The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth (Book of Dust, Volume 2)

by Philip Pullman

  Anneke was growling as she stood foursquare and gazed at the rapidly fading glow from the rocket.

  A moment later a dozen marsh lights flickered again, moving swiftly, darting here and there, even rising and falling. Little jets of fire spurted up from the ground, to flare and go out in a moment.

  “That’s made ’em angry,” said Brabandt. “Trouble is, they’re showing us up.”

  The boat was still purring forward into the dark, but he was right: the marsh lights were so fierce and brilliant now that, small as they were, they illuminated the whole length of the Maid of Portugal, streaming with rain and catching every flicker of light.

  “They don’t like us, the will o’ the wykeses, but they like them zeppelins even less,” Brabandt said. “But they still don’t like us. Wouldn’t bother ’em a bit if we got sunk and drowned, or smashed into a thousand splinters.”

  Anneke suddenly barked, a short yap of alarm. She was looking up, and Lyra, following her gaze, saw a little shape falling from the zeppelin and briskly unfolding into a parachute. Almost at once the wind caught it and tossed it backwards, but a moment later the black shape under the canopy burst into a brilliant flame.

  “Flares,” said Brabandt as another fell, blossomed, and blazed.

  The response from the marsh lights was instant and furious. More and more of them flickered into being and leapt and danced towards the falling flare, and when it reached the water, they swarmed all over it, their cold fire mastering its heat and finally drowning it in a cloud of smoke and a chorus of wet little shrieks and sucking noises.

  Suddenly Lyra jumped up and ran inside, feeling her way along the length of the boat to her little cabin in the prow. She felt for her bunk, felt the bedside table, moved her hands over the book and the lamp until they found the velvet bag that held the alethiometer. With that safely in both hands, she moved back through the boat, conscious of the little movements Brabandt was making with the tiller and the throttle, of the roar from the zeppelin’s engine somewhere above, of the moaning of the wind. From the galley she saw Brabandt outlined against the flickering marsh lights, and then she was in the doorway again and sat on the bench from where she could see the sky.

  “You all right?” said Brabandt.

  “Yes. I’m going to see what I can find out.”

  She was already turning the little wheels of the alethiometer, and peering close in the intermittent glimmer to try to make out the symbols. But it was no good: they were more or less invisible. She held the instrument between her palms and stared fiercely out at the flickering jacky lanterns, aware of a powerful contradiction that almost tore her mind in two. What she wanted to do would involve this secret commonwealth of Brabandt’s, and yet she told herself it was nonsense, superstition, nothing but meaningless fancy.

  The zeppelin was turning around ahead of them, its searchlight probing the rain and the dark marsh gloom below it. Another minute or two, and it would be facing them, and once it had the Maid of Portugal fixed in the glare of the light, nothing would save them.

  Pan, Pan, Pan, Lyra thought, I need you now, you little bastard, you traitor.

  She tried to imagine gathering all the jacky lanterns as if she was herding sheep, but it was so difficult, because, after all, she had no imagination, as Pan had said. What would it be like to do that? She thought harder and harder. She tried to think of herself as a light-herd, and the absent Pan as a light-dog, racing from side to side across the marsh, crouching down still, leaping up again, barking short, sharp commands, running where she thought him to.

  And how stupid, she thought, how childish. It’s just methane or something. It’s just natural, meaningless. Her concentration faltered.

  She heard a sob coming from her throat.

  Brabandt said, “What you doing, gal?”

  She ignored him. She gritted her teeth. Against her will she summoned the absent Pan again, a hellhound now, with glowing eyes and slaver flying from his lips, and she saw the terrified marsh lights fleeing and flocking and circling round as the zeppelin’s cold beam of light came closer and closer and she heard the drumming of rain on the great snout-prow of the aircraft, even over the wind and the roar of the engine.

  She felt something rising inside her, like a tide, wave upon wave of it, growing and receding and then growing again, a little more each time, and it was anger, it was desire, it was visceral.

