The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth (Book of Dust, Volume 2) (42 page)

“Soon, Holy One, soon,” murmured Brother Mercurius, and knelt again to adjust the front of the lower garments as the great enfolding cope, with its substructure of tough struts and crosspieces, was maneuvered into place around the saint’s shoulders.

“Brother,” said the senior subdeacon warningly, and Brother Mercurius modestly ducked aside, managing to imply both a humble desire to serve and a rueful self-deprecation: how silly to forget that this was Brother Ignatius’s job! His little jerboa dæmon skipped out of the way helpfully.

“Brother…Brother…young Brother,” said the old man, “please be good enough to trim the lamps in the corridor to the council room. Twice now I have nearly missed my step along there.”

“Of course, Your Blessedness,” said Brother Mercurius, bowing to conceal his disappointment. Now it would be the other two who supported the saint on his entrance.

The subdeacon slipped out of the vestry and found the eunuch waiting in the corridor—waiting for something, or just standing, but in either case disconcerting. That face, a great moon of raw pastry! Brother Mercurius offered him a quick, modest smile and set about adjusting the lamps, which needed no adjusting, as he well knew. Those at the further end, close to the council chamber, were mounted a little higher than the rest, which allowed Brother Mercurius to make much of the awkwardness of dealing with them while listening for any scraps of conversation he might hear through the door.

But they were cunning, these bishops and archbishops and archimandrites. Two thousand years of subtle statesmanship are not easily outfoxed by a pretty young subdeacon with a winning manner. Behind the door outside which Brother Mercurius was disingenuously lingering, three prelates from Syria were discussing raisins. Their fellow synod members, all one hundred and forty-seven of them, were disposed around the council chamber, engaging in similarly meaningless small talk. They would not start their business until the emptying bell rang to signify that everyone but themselves had been escorted from the palace.

Hearing the doors from the vestry open, Brother Mercurius turned away from the lamp he’d been fiddling with and smoothed his hands down over his slim flanks before standing modestly to one side, ready to dart forward and open the door to the great chamber.

“Back, fool, back,” came a whisper in a well-known voice. The Archdeacon Phalarion, who had appeared from the vestry, was the supervisor of ritual, and the office of opening the door was very firmly his. Brother Mercurius bowed and tiptoed back along the corridor, keeping so close to the wall that he was moving sideways rather than forward. It was because he was doing that, and because he was about halfway along, that he had the best view of all of them of what happened next.

The first thing was that the eunuch’s goose dæmon, from the door of the vestry, honked suddenly and loudly: a great goose cry of fear and danger.

Kaloumdjian turned to see what had frightened her, and the next instant a scimitar sliced his head from his shoulders. The head tumbled with a hefty thud, and a very long second or two later, down came his body to follow it, spouting blood. His dæmon had already vanished.

Archdeacon Phalarion hurled himself at the jostling figures that were coming out of the vestry, and was borne to the ground in a moment. The Patriarch, supported by the two subdeacons, was too stiff to turn and look and too bewildered to speak, and the subdeacons themselves, caught between horrible fear and the desire to protect the old man, did not move either, but were both killed as they gazed back over their shoulders. They fell aside like the mold of a sculpture that has just been cast in bronze: stiff, dead things that only serve to contain the work of art within, which is now born and visible for the first time.

That work of art, the Patriarch himself, stood radiant in his robes and supported still by the armature inside the cope. His expression, which Brother Mercurius could see very clearly in the radiance of the lamps, was like that of someone who has just understood the solution to a profound and complex problem—as it might be, the mystery of the Incarnation. But unlike the eunuch and the subdeacons, the saint was not lucky enough to die from the first blow that struck him. His assailants—three of them—hacked and stabbed and sawed at the stiff, half-wooden figure while his frightened dæmon fluttered high and fell back and careered into the wall and spun around on the floor, and drops of liquid music flew around.

St. Simeon, meanwhile, was waving his arms slowly like a beetle on its back, despite the fact that one of them had lost its hand; and presently the nightingale’s song fell silent and the old man lolled in his sustaining robes, quite unable to fall over.

