“Yes! I have heard of them! One of the men last night, he said that my uncle, Lord Asriel, he’s being imprisoned in a fortress guarded by the armored bears.”
“Is he, now? And what was he doing up there?”
“Exploring. But the way the man was talking I don’t think my uncle’s on the same side as the Gobblers. I think they were glad he was in prison.”
“Well, he won’t get out if the armored bears are guarding him. They’re like mercenaries, you know what I mean by that? They sell their strength to whoever pays. They got hands like men, and they learned the trick of working iron way back, meteoric iron mostly, and they make great sheets and plates of it to cover theirselves with. They been raiding the Skraelings for centuries. They’re vicious killers, absolutely pitiless. But they keep their word. If you make a bargain with a panserbjørn, you can rely on it.”
Lyra considered these horrors with awe.
“Ma don’t like to hear about the North,” Tony said after a few moments, “because of what might’ve happened to Billy. We know they took him up north, see.”
“How d’you know that?”
“We caught one of the Gobblers, and made him talk. That’s how we know a little about what they’re doing. Them two last night weren’t Gobblers; they were too clumsy. If they’d been Gobblers we’d’ve took ’em alive. See, the gyptian people, we been hit worse than most by these Gobblers, and we’re a coming together to decide what to do about it. That’s what we was doing in the basin last night, taking on stores, ’cause we’re going to a big muster up in the fens, what we call a roping. And what I reckon is we’re a going to send out a rescue party, when we heard what all the other gyptians know, when we put our knowledge together. That’s what I’d do, if I was John Faa.”
“Who’s John Faa?”
“The king of the gyptians.”
“And you’re really going to rescue the kids? What about Roger?”
“Who’s Roger?”
“The Jordan College kitchen boy. He was took same as Billy the day before I come away with Mrs. Coulter. I bet if I was took, he’d come and rescue me. If you’re going to rescue Billy, I want to come too and rescue Roger.”
And Uncle Asriel, she thought; but she didn’t mention that.
7
JOHN FAA
Now that Lyra had a task in mind, she felt much better. Helping Mrs. Coulter had been all very well, but Pantalaimon was right: she wasn’t really doing any work there, she was just a pretty pet. On the gyptian boat, there was real work to do, and Ma Costa made sure she did it. She cleaned and swept, she peeled potatoes and made tea, she greased the propeller shaft bearings, she kept the weed trap clear over the propeller, she washed dishes, she opened lock gates, she tied the boat up at mooring posts, and within a couple of days she was as much at home with this new life as if she’d been born gyptian.
What she didn’t notice was that the Costas were alert every second for unusual signs of interest in Lyra from the waterside people. If she hadn’t realized it, she was important, and Mrs. Coulter and the Oblation Board were bound to be searching everywhere for her. Indeed, Tony heard from gossip in pubs along the way that the police were making raids on houses and farms and building yards and factories without any explanation, though there was a rumor that they were searching for a missing girl. And that in itself was odd, considering all the kids that had gone missing without being looked for. Gyptians and land folk alike were getting jumpy and nervous.
And there was another reason for the Costas’ interest in Lyra; but she wasn’t to learn that for a few days yet.
So they took to keeping her below decks when they passed a lockkeeper’s cottage or a canal basin, or anywhere there were likely to be idlers hanging about. Once they passed through a town where the police were searching all the boats that came along the waterway, and holding up the traffic in both directions. The Costas were equal to that, though. There was a secret compartment beneath Ma’s bunk, where Lyra lay cramped for two hours while the police banged up and down the length of the boat unsuccessfully.
“Why didn’t their dæmons find me, though?” she asked afterward, and Ma showed her the lining of the secret space: cedarwood, which had a soporific effect on dæmons; and it was true that Pantalaimon had spent the whole time happily asleep by Lyra’s head.