  “What they doing? Good God—look at that…,” Brabandt was saying.

  The marsh lights were speeding and climbing, dashing again and again at a spot on the water just ahead of the zeppelin’s searchlight, and then, with a shriek, something rose out of the marsh that wasn’t a jacky lantern or a will o’ the wykes but a large bird, a heron or even a stork, heavy and white and terrified by the darting green glimmers that harried it up and up and into the beam of the searchlight, and higher still, snapping at its legs, crowding like hornets at its great hefty body as it lumbered up in fear and hurled itself at the aircraft—

  Brabandt said hoarsely, “Hold tight, gal.” The searchlight beam was nearly on them.

  Then, in an explosion of fire and blood and white feathers, the heron flew straight into the port engine of the zeppelin.

  The aircraft lurched and swung to the left at once, and dipped and sagged as the starboard engine screamed and the great slug shape drifted sideways and downwards. The tail heaved itself round, caught by the wind with no port engine to stabilize it, and the craft drifted down and down towards the swamp, and closer and closer to the Maid of Portugal, as if it were sinking onto a bed. Little scraps of sound, screams, cries, came whirling through the wind and were snatched away again. By the glow of the dancing marsh lights as well as the fire that was now blazing out of control from the zeppelin, she and Brabandt watched in horror as a figure, two, three, hurled themselves out of the cabin and fell down into the dark. A moment later the great broken shell of the zeppelin collapsed onto the water only fifty yards away from them, surrounded by clouds of steam, and smoke, and flame, and the dance of a thousand marsh lights, capering in triumph. The heat scorched Lyra’s face, and Brabandt tilted his sou’wester against it.

  It was horrible to watch, but she couldn’t look away. The skeleton of the airship showed black against the great blaze of light, and then it crumpled together and fell in with a cascade of sparks and smoke.

  “They won’t survive that, none of ’em,” said Brabandt. “They be all dead now.”

  “Horrible.”

  “Aye.”

  He moved the throttle lever, and the boat moved out into the middle of the watercourse and gathered speed slowly.

  “That heron,” Lyra said shakily. “The marsh lights were chasing it. They made it fly up into the engine. They knew what they were doing.”

  And so did I, she thought. I made it happen.

  “A heron, was it? Might’ve been. I thought it was a flying boggart. They do fly, some of ’em, making a kind of a whirring noise. Only there was so much else going on, we couldn’t a’ heard that. That’s probably what it was, a flying elf or a spirit out the waters. Summing from the secret commonwealth, what I told you about. Look at the jacky lanterns now.”

  The marsh lights, dozens of them, had all gathered around the burning wreck, making little darts towards it and out again, flickering and dancing.

  “What are they doing?”

  “Looking for any survivors. They’ll pull ’em down under the water and finish ’em off. Them potaters done yet?”

  “Oh—yes.”

  “Well, don’t let ’em get cold. Tell you what, there’s a tin of bully beef in the locker. Chop it up with the potatoes and fry the lot. I’m getting peckish.”

  Lyra felt sick. She couldn’t help thinking of the dead men from the zeppelin, burned or drowned or worse, and of that beautiful white bird, driven up without mercy into the blades of the engine. Fo
od was the last thing she wanted just then, but when the hash was cooking she found that, after all, it was a shame to waste it, and it did smell good; so she brought two plates of it to the cockpit, where Brabandt began by scooping up a forkful and dropping it over the side.

  “For the will o’ the wykeses,” he said.

  She did the same with hers, and then they ate their supper, sheltering their plates from the rain.

  That same evening, Dick Orchard pushed open the door and went into the public bar of the Trout. He knew many of Oxford’s pubs, but like everyone else, he had his favorites, and the Trout was too far out of the way for him to visit often. Still, the beer was good.

  He ordered a pint and looked around warily. There was no one among the customers who looked like a scholar: a group of old men playing cards near the fireplace, two men who looked like farmworkers stolidly working their way through a long and winding argument about stock fencing, two younger couples ordering a meal—nothing more than a quiet night in a traditional waterside pub.

