Malcolm tried to step forward, but the cave was revolving in his vision. He missed his footing, found it again, and then fell over completely and nearly vomited. Asta was whispering hoarsely, “It’s the blow on the head—you can’t stand up yet—lie down and keep still.” But he was possessed by a frenzy of fear and rage, and he struggled to get to his feet.
There was Andrew, smiling nervously, but with a righteous smugness in his expression too. He put up his hands in defense. Malcolm knocked them aside and hit him hard in the face, so that he fell over, crying, “Auntie! Auntie!”
“What you done?” said his aunt, but Malcolm didn’t know whether she was speaking to him or to Andrew. Perhaps she didn’t know either.
Malcolm kicked the boy, and he rolled away, curled up like a wood louse.
“Who were those men?” Malcolm shouted. “Where were they going?”
“None of your— Argh!” cried Andrew as Malcolm kicked him again.
Finally Doris Whicher realized what was happening and hauled Malcolm away.
“Who were they?” Malcolm roared, struggling against the fat arms and the reek of alcohol. “Where are they taking Lyra?”
Andrew had rolled out of reach and tried to stand up, making the most of the blows Malcolm had landed, wincing, limping, touching his face with delicate fingers.
“I think you broke my jaw—”
Malcolm stamped on Doris’s foot, and then Alice was there too, slapping and scratching at the boy, then turning to haul at his aunt’s shaking arms as they tried to hold on to Malcolm, who tore himself free and rushed to corner Andrew against the rocky wall of the cave. The boy’s mouse dæmon was squealing and screaming as she cowered behind his feet.
“No! Don’t hit me!”
“Just tell me who they were.”
“CCD!”
“Liar. It was the wrong uniform. Who were they?”
“I don’t know! I thought they were CCD—”
“Where did you go to find them?”
By this time the other adults had come round to watch and encourage one side or the other. Some of them had not been awake when the men came and needed to have it explained, and George Boatwright was still unconscious, and Audrey was anxiously crying his name as she knelt beside him, so the cave was full of hubbub.
Andrew was sobbing. Malcolm turned away in disgust and sank to his knees, but Asta, cat-shaped, leapt at Andrew’s mouse dæmon and bore her to the ground. And there was Ben, hair bristling, growling at the boy with a bulldog ferocity.
But Alice was tugging at Malcolm’s arm and making him stand up, so he turned away from the dæmons for a moment.
“Listen,” she said, “listen to this man.”
The man was small and wiry and dark-haired, and his dæmon was a vixen.
“I seen them uniforms before,” he said. “They en’t CCD. They’re called summing like the Security of the Holy Spirit, summing like that. They guard religious places—seminaries, nunneries, schools, that sort of place. They prob’ly come from Wallingford, from the priory there.”
“A priory?” said Malcolm. “With monks or nuns?”
“Nuns,” said someone else, a woman whom Malcolm couldn’t see. “The Sisters of Holy Obedience.”
“How d’you know?” said the man.
“I used to work for ’em,” she said, coming out of the shadows and into the gray light near the entrance of the cave. “For the sisters. I used to clean and look after the chickens and the goats.”
“Where are they? Where is this place?” said Malcolm.
“Down Wallingford,” she said. “You wouldn’t miss it. Big white stone buildings.”
“And who are these sisters? What do they do?” said Alice, her face pale, her eyes blazing.
“They pray. They teach. They look after kids. I dunno…they’re fierce.”
“Fierce? How?” said Malcolm.
“Stern. Very stern and cruel. I couldn’t bear it, so I left,” the woman said.
“I seen them guards catching a kid what run away,” said the man. “They beat him right there in the street till he fainted. No use trying to interfere—they got all the power they need.”
“Is that what you did, then?” said Malcolm, turning to Andrew. “You went and told them about us and the baby?”
Andrew whimpered and wiped his nose on his sleeve.
“Tell ’em, boy,” said his aunt. “Stop sniveling.”
“I don’t want him to hit me again,” said Andrew.
“I won’t hit you. Just tell us what you did.”
“I’m in the league. I had to do what’s right.”
“Never mind the league. What did you do?”
