PHILIP PULLMAN’S HIS DARK MATERIALS
LYRA’S OXFORD
LYRA DIDN’T OFTEN climb out of her bedroom window these days. She had a better way on to the roof of Jordan College: the Porter had given her a key that let her on to the roof of the Lodge Tower. He’d let her have it because he was too old to climb the steps and check the stonework and the lead, as was his duty four times a year; so she made a full report to him, and he passed it to the Bursar, and in exchange she was able to get out on to the roof whenever she wanted.
When she lay down on the lead, she was invisible from everywhere except the sky. A little parapet ran all the way around the square roof, and Pantalaimon often draped his pine-marten form over the mock-battlements on the corner facing south, and dozed while Lyra sat below with her back against the sun-drenched stone, studying the books she’d brought up with her. Sometimes they’d stop and watch the storks that nested on St Michael’s Tower, just across Turl Street. Lyra had a plan to tempt them over to Jordan, and she’d even dragged several planks of wood up to the roof and laboriously nailed them together to make a platform, just as they’d done at St Michael’s; but it hadn’t worked. The storks were loyal to St Michael’s, and that was that.
‘They wouldn’t stay for long if we kept on coming here, anyway,’ said Pantalaimon.
‘We could tame them. I bet we could. What do they eat?’
‘Fish,’ he guessed. ‘Frogs.’
She was waiting for the starlings. That year an extraordinary number of them had come to roost in the Botanic Garden, and every evening they would rise out of the trees like smoke, and swirl and swoop and dart through the skies above the city in their thousands.
‘Millions,’ Pan said.
‘Maybe, easily. I don’t know who could ever count them … There they are!’
They didn’t seem like individual birds, or even individual dots of black against the blue; it was the flock itself that was the individual. It was like a single piece of cloth, cut in a very complicated way that let it swing through itself and double over and stretch and fold in three dimensions without ever tangling, turning itself inside out and elegantly waving and crossing through and falling and rising and falling again.
‘If it was saying something …’ said Lyra.
‘Like signalling.’
‘No one would know, though. No one could ever understand what it meant.’
‘Maybe it means nothing. It just is.’
‘Everything means something,’ Lyra said severely. ‘We just have to find out how to read it.’
Pantalaimon leapt across a gap in the parapet to the stone in the corner, and stood on his hind legs, balancing with his tail and gazing more intently at the vast swirling flock over the far side of the city.
‘What does that mean, then?’ he said.
She knew exactly what he was referring to. She was watching it too. Something was jarring or snagging at the smoke-like, flag-like, ceaseless motion of the starlings, as if that miraculous multi-dimensional cloth had found itself unable to get rid of a knot.
‘They’re attacking something,’ Lyra said, shading her eyes.
And coming closer. Lyra could hear them now, too: a high-pitched angry mindless shriek. The bird at the centre of the swirling anger was darting to right and left, now speeding upwards, now dropping almost to the rooftops, and when it was no closer than the spire of the University Church, and before they could even see what kind of bird it was, Lyra and Pan found themselves shaking with surprise. For it wasn’t a bird, although it was bird-shaped; it was a dæmon. A witch’s dæmon.
‘Has anyone else seen it? Is anyone looking?’ said Lyra.
Pan’s black eyes swept every rooftop, every window in sight, while Lyra leaned out and looked up and down the street on one side and then darted to the other three sides to look into Jordan’s front quadrangle and along the roof as well. The citizens of Oxford were going about their daily business, and a noise of birds in the sky wasn’t interesting enough to disturb them. Just as well: because a dæmon was instantly recognisable as what he was, and to see one without his human would have caused a sensation, if not an outcry of fear and horror.
‘Oh, this way, this way!’ Lyra said urgently, unwilling to shout, but jumping up and waving both arms; and Pan too was trying to attract the dæmon’s attention, leaping from stone to stone, flowing across the gaps and spinning around to leap back again.
