The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth (Book of Dust, Volume 2) (47 page)

“The Blue Hotel—is that…is it true, that story? About the ruined city where no one but dæmons can live?”

“I believe so. Some of my visitors—people from Mr. Kubi
č
ek, I mean—have been on their way there. No one has come back, as far as I know.”

Lyra’s mind was racing over deserts and mountains, to a ruined city stark and silent under moonlight.

“Now I have told you my story,” said the princess, “you must tell me something remarkable. What have you seen on your journey that might interest an old lady without a dæmon?”

Lyra said, “When I was in Prague…It seems a long time ago, but it was really only last week. I got off the train, and before I’d even tried to find out about the timetable, Mr. Kubi
č
ek spoke to me. It was as if he’d been waiting for me, and as it turned out, he had….”

She recounted the entire story of the furnace man and was rewarded by utter stillness and concentration. When she finished, the princess sighed with satisfaction.

“And he was the magician’s son?” she said.

“Well, so Agrippa claimed. Cornelis and Dinessa…”

“It was a cruel game to play with him and his dæmon.”

“I thought so too. But he was determined to find Dinessa, and he did.”

“Love…,” said the princess.

“Tell me more about the Blue Hotel,” said Lyra. “Or what’s the other name—Madinat al-Qamar—the City of the Moon. Why is it called that?”

“Oh, no one knows. It’s a very old idea. My nurse used to tell me ghost stories when I was very young, and it was she who told me about the Blue Hotel. Where are you going next?”

“Aleppo.”

“Then I shall give you the names of some people there who are in our condition. One of them might know a little about it. Of course, it is a subject of horror and superstitious dread. Not to be spoken of in front of people who are entire, and easily frightened.”

“Of course,” said Lyra, and sipped the last of her tea. “This is such a lovely room. Do you play the piano?”

“It plays by itself,” said the princess. “Go and pull out the ivory knob on the right of the keyboard.”

Lyra did, and at once a mechanism inside the piano began playing the keys, which were depressed as if by an invisible pair of hands. The sounds of a sentimental love song of fifty years before filled the room. Lyra was delighted, and smiled at the princess.

“ ‘L’Heure Bleue,’ ”
the old lady said. “We used to dance to that.”

Lyra looked back at the piano, at the multitude of silver-framed photograms, and suddenly fell still.

“What is it?” said the princess, startled by Lyra’s expression.

Lyra pressed in the knob to stop the music, and picked up one of the photograms with a trembling hand. “Who is this?” she said.

“Bring it to me.”

The old lady took it and peered through a pair of pince-nez. “It is my nephew, Olivier,” she said. “My great-nephew, I suppose I should say. Do you know him? Olivier Bonneville?”

“Yes. That is, I haven’t actually met him, but he…he thinks I’ve got something that belongs to him, and he’s been trying to get it back.”

“And have you?”

“It belongs to me. My father…my father gave it to me. Monsieur Bonneville is wrong, but he won’t accept it.”

“Always a very stubborn boy. His father was a ne’er-do-well who probably died a violent death. Olivier is related to me on his mother’s side, and she too is dead. He has expectations of me. If it were not for those, I should certainly never see him.”

“Is he in Smyrna now?”

“I hope not. If he comes here, I shall say nothing about you, and if he asks, I shall lie through my teeth. I am a good liar.”

“I used to be good at lying when I was young,” Lyra said. She was feeling a little calmer. “These days I find it more difficult.”

“Come here and kiss me, my dear,” said the princess, and held out her hands.

Lyra was glad to do so. The old lady’s papery cheeks smelled of lavender.

“If you do go to al-Khan al-Azraq,” said the princess, “and if it really is a ruined city inhabited by dæmons, and if you see a black cat, and if his name is Phanourios, tell him that I would be glad to see him again before I die, but that he had better not leave it too long.”

“I shall.”

“I hope that your quest goes well, and that you solve your mystery. There is a young man involved, I take it.”