Slowly, with many halts and detours, the Costas’ boat drew nearer the fens, that wide and never fully mapped wilderness of huge skies and endless marshland in Eastern Anglia. The furthest fringe of it mingled indistinguishably with the creeks and tidal inlets of the shallow sea, and the other side of the sea mingled indistinguishably with Holland; and parts of the fens had been drained and dyked by Hollanders, some of whom had settled there; so the language of the fens was thick with Dutch. But parts had never been drained or planted or settled at all, and in the wildest central regions, where eels slithered and waterbirds flocked, where eerie marsh fires flickered and waylurkers tempted careless travelers to their doom in the swamps and bogs, the gyptian people had always found it safe to muster.
And now by a thousand winding channels and creeks and watercourses, gyptian boats were moving in toward the byanplats, the only patch of slightly higher ground in the hundreds of square miles of marsh and bog. There was an ancient wooden meeting hall there with a huddle of permanent dwellings around it, and wharves and jetties and an eelmarket. When the gyptians called a byanroping—a summons or muster of families—so many boats filled the waterways that you could walk for a mile in any direction over their decks; or so it was said. The gyptians ruled in the fens. No one else dared enter, and while the gyptians kept the peace and traded fairly, the landlopers turned a blind eye to the incessant smuggling and the occasional feuds. If a gyptian body floated ashore down the coast, or got snagged in a fishnet, well—it was only a gyptian.
Lyra listened enthralled to tales of the fen dwellers, of the great ghost dog Black Shuck, of the marsh fires arising from bubbles of witch oil, and began to think of herself as gyptian even before they reached the fens. She had soon slipped back into her Oxford voice, and now she was acquiring a gyptian one, complete with Fen-Dutch words. Ma Costa had to remind her of a few things.
“You en’t gyptian, Lyra. You might pass for gyptian with practice, but there’s more to us than gyptian language. There’s deeps in us and strong currents. We’re water people all through, and you en’t, you’re a fire person. What you’re most like is marsh fire, that’s the place you have in the gyptian scheme; you got witch oil in your soul. Deceptive, that’s what you are, child.”
Lyra was hurt.
“I en’t never deceived anyone! You ask …”
There was no one to ask, of course, and Ma Costa laughed, but kindly.
“Can’t you see I’m a paying you a compliment, you gosling?” she said, and Lyra was pacified, though she didn’t understand.
When they reached the byanplats it was evening, and the sun was about to set in a splash of bloody sky. The low island and the Zaal were humped blackly against the light, like the clustered buildings around; threads of smoke rose into the still air, and from the press of boats all around came the smells of frying fish, of smokeleaf, of jenniver spirit.
They tied up close to the Zaal itself, at a mooring Tony said had been used by their family for generations. Presently Ma Costa had the frying pan going, with a couple of fat eels hissing and sputtering and the kettle on for potato powder. Tony and Kerim oiled their hair, put on their finest leather jackets and blue spotted neckerchiefs, loaded their fingers with silver rings, and went to greet some old friends in the neighboring boats and drink a glass or two in the nearest bar. They came back with important news.
“We got here just in time. The Roping’s this very night. And they’re a saying in the town—what d’you think of this?—they’re saying that the missing child’s on a gyptian boat, and she’s a going to appear tonight at the Roping!”
He laughed loudly and ruffled Lyra’s hair. Ever since they’d entered
the fens he had been more and more good tempered, as if the savage gloom his face showed outside were only a disguise. And Lyra felt an excitement growing in her breast as she ate quickly and washed the dishes before combing her hair, tucking the alethiometer into the wolfskin coat pocket, and jumping ashore with all the other families making their way up the slope to the Zaal.
She had thought Tony was joking. She soon found that he wasn’t, or else that she looked less like a gyptian than she’d thought, for many people stared, and children pointed, and by the time they reached the great doors of the Zaal they were walking alone between a crowd on either side, who had fallen back to stare and give them room.
And then Lyra began to feel truly nervous. She kept close to Ma Costa, and Pantalaimon became as big as he could and took his panther shape to reassure her. Ma Costa trudged up the steps as if nothing in the world could possibly either stop her or make her go more quickly, and Tony and Kerim walked proudly on either side like princes.
