Malcolm had never thought it possible for an entire river, not to say an entire countryside, to disappear under a flood. Where this colossal amount of water had come from was hard to imagine. At one point later in the morning, he put his hand over the side and brought some to his mouth to taste, half expecting to find it salty, as if it was the Bristol Channel pouring its way through to London. But there was no salt; it didn’t taste very good, but it wasn’t seawater.
“If you was paddling to London,” said Alice, “and the river was normal and there wasn’t no flood, how long would it take?”
It was the first time she’d spoken since they’d left the pharmacy two hours before.
“Dunno. It’s about sixty miles, maybe more, ’cause the river twists and turns. But you’d be going with the current, so…”
“Well, how long, then?”
“A few days?”
Alice’s expression indicated disgust.
“But this’ll be quicker,” Malcolm went on, “ ’cause the current’s stronger. Look how fast we’re going past those trees.”
The summit of a hill stood out above the water, crowned with a clump of trees, mostly oaks, whose bare branches looked mournful against the gray sky. But La Belle Sauvage was moving fast; in a minute she had sped past, and the hill was behind them.
“So it shouldn’t take that long,” he said. “Maybe just a day.”
Alice said nothing, but reached down to adjust Lyra’s covers. The child was lying between her feet, wrapped up so thickly that all Malcolm could make out was the top of her head and the brilliant butterfly Pantalaimon perching on her hair.
“Is she all right?” he said.
“Seems to be.”
Asta was very curious about Pan. She had noticed before that he could change in Lyra’s sleep, although he was asleep himself. She had a theory that when he was a butterfly it meant that Lyra was dreaming, but Malcolm was skeptical. Of course, neither of them had the faintest idea what happened when they themselves were asleep; they knew Asta could go to sleep as one creature and wake up as another, but neither of them remembered anything about the change. It was the sort of thing he’d have liked to mention to Alice, but the prospect of her bottomless scorn put him off.
“I bet it is a dream,” Asta said.
“Who’s that?” said Alice sharply.
She was pointing past Malcolm’s shoulder, looking some distance back. He turned to look and saw, only just visible through the wet gray air, a man in a dinghy rowing hard towards them.
“Can’t see for sure,” Malcolm said. “It might be…”
“It is,” she said. “That dæmon’s in the front. Go faster.”
Malcolm could see that the dinghy was an unhandy vessel, by no means as swift and easy through the water as La Belle Sauvage. Still, the man had adult muscles and was plying the oars with determination.
So Malcolm dug the paddle in and urged the canoe forward. But he couldn’t do it for long, because his shoulders and arms, his whole torso and waist, were aching.
“What’s he doing? Where is he?” he said.
“He’s dropping back. Can’t see him—he’s behind that hill—keep going!”
“I’m going as fast as I can. But I’ll have to stop soon. Besides…”
The change in motion had woken Lyra, and she began to cry quietly. They’d have to feed her before long, and that meant tying up the canoe, building a fire, heating the saucepan. And before that, finding somewhere to hide.
Malcolm looked all around while paddling as steadily as he could. They were in a broad valley, probably far above the riverbed, with a wooded slope rising out of the water to the left, and to the right a large house, classical in shape and white in color, on the breast of a green hill on which were more trees. Each side was some way off; it was likely that the man in the dinghy would see them long before they reached a hiding place.
“Make for the house,” said Alice.
Malcolm thought that was the better option too, so he paddled the canoe as fast as he could in that direction. As they got closer, he could see a thin column of smoke rising from one of the many chimneys, before being blown away.
“There’s people there,” he said.
“Good” was all she said.
“If there’s people around,” said Asta, “he’s less likely to…”
“Suppose he’s already here, and he’s one of them?” said Malcolm.
“But that was him back there in the boat,” she said. “Wasn’t it?”
“Maybe. Too far away to see.”
Malcolm was realizing how tired he was. He had no idea how long he’d been paddling, but as he slowed down, nearing the house, he felt more and more hungry and weary and cold. He could barely hold his head up.