“I knew you never oughter been looking after a kid that en’t yours. You prob’ly stole her or summing. So I told the Office of Child Protection. They came in our school and explained why it was right to tell ’em things like that. I don’t know nothing about this Security of the Holy Spirit; I never heard of them. It was the Office of Child Protection.”
“Where are they?”
“In the priory.”
“Isn’t the priory flooded like everywhere else?”
“No, ’cause it’s on a hill.”
“Who’s in charge there?”
“The Mother Superior.”
“So you went and told her, did you?”
“The Child Protection people took me to see her. It was the right thing to do,” he said quaveringly, beginning to wail.
His aunt hit him, and he choked back his wail with a sniveling cough.
“What did she say, the Mother Superior?” Malcolm demanded.
“She wanted to know who the kid was and where we were and all that. I told her everything I knew. I had to.”
“And then what?”
“We said a prayer and then she give me a bed to sleep on for a bit, and then I guided ’em back here.”
In the face of the hostility and contempt of almost everyone in the cave, Andrew crumpled and fell to the floor, curled up and sobbing. Almost everyone, because George Boatwright was still unconscious, and Audrey was now increasingly frightened. She knelt beside him, rubbing his hand, stroking his head, calling his name, and looking around to everyone there for help.
Alice saw her and knelt to see if she could do anything, while Malcolm continued to question Andrew.
“Where is this priory? How far away?”
“Dunno…”
“Did you walk there and back, or go in a boat?”
“In a boat. Their boat.”
“It’s not far,” said the woman who’d worked there. “It’s the highest place. You can’t miss it.”
“Have they got lots of kids there?” Malcolm asked her.
“Yeah, all ages. From babies right up to sixteen, I suppose.”
“What do they do? Teach them, or make them work, or what?”
“Teach ’em, yeah….They prepare them for lives as servants, that kind of thing.”
“Boys and girls?”
“Yeah, boys and girls, but after ten years old they keep ’em apart.”
“And the babies, do they keep them apart from the rest?”
“There’s a nursery just for the young ones, yes.”
“How many babies have they got there?”
“Oh, Lord, I don’t know….In my time, there was about fifteen or sixteen….”
“Are they all orphans?”
“No. Sometimes if a child is really badly behaved, they take them in. They never get out till they’re sixteen. They never see their parents again.”
“How many kids altogether, then? Babies and older ones?”
“A hundred, maybe…”
“Don’t they ever try to escape?”
“They might escape once, but they’re always caught, and they never dare to do it again.”
“So they’re cruel, these nuns?”
“You wouldn’t believe how cruel they can be. You wouldn’t believe it.”
“You—Andrew,” said Malcolm. “Have you told on any other kids and got them taken in there?”
“I en’t saying,” the boy mumbled.
“Tell the truth, you little shit,” his aunt said.
“No, I en’t, then!”
“Never?” said Malcolm.
“It en’t your busi—”
His aunt slapped him. His voice rose in a high wail.
“All right, maybe I have!” he cried.
“Little sneaking shit,” she said.
“Who do you speak to when you go to report someone?” said Malcolm, desperately trying to keep his focus. His head was throbbing, and waves of nausea came and went. “Where did you go last night? Who did you speak to?”
“Brother Peter. I en’t s’posed to tell you this.”
“I don’t care what you’re s’posed to tell. Who’s Brother Peter, and where did you go to find him?”
“He’s the director of the Office of Child Protection for Wallingford. They got an office at the priory.”
“And he knew you because you’d been to him before?”
At that, Andrew just buried his head in his arms and howled.
There were voices behind Malcolm, excited and relieved, and he turned to see, but felt a bout of pain and nausea in his head as he did, so brutal it was like being hit again. He kept still, knowing that the slightest movement of his head would mean being violently sick.
Alice was beside him, holding his arm.
“Lean on me,” she said. “And come over this way.”
He did as she told him.
“Lyra,” he muttered.
“We know where she is, and she en’t going anywhere else. You can’t move now, else you’ll be sick. Just sit down here.”
Her voice was quiet and gentle, and that was so surprising that he let himself be led and tended to.
