The Book of Dust, Volume 1

by Philip Pullman

  “It probably wouldn’t be for long,” said Malcolm.

  “No, it wouldn’t work. But you better tell ’em anyway, like your mum says. What’s for pudding?”

  “Stewed apple, and lucky to get it,” she said.

  After he’d dried the dishes, Malcolm said good night and went upstairs. There was no homework to do, so he took out the diagram Dr. Relf had given him, the one about the symbols on the alethiometer.

  “Be systematic about it,” said Asta.

  He didn’t think that deserved an answer, because he was always systematic. They pored over the diagram under the lamplight, and then he wrote down what each of the thirty-six pictures showed, or was intended to show; but they were so small that he couldn’t make them all out.

  “We’ll have to ask her,” said Asta.

  “Some of ’em are easy, though. Like the skull. And the hourglass.”

  But it was laborious work, and once he’d listed all the ones he could recognize and left gaps for the rest, he and Asta both felt they’d spent enough time with it.

  They didn’t feel like sleep, and they didn’t feel like reading, so Malcolm took the lamp and they wandered through the guest bedrooms in the old building to look across the river. His own bedroom faced the other way, so he couldn’t keep a regular eye on the priory, but the guest bedrooms were all on the river side because the view was better; and as there happened to be no one staying, he could go where he liked.

  In the highest bedroom, just below the eaves, he turned out the lamp and leaned on the windowsill.

  “Be an owl,” he whispered.

  “I am.”

  “Well, I can’t see you. Look over there.”

  “I am!”

  “Can you see anything?”

  There was a pause. Then she said, “One of the shutters is open.”

  “Which one?”

  “Top floor. Second one along.”

  Malcolm could only just make out the windows because the gate light was on the other side of the building, and the half moon shone on that side too; but finally he made it out.

  “We’ll have to tell Mr. Taphouse tomorrow,” he said.

  “The river’s noisy.”

  “Yeah…I wonder if they’ve been flooded before.”

  “In all the time the priory’s been there, they must have been.”

  “There’d be stories about it. There’d be a picture in a stained-glass window. I’ll ask Sister Fenella.”

  Malcolm wondered what single picture small and clear enough to fit on the dial of the alethiometer could symbolize a flood. Maybe it would be a mixture of two pictures, or maybe it was a lower-down meaning of another one altogether. He’d ask Dr. Relf. And he’d tell her what the gyptian had said about the flood—he must certainly do that. He thought of all those books that would be ruined if her house was flooded. Perhaps he could help take them upstairs.

  “What’s that?” said Asta.

  “What? Where?”

  Malcolm’s eyes were adjusted to the dark by this time, or as much as they ever would be, but he couldn’t see more than the stone building and the lighter shapes of the shuttered windows.

  “There! Just at the corner of the wall!”

  Malcolm widened his eyes and peered as hard as he could. Was there a movement? He wasn’t sure.

  But then he did see something at the base of the wall: just a shadow, slightly darker than the building. Something man-sized but not man-shaped—a massive bulk where the shoulders should have been and no head—and it moved with a crabwise shuffle….Malcolm felt a great drench of fear pour over his heart and down into his belly. And then the shadow vanished.

  “What was that?” he whispered.

  “A man?”

  “It didn’t have a head—”

  “A man carrying something?”

  Malcolm thought. It could have been.

  “What was he doing?” he said.

  “Going to close the shutter? Mr. Taphouse, maybe?”

  “What was he carrying?”

  “A bag of tools? I don’t know.”

  “I don’t think it was Mr. Taphouse.”

  “Nor do I, really,” said Asta. “It didn’t move like him.”

  “It’s the man—”

  “Gerard Bonneville.”

  “Yes. But what’s he carrying?”

  “Tools?”

  “Oh! I know! His dæmon!”

  If she lay across his shoulders, she would account for the bulk, and for the fact that they couldn’t see his head.

  “What’s he doing?” said Asta.

  “Is he going to climb up—”

  “Has he got a ladder?”

