The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth (Book of Dust, Volume 2) (21 page)

Something of the defiance went out of Morris, and his dæmon backed away as far as she could get from Asta, who simply stood and watched.

“He’s…he’s bent. He’s a copper, all right, but he’s as twisted as hell. He’ll do anything, get you anything, steal anything, hurt anyone. I knew he was a killer, but I never seen him do it, not till…”

“It was Paston who killed the other man?”

“Yeah! It couldn’t’ve been me. He’d done my fucking leg by then. I was on the ground, I couldn’t move nowhere.”

“Who was the victim?”

“I dunno. No need to know. I didn’t care who the hell he was.”

“Why did Paston want to attack him?”

“Orders, I suppose.”

“Orders from whom? From where?”

“Paston…He’s got someone over him who tells him what jobs he wants done, right—I dunno who that is.”

“Paston’s never given you any clue?”

“No, I only know what he tells me, and he keeps a lot of it close to his chest. That’s all right with me. I don’t want to know anything that’ll get me into trouble.”

“You’re in trouble already.”

“But I never killed him! Never! That wasn’t part of the plan. We was just supposed to smack him a bit and take his bag, his rucksack, whatever he was carrying.”

“And did you take it?”

“No, ’cause he wasn’t carrying nothing. I says to George he must’ve had something, he must’ve left it in the station or passed it to someone else.”

“When did you say that? Before or after he was killed?”

“I can’t remember. It was an accident. We never meant to kill him.”

Malcolm wrote for a minute, two minutes, three. Morris sat slumped without moving, as if all the strength had gone out of him, and his dæmon was whimpering at his feet. Asta, still on guard in case the dæmon made a sudden move, sat down carefully but kept watching.

Then Malcolm said, “This man who tells Paston what to do.”

“What about him?”

“Does Paston ever talk about him? Mention a name, for instance?”

“He’s a Scholar. That’s all I know.”

“No, it isn’t. You know more than that.”

Morris said nothing. His dæmon was lying flat on the floor, her eyes closed tight, but as soon as Asta took a step towards her, she sprang up in alarm and backed away behind the man’s chair.

“No!” said Morris, flinching too.

“What’s his name?” said Malcolm.

“Talbot.”

“Just Talbot?”

“Simon Talbot.”

“College?”

“Cardinal’s.”

“How do you know?”

“Paston told me. He says he’s got something on him.”

“Paston knows something about him?”

“Yeah.”

“Did he tell you what that was?”

“No. He was prob’ly just boasting.”

“Tell me as much as you know.”

“I
can’t.
He’d kill me. Paston—you don’t know what he’s like. There’s no one else that knows this, only me, and if he finds out you know, he’ll know it’s come from me, and—I’ve said too much already. I was lying. I never told you nothing.”

“In that case, I’ll have to ask Paston myself. I’ll make sure he knows how helpful you’ve been.”

“No, no, no, please, don’t do that. He’s a terrible man. You can’t imagine what he’d do. Killing’s nothing to him. That man by the river—he killed him like killing a fly. That’s all it was to him.”

“You haven’t told me enough about this Talbot man at Cardinal’s. Have you met him?”

“No. How would I have done that?”

“Well, how did Paston know him?”

“He’s the liaison officer for that group of colleges. If they need any police contact, for any reason, he’s the one they speak to.”

That made sense to Malcolm. There were arrangements like that in place for all the colleges. The Proctors, the university police, dealt with most matters of discipline, but it was thought to be good for town-gown relations to have regular informal contact with the police.

He stood up. Such was Morris’s fear that he shrank back on his chair. Malcolm saw it, and Morris saw that he saw.

“If you say one word to Paston about this, I’ll know,” said Malcolm. “And you’ll be finished.”

Morris feebly caught at Malcolm’s sleeve. “Please,” he said, “don’t give me to him. He’s—”

“Let go.”

Morris’s hand dropped away.

“If you don’t want to end up on the wrong side of Paston, you’ll have to keep your mouth shut, won’t you?” Malcolm said.

