The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth (Book of Dust, Volume 2) (25 page)

“Your drinks, I think, gentlemen,” said Bonneville, putting the tray down on their table and ignoring the waiter, whose lizard dæmon was protesting volubly from the pocket of his apron.

“Very skillfully caught,” said Rattin. “You should be a goalkeeper, sir! Or perhaps you are?”

“No,” said Bonneville, smiling. He passed the empty tray back to the waiter, and Rattin went on: “You must have a drink with us to thank you for saving ours.”

“Indeed, yes,” said the third man.

“Well, how generous…A dark beer,” Bonneville said to the waiter, who scowled and left.

Bonneville was about to pull out a chair when he looked again at the man with the gray mustache, as if recognizing him.

“Isn't it…Monsieur Rattin?” he said.

“Yes, it is, but…”

“We met a couple of weeks ago at the opening of the Rovelli show at Tennier's gallery. You won't remember, but I found what you said about the artist quite fascinating.”

One of the things that Bonneville had noticed in the course of his life was that older men, homosexual or not, could be very susceptible to the flattery of younger ones if it was expressed with frankness and sincerity. The essential thing was to confirm the views of the older ones in such a way as to convey the simple and genuine admiration of a young person who might one day become a disciple. Bonneville's sparrowhawk dæmon, as if eager to continue the flattery, at once hopped onto the back of Rattin's chair to speak with the man's snake dæmon, who lay curled along the top.

Meanwhile, Bonneville turned to Pochinsky. “And you, sir—I don't think I'm mistaken—surely you're Alexander Pochinsky? I've been reading your column in the
Gazette
for years.”

“Yes, that's who I am,” said the critic. “And are you involved in the world of the visual arts?”

“Only a humble amateur, one who's content to read what the best critics have to say about them.”

“You work for Marcel Delamare,” said the third man, who hadn't spoken before. “I think I've seen you at
La Maison Juste.
Am I right?”

“Quite right, sir, and very privileged to do so,” said Bonneville, holding out his hand to shake. “My name is Olivier Bonneville.”

The man gave Bonneville his hand. “Yes,” he said, “I've had occasion to visit
La Maison Juste
on business once or twice. Eric Schlosser.”

He was a banker: Bonneville had placed him at last. “Yes,” he said, “my employer is a remarkable man. Of course, you're aware of the Magisterial Congress?”

“Did Monsieur Delamare play a part in organizing that?” asked Rattin.

“Yes indeed, a prominent one,” said Bonneville. “Your good health, gentlemen!”

He drank, and they reciprocated.

“Yes,” Bonneville went on, “working in daily communication with someone whose brilliance is dazzling—well, you know, one can't help but be a little intimidated.”

“What is the business of
La Maison Juste
?” said Pochinsky.

“We are continually seeking a way of accommodating the life of the world to the life of the spirit,” said Bonneville easily.

“And will this congress help with that?”

“I truly think so. It should bring a clarity, a sharp edge of purpose to the work of the Magisterium.”

Rattin said, “And what is
La Maison Juste
? Is it part of the judicial system?”

“It was set up a century ago—the League for the Instauration of the Holy Purpose, that's the official title—and it's been working hard for a long time. But in recent years, under Monsieur Delamare, it's become a potent force for good in the ranks of the Magisterium. Of course, we should always refer to it by that name, really, but the building where we work is so beautiful that I suppose it's a way of paying tribute to it. It was used centuries ago for the examination of heresy and heretics, hence the name.”

Bonneville sensed that his dæmon had discovered something important, but he gave no sign of it. Instead, he turned to the critic.

“Tell me, Monsieur Pochinsky,” he said, “what do you think about the place of the spirit in the visual arts?”

Pochinsky could talk about that for hours. Bonneville settled back to nurse his drink, to listen with assiduous attention, and to wait for the perfect moment to depart, when he thanked them all for their fascinating conversation and left them with a strong impression of the courtesy, modesty, capability, and charm of the younger generation.

As soon as they were outside, his dæmon flew to his shoulder. Bonneville listened closely as they made their way to the attic apartment where they lived.

“Well?”

