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

by Philip Pullman

  But now she just lacked inventiveness, or energy, or chutzpah. She was tired and lonely and frightened, even by this self-satisfied man and his silly little dæmon, who was now yapping and jumping up at his knees.

  “What is it, Bessy?” he said, and lifted her up to make a fuss of her, and let her whisper in his ear. Lyra turned away, but she could still see what he was doing: he was looking at her while whispering with his dæmon.

  A little half-stifled whimper came from the dæmon, who tried to scrabble away from Lyra and bury herself in the man’s coat. This display of craven attention seeking disgusted Lyra, who closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep. Someone was arguing near the bar—a Welsh voice was raised, there seemed to be a scuffle—but as quickly as it arose, it subsided again.

  “There’s something wrong here,” the bulky man said loudly, not addressing Lyra. “There’s something badly wrong.”

  Lyra opened her eyes and saw one or two heads turning. All the benches were crammed with travelers sitting and sleeping, or eating and drinking, and the noise of the ferry’s engines was a perpetual rumble underneath, and the sound of the waves and the wind outside formed another layer of sound, while the conversations nearby and the laughter of the drinkers at the bar a little further away were also clear: but over it all the man’s voice insisted again, “I say there’s something wrong here. This young woman—something’s not right.”

  His dæmon howled properly, a high quaking shiver of a sound that touched Lyra’s spine with cold. More people were looking now, and the sleeping woman on her left was stirring and working her mouth as she came awake.

  Lyra said, “My dæmon is inside my coat. He’s not well. It’s none of your business.”

  “No, no, that won’t do. I don’t think you’ve got a dæmon at all. My Bess never makes a mistake over that sort of thing.”

  “You’re wrong. My dæmon is not well. I’m not going to disturb him just because you’re superstitious.”

  “Don’t speak to me in that tone of voice, young lady. I won’t put up with that. You shouldn’t be in a public place in the state you are. There’s something the matter with you. Something not right.”

  “What’s wrong?” said a man on the bench opposite. “What are you shouting about?”

  “She hasn’t got a dæmon! I keep telling her, it’s not right to come out in public like that. There’s something badly wrong—”

  “Is that true?” asked the other man, whose rook dæmon was shaking her wings on his shoulder and cawing loudly. Lyra realized he was speaking to her.

  “Of course it’s not true,” she said as calmly as she could manage. “How could I go anywhere without a dæmon?”

  “Well, where is he, then?” the first man demanded.

  “It’s got nothing to do with you,” said Lyra, now becoming alarmed by the attention this ridiculous incident was attracting.

  “People with that degree of disfigurement ought to keep out of public view,” he said, and his dæmon howled again. “Look at the way you’re frightening people. Not fit to be seen in public. There are places for people like you to stay….”

  A child was beginning to cry, and his mother picked him up ostentatiously, holding his coat clear of Lyra’s rucksack, as if it was tainted. The child’s dæmon was changing from a mouse to a bird to a puppy and back to a mouse, and kept falling away from him, making them both shriek even louder, until his mother’s mastiff dæmon picked her up and shook her.

  Lyra held on tight to her rucksack and began to stand up, but found her sleeve held by the bulky man.

  “Let me go!” she said.

  “Oh, no, you can’t just go where you please,” he said, looking all around for the support that was beginning to grow in the faces of the people nearby. He clearly thought he was speaking for all of them. “You can’t go about in that state,” he went on. “You’re frightening children. It’s a public menace. You’re going to come with me, and I’m going to put you in the charge of—”

  “It’s all right,” said another voice, a man’s voice with a Welsh accent. Lyra looked up to see two of the men from the group by the bar, easy, confident, a little red-faced, a little drunk, perhaps. “We’ll take care of her. You leave her to us, don’t you worry.”

  The man was reluctant to abandon his position at the center of attention, but the two Welshmen were younger and stronger than he was. He let go of Lyra’s sleeve.

