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

  The new Master was Dr. Werner Hammond: not a Jordan man, or even an Oxford man, but a businessman from the world of pharmaceuticals who had had a distinguished career as a scholar of chemistry before becoming chairman of one of the great medical corporations and enlarging its powers and revenues considerably. Now he had returned to the academic sphere, and no one could say he didn’t belong there; his scholarship was impeccable, his command of five languages complete, his tact flawless, his conscientious immersion in the history and traditions of Jordan beyond reproach; but there were some older Scholars who found him a little too good to be true, and wondered whether his Mastership of the college was the real culmination of his career or a stepping-stone on the way to something even grander.

  The one thing he had not completely understood about Jordan College was Lyra. Dr. Hammond had never known anything like this strange young self-possessed figure who inhabited the college as if she were a wild bird that had chosen to make her nest in a corner of the oratory roof, among the gargoyles, and was now regarded with protective affection by everyone in the place. He was interested in how this had happened; he made inquiries; he consulted senior members; and the week before the end of term, he sent a note to Lyra inviting her to dine with him in the Master’s lodging on the evening after the Founder’s Feast.

  She was a little puzzled, but not much concerned. Of course he would want to talk to her, or listen, more likely. No doubt there were all kinds of things she could tell him that it would be useful for him to know. She was a little surprised to learn from Mr. Cawson that she was to be the only guest, but he could tell her nothing about the Master’s intentions.

  Dr. Hammond received her with great friendliness. He was silver-haired and slim, with rimless spectacles and a beautifully cut gray suit. His dæmon was a small and elegant lynx, who sat on the hearthrug with Pantalaimon and made easy and charming conversation. The Master offered Lyra sherry and asked her about her studies, about her schooling, about her life at St. Sophia’s College; he was interested to hear about her private study of the alethiometer with Dame Hannah Relf, and told Lyra of how he’d met Dame Hannah in Munich on some corporate business, and of how highly he’d esteemed her, and how she’d been instrumental in some complex negotiations that had eased the passage of an international trade deal with a dusty corner of the Near East. That didn’t sound much like Hannah, thought Lyra; she must ask her.

  Over the meal, which was served by one of the Master’s private staff whom Lyra hadn’t seen before, she tried to ask the Master about his previous career, his background, and so on. She was really only making conversation for the sake of politeness; she’d already decided that the man was clever and courteous, but dull. She was slightly interested in whether he was single or widowed; there was no Mrs. Hammond in evidence. The old Master had been a bachelor, but it wasn’t a requirement that the Master should be unmarried. A pleasant wife, a young family, would have added a lot to the liveliness of the place, and Dr. Hammond was presentable enough, still young enough to have those desirable additions to his household; but he avoided answering Lyra’s questions with great skill and gave not the slightest hint that he thought them intrusive.

  Then came dessert, and the purpose of the evening became clear.

  “Lyra, I’ve been meaning to ask you about your position here at Jordan College,” the Master began.

  And she felt the faintest little sensation, like a tremor in the ground.

  “It’s a very unusual one,” he went on gently.

  “Yes,” she said, “I’m very lucky. My father sort of put me here, and they just…well, put up with me.”

  “You’re how old now? Twenty-one?”

  “Twenty.”

  “Your father, Lord Asriel,” he said.

  “That’s right. He was a Scholar of the college. Dr. Carne, the old Master, was sort of my guardian, I suppose.”

  “In a way,” he said, “though it doesn’t seem to have ever been made into a legally valid arrangement.”

  That surprised her. Why would he have wanted to find that out? “Does that matter,” she said cautiously, “now that he’s dead?”

  “No. But it might have a bearing on the way things move in the future.”

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “Do you know the origin of the money you’re living on?”

  Another little earth tremor.

  “I knew there was some money that my father left,” she said. “I don’t know how much, or where it’s been looked after. Those were things I never questioned. I suppose I must have thought that things were…all right. I mean, that…I suppose I thought that…Dr. Hammond, may I ask why we’re talking about this?”

  “Because the college, and I as the Master, are, as it were, in loco parentis towards you. In an informal way, because you’ve never actually been in statu pupillari. It’s my duty to keep an eye on your affairs until you come of age. There was a sum of money put by for your benefit, to pay for your living expenses and accommodation and so on. But it wasn’t put there by your father. It was Dr. Carne’s money.”

  “Was it?” Lyra was feeling almost stupid, as if this was something she should have known about all her life, and it was negligent of her not to.

  “So he never told you?” the Master said.

  “Not a word. He told me I would be looked after, and there was no need to worry. So I didn’t. In a way, I thought the whole college was…sort of looking after me. I felt I belonged here. I was very young. You don’t question things….And it was his money all the time? Not my father’s?”

  “I’m sure you’ll correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe your father was living as an independent scholar, in a rather hand-to-mouth way. He vanished when you were—what, thirteen years old?”