Ahead of them a sloping lawn rose directly out of the floodwater and led smoothly up to the white facade of the house, the columns and the pediment. Someone was moving there, behind the columns, but the light was too gloomy to see anything more than the movement. The smoke was rising from a chimney somewhere at the back.
Malcolm brought the canoe to rest against the grass of the lawn.
“Well, what are we s’posed to do now?” said Alice.
The slope was a gentle one, and the edge of the water was some feet further than the canoe could reach.
“Take your shoes and socks off,” said Malcolm, hauling off his boots. “We’ll pull the canoe up out of the water. It’ll slide over the grass easy enough.”
There was a shout from the house. A man came out from between the columns and gestured to them to go away. He shouted again, but they couldn’t hear what he said.
“You better go up and tell him we got to feed a baby and rest for a while,” said Malcolm.
“Why me?”
“ ’Cause he’ll take more notice of you.”
They got the canoe out of the water, and then Alice sulkily picked her way up the lawn towards the man, who was shouting again.
Malcolm pulled the canoe away from the water and into ragged shrubbery at the edge of the lawn, and then slumped down beside it. He said to Lyra, “I suppose you’re just waking up, are you? It’s all right for some. It’s a nice life being a baby.”
She wasn’t happy. Malcolm took her out of the canoe and cuddled her on his lap, ignoring the smell that meant she needed changing, ignoring the heavy gray sky and the cold wind and the distant man in the dinghy, who had come into sight again. He held the little child against his chest and self-consciously kissed her forehead.
“We’ll keep you safe,” he said. “See, Alice is talking to the man up there. Soon we’ll take you there and make a fire and warm some milk. Course, if your mummy was here…You never had a mummy, did you? You were just found somewhere. The lord chancellor found you under a bush. And he thought, Blimey, I can’t look after a baby, I better take her to the sisters at Godstow. So then it was Sister Fenella who looked after you. I bet you remember her. She’s a nice old lady, isn’t she? And then the flood came and we had to take you away in La Belle Sauvage to keep you safe. I wonder if you’ll remember any of this. Prob’ly not. I can’t remember anything from when I was a baby. Look, here comes Alice. Let’s see what she says.”
“He says we can’t stay long,” she told him. “I says we got to make a fire and feed the baby and we don’t want to stay long anyway. I think summing funny’s going on. He had a strange look about him.”
“Was there anyone else there?” said Malcolm, getting to his feet.
“No. At least I didn’t see no one.”
“Take Lyra, then, and I’ll hide the canoe a bit more,” he said, handing over the child. His arms were trembling with fatigue.
Once he had the canoe concealed, he gathered the things they needed for Lyra and made his way up to the house. The great door was open behind the columns, and lingering beside it was the man: a sour-faced individual in rough clothes, whose mastiff dæmon stood close by, watching without moving.
“You en’t staying long,” the man said.
“Not very long, no,” Malcolm agreed. And he recognized something: the man was a little drunk. Malcolm knew how to deal with drunks.
“Lovely house,” he said.
“So it may be. It en’t yours.”
“Is it yours?”
“ ’Tis now.”
“Did you buy it, or did you fight for it?”
“You being cheeky?”
The mastiff dæmon growled.
“No,” said Malcolm easily. “It’s just with everything changed by the flood, I wouldn’t be surprised if you had to fight for it. Everything’s different now. And if you fought for it, then it belongs to you, no doubt about it.”
He looked down the lawn towards the turbid flood. In the heavy twilight he couldn’t see the rowing boat at all.
“It’s like a castle,” he went on. “You could defend this easy, if you were attacked.”
“Who’s going to attack it?”
“No one. I’m just saying. You made a good choice.”
The man turned and followed his gaze out over the water.
“Has it got a name, this house?” said Malcolm.
“Why?”
“It looks important. It looks like a manor or a palace or something. You could call it after yourself.”
The man snorted. It might have been with laughter.
“You could put a notice up at the edge of the water,” Malcolm said. “Saying keep out, or trespassers will be prosecuted. You’d have every right to. Like that man over there in the dinghy,” he said, because now he could see the boat, still some way off, still moving steadily towards them.
