The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth (Book of Dust, Volume 2) (37 page)

They went on towards the river, the Vltava. Kubi
č
ek explained that the river was the route by which most travelers entered and left the city, though the railway was beginning to rival it in popularity. His own house, Kubi
č
ek said, lay on the other side of the river, in the Malá Strana.

“Have you heard of Zlatá uli
č
ka?” he asked.

“No. What is that?”

“It is the street where people think the alchemists used to make their gold. It is very close to my apartment.”

“Do people still believe in alchemy?”

“No. Educated people do not. So they think alchemists are fools for pursuing a goal that does not exist, and they take no notice of them, and fail to see what they are really doing.”

A bell rang in her memory: Sebastian Makepeace, the Oxford alchemist! He’d told her almost the same thing four years before.

They came to the river. Kubi
č
ek looked carefully all around before stepping forward towards the bridge, a wide, ancient structure with statues of kings and saints set along the parapet. The houses on the other side were old, crowded together, with narrow streets and crooked alleys between them, and high above behind them stood a castle that was lit by floodlights. Despite the cold, the bridge was busy and the streets crowded; lights glowed from every shop window and tavern, and gaslamps flared between the statues on the bridge.

At the foot of the bridge on the Malá Strana side of the river, there was a landing stage where a paddle steamer was carefully drawing up. As Lyra and Kubi
č
ek went further across, they could see a number of passengers on the deck waiting for the gangway to be lowered so they could come ashore. They hadn’t been on a pleasure cruise; they were carrying suitcases, or rucksacks, or boxes tied with string, or loaded baskets and carrier bags. They looked as if they were fleeing some disaster.

“Did your strange man arrive on a boat like this?” said Lyra.

“Yes.”

“Where are those people traveling from?”

“From the south; ultimately, from the Black Sea or further. The boats travel on from here to the north, where this river joins the Elbe, and from there to Hamburg and the German Ocean.”

“Does every boat that lands here carry passengers like those? They look like refugees.”

“More and more of them arrive every day. The Magisterium has begun to encourage each province of the Church to regulate its territory with a firmer hand. In Bohemia things are not yet as savage as elsewhere; refugees are still given sanctuary. But that can’t go on indefinitely. We shall have to begin turning them away before too long.”

In their short walk through the city, Lyra had already noticed a few people huddled in doorways or sleeping on benches. She’d supposed they were beggars, and she was sorry to see that such a fine city cared so little for the poor. Now she watched as a family came down the gangway onto the landing stage: an old woman leaning on a stick, a mother with a baby in her arms, and four other children, all under ten, by the look of them. Each child carried a box or a bag or a suitcase, and they were all struggling. Behind them came an old man and a boy in his early teens carrying a rolled-up mattress between them.

“Where will they go?” said Lyra.

“At first, to the Bureau of Asylum. After that, onto the streets if they have no money. Come. This way.”

Lyra walked a little faster, as he did. Once across the river, they made for the twisting maze of little alleys under the castle. Kubi
č
ek took so many turns that she soon lost track of where they might be.

“You will help me find the way back to the station?” she said.

“Of course. We are quite close now.”

“Can you tell me anything about this man you want me to see?”

“His name is Cornelis van Dongen. Dutch, as you may guess. I would rather let him tell you the rest.”

“Suppose I can’t help him? What will he do then?”

“Then it would be much the worse for me, and for all the citizens of the Malá Strana, and beyond the Malá Strana too.”

“That’s giving me a large responsibility, Mr. Kubi
č
ek.”

“I know you will bear it.”

She said nothing, but she felt for the first time how stupid she’d been to walk into this warren of ancient houses and alleyways with a man she knew nothing about.

Here and there a gaslight flaring on a bracket shone on the wet street, on the cobbles, on the shutters over the windows. The noise of the traffic, the clatter of iron wheels on stone, the drone of the anbaric trams, grew less and less noticeable as they went further in. There were fewer people to be seen, though sometimes they would pass a doorway with a man lounging against the wall, or a woman standing under a lamp. They would look at Kubi
č
ek and Lyra and mutter a comment, or cough consumptively, or simply sigh.