Brother Mercurius saw the three white-robed swordsmen, now much more vividly colored than a few seconds previously, push the old man over to make sure he was dead. He saw them look around and behind, from where shouts and cries of anger and pursuit could now be heard, running feet, the clatter of pikes; he saw them turn their hawk faces towards him, he felt the appalling beauty of their gaze, he nearly swooned as he saw them rush towards him, and he thought of the door behind him, the door—

It opened
this
way, and if he planted his back against it and waited to be slaughtered, it might hold the men up long enough for the palace guards to arrive. Brother Mercurius knew that, within the smallest fraction of a second. He also knew that it was not in his nature to do that sort of thing, and that it was in his nature to be agreeable, to make things easy and convenient, and that this was the way God had made him, and there was no changing now.

So in that same moment and before the assassins had come halfway down the corridor, Brother Mercurius had turned and grasped the handle and pulled the great door open. The terrified prelates inside, hearing the cries and the sounds of struggle from the corridor, had gathered like sheep in the center of the chamber, and the assassins were able to charge full at them through the open doorway and slaughter a dozen or so before the pursuing guards caught up and fell on them from behind.

Brother Mercurius did not want to look at the body of the Patriarch, but he knew that it would be a good thing to be discovered praying beside it, so while the killing, the cries, the splashing, the thudding, the scraping and wailing and clashing from the council chamber filled his ears, he made his way delicately back to the tumbled structure containing what was left of the saint and fell to his knees, taking care to daub himself with as much blood as he could bear, and to let the tears flow freely down his cheeks.

It would be wrong to say that Mercurius was already envisaging the icons that would in time depict the martyrdom of St. Simeon Papadakis, and ensuring that an essential component of the scene, perhaps even its defining element, was the presence of the young and devoted subdeacon splashed with the martyr’s blood and with his large eyes cast upwards in prayer.

That is to say, that picture was indeed in his mind, but not at the forefront. He was mainly preoccupied with the enthralling questions of the succession, of the weeks of politics that would now unfold, of the possibility of promotion now that the two other subdeacons of the bathhouse had been killed. He was also intoxicated by the look in the beautiful eyes of the assassins as they rushed towards him in the corridor. He had never in all his life seen anything quite so thrilling.

Meanwhile, in the main body of the great cathedral, out of earshot of the assassination of St. Simeon, the congregation—including Lyra—stood in their hundreds under the vast dome, waiting for the service proper to begin, while a choir of deep male voices sang a hymn whose length and slowness conveyed a strong impression of eternity.

Part of Lyra’s unobtrusiveness policy consisted of not asking any questions or starting any conversations, so she had to make do with whatever she could gather from everything that was going on around her. She absorbed the congregation’s patience and trance-like stillness, intensified by the music, until a moment came when one of the singers faltered.

It sounded as if he had been struck in the heart during a long-held high note. A sort of cough or gasp interrupted the line of music, succeeded by a sighing uncertainty in the other voices. After a minute or so they seemed to gather themselves and continue, only to come to a halt after another phrase or so, although that was clearly not the end of the hymn.

The choir was hidden, so no one could see what had caused the interruption. The rapt mood of the service had vanished in a second; from a single congregation they had fractured into several hundred anxious individuals. People looked all around, they tried to peer over the heads of those in front, and after a moment came other sounds from the choir: cries, shouts, the clash of steel on steel, and even at one point a gunshot, which made everyone in the congregation start at once, so they looked like a field of wheat under a sudden gust of wind.

People had moved at first away from the walls to gather more closely in the center of the vast building. Lyra went with them, unable to see very much but listening hard to the hubbub and the violent struggle that was taking place beyond the iconostasis. To add to the noise, several people had begun to pray aloud in tones of desperation.

Lyra turned to whisper to Pan, and of course he wasn’t there, and again she felt a stab of abandonment. She gathered herself and went through her checklist, dealing one by one with the things that might make her conspicuous, so that once she was in control, she seemed only like the meekest, most passive, least determined bystander, no one worth taking an interest in.