“What’s the matter with him?”
“Nothing, till he tries to land and take this house away from you.”
“D’you know him?”
“I think I know who he is. And he prob’ly would try and do that.”
“I got a shotgun.”
“Well, he wouldn’t dare land if you threatened him with that.”
The man seemed to be thinking about it.
“I got to defend my property,” he said.
“Course you have. You got every right to.”
“Who is he, anyway?”
“If it’s who I think it is, his name’s Bonneville. He’s not long out of prison.”
The mastiff dæmon, following the man’s line of sight, growled again.
“Is he after you?”
“Yeah. He’s been following us from Oxford.”
“What’s he want?”
“He wants the baby.”
“Is it his kid, then?”
The man’s blurred eyes swam towards focus on Malcolm’s face.
“No. She’s our sister. He just wants her.”
“Get away!”
“I’m afraid so,” Malcolm said.
“Bastard.”
The man in the boat was getting closer, making quite clearly for the lawn, and now Malcolm had no doubt who he was.
“I better get inside, in case he sees me,” he said. “We won’t make any trouble for you. We’ll get away as soon as we can.”
“Don’t you worry, son,” the man said. “What’s your name?”
Malcolm had to think.
“Richard,” he said. “And my sister’s Sandra, and the baby’s Ellie.”
“Get inside. Keep out the way. Leave him to me.”
“Thank you,” said Malcolm, and he slipped inside.
The man came inside too, and took a shotgun from a cabinet in a room just off the hall.
“Be careful,” said Malcolm. “He might be dangerous.”
“I’m dangerous.”
The man went unsteadily outside. Malcolm looked around quickly. The hall was decorated with ornate plasterwork, cabinets in precious woods and tortoiseshell and gold, statues of marble. The huge chimneypiece was cracked, though, and the hearth was empty. Alice must have found the fire in another room.
Afraid to call out for her, he hurried from room to room, listening hard for the sound of a gunshot; but there was no sound from outside except the wind and the rush of the water.
He found Alice in the kitchen. There was a fire in an iron range, and Lyra sat freshly changed in the center of a large pine table.
“What’d he say?” Alice demanded.
“He said we can stay here and do what we need to. And he’s got a shotgun and he’s going to defend the house against Bonneville.”
“Is he coming? It was him in the boat, wannit?”
“Yeah.”
The water in the saucepan had been boiling when Malcolm came in. Alice took it off to cool. Malcolm picked up the biscuit that had fallen from Lyra’s hand and gave it to her again. She gurgled her appreciation.
“If she drops her biscuit, you ought to tell her where it’s gone,” he said to Pantalaimon, who instantly became a bush baby and gazed at him with enormous eyes, unmoving and silent.
“Look at Pan,” Malcolm said to Alice.
She cast a quick glance, not interested.
“How does he know how to be one of them?” Malcolm went on. “They can’t ever have seen a whatever-it-is. So how does he know—”
“What we gonna do if Bonneville gets past the man?” said Alice, her voice sharp and high.
“Hide. Then run out and get away.”
Her face showed what she thought of that.
“Go and find out what’s going on,” she told him. “And don’t let him see you.”
Malcolm went out and tiptoed along the corridor to the main hall. Pressing himself into the shadows beside the door, he listened hard, and hearing nothing, he looked around carefully. The hall was empty. What now?
There was no sound but the wind and the water, no voices, certainly no gunshots. They might be talking at the water’s edge, he thought, and keeping to the wall, he moved silently across the marble floor towards the great windows.
But Asta, moth-formed, got there first, and Malcolm felt a horrible shock as she saw something outside and fell off the curtain into his hand.
The man from the house was lying on the grass, with his head and arms in the water beside Bonneville’s dinghy, not moving. There was no sign of Bonneville, and no sign of the gun.
In his alarm, Malcolm recklessly went close to the window, peering out to left and right. The only movements were the bobbing of the dinghy, which was tied to a stick Bonneville had driven into the soft lawn, and the swaying this way and that of the top half of the man’s body. The light was too gray and dim for him to be sure, but Malcolm thought he could see a current of scarlet trailing away from the man’s throat.