The birds were closer now, and Lyra could see the dæmon clearly: a dark bird about the size of a thrush, but with long arched wings and a forked tail. Whatever he’d done to anger the starlings, they were possessed by fear and rage, swooping, stabbing, tearing, trying to batter him out of the air.
‘This way! Here, here!’ Pan cried, and Lyra flung open the trapdoor to give the dæmon a way of escape.
The noise, now that the starlings were nearly overhead, was deafening, and Lyra thought that people below must be looking up to see this war in the sky. And there were so many birds, as thick as flakes in a blizzard of black snow, that Lyra, her arm across her head, lost sight of the dæmon among them.
But Pan had him. As the dæmon-bird dived low towards the tower, Pan stood up on his hind legs, and then leapt up to gather the dæmon in his paws and roll with him over and over towards the trapdoor, and they fell through clumsily as Lyra struck out with her fists to left and right and then tumbled through after the two dæmons, dragging the trapdoor shut behind her.
She crouched on the steps just beneath it, listening to the shrieks and screams outside rapidly lose their urgency. With their provocation out of sight, the starlings soon forgot that they were provoked.
‘What now?’ whispered Pan, just below her.
These wooden steps led up from a narrow landing, and were closed by a door at the bottom of the flight. Another door on the landing led to the rooms of young Dr Polstead, who was one of the few Scholars capable of climbing all the way up the tower several times a day. Being young, he had all his faculties in working order, and Lyra was sure he must have heard her tumble through and bang the trapdoor shut.
She put her finger to her lips. Pantalaimon, staring up in the near-dark, saw and turned his head to listen. There was a faint patch of a lighter colour on the step next to him, and as Lyra’s eyes adjusted she made out the shape of the dæmon and the V-shaped patch of white feathers on his rump.
Silence. Lyra whispered down:
‘Sir, we must keep you hidden. I have a canvas bag – if that would be all right – I could carry you to our room …’
‘Yes,’ came the answering whisper from below.
Lyra pressed her ear to the trapdoor, and, hearing no more tumult, opened it carefully and then darted out to retrieve her bag and the books she’d been studying. The starlings had left evidence of their last meals on the covers of both books, and Lyra made a face as she thought about explaining it to the Librarian of St Sophia’s. She picked the books up gingerly and took them and the bag down through the trapdoor, to hear Pan whispering, ‘Sssh …’
Voices beyond the lower door: two men leaving Dr Polstead’s room. Visitors – the university term hadn’t begun, and he wouldn’t be holding tutorials yet.
Lyra held open her bag. The strange dæmon hesitated. He was a witch’s dæmon, and he was used to the wide Arctic skies. The narrow canvas darkness was frightening to him.
‘Sir, it will only be for five minutes,’ she whispered. ‘We can’t let anyone else see you.’
‘You are Lyra Silvertongue?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Very well,’ he said, and delicately stepped into the bag that Lyra held open for him.
She picked it up carefully, waiting for the visitors’ voices to recede down the stairs. When they’d gone, she stepped over Pan and opened the door quietly. Pan flowed through like dark water, and Lyra set the bag gently over her shoulder and followed, shutting the door behind her.
‘Lyra? What’s going on?’
The voice from the do
orway behind her made her heart leap. Pan, a step ahead, hissed quietly.
‘Dr Polstead,’ she said, turning. ‘Did you hear the birds?’
‘Was that what it was? I heard a lot of banging,’ he said.
He was stout, ginger-haired, affable; more inclined to be friendly to Lyra than she was to return the feeling. But she was always polite.
‘I don’t know what was the matter with them. Starlings, from over Magdalen way. They were all going mad. Look!’
She held out her bespattered books. He made a face.
‘Better get those cleaned,’ he said.
‘Well, yes,’ she said, ‘that’s where I was going.’
His dæmon was a cat, as ginger as he was. She purred a greeting from the doorway, and Pan acknowledged her courteously and moved away.
Lyra lived at St Sophia’s in term time, but her room in the back quad at Jordan was always there when she wanted to use it. The clock was striking half-past six as she hurried there with her living burden – who was much lighter than her own dæmon, as she intended to tell Pantalaimon later.
