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

by Philip Pullman

The princess rang a little silver bell on the table beside her. “When did you arrive in Smyrna?” she said.

  “This afternoon. I came straight from the port. Princess, why did your dæmon leave you?”

  The old lady held up a hand. She heard the door open. When the butler came in, she said, “Tea, Hamid,” and he nodded deeply and went out again.

  The princess listened. When she was satisfied that the servant had gone, she turned back to Lyra.

  “He was a particularly beautiful black cat. He left me because he fell in love with someone else. He became utterly fascinated by a dancer, a nightclub dancer.”

  Her tone made it clear that she meant “someone little better than a prostitute.” Lyra was silent, intrigued.

  “You will be wondering,” the princess went on, “how he could possibly have come to know such a woman. My social circle and hers would normally never touch. But I had a brother whose physical appetites were insatiable, and whose gift for making unsuitable alliances caused the family a great deal of embarrassment. He introduced the woman one evening into a soirée. He was perfectly open about it—‘This young woman is my mistress,’ he would say when meeting people—and to do her justice, she was remarkably pretty and graceful. I could feel her attractiveness myself, and my poor dæmon became besotted at once.”

  “Your poor dæmon?”

  “Oh, I felt sorry for him. To be so abjectly dependent on a woman of that kind. It was a sort of madness. I felt every little quiver of it, of course, and I tried to speak to him about it, but he refused to listen, refused to control his feelings. Well, I daresay they were beyond control.”

  “What about her dæmon?”

  “He was a marmoset or something of that kind. Lazy, incurious, vain. Quite indifferent to what was going on. My brother persisted in bringing the girl to the opera, to race meetings, to receptions, and whenever I was present too, my dæmon’s obsession would force me to seek her company and experience his passion for her. It became unendurable. He would get as close as he could and talk quietly, whispering into her ear, while her own dæmon preened and yawned nearby. In the end—”

  The door opened, and she stopped while the butler came in with a tray, which he set on the little table to her right. He bowed and left, and she completed the sentence:

  “In the end it became notorious. Everyone knew about it. I have never been so unhappy.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Nineteen, twenty, I can’t remember. It would have been the natural thing for me to accept the attentions of any one of a number of young men my parents thought suitable, and to marry, and so on. But this absurdity made that impossible. I became an object of ridicule.”

  She spoke calmly, as if the young woman who had been her twenty-year-old self were someone else entirely. She turned to the tray and poured tea into two pretty cups.

  “How did it end?” said Lyra.

  “I begged, I pleaded with him, but he was lost in his madness. I said we would both die if he didn’t stop, but nothing would make him stay with me. I even—and this will show you how abject a human being can become—I even left my parents and went to live with her myself.”

  “The dancer? You went to live with her?”

  “It was reckless. I pretended to be in love with her, and she was happy enough with that. I lived with her, I forsook all my family responsibilities, I shared her bed, her table, her wretched occupation, because I could dance too, I was graceful, I was no less pretty than she was. She had a little talent, but no more than that. Together we attracted a bigger audience; we had a great success. We danced in every nightclub from Alexandria to Athens. We were offered a fortune to dance in Morocco, and an even greater one to dance in South America. But my dæmon wanted more, always more. He wanted to be hers and not mine. Her dæmon became a slave of poppy, which didn’t affect her; but she turned to my dæmon, and when he felt his own obsession returned, I knew it was time for me to leave.

  “I was ready to die. One night—we were in Beirut—one night I tore myself away from them. He was clinging to her, she was holding him tight, crushing him to her breast, all three of us were sobbing with pain and terror; but I wouldn’t stop. I wrenched myself apart from him and left him there with her. From that day to this, I have been alone. I came back to my family, who regarded it all as a mildly amusing addition to the family legends. I could not marry, of course, in my solitary state; no one would have had me.”

  Lyra sipped her tea. It was delicately scented with jasmine.

  “When did you meet my father?”

  “It was a year before all that.”

  Lyra thought, But that can’t be true. He wouldn’t have been old enough.

  “What do you remember most about your time with the dancer?” she said.

  “Oh, that’s easy. The hot nights, our narrow bed, her slender body, the scent of her flesh. That will never leave me.”

  “And were you in love with her, or were you still pretending?”

  “You can pretend and pretend that sort of thing until it comes true, you know.” The old woman’s face was calm and deeply lined. Her eyes were very small amid the wrinkles, but bright and still.

  “And your dæmon…”

  “Never came back. She died, the dancer, oh, a long time ago. But he never came back to me. I think he might have gone to al-Khan al-Azraq.”

  “The Blue Hotel—is that…is it true, that story? About the ruined city where no one but dæmons can live?”

  “I believe so. Some of my visitors—people from Mr. Kubiček, I mean—have been on their way there. No one has come back, as far as I know.”

  Lyra’s mind was racing over deserts and mountains, to a ruined city stark and silent under moonlight.

  “Now I have told you my story,” said the princess, “you must tell me something remarkable. What have you seen on your journey that might interest an old lady without a dæmon?”

