The Book of Dust, Volume 1

by Philip Pullman

  He finished the stew and almost immediately felt his eyes closing. But he managed to force himself awake enough to take Lyra from Audrey, who was patting her back, and carry her to where Alice was already curling up on the floor.

  “Here,” said Mr. Boatwright, handing him a bundle of blankets and canvas bags roughly filled with hay. With the last of his wakefulness, Malcolm pushed them into shape and laid them side by side, and then, putting Lyra between them, lay down next to Alice and fell at once into the deepest sleep of his life.

  —

  And it was Lyra who woke them when the gray light of a wet dawn crept into the cave. Asta sleepily nipped Malcolm’s ear, and he came awake like someone struggling to swim to the surface of a lake of laudanum, where the strongest delights were the deepest and there was nothing above but cold and fear and duty.

  Lyra was crying, and Asta was trying to comfort Pan, but the little ferret wouldn’t be comforted and burrowed closer around Lyra’s neck, only irritating her further. Malcolm, heavy-eyed, forced himself up and rocked the child gently to and fro. That didn’t help either, so he picked her up.

  “You been productive in the night,” he whispered. “I never knew such a fountain of manure. I’ll have to see if I can do the changing of the guard myself. Alice is still asleep, see.”

  She was a little happier in his arms, but not much. She whimpered instead of crying fully, and Pan looked out and let Asta lick his nose.

  “What you doing?” mumbled Alice, and instantly her dæmon was awake and growling softly.

  “ ’S all right,” said Malcolm. “I’m going to change her, that’s all.”

  “You can’t,” said Alice, sitting up. “You’ll do it all wrong.”

  “Yeah, I prob’ly would,” said Malcolm with some relief.

  “What’s the time?”

  “About dawn.”

  They spoke in the quietest of whispers; neither wanted to wake the other sleepers. Gathering a blanket around her shoulders, Alice crawled to the fire and put another log on the ashy heap, stirring it until she found a few red embers, and put the saucepan on to heat. There was a cask of fresh water nearby; Audrey had said that anyone who used some had to refill it from the spring outside, so she made sure to do that while waiting for the saucepan to heat up.

  Meanwhile, Malcolm walked up and down with Lyra. They went to the mouth of the cave and looked out at the rain, heavy, incessant, falling straight down through the sodden air. They looked back into the cave, where sleepers lay on both sides, some alone, some snuggled up together. There were more of them than he’d been aware of the night before; perhaps they’d already been there, fast asleep, or perhaps they’d come in later on. They might have been poaching. If the flood had forced deer and pheasants as well as people high up above their usual dens and nests, there should be plenty of them around to catch.

  He whispered all this to Lyra, rocking her from side to side as he walked about. At one point, Asta whispered, “Look at Pan,” and Malcolm noticed that the little dæmon, kitten-shaped, was unwittingly kneading the flesh of Malcolm’s hand with his tiny claws. Malcolm felt astonished, shy, privileged. The great taboo against touching another’s dæmon was not instinctual but learned, then. He felt a wave of love for the child and her dæmon, but that made no difference to them, because Lyra was still grizzling and Pantalaimon soon let go of Malcolm’s hand and became a toad.

  And then the fear came back. What they’d done to Bonneville…When the CCD men in their boat found the dæmon with the shattered leg and the man with a wound in his thigh, they’d have one more reason to hunt Malcolm and Alice down. Was the knife still in the wound? Was Bonneville actually dead? He couldn’t remember. Everything had passed with such nightmarish speed.

  “Ready,” said Alice very quietly behind him, and he nearly leapt in the air with shock. But she didn’t laugh. She seemed to know just what he was thinking, and to be thinking the same herself. The look they exchanged in the mouth of the cave before going back to the fire was something Malcolm never forgot: it was deep and complex and close, and it touched every part of him, body and dæmon and ghost.

  He knelt beside her, and he and Asta occupied Lyra’s attention while Alice washed and dried her.

  “You can see her thinking, even though she hasn’t got any words,” he said.

  “Not this end,” said Alice shortly.

  One or two sleepers were beginning to stir as the light grew stronger. Malcolm took the bundle to be thrown away and tried to move very quietly as he carried it out to the pit the boy had shown him.