As soon as the door had closed behind them, she set down the bag on her desk and let the dæmon out. He was frightened, and not only of the dark.
‘I had to keep you out of sight –’ she began.
‘I understand. Lyra Silvertongue, you must guide me to a house in this city – I can’t find the house, I don’t know cities –’
‘Stop,’ she said, ‘slow down, wait. What is your name, and your witch’s name?’
‘I am Ragi. She is Yelena Pazhets. She sent me – I must find a man who –’
‘Please,’ Lyra said, ‘please don’t speak so loudly. I’m safe here – this is my home – but people are curious – if they hear another dæmon’s voice in here, it would be hard to explain, and then you would be in danger.’
The dæmon fluttered anxiously to the windowsill, and then to the back of Lyra’s chair, and then back to the table.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I must go to a man in this city. Your name is known to us – we heard that you could help. I am frightened this far south, and under a roof.’
‘If I can help, I will. Who is this man? Do you know where he lives?’
‘His name is Sebastian Makepeace. He lives in Jericho.’
‘Just Jericho? That’s all the address you have?’
The dæmon looked bewildered. Lyra didn’t press him; to a witch of the far north, a settlement of more than four or five families was almost unimaginably vast and crowded.
‘All right,’ she said, ‘I’ll try and find him. But –’
‘Now! It’s urgent!’
‘No. Not now. Tonight, after dark. Can you stay here comfortably? Or would you rather come with us to … to my school, which is where I should be now?’
He flew from the table to the open window and perched on the sill for a moment, and then flew out altogether and circled in the air above the quadrangle. Pantalaimon leapt on to the windowsill to watch for him while Lyra searched through the untidy bookshelves for a map of the city.
‘Has he gone?’ she said over her shoulder.
‘He’s coming back.’
The dæmon flew in and beat his wings inwards to slow down and perch on the back of the chair.
‘Danger outside and suffocation within,’ he said unhappily.
Lyra found the map and turned around.
‘Sir,’ she said, ‘who was it who told you my name?’
‘A witch from Lake Enara. She said Serafina Pekkala’s clan had a good friend in Oxford. Our clan is allied to hers through the birch-oath.’
‘And where is Yelena Pazhets, your witch?’
‘She’s lying sick beyond the Urals, in our homeland.’
Lyra could feel Pan teeming with questions, and she half-closed her eyes in a flicker that she knew he’d see: don’t. Wait. Hush.
‘It would be too painful for you to hide in my bag till nightfall,’ she said, ‘so this is what we’ll do. I’ll leave this window open for you and you can shelter in here, and fly out whenever you need to. I shall come back at … Can you read the time in our fashion?’
‘Yes. We learned at Trollesund.’
‘You can see the clock over the hall from here. At half-past eight I shall be in the street outside the tower where you found us. Fly down and meet us there, and we’ll take you to Mr Makepeace.’
‘Yes – yes. Thank you.’
Eleven-year-old Malcolm lives with his parents at the Trout Inn near Oxford, across the river Thames from Godstow Priory, where the nuns are looking after a special guest. One night his father comes to Malcolm’s bedroom.
‘Malcolm, you en’t in bed yet – good. Come downstairs for a minute. There’s a gentleman wants a word with you.’
‘Is it the Lord Chancellor?’ said Malcolm eagerly, jumping up and following his father out.
‘Keep your voice down. It en’t the Lord Chancellor, no. He’ll tell you who he is if he wants to.’
‘Where is he?’
‘In the Terrace Room. Take him a glass of Tokay.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Hungarian wine. Come on, hurry up.’
‘Has it suddenly got busy or something?’
‘No. Gentleman wants to see you, that’s all. Mind your manners and tell the truth.’
‘I always do,’ said Malcolm automatically.
‘News to me,’ said his father. But he ruffled Malcolm’s hair before they entered the bar.
The Tokay was a rich gold colour, and smelled sweet and complicated. Malcolm was seldom tempted by the drinks they sold in the Trout; beer was bitter, and wine was usually sour, and whisky was abominable. But if he could find the bottle later he’d take a sip of this all right, once his father’s back was turned.