  “Can’t see.”

  They both peered again as fiercely as they could. If it was Bonneville, and he wanted to climb up to the window behind the shutter, he would have to carry his dæmon; he wouldn’t be able to leave her on the ground. Every roofer, tiler, and steeplejack had a dæmon who could fly, or one so small she could come up in a pocket.

  “We should tell Dad,” Malcolm said.

  “Only if we’re sure.”

  “We are, though, en’t we?”

  “Well…”

  Her reluctance was speaking for his.

  “He’s after Lyra,” he said. “He must be.”

  “D’you think he’s a murderer?”

  “Why would he want to kill a baby, though?”

  “I think he’s a murderer,” said Asta. “Even Alice was frightened of him.”

  “I thought she liked him.”

  “You don’t see much, do you? She was scared stiff as well. That’s why she asked us about him.”

  “Maybe he wants to take Lyra because he really is her father.”

  “Look—”

  The shadow appeared around the side of the building again. And then the man staggered, and the burden on his shoulders seemed to squirm away and fall to the ground; and then they heard a hideous high-pitched cry of laughter.

  The man and the dæmon seemed to be spinning around in a mad dance. That uncanny laughter tormented Malcolm’s ears; it sounded like a high hiccupping yell of agony.

  “He’s hitting her…,” whispered Asta, unable to believe it.

  When she said that, it became clear to Malcolm too. The man had a stick in his hand, and he had forced the hyena dæmon back against the wall. He was thrashing and thrashing her with fury, and she couldn’t escape.

  Malcolm and Asta were terrified. She turned into a cat and burrowed into his arms, and he hid his face in her fur. They had never imagined anything so vile.

  And the noise had been heard inside the priory. There was a dim light bobbing its way towards the window with the broken shutter, and then it was there, with a pale face beside it, trying to look directly down. Malcolm couldn’t tell which of the nuns it was, but then it was joined by another face, and the window swung open, into the dark and the cries of agonized laughter.

  Two heads craned out and looked down. Malcolm heard a commanding call and recognized the voice of Sister Benedicta, though he couldn’t make out the words. In the dim light from the lantern above, Malcolm saw the man look up, and in that instant the hyena dæmon gave a desperate leap sideways, lurching away from the man, who felt the inevitable heart-deep tug as soon as she reached the limit of the invisible bond that joined every human with their dæmon, and stumbled after her.

  She dragged herself away, limping as fast as she could, and the terrible fury of the man came after her, thrashing and beating with his stick, and the frenzied laughter-like agony filled the air again. Malcolm saw the two nuns flinch as they saw what was happening; then they pulled the shutter closed and the light vanished.

  Gradually the cries faded. Malcolm and Asta clung together with horror.

  “Never…,” she whispered.

  “…never thought we’d ever see anything like that,” he finished for her.

  “What could make him do that?”

  “And it was hurting him too. He must
be insane.”

  They held each other till the noise of that laughter had entirely gone.

  “He must hate her,” Malcolm said. “I can’t imagine….”

  “D’you think the sisters saw him doing it?”

  “Yeah, when they first looked. But he stopped for a second when one of them called, and his dæmon got away.”

  “If it was Sister Benedicta, we could ask…”

  “She wouldn’t say. There’s things they like to keep away from us.”

  “If she knew we’d seen it, maybe.”

  “Maybe. I wouldn’t tell Sister Fenella, though.”

  “No, no.”

  The man and his tormented dæmon had gone, and there was nothing now but the darkness and the sound of the river; so after another minute Malcolm and Asta crept out of that room in the dark and felt their way to bed.

  When they slept, he dreamed of wild dogs, a pack of them, fifty or sixty, all kinds, racing through the streets of a deserted city; and as he watched them, he felt a strange, wild exhilaration that was still there when he woke up in the morning.