  “You come with us,” said the first Welshman. He looked as if he had never in his life been refused or disobeyed. Unsure, she didn’t move, and he said “Come on” again.

  The other man was looking at her appraisingly. There was no support from anyone nearby. Closed faces, cold and indifferent ones, or faces filled with active hatred were all around; and every dæmon in sight had clambered or flown or crawled to their people’s breasts to be safe from the appalling and uncanny figure who had the gall to come among them with no dæmon. Lyra picked her way between their legs and feet and luggage, following the Welshmen.

  She thought: Is it all going to end so soon, then? I won’t let it. Once we’re outside, I’ll attack. The stick Pequeno was in her left sleeve, ready to be drawn by her right hand, and she’d already decided where to aim her first blow: on the side of the second man’s head, as soon as the door closed behind them.

  They reached the door of the saloon, with a growling murmur from the seated passengers and approving, complicit nods from the other Welshmen at the bar. Everybody knew what the two were going to do to her, and not one person objected. Lyra worked the handle of the stick a little way into her palm, and then they were outside in the cold wind with the door banging shut behind them.

  The deck was streaming with rain and spray, the boat was pitching hard, and the wind slapped Lyra’s face as she pulled out the stick—and then she stopped.

  The two men were standing back, hands up, palms forward. Their dæmons, a badger and a canary, stood still and peaceable, one on the deck and the other on a shoulder.

  “ ’S all right, miss,” said the taller man. “Just had to get you out of there, that’s all.”

  “Why?” she said, thankful that at least her voice was steady.

  The other man held something out. It was the alethiometer’s black velvet bag. Lyra lost her balance for a moment, as if she’d been struck.

  “What are you doing—how did you—”

  “As you come in the saloon, we saw a man put his hand inside your rucksack and take something out. He was very quick. We watched where you went, and we watched him, and before he could clear off, we caught hold of him. He only argued for a second. We got this back off him, and then that fool with the little yapping dæmon started going on at you, so we thought we’ll kill two birds with one stone.”

  She took the velvet bag and opened it: the gleam of gold and the familiar weight of it in her hand told her it was safe.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you so much.”

  The taller man’s canary dæmon spoke from his shoulder. She said, “Duw mawr, dydi hi ddim yn ddewines, ydi hi?”

  The man nodded and said to Lyra, “You’re a witch, en you? Sorry if that’s rude of me, you know, but—”

  “How do you know?” said Lyra, and this time she couldn’t prevent her voice from shaking.

  “We seen your people before,” said the other.

  The bulkhead light shone yellow on their faces, as naked as hers to the wind and the spray. They stood back further.

  “Got all the wind on this side,” said the first man. “Bit more shelter round the other way.”

  They moved away, and she followed them across the open foredeck, struggling to keep her balance, and down the other side of the vessel. The saloon beside them and a lifeboat on its davit above kept the worst of the wind and rain from this side, and there was a bench that was more or less dry a little further
along under a feeble light.

  The men sat down. Lyra pushed the stick back inside her sleeve and joined them. They sat at one end, leaving plenty of space for her, and pulled the collars of their jackets up against the wind. One had a woolen hat in his pocket and put it on.

  Lyra pushed her hood back and turned her face to the light, so she was fully visible.

  “I’m Gwyn,” said the first man, “and this is Dafydd.”

  “I’m Tatiana Asrielovna,” said Lyra, making a patronymic of her father’s name.

  “And you are a witch, en you?” said Dafydd.

  “Yes. I’m traveling like this because I have to. I wouldn’t go like this from choice.”

  “Yes, we could see that,” said Gwyn. “You wouldn’t choose to go into a pit of fools like that bloody saloon unless you had to.”

  She suddenly realized something. “Are you miners?” she said.

  “How’d you know that?” said Dafydd.

  “I worked it out. Where are you going?”

  “Back to Sala,” said Gwyn. “Sweden, that is. Silver mines.”

