The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth (Book of Dust, Volume 2)

by Philip Pullman

  “And presumably there’s a Scholar of each college responsible for communicating with the police, if necessary?”

  “Yes,” said Capes. “Usually a Junior Dean or someone of that sort.”

  “Find out, please, Charles. See what you can discover about Talbot and this Paston. Malcolm, I want you to concentrate on the rose oil. I want to know everything about it. The research station in Central Asia: What is it? Who runs it? What have they discovered about the oil, if anything? Why can’t the roses be grown anywhere else? What’s the truth about this extraordinary red building in the middle of the desert, with the Latin-speaking guards, where the roses come from? Is it a delirious fantasy of some sort? I want you to go there yourself as soon as possible. You know the place, you speak the language, I think?”

  Malcolm said, “Yes.”

  That was all he could say. An order like that meant that he’d have no chance to search for Lyra, even if he’d known where to begin.

  “And this unrest throughout the Levant and beyond: find out what’s behind that. Is it coming from the Lop Nor region and spreading west? Is it connected at all with the rose business?”

  “There’s something curious about that,” said Malcolm. “In Strauss’s diary, he mentions that some places not far from the research station had been attacked, rose gardens set on fire, and so on, and he says he was surprised because he thought that sort of thing had been confined to Asia Minor—to Turkey and the Levant, basically. Maybe the unrest didn’t originate in Central Asia at all, but further west. Nearer Europe.”

  Glenys Godwin nodded and made a note. “Find out what you can,” she said, and went on, “Hannah, the young woman, Lyra Silvertongue: any idea where she’s gone?”

  “None, yet. But the alethiometer isn’t good at hurrying. I think she’s safe, but more than that, I can’t tell. I’ll keep looking.”

  “I’d like a brief account of her background and why she’s important. I don’t know whether she’s central or peripheral. Can you put that together quickly?”

  “Of course.”

  “There’s a file about her in the mausoleum,” said Godwin’s dæmon.

  He meant the section of Oakley Street’s archives in which inactive material was stored. Malcolm and Asta knew that, but couldn’t help feeling a little dart of shock at the reminder of that dank and rotting graveyard where he’d killed Gerard Bonneville in order to save Lyra’s life.

  “Good,” said Godwin. “I’ll read it when we get back. In the meantime, something’s happening in Geneva. D’you know anything about that, Charles?”

  “A conference. Or a congress, as they’re calling it. All the various bodies of the Magisterium are gathering for the first time in centuries. I don’t know what’s prompted it, but it doesn’t sound good. The best weapon we have against them at the moment is their disunity. If they find a reason for coming together and a way of institutionalizing it, they’ll be more formidable than ever.”

  “Could you find a way of getting there yourself?”

  “I daresay I could, but I’m already under suspicion, or so I’ve been told. They’d make sure I didn’t learn very much. I do know one or two people who’d learn more and wouldn’t mind telling me about it. There are always journalists, scholars from various places, attending and listening and reporting on events like that.”

  “All right. Whatever you can do. Let’s keep in mind what’s at the bottom of this. These roses, this oil they produce, is something the Magisterium is desperate to control. The main instigator in all this seems to be the organization called La Maison Juste and its director, Marcel Delamare. Charles, do you know anything about them? Why is it called that, for instance?”

  “La Maison Juste is the building where their headquarters are. The organization’s full title is the League for the Instauration of the Holy Purpose.”

  “Instauration?” said Glenys Godwin. “I’ve forgotten what that means, if I ever knew it.”

  “It means restoration, or renewal.”

  “And what is this Holy Purpose? Actually, don’t bother: I can guess. They want to reinvigorate their sense of righteousness. They’d like a war, and for some reason these roses will give them an advantage. Well, we need to know what that is and cancel it out and, if possible, gain it for ourselves. Let’s keep that clearly in mind.”

  “Oakley Street is hardly in a position to fight a war,” said Hannah.

  “I was not actually advocating a war,” said Godwin. “But if we act intelligently and effectively, we might prevent one. You know why I’m sending you in particular there, Malcolm. I wouldn’t ask anyone else to go.”

  Malcolm did know, and so did Hannah, but Capes didn’t and was looking at him curiously.

  “It’s because my dæmon and I can separate,” Malcolm said.

  “Ah,” said Capes. He looked at Malcolm and nodded.

  No one spoke for a few moments.

  Something was glinting on the desk: the sunlight was catching the blade of a silver paper knife, and Malcolm felt the familiar presence of the tiny shimmering point, no bigger than an atom, which would slowly become visible and then grow larger into the sparkling loop of light he knew as the spangled ring. Asta looked at him: she felt it too, though it wasn’t visible to her. There was no point in his trying to focus on anything for a few minutes, because it would take that long for the ring to grow large enough to see through; so he relaxed his vision and thought about the four human beings in the room, so liberal and tolerant, so civilized, and the organization they embodied.

  In that wider perspective, Oakley Street seemed absurd: an organization whose very existence had to be concealed from the nation it had been set up to protect, whose agents were mostly now middle-aged or older and fewer in number than ever, whose resources were so scanty that its Director would have had to travel third-class on a slow train from London and he, Malcolm, would have to subsidize his own travel to Karamakan. What did this decrepit, poverty-stricken, understaffed body think it was doing, taking on the entire Magisterium?