  The philosophical instruments of the Weather Office, so highly regarded by some of the drinkers at the Trout and so disdained by others, did what they always did and told their attendants exactly what they could have seen by looking at the sky. The weather was fair and cold; the sky was clear day and night; there was no prospect of rain. Further out in the Atlantic than they could perceive, there might have been all sorts of bad weather; there might have been the mother of all depressions, and it might have been heading towards Brytain to bring about just the sort of inundation that Coram van Texel had predicted to Malcolm; but there were no instruments that could see it, except perhaps an alethiometer.

  So the citizens of Oxford read the weather forecasts in the newspaper, and enjoyed the pale sun on their faces, and began to put their sandbags away. The river was still racing; a dog that fell in the water at Botley was whirled away and drowned before its owner could rescue it. There was little sign of the level going down, but the banks weren’t giving way and the roads were dry, so people thought the worst was over.

  Hannah Relf sat at home, writing up her latest findings on the depths of the hourglass range of alethiometer meanings. She had plenty to occupy her in the pages of notes she’d been building up.

  She worked hard all day, and when there was a knock on the front door in the late afternoon, her thoughts had begun to turn teawards. She pushed her chair back, feeling pleased at the interruption, and went downstairs to open the door.

  “Malcolm! What are you— Come in, come in.”

  “I know it’s not the usual day,” he said, shivering, “but I thought it was important, so…”

  “I was just about to make some tea. You’ve come at the right time.”

  “I came straight from school.”

  “Let’s go in the sitting room, and I’ll light the fire. It’s cold.”

  She’d been working upstairs with a blanket over her knees and a little naphtha stove at her feet, so she hadn’t lit the sitting room fire all day and it felt chilly in there. Malcolm stood awkwardly on the hearth rug while she set newspaper and kindling and struck a match.

  “I had to come because—”

  “Wait, wait. Tea first. Or would you prefer chocolatl?”

  “I don’t think I ought to stay. I just came to warn you.”

  “Warn me?”

  “There was this man—a gyptian—”

  “Come in the kitchen, then. You’re not going out without a hot drink—it’s too cold. You can warn me while I make it.”

  She made tea for them both, and Malcolm told her about Mr. Van Texel, and the canoe, and the flood warning.

  “I thought the weather was getting better.”

  “No, he knows. The gyptians know all the rivers and the canals, and they know the state of the weirs all the way up to Gloucester. It’s coming, all right, and it’s going to be the biggest flood for ages. He said there was something in the water and the sky that was disturbed, and no one could tell except the people who could read the signs, and that made me think of you and the alethiometer….So I thought I ought to come and tell you because of that, and because of all these books. I could help you take them upstairs, maybe.”

  “That’s kind of you. But not now. Have you told anyone else about the gyptian’s warning?”

  “I told my mum and dad. Oh, and he said—the gyptian man—he said he knew about you.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Coram van Texel. He said I was to say Oakley Street to you—just that, so’s you could believe him.”

  “Good grief,” said Hannah.

  “Where is Oakley Street? I don’t know a street called that in Oxford.”

  “No, it’s not in Oxford. It just means— Well, it’s a sort of password. Did he say anything else? Let’s go in and keep the fire going. Bring your tea.”

  When Malcolm was sitting as close to the fire as he could get, he told her about Gerard Bonneville, and what he’d seen at the priory from the guest room window.

  She listened wide-eyed. Then she said, “Gerard Bonneville…How odd. I heard that name yesterday. I dined in college and spoke to one of our guests, who’s a lawyer. Apparently, Bonneville isn’t long out of prison, I think for assault, or grievous bodily harm—something like that—and it was rather a famous case, because the chief prosecution witness was Mrs. Coulter. That’s right—Lyra’s mother. Bonneville swore in the dock that he’d get revenge.”

  “Lyra,” said Malcolm at once. “He wants to hurt Lyra. Or kidnap her.”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me. He sounds demented.”

  “He said to Alice that he was Lyra’s father.”

  “Who’s Alice? Oh, I remember. Did he really?”

  “I’m going to tell the nuns this evening. They need to get that shutter fixed. I’ll help Mr. Taphouse.”

