The Book of Dust, Volume 1

by Philip Pullman

  “As sure as I can be. That child is the daughter of Lord Asriel.”

  “But how did she come to be in a cave in the woods with a lot of poachers and common thieves? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “I don’t know how, Sister. We’ll never know. By the time we send someone back to interrogate them, they’ll have gone. I must say this has been a complete—”

  “Keep your voice down, Father.”

  They both sounded testy.

  “Which one is she?” said the priest.

  Malcolm lifted his head and watched as the nun led him to the seventh crib from the end.

  The priest stood gazing down at the child in the crib. “I’ll take her with me in the morning,” he said.

  “I beg your pardon, Father, but you won’t. She is in our care now, and there she will remain. That is the rule of our order.”

  “My authority outweighs the rule of your order. In any case, I should have thought that the one thing a Sister of Holy Obedience ought to do was obey. I will take this child in the morning, and that is the end of it.”

  He turned and walked to the end of the room and out the door. One or two of the sleeping children muttered or whimpered in their sleep as he passed, and the nun in the bed at the end gave a soft shuddering snore and turned over.

  The nun who had come in remained by the crib for a few moments, and then made her way more slowly to the door. Malcolm could see along the length of the room under the beds, and in the dim light from the corridor he saw her sandaled feet under her long habit as she stopped and turned to look back. She stood there for some time, and he thought, Has she seen me? What’s she going to do?

  But finally she turned and left and shut the door.

  Malcolm thought of Alice, faithfully waiting outside in the cold, cut off from any knowledge of what was happening. How lucky he and Lyra were to have her to rely on! But how long could he stay lying here? Not much longer. He was aching with cold.

  Slowly, carefully, he pulled himself out from under the bed. Asta was watching all around, cat-formed, ears pricked. When he stood up, she flew to his shoulder as a wren.

  “She’s gone down the corridor,” she whispered. “Come on!”

  Malcolm, shivering hard, tiptoed to the seventh crib. He was about to reach down when Asta said, “Stop—”

  He stood back and looked around, but she said, “No—look at her!”

  The sleeping child had thick black curls.

  “That’s not Lyra,” he said stupidly. “But she said—”

  “Look in the other cribs!”

  The next one was empty, but the one after that—

  “Is this her?”

  He was so bewildered now that he couldn’t even guess. It looked like Lyra, but the nun had been so sure….

  Asta, silent-winged, flew down to the pillow. She bent her head to the little dæmon fast asleep around the child’s neck and nudged him gently. The child stirred and sighed.

  “Is it?” said Malcolm, more urgently.

  “Yes. This is Pan. But there’s something—I don’t know—something not right….”

  She lifted the little ferret dæmon’s head, and it flopped back as soon as she let go.

  “They should have woken,” said Malcolm.

  “They’re drugged. I can smell something sweet on her lips.”

  That would make it easier, at least, he thought.

  “Are you absolutely sure it’s her?”

  “Well, look. Aren’t you?”

  The light was very dim, but when he peered down close and looked at the child’s face, he knew beyond any doubt that this was the Lyra he loved.

  “Yes, it’s her. Course it is. Well, let’s go.”

  He spread the blankets he was carrying on the floor, and while Asta carefully lifted the sleeping Pan away, he bent and picked up the child, feeling a little surprised at her solidity. She neither stirred nor murmured, but hung in his arms profoundly asleep.

  He laid her on the blankets and rolled them around her. Asta, badger-formed now, carried Pan in her mouth, and they made their way silently between the row of cribs and the row of beds, past the sleeping nun at the end of the room, still gently snoring, and opened the door.

  Silence. Without waiting a second, Malcolm stepped through and Asta followed, and then they shut the door and tiptoed back towards the stairs.

  As they were about to take the first step down, the great bell rang and startled him so, he nearly dropped the clumsy bundle; but it was only telling the time. Nothing happened. They went on down through the kitchen and into the scullery, and found the wooden box where they’d left it.