“Not far now,” said Kubi
č
ek.

“I’m completely lost,” said Lyra.

“I’ll show you the way out, don’t worry.”

Around one more corner, and then Kubi
č
ek took a key from his pocket and unlocked the heavy oak door of a tall house. He went in ahead of Lyra and struck a match, lighting a naphtha lamp and holding it up so she could see to pick her way through the columns of books that stood on both sides of the narrow hall. There were bookshelves too, rising to the ceiling, but clearly Kubi
č
ek had long ago filled them, and had to resort to the floor. The steps of a staircase that led up into the gloom were themselves laden with books on each side. The air of the place was cold and damp, with the smell of leather bindings and old paper overlying that of cabbage and bacon.

“Please come this way,” said Kubi
č
ek. “My guest is not actually inside the building. I am a book dealer, and…You will understand in little more than a minute.”

Carrying the lamp, he led Lyra into a little kitchen, which was clean and tidy and clear of books except for three small piles on the table. Kubi
č
ek put the lamp down and unlocked the back door.

“Please, will you come this way?” he said.

Apprehensive, Lyra followed. Kubi
č
ek had left the lamp inside, and the little yard behind the house was almost dark but for the glow of the city that pervaded the air above. But for that, and for—

Lyra caught her breath.

In the little courtyard stood a man in rough clothes who gave off such heat that she couldn’t go close. He was like a furnace. She could see his gaunt face, alive with anguish, and she had to gasp as two little flames broke out from under his eyelids, to be dashed away like tears by his angry hand. His eyes were glowing like coals: black over a flaring, breathing red. He had no dæmon that Lyra could see.

He spoke to Kubi
č
ek, and flame spilled out of his mouth. His voice had the quiet roaring, bubbling sound of an overfed fire in a small fireplace, the kind of fire that threatens to set the chimney ablaze.

Kubi
č
ek said in English, “This is Lyra Silvertongue. Miss Silvertongue, may I introduce Cornelis van Dongen?”

Van Dongen said, “I cannot shake your hand. I salute you. Please, I beg you, help me.”

“If I can, I will, but—how? What can I do for you?”

“Find my dæmon. She is nearby. She is in Prague. Find her for me.”

She supposed he meant with the alethiometer. And she’d have to use the new method, and that would leave her prostrate with sickness.

“I need to know—” she began, but shook her head, helpless.

The dark man who burned like a furnace stood with hands outstretched, palms upward, pleading. A row of little flames broke out from under the fingernails of his left hand, and he crushed them out in his right palm.

“What do you need to know?” he said, his voice sounding like that of a gas flame.

“Oh, everything—I don’t know! Is she—like you?”

“No. I am all fire, and she is all water. I long for her. She is longing for me….”

Tears of flame gushed from his eyes, and he stooped to pick up a handful of earth and rubbed it into them until the flames went out. Lyra was filled with pity and horror. She could make him out a little more clearly now her eyes were accustomed to the dark, and his face seemed like that of a wounded animal, aware of its suffering but of nothing that could explain it, so the whole universe was complicit in its pain and terror. The man’s clothing, she realized in passing, was made of asbestos cloth.

Her expression must have been visible to him, and it made him shrink away, ashamed, which added to the shame she felt herself. What could she do? What in the world could she do?

But she had to do something.

“I need to know more about her,” she said. “Her name, for example. Why you’re separated. Where you come from.”

“Her name is Dinessa. We come from the Dutch Republic. My father is a natural philosopher, and my mother died when we were young. My dæmon and I loved to help my father in his workshop, his laboratory, where he worked on his magnum opus, which was the isolation of the essential principles of matter….”

As he spoke, the heat coming from his body seemed to increase, and Lyra found herself stepping back a little. Kubi
č
ek was standing in the doorway, respectfully attending to everything they said. The yard they were in seemed to be shared by the other buildings behind, whose windows overlooked it; and as Lyra turned her face away for a second’s relief from the heat, she saw lights glowing and one or two people moving around, but no one was looking out.

