The Book of Dust, Volume 1

by Philip Pullman

In his alarm, Malcolm recklessly went close to the window, peering out to left and right. The only movements were the bobbing of the dinghy, which was tied to a stick Bonneville had driven into the soft lawn, and the swaying this way and that of the top half of the man’s body. The light was too gray and dim for him to be sure, but Malcolm thought he could see a current of scarlet trailing away from the man’s throat.

  He pressed himself against the glass, trying to see where he’d hidden La Belle Sauvage. As far as he could tell, the bushes were undisturbed.

  Which was the cabinet the man had opened to get the gun? In that room at the other end of the great hall…

  But Malcolm didn’t know how to load and fire one, even if…

  He ran back to the kitchen. Alice was just pouring the milk into Lyra’s bottle.

  “What is it?”

  “Shh. Bonneville’s killed the man and taken his gun, and I can’t see him anywhere.”

  “What gun?” she said, alarmed.

  “He had a shotgun. I told you. He was going to defend the place. And now Bonneville’s got it and killed him. He’s lying in the water….”

  Malcolm was looking around, almost panting with fear. He saw an iron ring in a wooden trapdoor, and his panic-strengthened muscles lifted it at once. A flight of steps led down into profound darkness.

  “Candles—on the shelf over there,” said Alice, scooping up Lyra and the bottle and looking around for anything that would give them away, but there was too much to pick up.

  Malcolm ran to the shelf and found a box of matches there as well.

  “You go down first. I’ll pull the trapdoor after me,” he said.

  Alice moved cautiously into the dark. Lyra was twisting and struggling, and Pantalaimon was chirruping like a frightened bird. Asta flew to him, perching on Lyra’s blanket, and made soft cooing noises.

  Malcolm was struggling with the trapdoor. There was a rope handle on the inside, but the hinges were stiff and it was very heavy. Finally he managed to haul it over and let it down as quietly as he could.

  The strain of being at a distance from his dæmon was beginning to tell. His hands were trembling and his heart was lurching painfully.

  “Don’t move any further away,” he whispered to Alice.

  “Why—”

  “Dæmon.”

  She understood and moved back a step, crowding him slightly as he tried to strike a match. He got a candle lit, and Asta flew back to him, for the little flame itself was enough to distract Lyra. In its light, Alice trod carefully down to the cellar floor.

  “All right, Lyra, hush, gal,” she whispered, and settled on the cold earth floor with her back against the wall. A noisy sound of sucking came almost at once, and Alice’s dæmon settled near the chick-shaped Pan as a crow. The little dæmon’s anxious chirruping stopped.

  Malcolm sat on the bottom step, looking around. This was a storeroom for vegetables and sacks of rice and other such things: dry enough, but bitterly cold. A low archway led through into a further cellar.

  “All he’s got to do,” said Alice shakily, “is move summing heavy onto the trapdoor and—”

  “Don’t think about it. There’s no point in thinking like that. In a minute I’ll go through that archway and see where it leads. There’s bound to be another entrance.”

  “Why?”

  “Because a cellar is where they keep wine. And when they send the butler down to fetch up some bottles of claret or whatever, he en’t going to struggle with the trapdoor and stumble down the steps, like we did. There’ll be a proper staircase somewhere—”

  “Shh!”

  He sat still, tense and fearful, trying not to let his fear show. Leisurely footsteps moved across the floor above. They stopped at the end of the kitchen and paused, and then crossed the floor again. The steps paused once more, close to the trapdoor.

  Nothing happened for a minute. Then there was a sound, as of a wooden chair being pulled out from the table, just that; but they couldn’t tell whether Bonneville had put it over the trapdoor, or whether he’d simply moved it and gone out.

  Another minute went past, and then another.

  With the greatest of care, Malcolm stood up and stepped down to the earth floor. He set the lit candle on the ground near Alice, screwing it into the soil so as to stand securely, and tiptoed under the low archway into the next part of the cellar. Once he was there, he lit another candle. This was a second storeroom, but for unwanted furniture rather than food, so he looked around quickly and moved on through the next archway.

