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

by Philip Pullman

  “All right, then,” said the interrogator, as the other man opened the door.

  Bonneville put the alethiometer away and picked up his rucksack to follow them. They were speaking to the policeman, who turned and took a ring of keys from his pocket and looked through them for the right one.

  “We’re going to watch,” said the interrogator. “And we’re going to make a note of everything you ask, and everything he says in reply.”

  “Of course,” said Bonneville.

  The policeman opened the door, and then stopped suddenly.

  “What’s the matter?” said the interrogator.

  Bonneville pushed him aside and went in past the policeman. It was a room just like the one next door, with a table and three chairs. The coal-silk net was lying on the table, bitten to shreds, and the window was open. Pantalaimon had escaped.

  Bonneville turned to the CCD men in a fury that wasn’t in the least assumed. Blood flowing thickly over his mouth and chin, nearly blind with pain, he denounced them and the police for their boneheaded stupidity and criminal carelessness, and threatened them with the wrath of the entire Magisterium in this life, and the certainty of hell in the next.

  It was a fine performance. He certainly thought so himself a few minutes later, as he sat in a comfortable chair under the hands of the police doctor, and shortly afterwards stalked away towards the railway station, with his possessions intact and his pride in full flower. The bandage covering his nose was the badge of an honorable wound; the loss of Pantalaimon irrelevant. He had a new target now, one so interesting and so unexpected that it was like a revelation, an epiphany.

  It rang in his head like the tolling of a bell: the man who had killed his father, this large man with red hair, this man called Matthew Polstead.

  Lyra arrived in Constantinople tired and anxious, completely unable to put out of her mind what had happened in Prague, or to understand what it meant. Her feeling of certainty and purpose had been brief and evanescent. She felt as if she had been used by some hidden power, as if all the events on her journey, and for long before, had been arranged with meticulous care with only one purpose: and it was a purpose that had nothing to do with her, and one that she’d never understand, even if she knew what it was. Or was it the beginning of madness to think like that?

  The only thing she could find any satisfaction in was the matter of being inconspicuous. She had a mental checklist: Where am I looking? How am I moving? Am I showing any feeling? She went through everything that might draw attention to her and suppressed it. As a result, she could now walk along a crowded street and hardly be noticed. It gave her a rueful kind of amusement to recall how, only a few months ago, she’d sometimes attracted looks of admiration or desire, and had played at ignoring them haughtily while enjoying the power they gave her. Now what she had to feel pleased with was being ignored.

  The much harder thing was being without Pantalaimon.

  She was aware of a few things concerning her dæmon. He was not in danger; he was traveling; he was intent on something; but that was all. And although she picked up the alethiometer several times, in the solitude of her hotel room or railway sleeping compartment, she soon put it away again. The sickness brought on by the new method was unbearable. She did try the classic method, brooding over the images, trying to recall a dozen or so meanings for each one and composing a question; but the answers she got were enigmatic or contradictory or simply opaque. Occasionally she felt a spasm of passionate fear, or of pity, or of anger, and knew he was feeling those things too; but she had no idea why. All she could do was hope, and she kept trying to do that, in spite of the fear and the loneliness.

  She spent some time writing to Malcolm. She told him about everything she saw and heard. She related the events involving the burning Dutchman and the alchemist, and told him the advice Agrippa had given her about her journey, and posted the letters to Malcolm care of the Trout in Godstow; but whether he’d ever get them, and whether she’d ever receive an answer, she had no idea.

  She felt so alone. She felt as if her life had gone into a kind of hibernation, as if part of her was asleep and maybe dreaming the rest. She let herself be passive; she accepted whatever happened. When she found that the ferry to Smyrna had just left and that she’d have to wait two days for another, she heard the news calmly, found a cheap hotel, and wandered about the ancient city of Constantinople modestly and unobtrusively, looking at oratories and museums and the great merchants’ houses along the waterfront, sitting in one of the many parks under trees that were still bare. She bought an English-language newspaper and read every word of every article, lingering over coffee in a warm and smoky café near the vast Oratory of the Holy Wisdom, which rose like a giant bubble of stone above the buildings around it.