Lyra blinked. The princess must have meant Malcolm. Of course, he
was
young to her. “Well,” she said, “not…”

“No, no, not my great-nephew, of course not. Now, if you come this way again, do not fail to come and see me, or I shall haunt you.”

She turned to a little ormolu desk beside her, took out a piece of paper and a fountain pen, and wrote for a minute or so. Then she blew on the paper to dry the ink and folded it in half before giving it to Lyra.

“One of these people will be sure to help,” she said.

“Goodbye. I’m very grateful indeed. I shan’t forget the things you’ve told me.”

Lyra left and closed the door quietly. The butler was waiting in the hall to see her out. When she left the garden, she walked a little further until she was out of sight of the house, and then leant against a wall to recover her composure.

She had been nearly as shocked as if Bonneville had come into the room himself. He had the power to disturb her, even as a picture. This had all the quality of a warning from the secret commonwealth. It said, “Be on your guard! You never know when he’ll appear.”

Even in Smyrna, she thought, he might find her.

By the evening of the day after his encounter with Olivier Bonneville, Malcolm was in a city three hundred miles south of Constantinople. It was the capital of the rose-growing district in the ancient Roman province of Pisidia, and he’d gone there to meet an English journalist called Bryan Parker, a foreign correspondent who specialized in security matters, whom he knew from Oakley Street business. Malcolm told him a little about the journey to Central Asia, and what had sent him on that quest, and Parker instantly said, “Then you must come with me to a public meeting this evening. I think we can show you something interesting.”

As they walked to the theater where the meeting was due to take place, Parker explained that the rose growing and processing industry was a valuable part of the region’s economy, and that it was now under a great strain.

“What’s the source of the problem?” said Malcolm as they went into the old theater.

“A group of men—no one knows where they come from, but they’re always referred to as the men from the mountains. They’ve been burning rose gardens, attacking the growers, smashing their factories….The authorities can’t seem to do anything about it.”

The auditorium was crowded already, but they found a couple of seats at the back. There was a large number of middle-aged or older men wearing respectable suits and ties, and Malcolm guessed them to be the owners of the gardens. There were several women too, with sun-browned faces; he’d gathered from Parker that the industry was intensely conservative, with differing roles played by men and women workers, so perhaps these were some of the women who gathered the flowers, while the men were involved in the distilling of the rosewater and the production of the oil. Apart from them, the other members of the audience seemed to be townspeople, some of them possibly journalists or local politicians.

Men were coming and going on the stage, some engaged in erecting a large banner, which Parker said was that of the trade association sponsoring the meeting.

Eventually every seat was taken, with people standing at the back and along the sides. It was too full to satisfy any fire regulation that Malcolm was familiar with, but perhaps they had a more relaxed attitude about such things here. There were armed policemen, though, at every entrance, looking nervous, Malcolm thought. If there was any trouble this evening, a lot of people could easily get hurt.

Finally the organizers decided that they were ready to begin. A group of men in suits, carrying briefcases or bulging files of paper, came out onto the stage, and some of them were recognized and applauded or cheered by the audience. Four of them sat at a table, and a fifth came to a lectern and started to speak. At first, the loudspeakers howled with feedback, and he stood back, alarmed, and tapped the microphone, and a technician hurried out to adjust it. Malcolm was watching everything, looking around unobtrusively, and as the speaker began again, he noticed something: the armed police had quietly vanished. There’d been a man at each of the six exits. Now there were none.

Parker was whispering a précis of what the speaker was saying. “Welcome to everyone—time of crisis in the industry—soon hear a report from each of the rose-growing regions. Now he’s reading out some figures—this man is not the greatest speaker in the world….Basically, production is down, turnover is down—now he’s introducing the first speaker—a grower from Baris.”

There was a scatter of applause as the next speaker left the table and came to the lectern. Whereas the previous man had a bureaucratic manner and a soporific voice, this older man spoke with force and passion from the start.

