ask Dr. Polstead over at Durham.”
“Oh yes. I could. Thank you, Mr. Cawson.”
She left the Steward’s pantry and wandered out into the winter afternoon. Unenthusiastically she looked across Broad Street at the buildings of Durham College; no doubt Dr. Polstead was in his rooms, no doubt she could cross the road and knock on the door, and no doubt he’d welcome her, full of bonhomie, and sit her down and explain all about Levantine history at interminable length, and within five minutes she’d wish she hadn’t bothered.
“Well?” she said to Pan.
“No. We can see him anytime. But we couldn’t tell him about the rucksack. He’d just say take it to the police, and we’d have to say we couldn’t, and…”
“Pan, what is it?”
“What?”
“There’s something you’re not telling me.”
“No, there isn’t. Let’s go and look in the rucksack.”
“Not now. That’ll keep. We’ve got proper work to do, don’t forget,” Lyra reminded him. “If we make a start on it today, there’ll be that much less to do later on.”
“Well, let’s take the rucksack with us, at least.”
“No! Leave it where it is. It’s perfectly safe. We’ll be back here for the vacation soon, and if it’s with us at St. Sophia’s, you’ll be nagging me to look at it all the time.”
“I don’t nag.”
“You should hear yourself.”
When they got back to St. Sophia’s, Pan pretended to go to sleep while Lyra checked the references in her final essay and thought again about the rucksack; and then she put on her last clean dress and went down to dinner.
Over the boiled mutton, some friends tried to persuade her to come with them to a concert in the town hall, where a young pianist of striking good looks was going to play Mozart. This would normally have been tempting enough, but Lyra had something else in mind, and after the rice pudding she slipped away, put on her coat, and went down to Broad Street and into a pub called the White Horse.
It wasn’t usual for a young lady to go into a pub on her own, but Lyra in her present mood was far from being a lady. In any case, she was looking for someone, and pretty soon she found him. The bar in the White Horse was small and narrow, and in order to be sure the person she was looking for was there, Lyra had to shove her way through the evening crowd of office workers as far as the little snug at the back. In term time it would have been packed with undergraduates, because unlike some other pubs, the White Horse was used by both the town and the gown, but the year was winding down, and the students wouldn’t be seen again till mid-January. But Lyra wasn’t gown now: this evening she was town, exclusively.
And there in the snug was Dick Orchard, with Billy Warner and two girls whom Lyra didn’t know.
“Hello, Dick,” she said.
His face brightened, and it was a good-looking face. His hair was black and curly and glossy; his eyes were large, with brilliant dark irises and clear whites; his features were well defined, his skin healthy and golden; it was the sort of face that would look good in a photogram, nothing blurred or smudged about it; and besides, there was a hint of laughter, or at any rate amusement, behind every expression that flitted over it. He wore a blue-and-white-spotted handkerchief around his throat, in the gyptian style. His dæmon was a trim little vixen, who stood with pleasure to greet Pan; they had always liked each other. When Lyra was nine, Dick had been the leader of a gang of boys who hung around the market, and she had admired him greatly for his ability to spit further than anyone else. Much more recently she and he had had a brief but passionate relationship and, what was more, parted friends. She was genuinely pleased to find him there, but of course would never show it, with other girls watching.
“Where you been, then?” Dick said. “En’t seen you for weeks.”
“Things to do,” she said. “People to see. Books to read.”
“Hello, Lyra,” said Billy, an amiable boy who had been following Dick around since they were in elementary school. “How you doing?”
“Hello, Billy. Is there room for me there?”
“Who’s this?” said one of the girls.
They all ignored her. Billy moved up along the bench, and Lyra sat down.
“Hey,” said the other girl. “What you doing butting in?”
Lyra ignored her too. “You’re not still working in the market, Dick?” she said.
“No, sod that for a lark. Heaving spuds around, piling cabbages up. I’m working at the mail depot now. What you drinking, Lyra?”
“Badger,” she said, inwardly delighted. She’d been right about his job.
Dick got up and squeezed out past one of the girls, who protested, “What you doing, Dick? Who’s she?”
“She’s my girlfriend.”
He looked at Lyra with a lazy sort of smile in his eyes, and she looked back, bold and calm and complicit. Then he was gone, and the girl picked up her handbag and went after him, complaining. Lyra hadn’t looked at her once. The other girl said, “What’d he call you? Laura?”
“Lyra.”
Billy said, “This is Ellen. She works in the telephone exchange.”
“Oh, right,” said Lyra. “What you doing now, Billy?”
“I’m with Acott’s in the High Street.”
“Selling pianos? I didn’t know you could play the piano.”
“I can’t. I just move ’em. Like tonight, there’s a concert at the town hall, and they got a lousy piano there, so they hired one from us, a good ’un. Took three of us to move it, but you get wh
at you pay for. What you up to? You done your exams yet?”
“Not yet.”
“What exams? You a student?” said the girl.
Lyra nodded. Dick came back with a half pint of Badger ale. The other girl had gone.
“Oh, a half. Thank you for my half pint, Dick,” said Lyra. “If I’d known you were short of money, I’d have asked for a glass of water.”
“Where’s Rachel?” said the girl.
Dick sat down. “I didn’t get you a pint because there was this article in the paper,” he said. “It says women shouldn’t drink all that much at once, it’s too strong for ’em, it sends ’em mad with strange lusts and desires.”
“Too much for you to cope with, then,” Lyra said.
“Well, I could manage, but I was just thinking of the innocent bystanders.”
“Has Rachel gone?” said the girl, trying to peer through the crowd.
“You’re looking very gyptian tonight,” Lyra said to Dick.
“You got to show off your best features, en’t you,” he said.
“Is that what you call ’em?”
“You remember my grandad’s gyptian. Giorgio Brabandt. He’s good-looking too. He’ll be in Oxford later this week—I’ll introduce you.”
“I’m fed up with this,” the girl said to Billy.
“Ah, come on, Ellen…”
“I’m going with Rachel. You can come or not, as you like,” she said, and her starling dæmon flapped his wings on her shoulder as she got up.
Billy looked at Dick, who shrugged; so Billy got up as well.
“See you, Dick. Cheers, Lyra,” he said, and followed the girl out through the crowded bar.
“Well, fancy that,” said Dick. “We’re all alone.”
“Tell me about the mail place. What is it you do?”
“It’s the main sorting office for the south of England. Stuff comes in on the mail trains in sealed sacks and we open them and sort the post into regions. Then we take it back out in boxes, different colors for different regions, and load ’em onto other trains, or on the zeppelin for London.”
The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth (Book of Dust, Volume 2) Page 5