He pressed himself against the glass, trying to see where he’d hidden La Belle Sauvage. As far as he could tell, the bushes were undisturbed.
Which was the cabinet the man had opened to get the gun? In that room at the other end of the great hall…
But Malcolm didn’t know how to load and fire one, even if…
He ran back to the kitchen. Alice was just pouring the milk into Lyra’s bottle.
“What is it?”
“Shh. Bonneville’s killed the man and taken his gun, and I can’t see him anywhere.”
“What gun?” she said, alarmed.
“He had a shotgun. I told you. He was going to defend the place. And now Bonneville’s got it and killed him. He’s lying in the water….”
Malcolm was looking around, almost panting with fear. He saw an iron ring in a wooden trapdoor, and his panic-strengthened muscles lifted it at once. A flight of steps led down into profound darkness.
“Candles—on the shelf over there,” said Alice, scooping up Lyra and the bottle and looking around for anything that would give them away, but there was too much to pick up.
Malcolm ran to the shelf and found a box of matches there as well.
“You go down first. I’ll pull the trapdoor after me,” he said.
Alice moved cautiously into the dark. Lyra was twisting and struggling, and Pantalaimon was chirruping like a frightened bird. Asta flew to him, perching on Lyra’s blanket, and made soft cooing noises.
Malcolm was struggling with the trapdoor. There was a rope handle on the inside, but the hinges were stiff and it was very heavy. Finally he managed to haul it over and let it down as quietly as he could.
The strain of being at a distance from his dæmon was beginning to tell. His hands were trembling and his heart was lurching painfully.
“Don’t move any further away,” he whispered to Alice.
“Why—”
“Dæmon.”
She understood and moved back a step, crowding him slightly as he tried to strike a match. He got a candle lit, and Asta flew back to him, for the little flame itself was enough to distract Lyra. In its light, Alice trod carefully down to the cellar floor.
“All right, Lyra, hush, gal,” she whispered, and settled on the cold earth floor with her back against the wall. A noisy sound of sucking came almost at once, and Alice’s dæmon settled near the chick-shaped Pan as a crow. The little dæmon’s anxious chirruping stopped.
Malcolm sat on the bottom step, looking around. This was a storeroom for vegetables and sacks of rice and other such things: dry enough, but bitterly cold. A low archway led through into a further cellar.
“All he’s got to do,” said Alice shakily, “is move summing heavy onto the trapdoor and—”
“Don’t think about it. There’s no point in thinking like that. In a minute I’ll go through that archway and see where it leads. There’s bound to be another entrance.”
“Why?”
“Because a cellar is where they keep wine. And when they send the butler down to fetch up some bottles of claret or whatever, he en’t going to struggle with the trapdoor and stumble down the steps, like we did. There’ll be a proper staircase somewhere—”
“Shh!”
He sat still, tense and fearful, trying not to let his fear show. Leisurely footsteps moved across the floor above. They stopped at the end of the kitchen and paused, and then crossed the floor again. The steps paused once more, close to the trapdoor.
Nothing happened for a minute. Then there was a sound, as of a wooden chair being pulled out from the table, just that; but they couldn’t tell whether Bonneville had put it over the trapdoor, or whether he’d simply moved it and gone out.
Another minute went past, and then another.
With the greatest of care, Malcolm stood up and stepped down to the earth floor. He set the lit candle on the ground near Alice, screwing it into the soil so as to stand securely, and tiptoed under the low archway into the next part of the cellar. Once he was there, he lit another candle. This was a second storeroom, but for unwanted furniture rather than food, so he looked around quickly and moved on through the next archway.
At the other end of this room, there was a heavy wooden door with great iron hinges and a lock as big as a large book. There was no key hanging nearby, and he couldn’t tell whether the door was locked, even by looking closely.
And then a quiet voice spoke on the other side. It was Bonneville. Asta, on his shoulder as a lemur, nearly fainted; he caught her and held her close.