  Malcolm laid Lyra on the table, lined the box with the oilskin, and put the child and blankets inside. Then Asta settled the limp dæmon in his place around Lyra’s neck, and Malcolm said, “Ready?”

  “I’ll go first,” said Asta.

  Malcolm was shivering so hard he thought he’d never be able to hold the box, but he managed to step into the drain, his back to the way out, and pull the box after him. Once they were under the grating, he reached up and set it free from the catch. He couldn’t prevent it from falling with a loud clang and wished he’d left it, but there was nothing to be done.

  He clambered backwards down the drain, moaning with cold, bashing his head, scraping his knees, slipping, falling on his face, pushing himself up again, into the darkness, until Asta said, “There it is! We’re nearly there!”

  He could see a faint light gleaming on the wet walls; he could smell fresh air; he could hear the lapping of water.

  “Careful—don’t go too fast—”

  “Is she there?”

  “Course she’s there. Alice—Alice—come closer….”

  “Took your bloody time, didn’t you?” came her voice from below. “Here—gimme your foot—thassit—now the other—”

  He felt the rock and swing of the canoe underfoot and let his whole weight down into it. Then he didn’t know what to do with the box. He was nearly stupid with exhaustion and fear and cold.

  “I got it steady—don’t hurry,” she said. “Just bring it out slow and careful. No hurry. Got the weight? Take your time. Turn round this way. I got it—I got it—and she slept through all this? Lazy little cow. Come here, sweetheart, come to Alice. Here, Mal, sit down and put them blankets round you. For God’s sake, get warm. And eat this—here. I kept it from the cave. If you got summing in your belly, it’ll warm you up quicker.”

  She shoved a lump of bread and a piece of cheese into his hands, and he gobbled down a bit at once.

  “Gimme the paddle,” he mumbled, and with another bit of bread and cheese in his mouth, the blankets around his shoulders, and the paddle in his hand, he pushed away from the walls of the great white priory and brought the faithful canoe out once more onto the flood.

  Between bites of the bread and cheese and strokes of the paddle, Malcolm told Alice everything that had happened.

  “So the priest wanted to take her away,” she said, “and the nun showed him the wrong child? D’you think she just didn’t know herself which was the right one?”

  “No, I think she knew, all right. She was trying to trick him, and it would have worked. Well, it might still work—for a while, anyway. Till he finds out it wasn’t Lyra. And the nuns find out that the real Lyra’s missing.”

  “But how could he know it was Lord Asriel’s kid who was there in the first place?”

  “It must have been Andrew. I had to use our real names ’cause Mr. Boatwright knows who we are, but I should have called Lyra something else. There can’t be many Lyras in the world.”

  “You can’t help that. I trusted ’em too. Little toe rag.”

  “But I can’t understand what the nuns were going to do with Lyra if the priest had taken the wrong kid. I mean, they wouldn’t have been able to keep her hidden forever. Maybe what she was going to do would have been even worse’n what he was going to do.”

  “I’d like to see what happens in the morning
, though. Pity we can’t get ’em all out. Poor little buggers.”

  He finished the bread and cheese. All he wanted to do was lie down and sleep. He felt on the edge of death with the desire for it, and presently, without his being able to prevent it, his eyes closed.

  “Want me to paddle for a bit?” said Alice, waking him up with a start. He nearly dropped the paddle. “You been asleep for a long time.”

  “No,” he said. “I’m all right. But as soon as we find somewhere…”

  “Yeah. What about that hill over there?”

  She pointed, turning around. A wooded hilltop rose out of the water, a little island all on its own, brightly lit by the low-lying moon. The air was warm, and there was a softness about it, almost a fragrance.

  Malcolm steered for it, still more than half asleep, and brought La Belle Sauvage gently alongside the hill, out of the main current, where little swirls and whirlpools made the canoe dance and lurch and bob, until Alice found a branch to hold on to.

  “Just a bit further along—look—there’s a sort of little beach,” she said, and he pushed the paddle into the water and brought the bow of the canoe firmly up onto a patch of grass. The moon shone directly in at it and helped him see a firm branch to tie the painter to, and then he slumped down in the canoe where he was and closed his eyes and fell asleep.