  Lyra said, “When I was in Prague…It seems a long time ago, but it was really only last week. I got off the train, and before I’d even tried to find out about the timetable, Mr. Kubiček spoke to me. It was as if he’d been waiting for me, and as it turned out, he had….”

  She recounted the entire story of the furnace man and was rewarded by utter stillness and concentration. When she finished, the princess sighed with satisfaction.

  “And he was the magician’s son?” she said.

  “Well, so Agrippa claimed. Cornelis and Dinessa…”

  “It was a cruel game to play with him and his dæmon.”

  “I thought so too. But he was determined to find Dinessa, and he did.”

  “Love…,” said the princess.

  “Tell me more about the Blue Hotel,” said Lyra. “Or what’s the other name—Madinat al-Qamar—the City of the Moon. Why is it called that?”

  “Oh, no one knows. It’s a very old idea. My nurse used to tell me ghost stories when I was very young, and it was she who told me about the Blue Hotel. Where are you going next?”

  “Aleppo.”

  “Then I shall give you the names of some people there who are in our condition. One of them might know a little about it. Of course, it is a subject of horror and superstitious dread. Not to be spoken of in front of people who are entire, and easily frightened.”

  “Of course,” said Lyra, and sipped the last of her tea. “This is such a lovely room. Do you play the piano?”

  “It plays by itself,” said the princess. “Go and pull out the ivory knob on the right of the keyboard.”

  Lyra did, and at once a mechanism inside the piano began playing the keys, which were depressed as if by an invisible pair of hands. The sounds of a sentimental love song of fifty years before filled the room. Lyra was delighted, and smiled at the princess.

  “ ‘L’Heure Bleue,’ ” the old lady said. “We used to
dance to that.”

  Lyra looked back at the piano, at the multitude of silver-framed photograms, and suddenly fell still.

  “What is it?” said the princess, startled by Lyra’s expression.

  Lyra pressed in the knob to stop the music, and picked up one of the photograms with a trembling hand. “Who is this?” she said.

  “Bring it to me.”

  The old lady took it and peered through a pair of pince-nez. “It is my nephew, Olivier,” she said. “My great-nephew, I suppose I should say. Do you know him? Olivier Bonneville?”

  “Yes. That is, I haven’t actually met him, but he…he thinks I’ve got something that belongs to him, and he’s been trying to get it back.”

  “And have you?”

  “It belongs to me. My father…my father gave it to me. Monsieur Bonneville is wrong, but he won’t accept it.”

  “Always a very stubborn boy. His father was a ne’er-do-well who probably died a violent death. Olivier is related to me on his mother’s side, and she too is dead. He has expectations of me. If it were not for those, I should certainly never see him.”

  “Is he in Smyrna now?”

  “I hope not. If he comes here, I shall say nothing about you, and if he asks, I shall lie through my teeth. I am a good liar.”

  “I used to be good at lying when I was young,” Lyra said. She was feeling a little calmer. “These days I find it more difficult.”

  “Come here and kiss me, my dear,” said the princess, and held out her hands.

  Lyra was glad to do so. The old lady’s papery cheeks smelled of lavender.

  “If you do go to al-Khan al-Azraq,” said the princess, “and if it really is a ruined city inhabited by dæmons, and if you see a black cat, and if his name is Phanourios, tell him that I would be glad to see him again before I die, but that he had better not leave it too long.”

  “I shall.”

  “I hope that your quest goes well, and that you solve your mystery. There is a young man involved, I take it.”

  Lyra blinked. The princess must have meant Malcolm. Of course, he was young to her. “Well,” she said, “not…”

  “No, no, not my great-nephew, of course not. Now, if you come this way again, do not fail to come and see me, or I shall haunt you.”

  She turned to a little ormolu desk beside her, took out a piece of paper and a fountain pen, and wrote for a minute or so. Then she blew on the paper to dry the ink and folded it in half before giving it to Lyra.

  “One of these people will be sure to help,” she said.

  “Goodbye. I’m very grateful indeed. I shan’t forget the things you’ve told me.”

  Lyra left and closed the door quietly. The butler was waiting in the hall to see her out. When she left the garden, she walked a little further until she was out of sight of the house, and then leant against a wall to recover her composure.

  She had been nearly as shocked as if Bonneville had come into the room himself. He had the power to disturb her, even as a picture. This had all the quality of a warning from the secret commonwealth. It said, “Be on your guard! You never know when he’ll appear.”

  Even in Smyrna, she thought, he might find her.

  By the evening of the day after his encounter with Olivier Bonneville, Malcolm was in a city three hundred miles south of Constantinople. It was the capital of the rose-growing district in the ancient Roman province of Pisidia, and he’d gone there to meet an English journalist called Bryan Parker, a foreign correspondent who specialized in security matters, whom he knew from Oakley Street business. Malcolm told him a little about the journey to Central Asia, and what had sent him on that quest, and Parker instantly said, “Then you must come with me to a public meeting this evening. I think we can show you something interesting.”

  As they walked to the theater where the meeting was due to take place, Parker explained that the rose growing and processing industry was a valuable part of the region’s economy, and that it was now under a great strain.