The hall was lit by naphtha lamps, which shone brightly enough on the faces and bodies of the audience, but left the lofty rafters hidden in darkness. The people coming in had to struggle to find room on the floor, where the benches were already crowded; but families squeezed up to make space, children occupying laps and dæmons curling up underfoot or perching out of the way on the rough wooden walls.
At the front of the Zaal there was a platform with eight carved wooden chairs set out. As Lyra and the Costas found space to stand along the edge of the hall, eight men appeared from the shadows at the rear of the platform and stood in front of the chairs. A ripple of excitement swept over the audience as they hushed one another and shoved themselves into spaces on the nearest bench. Finally there was silence and seven of the men on the platform sat down.
The one who remained was in his seventies, but tall and bull necked and powerful. He wore a plain canvas jacket and a checked shirt, like many gyptian men; there was nothing to mark him out but the air of strength and authority he had. Lyra recognized it: Uncle Asriel had it, and so did the Master of Jordan. This man’s dæmon was a crow, very like the Master’s raven.
“That’s John Faa, the lord of the western gyptians,” Tony whispered.
John Faa began to speak, in a deep slow voice.
“Gyptians! Welcome to the Roping. We’ve come to listen and come to decide. You all know why. There are many families here who’ve lost a child. Some have lost two. Someone is taking them. To be sure, landlopers are losing children too. We have no quarrel with landlopers over this.
“Now there’s been talk about a child and a reward. Here’s the truth to stop all gossip. The child’s name is Lyra Belacqua, and she’s being sought by the landloper police. There is a reward of one thousand sovereigns for giving her up to them. She’s a landloper child, and she’s in our care, and there she’s going to stay. Anyone tempted by those thousand sovereigns had better find a place neither on land nor on water. We en’t giving her up.”
Lyra felt a blush from the roots of her hair to the soles of her feet; Pantalaimon became a brown moth to hide. Eyes all around were turning to them, and she could only look up at Ma Costa for reassurance.
But John Faa was speaking again:
“Talk all we may, we won’t change owt. We must act if we want to change things. Here’s another fact for you: the Gobblers, these child thieves, are a taking their prisoners to a town in the far North, way up in the land of dark. I don’t know what they do with ’em there. Some folk say they kill ’em, other folk say different. We don’t know.
“What we do know is that they do it with the help of the landloper police and the clergy. Every power on land is helping ’em. Remember that. They know what’s going on and they’ll help it whenever they can.
“So what I’m proposing en’t easy. And I need your agreement. I’m proposing that we send a band of fighters up north to rescue them kids and bring ’em back alive. I’m proposing that we put our gold into this, and all the craft and courage we can muster. Yes, Raymond van Gerrit?”
A man in the audience had raised his hand, and John Faa sat down to let him speak.
“Beg pardon, Lord Faa. There’s landloper kids as well as gyptians been taken captive. Are you saying we should rescue them as well?”
John Faa stood up to answer.
“Raymond, are you saying we should fight our way through every kind of danger to a little group of frightened children, and then say to some of them that they can come home, and to the rest that they have to stay? No, you’re a better man than that. Well, do I have your approval, my friends?”
The question caught them by surprise, for there was a moment’s hesitation; but then a full-throated roar filled the hall, and hands were clapped in the air, fists shaken, voices raised in excited clamor. The rafters of the Zaal shook, and from their perches up in the dark a score of sleeping birds woke up in fear and flapped their wings, and little showers of dust drifted down.
John Faa let the noise continue for a minute, and then raised his hand for silence again.
“This’ll take a while to organize. I want the heads of the families to raise a tax and muster a levy. We’ll meet again here in three days’ time. In between now and then I’m a going to talk with the child I mentioned before, and with Farder Coram, and form a plan to put before you when we meet. Goodnight to ye all.”