“Mr. Boatwright’s woken up,” she said. “He had a crack on the nut, like you did, only worse. Audrey thought he was dead, but he en’t. Just keep still now.”
“Here,” said a woman’s voice, and then, “Let him sip this.”
“Thank you,” said Alice. “Here, Mal, sit up a bit and sip this. But mind, it’s hot.”
Mal! She had never called him Mal. No one had. He wouldn’t let anyone but Alice call him that now. The drink was scalding, and he could only take the smallest sip. It tasted like lemon, the sort of cold remedy his mother sometimes gave him, but there was something else in it.
“I put a bit of ginger with it,” the woman said. “Stops you feeling sick. Otherwise, it’s a painkiller.”
“Thank you,” he murmured. He had no idea how he’d had the energy to interrogate Andrew only a minute before.
He sipped a little more of the drink and fell asleep.
It was dark again when he woke up. He was warm, and covered in something heavy with a doggish animal smell. He moved a little, and his head didn’t punish him for it, so he moved a little more and sat up.
“Mal,” Alice said at once from beside him. “You all right now?”
“Yeah, I think so,” he said.
“Stay there. I’ll get you some bread and cheese.”
She scrambled up, which showed him that she’d been lying beside him. She was more and more surprising. He lay there, slowly waking up, letting the memory of the last day and night slowly wake up too. Then he remembered what had happened to Lyra, and sat up with a convulsive shock. Alice was holding out something for him.
“Here y’are,” she said, putting a hunk of bread in his hand. “It’s hard, but it en’t moldy. D’you want an egg? I can fry you an egg if you like.”
“No, thanks. Alice, did we really…,” he whispered, unable to say any more.
“Bonneville?” she whispered back. “Yeah, we did. But hush about that. Don’t say nothing. It’s over.”
Malcolm tried to bite a piece off the hunk of bread and found it so hard that it was a serious challenge to his teeth, and thus to the pain in his head. Still, he persevered. Alice appeared again with a mug of something strong and salty.
“What’s this?”
“Some sort of stock cube. I dunno. It’ll do you good.”
“Thank you,” he said, and took a sip. “Has it been night for a long time?”
“No. There’s people out there poaching or summing. It en’t been dark long.”
“Where’s Andrew?”
“His auntie’s guarding him. He won’t get out again.”
“We got to—” He tried to swallow a lump of bread, and then retrieved it and chewed it a bit more before trying again and continuing hoarsely, “We’ve got to rescue Lyra.”
“Yeah. I been thinking about that.”
“First we got to look at the priory.”
“And,” she said, “we got to know exactly what Andrew told ’em about us.”
“D’you think he’d ever tell us the truth?”
“I could get it out of him.”
“He’s not reliable. He’d say anything to avoid getting hit.”
“I’ll hit him anyway.”
He chewed another mouthful of bread.
“I’d like to ask that lady who worked there,” he said. “About where everything is, where the nursery is, how to get there, all that.”
“I’ll go and get her.”
She leapt to her feet and hurried to the fire, where a number of people were sitting and drinking and talking and occasionally stirring a big pot of stew.
Malcolm struggled to sit up a bit higher, and found that although his headache had receded, a number of other aches, all over his body, had come out to claim his attention. He chewed off another piece of cheese and concentrated on that.
Soon Alice came back with the woman who’d spoken up before. Her dæmon was a ferret, who sat nibbling constantly on her shoulder.
“This is Mrs. Simkin,” said Alice.
“Hello, Mrs. Simkin,” said Malcolm, trying to swallow the cheese, and having to soften it with a sip of the stock-cube drink. “We want to know all about this priory.”
“You en’t thinking of trying to get in and rescue her?” she said, sitting down nearby. Her hand kept going up to stroke her dæmon, who was very nervous.
“Well, yes,” said Malcolm. “We got to. There’s no question about it.”
“You can’t,” she said. “It’s like a fortress. You’ll never get in.”
“Well, all right. But what’s it like when you are in? Where do they keep the kids?”
“There’s the nursery—that’s where the little ones sleep and get looked after. That’s upstairs near where the nuns have their cells.”
