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

by Philip Pullman

  She pointed to the man who had her stick. She had to support her right hand with her left wrist to do it.

  “Give it to me,” she said. “Give it back to me.”

  Her voice was thick with tears and shaking so much, she could hardly articulate the words. The man tried to shove the stick down beside him on the seat. With the last of her strength she flung herself at him and tore at his face, his hands, with nails and teeth and fury, but found herself lifted away effortlessly and held up in the air by the sergeant’s left arm.

  He snapped the fingers of his right hand at the soldier, whose eyes and nose were now bleeding thickly. The man handed up the stick. The sergeant put it in his pocket and then barked an order. Another soldier picked up Lyra’s rucksack and handed it to him.

  Another harsh sentence or two, and he carried the struggling Lyra out into the corridor and put her down. He jerked his head, indicating that she should follow him, although she could barely stand; and then he shoved his way forcefully through the men who had come out into the corridor to see what was going on. Lyra had to go with him: he had the rucksack and the stick. Shaking so violently she almost lost her balance, feeling the blood trickling past her mouth and the wetness on her legs, she did her best to follow.

  Every soldier’s eyes were staring, taking in every detail, greedy to know more. She stumbled through the midst of them, trying to hold herself steady, simply that; once the train lurched over a poor section of track, and she almost fell, but a hand came out to hold her upright; she pulled her arm away and moved on.

  The sergeant was waiting outside the last compartment in the next carriage. Standing in the doorway was the officer—major, captain, whatever he was; and as she reached him, the sergeant handed her the rucksack, which had never seemed so heavy.

  “Thank you,” she managed to say in French. “And my stick.”

  The officer asked the sergeant something. The sergeant took the stick out of his pocket and gave it to the officer, who looked at it curiously. The sergeant was explaining what had happened.

  “My stick,” Lyra said, steadying her voice as much as she could. “Are you going to leave me entirely defenseless? Let me have it back.”

  “You have already put three of my men out of action, I am told.”

  “Am I supposed to let myself be raped? I’d kill them all first.”

  She had never felt so ferocious and so weak. She was really on the point of falling to the floor, and at the same time, she was ready to tear out his throat to get her stick back.

  The sergeant said something. The officer replied, and nodded, and reluctantly handed Lyra back the stick. She tried to open her rucksack, and failed, and tried again, and failed, and began to cry, to her immense anger. The officer stood aside and indicated the seat behind him. The compartment was empty apart from his valise, a multitude of papers spread out on the opposite seat, and a half-finished meal of bread and cold meat.

  Lyra sat down and tried a third time to open her rucksack. This time she managed, though it made her realize how damaged her fingers were: torn nails, swollen joints, a wrenched thumb. She wiped her eyes with the heel of her left hand, took several deep breaths, gritted her teeth—at which point she found one of them broken, and explored it with her tongue. Half of it was missing. Too bad, she thought. She gathered her resolution and worked at the rucksack buckles with her painful fingers. Her left hand was so sore and weak and swollen, she touched the back of it tenderly, and thought she felt a broken bone. Finally she got the rucksack open and found the alethiometer, the pack of cards, and her little purse of money. She slipped the stick down inside and buckled it again, and then leant back and closed her eyes.

  Every part of her seemed to hurt. She could still feel those hands tearing at her underclothes, and wanted to wash more than anything else in the world.

  Oh, Pan, she thought. Are you satisfied now?

  The officer had been speaking quietly to the sergeant. She heard him reply and then move away, and the officer came back into the compartment and slid the door shut.

  “Are you in pain?” he said.

  She opened her eyes. One of them seemed to prefer to stay closed. She touched the flesh around it with her right hand: it was already swollen.

  She looked at the young man. It wasn’t really necessary to say anything. She held out her trembling hands to show him the damage.

  “If you will permit me,” he said.

  He sat down opposite and opened a little clothbound case. His hawk dæmon jumped down and looked as he moved the contents around: rolls of bandage, a little pot of salve, bottles of pills, small envelopes probably containing powders of one sort or another. He unfolded a clean cloth and uncapped a brown bottle to sprinkle some liquid on it.

  “Rosewater,” he said.

  He handed it to her and indicated that she might clean her face with it. It was marvelously cool and soothing, and she held it over her eyes until she felt able to look at him again. She lowered the cloth, and he sprinkled it with more rosewater.

  “I thought rosewater was difficult to obtain,” she said.

  “Not for officers.”

  “I see. Well, thank you.”

  There was a mirror over the seat opposite, and she stood up shakily and looked at herself, almost recoiling when she saw the mess of blood over her mouth and nose. Her right eye was nearly closed.

