The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth (Book of Dust, Volume 2) (46 page)

“What do you know about my father?”

“More than you, obviously.”

The hawk dæmon shook herself away from Bonneville’s hand and sprang to the tabletop, her claws gripping the tablecloth and pulling it into ridges. Her fierce eyes were fixed on Malcolm’s, and Asta stood up on the chair next to his, watching her.

“I know you killed him,” Bonneville said. “You killed my father.”

“Don’t be stupid. I was only ten, eleven, something like that.”

“I know your name. I know you killed him.”

“What is my name, then?”

“Matthew Polstead,” said Bonneville with contempt.

Malcolm took out his passport, his genuine one, and showed the boy his name. “Malcolm, see? Not Matthew. And look at my date of birth. It was only eleven years before your father died. There was a great flood, and he drowned. As for Matthew, he’s my older brother. He found your father’s body in the Thames, near Oxford. He had nothing to do with killing him.”

He took back his passport. The boy looked both rebellious and disconcerted.

“If he discovered the body, he must have stolen my father’s alethiometer,” he said sullenly. “I want it back.”

“I heard about an alethiometer. I heard about what your father did to his dæmon too. Did you know about that? I thought it might run in the family.”

Bonneville’s hand moved to his dæmon’s neck, to stroke it or hold her steady, but she shook her wings impatiently and moved away, further onto the table. Asta put her front paws on the table and stood up, watching intently.

“What?” said Bonneville. “Tell me.”

“You tell me what I want to know first. Roses. Oxford. The alethiometer. The girl. The death of the Patriarch. Everything. Then I’ll tell you about your father.”

The boy’s eyes were glaring like his dæmon’s. He sat tensely on the edge of his chair, both hands on the table, and Malcolm stared implacably back. After several seconds Bonneville’s eyes dropped, and he sat back and began to chew at a fingernail.

Malcolm waited.

“What d’you want first?” said Bonneville.

“The alethiometer.”

“What about it?”

“How you came to read it.”

“When I was a kid, my mother told me about how my father had been given his by these monks in Bohemia or somewhere. They had it for centuries, but they recognized that he was a genius at reading it and they saw he had to have it. When I heard that, I knew it would be mine one day, so I started reading all about the symbols and how to interpret them. And when I first touched the one the Magisterium has, I found I could read it easily. So they began to rely on me. I could read it more quickly and better, more accurately, than anyone they’d ever seen. So I became their chief reader. I used it to ask what had happened to my father, how he died, where his alethiometer was now, a lot of questions like that. They led me to that girl. That bitch has got it. They murdered him, and she stole it.”

“Who murdered him?”

“The Oxford people. Maybe your brother.”

“He drowned.”

“The fuck you know about it, if you were only ten years old.”

“Tell me about this new method.”

“I just found it out.”

“How?”

Bonneville was vain enough to respond. “You wouldn’t understand. No one would unless they had a thorough classical training. Then you have to rebel against it and find something new, like I did. At first, it made me throw up and I saw nothing and felt nauseated. But I stuck to it. I tried again and again. I wasn’t going to let it beat me. And in spite of being nauseated, I could make connections much more quickly. It became famous, my new method. The other readers tried it. But they could only do it weakly, uncertainly; they couldn’t handle it. It was talked about all over Europe. But no one can do it properly except me.”

“What about the girl? I thought she could do it.”

“She’s better than most. I admit that. But she hasn’t got the strength. You need a kind of power, stamina, force, and I guess girls haven’t got it.”

“Why do you think she has the alethiometer that your father had?”

“I don’t have to think it. I just know it. It’s a stupid question. It’s like asking how I worked out that this tablecloth’s white. You don’t have to work it out.”

“All right. Now tell me why the Patriarch Papadakis was killed.”

“It was bound to happen. As soon as Delamare arranged for him to head this new High Council, the poor old bastard was doomed. See, Delamare had it all worked out from the start. The only way he could be the single unchallenged leader was to set up a structure where there
was
a leader. The Magisterium hasn’t had that since, I don’t know, hundreds of years ago, but as soon as there was a single leader, all Delamare had to do was have him killed in circumstances that led to panic, then step in and calm that panic with some emergency regulations, and modestly offer himself. He’s in charge now for life. Unlimited powers. You got to admire that sort of resolution. I could handle him, but no one else can.”

“In that case, why are you on the run?”

“What the fuck d’you mean? I’m not on the run,” Bonneville blustered. “I got a secret mission from Delamare himself.”

“They’re looking for you. There’s a reward, didn’t you know?”