“Cells?” said Alice.
“That’s what they call their bedrooms,” explained Malcolm. “Can you draw a plan?” he said to the woman.
But she was so doubtful and uneasy that he realized she couldn’t read or write, and had no idea of the principles of maps or plans of any sort. He felt embarrassed for asking, and went on quickly: “How many flights of stairs is there?”
“There’s one at the front, a big one, and a small one at the back for the cleaners and servants, people like me. And there’s another, but I never seen it. Sometimes they have guests—men too—and it wouldn’t be right for them to mingle with the nuns, or the servants neither, so they have their own staircase. But that only goes up to the guest rooms, and they’re shut off from the rest of the place.”
“Right. Now, when you go up the servants’ staircase, what do you come to at the top?”
The woman’s dæmon whispered to her. She listened and then said, “He’s just reminding me. On the first floor there’s a small landing and a door that opens on a corridor where the nursery is.”
“Anything else in that corridor?”
“There’s two cells on the opposite side from the nursery. Whichever nuns are on duty with the little kids, they sleep in there.”
“What’s the nursery like?”
“It’s a big room, with about…I dunno, maybe twenty or so beds and cribs.”
“Are there that many little kids?”
“Not always. There’s usually a bed or two empty, in case any new kids arrive.”
“How old are the kids in there?”
“Up to four, I think. Then they’re moved to the main block. The nursery’s in the kitchen block, like, right over the kitchen on the ground floor.”
“Is there anything else besides the nursery on that corridor?”
“There’s two bathrooms on the right, before you get to the nursery. Oh, and an airing cupboard for blankets and that.”
“And the cells are on the left?”
“That’s right.”
“So there’s only two nuns looking after the kids?”
“There’s another one sleeping in the nursery itself.”
The mouse dæmon whispered again.
“Don’t forget,” the woman said, “they get up ever so early for the services.”
“Oh, yeah. I remember. They did that at Godstow.”
He thought there wouldn’t be much time to find Lyra and get out again, even if he could get in. And all it would take to give them away would be a nervous child crying out at the presence of strangers in the nursery….
He asked the woman about the arrangement of doors and windows in the kitchen, and anything else he could think of. The more he heard, the more difficult it seemed, and the more despondent he became.
“Well, thank you,” he said. “That’s all very useful.”
The woman nodded and went back to the fire.
“What we gonna do?” said Alice quietly.
“Get in and rescue her. But suppose there’s twenty kids the same age all lying asleep—how could we tell which was her?”
“Well, I’d recognize her. She’s unmistakable.”
“When she’s awake, yeah. Pan would recognize Asta, and Ben too. But if she’s asleep…We can’t wake ’em all up.”
“I won’t mistake her. Nor will you, actually.”
“Let’s go now, then.”
“You all right to do that?”
“Yes. I’m feeling much better.”
In fact, Malcolm was still aching and a little dizzy, but the thought of lounging in the cave while Lyra was captive was too horrible to bear. He stood up slowly and took a step or two towards the entrance, going carefully, making no fuss, saying nothing. Alice was gathering their possessions and wrapping them in the blanket as Boatwright had.
Once they were outside, he said softly to Alice, “Those biscuits she likes—are they still in the canoe?”
“Well, we didn’t bring ’em up here. They must be.”
“We can give her one of them to keep her quiet.”
“Yeah, if…”
“Keep a watch out for Andrew.”
“Can you remember the way to the canoe?”
“If we keep going down, we’ll get there eventually.”
That was what he hoped anyway. Even if George Boatwright had fully recovered, which he probably hadn’t yet, it wouldn’t have been a good idea to ask him to guide them down. He’d have wanted to know where they were going and what they planned to do, and he’d have told them not to.
Malcolm stopped thinking about that. He was discovering a new power in himself: he was able to stop thinking things he didn’t want to think. Quite often, he realized as he led the way down the moonlit path, he had pushed aside thoughts of his mother and father and how they must be suffering, wondering where he was, whether he was still alive, how he’d ever find his way back against the flood. He did it again now. It was dark under the holm oaks, so it didn’t matter if he made a face of anguish. He could stop that too after a few seconds.