“Who are you, anyway? That card en’t real. You don’t come from the Royal Mail.”

Malcolm ignored him and walked out. Morris’s dæmon whimpered.

“Simon Talbot?” Malcolm said to Asta as they shut the door and walked away. “Well, well.”

Pantalaimon knew he’d have to move at night and hide during the day: that was a given. It was also necessary to follow the river, because that would take him to the heart of London and thence to the docks, and whereas there were plenty of places to hide along the riverbank, there would be far fewer beside the main roads. He’d deal with the city when he got there.

It was harder going than he’d thought it would be. Roaming through Oxford under the moon was one thing, because he knew every corner so well, but he soon realized how much he’d miss Lyra’s ability to look things up, to ask questions, to function successfully in a world of human beings. He missed that even more at first than he missed the softness of her flesh, the scent of her warm hair when it needed washing, the touch of her hands, and he missed those terribly: on his first night away he couldn’t sleep, no matter how comfortable the mossy fork of an old oak where he curled up.

But it had been impossible. They couldn’t live together. She’d become unbearable, with her new hard, dogmatic certainty and the condescending half smile she couldn’t conceal when he spoke of things she’d once been eager to hear about, or criticized that loathsome novel which had so warped her understanding.

And
The Hyperchorasmians
was the center of his quest, for the time being. He knew the author’s name: Gottfried Brande. He knew Brande was, or had been, a professor of philosophy at Wittenberg. That was all he knew in the way of facts and reason, and it would have to do. But in the realm of dreams and thoughts and memories, he was perfectly at home and perfectly certain: someone had stolen Lyra’s imagination, and he was going to find it, wherever it was, and take it home to her.

“What do we know about this Simon Talbot?” said Glenys Godwin.

The Oakley Street Director was sitting in Charles Capes’s rooms in Wykeham College together with Capes, and Hannah Relf, and Malcolm. The morning was clear and fresh, and the sun shone through an open window onto the richly spotted fur of Godwin’s paralyzed dæmon, where he lay on Capes’s desk. Godwin and Capes both had now read all the documents Malcolm had copied, and they had listened with interest to what Malcolm had found out from Benny Morris.

“Talbot’s a philosopher,” said Capes. “So-called. He doesn’t believe in objective reality. It’s a fashionable attitude among undergraduates with an essay to write. A flashy writer—witty, if you like that sort of thing—very popular lecturer. He’s beginning to acquire a bit of a following among the younger Scholars, mind you.”

“More than a bit, I think,” said Hannah. “He’s rather a star.”

“Do we know of any connection between him and Geneva?” asked Malcolm.

“No,” said the whisper of Godwin’s dæmon. “There could hardly be any common ground, if he means what he says.”

“I think the point is that he says nothing means anything very much,” said Capes. “It might be quite easy for him to play at supporting the Magisterium. I’m not sure they’d trust
him,
though.”

“This police liaison business,” said Glenys Godwin. “Talbot’s college is Cardinal’s, is that right?”

“That’s right,” said Hannah. “The colleges are organized in groups for that sort of thing. The others in that group are Foxe, Broadgates, and Oriel.”

“And presumably there’s a Scholar of each college responsible for communicating with the police, if necessary?”

“Yes,” said Capes. “Usually a Junior Dean or someone of that sort.”

“Find out, please, Charles. See what you can discover about Talbot and this Paston. Malcolm, I want you to concentrate on the rose oil. I want to know everything about it. The research station in Central Asia: What is it? Who runs it? What have they discovered about the oil, if anything? Why can’t the roses be grown anywhere else? What’s the truth about this extraordinary red building in the middle of the desert, with the Latin-speaking guards, where the roses come from? Is it a delirious fantasy of some sort? I want you to go there yourself as soon as possible. You know the place, you speak the language, I think?”

Malcolm said, “Yes.”

That was all he could say. An order like that meant that he’d have no chance to search for Lyra, even if he’d known where to begin.

