“A priory?” said Malcolm. “With monks or nuns?”
“Nuns,” said someone else, a woman whom Malcolm couldn’t see. “The Sisters of Holy Obedience.”
“How d’you know?” said the man.
“I used to work for ’em,” she said, coming out of the shadows and into the gray light near the entrance of the cave. “For the sisters. I used to clean and look after the chickens and the goats.”
“Where are they? Where is this place?” said Malcolm.
“Down Wallingford,” she said. “You wouldn’t miss it. Big white stone buildings.”
“And who are these sisters? What do they do?” said Alice, her face pale, her eyes blazing.
“They pray. They teach. They look after kids. I dunno…they’re fierce.”
“Fierce? How?” said Malcolm.
“Stern. Very stern and cruel. I couldn’t bear it, so I left,” the woman said.
“I seen them guards catching a kid what run away,” said the man. “They beat him right there in the street till he fainted. No use trying to interfere—they got all the power they need.”
“Is that what you did, then?” said Malcolm, turning to Andrew. “You went and told them about us and the baby?”
Andrew whimpered and wiped his nose on his sleeve.
“Tell ’em, boy,” said his aunt. “Stop sniveling.”
“I don’t want him to hit me again,” said Andrew.
“I won’t hit you. Just tell us what you did.”
“I’m in the league. I had to do what’s right.”
“Never mind the league. What did you do?”
“I knew you never oughter been looking after a kid that en’t yours. You prob’ly stole her or summing. So I told the Office of Child Protection. They came in our school and explained why it was right to tell ’em things like that. I don’t know nothing about this Security of the Holy Spirit; I never heard of them. It was the Office of Child Protection.”
“Where are they?”
“In the priory.”
“Isn’t the priory flooded like everywhere else?”
“No, ’cause it’s on a hill.”
“Who’s in charge there?”
“The Mother Superior.”
“So you went and told her, did you?”
“The Child Protection people took me to see her. It was the right thing to do,” he said quaveringly, beginning to wail.
His aunt hit him, and he choked back his wail with a sniveling cough.
“What did she say, the Mother Superior?” Malcolm demanded.
“She wanted to know who the kid was and where we were and all that. I told her everything I knew. I had to.”
“And then what?”
“We said a prayer and then she give me a bed to sleep on for a bit, and then I guided ’em back here.”
In the face of the hostility and contempt of almost everyone in the cave, Andrew crumpled and fell to the floor, curled up and sobbing. Almost everyone, because George Boatwright was still unconscious, and Audrey was now increasingly frightened. She knelt beside him, rubbing his hand, stroking his head, calling his name, and looking around to everyone there for help.
Alice saw her and knelt to see if she could do anything, while Malcolm continued to question Andrew.
“Where is this priory? How far away?”
“Dunno…”
“Did you walk there and back, or go in a boat?”
“In a boat. Their boat.”
“It’s not far,” said the woman who’d worked there. “It’s the highest place. You can’t miss it.”
“Have they got lots of kids there?” Malcolm asked her.
“Yeah, all ages. From babies right up to sixteen, I suppose.”
“What do they do? Teach them, or make them work, or what?”
“Teach ’em, yeah….They prepare them for lives as servants, that kind of thing.”
“Boys and girls?”
“Yeah, boys and girls, but after ten years old they keep ’em apart.”
“And the babies, do they keep them apart from the rest?”
“There’s a nursery just for the young ones, yes.”
“How many babies have they got there?”
“Oh, Lord, I don’t know….In my time, there was about fifteen or sixteen….”
“Are they all orphans?”
“No. Sometimes if a child is really badly behaved, they take them in. They never get out till they’re sixteen. They never see their parents again.”
“How many kids altogether, then? Babies and older ones?”
“A hundred, maybe…”
“Don’t they ever try to escape?”
“They might escape once, but they’re always caught, and they never dare to do it again.”
“So they’re cruel, these nuns?”
“You wouldn’t believe how cruel they can be. You wouldn’t believe it.”
“You—Andrew,” said Malcolm. “Have you told on any other kids and got them taken in there?”
“I en’t saying,” the boy mumbled.
“Tell the truth, you little shit,” his aunt said.
“No, I en’t, then!”
“Never?” said Malcolm.
“It en’t your busi—”
His aunt slapped him. His voice rose in a high wail.
“All right, maybe I have!” he cried.
“Little sneaking shit,” she said.
“Who do you speak to when you go to report someone?” said Malcolm, desperately trying to keep his focus. His head was throbbing, and waves of nausea came and went. “Where did you go last night? Who did you speak to?”
“Brother Peter. I en’t s’posed to tell you this.”
“I don’t care what you’re s’posed to tell. Who’s Brother Peter, and where did you go to find him?”
“He’s the director of the Office of Child Protection for Wallingford. They got an office at the priory.”
“And he knew you because you’d been to him before?”
At that, Andrew just buried his head in his arms and howled.
There were voices behind Malcolm, excited and relieved, and he turned to see, but felt a bout of pain and nausea in his head as he did, so brutal it was like being hit again. He kept still, knowing that the slightest movement of his head would mean being violently sick.