  Invisible, she thought bitterly, and set to work cleaning herself. More applications of rosewater helped, and so did the salve in the little pot, stinging at first and then diffusing a deep warmth, along with a strong herbal smell.

  Finally she sat down and took a deep breath. It was her left hand, she thought, that hurt the most. She touched it tentatively again. The officer was watching.

  “I may?” he said, and took the hand with great gentleness. His own hands were soft and silky. He moved it to and fro, just a little this way and that, but it hurt her too much to let him continue. “Possibly a broken bone,” he said. “Well, if you will ride on a train with soldiers, you must expect a little discomfort.”

  “I have a ticket that permits me to ride on this train. It does not say that the journey includes assault and attempted rape. Do you expect your soldiers to behave like that?”

  “No, and they will be punished. But, I repeat, it is not wise for a young woman to travel alone in the present circumstances. May I offer you a little eau de vie as a restorative?”

  She nodded. The movement hurt her head. He poured the spirit into a little metal cup, and she sipped it carefully. It tasted like the best brantwijn.

  “When does the train arrive in Seleukeia?” she said.

  “In two hours.”

  She closed her eyes. Hugging the rucksack close to her breast, she let herself sink into a doze.

  * * *

  * * *

  Only a few seconds later, it seemed, the officer was squeezing her shoulder. Her heavy consciousness was reluctant to leave the slumber behind; she wanted to sleep for a month.

  But outside the window she could see the lights of a city, and the train was slowing down. The officer was gathering his papers together, and then he looked up as the door slid open.

  The sergeant said something, perhaps reporting that the men were ready to leave the train. He looked at Lyra as if assessing the damage. She looked down: time to be modest again, inconspicuous, dowdy. But inconspicuous, she thought, with a black eye and a broken hand and cuts and scratches all over? And no dæmon?

  “Mademoiselle,” said the officer. She looked up and saw the sergeant was holding something out to her. It was her spectacles, with one lens broken and one arm missing. She took them without a word.

  “Come with me,” said the officer, “and I shall help you leave the train first.”

  She didn’t argue. She stood up, with some difficulty and pain, and he helped her
lift the rucksack to her shoulders.

  The sergeant stood aside to let them out of the compartment. All along the train, as far as she could tell, soldiers were gathering their weapons and possessions and shoving their way into the corridor, but the officer called out, and the nearest ones moved back out of the way as Lyra followed him towards the door.

  “A little advice,” he said as he helped her stiffly down onto the platform.

  “Well?”

  “Wear a niqab,” he said. “It will help.”

  “I see. Thank you. It would be better for everyone if you disciplined your soldiers.”

  “You have done that yourself.”

  “I should not have had to.”

  “Nevertheless, you defended yourself. They will think twice before behaving badly again.”

  “No, they won’t. You know that.”

  “You are probably right. They are trash. Seleukeia is a difficult city. Do not stay here long. There will be more soldiers arriving by other trains. Better move on soon.”

  Then he turned away and left her alone. His men watched her from the train windows as she limped along the platform towards the ticket hall. She had no idea what she could do next.

  She walked away from the station and tried to look as if she had every right to be there and knew where she was going. Every part of her body hurt, every part felt tainted by the hands that had thrust their way to her flesh. Her rucksack was a hideous burden: how had it become so heavy? She longed for sleep.

  It was the dead of night. The streets were empty of people, poorly lit, and hard. There were no trees, no bushes, no grass; no little parks or squares with a patch of greenery; nothing but hard pavements and stone-built warehouses, or banks, or office buildings; nowhere to lay her head. The place felt so quiet, she thought that there must be a curfew, and that if she were found wandering, she would be arrested. She almost longed for that: she could sleep in a cell. There was no sign of a hotel, not even a single café, nowhere that might be intended for the refreshment or repose of travelers. This place made an outcast of every visitor.

  Only once did she hear any sign of life, and that was when, nearly crazed with exhaustion and at the limit of pain and unhappiness, she risked knocking at a door. Her intention was to throw herself on the mercy of whoever lived there, in the hope that their culture had a tradition of hospitality to strangers, in the face of all the evidence to the contrary. Her timid knock, with bruised knuckles, awoke only a man, clearly a night watchman or security guard of some kind, on duty just inside. His dæmon woke him with a frenzy of howling, and he snarled a curse at whoever had dared to knock. His voice was full of hate and fear. Lyra hurried away. She could hear him cursing and shouting for a long time.

  Finally she could go no further. She simply crumpled at a spot shaded from the glare of the nearest streetlight by the corner of a building, and curled up around the rucksack, and fell asleep. She was too hurt and tired even to sob; the tears flowed from her eyes with no impulsion; she felt them cold on her cheek, her eyelids, her temple, and did nothing to stanch them; and then she was asleep.