“How much?”

“More than you’re worth. Someone will betray you in the end. Now tell me about the roses. What did they do with the sample of oil?”

“They analyzed it. The oil from that place has got various properties that they haven’t got to the bottom of yet. They need a larger sample. I got hold of a tiny amount—I know a girl in the Geneva laboratory, and in exchange…Well, she gave me a piece of blotting paper with a few drops on it. I found out one thing straightaway. It protects against the nausea in the new method. With enough of it, you could use the new method and never suffer the ill effects. But I only had that little bit.”

“Go on. What else?”

“You know what they mean by Dust?”

“Of course.”

“With the oil, they can see that. And lines of power. Or fields. Maybe fields. The girl in the lab said it was a field. And they could see not just chemicals and kinds of light but human interactions. If Professor Zitski had touched this specimen but not that one, he showed up somehow, because they could check it against the other things he’d touched. And Professor Zotski would have his mark on it too, if he had. If Zotski had been thinking about the thing, or he’d ordered how the experiment was to be set up, he’d show up in the field.”

“And what was Delamare’s reaction to this?”

“You’ve got to understand, he’s not a simple man. He’s got layer on layer of complexity, he’s subtle, he seems to contradict himself and then you see he’s thought several moves ahead….The new High Council, that’ll let him do things he wasn’t able to before. He’s going to send an expedition to this rose place, Lop Nor, wherever. Not for trade, though. I mean armed. They’re going to capture it. He’s going to control it all. He’s not going to let anyone else have the oil.”

“What do you know about this armed expedition? Who’s commanding it?”

“Fuck, I don’t know,” said Bonneville. He was sounding impatient, bored, and Malcolm could see that he needed the constant attention of a listener to stop him losing concentration and becoming irritated.

“Want some more coffee?”

“All right.”

Malcolm signaled to the waiter. Bonneville’s dæmon had shut her eyes and let him return her to his shoulder.

“This girl in the laboratory,” Malcolm said. “In Geneva.”

“Nice body. Too emotional, though.”

“Are you still in contact with her?”

Bonneville thrust his right forefinger into and out of his closed left fist several times. Malcolm knew what the boy wanted then: the sexual admiration of an older man. He let a slight smile into his expression.

“She’ll find things out for you?”

“She’ll do anything. But there’s no oil left, I told you.”

“Have they tried to synthesize it?”

Bonneville’s eyes narrowed. “You sound like you’re trying to recruit me as a spy,” he said. “Why should I tell you anything?”

The waiter came back with their coffee. Malcolm waited till he’d gone, and then said, “The circumstances haven’t changed.”

He wasn’t smiling anymore. Bonneville gave an elaborate shrug.

“I’ve told you plenty. Now you tell me something. How did that girl Belacqua get hold of my father’s alethiometer?”

“As far as I know, it was given to her by the head of her father’s college in Oxford. Jordan College.”

“Well, how did
he
get hold of it?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“So why did he give it to her?”

“I know nothing about it at all.”

“How do you know her anyway?”

“I used to teach her.”

“When? How old was she? Did she have the alethiometer then?”

“She was about fourteen, fifteen. I taught her history. She never mentioned the alethiometer. I certainly never saw it. I had no idea she had it until recently. Is that why Delamare wants to find her?”

“He’d like the alethiometer, certainly. He’d be glad to have a second one. Then he could play me off against the other readers. But that isn’t why he wants to find her.”

“Well, why does he?”

Malcolm could see the temptation playing over Bonneville’s expression. He knew something that Malcolm didn’t, and the pleasure of telling it was too strong to ignore.

“You mean you don’t know?” he said.

“There are a lot of things I don’t know. What is it in this case?”

“I don’t know how you failed to know this. Obviously your sources aren’t up to much.”

Malcolm sipped his coffee and watched Bonneville’s knowing smirk broaden. “Obviously,” he said. “Well?”

“Delamare is her uncle. He thinks she killed his sister, her mother. He must have been in love with his sister, if you ask me. Obsessed with her, anyway. He wants to punish her, Silvertongue, Belacqua, whatever her name is. Wants to make her pay.”

Malcolm was profoundly surprised. He’d had no idea that the Mrs. Coulter he’d once met, in Hannah Relf’s little house on a winter afternoon just before the great flood, had any siblings at all. But why should she not? People did. And did Lyra know about this brother, this uncle? He wanted to talk to her urgently, now, this minute. And he had to show no reaction. He had to feel no reaction. He had to feel no more than mildly interested.

“Does he know where she is?” he said. “Have you told him?”