Parker said, “He’s telling what happened at his factory. Some men from the mountains came early one morning and gathered all his workers together and forced them at gunpoint to burn down the factory, feeding the flames with the precious oil. Then they brought a bulldozer and dug up every corner of his gardens and poured poison—I don’t know what sort—on the land so nothing could grow there again. Look—he’s weeping with passion—this was a place owned by his great-great-grandfather, cared for by his family for over a hundred years, employing all his children and thirty-eight workers….”

Murmurs of anger, or sympathy, or agreement came from the audience. Clearly many others had had similar experiences.

“He’s saying where was the police force? Where was the army? Where was any protection for honest citizens like him and his family? It seems his son was killed in a skirmish with these men, who simply vanished afterwards—no one was caught, no one punished. Where is the justice? That’s what he’s saying.”

The man’s voice had risen to a pitch of rage and sorrow, and the audience joined in, clapping, shouting, stamping. Shaking his head, sobbing, the farmer left the lectern and sat down.

“Is there anyone from the government here?” Malcolm said.

“The only politicians here are from the local administration. No national figures.”

“What’s been the response of the national government so far?”

“Oh, concern, of course—sympathy—stern warnings—but also a curious tone of caution, as if they’re too frightened to criticize these vandals.”

“Curious, as you say.”

“Yes, and it’s making people angry. This next speaker is from the wholesalers’ trade association….”

He was another dull speaker. Parker whispered the gist of what he said, but Malcolm was more interested in what was going on in the auditorium.

Parker noticed and said, “What? What are you looking at?”

“Two things. Firstly the police have vanished, and secondly they’ve closed all the exits.”

They were sitting at the right-hand end of the last row but one, which was close to the exit on that side. It had been a noise from there that had alerted Malcolm: it sounded like the sliding of a bolt.

“You want me to go on translating this dull man?”

“No. But be ready to smash that door open with me when the time comes.”

“They open inwards.”

“But they’re not heavy or strong. Something’s going to happen, Bryan. Thank you for suggesting this.”

They didn’t have to wait long.

Before the speaker had finished, three men appeared on the platform behind him, carrying guns: two had rifles, one had a pistol.

The audience gasped and fell still, and the speaker turned to see what had happened, and grasped the lectern and went pale. Out of the corner of his eye, Malcolm caught a movement at the other side of the hall. He turned his head a little to look and saw a door on that side open briefly to let in a man with a rifle. Then it shut again. Malcolm turned all around: the same thing had happened at all six exits.

The young man with the revolver had pushed the speaker aside and begun to talk himself. His eyes were pale, but his black hair and beard were long and thick. His voice was clear and light and harsh in quality, and full of calm conviction.

Malcolm leant his head a little sideways, and Parker whispered:

“He’s saying that everything you know is going to change. Things that you are familiar with will become strange and alien, and things you have never imagined will become normal. This is beginning now in many parts of the world, not just in Pisidia….”

The men who’d entered with him came to the two sides of the stage and faced out into the audience. No one moved. Malcolm could almost feel everyone holding their breath.

Parker went on as the man continued: “You and your families and your workers have been tending your gardens for far too long. The Authority does not want roses, and you are displeasing him by growing so many. The smell of them is sickening to him. It is like the dung of the devil himself. Those who grow roses and those who deal in oils and perfumes are pleasing the devil and offending God. We have come to tell you this.”

He paused for a moment, and then the farmer who had spoken so passionately couldn’t contain himself for another moment. He pushed back his chair and stood up. All three gunmen on the stage turned to him at once, guns pointed at his heart. The man spoke, without the microphone, but in a voice so loud and clear that everyone heard.

Parker whispered, “He says this is a new teaching. He has not heard it before. His forefathers, his family, his cousins who grow roses in the next village, they all thought they were doing the will of God by tending the flowers he created and preserving the beauty of their scent. This doctrine is new and strange, and it will be strange to everyone he knows and to everyone in this hall.”