  When the meal had been ordered and the younger couples were sitting down with their drinks, Dick spoke to the barman, a hefty man of sixty or so with thinning red hair and a genial expression.

  “S’cuse me, mate,” Dick said. “I’m looking for someone called Malcolm Polstead. D’you know him?”

  “He’s my son,” said the barman. “He’s in the kitchen at the moment, having a bite of supper. You want to speak to him?”

  “When he’s finished. No hurry.”

  “You’ve only just caught him, as a matter of fact. He’s leaving shortly for somewhere abroad.”

  “Oh, is he? Lucky I came when I did, then.”

  “Yes…he’s got to go and sort out some of his affairs at the university and then he’ll be catching a train. I don’t think he’s got all that long—he’ll be off by tomorrow night latest, I’d guess. Why don’t you take your drink over to the corner table and I’ll let him know you’re here, then he can come and say hello before he leaves. What name is it?”

  “Dick Orchard. He won’t know it, though. It’s about…It’s about Lyra.”

  The barman’s eyes widened. He leant a little closer and said quietly, “You know where she is?”

  “No, but she told me the name Malcolm Polstead, so…”

  “I’ll get him now.”

  Dick took his pint and sat down at the corner table. Something in the barman’s manner made him wish he’d come here sooner.

  Less than a minute later a tall man, not quite as hefty as his father the landlord, but still someone Dick would have hesitated to tangle with, sat down at the table with him. He held a mug of tea in one hand, and he was wearing a brown corduroy suit. His dæmon, a large ginger cat, touched noses courteously with Dick’s vixen, Bindi.

  Dick held out his hand, and Polstead shook it firmly.

  “You know something about Lyra?” he said.

  He spoke quietly, but his voice was very clear. It was deep and resonant, the voice of a singer, perhaps. Dick was puzzled. It wasn’t surprising to know the man was a scholar, because of the intelligence in his face, but he had the air of someone who knew his way around the real world.

  “Yeah,” said Dick. “She’s a…she’s a friend. She came round my house the other morning because she was in trouble, she said, and she asked if I could help her. She wanted to get to the Fens, you see, and my grandad’s gyptian, and he happened to be in Oxford just then with his boat, and I gave her a…I told her how to introduce herself to him. I think she must’ve done that and gone off with him. She told me about something that had happened down near the Oxpens, by the river, and—”

  “What was that?”

  “She saw someone being killed.”

  Malcolm liked the look of this boy. He was nervous, but he didn’t let it get in the way of speaking clearly and frankly.

  “How did you know my name?” Malcolm said. “Did Lyra tell you?”

  “She said you knew about that business by the river, and she’d been staying here in the Trout, but she had to go, because…”

  He was finding it hard to say. Malcolm waited. Dick looked around and leant in closer, and finally said almost in a whisper:

  “She felt…the thing was, her dæmon, Pan…he’d gone. He wasn’t with her. He’d just disappeared.”

  And Malcolm thought: Of course. Of course…This changes everything.

  “I’d never seen anyone like that,” Dick went on in the same tone. “You know, separated. She was frightened, and she thought everyone’d be looking at her, or worse. There was someone she knew in the Fens, an old gyptian man, she knew she’d be safe with him, and she thought my grandad might be able to take her there.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “My grandad? Giorgio Brabandt.”

  “And the man in the Fens?”

  “I dunno. She never said.”

  “What did she have with her?”

  “Just a rucksack.”

  “What time was this?”

  “Quite early. I’d just come home. I work the night shift at the Royal Mail.”

  “Was it you who told Lyra about Benny Morris?”

  “Yeah. I did.”

  Dick wanted to ask whether Malcolm had found out anything about that man, but he held his tongue. Malcolm was taking out a notebook and pencil. He wrote something down and tore out the page.

  “You can trust these two people,” he said. “They both know Lyra well. They’ll be anxious to know where she’s gone. If you could tell them what you’ve just told me, I’d be very obliged. And if you have the time to come out here, my mother and father would be glad to know if you hear any more from her. But don’t tell anyone else.”