“Your turn,” said Bonneville. “Tell me about my father. Who killed him?”

“I told you. No one killed him. He drowned.”

“I don’t believe you. Someone killed him. When I find out who that was, I’ll kill him.”

“Have you got the nerve to do that?”

“No question. Tell me about his dæmon. You said something about his dæmon.”

“She was a hyena. She’d lost a leg because he mistreated her. He beat her savagely. I heard it from a man who saw him doing it. He said it made him sick to see it.”

“You think I’ll believe that?”

“It’s of no interest to me whether you believe it or not.”

“Did you ever see him?”

“Only once. I saw his dæmon, and she frightened me. She came out of the bushes in the dark and looked at me and pissed on the path I was walking on. Then he came out and saw what she was doing, and laughed. They went ahead further into the wood, and I waited for a long time before I dared go on. But I never saw him again.”

“How did you know his name?”

“I heard people talking about him.”

“Where was this?”

“In Oxford during the flood.”

“You’re lying.”

“And you’re boasting, and you’ve got far less control over the alethiometer than you think you have. You read it in a state of confusion and seasickness, and guesswork. I don’t trust you an inch, because you’re a slippery, vicious little brat. But I’ve given my word. I won’t tell Menotti or the others where you are. Unless you try something against me, in which case I won’t bother with them; I’ll find you and kill you myself.”

“Easy to say.”

“Easy to do.”

“Who are you, anyway?”

“An archaeologist. The best advice I can give you is to crawl back to Delamare and apologize fulsomely. Then stay put.”

Bonneville sneered.

“Is your mother still alive?” Malcolm said.

A flush came into the boy’s cheeks. “Never you fucking mind,” he said. “She’s got nothing to do with you.”

Malcolm watched him and said nothing. After a minute Bonneville stood up.

“I’ve had enough,” he said.

He picked up his dæmon and squeezed out past the next table. Malcolm smelled the cologne he was wearing and recognized the scent as one that a number of young men seemed to be affecting: a citrus-based product called Galleon. So Bonneville was conscious of fashion, and wanted to be attractive, and perhaps was; it was another fact that might be useful. The young man was holding himself gingerly, as if his ribs still hurt. Malcolm watched him out of the café and away past the fountain to be lost in the crowd.

“D’you think he knows about Lyra and Pan not being together?” said Asta.

“Hard to say. It’s the sort of thing he’d boast about, if he did.”

“He’ll kill her if he finds her.”

“Then we must find her first.”

The ferry didn’t reach Smyrna till late in the following afternoon. During the day Lyra hardly moved, staying in her wicker chair and stirring only to fetch some coffee and bread, thinking about what she should do next, and looking through the little notebook, the
clavicula.
The name Kubi
č
ek had pointed to was that of a Princess Rosamond Cantacuzino, and it was the rose in her name that decided it. Lyra set off for her house as soon as she left the boat.

The princess lived in one of the great houses further along the waterfront. The city was a famous center of trade; in earlier times, merchants had made enormous fortunes from buying and selling carpets, dried fruit, grain, spices, and precious minerals. For the sake of the cool breezes in summer, and the views of the mountains, the richest families had long settled in splendid mansions along the palm-shaded corniche. The Cantacuzino house stood back from the road, behind a garden whose neatness and complexity of planting spoke of great wealth. Lyra thought that great wealth would help a lot if you’d lost your dæmon; you could pay for well-guarded privacy.

And thinking that, she wondered if she’d ever get inside the house to meet the princess. She almost quailed. Why did she want to meet her, anyway? Well, to ask for advice about the rest of her journey, obviously. And if Kubi
č
ek had her on his list, there must have been at least one occasion when she’d agreed to be helpful to those like herself.
Courage!
Lyra thought.

She walked through the gate and along a gravel path between symmetrical beds of tightly pruned roses whose buds were just beginning to show. A gardener at work in a far corner looked up and saw her, and straightened his back to watch as she made, with all the confidence she could assume, for the marble steps up to the entrance.

An elderly manservant answered the bell. His crow dæmon gave one hoarse croak as soon as she saw Lyra, and the old man’s hooded eyes flickered with a moment’s understanding.

“I hope you can speak English,” Lyra said, “because I have little Greek and no Anatolian. I have come to present my compliments to Princess Cantacuzino.”

The servant looked her up and down. She knew her clothes were shabby, but she also remembered Farder Coram’s advice, and tried to imitate the way the witches bore themselves: supremely at ease in their ragged scraps of black silk, as if they wore the most elegant couture.