  * * *

  * * *

  Someone was shaking her shoulder. A low voice was whispering anxious, urgent words that she couldn’t understand. Everything hurt.

  It was still dark. When she opened her eyes, there was no light to dazzle her. The man leaning over her was dark too, a deeper darkness, and he stank terribly. There was another figure nearby; she could see his face, pale against the night, looking this way and that.

  The first man stood back as she struggled to sit up on the cold stone and to loosen her limbs a little. It was so cold. They had a cart, and a long-handled shovel.

  More words, in that urgent low voice. They were gesturing: get up, stand, get up. The stench was sickening. As she painfully moved her limbs and forced herself up, she understood: these were night-soil men, making their rounds, emptying the city’s latrines and cesspits: an occupation for the lowest and most despised class of people.

  She tried French: “What do you want? I am lost. Where are we?”

  But they could only speak their own language, which sounded neither Anatolian nor Arabic. At any rate, she couldn’t understand, except to see that they were anxious, and anxious for her.

  But she was so cold, so full of pain. She tried to stop shivering. The first man said something else, which seemed to be: Follow, come with us.

  Even burdened with their stinking cart, they moved faster than she could, and she caught some of their anxiety when they had to slow down for her. They kept looking all around. Finally they came to an alley between two imposing stone buildings, and turned into it.

  There was just the very faintest hint in the sky that the night was going; nothing as much as light, just a slight dilution of the dark. She understood: they had to finish their rounds by daylight, and they wanted her out of sight before then.

  The alley was very narrow, and the buildings crowded close above. She was getting used to the smell—no, she wasn’t; she never would; but it was no worse than it had been. One of the men lifted the latch on a low door and opened it quietly. Instantly a female voice inside, heavy with sleep but awake at once, uttered a short fear-filled question.

  The man replied, equally briefly, and stood aside to indicate Lyra. A woman’s face emerged dimly from the gloom, strained, fearful, prematurely aged.

  Lyra stepped forward so as to be more clearly visible. The woman scanned her for a moment and then reached out a hand to take hers. It was the broken hand, and Lyra couldn’t help a cry of pain. The woman shrank back into the darkness, and the man spoke urgently again.

  “Sorry, sorry,” said Lyra quietly, though she felt like howling with agony. She could feel that the hand was swollen and hot.

  The woman emerged a second time and beckoned, taking care not to touch. Lyra turned to express her thanks somehow, but the men were already hastening away with their stinking cart.

  She stepped forward carefully, ducking under the low lintel. The woman shut the door, and total darkness enveloped them; but Lyra heard a rustling movement, and then the woman struck a match and lit the wick of a little oil lamp. The room smelled of nothing but sleep and cooked food. In the yellow glow Lyra could see that her hostess was very thin, and that she was younger than she’d seemed.

  The woman indicated the bed, or rather a mattress heaped with various coverings: it was the only place to sit down apart from the floor. Lyra put her rucksack down and sat on the corner of the mattress, saying, “Thank you—it’s very kind—merci, merci—”

  It was only then that she noticed that she hadn’t seen the woman’s dæmon. And with a little jolt she realized that the men had no dæmons either.

  She said, “Dæmon?” and tried to indicate her own lack of one, but the woman clearly didn’t understand, and Lyra just shook her head. There was nothing else she could do. Perhaps these poor people had to do the job they did because, without having dæmons, they were less than human in the eyes of their society. They were the lowest caste there was. And she belonged with them.

  The woman was watching her. Lyra pointed to her own breast and said, “Lyra.”

  “Ah,” said the woman, and pointed to herself, saying, “Yozdah.”

  “Yozdah,” repeated Lyra carefully.

  The woman said, “Ly-ah.”

  “Lyra.”

  “Ly-ra.”

  “That’s it.”

  They both smiled. Yozdah indicated that Lyra could lie down, and Lyra did, and then she felt a heavy rug being pulled up over her, and at once she fell asleep, for the third time that night.

  * * *

  * * *

  She woke up to the sound of low voices. Daylight was filtering in through a bead curtain across the doorway, but it was gray, with no direct sunshine in it. Lyra opened her eyes to see the woman Yozdah a
nd a man, presumably one of the two who had brought her there, sitting on the floor and eating from a large bowl between them. She lay and watched them before moving; the man looked younger than the woman, and his clothes were shabby, but she couldn’t detect any of the stink from his profession.

  She sat up carefully and found her left hand too painful even to open fully. The woman saw her move and said something to the man, who turned to look and then stood up.