“Well, Malcolm,” said Bonneville, his voice low and confiding. “Here we are on either side of a locked door, and neither of us has the key. At least I haven’t, and I assume you haven’t either, because you’d have unlocked it and come through, wouldn’t you? That would have been unfortunate for you.”
Malcolm had nearly dropped the candle. His heart was beating like the wings of a captured bird, and Asta changed rapidly from lemur to butterfly to crow before becoming a lemur again, crouching on Malcolm’s shoulder, her enormous eyes fixed on the lock.
“Don’t say a word,” she murmured into his ear.
“Oh, I know you’re there,” said Bonneville. “I can see the light of your candle. I saw you on the terrace talking to our late host—did you know this is an island, by the way? If your canoe should meet with an accident, you’d be marooned. How would you like that?”
Again Malcolm held his tongue.
“I know it’s you because it must be you,” Bonneville went on. He was speaking confidentially, his voice just loud enough to penetrate the door. “It couldn’t be anyone else. That girl is feeding the baby—she wouldn’t be prowling around with a candle. And I know you’re listening. It won’t be long before we’re face to face. You won’t escape me now. Can you see them, by the way?”
“See who?” Malcolm cursed himself as soon as he spoke. “There’s no one here but me,” he went on.
“Oh, don’t ever think that, Malcolm. You’re never alone.”
“Well, there’s my dæmon—”
“I don’t mean her. You and she are the same being, naturally. I mean someone besides you.”
“Who d’you mean, then?”
“I hardly know where to start. There are spirits of the air and the earth, to begin with. Once you learn to see them, you’ll realize that the world is thronged with them. And then in wicked places like this, there are night-ghasts of many kinds. Do you know what used to go on here, Malcolm?”
“No,” said Malcolm, who didn’t want to know in the least.
“This is where Lord Murdstone used to bring his victims,” said Bonneville. “Have you heard his name? They used to call him Lord Murderer. Not all that long ago either.”
Malcolm’s heart was beating painfully. “Did he—” He couldn’t speak clearly. “Did he own this house?”
“He could do what he liked here,” the slow, dark voice went on through the door. “There was no one to stop him. So he used to bring children down here and dismember them.”
“Did—what?” Malcolm could only whisper.
“Cut them apart bit by bit while they were still alive. That was his special pleasure. And naturally the horrible agony of those children was too great to disappear forever when they eventually died. It soaked into the stonework. It lingered in the air. There’s no clean wind blowing through these cellars, Malcolm. The air you’re breathing now was last in the lungs of those tortured children.”
“I don’t want to hear any more,” said Malcolm.
“I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t want to hear it either. I’d want to stop my ears up and wish it would go away. But there’s no escaping it, Malcolm. They’re all around you now, the spirits of that agony. They’re sensing your fear, and they’re flocking towards you to lap it up. Next thing you’ll start hearing them—a sort of desperate little whisper—and then you’ll begin to see them.”
Malcolm was nearly fainting by this time. He believed everything Bonneville was saying; it all sounded so likely that he believed it helplessly and immediately.
Then a little current of air found his candle flame and made it lean sideways for a moment, and he looked at it, and instantly there in his vision was the little floating grain of light and movement, the seed of his aurora. A tiny spring of relief and hope began to flow in his mind.
“You’re wrong about the baby,” he said, and was surprised to find his voice steady.
“Wrong? In what way?”
“You think she’s your child, but she’s not.”
“Well, you’re wrong about her too.”
“I en’t wrong about that. She’s Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter’s child.”
“You’re wrong to think I’m interested in her. I might be interested in Alice.”
Asta whispered, “Don’t let him make us talk about what he wants.”
Malcolm nodded. She was right. His heart was pounding.
Then he remembered the message in the wooden acorn and said, “Mr. Bonneville, what’s the Rusakov field?”
“What do you know about that?”
“Nothing. That’s why I’m asking.”
“Why don’t you ask Dr. Hannah Relf?”
That was a surprise. He had to answer quickly.
“I have,” he said, “but it’s not what she knows about. She knows about stuff like the history of ideas.”