“Rattin works with Sylberberg, as you remembered. And Sylberberg knew Delamare at school, and still has an acquaintanceship with him. According to Rattin's dæmon, Delamare had an older sister to whom he was devoted. She was a prominent force in the Magisterium—she set up an organization devoted to some purpose that Rattin couldn't remember, but she was very influential. A beautiful woman, apparently. She married an Englishman called Courtney, Coulson, something like that, but there was a scandal when she had a child by another man. Delamare was devastated when she vanished about ten years ago. He believes that the child was to blame, but as for why he thinks that, Rattin couldn't say.”

“A child! Boy or girl?”

“Girl.”

“When?”

“About twenty years ago. Lyra Belacqua. She's the one.”

When Lyra and Giorgio Brabandt arrived at the gyptians’ township in the Fens, the great gathering of boats and maze of landing places and paths around the Byanzaal, it was midmorning, and she was nervously aware that other people might not be as tolerant of her dæmonless state as Brabandt had been.

“No need to be anxious,” he’d said. “There’s witches visit us from time to time these days, after that great fight in the north. We know their ways. You’ll just look like one o’ them.”

“I suppose I could try,” she said. “Where’s Farder Coram’s boat, do you know?”

“Along the Ringland branch, down that way. But you better call on young Orlando Faa first, out of politeness.”

“Young” Orlando was in his fifties, at least. He was the son of the great John Faa, who had led the expedition to the north all that time ago. He was smaller than his father, but he had something of the old man’s massiveness of nature, and he greeted Lyra solemnly.

“I heard many tales about you, Lyra,” said the gyptian leader. “My old dad was full of ’em. That voyage and the battle when you rescued the little kids—I wished I’d been there every time I heard it.”

“It was all thanks to the gyptians,” Lyra said. “Lord Faa was a great leader. And a great fighter.”

His eyes moved around her where she sat at his council table. He couldn’t disguise what he was looking for. “You’re in trouble, lady,” he said gently.

She was moved by his courtesy in using that term, and found her throat too tight to speak for a moment. She nodded and swallowed hard. “That’s why I need to see Farder Coram,” she managed to say.

“Old Coram’s a bit frail now,” said Faa. “He dun’t go nowhere, but he hears everything and he knows everything.”

“I didn’t know where else to go.”

“No. Well, you stop here with us till you’re ready to go on, and welcome. I know Ma Costa’ll be glad to see you.”

She was. Lyra went to her next, and the boat mother enfolded Lyra in a warm embrace without a moment’s hesitation, and hugged her close in the sunshine-flooded galley, rocking them both back and forth.

“What you been doing to yourself?” she said when she finally let go.

“He…Pan…I don’t know. He was unhappy. We both were. And he just left.”

“I never heard of such a thing. You poor gal.”

“I’ll tell you about it, I promise. But I must go and see Farder Coram first.”

“You seen young Orlando Faa?”

“He was the first person I called on. I just arrived this morning, with Giorgio Brabandt.”

“Old Giorgio? Well, he’s a rascal, and no mistake. I want to hear all about it, don’t forget. But what’s been happening to you? I never seen anyone look so lost, gal. Where are you going to stay?”

That silenced Lyra. For the first time, she realized that she hadn’t thought about that for a moment.

Ma Costa saw that and went on, “Well, you’re going to stay here with me, goose. Did you think I’d let you sleep on the bank?”

“Will I be in the way?”

“You’re not fat enough to be in the way. Get along with you.”

“Ma Costa, I don’t know if you remember, but you once said—all that time ago—you said I had witch oil in my soul. What did that mean?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea, gal. But it looks as though I was right.” She looked somber as she said that. Then she opened a cupboard and took out a small biscuit tin. “Here,” she said. “When you see Farder Coram, give him these. I made ’em yesterday. He loves a ginger biscuit.”

“I will. Thank you.”

Lyra kissed her and left to find the Ringland branch. That was a narrower canal than the rest, with several boats moored permanently on the southern bank. The people she passed looked at her curiously, but without hostility, she thought; she carried herself modestly and kept her eyes down, trying to think like Will, trying to be invisible.

It seemed that Farder Coram had a place of high honor among his people, because the path to his mooring was carefully tended and banked with stone, and the verge planted with marigolds and bordered by poplars. The trees were leafless now, but in the summer they’d cast a welcome shade over this stretch of water.