  “Twelve,” said Lyra. Her throat had tightened.

  “Twelve. That would have been the point when Dr. Carne decided to put a sum of money aside for your benefit. He wasn’t a rich man, but there was enough. It was looked after by the college’s solicitors, who invested it prudently, paid over a regular sum to the college for your rent and living expenses, and so on. But, Lyra, I have to tell you that the interest on the capital sum was never quite adequate. It appears that Dr. Carne continued to subsidize it from his income, and the money he originally placed with the solicitor for your benefit is now exhausted.”

  She put down her spoon. The crème caramel suddenly seemed inedible. “What…I’m sorry, but this is a shock,” she said.

  “Of course. I understand.”

  Pan had come up onto her lap. She moved her fingers through his fur. “So this means…I have to leave?” she said.

  “You’re in your second year of study?”

  “Yes.”

  “One more year to go after this one. It’s a pity that none of this was made clear to you before, Lyra, so that you would be prepared.”

  “I suppose I should have asked.”

  “You were young. Children take things for granted. Not your fault at all, and it would be very unjust to expose you to consequences you could never have foreseen. This is what I propose. Jordan College will fund the remainder of your education at St. Sophia’s. As far as your accommodation outside term is concerned, you may, of course, continue to live here in Jordan, which is, after all, your only home, until you graduate. I understand you have the use of a second room as well as a bedroom?”

  “Yes,” she said, finding her voice quieter than she had expected.

  “Well, this presents us with a little problem. You see, the rooms on that staircase are really needed for undergraduates, for our young men. That is what they were built for, were always intended for. The rooms you occupy could accommodate two first-year undergraduates who currently have to live outside college, which is not ideal. We could at a pinch go back to asking you to use one room only, which would free the second room for o
ne man, but there are matters of propriety, of modesty, one might say, which make it unsuitable….”

  “There are undergraduates living on the same staircase,” Lyra said. “There always have been. It’s never been unsuitable before.”

  “But not on the same landing. It would not work, Lyra.”

  “And I’m only here in the vacation,” she said, beginning to sound desperate. “During term I live at St. Sophia’s.”

  “Of course. But the presence of your belongings in that room would make it impossible for a young man to make the place properly his own. Lyra, this is what the college can offer. There is a room—a small one, I admit—above the kitchen, currently used as a storeroom. The Bursar will arrange for that room to be furnished and made available to you for the duration of your studies. You may live here as you have done all your life until you graduate. Rent, meals during the vacation, we shall cover all that. But you must understand, this is how things will be in the future.”

  “I see,” she said.

  “May I ask—do you have any other family?”

  “None.”

  “Your mother—”

  “She vanished at the same time as my father.”

  “And there are no relations on her side?”

  “I never heard of any. Except—I think she might have had a brother. Someone told me that once. But I don’t know anything about him, and he’s never been in touch with me.”

  “Ah. I’m sorry.”

  Lyra tried to pick up a spoonful of her dessert, but her hand was shaking. She put the spoon down.

  “Would you care for some coffee?” he said.

  “No, thank you. I think perhaps I’d better go. Thank you for dinner.”

  He stood up, formal, elegant, sympathetic, in his beautiful gray suit and silver hair. His dæmon came to stand beside him; Lyra gathered Pan up in her arms as she stood up too.

  “Would you like me to move out at once?” she said.

  “By the end of the vacation, if you could manage that.”

  “Yes. All right.”

  “And, Lyra, one more thing. You’ve been used to dining in Hall, to accepting the hospitality of the Scholars, to coming and going freely as if you were a Scholar yourself. It’s been put to me by several voices, and I’m bound to say I agree, that that behavior is no longer appropriate. You will be living among servants, and living, so to speak, as a servant. It would not be right anymore for you to live on terms of social equality with the academic body.”

  “Of course not,” she said. Surely she was dreaming this.

  “I’m glad you understand. You will have things to think about. If it would help at all to talk to me, to ask any questions, please don’t hesitate to do so.”

  “No, I won’t. Thank you, Dr. Hammond. I’m in no doubt now about where I belong and how soon I shall have to leave. I’m only sorry to have troubled the college for so long. If Dr. Carne had been able to explain things as clearly as you can, I might have realized much sooner what a burden I was being, and that would have spared you the embarrassment of telling me. Good night.”

  It was her bland voice, her wide-eyed, innocent look, and she was secretly glad to see they still worked, because he had not the faintest idea how to respond.

  He gave a little stiff bow, and she left without another word.

  * * *

  * * *

  She walked slowly back around the main quad and stopped to look up at the little window of her bedroom, close against the square bulk of the lodge tower.

  “Well,” she said.

  “That was cruel.”

  “I don’t know. If there’s no money left…I don’t know.”

  “I didn’t mean that. You know what I meant. The servant thing.”

  “Nothing wrong with being a servant.”