“Right up her street, I would have thought. Why are you interested in the Rusakov field?”
The spangled ring was growing larger, as it always did. Now it was like a small jeweled serpent twisting and twining for him alone. He went on steadily. “ ’Cause you know how the gravitational field deals with the force of gravity, right, and the magnetic field deals with that force, so what force is it that the Rusakov field deals with?”
“Nobody knows.”
“Is it something to do with the uncertainty principle?”
Bonneville was silent for a few moments. Then he said, “My, my, you are a persistent child. If I were in your position, I’d want to know something quite different.”
“Well, I want to know all sorts of things, but in the right order. The Rusakov field is the most important one, ’cause it’s connected with Dust….”
Malcolm heard a quiet noise behind him and turned to see Alice coming through the archway, holding the candle. He put his finger to his lips and mouthed in an exaggerated way, “Bonneville,” pointing to the door. He gestured: Go, go!
Her eyes widened and she stood still.
Malcolm turned back. Bonneville was speaking. He was saying: “Because there are some things you can explain to an elementary school pupil and others that move quickly out of his range. This is one of them. You need at least an undergraduate grasp of experimental theology before the Rusakov field will have the slightest meaning for you. There’s no point in even beginning.”
Malcolm looked round silently and saw that Alice had gone. “But all the same—” he said, turning back.
“Why were you turning round?”
“I thought I heard something.”
“That girl? Alice? Was it her?”
“No, it wasn’t. It’s just me here.”
“I thought we’d disposed of that notion, Malcolm. Those dead children—did I tell you what he did to their dæmons? It was the most ingenious…”
Malcolm turned away with the candle held in both hands and went back across the cellar, which, despite his success in distracting the man, and despite his aurora, now glittering at the edge of his vision, was still thronged with almost-visible horrors. He felt forward with his feet, trying to hold his balance and keep the candle alight, and all the time Bonneville’s voice spoke on behind the door, and Malcolm mouthed to himself, “Not true! Not true!”
Finally he reached the other room. Alice and Lyra had gone. He almost stumbled up to the flight of steps, held himself steady, and began to climb, silent, careful, slow.
He got to the trapdoor and stopped: Could he hear anything? The urge to fling it open and rush out into the clear air was almost overpowering, but he made himself listen. Nothing. No voice, no footsteps, nothing but the thudding of his own heart.
So he put his back against the trapdoor and pushed up, and up it went, quite smooth and easy, and then a gust of air blew his candle out—but it was all right—there was light coming in through the kitchen window—he could see the table, the walls—and there was the glow of the fire still. He climbed out in a moment, lowered the trapdoor swiftly and silently, and then, before racing to the door and the world outside, stopped.
This was a kitchen, and if the cooks here were anything like his mother or Sister Fenella, there would be a drawer with knives in it. He felt around the table, found a knob, pulled it open, and there they were: an assortment of wooden-handled cooks’ knives, all lying ready to hand. He felt through the handles till he came to one that wasn’t too long to conceal, whose blade came to a point and not a rounded end.
He put it in his belt behind his back and made for the door and the clear, cold air outside.
In the very last gray of the day, he could see Alice stumbling across the grass in great haste, carrying Lyra. Bonneville’s boat was still tied up, but the body of the other man had floated away, and there was no sign of Bonneville himself.
He ran to the dinghy, pulled the stick it was tied to out of the ground, and began to shove the boat out into the current.
But he stopped: there was a rucksack in it, under the thwart. The thought came at once: If we have this, we can bargain with him. So he reached in and swung it up—it was heavy—and out onto the grass, and then pushed the boat away from the land.
He grabbed the rucksack and ran back towards Alice. She had put Lyra down on the grass and was tugging La Belle Sauvage out of the bushes, so Malcolm dropped the rucksack in the canoe and joined her.
But they hadn’t moved it a foot before they heard behind them the “Haa! Haa! Haa!” of that abominable dæmon, and turned to see Bonneville sauntering down from the entrance of the house, shotgun under his arm, the dæmon limping and lurching beside him, as if on an invisible leash.