  The newspaper told her of attacks on property in the countryside, of rose gardens set aflame or dug up, of workers and their families slaughtered when they tried to defend their workplaces. There had been a spate of such attacks as far south as Antalya and as far east as Yerevan. No one knew what had set off this frenzy of destruction. The attackers were known simply as “the men from the mountains,” and according to some reports these men demanded that their victims spurn their religion and take up a new one, but no one had any details about that. Other reports said nothing about religion, and only mentioned the looting and the destruction, and the inexplicable hatred expressed by the attackers towards roses and their scent.

  Other news in the paper concerned the forthcoming celebrations in honor of the Patriarch, St. Simeon Papadakis, on his election as President of the new High Council of the Magisterium. There was going to be a lengthy service in the Oratory of the Holy Wisdom, in the presence of over a hundred senior clergy from all over the province, followed by a procession through the city. The celebrations would include the consecration of a new icon of the Virgin Mary, which had appeared miraculously at the tomb of a fourth-century martyr, accompanied by various signs attesting to its supernatural origin, such as blossom on a honeysuckle growing over the grave, various sweet odors, the sound of heavenly flutes, and so on. Sweet odors, thought Lyra….To the men from the mountains, such things were anathema. To the established hierarchy of the Church, they were the mark of heavenly favor. If the religious world was going to split, it might well be over a small thing like the scent of a rose.

  Malcolm would know why it was all happening. She’d write to him about it in her next letter. Oh, but it was so lonely.

  She made herself read more about this new High Council. The celebrations in honor of the Patriarch were happening that very morning—her second day in Constantinople—and she decided to go along and watch. It would be something to do.

  * * *

  * * *

  As a matter of fact, while Lyra was thinking about him, St. Simeon was stirring uneasily in his marble bath and thinking about the mystery of the Incarnation. His dæmon, the sweet-voiced Philomela, nodded beside him on her golden perch. The currents that the saint’s body set up in the scummy water were uncomfortably cold now, and he called out, “Boy! Boy!”

  He could never remember the name of any of the boys, but it didn’t matter. All boys were very similar. However, the feet he heard coming in answer to his call were not a boy’s feet, being heavy and slow: a shuffle instead of a light, darting step.

  “Who is that? Who is that?” said the saint, and his dæmon answered, “It is Kaloumdjian.”

  The Patriarch extended a quivering hand and peered up at the bulky form of the eunuch. “Help me up, Kaloumdjian,” he said. “Where is the boy?”

  “His master the devil came last night and took him away. How should I know where the boy is? There is no boy to be found.”

  In the dim lantern light, it was hard to see Kaloumdjian except as a gigantic shadow, but his delicate, creamy voice was unmistakable. The saint felt himself lifted and placed dripping on the wooden du
ck board, and a moment later swathed roughly in clean heavy cotton.

  “Not so rough,” he said. “I’ll fall over if you shake me like that. The boy would be gentle. Where has he gone?”

  “No one knows, Your Blessedness,” said the eunuch, toweling less vigorously. “There will be another very soon.”

  “Yes, no doubt. And the water, you know, it gets cold more quickly than it used to. I am sure there is something wrong. The oil—do you think the oil could make it lose heat? A new kind of oil, perhaps? It doesn’t smell the same. It has a harsher quality. If the chemical composition is slightly different, you see, that might allow the molecules of heat to pass through the film of oil more easily. I am sure there is something like that going on. I must ask St. Mehmet to look into it.”

  Behind him, Kaloumdjian’s goose dæmon dipped her head towards the bath and smelled the water. The eunuch said, “The oil is not the same, because the merchant who used to supply it has been summoned to the Court of the Three Windows.”