“And this unrest throughout the Levant and beyond: find out what’s behind that. Is it coming from the Lop Nor region and spreading west? Is it connected at all with the rose business?”

“There’s something curious about that,” said Malcolm. “In Strauss’s diary, he mentions that some places not far from the research station had been attacked, rose gardens set on fire, and so on, and he says he was surprised because he thought that sort of thing had been confined to Asia Minor—to Turkey and the Levant, basically. Maybe the unrest didn’t originate in Central Asia at all, but further west. Nearer Europe.”

Glenys Godwin nodded and made a note. “Find out what you can,” she said, and went on, “Hannah, the young woman, Lyra Silvertongue: any idea where she’s gone?”

“None, yet. But the alethiometer isn’t good at hurrying. I think she’s safe, but more than that, I can’t tell. I’ll keep looking.”

“I’d like a brief account of her background and why she’s important. I don’t know whether she’s central or peripheral. Can you put that together quickly?”

“Of course.”

“There’s a file about her in the mausoleum,” said Godwin’s dæmon.

He meant the section of Oakley Street’s archives in which inactive material was stored. Malcolm and Asta knew that, but couldn’t help feeling a little dart of shock at the reminder of that dank and rotting graveyard where he’d killed Gerard Bonneville in order to save Lyra’s life.

“Good,” said Godwin. “I’ll read it when we get back. In the meantime, something’s happening in Geneva. D’you know anything about that, Charles?”

“A conference. Or a congress, as they’re calling it. All the various bodies of the Magisterium are gathering for the first time in centuries. I don’t know what’s prompted it, but it doesn’t sound good. The best weapon we have against them at the moment is their disunity. If they find a reason for coming together and a way of institutionalizing it, they’ll be more formidable than ever.”

“Could you find a way of getting there yourself?”

“I daresay I could, but I’m already under suspicion, or so I’ve been told. They’d make sure I didn’t learn very much. I do know one or two people who’d learn more and wouldn’t mind telling me about it. There are always journalists, scholars from various places, attending and listening and reporting on events like that.”

“All right. Whatever you can do. Let’s keep in mind what’s at the bottom of this. These roses, this oil they produce, is something the Magisterium is desperate to control. The main instigator in all this seems to be the organization called
La Maison Juste
and its director, Marcel Delamare. Charles, do you know anything about them? Why is it called that, for instance?”

“
La Maison Juste
is the building where their headquarters are. The organization’s full title is the League for the Instauration of the Holy Purpose.”

“Instauration?” said Glenys Godwin. “I’ve forgotten what that means, if I ever knew it.”

“It means restoration, or renewal.”

“And what is this Holy Purpose? Actually, don’t bother: I can guess. They want to reinvigorate their sense of righteousness. They’d like a war, and for some reason these roses will give them an advantage. Well, we need to know what that is and cancel it out and, if possible, gain it for ourselves. Let’s keep that clearly in mind.”

“Oakley Street is hardly in a position to fight a war,” said Hannah.

“I was not actually advocating a war,” said Godwin. “But if we act intelligently and effectively, we might prevent one. You know why I’m sending you in particular there, Malcolm. I wouldn’t ask anyone else to go.”

Malcolm did know, and so did Hannah, but Capes didn’t and was looking at him curiously.

“It’s because my dæmon and I can separate,” Malcolm said.

“Ah,” said Capes. He looked at Malcolm and nodded.

No one spoke for a few moments.

Something was glinting on the desk: the sunlight was catching the blade of a silver paper knife, and Malcolm felt the familiar presence of the tiny shimmering point, no bigger than an atom, which would slowly become visible and then grow larger into the sparkling loop of light he knew as the spangled ring. Asta looked at him: she felt it too, though it wasn’t visible to her. There was no point in his trying to focus on anything for a few minutes, because it would take that long for the ring to grow large enough to see through; so he relaxed his vision and thought about the four human beings in the room, so liberal and tolerant, so civilized, and the organization they embodied.