  “That’s where we met a witch before,” said Dafydd. “She come down that way to buy some silver, and got landlocked. Her, you know, the tree—the pine branch—”

  “Cloud-pine.”

  “Thass it. Someone stole it. We got that back and all.”

  “She helped us first,” said Gwyn. “We owed her one. We helped her, like. Learnt a lot about their life and that.”

  “Where are you traveling to, Tatiana?” said Dafydd.

  “I’m going a long way east. I’m looking for a plant that only grows in Central Asia.”

  “Is that for, like, a spell or something?”

  “It’s to make medicine. My queen is ill. Unless I bring back some of that plant, she’ll die.”

  “And why are you going like this, by sea? It’s dangerous for you, traveling over the surface of the earth, like.”

  “Misfortune,” she said. “My cloud-pine was lost in a fire.”

  They nodded.

  “Better, if you can, travel by first class,” said Gwyn.

  “Why?”

  “Not so many questions. Not so much curiosity. Rich folk en like us. Them people back in the saloon, that fool of a fat man, there’s plenty of arseholes like that—excuse me—wherever you go. And that thief too. If you travel first class and keep yourself kind of apart, you know, what’s the word—”

  “Aloof,” said Dafydd.

  “Summing like that. Proud, haughty. People are wary of you then, and they don’t dare question you or interfere, you know.”

  “D’you think?”

  “Yes. Take it from me.”

  “Central Asia,” said Gwyn. “That’s a long way.”

  “I’ll get there. Tell me, why do Welsh miners work in Sweden?”

  “Because we’re the best in the world,” said Dafydd. “Coleg Mwyngloddiaeth, both of us.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s the School of Mining in Blaenau Ffestiniog.”

  “And you mine for silver?”

  “In Sala, yes,” said Gwyn. “Precious metals is what we know best.”

  “That thing we got back for you,” said Dafydd. “What is it, if you don’t mind me asking? It felt heavy, like gold.”

  “It is gold,” she said. “Would you like to see it?”

  “Oh, very much,” said Gwyn.

  Lyra opened her rucksack. Was she mad? Why in the world should she trust these two strangers? Because they’d helped her, that was why.

  They moved closer to look as she opened the black velvet bag and let the alethiometer fall heavily into her palm. It caught every photon that fell on it from the bulkhead light, and gave it back improved.

  “Duw,” said Dafydd. “What’s that, then?”

  “It’s an alethiometer. It was made, I don’t know, three hundred years ago, maybe. Can you tell where the gold is from?”

  “I’d have to touch it,” said Gwyn. “Looking at it now, I can say something straightaway, but I’ll have to feel it to be sure.”

  “What can you see straightaway?”

  “It’s not twenty-four karat, but then I wouldn’t expect it to be. That’s too soft for a working instrument. So you have to make an alloy with another metal. I can’t see what that is, not in this light. But it’s strange. It’s almost pure gold, but not quite. I never saw anything like this before.”

  “Sometimes you can taste it,” said Dafydd.

  “Can I touch it?” asked Gwyn.

  Lyra held it out. He took it from her hand and ran his thumb along the gold rim.

  “That’s not copper nor silver,” he said. “That’s something else.”

  He lifted it to his face and held it delicately against the skin over his cheekbone.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Feeling it. Different nerves in different parts of the skin, see. Sensitive to different stimulations. This is very strange. I can’t believe it’s…”

  “Let me try,” said Dafydd.

  He took it and brought it to his mouth and touched the tip of his tongue to the gold case.

  “That’s almost all gold. The rest…No, I don’t believe it.”

  “It is,” said his canary dæmon from his wrist. “I can tell now. It’s titanium.”

  “Aye. I thought so too. But that’s impossible,” Gwyn said. “They never discovered titanium till about two hundred years ago, and I never heard of a gold alloy of it.”

  “It’s very hard to work,” said Dafydd. “But that’s what it feels like….What are these hands made of?”