  “You don’t say? The scoundrel! What has he done?”

  “Fallen into debt, Your Blessedness. As a result, he could obtain no more credit from the suppliers, and furthermore they too are in trouble, and likely to go out of business.”

  “But what about my rose oil?”

  “This is an inferior product from Morocco. It is all we could get.”

  St. Simeon made a small noise expressive of disappointment. Kaloumdjian knelt heavily to towel the holy shanks while the Patriarch’s frail hand rested on his shoulder.

  “No boys, no oil…What is the world coming to, Kaloumdjian? I hope the boy is safe, at any rate. I was fond of the little wretch. Do they just run away, do you think?”

  “Who can tell, Your Blessedness? Perhaps he thought they were going to make a eunuch of him.”

  “I suppose he might have thought that. Poor little fellow. I hope he is safe. Now, Kaloumdjian, you will make sure that the water is sold cheaply. It would be wrong to let people think they were getting the same quality as before. I am quite firm about this.”

  The saint’s bathwater, being sanctified by contact with his person, was bottled and sold at the palace gates. St. Simeon was about the only man in the palace who did not know that the officials took a homeopathic attitude to its quality, and diluted it several-fold. But saints were not expected to be worldly about such matters; a previous Patriarch, expressing surprise when he discovered the gallons and gallons on sale, had to be assured that the holiness of the water caused it to expand in size, and that a number of bottles routinely burst from sacramental exuberance.

  “My drawers, Kaloumdjian, if you please,” said the Patriarch, and still holding on to the soft bulk of the eunuch’s shoulder, he stepped shakily into the silk garment before letting the eunuch fasten the ribbon around his little potbelly. In the process, Kaloumdjian took a close look at the suppurating ulcer on the saint’s right shin, which must have been causing him abominable pain, but about which he said not a word. It will kill him in six months, Kaloumdjian thought, as he eased the old man’s arms tenderly into the sleeves of his undervest and helped his damp and bony feet into the slippers.

  St. Simeon, for his part, was grateful after all that it was Kaloumdjian and not the boy who was dressing him, because the boy had no idea which way round to hold the cope, for example, and had once done up thirty-five of the buttons on the undervest before discovering that the last one lacked a hole to go into, and had to undo them all and start again; so the saint had to pay attention and direct the operation, which was trying. Kaloumdjian required no guidance, and the Patriarch was able to withdraw his attention and attempt once again to think about the mystery of the Incarnation, which was trying in a different way.

  So he stopped thinking about that and said, “Kaloumdjian—tell me: these men from the mountains of whom we hear so much talk—do you know anything about them?”

  “I have a distant cousin in Yerevan, Your Blessedness, whose family were put to the sword by a band of men who wanted them to abjure the Holy Church and the doctrine of the Incarnation in particular.”

  “But that is appalling,” the old man said. “And have they been found and punished, these heretics?”

  “Alas, no.”

  “His whole family?”

  “Almost all, except for my cousin Sarkisian, who was at the market when it happened, and for a young girl, a servant, who saved herself by promising to believe what the men told her to.”

  “The poor child!” The saint’s dim eyes filled with tears for the little girl, who would now go to hell. “Do you suppose, Kaloumdjian, that these men from the mountains have made away with the boy?”

  “Perfectly possible, Your Blessedness. Take my hand now.”

  The saint obediently took the great soft hand he saw in front of him, and with Kaloumdjian’s help, he braced himself against the weight of the little nightingale dæmon who struggled to his shoulder, though in truth she weighed barely more than a handful of petals. With Kaloumdjian’s goose waddling ahead, they made their way out of the bath chamber and into the vestry, where the Patriarch’s outer robes were being prepared. The process was not so much a putting-on as a climbing-in, and indeed the outermost garment was constructed not unlike a tepee or yurt, with a frame of sticks and laths that allowed the saint to rest against it during the rigors of the long liturgy. There was even a vessel skillfully placed to collect the saint’s urine, so that nothing need interrupt the service or trouble the Patriarch, who like many elderly men felt his bladder behaving more and more capriciously.