  “I didn’t see him in the cave,” Asta whispered.

  “Perhaps he sleeps somewhere else.”

  They found the rubbish pit and hurried back because the rain was drenching. When they got there, Audrey was holding Lyra, who seemed comfortable enough, even if a little doubtful, while Alice prepared the milk.

  “Who’s her mother?” Audrey said, settling herself next to the fire.

  “We don’t know,” said Malcolm. “She was being looked after by the nuns at Godstow, so she must be someone important.”

  “Oh, I know the ones you mean,” said Audrey. “Sister Benedicta.”

  “Yes, she’s in charge. But it was Sister Fenella who looked after her mostly.”

  “What happened?”

  “The priory collapsed in the flood. We just got her out in time. Then we got swept away.”

  “So you don’t know who her family is?”

  “No,” said Malcolm. He was getting better at lying.

  Audrey handed the child over to Alice, who had the bottle ready. A little way off, Mr. Boatwright stood up and stretched and went out of the cave, and others were stirring.

  “Who is everyone?” said Malcolm. “Is it all your family?”

  “There’s my son, Simon, and his wife and two little kids. The others are…just others.”

  “There’s a boy called Andrew. I spoke to him last night.”

  “Yes, he’s Doris Whicher’s nephew. That’s Doris over there by the big rock. They come from Wallingford way. My, she’s hungry, en’t she?” she said admiringly, watching Lyra’s lusty guzzling.

  Doris Whicher was still asleep. There was no sign of Andrew.

  “I don’t suppose we’ll stay long,” said Malcolm. “Just till the rain’s stopped.”

  “You stay as long as you need to. You’ll be safe here. No one knows about this place. There’s a few of us got reason to be careful who knows where they are, and we en’t lost anyone yet.”

  Mr. Boatwright came out of the rain carrying a dead chicken.

  “Know how to pluck a chicken, Malcolm?” he said.

  Actually, Malcolm did, because of watching Sister Fenella doing it in the priory kitchen. He’d done it once or twice in his mother’s kitchen too. He took the bird, a scrawny item, and set to work while Mr. Boatwright sat down and stirred the fire up before lighting a pipe.

  “What’d they say after I vanished, eh?” he said. “Anyone guess where I’d gone?”

  “No,” said Malcolm. “They all said you were the only person that had ever got away from the CCD. And the officers came back the next day and asked a lot of questions, but no one said anything, except one or two said you had evil dark powers, like making yourself invisible, and the CCD had no hope of finding you, ever.”

  Mr. Boatwright laughed so much he had to put his pipe down.

  “Hear that, Audrey?” he wheezed. “Invisible!”

  “I wish you was inaudible sometimes,” she said.

  “No,” he went on, “I been preparing for summat like that. You got to have an escape route, no matter where you are. Always have an escape route. And when the time comes, don’t hesitate a single second. Eh, Audrey? We had our escape route and we took it that same night the bastards come to the Trout.”

  “Did you come straight here?”

  “In a manner of speaking. There’s hidden pathways and hidden refuges, all across the woods, all across Oxfordshire and Glou
cestershire and Berkshire and beyond. You could go from Bristol to London by them hidden pathways and no one’d ever know you were doing it.”

  “What happened when the flood came?”

  “Ah, all we done was go up higher. This spot where we are now is the highest piece of land in Berkshire. We know all the shortcuts and the shallow ways and the deep ways. We can always slip away and they’ll never catch us. And the water’s on our side, not theirs.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Malcolm, turning the chicken over.

  “The creatures in the water, Malcolm. I don’t mean fish neither, nor water voles; I mean the old gods. Old Father Thames, I seen him a few times, with his crown and his weeds and his trident. He’s on our side. The bloody CCD, they won’t never win against Old Father Thames. And other beings as well. There was a man with us, he saw a mermaid near Henley. The sea was so full she come right up the river, even that far from the coast, and this chap, he swore to me that if he saw that mermaid again, he’d go off with her. Well, two days later he disappeared, and chances are he did just that. I believe it, anyway.”

  “If that was Tom Simms,” said Audrey, “I’d say he was probably drunk and his mermaid was a porpoise.”