“Please go on,” she said.

“I said that Dinessa and I loved to help him in his work. It felt grand and important to us. All we knew was that he was having conversations, interchanges, with immortal spirits, and what they had to say was far above our understandings. One day he spoke to us about the elements of fire and water….” He broke off for a few moments to sob helplessly in great gouts of flame.

Kubi
č
ek said, “Van Dongen, please—not so much…” He was looking anxiously up at the windows of the buildings overlooking the little courtyard.

“I am a human being!” the furnace man cried. “Even now I am
human
!”

He pressed his hands over his eyes and rocked back and forth. There was nothing he needed so much as an embrace, and such a human contact would never be offered.

“What happened?” urged Lyra, helpless with pity.

“My father was interested in change,” Van Dongen said after another moment. “In one thing becoming another, while other things do not change. Naturally we trusted him and thought no harm could come of what he did. We were proud to be helping with such a great task. So when he wanted to work with us, with the connection between the two of us, while Dinessa could still change, we agreed at once.

“It was a long process that wearied and troubled us, me and my dæmon, but we persevered and did all that he asked of us. My father was anxious about our safety, anxious about everything, because he truly loved us as much as he loved knowledge. And in the course of one experiment, he assimilated our essential self to the elements: me to the nature of elemental fire, her to that of elemental water. Then he found he could not undo this operation—that it was permanent. I am like this, and my dæmon cannot live in the air but has to breathe water and live her life in it.” A flame broke out on his brow, and he swiped a hand across to smother it.

“Why were you separated?” Lyra said.

“Once we were transformed in that way, we were each other’s only comfort and consolation, but now we could never touch, never embrace. It was a torment. We had to remain hidden in the house and grounds, my dæmon in a pool of water and myself in a hut constructed of iron sheets. The servants were bribed to keep quiet about us. My father did everything he could to keep us concealed, but it was costing him money; he was selling everything he could to meet the expense. We didn’t know. How would we know? We knew nothing. Finally he came to us and said, ‘I am so sorry, my child, but I can afford to keep you concealed no longer. The Magisterium has heard rumors, and if they find out about you, they will arrest me and kill you. I have had to ask the advice of a great magician. He is coming tomorrow to see you. Maybe he will be able to help.’

“False words! Oh, false hopes and false words!”

Cascades of flame ran down his cheeks, and the blaze lit up the backs of all the other buildings, and made flaring shadows on the walls. Lyra stood helplessly watching. Van Dongen wiped his asbestos sleeve over his face and brushed off little sparks that fell to the ground and squirmed and flared and died quickly.

Kubi
č
ek stepped forward a little way and said, “Please, Van Dongen, please try to avoid exciting yourself. This is the only place we can talk without danger to the building, but anyone could look out at any time, and—”

“I know. I know. Please forgive me.”

He sighed, and a cloud of smoke and flame gushed from his mouth, and vanished in the air.

Van Dongen sank to his knees, and then twisted himself down to sit on the ground cross-legged. His head was bowed, his hands in his lap.

“The magician arrived. He was called Johannes Agrippa, and he looked at us, at me and Dinessa, and went to my father’s study to talk in private. There he made my father an offer: he would pay a considerable sum to take my dæmon away, but he would not take me. My father accepted the offer. As if she was an animal, as if she was a block of marble, he gave that man my dæmon, my only companion, the one being who could understand the full misery of our existence. She begged and pleaded, I sobbed and implored, but he was stronger, he had always been stronger, and he went through with his transaction. My dear dæmon was sold to the magician, and arrangements were made to transport her to the city of Prague, where he lived. The agony of parting was indescribable. I was kept from them by force until they were far away, and as soon as I was free I set off to find her. But here she still is, somewhere, and I would tear down every wall and set every house ablaze, I would bring about a conflagration that would dwarf every great fire that ever burned, but she would perish in the process and I would be destroyed before I saw her again.