  The three hands that Lyra could move with the wheels were made of some black metal. The needle that moved by itself was a lighter color, a sort of stormy gray. She and Will had noticed its resemblance to the color of the blade of the subtle knife, but they had found out nothing about that; even Iorek Byrnison, who reforged the blade when it shattered, had to admit that he had no idea what it was.

  Lyra couldn’t begin to tell them that without spending a long time explaining it, so she said simply, “I don’t think anyone knows.”

  Dafydd handed the alethiometer back, and she put it away.

  “You know,” Gwyn told her, “there’s a piece of metal in the museum at the Coleg Mwyngloddiaeth that looks like part of a blade, a knife blade, something like that. No one’s ever discovered what metal it’s made of.”

  “It’s kind of a secret, see,” said Dafydd.

  “But it looks exactly like that needle. Where does that thing come from, then?”

  “Bohemia.”

  “Well, they had good metalworkers there,” said Gwyn. “If the case is an alloy of gold and titanium…that’s not easy to make. Before modern times I’d say it was impossible. But with that thing, there’s no doubt about it. That’s what it is. Is that a witch thing, then?”

  “No. I’m the only witch who ever touched one of these. There are only six of them in the world that we know about.”

  “What do you do with it?”

  “You ask questions, and read the answers. The trouble is that you need all the old books, with the keys to the symbols, to understand what it says. It takes a long time to learn. All my books are in Novy Kievsk. I can’t read it without them.”

  “Why are you carrying it with you, then? Wouldn’t it be safer to leave it at home?”

  “It was stolen from me, and I had to go a long way to get it back. It…” She hesitated.

  “What?” said Dafydd.

  “It seems to attract thieves. Like just now. It’s been stolen many times. When it was given to me, I thought that was the end of the stealing, but obviously it wasn’t. I’ll be extra careful. I owe you a great deal.”

  “Just paying back, like,” said Gwyn.
“That witch we told you about—she helped us when we fell sick. There was an epidemic. It spread from the mines further north than Sala, sort of a lung disease. We were both a bit poorly. The witch found some herbs that made us better, and then some local idiots stole her cloud-pine. So we got that back for her.”

  His dæmon, a small badger, was prowling restlessly along the deck, when suddenly she stopped still and gazed towards the stern. Gwyn said something softly in Welsh, and she replied in the same language.

  “There’s men coming,” said Dafydd, translating.

  Lyra couldn’t see anyone, but it was darker down that way and the wind was whipping her hair across her eyes. She put the rucksack carefully under the bench and felt for her stick. She could see the other two getting ready to jump up and fight, and they looked as if they’d enjoy it; but before it came to that, the two men coming stepped into the pool of light beside a doorway.

  They wore uniforms of a kind Lyra didn’t recognize: black, smartly tailored, with caps bearing a symbol she couldn’t make out. They certainly didn’t look maritime: they looked military.

  One said, “Show us your travel documents.”

  Gwyn and Dafydd reached into jacket pockets. The dæmons of the uniformed men were both large wolflike dogs, and they both glared at Lyra with fierce concentration.

  The man who seemed to be in charge held out his gauntleted hand for Gwyn’s ticket, but Gwyn didn’t move.

  “First of all,” he said, “you’re not employees of North Dutch Ferries. I don’t know those uniforms. Tell me who you are, and I’ll decide if I want to show you my ticket.”

  The uniformed man’s dæmon growled. Gwyn put a hand down to his own badger dæmon’s neck.

  “Take a good look,” said the uniformed man, and took off his cap to show the badge. Lyra saw that it depicted a golden lamp whose flame shot rays of red all around it. “You’ll see this more and more, and soon you won’t have to ask. This is the badge of the Office of Right Duty. We’re constables of that office, and we have the responsibility to check the travel documents of anyone entering continental Europe. Among other things.”

  Then something entered Lyra’s memory, something Malcolm had told her….She said, “The League of St. Alexander. Well done. You can put your cap back on now.”