  At the other end of this room, there was a heavy wooden door with great iron hinges and a lock as big as a large book. There was no key hanging nearby, and he couldn’t tell whether the door was locked, even by looking closely.

  And then a quiet voice spoke on the other side. It was Bonneville. Asta, on his shoulder as a lemur, nearly fainted; he caught her and held her close.

  “Well, Malcolm,” said Bonneville, his voice low and confiding. “Here we are on either side of a locked door, and neither of us has the key. At least I haven’t, and I assume you haven’t either, because you’d have unlocked it and come through, wouldn’t you? That would have been unfortunate for you.”

  Malcolm had nearly dropped the candle. His heart was beating like the wings of a captured bird, and Asta changed rapidly from lemur to butterfly to crow before becoming a lemur again, crouching on Malcolm’s shoulder, her enormous eyes fixed on the lock.

  “Don’t say a word,” she murmured into his ear.

  “Oh, I know you’re there,” said Bonneville. “I can see the light of your candle. I saw you on the terrace talking to our late host—did you know this is an island, by the way? If your canoe should meet with an accident, you’d be marooned. How would you like that?”

  Again Malcolm held his tongue.

  “I know it’s you because it must be you,” Bonneville went on. He was speaking confidentially, his voice just loud enough to penetrate the door. “It couldn’t be anyone else. That girl is feeding the baby—she wouldn’t be prowling around with a candle. And I know you’re listening. It won’t be long before we’re face to face. You won’t escape me now. Can you see them, by the way?”

  “See who?” Malcolm cursed himself as soon as he spoke. “There’s no one here but me,” he went on.

  “Oh, don’t ever think that, Malcolm. You’re never alone.”

  “Well, there’s my dæmon—”

  “I don’t mean her. You and she are the same being, naturally. I mean someone besides you.”

  “Who d’you mean, then?”

  “I hardly know where to start. There are spirits of the air and the earth, to begin with. Once you learn to see them, you’ll realize that the world is thronged with them. And then in wicked places like this, there are night-ghasts of many kinds. Do you know what used to go on here, Malcolm?”

  “No,” said Malcolm, who didn’t want to know in the least.

  “This is where Lord Murdstone used to bring his victims,” said Bonneville. “Have you heard his name? They used to call him Lord Murderer. Not all that long ago either.”

  Malcolm’s heart was beating painfully. “Did he—” He couldn’t speak clearly. “Did he own this house?”

  “He could do what he liked here,” the slow, dark voice went on through the door. “There was no one to stop him. So he used to bring children down here and dismember them.”

  “Did—what?” Malcolm could only whisper.

  “Cut them apart bit by bit while they were still alive. That was his special pleasure. And naturally the horrible agony of those children was too great to disappear forever when they eventually died. It soaked into the stonework. It lingered in the air. There’s no clean wind blowing through these cellars, Malcolm. The air you’re breathing now was last in the lungs of those tortured children.”

  “I don’t want to hear any more,” said Malcolm.

  “I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t want to hear it either. I’d want to stop my ears
up and wish it would go away. But there’s no escaping it, Malcolm. They’re all around you now, the spirits of that agony. They’re sensing your fear, and they’re flocking towards you to lap it up. Next thing you’ll start hearing them—a sort of desperate little whisper—and then you’ll begin to see them.”

  Malcolm was nearly fainting by this time. He believed everything Bonneville was saying; it all sounded so likely that he believed it helplessly and immediately.

  Then a little current of air found his candle flame and made it lean sideways for a moment, and he looked at it, and instantly there in his vision was the little floating grain of light and movement, the seed of his aurora. A tiny spring of relief and hope began to flow in his mind.

  “You’re wrong about the baby,” he said, and was surprised to find his voice steady.

  “Wrong? In what way?”

  “You think she’s your child, but she’s not.”

  “Well, you’re wrong about her too.”

  “I en’t wrong about that. She’s Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter’s child.”

  “You’re wrong to think I’m interested in her. I might be interested in Alice.”