  The other three were talking quietly. As the sparkling loop of light drifted towards Malcolm, it encircled each of them in turn when he looked over at them: Charles Capes, slender, bald, faultlessly dark-suited, a red handkerchief in his top pocket, a deep and subtle intelligence in his eyes; Glenys Godwin, warmly dark-eyed, gray hair cut neatly, one hand tirelessly and tenderly caressing her wounded dæmon; Hannah Relf, whom Malcolm loved only a little less than his own mother, slight and gray-haired and frail, whose mind held such knowledge. How valuable these people seemed, in this other perspective, in the light of the spangled ring.

  So he sat and listened, and let it drift past him and disappear.

  * * *

  * * *

  As Charles Capes had said, it was the first congress the hierarchy of the Magisterium had held for centuries.

  There was a hierarchy, in the sense that some of the bodies and individuals were junior and some senior, some more important and some less; but it was not a fixed hierarchy, as it would have been had Pope John Calvin left the Church as he’d found it. Instead, he had repudiated the primacy of his office and divided its power among several agencies. After his death, the office of Pope was never filled again, and the authority that used to go with the title was diverted into many different courses, as a river that had run fast and narrow in the mountains slows down, and spreads out, and cuts many new channels as it finds itself in the flat lands below.

  So there was no one clear line of command. Instead, a multitude of different bodies, councils and colleges and committees and courts, grew up and, if they found themselves under an ambitious and talented leader, flourished; or perished and withered, if there was no boldness of vision or depth of courage among their governors. Altogether, the entity known as the Magisterium consisted of a seething mass of rivalrous, jealous, mutually suspicious bodies similar o
nly in their liking for power and their ambition to wield it.

  They came, the leaders of these factions, the Director of the Consistorial Court of Discipline, the Dean of the College of Bishops, the Chairman of the Committee for the Propagation of the True Faith, the Secretary General of the Society for the Promotion of Celibate Virtue, the Rector of the Red Chamber, the Master of the School of Dogmatic Logic, the President of the Court of Common Order, the Abbess of the Sisters of Holy Obedience, the Archimandrite of the Priory of Grace, and many, many others—they came because they dared not stay away, in case their absence were interpreted as rebellion. They came from all over Europe and from further south and north and west and east, some eager for conflict, some uneasy at the thought of it; some tempted like hounds by the gamy tang of heresy hunting, others reluctant to leave the peace of their monasteries or colleges for what was bound to be discord and anger and danger.

  Altogether, fifty-three men and women assembled in the oak-paneled Council Chamber of the Secretariat of the Holy Presence, which had the advantage of giving the Prefect of that order the right to chair the meeting.

  “Brothers and Sisters,” the Prefect began, “in the name and the authority of the Most High, we are summoned here today to discuss a matter of burning importance. Our faith has in recent years been challenged and threatened as never before. Heresy is flourishing, blasphemy goes unpunished, the very doctrines that have led us through two thousand years are being openly mocked in every land. This is a time for people of faith to draw together and make our voices heard with unmistakable force.

  “And at the same time, there is opening to us in the east an opportunity so rich and promising as to raise the heart of the most despondent. We have a chance to increase our influence and bring our power to bear on all those who have resisted and are still resisting the good influence of the Holy Magisterium.

  “In bringing you this news—and you shall hear much more later—I must also urge you all to pray most earnestly for the wisdom we shall need in order to deal with the new situation. And the first question I must put before you is this: Our ancient body, here represented by fifty-three men and women of the utmost faith and probity—is it too large? Are there simply too many of us to make rapid decisions and act with force and effect? Should we not consider the benefits that would flow from delegating matters of great policy to a smaller, a more swift-moving and decisive council, which could provide the leadership that is so necessary in these distracted times?”

  Marcel Delamare, representing La Maison Juste, listened to the Prefect’s words with satisfaction. No one would ever know, but he himself had written the speech for the Prefect to deliver; and he had made sure, by private inquiry, by blackmail, by bribery, by flattery, by threat, that the motion to elect a smaller council would be passed, and he had already decided who should be elected to it, and who should chair it.

  He settled comfortably back and folded his arms, and the debate opened.

  * * *

  * * *

  As darkness was falling at the edge of the Fens, rain started to fall too. It was the time of day when Giorgio Brabandt usually began to look for a likely spot to moor for the night, but as they were so close to his native waters, he was inclined to keep moving. He knew every twist and turn of these mazy waterways, and the lights he sent Lyra to mount at the stem and the stern were a matter of courtesy to any fellow boaters, not a necessity to show the way.

  “When do we get into the Fens, Master B?” said Lyra.

  “We’re there now,” he said. “More or less. There en’t no frontier nor customs post, nothing like that. One minute you’re out, the next minute you’re in.”

  “So how do you know?”

  “You got a feeling for it. If you’re gyptian, it’s like coming home. If you en’t gyptian, you feel uncomfortable, nervous, you feel that all them boggarts and horrors is out there in the water, watching you. Don’t you feel that?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. Well, we can’t be there yet. Or else I en’t told you enough stories.”