In this mask of modesty she made her way towards the edge of the vast floor and along the wall to the doors. Several other people were already hurrying out, and Lyra could see there would be a problem if the exit got blocked. Rather than wait and be trapped inside, she slipped through the melee and shoved hard until she was outside on the marble steps, blinking in the sunlight, being forced downwards as more and more people poured through the door and spread out in front of the building.

There was confusion in the public square as rumors of assassination, massacre, bloodshed spread with the speed of fire. Lyra could only guess what was being said, but then she heard some words in English and turned to the speaker.

He was a gaunt and tonsured man in a form of clerical dress, something severe and monastic, and he was speaking rapidly to a party of English men and women, mostly middle-aged or elderly, who looked fearful and sorrow-struck.

A woman at the edge of the group had a kind face that was vivid with concern, and her greenfinch dæmon was looking at Lyra sympathetically.

“What’s happening? Does anyone know?” Lyra said, breaking her rule.

Hearing an English voice, the woman turned to her and said, “They think he’s been killed—the Patriarch—no one knows for certain—”

Another member of the group called out to the monk, “What did you actually see?”

The monk laid his hand across his forehead in a gesture of desperate helplessness and raised his voice: “I saw men with swords—dressed in white—they were killing all the clergy—His Holiness the Patriarch was the first to fall—”

“Are they still in there?”

“I couldn’t say—I fled—I’m ashamed to admit it—I fled instead of staying to die like the others….”

Tears were falling down his cheeks, his voice was high and broken, and his mouth was trembling.

“It’s important to bear witness,” someone said.

“No!” cried the monk. “I should have stayed! I was called to be a martyr, and I fled like a coward!”

The woman who’d spoken to Lyra shook her head and murmured in dismay, “No, no.”

The monk’s dæmon was a small monkey-like creature, who ran up and down his arm and rubbed her fists into her eyes, wailing in self-pity. The woman turned away, frowning, but then her dæmon whispered in her ear, and she looked back at Lyra again.

“You—excuse me—I can’t believe that you—am I making a mistake? Your dæmon…”

“No, you’re right,” Lyra said. “My dæmon’s not…He’s gone.”

“You poor girl,” said the woman with genuine sympathy.

This was so far from the reaction Lyra expected that she didn’t know how to respond. “Are you, umm…are you part of this group?”

“No, no. I just heard them speaking in English, so…Were you inside the cathedral? Do you know what’s happening?”

“No…The choir stopped singing, and then—but look, someone’s coming out.”

In the throng at the top of the steps, outside the entrance, there was a disturbance as people seemed to be pushed aside, and then came four or five soldiers in the ceremonial uniform of the Patriarchal Guard. They were forming a protective square around a young man in clerical dress whose bloodstained face and large, lustrous eyes seemed, even on that sunny morning, to be lit by a spotlight, so clear was every change of expression, from sorrow and pity to patient courage and on to a rapturous acceptance of the late saint’s martyrdom. He was speaking, and half chanting words that were obviously familiar prayers, because the crowd seemed to find themselves transformed into an impromptu congregation, and murmured responses whenever he paused.

The woman whispered, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a shameless opportunist. He’ll do well out of this terrible business.”

Lyra thought so too. The little coxcomb was now appearing to feel faint, and gripping the arm of the most handsome of the guards, who blushingly held him up. The priest’s dæmon said something that drew a sigh of warm sympathy from those nearby. Lyra turned away, and so did the woman.

“Don’t go,” the woman said, and Lyra looked at her properly for the first time. She saw a woman in a well-preserved middle age, with a plain, good-humored face whose red cheeks were not entirely due to the sun.

“I can’t stay here,” said Lyra, though there was no reason why she couldn’t, and since this was (from an Oakley Street point of view) where the most important events were happening, no doubt she should stay and make notes.

“Spare five minutes,” said the woman. “Come and have some coffee with me.”