  “She weren’t a porpoise. He spoke to her, didn’t he? And she spoke back. She had a voice sweeter than a chime of bells, he said. Ten to one he’s living with her now, out in the German Ocean.”

  “He’ll be bloody cold if he is,” said Audrey. “Here, give me that chicken. I’ll finish it off.”

  Malcolm had made a reasonable job of it, he thought, but he was glad to let her take over. His hands were numb with cold and he couldn’t grip the smaller feathers.

  “Get yourself some bread from the bin over there,” Audrey told him. “There’s cheese in the bin next to it.”

  The bins were galvanized steel dustbins. In the first one, there were three and a half heavy loaves, hard and stale, and a knife to cut them with. Malcolm cut a thick slice for himself and another for Alice, and carved some cheese to go with them as the woman Doris Whicher woke up nearby and looked around blearily.

  “Andrew?” she said. “Where’s Andrew?”

  “I haven’t seen him this morning,” Malcolm said.

  She rolled over and sat up in a thick smell of alcohol. “Where’s he gone?”

  “I saw him last night.”

  “Who are you, then?”

  “Malcolm Polstead,” he told her. There was no point in giving himself a false name, since Mr. Boatwright knew exactly who he was.

  Doris Whicher groaned and lay down again, and Malcolm took the bread and cheese over to Alice. Audrey Boatwright was holding Lyra up and patting her back, and Lyra obliged with a fine expression of wind. Malcolm sat down to gnaw at the bread and cheese and found it hard going, but his stomach was glad of the effort his teeth were making.

  And then, once he was able to sit and relax, the realization came back: he had killed Bonneville. He and Alice, they were murderers. The dreadful word was stamped on his mind as if by a printing press on a sheet of paper, and the ink was red. Asta became a moth and flew from his shoulder to Alice’s dæmon, and Ben tilted his head as Asta whispered to him. Mrs. Boatwright was walking up and down, showing Lyra to the people who were just waking, and someone else was attending to the chicken, gutting it and jointing it and sprinkling it with flour. If that was going to feed everyone in the cave, Malcolm thought, trying to distract himself, there wouldn’t be much on anyone’s plate.

  But Alice had moved closer, and she was leaning in to whisper something.

  “Mr. Boatwright…D’you trust him?”

  “I…think so. Yes.”

  “ ’Cause we didn’t ought to stay here much longer.”

  “I think so too. And there’s a boy…”

  He told her about Andrew. She frowned.

  “And he en’t here now?”

  “No. I’m a bit worried.”

  At that moment, Andrew’s aunt stumbled up to the fire and sat down heavily. Alice glared at her. Doris Whicher didn’t notice; she was in the throes of a hangover, and the smell of liquor was so strong that Malcolm thought she ought to breathe more carefully near the fire. Her crow dæmon kept falling down and scrabbling up again.

  Then she looked at Malcolm and said, “Who was asking me about Andrew? Was it you?”

  “Yes. I didn’t know where he was.”

  “Why d’you want to know?”

  “ ’Cause we were talking last night and he said something interesting and I was going to ask him about it.”

  “Is it that bloody league?”

  Every nerve in Malcolm’s body sprang awake.

  “The League of St. Alexander? Is he a member?”

  “Yeah, little bastard. If I says to him once—”

  Malcolm got up at once, and Alice, seeing his urgency, followed.

  “We got to go,” he said. “Right now.”

  Alice ran to Audrey Boatwright, who was talking to another woman near the cave entrance, jogging Lyra comfortably on her bosom. Malcolm looked around and saw George Boatwright bending some sticks together to make a trap.

  “Mr. Boatwright—sorry to disturb you—but we’ve got to go right away. Can you show us the path down—”

  “Don’t worry about that CCD boat,” said Boatwright confidently. “Chances are, they—”

  “No, it’s not them. We got to get Lyra away before—”

  But there were loud voices behind him. He turned swiftly to see Alice trying to get between Mrs. Boatwright and a man in a dark uniform, and three other men behind him spread out to prevent anyone leaving the cave. And lurking behind them, half ashamed, half proud, was Andrew.