  —

  He must have slept for hours. When he woke up, it felt like a whole season later because he was warm, and the light through the leaves above was bright and sparkling. Leaves! There couldn’t be leaves out, not yet! He blinked and rubbed his eyes, but there they were: leaves, and blossoms too. He had to put his hand up against the brilliance. But the brilliance defeated him: there it was inside his eyes, twisting and scintillating like a…

  It was like an old friend now. Certainly it was a sign of something. He lay stiff and aching where he’d dropped, and slowly let his wits come back to him as the spangled ring expanded and drifted closer and closer, until it vanished past the corner of his eye.

  Someone was talking nearby. It was Alice, and a woman was responding. The woman’s voice was low and sweet. They were discussing babies. Could he hear Lyra’s voice as well, burbling her nonsense? It might have been that, or it might have been the lapping of the water, which sounded like a little stream now, not like a great flood. And birdsong! He could hear a blackbird, and sparrows, and a lark, for all the world as though it was already spring.

  There was a warm smell—was that coffee? Or toast? Or both? Either was impossible. Both were inconceivable. But there it was, that fragrance, stronger by the minute.

  “I think he’s woken up,” said the woman’s voice.

  “Richard?” called Alice quickly.

  And he was on his guard at once.

  He heard her light footsteps, and then felt her hand on his, and he had to open his eyes properly.

  “Richard, come and have some coffee,” she said. “Coffee! Think of that!”

  “Where are we?” he mumbled.

  “I dunno, but this lady, she…Come on. Wake up!”

  He yawned and stretched and made himself sit up.

  “How long have I been asleep?”

  “Hours and hours.”

  “And how’s—”

  “Ellie?” she cut in. “She’s fine. Everything’s all right.”

  “And who—” he whispered.

  “This lady, it’s her place, that’s all,” she whispered back. “She’s really nice. But…”

  He rubbed his eyes and reluctantly pushed himself up out of the canoe. He’d been so deeply asleep that he could remember no dreams, unless the episode at the white priory had been a dream itself, which seemed not unlikely, now that scraps of it came back to him.

  Still heavy and groggy with sleep, he followed Alice (No! What was her name? What was it? Sandra! Sandra!) up the grassy slope to where Lyra/Ellie lay on the grass, with Pan laughing at the flight of a dozen, a score, of large blue butterflies that flickered and fluttered around him. One of them might have been the woman’s dæmon.

  The woman…

  She was young, as far as Malcolm could judge, maybe in her twenties, and very pretty, with the sunlight glowing in her golden hair and her light green dress. She was kneeling on the grass in front of Lyra, tickling her, or letting the petals of some sort of blossom fall over her face, or leaning down to let the child play with a long necklace she wore, but Lyra never managed to grasp it. Her hands went right through it, as if it wasn’t there.

  “Miss,” said Alice, “this is Richard.”

  The woman stood up in one swift, elegant movement.

  “Hello, Richard,” she said. “Did you sleep well?”

  “Very well, thank you, miss. Is it morning or afternoon?”

  “Late morning. If Sandra has finished with the cup, you can have some coffee. Would you like some?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Alice filled it for him from a copper pot that hung over a fire that crackled in a ring of stones.

  “Thanks. Do you live here?” he said.

  “Not all the time. I do when it suits me. Where do you live?”

  “In Oxford. Up the river…”

  She seemed to be listening intently, but not necessarily to his words. Everything about her was pretty and gentle and kind, and yet he felt uneasy.

  “And what are you going to do with little Ellie?” she said.

  “We’re taking her to her father. In London.”

  “That’s a long way,” she said, sitting back down and stroking the child’s hair. Pan had become a butterfly himself by now and was struggling to fly with the cloud of big blue ones, who fluttered around him, encouraging, helping, lifting, but he couldn’t fly very far from Lyra and soon fell back on the grass beside her, as lightly as a leaf. Then he became a mouse and scuttled to her neck.

