The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth (Book of Dust, Volume 2) Read online

  Finally one of them opened a door, and they said good night, and the other’s footsteps moved away unsteadily towards Walton Street. Pan waited for another minute, and then slipped through the gate and over the low wall in front of the last house.

  He crouched beside the little window of the basement, which was dimly lit, and so smoke-covered and dusty that it was impossible to see through. He was listening for the sound of a man’s voice, and presently he heard it, a sentence or two in a hoarse conversational tone, answered by a lighter and more musical one.

  They were there, and they were working: that was all he needed to know. He tapped on the window, and the voices stopped at once. A dark shape leapt up onto the narrow windowsill, peered out, and a moment later moved out of the way to let the man unlatch the window.

  Pan slipped inside and jumped down onto the stone floor of the basement to greet the cat dæmon, whose black fur actually seemed to absorb light. A great furnace was blazing in the center of the room, and the heat was fierce. The place seemed like a combination of blacksmith’s forge and chemical laboratory, dark with soot and thick with cobwebs.

  “Pantalaimon,” said the man. “Welcome. We haven’t seen you for a while.”

  “Mr. Makepeace,” said Pan, dropping the notebook in order to speak. “How are you?”

  “Active, at least,” said Makepeace. “You’re alone?”

  He was aged about seventy, and deeply wrinkled. His skin was mottled either by age or by the smoke that filled the air. Pan and Lyra had first encountered Sebastian Makepeace a few years before, in a strange little episode involving a witch and her dæmon. They had visited him a number of times since then, becoming familiar with his ironic manner, the indescribable clutter of his laboratory, his knowledge of curious things, and the kindly patience of his dæmon, Mary. She and Makepeace knew that Lyra and Pan could separate: the witch whose deceit had brought them together had once been his lover, and he knew about the power the witches had.

  “Yes,” said Pan. “Lyra is…well, she’s asleep. I wanted to ask you about something. I don’t want to interrupt you.”

  Makepeace put on a battered gauntlet and adjusted the position of an iron vessel at the edge of the furnace. “That can go on heating for a while,” he said. “Sit down, my boy. I’ll smoke while we talk.” He took a small cheroot from a drawer and lit it. Pan liked the scent of smokeleaf, but wondered if he’d smell it at all in this atmosphere. The alchemist sat on a stool and looked at him directly. “Very well, what’s in that notebook?”

  Pan picked it up and held it for him to take, and then told him about the murder and the events that had followed. Makepeace listened closely, and Mary sat at his feet, eyes on Pan as he spoke.

  “And the reason I hid it,” Pan finished, “and the reason I brought it here, is that your name’s in it. It’s a sort of address book. Lyra didn’t notice that, but I did.”

  “Let me have a look,” said Makepeace. He put on his spectacles. His dæmon sprang up to his lap, and they both looked closely at the list of names of people and their dæmons, and their addresses, in the little book. Each name and address was written in a different hand. They weren’t in alphabetical order; in fact, they seemed to Pan to be ordered geographically, east to west, starting from somewhere called Khwarezm and ending in Edinburgh, taking in cities and towns in most European countries. Pan had studied it secretly three or four times, and could find nothing to hint at the connection between them.

  The alchemist seemed to be searching for some names in particular.

  “Your name’s the only one in Oxford,” Pan said. “I just wondered if you knew about this list. And why he might have been carrying it.”

  “You said he could separate from his dæmon?”

  “Just before he died. Yes. She flew up to the tree and asked me to help.”

  “And why haven’t you told Lyra about this?”

  “I…It just never seemed to be the right time.”

  “That’s unfortunate,” said Makepeace. “Well, you should give it to her. It’s very valuable. There’s a name for this kind of list: it’s known as a clavicula adiumenti.”

  He pointed to a small pair of embossed letters inside the back cover, at the foot next to the spine: C.A. The little book was so rubbed and battered that they were hardly visible. Then he flicked through the pages to about halfway through, took a short pencil out of his waistcoat pocket, and turned the notebook sideways before writing something in it.

  “What does that mean?” said Pan. “Clavicula…And who are these people? Do you know them all? I couldn’t see any connection between the names.”

  “No, you wouldn’t.”

  “What did you write?”

  “A name that was missing.”

  “Why did you turn it sideways?”

  “To fit it on the page, of course. I say this again: give it to Lyra, and come back here with her. Then I’ll tell you what it means. Not until you’re both here together.”

  “That won’t be easy,” said Pan. “We hardly talk nowadays. We keep quarreling. It’s horrible, and we just can’t stop it.”

  “What do you quarrel about?”

  “Last time—earlier this evening—it was imagination. I said she had no imagination, and she was upset.”

  “Are you surprised?”

  “No. I suppose not.”

  “Why were you arguing about imagination?”

  “I don’t even know anymore. We probably didn’t mean the same thing by it.”

  “You won’t understand anything about the imagination until you realize that it’s not about making things up, it’s about perception. What else have you been quarreling about?”

  “All kinds of things. She’s changed. She’s been reading books that…Have you heard of Gottfried Brande?”

  “No. But don’t tell me what you think about him. Tell me what Lyra would say.”