And there was Coram’s boat, neat and trim and brightly painted, everything about her looking fresh and lively. Lyra knocked on the cabin roof and stepped down into the cockpit, and peered in through the window in the cabin door. Her old friend was dozing in a rocking chair with a rug over his knees, his dæmon keeping his feet warm, the great autumn-colored cat Sophonax.

Lyra knocked on the glass, and Coram blinked and woke up, and shaded his eyes to look at the door. Then he recognized her and beckoned her inside, with a great smile on his old face.

“Lyra, child! What am I saying? You en’t no child, you’re a young lady. Welcome, Lyra—but what’s happened to you? Where’s Pantalaimon?”

“He left me. Just one morning, only a few days ago. I woke up and he was gone.”

Her voice trembled, and then her heart overflowed, and she sobbed and wept as never before. She fell to her knees next to his chair, and he leant out to embrace her. He stroked her hair and held her gently as she clung to him and sobbed against his chest. It was like a dam breaking; it was like a flood.

He murmured soft words, and Sophonax jumped up onto his lap to be close to her, purring in sympathy.

Finally the storm subsided. There were no tears left to weep, and Lyra drew away as the old man loosened his embrace. She mopped her eyes and stood up unsteadily.

“Now, you sit down here and tell me all about everything,” he said.

Lyra bent down to kiss him. He smelled of honey. “Ma Costa gave me these ginger biscuits for you,” she said. “Farder Coram, I wish I’d thought ahead and brought you a proper present—it seems rude to call on you empty-handed….I did find some smokeleaf, though. That’s all they had in the post office where we last stopped, me and Master Brabandt. I think I remembered it right, the kind you smoked.”

“That’s it, Old Ludgate, that’s the sort I like. Thank’ee! So you come here on the
Maid of Portugal,
did you?”

“That’s right. Oh, Farder Coram, it’s been far too long! It seems like a lifetime ago….”

“Seems like yesterday. Seems like the blink of an eye. But before you start, put the kettle on, gal,” he said. “I’d do it meself, but I know me limitations.”

She made some coffee, and when it was ready, she put his mug on the little table at his right side and sat down on the settle opposite his rocking chair.

She told him much of what had happened since they had last seen each other. She told him about the murder by the river, and about Malcolm, and how she’d learnt about her own past, and how she now felt lost and almost helpless.

Coram listened to Lyra’s story without speaking till she’d come to the present moment and her arrival among the gyptians.

“Young Orlando Faa,” he said. “He never come to the north with us, because he had to stay in case John never come back. He always regretted that. Well, he’s a fine lad. Fine enough. His father, John—well, he was a great man. Simple and true and strong as a beam of oak. A great man. I don’t think they make ’em like him anymore, but Orlando’s a fine lad, no doubt about it. But times have changed, Lyra. Things as used to be safe en’t safe no longer.”

“It does feel like that.”

“But young Malcolm, now. Did he tell you how he lent Lord Asriel his canoe?”

“He said something about it, but I…I was so shaken up by other things that I didn’t really take it in.”

“Staunch, Malcolm is. When he was a boy, he was just the same. Generous—didn’t hesitate to give Lord Asriel his canoe, never knowing if he’d ever see her again. So when Asriel charged me with taking her back, he gave me some money to see her made over—did Malcolm tell you that?”

“No. There’s a lot we just haven’t had time to talk about.”

“Yes, she was a trim little vessel, the
Bell Savage.
She needed to be. I remember that flood well enough, and how it brung things to light that’d been hid for centuries. Maybe longer.”

Coram was talking as if he’d known Malcolm more recently than the flood, and Lyra wanted to ask him about that; but she shrank from it, as if it would give too much away. She felt uncertain about so much.

So she said, “D’you know the phrase ‘the secret commonwealth’?”

“Where’d you hear that from?”

“From Master Brabandt. He was telling me about the will o’ the wykes, things like that.”

“Yes, the secret commonwealth…You don’t hear much talk about that these days. When I was young, there wasn’t a single bush, not a single flower nor a stone, that didn’t have its own proper spirit. You had to have a mind to your manners around them, to ask for pardon, or for permission, or give thanks….Just to acknowledge that they were there, them spirits, and they had their proper rights to recognition and courtesy.”

“Malcolm told me that a fairy caught me and nearly kept me, except that he tricked her into giving me back.”