  Malcolm ran to help Alice, who was trying to pull Lyra from Audrey Boatwright’s arms. But then one of the men grabbed Alice by the neck, and he was shouting, and Malcolm was shouting too, and he didn’t know what he was saying. Audrey was trying to shelter Lyra, turning away, trying to move back into the cave, and Mr. Boatwright was trying to help her, and Lyra was screaming in fear. At one moment, Malcolm reached Mrs. Boatwright and had his hands on Lyra and began to lift her away, and the next moment came a shocking blow on his head and he fell sprawling half conscious to the ground; and Alice was biting the arms that held her, and lashing out with both feet, and screaming.

  Malcolm dragged himself to his knees, dizzy and weak and almost totally confused. Through the tumult of voices, one voice cried out to him with perfect clarity, that of Lyra, and he called back, “Lyra! Lyra! I’m coming!”

  But a heavy weight crashed into him and knocked him flat again. It was Audrey Boatwright, who had lost hold of Lyra and been knocked off her feet by one of the men. Malcolm struggled to get out from under her body, but it was so hard, because she was struggling too, and then he found himself on his knees again, and Alice was lying still on the ground, and so was George Boatwright. Someone was wailing and crying, but it wasn’t Lyra; someone else a long way off was shouting, a woman’s voice, incoherent with rage and helplessness. Audrey Boatwright began to sob as she found her husband unconscious beside her.

  But the dark-uniformed men were gone, and Lyra was gone with them.

  Malcolm tried to step forward, but the cave was revolving in his vision. He missed his footing, found it again, and then fell over completely and nearly vomited. Asta was whispering hoarsely, “It’s the blow on the head—you can’t stand up yet—lie down and keep still.” But he was possessed by a frenzy of fear and rage, and he struggled to get to his feet.

  There was Andrew, smiling nervously, but with a righteous smugness in his expression too. He put up his hands in defense. Malcolm knocked them aside and hit him hard in the face, so that he fell over, crying, “Auntie! Auntie!”

  “What you done?” said his aunt, but Malcolm didn’t know whether she was speaking to him or to Andrew. Perhaps she didn’t know either.

  Malcolm kicked the boy, and he rolled away, curled up like a wood louse.

  “Who were th
ose men?” Malcolm shouted. “Where were they going?”

  “None of your— Argh!” cried Andrew as Malcolm kicked him again.

  Finally Doris Whicher realized what was happening and hauled Malcolm away.

  “Who were they?” Malcolm roared, struggling against the fat arms and the reek of alcohol. “Where are they taking Lyra?”

  Andrew had rolled out of reach and tried to stand up, making the most of the blows Malcolm had landed, wincing, limping, touching his face with delicate fingers.

  “I think you broke my jaw—”

  Malcolm stamped on Doris’s foot, and then Alice was there too, slapping and scratching at the boy, then turning to haul at his aunt’s shaking arms as they tried to hold on to Malcolm, who tore himself free and rushed to corner Andrew against the rocky wall of the cave. The boy’s mouse dæmon was squealing and screaming as she cowered behind his feet.

  “No! Don’t hit me!”

  “Just tell me who they were.”

  “CCD!”

  “Liar. It was the wrong uniform. Who were they?”

  “I don’t know! I thought they were CCD—”

  “Where did you go to find them?”

  By this time the other adults had come round to watch and encourage one side or the other. Some of them had not been awake when the men came and needed to have it explained, and George Boatwright was still unconscious, and Audrey was anxiously crying his name as she knelt beside him, so the cave was full of hubbub.

  Andrew was sobbing. Malcolm turned away in disgust and sank to his knees, but Asta, cat-shaped, leapt at Andrew’s mouse dæmon and bore her to the ground. And there was Ben, hair bristling, growling at the boy with a bulldog ferocity.

  But Alice was tugging at Malcolm’s arm and making him stand up, so he turned away from the dæmons for a moment.

  “Listen,” she said, “listen to this man.”

  The man was small and wiry and dark-haired, and his dæmon was a vixen.

  “I seen them uniforms before,” he said. “They en’t CCD. They’re called summing like the Security of the Holy Spirit, summing like that. They guard religious places—seminaries, nunneries, schools, that sort of place. They prob’ly come from Wallingford, from the priory there.”