Alice was beside him, holding his arm.
“Lean on me,” she said. “And come over this way.”
He did as she told him.
“Lyra,” he muttered.
“We know where she is, and she en’t going anywhere else. You can’t move now, else you’ll be sick. Just sit down here.”
Her voice was quiet and gentle, and that was so surprising that he let himself be led and tended to.
“Mr. Boatwright’s woken up,” she said. “He had a crack on the nut, like you did, only worse. Audrey thought he was dead, but he en’t. Just keep still now.”
“Here,” said a woman’s voice, and then, “Let him sip this.”
“Thank you,” said Alice. “Here, Mal, sit up a bit and sip this. But mind, it’s hot.”
Mal! She had never called him Mal. No one had. He wouldn’t let anyone but Alice call him that now. The drink was scalding, and he could only take the smallest sip. It tasted like lemon, the sort of cold remedy his mother sometimes gave him, but there was something else in it.
“I put a bit of ginger with it,” the woman said. “Stops you feeling sick. Otherwise, it’s a painkiller.”
“Thank you,” he murmured. He had no idea how he’d had the energy to interrogate Andrew only a minute before.
He sipped a little more of the drink and fell asleep.
—
It was dark again when he woke up. He was warm, and covered in something heavy with a doggish animal smell. He moved a little, and his head didn’t punish him for it, so he moved a little more and sat up.
“Mal,” Alice said at once from beside him. “You all right now?”
; “Yeah, I think so,” he said.
“Stay there. I’ll get you some bread and cheese.”
She scrambled up, which showed him that she’d been lying beside him. She was more and more surprising. He lay there, slowly waking up, letting the memory of the last day and night slowly wake up too. Then he remembered what had happened to Lyra, and sat up with a convulsive shock. Alice was holding out something for him.
“Here y’are,” she said, putting a hunk of bread in his hand. “It’s hard, but it en’t moldy. D’you want an egg? I can fry you an egg if you like.”
“No, thanks. Alice, did we really…,” he whispered, unable to say any more.
“Bonneville?” she whispered back. “Yeah, we did. But hush about that. Don’t say nothing. It’s over.”
Malcolm tried to bite a piece off the hunk of bread and found it so hard that it was a serious challenge to his teeth, and thus to the pain in his head. Still, he persevered. Alice appeared again with a mug of something strong and salty.
“What’s this?”
“Some sort of stock cube. I dunno. It’ll do you good.”
“Thank you,” he said, and took a sip. “Has it been night for a long time?”
“No. There’s people out there poaching or summing. It en’t been dark long.”
“Where’s Andrew?”
“His auntie’s guarding him. He won’t get out again.”
“We got to—” He tried to swallow a lump of bread, and then retrieved it and chewed it a bit more before trying again and continuing hoarsely, “We’ve got to rescue Lyra.”
“Yeah. I been thinking about that.”
“First we got to look at the priory.”
“And,” she said, “we got to know exactly what Andrew told ’em about us.”
“D’you think he’d ever tell us the truth?”
“I could get it out of him.”
“He’s not reliable. He’d say anything to avoid getting hit.”
“I’ll hit him anyway.”
He chewed another mouthful of bread.
“I’d like to ask that lady who worked there,” he said. “About where everything is, where the nursery is, how to get there, all that.”
“I’ll go and get her.”
She leapt to her feet and hurried to the fire, where a number of people were sitting and drinking and talking and occasionally stirring a big pot of stew.
Malcolm struggled to sit up a bit higher, and found that although his headache had receded, a number of other aches, all over his body, had come out to claim his attention. He chewed off another piece of cheese and concentrated on that.
Soon Alice came back with the woman who’d spoken up before. Her dæmon was a ferret, who sat nibbling constantly on her shoulder.
“This is Mrs. Simkin,” said Alice.
“Hello, Mrs. Simkin,” said Malcolm, trying to swallow the cheese, and having to soften it with a sip of the stock-cube drink. “We want to know all about this priory.”
“You en’t thinking of trying to get in and rescue her?” she said, sitting down nearby. Her hand kept going up to stroke her dæmon, who was very nervous.
“Well, yes,” said Malcolm. “We got to. There’s no question about it.”
“You can’t,” she said. “It’s like a fortress. You’ll never get in.”
“Well, all right. But what’s it like when you are in? Where do they keep the kids?”
“There’s the nursery—that’s where the little ones sleep and get looked after. That’s upstairs near where the nuns have their cells.”
“Cells?” said Alice.
“That’s what they call their bedrooms,” explained Malcolm. “Can you draw a plan?” he said to the woman.
But she was so doubtful and uneasy that he realized she couldn’t read or write, and had no idea of the principles of maps or plans of any sort. He felt embarrassed for asking, and went on quickly: “How many flights of stairs is there?”
“There’s one at the front, a big one, and a small one at the back for the cleaners and servants, people like me. And there’s another, but I never seen it. Sometimes they have guests—men too—and it wouldn’t be right for them to mingle with the nuns, or the servants neither, so they have their own staircase. But that only goes up to the guest rooms, and they’re shut off from the rest of the place.”