The butler inclined his head and said, “May I tell the princess who is calling?”

“My name is Lyra Silvertongue.”

He stood aside and invited her to wait in the hall. She looked around: heavy dark wood, an elaborate staircase, a chandelier, tall palms in terra-cotta pots, the smell of beeswax polish. And cool, and quiet. The sound of traffic on the corniche, the stir of the air in the outside world, were all hushed behind the layers of wealth and custom that hung like heavy curtains all around.

The butler returned and said, “The princess will see you now, Miss Silvertongue. Please follow me.”

He’d come from a door on the ground floor, but now he began to climb the stairs. He moved slowly, wheezing a little, but his posture was soldierly and upright. On the first floor he opened a door and announced her, and Lyra walked past into a room flooded with light, overlooking the bay and the harbor and the distant mountains. It was very large, and it seemed full of life: an ivory-colored grand piano covered in a dozen or more silver-framed photograms, many modern paintings, crowded white-painted bookshelves, and elegant light-colored furniture, all made Lyra like it at once. A very old lady sat in a brocaded armchair near the great windows, dressed all in black.

Lyra approached her. She wondered for a moment if she ought to curtsy, but decided immediately that it would look ridiculous, and simply said, “Good afternoon, Princess. It’s very good of you to see me.”

“Is that how you were brought up to address a princess?” The old woman’s voice was dry, astringent, amused.

“No. That didn’t form part of my lessons at all. I can do several other things quite well, though.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Bring that chair forward and sit down. Let me look at you.”

Lyra did as she was told and looked back calmly as the old woman scrutinized her. The old woman was both fierce and vulnerable, and Lyra wondered what her dæmon had been, and whether it would be polite to ask.

“Who were your people?” said the princess.

“My father’s name was Asriel, Lord Asriel, and my mother was not his wife. She was called Mrs. Coulter. How did you know…I mean, why did you say
were
? How could you tell they weren’t alive?”

“I can tell an orphan when I see one. I met your father once.”

“Did you?”

“It was at a reception in the Egyptian embassy in Berlin. It must have been thirty years ago. He was a very handsome young man, and very rich.”

“He lost his wealth when I was born.”

“Why was that?”

“He wasn’t married to my mother, and there was a court case—”

“Oh! Lawyers! Have
you
any money, child?”

“None at all.”

“Then you will be of no interest to lawyers, and all the better for it. Who gave you my name?”

“A man in Prague. He was called Vaclav Kubi
č
ek.”

“Ah. A very interesting man. A scholar of some repute. Modest, unassuming. Did you know of him before you went to Prague?”

“No, not at all. I had no idea there could be anyone else who…I mean, without…He was very helpful to me.”

“Why are you traveling? And where are you going?”

“I’m going to Central Asia. To a place called Tashbulak, where there’s a botanical research station. I’m going there to find out the answer to a puzzle. A mystery, really.”

“Tell me about your dæmon.”

“Pantalaimon…”

“A good Greek name.”

“He settled in the form of a pine marten. He and I discovered we could separate when I was about twelve. We had to. At least, I had to keep a promise, which meant leaving him behind and going into a place where he couldn’t come. Nothing…Almost nothing has ever felt worse. But after a while we found each other again, and I think he forgave me. And we were together after that, though we had to keep our separating very secret. We didn’t think anyone could do it except witches. But for the last year or so we’ve been quarreling. We couldn’t stand each other. That was horrible. And one day I woke up and he’d just gone. So I’m searching for him, really. I’m following clues…little things that don’t make rational sense….In Prague I met a magician who gave me a clue. And I’m relying on chance. It was by chance that I met Mr. Kubi
č
ek.”

“There’s a great deal you’re not telling me.”

“I don’t know how long you’ll be interested for.”

“You don’t suppose my life is so full of fascinating events that I can pass up the chance to listen to a stranger in the same depleted condition as I am myself?”

“Well, it might be. Full of fascinating events, I mean. I’m sure there’s no shortage of people who’d like to meet you, or friends who could come and talk. Perhaps you have a family.”

“I have no offspring, if that’s what you mean. No husband. But in another sense I am smothered by family; this city, this country are full of Cantacuzinos. What I have instead of a family is—yes, I have a handful of friends, but they are embarrassed by me, they make allowances, they avoid painful subjects, they’re full of kindly understanding, and as a result conversation with them is a kind of purgatory. When Mr. Kubi
č
ek came to see me, I was nearly dead with boredom and despair. Now the people who come here through him and through two or three other people of our sort in other places are the most welcome of guests. Will you take some tea with me?”