  He was standing at the tiller, in oilskins and sou’wester, while Lyra sat just inside the doorway, wrapped in an old coat of his. The stern light threw a yellow outline around his bulky form and lit up the incessant raindrops that filled the air. Lyra was aware of the potatoes cooking on the naphtha stove in the galley behind her; she’d go in soon and cut some slices of bacon to fry.

  “When d’you think we’ll get to the Zaal?” she said. She was referring to the great meeting hall, the center of the gyptians’ communal life.

  “Ah, there’s a way to tell that.”

  “What is it?”

  “When you’re close enough to see it, you’re almost there.”

  “Well, that’s helpful. I must—”

  He suddenly put up a hand to hush her, and at the same moment his dæmon turned her head to the sky. Brabandt sheltered his eyes with the brim of his sou’wester and peered up too, and Lyra followed their example. She could see nothing, but heard a distant rumble from the clouds.

  “Lyra, run forrard and dowse that glim,” said Brabandt, easing the throttle back and reaching out with his other hand for the stern light.

  The light at the prow was reflected along the length of the cabin roof, so Lyra could see easily enough to run along and jump down into the bow. When she reached up and turned the wick down to extinguish the flame, she could hear the sound more easily, and a moment later she could see the source of it: the pale egglike form of a zeppelin, cruising slowly some way behind them on the starboard side, below the clouds, and showing no lights.

  She felt her way back to the cockpit. Brabandt had steered the Maid in towards the side and cut the engine to a murmur, and Lyra felt a little jolt as the boat touched the grassy bank.

  “You see it?” he said quietly.

  “I can see one. Are there more?”

  “One’s enough. Is it follerin’ us?”

  “No. I shouldn’t think they can have seen the lights yet, not through this rain. And the noise that engine is making, they’d never be able to hear ours.”

  “I’m going to move along, then,” he said.

  He pushed the throttle forward, and the engine responded with a gentle rumble. The boat moved on.

  “How can you see?” said Lyra.

  “Instinct. Keep your trap shut. I need to listen.”

  She remembered the potatoes, and ran inside to take them off the stove and drain them. The warm, comfortable old cabin, the clean galley, the steam, the smell of the cooked potatoes—they felt like a bulwark against the danger above; but she knew they were nothing of the sort, and that a bomb well aimed would kill her and Brabandt and sink the Maid of Portugal in a matter of moments.

  She hurried from end to end of the boat, checking all the blinds. There wasn’t a single chink. Finally she put out the light in the galley and went back to the cockpit.

  The roar of the zeppelin’s engine was loud now. It sounded as if it was directly overhead. She squinted up through the lashing rain and could see nothing.

  “Psst,” said Brabandt quietly. “Look out starboard.”

  Lyra stood and stared out as hard as she could, ignoring the rain in her eyes, and this time saw a little flickering greenish light. It was inconstant, but it always came back after vanishing for a second or two, and it was moving.

  “Is that another boat?” she said.

  “It’s a will o’ the wykes. A jacky lantern.”

  “There’s another!”

  A second light, reddish in color, appeared and disappeared not far from the first. Lyra watched them approach each other, touching, disappearing, and then flickering up again a little way apart.

  The Maid of Portugal continued to move ahead, steady and slow, as Brabandt kept checking left and right, listening, peering, even lifting his face to sniff at the air. T
he rain was beating down harder than ever. The marsh lights seemed to be keeping pace with the boat, and then Lyra realized that the zeppelin overhead had moved a little in their direction, as if to see what they were. The engine sounded very loud, very close, and she wondered how the pilot could see anything at all in the murk. The Maid of Portugal was leaving no wake, and every light on board was out.

  “There’s another one,” Lyra said.

  A third light had joined the first two, and now they set up a weird halting, pausing, swerving dance. The cold, inconstant glimmer made Lyra feel uneasy. Only the solid deck beneath her feet and the bulky presence of Giorgio Brabandt saved her from a sickly fear of things that were outside, just beyond the reach of reason, inhabiting the dark.

  “It’s going that way,” said Brabandt.

  He was right. As if it was being pulled, the zeppelin was moving to starboard, towards the marsh lights.

  Brabandt pushed the throttle further forward, and the narrowboat picked up speed. In the faint glimmer of the marsh lights, Lyra could see him straining every sense, and Anneke, his dæmon, jumped up onto the cabin roof, head moving this way and that to catch a fragment of scent that would help avoid a mudbank or steer round a bend.

  Lyra almost said, “Can I help?” but realized as she opened her mouth that if he had a task for her, he’d tell her. So she sat down in the doorway again and kept still, and looked out to starboard, where the marsh lights were flickering more brightly than ever.

  Suddenly a line of fire streaked down towards the marsh lights from the teeming sky above. It hit the water and exploded in a blossom of orange and yellow flame, and a moment later Lyra heard the brief whistle of the flight and the solid crump of the explosion.

  The marsh lights went out all at once.

  “There,” said Brabandt. “They broke the law now. They’re allowed to fly over, but not to do that.”