  “Was he going to climb up? Did he have a ladder?”

  “We didn’t see. But it would make sense.”

  “They need more than shutters,” said Hannah, stirring the fire. “If only one could trust the police!”

  “I’ll tell the nuns anyway. Sister Benedicta can protect Lyra against anything. Dr. Relf, have you ever heard of anyone hurting their own dæmon before?”

  “Not anyone sane.”

  “It made us think that maybe it was him that cut her leg off.”

  “Yes, I can see that. How horrible.”

  They both sat there looking into the fire.

  “I’m sure Mr. Van Texel’s right about the flood,” Malcolm said. “Even though it doesn’t look like it now.”

  “I’ll do something about it. I’ll start with the books, as you suggest. If necessary, I’ll live upstairs till the water goes away. What about the priory?”

  “I’ll tell them too, but it won’t mean much if I say ‘Oakley Street’ to the nuns.”

  “No. You’ll just have to be persuasive. And you mustn’t actually say those words to anyone but me.”

  “He told me that.”

  “Then you’ve heard it from both of us.”

  “Have you met him? Mr. Van Texel?”

  “No, never. Now, Malcolm, if you’ve finished your tea, I’m going to hurry you away. I’ve got to go out this evening. Thank you for the warning. I really will take it seriously.”

  “Thank you for the tea. I’ll come on Saturday as usual.”

  —

  Hannah wondered if Malcolm had told his parents about seeing the man and his dæmon outside the priory. It was the sort of thing that would worry a sensitive child, and she could see that he’d been badly disturbed. She wanted to hear more, especially about this gyptian who knew Oakley Street. Could he be an agent himself? It wasn’t inconceivable.

  Her engagement this evening was a mysterious one. The problem was that she didn’t know where she was going. When she had seen Professor Papadimitriou some days before, he had told her how to contact him. “If I need to co
ntact you,” he’d said, “you will know about it.”

  A card had come that morning. It was a simple white card inside a white envelope, and all it said was “Come to dinner this evening. George Papadimitriou.”

  Not an invitation, exactly; more of a command. She supposed the dinner would be at his college, where the porter, he’d said, was a gossip, though, of course, there was more than one porter at Jordan; nevertheless, it was puzzling.

  But as she was sorting through her not-very-many dresses and deciding that the note to strike should be serious and quiet, her letter box clattered. Her dæmon looked down from the landing.

  “Another white envelope,” he said.

  The card inside said only “28 Staverton Road. 7 p.m.”

  “Easy enough, Jesper,” she said.

  —

  At one minute past seven, after a brisk cold walk, she rang the bell of a large, comfortable-looking villa in one of the roads a little way north of Jericho. There was a thickly grown garden heavy with shrubs and trees, hard to see past from the road. She wondered if this was Papadimitriou’s own house: it would be interesting to see how this enigmatic figure lived. And who else would be there?

  “It’s not a social invitation,” murmured her dæmon. “This is business.”

  The door was opened by a pleasant-featured woman of forty or so who looked North African.

  “Dr. Relf, how nice of you to come! I’m Yasmin Al-Kaisy. Bitterly cold, isn’t it? Do put your coat on the chair here….Come through.”

  There were three other people in the warm drawing room. Professor Papadimitriou was one, and he seemed to be in charge, but then he always did. It was a large, low-ceilinged room, with naphtha lamps on side tables and two or three anbaric standard lamps beside the armchairs. There were numerous pictures—drawings, prints, a watercolor painting or two—all of high quality, as far as Hannah could judge. The furniture was neither antique nor modern, and looked extremely comfortable.

  In the warm light, Papadimitriou moved forward to shake Hannah’s hand.

  “Let me introduce our hosts, first of all: Dr. Adnan Al-Kaisy and Mrs. Yasmin Al-Kaisy,” he said. Hannah smiled at the woman who’d opened the door, who was now standing by a table of drinks, and shook the hand of the man: tall, lean, dark, with brilliant eyes and a short black mustache, his dæmon some kind of desert fox.