  Kaloumdjian delivered the Patriarch into the care of the three subdeacons. St. Simeon let go of his hand with some reluctance and said, “Thank you, dear Kaloumdjian. Please see if you can find out more about, you know, the matters we discussed. I would be so grateful.”

  The eunuch saw what the Patriarch didn’t, the little Brother Mercurius’s bright, inquisitive, sympathetic glance flicker at once from under his charmingly tousled hair, flick to the Patriarch’s face, and then to the eunuch’s, and then back to the Patriarch. Kaloumdjian’s heavy eyes rested on the subdeacon for a second longer than Brother Mercurius found comfortable, but the young man understood their message and folded his hands as he turned his modest attention to the saint.

  The old man said the first prayer, and on went the cassock. Brother Mercurius was swift to kneel, his hands fluttering at the buttons and stroking the heavy silk over the Patriarch’s legs, as if to adjust the hang, but he watched for the helpless flinch as his hand brushed the right shin. Worse than last time! That was worth knowing.

  Another prayer as the skullcap went on, another for the hood, another for the surplice, another for the stole, another for the girdle, one each for the sleeves, left and right, that covered the plain arms of the surplice. Each of these vestments was embroidered so thickly with gold and jewels that the Patriarch was becoming more like a piece of ancient mosaic than a human being, and their combined weight was making the old man tremble.

  “Soon, Holy One, soon,” murmured Brother Mercurius, and knelt again to adjust the front of the lower garments as the great enfolding cope, with its substructure of tough struts and crosspieces, was maneuvered into place around the saint’s shoulders.

  “Brother,” said the senior subdeacon warningly, and Brother Mercurius modestly ducked aside, managing to imply both a humble desire to serve and a rueful self-deprecation: how silly to forget that this was Brother Ignatius’s job! His little jerboa dæmon skipped out of the way helpfully.

  “Brother…Brother…young Brother,” said the old man, “please be good enough to trim the lamps in the corridor to the council room. Twice now I have nearly missed my step along there.”

  “Of course, Your Blessedness,” said Brother Mercurius, bowing to conceal his disappointment. Now it would be the other two who supported the saint on his entrance.

 
The subdeacon slipped out of the vestry and found the eunuch waiting in the corridor—waiting for something, or just standing, but in either case disconcerting. That face, a great moon of raw pastry! Brother Mercurius offered him a quick, modest smile and set about adjusting the lamps, which needed no adjusting, as he well knew. Those at the further end, close to the council chamber, were mounted a little higher than the rest, which allowed Brother Mercurius to make much of the awkwardness of dealing with them while listening for any scraps of conversation he might hear through the door.

  But they were cunning, these bishops and archbishops and archimandrites. Two thousand years of subtle statesmanship are not easily outfoxed by a pretty young subdeacon with a winning manner. Behind the door outside which Brother Mercurius was disingenuously lingering, three prelates from Syria were discussing raisins. Their fellow synod members, all one hundred and forty-seven of them, were disposed around the council chamber, engaging in similarly meaningless small talk. They would not start their business until the emptying bell rang to signify that everyone but themselves had been escorted from the palace.

  Hearing the doors from the vestry open, Brother Mercurius turned away from the lamp he’d been fiddling with and smoothed his hands down over his slim flanks before standing modestly to one side, ready to dart forward and open the door to the great chamber.

  “Back, fool, back,” came a whisper in a well-known voice. The Archdeacon Phalarion, who had appeared from the vestry, was the supervisor of ritual, and the office of opening the door was very firmly his. Brother Mercurius bowed and tiptoed back along the corridor, keeping so close to the wall that he was moving sideways rather than forward. It was because he was doing that, and because he was about halfway along, that he had the best view of all of them of what happened next.