  “Well, yeah, it is,” said Malcolm.

  “You can rest here as long as you like.”

  “Thank you….”

  Alice was doing something at the fire.

  “Here y’are,” she said, and held out a plate with a fork and two fried eggs on it.

  “Oh, thanks!” he said, and suddenly realized how hungry he was, and ate them up in a moment.

  Lyra was laughing. The woman had picked her up and was holding her high and laughing up at her. Pan was a butterfly again, a pure white one, and was dancing in the air with the cloud of blue ones, successfully this time, and Malcolm suddenly thought: Suppose her dæmon is the whole cloud of butterflies, not just one of them?

  That made him shiver.

  Alice gave him a slice of bread. It was fresh and soft, unlike the brick-hard bread from the cave, and he thought he’d never tasted anything better.

  “Miss,” he said when he’d finished the bread, “what’s your name?”

  “Diania,” she said.

  “Diana?”

  “No, Diania.”

  “Oh. Well, um…How far are we from London?”

  “Oh, miles and miles.”

  “Is London closer than Oxford?”

  “It depends how you go. By road, yes, it’s probably closer. But all the roads in Albion are drowned now. By water, everything is changed. By air, I think we’re exactly halfway.”

  Malcolm looked at Alice. Her expression was neutral.

  “By air?” he said to Diania. “You en’t got a zeppelin or a gyropter, have you?”

  “Zeppelins! Gyropters!” she said, laughing and tossing Lyra up and making her laugh too. “Who needs a zeppelin? Great noisy things.”

  “But you can’t…I mean…”

  “You know, Richard, I’ve only known you for half an hour, since you woke up, but I can already tell that you’re an uncommonly earth-minded boy.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “Literal-minded. How’s that?”

  He didn’t want to contradict her, because after all she might have been right. He was still a long way from understanding himself, and she was grown up
.

  “Is that a bad thing to be?” he said cautiously.

  “Not for a mechanic, for instance. It would be a good thing, if you were a mechanic.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t mind being a mechanic.”

  “There you are, then.”

  Alice was watching this exchange closely. A little frown occupied her forehead, and her eyes were narrowed.

  “I’m going to check the canoe,” Malcolm said.

  La Belle Sauvage was bobbing comfortably on the water, which had lost the racing fury of the past days and was now flowing steadily, faster than the Thames in Port Meadow, but not much. It looked as if it had settled like this forever.

  Malcolm checked the canoe over from end to end, taking his time, letting his hands rest on it for longer than he needed to; it calmed his unease. Everything was in order, everything inside was dry and safe, and Bonneville’s rucksack was still tucked under the seat.

  The rucksack…

  He lifted it out.

  “You going to open it?” said Asta.

  “What do you think?”

  “I thought it might be like evidence, or something, if they found his body,” she said.

  “Evidence that we’d…”

  “Yes. But then I thought we could have picked it up anywhere. Just found it on the bank—summing like that.”

  “Yeah. It’s pretty heavy.”

  “Might be gold bars in there. Go on.”

  It was a battered old thing of green canvas, with leather patches on the corners and edges. The buckles were made of tarnished brass. Malcolm unfastened them and pulled back the top. The first thing he found was a sweater of navy-blue wool, which smelled of fuel oil and smokeleaf.

  “We could have done with that,” he said.

  “Well, now we know….Go on.”

  He laid the sweater on the grass and looked again. There were five folders of faded cardboard, bent or torn at the corners, each one full of paper.

  “No wonder it was heavy,” he said.

  He took out the first folder and opened it. The papers were covered in swift, spidery handwriting, in black ink, which was hard to read; it seemed to be a sort of long argument about mathematics, all in French.

  “There’s a map,” said Asta.

  One sheet of paper did have what looked like a plan of a building on it. Rooms, corridors, doorways…The explanatory words were in French too, and in different writing. He could understand none of it. There were more plans beside the first one, which looked as if they might be further floors of the same building.