  “Hmm. All right, I’ll try….Brande is a philosopher. They call him the Sage of Wittenberg. Or some people do. He wrote an enormous novel called The Hyperchorasmians. I don’t even know what that means: he doesn’t refer to it in the text.”

  “It would mean those who live beyond Chorasmia, which is to say, the region to the east of the Caspian Sea. It’s now known as Khwarezm. And—”

  “Khwa—what? I think that name’s on the list.”

  Makepeace opened the notebook again and nodded. “Yes, here it is. And what does Lyra think of this novel?”

  “She’s been sort of hypnotized by it. Ever since she—”

  “You’re telling me what you think. Tell me what she would say if I asked her about it.”

  “Well. She’d say it was a work of enormous—um—scope and power…A completely convincing world…Unlike anything else she’d ever read…A—a—a new view of human nature that shattered all her previous convictions and…showed her life in a completely new perspective….Something like that, probably.”

  “You’re being satirical.”

  “I can’t help it. I hate it. The characters are monstrously selfish and blind to every human feeling—they’re either arrogant and dominating or cringing and deceitful, or else foppish and artistic and useless….There’s only one value in his world, which is reason. The author’s so rational, he’s insane. Nothing else has any importance at all. To him, the imagination is just meaningless and contemptible. The whole universe he describes, it’s just arid.”

  “If he’s a philosopher, why did he write a novel? Does he think the novel is a good form for philosophy?”

  “He’s written various other books, but this is the only one he’s famous for. We haven’t—Lyra hasn’t read any of the others.”

  The alchemist flicked the ash from his cheroot into the furnace and gazed at the fire. His dæmon, Mary, sat beside his feet, eyes half closed, purring steadily.

  �
��Have you ever known anyone and their dæmon who hated each other?” Pan said after a minute had gone by.

  “It’s more common than you might think.”

  “Even among people who can’t separate?”

  “It might be worse for them.”

  Pan thought: Yes, it would be. Steam was rising from the iron vessel on the fire.

  “Mr. Makepeace,” he said, “what are you working at now?”

  “I’m making some soup,” said the alchemist.

  “Oh,” said Pan, and then realized the old man was joking. “No, what really?”

  “You know what I mean by a field?”

  “Like a magnetic field?”

  “Yes. But this one is very hard to detect.”

  “What does it do?”

  “I’m trying to imagine.”

  “But if you— Oh, I see. You mean you’re trying to perceive it.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Do you need special equipment?”

  “You could probably do it with immensely expensive instruments that used colossal amounts of power and took up acres of space. I’m limited to what’s here in my laboratory. Some gold leaf, several mirrors, a bright light, various bits and pieces I’ve had to invent.”

  “Does it work?”

  “Of course it works.”

  “I remember the first time we met you, you told Lyra that if people think you’re trying to make gold out of lead, they think you’re wasting time and they don’t bother to find out what you’re really doing.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Were you trying to find this field then?”

  “Yes. Now I’ve found it, I’m trying to discover whether it’s the same everywhere, or whether it varies.”

  “Do you use all the things you’ve got down here?”

  “They all have a use.”

  “And what are you making in the iron pot?”

  “Soup, as I told you.”

  He got up to stir it. Pan suddenly felt tired. He’d learnt some things, but they weren’t necessarily helpful; and now he had to go all the way back across Port Meadow and hide the notebook again, and—sometime—tell Lyra about it.

  “Clavicula…,” he said, trying to remember, and Makepeace added, “Adiumenti.”

  “Adiumenti. I’m going to go now. Thank you for explaining this. Enjoy your soup.”

  “Tell Lyra, and tell her soon, and come here with her.”

  The black cat dæmon stood to touch noses with him, and Pan left.

  Next morning, a letter arrived by hand at Durham College for Malcolm. He opened it in the porter’s lodge and saw that the paper was headed Director’s Office, Botanic Garden, Oxford, and read:

  Dear Dr. Polstead,

  I feel I should have been more frank with you yesterday about Dr. Hassall and his research. The fact is that circumstances are changing rapidly, and the matter is more urgent than it might seem. We have been organizing a small meeting between various parties who have an interest in the case, and I wondered if you could possibly attend. Your knowledge of the area and of the items you found means that you might be able to contribute to our discussion. I wouldn’t ask, but it’s both serious and urgent.

  We are meeting this evening at six, here at the Garden. If you can come (and I very much hope you will), please ask at the gate for the Linnaeus Room.

  Yours sincerely,

  Lucy Arnold

  He looked at the date on the letter: it had been written that same morning. Asta, on reading it with him from the counter of the porter’s window, said, “We should tell Hannah.”

  “Is there time?”

  He had a college meeting at midmorning. He peered into the lodge and read the time from the porter’s clock: five past nine.

  “Yes, we can do it,” he said.

  “I meant for her,” Asta said. “She’s going to London this morning.”

  “So she is. Better hurry, then,” Malcolm said, and Asta leapt down and padded after him.

  Ten minutes later he was ringing Hannah Relf’s doorbell, and thirty seconds after that she was letting him in and saying, “So you’ve seen the Oxford Times?”