“Right. Now, when you go up the servants’ staircase, what do you come to at the top?”
The woman’s dæmon whispered to her. She listened and then said, “He’s just reminding me. On the first floor there’s a small landing and a door that opens on a corridor where the nursery is.”
“Anything else in that corridor?”
“There’s two cells on the opposite side from the nursery. Whichever nuns are on duty with the little kids, they sleep in there.”
“What’s the nursery like?”
“It’s a big room, with about…I dunno, maybe twenty or so beds and cribs.”
“Are there that many little kids?”
“Not always. There’s usually a bed or two empty, in case any new kids arrive.”
“How old are the kids in there?”
“Up to four, I think. Then they’re moved to the main block. The nursery’s in the kitchen block, like, right over the kitchen on the ground floor.”
“Is there anything else besides the nursery on that corridor?”
“There’s two bathrooms on the right, before you get to the nursery. Oh, and an airing cupboard for blankets and that.”
“And the cells are on the left?”
“That’s right.”
“So there’s only two nuns looking after the kids?”
“There’s another one sleeping in the nursery itself.”
The mouse dæmon whispered again.
“Don’t forget,” the woman said, “they get up ever so early for the services.”
“Oh, yeah. I remember. They did that at Godstow.”
He thought there wouldn’t be much time to find Lyra and get out again, even if he could get in. And all it would take to give them away would be a nervous child crying out at the presence of strangers in the nursery….
He asked the woman about the arrangement of doors and windows in the kitchen, and anything else he could think of. The more he heard, the more difficult it seemed, and the more despondent he became.
“Well, thank you,” he said. “That’s all very useful.”
The woman nodded and went back to the fire.
“What we gonna do?” said Alice quietly.
“Get in and rescue her. But suppose there’s twenty kids the same age all lying asleep—how could we tell which was her?”
“Well, I’d recognize her. She’s unmistakable.”
“When she’s awake, yeah. Pan would recognize Asta, and Ben too. But if she’s asleep…We can’t wake ’em all up.”
“I won’t mistake her. Nor will you, actually.”
“Let’s go now, then.”
“You all right to do that?”
“Yes. I’m feeling much better.”
In fact, Malcolm was still aching and a little dizzy, but the thought of lounging in the cave while Lyra was captive was too horrible to bear. He stood up slowly and took a step or two towards the entrance, going carefully, making no fuss, saying nothing. Alice was gathering their possessions and wrapping them in the blanket as Boatwright had.
Once they were outside, he said softly to Alice, “Those biscuits she likes—are they still in the canoe?”
“Well, we didn’t bring ’em up here. They must be.”
“We can give her one of them to keep her quiet.”
“Yeah, if…”
“Keep a watch out for Andrew.”
“Can you remember the way to the canoe?”
“If we keep going down, we’ll get there eventually.”
That was what he hoped anyway. Even if George Boatwright had fully recovered, which he probably hadn’t yet, it wouldn’t have been a good idea to ask him to gu
ide them down. He’d have wanted to know where they were going and what they planned to do, and he’d have told them not to.
Malcolm stopped thinking about that. He was discovering a new power in himself: he was able to stop thinking things he didn’t want to think. Quite often, he realized as he led the way down the moonlit path, he had pushed aside thoughts of his mother and father and how they must be suffering, wondering where he was, whether he was still alive, how he’d ever find his way back against the flood. He did it again now. It was dark under the holm oaks, so it didn’t matter if he made a face of anguish. He could stop that too after a few seconds.
“There’s the water,” said Alice.
“Let’s go carefully. There might be another boat snooping around….”
They stood still just inside the darkness of the trees, watching and listening. The expanse of water was clear ahead of them, and the only sound was its rush against the grass and the bushes.
Malcolm was trying to remember whether they’d left the boat on the left or right of the path.
“D’you remember where…”
“There it is now—look,” she said.
She was pointing to the left, and as soon as he followed her line of sight, he saw it. The canoe was barely concealed at all, and yet it had been invisible a moment before. The moon was so bright that everything under the trees was caught in a net of confusing shadows.
“You can see better’n I can,” he said, and pulled the boat out onto the grass, checking all around and turning her the right way up. He was tender with her, feeling all along her hull, checking that all the hoop brackets were firm, counting the hoops themselves as they lay inside the canoe, making sure the tarpaulin was folded and stowed away neatly. It was all shipshape, and the skin of the hull was undamaged, though the neat gyptian paintwork was a bit scratched.
He pushed her down to the water, and once again he felt as if this inanimate thing was joyously coming alive as she met her own element.
He held the gunwale as Alice got in, and then handed her the rucksack he’d taken from the dead Bonneville.
“Blimey, this is heavy,” she said. “What’s in here?”
“Haven’t had time to look. As soon as we’ve got Lyra and found somewhere safe to stop, we’ll open it up and see. Ready?”
The Book of Dust, Volume 1 Page 31