The gunman spoke, and Parker translated, “It replaces every other doctrine, because it is the word of God. No other doctrine is necessary.”

The farmer came out from behind the table and confronted the gunman directly. His broad and stocky frame, his red face, the passion in his eyes made a vivid contrast with the cool and slender young man holding the revolver.

The farmer spoke again, even more loudly, in what was almost a bellow: “What will become of my family and my workers? What will become of the merchants and craftsmen who depend on the roses we grow? Will it please God to see them all poor and starving?”

The gunman answered, and Malcolm leant close to hear Parker’s whisper: “It will please God to see them no longer involved in that evil trade. It will please him to see them turn away from their false gardens and set their eyes on the one true garden, which is paradise.”

Without moving his head, Malcolm looked to left and right and saw the men on either side slowly scanning the audience, back to front and back again, their rifles unwaveringly swinging from side to side with their gaze at head-level to the audience.

The farmer said, “What are you going to do, then?”

The gunman replied, “The question is not what we are going to do. There is no question that needs to be asked about us, because we submit to the will of God, which is without question.”

“I can’t see the will of God! I see my roses, my children, my workers!”

“You need not worry. We shall tell you the will of God. We understand how your life is complicated, how things seem to contradict one another, how everything is full of doubt. We have come to make things clear.”

The farmer swung his head and lowered it like a bull, and seemed to be gathering his strength. He spread his feet, as if to find a firmer purchase on the earth, though it was only a wooden stage; and finally he said, “And what is the will of God?”

The young gunman said, and Parker whispered, “That you dig up and burn every one of your rosebushes and smash every piece of your distilling apparatus. That you destroy every vessel that contains the dung of Satan, which you call perfume and oil. That is the will of God. In his infinite mercy, he has sent me and my companions to inform you of this and make sure it is done, so that your women and your workers may live lives that are pleasing to God instead of filling the air with the foul stench from the bowels of hell.”

The farmer tried to say something else, but the gunman lifted his hand and held the revolver only a foot away from the old man’s head.

“When you light that fire,” he said, “the fire that will consume your gardens and your factories, it will light a beacon of truth and purity to shine all over the world. You should rejoice at being given this opportunity. My companions in the brotherhood of this holy purpose are numbered in the thousands of thousands. The word of God has spread so fast that it is like a forest fire, and it will spread further and further until all the world is burning with the love of God and the joy of perfect obedience to his will.”

All this time the farmer’s dæmon, a heavy-beaked old raven, had been raising her wings and snapping her beak on his shoulder; and the gunman’s, a large and beautiful sand-colored desert cat, had been standing tense and watchful at his side.

Then the farmer shouted, “
I will never burn my roses!
I will never deny the truth of my senses! The flowers are beautiful, and their scent is the very breath of heaven! You are wrong!”

And the raven plunged down towards the cat, and the cat leapt up towards the raven, but even before they met, the gunman pulled the trigger and sent a bullet through the old man’s head. The raven vanished in midair and the farmer fell dead, blood pulsing from the hole in his skull.

The audience cried out, but any further noise was stilled at once by the movement of the gunmen, who stepped forward, all of them, and raised their rifles to their shoulders. No one said a word, but there was the sound of sobbing from several parts of the auditorium.

The young man spoke again, and Parker translated: “That was an example of what you must not do from now on, and an illustration of what will happen if you disobey us….”

He went on in the same style. Malcolm put his hand on Parker’s sleeve; he’d heard enough. He whispered, “Where does the stage door open?”

“Into an alley on the right of the main building.”

“Is there another way out of the alley, or is it a dead end?”

“The only way out goes past the front of the theater.”

The gunman finished his speech and had given another instruction.

“Hostages,” whispered Parker.

The remaining speakers on the stage were told to lie down on their faces, with their hands behind their heads. One or two of them were old, or hampered by arthritis; the gunmen forced them down anyway. Then at another order the six men by the exits stepped forward and each indicated to the nearest audience member that he or she should stand up and go with him.