  “No. What’s that about?”

  She held out the newspaper. It was the evening edition from the day before, and she’d turned it to page five, where a headline read, “Body Found at Iffley Lock. Not Drowned, Say Police.”

  He scanned the story quickly. Iffley Lock was about a mile down the river from where Pan had seen the attack, and the lockkeeper had found the body of a man of about forty, who had been brutally beaten and who appeared to have died before his body entered the water. The police had opened a murder inquiry.

  “Must be him,” said Malcolm. “Poor man. Well, Lucy Arnold might know by now. Perhaps that’s what she’s referring to.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I came to show you this,” he said, and handed her the letter.

  “Circumstances are changing rapidly,” Hannah read. “Yes. Could well be. She’s very cautious.”

  “Doesn’t mention the police. If there was nothing on the body to identify him, they wouldn’t know who he was, and she still might not know about it. Do you know anything about her? Ever met her?”

  “I know her slightly. Intense, passionate woman—almost tragic, I’ve sometimes thought. Or felt, rather. I’ve got no reason for thinking it.”

  “That doesn’t matter. It’s part of the picture. Anyway, I’m going to go to this meeting of hers. Will you see Glenys in London, d’you think?”

  “Yes. She’ll certainly be there. I’ll make sure she knows.”

  She took her overcoat from the hat stand. “How’s Lyra getting on?” she said as he held the coat for her.

  “Subdued. Not surprising, really.”

  “Tell her to come and see me when she has an hour or so. Oh, Malcolm—Dr. Strauss’s journey through the desert, and the red building…”

  “What about it?”

  “That word akterrakeh—any idea what it could mean?”

  “None, I’m afraid. It’s not a Tajik word, as far as I can tell.”

  “Oh well. I wonder if the alethiometer could clarify it. See you later.”

  “Give my regards to Glenys.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Glenys Godwin was the current Director of Oakley Street. Thomas Nugent, who had been Director when Hannah joined the organization, had died earlier in the year, and Hannah was going to his memorial service. Mrs. Godwin had had to retire as a field officer some years before when she contracted a tropical fever which had had the effect of paralyzing her dæmon, but her judgment was both sound and daring, and her dæmon’s memory was fine-grained and extensive. Malcolm admired her greatly. She was a widow whose only child had died of the same fever that had infected her, and she was the first woman to head Oakley Street; her political enemies had been waiting in vain for her to make a mistake.

  After the memorial service, Hannah managed to speak to her for ten minutes. They were sitting in a quiet corner of the hotel lounge where several other Oakley Street people were having drinks. She briskly summarized everything she knew about the murder, the rucksack, Strauss’s journal, and Malcolm’s invitation to this hastily summoned meeting.

  Glenys Godwin was in her fifties, small and stocky, her dark gray hair neatly and plainly styled. Her face was quick with feeling and movement—too expressive, Hannah had often thought, to be helpful to someone in her position, where a steely inscrutability might have been preferable. Her left hand moved gently over her dæmon, a small civet cat, who lay in her lap, listening closely. When Hannah had finished, she said, “The young woman, Lyra Silvertongue, was it? Unusual name. Where is she now?”

  “Staying with Malcolm’s parents. They have a
pub on the river.”

  “Does she need protection?”

  “Yes, I think she does. She’s…Do you know about her background?”

  “No. Tell me sometime, but not now. Clearly Malcolm must go to this meeting—it’s very much Oakley Street business. There’s an experimental theology connection; we know that much. A man called…”

  “Brewster Napier,” said the ghostlike voice of her dæmon.

  “That’s the one. He published a paper a couple of years ago, which first drew our attention to it. What was it called?”

  “ ‘Some effects of rose oil in polarized light microscopy,’ ” said Godwin’s dæmon. “In Proceedings of the Microscopical Institute of Leiden. Napier and Stevenson, two years ago.”

  His words were quiet and strained, but perfectly clear. Not for the first time, Hannah marveled at his memory.

  “Have you been in contact with this Napier?” Hannah asked.

  “Not directly. We checked his background very carefully and quietly, and he’s perfectly sound. As far as we know, the implications of his paper haven’t been noticed by the Magisterium, and we don’t want to prompt them by taking an overt interest ourselves. This business that Malcolm’s come across is just another indication that something’s stirring. I’m glad you told me about it. You say he’s copied all the papers from the rucksack?”

  “Everything. I imagine he’ll get them to you by Monday.”

  “I look forward to it.”

  * * *

  * * *

  At about the same time, Lyra was talking to the kitchen helper at the Trout. Pauline was seventeen years old, pretty and shy, inclined to blush easily. While Pan was talking under the kitchen table with her mouse dæmon, Pauline chopped up some onions and Lyra peeled potatoes.

  “Well, he used to teach me a bit,” Lyra said in answer to a question about how she knew Malcolm. “But I was being horrible to everyone in those days. I never thought of him having a life at all apart from college. I used to think they put him away in a cupboard at night. How long have you been working here?”

  “I started last year, just part-time, like. Then Brenda asked me to do a few more hours, and…I work at Boswell’s too, Mondays and Thursdays.”