  “All right, those several voices, then. I don’t believe any Scholar in the college would want us treated like that. He was just deflecting the blame.”

  “Well, you know what won’t help, Pan? Complaining. That won’t help.”

  “I wasn’t complaining. I was just—”

  “Whatever you were doing, don’t do it. There are things to be sad about. Like the rooms…We know that little room over the kitchen. There isn’t even a window in it. But we should have woken up before now, Pan. We haven’t even thought once about money, except the pocket money for polishing the silver and that sort of thing. There were bound to be costs…for meals and rooms, they cost money….Someone was paying all the time, and we just didn’t think about it.”

  “They let the money run out and they didn’t tell us. They should have told us.”

  “Yes, I suppose they should. But we should have thought to ask…ask who was paying. But I’m sure the old Master said that Lord Asriel had left plenty. I’m sure of it.”

  As if her limbs had been weakened, she stumbled two or three times as she climbed the staircase to her bedroom. She felt bruised and shaken. When she was in bed, with Pan curled up on the pillow, she put the light out at once and lay still for a long time before she fell asleep.

  Next morning, Lyra felt shy and nervous about going down for breakfast. She slipped into the servants’ dining room and helped herself to porridge, not looking around, just smiling and nodding when someone said hello. She felt as if she’d woken up in chains and couldn’t free herself, so had to carry them with her wherever she went, like a badge of shame.

  After breakfast she drifted through the lodge, not wanting to go back up to the little rooms that had been her home, feeling too heartsick to do what she’d spoken about to Dick and go in search of a vacation job at the mail depot, feeling almost devoid of energy and life. The porter called her, and she turned.

  “Letter for you, Lyra,” he said. “D’you want to take it now or pick it up later?”

  “I might as well take it now. Thanks.”

  It was a plain envelope, with her name in a clear, swift hand that she recognized as Dame Hannah Relf’s. A little spring of gratefulness gushed in her breast, for she thought that the lady was a true friend, but then it froze almost at once: Suppose she was going to say that Lyra would have to start paying for her alethiometer lessons? How would she manage that?

  “Open it, stupid,” said Pan.

  “Yes,” she said.

  The card inside said: Dear Lyra, could you possibly come to see me this afternoon? It’s important. Hannah Relf.

  Lyra looked at it numbly. This afternoon? Which afternoon did she mean? Wouldn’t she have had to post the letter yesterday? But the date on the card was today’s.

  She looked again at the envelope. She hadn’t noticed that there was no stamp, or that the words By hand were written in the top left corner.

  She turned to the porter, who was putting other letters into a rack of pigeonholes. “Bill, when did this arrive?” she said.

  “About half an hour ago. By hand.”

  “Thanks…”

  She put the letter in her pocket and wandered back through the quad and into the Scholars’ Garden. Most of the trees were bare, the flower beds seemed empty and dead, and only the great cedar looked alive, though it also looked asleep. It was another of those still, gray days when silence itself seemed to be a meteorological phenomenon, not just the result of nothing happening but a positive presence larger than gardens, and colleges, and life.

  Lyra climbed the stone steps that led up the bank at the end of the garden to a spot overlooking Radcliffe Square, and sat on the bench that had been placed there a long time before.

  “You know one thing,” said Pan.

  “What?”

  “We can’t trust the lock on our door.”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “Because we can’t trust him.”

  “Oh, really.”

  “Yes, really. We had n
o clue that he was going to say that last night. He was all smooth and agreeable. He’s a hypocrite.”

  “What did his dæmon say?”

  “Glib, friendly, patronizing stuff. Nothing important at all.”

  “Well, we haven’t got much choice,” she said, finding words hard to come by. “He needs our rooms. We’re not really part of the college. There’s no money left. He’s got to…got to try and…Oh, I don’t know, Pan. It’s all just so miserable. And now I’m worried about what Hannah’s going to say.”

  “Well, that’s just silly.”

  “I know it is. It doesn’t help, though, knowing it.”

  He stalked to the end of the bench and then leapt across onto the low wall, beyond which was a thirty-foot drop to the cobbles of the square below. She felt a lurch of fear, but nothing would have made her admit it to him. He pretended to stagger and trip and totter on the stone capping, and then, getting no response from Lyra, sank down on his belly into a sphinx posture, paws extended in front, head held high, gazing forward.

  “Once we’re out, we’re out,” he said. “We won’t be able to set foot in the place again. We’ll be strangers.”

  “Yes, I know. I’ve thought it all through, Pan.”

  “So what shall we do?”

  “When?”

  “When it’s all over. When we leave.”

  “Find a job. Find somewhere to live.”

  “Very easy, then.”

  “I know it won’t be easy. Actually, I don’t know that. It might be very easy. But everyone has to do that. Move away from home, I mean. Go out and make their own life.”

  “With most people, their home would always let them come back, and welcome them, and be glad to hear about what they’d been doing.”