  He passed over the paper, on which he’d written Alice’s name and address and Hannah’s.

  “You going abroad, then?” Dick said.

  “Yes. I wish I didn’t have to. Listen, there’s a possibility that Pan, that her dæmon, might turn up. He’ll be just as vulnerable as she is. If he knows you, he might do what she did and ask for help.”

  “I thought people died when they got separated like that. I couldn’t believe it when I saw her.”

  “Not always. Tell me, do you know anything about a man called Simon Talbot?”

  “Never heard of him. Is he summing to do with this?”

  “Quite possibly. What’s your address, by the way?”

  Dick told him, and Malcolm wrote it down.

  “You going away for long?” said Dick.

  “No way of telling at the moment. Oh—one of the people on that piece of paper, Dr. Relf, would be interested in anything else you can tell her about Benny Morris. He’ll be back to work soon.”

  “You seen him, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he do it?”

  “He said he didn’t.”

  “Are you…You en’t police, are you?”

  “No. Just a Scholar. Look, I’ve got to go—lots to do before I can leave. Thanks for coming here, Dick. When I get back, I’ll buy you a drink.”

  He stood up, and they shook hands.

  “Cheers, then,” said Dick, and he watched as Malcolm made his way out of the bar. He moves easy for a big man, he thought.

  * * *

  * * *

  At about the same time, Pantalaimon was crouching in the shadow of a derelict warehouse near a wharf in the Thames estuary, watching three sailors steal a ship’s propeller.

  There wasn’t much light from the sky; a few stars flickered between the ragged clouds, and the moon was somewhere else. There was a feeble glow from the anbaric bulkhead light on the warehouse wall, but very little else to see by except the naphtha lantern in the prow of the rowing boat that had wavered across the creek from a battered old schooner tied up further along the wharf. The schooner wa
s called the Elsa, and her captain had spent the day drinking beer after beer and persuading the mate to help him make off with the propeller, which was bolted to the deck of an almost equally squalid-looking coaster that seemed to have no crew at all, and to consist entirely of rust, apart from the four hundredweight of phosphor-bronze on the foredeck. They’d spent hours looking at it through the captain’s cracked binoculars and speculating about how much it would fetch in a tolerant shipyard, while two deckhands languidly tossed various splintered planks and bits of rope overboard, the remains of a badly stowed deck cargo that had come apart after a storm in the Channel and was now never going to be paid for.

  The tide was coming in, and the jetsam was floating slowly upstream over the rotting skeleton of a barge and the broken bottles and tin cans in the mud as the silent water gradually lifted the coaster upright. Pantalaimon was watching intently. He’d been interested in the Elsa since he’d arrived at the filthy little harbor the night before and heard German conversation on the deck. From what he could make out, they were intending to leave with the tide and cross the Channel, heading north for Cuxhaven, near Hamburg. That was when Pan knew he’d have to go with them: Cuxhaven lay at the mouth of the river Elbe, and the city of Wittenberg, where Gottfried Brande lived, lay many miles inland on the same river. It couldn’t be better.

  The crew of the Elsa had been waiting for a cargo, but someone had let them down, or more likely, from what Pan could gather, the skipper had simply got the date wrong. All day long the captain and the mate had bickered on the deck, drinking beer and tossing the bottles over the side, and finally, when the skipper agreed to split the proceeds fifty-fifty, the mate gave in and said he’d help liberate the propeller.

  Pan saw his chance to get aboard the Elsa, and as soon as the rowing boat began to move across the creek towards the coaster, he crept silently along the wharf and darted up the gangplank. There were four crewmen apart from the skipper and the mate: one of them was rowing the boat, another two were asleep belowdecks, and the fourth was leaning on the rail, watching the expedition. The Elsa was older than Pan could guess, patched and mended over and over, her sails worn and shoddy, her deck filthy with grease and rust.