His massive, plain, blunt presence was enough to calm them. As the audience began to move out of the great doors into the chilly evening, to go to their boats or to the crowded bars of the little settlement, Lyra said to Ma Costa:
“Who are the other men on the platform?”
“The heads of the six families, and the other man is Farder Coram.”
It was easy to see who she meant by the other man, because he was the oldest one there. He walked with a stick, and all the time he’d been sitting behind John Faa he’d been trembling as if with an ague.
“Come on,” said Tony. “I’d best take you up to pay your respects to John Faa. You call him Lord Faa. I don’t know what you’ll be asked, but mind you tell the truth.”
Pantalaimon was a sparrow now, and sat curiously on Lyra’s shoulder, his claws deep in the wolfskin coat, as she followed Tony through the crowd up to the platform.
He lifted her up. Knowing that everyone still in the hall was staring at her, and conscious of those thousand sovereigns she was suddenly worth, she blushed and hesitated. Pantalaimon darted to her breast and became a wildcat, sitting up in her arms and hissing softly as he looked around.
Lyra felt a push, and stepped forward to John Faa. He was stern and massive and expressionless, more like a pillar of rock than a man, but he stooped and held out his hand to shake. When she put hers in, it nearly vanished.
“Welcome, Lyra,” he said.
Close to, she felt his voice rumbling like the earth itself. She would have been nervous but for Pantalaimon, and the fact that John Faa’s stony expression had warmed a little. He was treating her very gently.
“Thank you, Lord Faa,” she said.
“Now you come in the parley room and we’ll have a talk,” said John Faa. “Have they been feeding you proper, the Costas?”
“Oh, yes. We had eels for supper.”
“Proper fen eels, I expect.”
The parley room was a comfortable place with a big fire, sideboards laden with silver and porcelain, and a heavy table darkly polished by the years, at which twelve chairs were drawn up.
The other men from the platform had gone elsewhere, but the old shaking man was still with them. John Faa helped him to a seat at the table.
“Now, you sit here on my right,” John Faa said to Lyra, and took the chair at the head of the table himself. Lyra found herself opposite Farder Coram. She was a little frightened by his skull-like face and his continual trembling. His dæmon was a beautiful autumn-colored cat, massive in size, who stalked along the table with upraised tail and elegantly inspected Pantalaimon, touching noses briefly before settling on Far
der Coram’s lap, half-closing her eyes and purring softly.
A woman whom Lyra hadn’t noticed came out of the shadows with a tray of glasses, set it down by John Faa, curtsied, and left. John Faa poured little glasses of jenniver from a stone crock for himself and Farder Coram, and wine for Lyra.
“So,” John Faa said. “You run away, Lyra.”
“Yes.”
“And who was the lady you run away from?”
“She was called Mrs. Coulter. And I thought she was nice, but I found out she was one of the Gobblers. I heard someone say what the Gobblers were, they were called the General Oblation Board, and she was in charge of it, it was all her idea. And they was all working on some plan, I dunno what it was, only they was going to make me help her get kids for ’em. But they never knew …”
“They never knew what?”
“Well, first they never knew that I knew some kids what had been took. My friend Roger the kitchen boy from Jordan College, and Billy Costa, and a girl out the covered market in Oxford. And another thing … My uncle, right, Lord Asriel. I heard them talking about his journeys to the North, and I don’t reckon he’s got anything to do with the Gobblers. Because I spied on the Master and the Scholars of Jordan, right, I hid in the Retiring Room where no one’s supposed to go except them, and I heard him tell them all about his expedition up north, and the Dust he saw, and he brought back the head of Stanislaus Grumman, what the Tartars had made a hole in. And now the Gobblers’ve got him locked up somewhere. The armored bears are guarding him. And I want to rescue him.”
She looked fierce and stubborn as she sat there, small against the high carved back of the chair. The two old men couldn’t help smiling, but whereas Farder Coram’s smile was a hesitant, rich, complicated expression that trembled across his face like sunlight chasing shadows on a windy March day, John Faa’s smile was slow, warm, plain, and kindly.
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