Malcolm had to stand still in the corridor outside the Terrace Room, just for a moment or two, to regain his sense of reality. His mind was still absorbed by the spangled ring. He took a deep breath and went in.
The gentleman waiting gave him a start, though all he was doing was sitting there still by the cold fireplace. Perhaps it was his dæmon, a beautiful leopard with silver fur and black spots, or perhaps it was his dark saturnine expression; at all events Malcolm felt daunted, and very young and small. Asta became a moth.
‘Good evening, sir,’ he said. ‘Your Tokay what you ordered. Would you like me to make up the fire? It’s ever so cold in here.’
‘Is your name Malcolm?’ The man’s voice was harsh and deep.
‘Yes, sir. Malcolm Polstead.’
‘I’m a friend of Dr Relf,’ said the man. ‘My name is Asriel.’
‘Oh. Er – she hasn’t told me about you,’ Malcolm said.
‘Why did you say that?’
‘Because if she had, I’d know it was true.’
The leopard growled, and Malcolm took a step backwards. But then he remembered how Sister Benedicta had faced down the men, and stepped forward again.
Asriel gave a short laugh. ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘You want another reference? I’m the father of that baby in the priory.’
‘Oh! You’re Lord Asriel!’
‘That’s right. But how are you going to test the truth of that claim?’
‘What’s the baby’s name?’
‘Lyra.’
‘And what’s her dæmon called?’
‘Pantalaimon.’
‘All right,’ said Malcolm.
‘All right now? You sure?’
‘No, I en’t sure. But I’m more sure than I was.’
‘Good. Can you tell me what happened earlier this evening?’
Malcolm went through it as fully as he could remember.
‘The Office of Child Protection?’
‘That’s what they called themselves, sir.’
‘What did they look like?’
Malcolm described their uniforms. ‘The one who took his cap off, he seemed like he was in charge. He was more polite than the others, more sort of smooth and smilin
g. But it was a real smile, not a fake one. I think I’d even’ve liked him if he’d come in here, as a customer, sort of thing. The other two were just dull and threatening. Most people would’ve been dead scared, but Sister Benedicta wasn’t. She faced ’em off all by herself.’
The man sipped his Tokay. His dæmon was lying on her front, head up, front paws stretched out ahead of her, like the picture of the Sphinx in Malcolm’s encyclopedia. The black and silver patterns on her back seemed to flicker and shimmer for a moment, and Malcolm felt as if the spangled ring had changed its form and become a dæmon; but then Lord Asriel spoke suddenly.
‘Do you know why I haven’t been to see my daughter?’
‘I thought you were busy. You probably had important things to do.’
‘I haven’t been to see her because if I do, she’ll be taken away from there and put in a much less congenial place. There’ll be no Sister Benedicta to stand up for her there. But now they’re trying to take her anyway … and what was that other thing I’ve heard about? The League of St Alexander?’
Malcolm told him about that.
‘Disgusting,’ said Asriel.
‘There’s plenty of kids at my school joined. They like being able to wear a badge and tell the teachers what to do. Excuse me, sir, but I told Dr Relf about all this. Didn’t she tell you?’
‘Still not quite sure about me?’
‘Well … no,’ said Malcolm.
‘Don’t blame you. You going to go on visiting Dr Relf?’
‘Yes. Because she lends me books as well as listening to what’s happened.’
‘Does she? Good for her. But tell me, the baby: is she being well looked after?’
‘Oh, yes. Sister Fenella, she loves her like—’ He was going to say, ‘like I do,’ but thought better of it. ‘She loves her a lot. They all do. She’s very happy, Lyra I mean. She talks to her dæmon all the time, just jabber jabber jabber, and he jabbers back. Sister Fenella says they’re teaching each other to talk.’
‘Does she eat properly? Does she laugh? Is she active and curious?’
‘Oh, yeah. The nuns are being really good to her.’
Once Upon a Time in the North Page 8