  “What’s the source of the problem?” said Malcolm as they went into the old theater.

  “A group of men—no one knows where they come from, but they’re always referred to as the men from the mountains. They’ve been burning rose gardens, attacking the growers, smashing their factories….The authorities can’t seem to do anything about it.”

  The auditorium was crowded already, but they found a couple of seats at the back. There was a large number of middle-aged or older men wearing respectable suits and ties, and Malcolm guessed them to be the owners of the gardens. There were several women too, with sun-browned faces; he’d gathered from Parker that the industry was intensely conservative, with differing roles played by men and women workers, so perhaps these were some of the women who gathered the flowers, while the men were involved in the distilling of the rosewater and the production of the oil. Apart from them, the other members of the audience seemed to be townspeople, some of them possibly journalists or local politicians.

  Men were coming and going on the stage, some engaged in erecting a large banner, which Parker said was that of the trade association sponsoring the meeting.

  Eventually every seat was taken, with people standing at the back and along the sides. It was too full to satisfy any fire regulation that Malcolm was familiar with, but perhaps they had a more relaxed attitude about such things here. There were armed policemen, though, at every entrance, looking nervous, Malcolm thought. If there was any trouble this evening, a lot of people could easily get hurt.

  Finally the organizers decided that they were ready to begin. A group of men in suits, carrying briefcases or bulging files of paper, came out onto the stage, and some of them were recognized and applauded or cheered by the audience. Four of them sat at a table, and a fifth came to a lectern and started to speak. At first, the loudspeakers howled with feedback, and he stood back, alarmed, and tapped the microphone, and a technician hurried out to adjust it. Malcolm was watching everything, looking around unobtrusively, and as the speaker began again, he noticed something: the armed police had quietly vanished. There’d been a man at each of the six exits. Now there were none.

  Parker was whispering a précis of what the speaker was saying. “Welcome to everyone—time of crisis in the industry—soon hear a report from each of the rose-growing regions. Now he’s reading out some figures—this man is not the greatest speaker in the world….Basically, production is down, turnover is down—now he’s introducing the first speaker—a grower from Baris.”

  There was a scatter of applause as the next speaker left the table and came to the lectern. Whereas the previous man had a bureaucratic manner and a soporific voice, this older man spoke with force and passion from the start.

  Parker said, “He’s telling what happened at his factory. Some men from the mountains came early one morning and gathered all his workers together and forced them at gunpoint to burn down the factory, feeding the flames with the precious oil. Then they brought a bulldozer and dug up every corner of his gardens and poured poison—I don’t know what sort—on the land so nothing could grow there again. Look—he’s weeping with passion—this was a place owned by his great-great-grandfather, cared for by his family for over a hundred years, employing all his children and thirty-eight workers….”

  Murmurs of anger, or sympathy, or agreement came from the audience. Clearly many others had had similar experiences.

  “He’s saying where was the police force? Where was the army? Where was any protection for honest citizens like him and his family? It seems his son was killed in a skirmish with these men, who simply vanished afterwards—no one was caught, no one punished. Where is the justice? That’s what he’s saying.”

  The man’s voice had risen to a pitch of rage and sorrow, and the audience joined in, clapping, shouting, stamping. Shaking his head, sobbing, the farmer left the lectern a
nd sat down.

  “Is there anyone from the government here?” Malcolm said.

  “The only politicians here are from the local administration. No national figures.”

  “What’s been the response of the national government so far?”

  “Oh, concern, of course—sympathy—stern warnings—but also a curious tone of caution, as if they’re too frightened to criticize these vandals.”

  “Curious, as you say.”

  “Yes, and it’s making people angry. This next speaker is from the wholesalers’ trade association….”

  He was another dull speaker. Parker whispered the gist of what he said, but Malcolm was more interested in what was going on in the auditorium.

  Parker noticed and said, “What? What are you looking at?”

  “Two things. Firstly the police have vanished, and secondly they’ve closed all the exits.”

  They were sitting at the right-hand end of the last row but one, which was close to the exit on that side. It had been a noise from there that had alerted Malcolm: it sounded like the sliding of a bolt.

  “You want me to go on translating this dull man?”

  “No. But be ready to smash that door open with me when the time comes.”

  “They open inwards.”

  “But they’re not heavy or strong. Something’s going to happen, Bryan. Thank you for suggesting this.”

  They didn’t have to wait long.

  Before the speaker had finished, three men appeared on the platform behind him, carrying guns: two had rifles, one had a pistol.

  The audience gasped and fell still, and the speaker turned to see what had happened, and grasped the lectern and went pale. Out of the corner of his eye, Malcolm caught a movement at the other side of the hall. He turned his head a little to look and saw a door on that side open briefly to let in a man with a rifle. Then it shut again. Malcolm turned all around: the same thing had happened at all six exits.

  The young man with the revolver had pushed the speaker aside and begun to talk himself. His eyes were pale, but his black hair and beard were long and thick. His voice was clear and light and harsh in quality, and full of calm conviction.