Malcolm let go of the canoe and quickly picked up Lyra, and Alice, turning to see what was happening, said, “Oh, God, no.”
There wouldn’t be time to get the canoe into the water, and even if they did, the man still had that gun. Although his face was indistinct in the gathering gloom, every line of his body looked as if he knew he’d won.
He stopped a few paces away and moved the gun to his left hand. Was he left-handed? Malcolm couldn’t remember, and cursed his carelessness in not noticing.
“Well, you might as well give her to me,” Bonneville said. “You’ve got no hope of getting away now.”
“But why d’you want her?” said Malcolm, holding the child even tighter to his chest.
“ ’Cause he’s a bloody pervert,” said Alice.
Bonneville laughed gently.
Malcolm’s heart was hammering so much it hurt. He felt Alice tense beside him. He was desperate to keep Bonneville looking their way, because the man hadn’t yet noticed that his own boat was gone. “What you were saying in there, through the door, it wasn’t true,” he said.
Malcolm had Lyra in his left arm, tight against his chest. She was quiet; Asta, as a mouse, was whispering to her and Pan. Malcolm felt behind him with his right hand, trying to feel for the knife. But the muscles of his arm were trembling so much that he was afraid he’d drop the knife before he could use it; and did he really intend to stab the man, anyway? He had never deliberately harmed so much as a fly, and the only fights he had had were playground scuffles. Even when he’d knocked the boy into the river for painting an S over the V of SAUVAGE, he’d pulled him out straightaway.
“How would you ever know what the truth was?” said Bonneville.
Malcolm said, “Your voice changes when you say something not true.” He was still feeling for the knife, and hoping that Bonneville didn’t see him moving.
“Oh, you believe that sort of thing? I suppose you believe that the last thing someone sees is imprinted on their retina?”
Malcolm found the handle of the knife and said, “No, I don’t believe that. But why do you want Lyra? What are you going to do with her?”
“She’s my daughter. I want to give her a decent education.”
“No, she’s not. You’ll have to give us a better reason than that.”
“All right, then. I’m going to roast her and eat her. Have you any idea how delicious—”
Alice spat at him.
“Oh, Alice,” he said. “You and I could have been such friends. Perhaps even more than friends. How close we nearly came, you and I! We really shouldn’t let such a little thing spoil a beautiful possibility.”
Malcolm had got the knife out of his belt. Alice could see what he was doing, dark though it was, and getting darker, and she moved a little closer.
“You still haven’t told the truth,” said Malcolm, shifting Lyra’s weight.
Bonneville stepped nearer. Malcolm held Lyra away from his chest, as if to give her to the man, and Bonneville held out his right arm, as if to take her.
The second he was close enough, Malcolm brought his right hand round and stabbed the knife as hard as he could into Bonneville’s thigh. It was the closest part of him. The man roared with pain and staggered sideways, dropping the gun to grab at his leg. His dæmon howled and lurched forward, slipping and falling flat. Malcolm turned around swiftly and put Lyra down—
—and then there was an explosion so loud it knocked him flat.
His head ringing, he pulled himself up to see Alice holding the gun. Bonneville was groaning and rocking back and forth on the grass, clutching his thigh, which was bleeding heavily, but his dæmon lay thrashing, howling, screaming, utterly unable to get up: her one foreleg was smashed beyond repair.
“Take Lyra!” Malcolm shouted to Alice, and scrambled over to seize the painter of the canoe and drag it down over the grass to the water’s edge.
Behind him Bonneville was shouting incoherently and trying to haul himself over the ground towards the child. Alice threw the gun into the darkness of the trees and snatched Lyra up. Bonneville tried to grab her as she came near, but she easily evaded him and leapt over the howling dæmon, who twisted and squirmed and fell again, trying to stand up on a leg that was hardly there.
It was horrible to watch: Malcolm had to close his eyes. Then Alice was climbing into the canoe with Lyra secure in her arms, and he pushed off from the grass, and the sweet-natured canoe did his bidding at once and carried them away and onto the breast of the flood.