  Asta whispered, “Don’t let him make us talk about what he wants.”

  Malcolm nodded. She was right. His heart was pounding.

  Then he remembered the message in the wooden acorn and said, “Mr. Bonneville, what’s the Rusakov field?”

  “What do you know about that?”

  “Nothing. That’s why I’m asking.”

  “Why don’t you ask Dr. Hannah Relf?”

  That was a surprise. He had to answer quickly.

  “I have,” he said, “but it’s not what she knows about. She knows about stuff like the history of ideas.”

  “Right up her street, I would have thought. Why are you interested in the Rusakov field?”

  The spangled ring was growing larger, as it always did. Now it was like a small jeweled serpent twisting and twining for him alone. He went on steadily. “ ’Cause you know how the gravitational field deals with the force of gravity, right, and the magnetic field deals with that force, so what force is it that the Rusakov field deals with?”

  “Nobody knows.”

  “Is it something to do with the uncertainty principle?”

  Bonneville was silent for a few moments. Then he said, “My, my, you are a persistent child. If I were in your position, I’d want to know something quite different.”

  “Well, I want to know all sorts of things, but in the right order. The Rusakov field is the most important one, ’cause it’s connected with Dust….”

  Malcolm heard a quiet noise behind him and turned to see Alice coming through the archway, holding the candle. He put his finger to his lips and mouthed in an exaggerated way, “Bonneville,” pointing to the door. He gestured: Go, go!

  Her eyes widened and she stood still.

  Malcolm turned back. Bonneville was speaking. He was saying: “Because there are some things you can explain to an elementary school pupil and others that move quickly out of his range. This is one of them. You need at least an undergraduate grasp of experimental theology before the Rusakov field will have the slightest meaning for you. There’s no point in even beginning.”

  Malcolm looked round silently and saw that Alice had gone. “But all the same—” he said, turning back.

  “Why were you turning round?”

  “I thought I heard something.”

  “That girl? Alice? Was it her?”

  “No, it wasn’t. It’s just me here.”

  “I thought we’d disposed of that notion, Malcolm. Those dead children—did I tell you what he did to their dæmons? It was the most ingenious…”

  Malcolm turned away with the candle held in both hands and went back across the cellar, which, despite his success in distracting the man, and despite his aurora, now glittering at the edge of his vision, was still thronged with almost-visible horrors. He felt forward with his feet, trying to hold his balance and keep the candle alight, and all the time Bonneville’s voice spoke on behind the door, and Malcolm mouthed to himself, “Not true! Not true!”

  Finally he reached the other room. Alice and Lyra had gone. He almost stumbled up to the flight of steps, held himself steady, and began to climb, silent, careful, slow.

  He got to the trapdoor and stopped: Could he hear anything? The urge to fling it open and rush out into the clear air was almost overpowering, but he made himself listen. Nothing. No voice, no footsteps, nothing but the thudding of his own heart.

  So he put his back against the trapdoor and pushed up, and up it went, quite smooth and easy, and then a gust of air blew his candle out—but it was all right—there was light coming in through the kitchen window—he could see the table, the walls—and there was the glow of the fire still. He climbed out in a moment, lowered the trapdoor swiftly and silently, and then, before racing to the door and the world outside, stopped.

  This was a kitchen, and if the cooks here were anything like his mother or Sister Fenella, there would be a drawer with knives in it. He felt around the table, found a knob, pulled it open, and there they were: an assortment of wooden-handled cooks’ knives, all lying ready to hand. He felt through the handles till he came to one that wasn’t too long to conceal, whose blade came to a point and not a rounded end.

  He put it in his belt behind his back and made for the door and the clear, cold air outside.

  In the very last gray of the day, he could see Alice stumbling across the grass in great haste, carrying Lyra. Bonneville’s boat was still tied up, but the body of the other man had floated away, and there was no sign of Bonneville himself.

  He ran to the dinghy, pulled the stick it was tied to out of the ground, and began to shove the boat out into the current.