In that wider perspective, Oakley Street seemed absurd: an organization whose very existence had to be concealed from the nation it had been set up to protect, whose agents were mostly now middle-aged or older and fewer in number than ever, whose resources were so scanty that its Director would have had to travel third-class on a slow train from London and he, Malcolm, would have to subsidize his own travel to Karamakan. What did this decrepit, poverty-stricken, understaffed body think it was doing, taking on the entire Magisterium?

The other three were talking quietly. As the sparkling loop of light drifted towards Malcolm, it encircled each of them in turn when he looked over at them: Charles Capes, slender, bald, faultlessly dark-suited, a red handkerchief in his top pocket, a deep and subtle intelligence in his eyes; Glenys Godwin, warmly dark-eyed, gray hair cut neatly, one hand tirelessly and tenderly caressing her wounded dæmon; Hannah Relf, whom Malcolm loved only a little less than his own mother, slight and gray-haired and frail, whose mind held such knowledge. How valuable these people seemed, in this other perspective, in the light of the spangled ring.

So he sat and listened, and let it drift past him and disappear.

As Charles Capes had said, it was the first congress the hierarchy of the Magisterium had held for centuries.

There was a hierarchy, in the sense that some of the bodies and individuals were junior and some senior, some more important and some less; but it was not a fixed hierarchy, as it would have been had Pope John Calvin left the Church as he’d found it. Instead, he had repudiated the primacy of his office and divided its power among several agencies. After his death, the office of Pope was never filled again, and the authority that used to go with the title was diverted into many different courses, as a river that had run fast and narrow in the mountains slows down, and spreads out, and cuts many new channels as it finds itself in the flat lands below.

So there was no one clear line of command. Instead, a multitude of different bodies, councils and colleges and committees and courts, grew up and, if they found themselves under an ambitious and talented leader, flourished; or perished and withered, if there was no boldness of vision or depth of courage among their governors. Altogether, the entity known as the Magisterium consisted of a seething mass of rivalrous, jealous, mutually suspicious bodies similar only in their liking for power and their ambition to wield it.

They came, the leaders of these factions, the Director of the Consistorial Court of Discipline, the Dean of the College of Bishops, the Chairman of the Committee for the Propagation of the True Faith, the Secretary General of the Society for the Promotion of Celibate Virtue, the Rector of the Red Chamber, the Master of the School of Dogmatic Logic, the President of the Court of Common Order, the Abbess of the Sisters of Holy Obedience, the Archimandrite of the Priory of Grace, and many, many others—they came because they dared not stay away, in case their absence were interpreted as rebellion. They came from all over Europe and from further south and north and west and east, some eager for conflict, some uneasy at the thought of it; some tempted like hounds by the gamy tang of heresy hunting, others reluctant to leave the peace of their monasteries or colleges for what was bound to be discord and anger and danger.

Altogether, fifty-three men and women assembled in the oak-paneled Council Chamber of the Secretariat of the Holy Presence, which had the advantage of giving the Prefect of that order the right to chair the meeting.

“Brothers and Sisters,” the Prefect began, “in the name and the authority of the Most High, we are summoned here today to discuss a matter of burning importance. Our faith has in recent years been challenged and threatened as never before. Heresy is flourishing, blasphemy goes unpunished, the very doctrines that have led us through two thousand years are being openly mocked in every land. This is a time for people of faith to draw together and make our voices heard with unmistakable force.

“And at the same time, there is opening to us in the east an opportunity so rich and promising as to raise the heart of the most despondent. We have a chance to increase our influence and bring our power to bear on all those who have resisted and are still resisting the good influence of the Holy Magisterium.

“In bringing you this news—and you shall hear much more later—I must also urge you all to pray most earnestly for the wisdom we shall need in order to deal with the new situation. And the first question I must put before you is this: Our ancient body, here represented by fifty-three men and women of the utmost faith and probity—is it too large? Are there simply too many of us to make rapid decisions and act with force and effect? Should we not consider the benefits that would flow from delegating matters of great policy to a smaller, a more swift-moving and decisive council, which could provide the leadership that is so necessary in these distracted times?”