“I would love to.”

The princess rang a little silver bell on the table beside her. “When did you arrive in Smyrna?” she said.

“This afternoon. I came straight from the port. Princess, why did your dæmon leave you?”

The old lady held up a hand. She heard the door open. When the butler came in, she said, “Tea, Hamid,” and he nodded deeply and went out again.

The princess listened. When she was satisfied that the servant had gone, she turned back to Lyra.

“He was a particularly beautiful black cat. He left me because he fell in love with someone else. He became utterly fascinated by a dancer, a nightclub dancer.”

Her tone made it clear that she meant “someone little better than a prostitute.” Lyra was silent, intrigued.

“You will be wondering,” the princess went on, “how he could possibly have come to know such a woman. My social circle and hers would normally never touch. But I had a brother whose physical appetites were insatiable, and whose gift for making unsuitable alliances caused the family a great deal of embarrassment. He introduced the woman one evening into a soirée. He was perfectly open about it—‘This young woman is my mistress,’ he would say when meeting people—and to do her justice, she was remarkably pretty and graceful. I could feel her attractiveness myself, and my poor dæmon became besotted at once.”

“Your
poor
dæmon?”

“Oh, I felt sorry for him. To be so abjectly dependent on a woman of that kind. It was a sort of madness. I felt every little quiver of it, of course, and I tried to speak to him about it, but he refused to listen, refused to control his feelings. Well, I daresay they were beyond control.”

“What about her dæmon?”

“He was a marmoset or something of that kind. Lazy, incurious, vain. Quite indifferent to what was going on. My brother persisted in bringing the girl to the opera, to race meetings, to receptions, and whenever I was present too, my dæmon’s obsession would force me to seek her company and experience his passion for her. It became unendurable. He would get as close as he could and talk quietly, whispering into her ear, while her own dæmon preened and yawned nearby. In the end—”

The door opened, and she stopped while the butler came in with a tray, which he set on the little table to her right. He bowed and left, and she completed the sentence:

“In the end it became notorious. Everyone knew about it. I have never been so unhappy.”

“How old were you?”

“Nineteen, twenty, I can’t remember. It would have been the natural thing for me to accept the attentions of any one of a number of young men my parents thought suitable, and to marry, and so on. But this absurdity made that impossible. I became an object of ridicule.”

She spoke calmly, as if the young woman who had been her twenty-year-old self were someone else entirely. She turned to the tray and poured tea into two pretty cups.

“How did it end?” said Lyra.

“I begged, I pleaded with him, but he was lost in his madness. I said we would both die if he didn’t stop, but nothing would make him stay with me. I even—and this will show you how abject a human being can become—I even left my parents and went to live with her myself.”

“The dancer? You went to live with her?”

“It was reckless. I pretended to be in love with her, and she was happy enough with that. I lived with her, I forsook all my family responsibilities, I shared her bed, her table, her wretched occupation, because I could dance too, I was graceful, I was no less pretty than she was. She had a little talent, but no more than that. Together we attracted a bigger audience; we had a great success. We danced in every nightclub from Alexandria to Athens. We were offered a fortune to dance in Morocco, and an even greater one to dance in South America. But my dæmon wanted more, always more. He wanted to be hers and not mine. Her dæmon became a slave of poppy, which didn’t affect her; but she turned to my dæmon, and when he felt his own obsession returned, I knew it was time for me to leave.

“I was ready to die. One night—we were in Beirut—one night I tore myself away from them. He was clinging to her, she was holding him tight, crushing him to her breast, all three of us were sobbing with pain and terror; but I wouldn’t stop. I wrenched myself apart from him and left him there with her. From that day to this, I have been alone. I came back to my family, who regarded it all as a mildly amusing addition to the family legends. I could not marry, of course, in my solitary state; no one would have had me.”

Lyra sipped her tea. It was delicately scented with jasmine.

“When did you meet my father?”

“It was a year before all that.”

Lyra thought, But that can’t be true. He wouldn’t have been old enough.

“What do you remember most about your time with the dancer?” she said.

“Oh, that’s easy. The hot nights, our narrow bed, her slender body, the scent of her flesh. That will never leave me.”

“And were you in love with her, or were you still pretending?”

“You can pretend and pretend that sort of thing until it comes true, you know.” The old woman’s face was calm and deeply lined. Her eyes were very small amid the wrinkles, but bright and still.

“And your dæmon…”

“Never came back. She died, the dancer, oh, a long time ago. But he never came back to me. I think he might have gone to al-Khan al-Azraq.”