  But he stopped: there was a rucksack in it, under the thwart. The thought came at once: If we have this, we can bargain with him. So he reached in and swung it up—it was heavy—and out onto the grass, and then pushed the boat away from the land.

  He grabbed the rucksack and ran back towards Alice. She had put Lyra down on the grass and was tugging La Belle Sauvage out of the bushes, so Malcolm dropped the rucksack in the canoe and joined her.

  But they hadn’t moved it a foot before they heard behind them the “Haa! Haa! Haa!” of that abominable dæmon, and turned to see Bonneville sauntering down from the entrance of the house, shotgun under his arm, the dæmon limping and lurching beside him, as if on an invisible leash.

  Malcolm let go of the canoe and quickly picked up Lyra, and Alice, turning to see what was happening, said, “Oh, God, no.”

  There wouldn’t be time to get the canoe into the water, and even if they did, the man still had that gun. Although his face was indistinct in the gathering gloom, every line of his body looked as if he knew he’d won.

  He stopped a few paces away and moved the gun to his left hand. Was he left-handed? Malcolm couldn’t remember, and cursed his carelessness in not noticing.

  “Well, you might as well give her to me,” Bonneville said. “You’ve got no hope of getting away now.”

  “But why d’you want her?” said Malcolm, holding the child even tighter to his chest.

  “ ’Cause he’s a bloody pervert,” said Alice.

  Bonneville laughed gently.

  Malcolm’s heart was hammering so much it hurt. He felt Alice tense beside him. He was desperate to keep Bonneville looking their way, because the man hadn’t yet noticed that his own boat was gone. “What you were saying in there, through the door, it wasn’t true,” he said.

  Malcolm had Lyra in his left arm, tight against his chest. She was quiet; Asta, as a mouse, was whispering to her and Pan. Malcolm felt behind him with his right hand, trying to feel for the knife. But the muscles of his arm were trembling so much that he was afraid he’d drop the knife before he could use it; and did he really intend to stab the man, anyway? He had never deliberately harmed so much as a fly, and the only fights he had had w
ere playground scuffles. Even when he’d knocked the boy into the river for painting an S over the V of SAUVAGE, he’d pulled him out straightaway.

  “How would you ever know what the truth was?” said Bonneville.

  Malcolm said, “Your voice changes when you say something not true.” He was still feeling for the knife, and hoping that Bonneville didn’t see him moving.

  “Oh, you believe that sort of thing? I suppose you believe that the last thing someone sees is imprinted on their retina?”

  Malcolm found the handle of the knife and said, “No, I don’t believe that. But why do you want Lyra? What are you going to do with her?”

  “She’s my daughter. I want to give her a decent education.”

  “No, she’s not. You’ll have to give us a better reason than that.”

  “All right, then. I’m going to roast her and eat her. Have you any idea how delicious—”

  Alice spat at him.

  “Oh, Alice,” he said. “You and I could have been such friends. Perhaps even more than friends. How close we nearly came, you and I! We really shouldn’t let such a little thing spoil a beautiful possibility.”

  Malcolm had got the knife out of his belt. Alice could see what he was doing, dark though it was, and getting darker, and she moved a little closer.

  “You still haven’t told the truth,” said Malcolm, shifting Lyra’s weight.

  Bonneville stepped nearer. Malcolm held Lyra away from his chest, as if to give her to the man, and Bonneville held out his right arm, as if to take her.

  The second he was close enough, Malcolm brought his right hand round and stabbed the knife as hard as he could into Bonneville’s thigh. It was the closest part of him. The man roared with pain and staggered sideways, dropping the gun to grab at his leg. His dæmon howled and lurched forward, slipping and falling flat. Malcolm turned around swiftly and put Lyra down—

  —and then there was an explosion so loud it knocked him flat.

  His head ringing, he pulled himself up to see Alice holding the gun. Bonneville was groaning and rocking back and forth on the grass, clutching his thigh, which was bleeding heavily, but his dæmon lay thrashing, howling, screaming, utterly unable to get up: her one foreleg was smashed beyond repair.