“That’s just the sort of thing they do. They en’t bad nor wicked, not really, nor partic’ly good neither. They’re just there, and they deserve good manners.”

“Farder Coram, did you ever hear of a city that’s called the Blue Hotel that’s empty and ruined except that dæmons live there?”

“What, people’s dæmons? Without their folk?”

“Yes.”

“No. I never heard of that. Is that where you think Pan’s gone to?”

“I don’t know what to think, but it could be. Did you ever know anyone who could separate from their dæmon? Except for witches, of course.”

“Yes, the witches could do it all right. Like my Serafina.”

“But anyone else? Did you know any gyptians who could separate?”

“Well, there was a man—”

Before he could say more, the boat rocked as if someone had come aboard, and then came a knock. Lyra looked up to see a girl of about fourteen balancing a tray on one arm and opening the door with the other, and hastened to help her step down.

“All right, Farder Coram?” the girl said. She was looking at Lyra warily.

“This is my great-niece Rosella,” said Coram. “Rosella, this is Lyra Silvertongue. You heard me speak about her many a time.”

Rosella put the tray on Farder Coram’s lap and shook hands timidly. Her manner was both shy and curious. She was very pretty. Her dæmon was a hare, and he was hiding behind her legs.

“This is Farder Coram’s dinner,” she said. “But I brung some for you an’ all, miss. Ma Costa said you’d be hungry.”

On the tray was some fresh bread and butter and pickled herring, and a bottle of beer and two glasses.

“Thank you,” said Lyra, and Rosella smiled and left. When she’d gone, Lyra said, “You were going to tell me about a man who could separate….”

“So I was. That was in Muscovy. He’d been to Siberia, to the place the witches go and done what they did. It nearly killed him, he said. He was the lover of a witch, and he thought that if he could separate like them, he’d live as long as they did. Only it didn’t work. His witch didn’t think no more of him for doing it, and he died soon after, in any case. He was the only man I knew who could do that, or wanted to. Why d’you ask about that, Lyra?”

She told him about the diary in the rucksack of the man who’d been killed by the river. Coram listened without moving, his fork still holding a piece of pickled herring.

“Does Malcolm know about that?” he said when she’d finished.

“Yes.”

“Did he say anything to you about Oakley Street?”

“Oakley Street? Where’s that?”

“It en’t a place, it’s a thing. He never mentioned it? Neither him nor Hannah Relf?”

“No. Maybe they would have done if I hadn’t left so suddenly…I don’t know. I know so little, Farder Coram. What is Oakley Street?”

The old man put his fork down and took a sip of beer. “Twenty years ago,” he said, “I took a bit of a risk, and I told young Malcolm to say the words
Oakley Street
to Hannah Relf, so as to reassure her that any connection he had with me was safe. I hoped she’d tell him what it was, and she did, and if he never spoke about it, that’s because you can trust him. Oakley Street’s the name of a department of the secret service, you might say. That’s not its real name, it’s just a sort of code for it, because the headquarters en’t nowhere near Oakley Street itself, which is in Chelsea. It was set up—the department, I mean—in King Richard’s time, the king being staunch agin the Magisterium, which was threatening on all sides. It was always an independent body, Oakley Street, under the Cabinet Office, not the War Ministry. It had the full backing of the king and the Private Council, and funds from the Gold Reserves, and it answered to a proper committee of Parliament. But when King Edward come in, the tone of politics, you might say, begun to change a bit, to swing around with the wind. There was ambassadors and, what do they call ’em, high commissioners, legates, exchanged between London and Geneva.

“That’s when the CCD got their foothold in this country. It all changed then to what we got now—a government what dun’t trust the people, and a people that’s afraid of the government, each side spying on the other. The CCD faction can’t arrest as many people as hate it, and the people en’t got the organization to move agin the CCD. Sort of a stalemate. But it’s worse’n that. The other side’s got an energy that our side en’t got. Comes from their certainty about being right. If you got that certainty, you’ll be willing to do anything to bring about the end you want. It’s the oldest human problem, Lyra, an’ it’s the difference between good and evil. Evil can be unscrupulous, and good can’t. Evil has nothing to stop it doing what it wants, while good has one hand tied behind its back. To do the things it needs to do to win, it’d have to become evil to do ’em.”