“There’s the water,” said Alice.
“Let’s go carefully. There might be another boat snooping around….”
They stood still just inside the darkness of the trees, watching and listening. The expanse of water was clear ahead of them, and the only sound was its rush against the grass and the bushes.
Malcolm was trying to remember whether they’d left the boat on the left or right of the path.
“D’you remember where…”
“There it is now—look,” she said.
She was pointing to the left, and as soon as he followed her line of sight, he saw it. The canoe was barely concealed at all, and yet it had been invisible a moment before. The moon was so bright that everything under the trees was caught in a net of confusing shadows.
“You can see better’n I can,” he said, and pulled the boat out onto the grass, checking all around and turning her the right way up. He was tender with her, feeling all along her hull, checking that all the hoop brackets were firm, counting the hoops themselves as they lay inside the canoe, making sure the tarpaulin was folded and stowed away neatly. It was all shipshape, and the skin of the hull was undamaged, though the neat gyptian paintwork was a bit scratched.
He pushed her down to the water, and once again he felt as if this inanimate thing was joyously coming alive as she met her own element.
He held the gunwale as Alice got in, and then handed her the rucksack he’d taken from the dead Bonneville.
“Blimey, this is heavy,” she said. “What’s in here?”
“Haven’t had time to look. As soon as we’ve got Lyra and found somewhere safe to stop, we’ll open it up and see. Ready?”
“Yeah, go on.”
She wrapped a blanket around her thin shoulders and kept watch behind as he began to paddle. The moon was brilliant, the water one sheet of fast-flowing glass. Malcolm felt good to be paddling again, despite his bruises, and he worked their way steadily to the center of the flood. The only sense of speed he had was the cold air against his face and the occasional tremor of the hull as some obstruction far below raised a slight wave in the water.
He had a thousand misgivings. If they were to miss the priory, they would never be able to work their way back against the power of the water. And if they got there and found it guarded? Or impossible to get inside? And suppose…And so on. But he thrust all those thoughts aside.
On they sped, and the moon continued to shine. Alice continually scanned the stream behind, on both sides, and as far back as the horizon; but she saw no other boats, no sign of life at all. They said little. Since their fight with Bonneville, something large had changed in the relationship between them, and it wasn’t just that she’d started calling him Mal. A wall of hostility had fallen down and vanished. They were friends now. It was easy to sit together.
Something ahead was gleaming, on the horizon, nowhere near yet.
“Is that a light, d’you reckon?” he said, pointing.
She turned and looked.
“Could be. But it looks more like summing’s just white, with the moon shining on it.”
And there it was again: the spangled ring, his personal aurora. It was so familiar now that he almost welcomed it, in spite of the difficulty it caused in seeing things behind it. And right inside the lovely celestial curve as it grew was the thing Alice mentioned, the great building gleaming white under the moon.
They were going so fast that it soon became clear that she was right: a large building, something like a castle, rising out of the water; but it wasn’t a castle because instead of a great keep at the heart of it, there rose the spire of an oratory.
“That’s it!” Malcolm said.
“It’s bloody immense,” she said.
It lay on the left as they floated swiftly towards it. It was built of a light stone that shone almost like snow in the glare of the moon, a vast spreading complex of walls and roofs and buttresses, all surrounding the slender spire. Black windows pierced the flat blank cliffs of white, occasionally flashing a reflection of the moon as the canoe floated by. It was just as bright and just as black as the scintillations on the spangled ring, which was now close enough to be almost out of sight behind him. The building had no windows low enough to climb into, no doors at all, no flights of steps; just immense vertical sheets of white stone, with any break in the smoothness high above anything they could reach from the level of the water. Like a fortress, it seemed designed to repel any attempt to get inside.
Malcolm was holding the canoe back now, trying to resist the power of the flood, and La Belle Sauvage responded sweetly. She could almost dance on the water, Malcolm thought, and he stroked the gunwale with love.
“Can you see a way in?” Alice said quietly.
“Not yet. But we won’t be going in through the front door anyway.”
“S’pose not….It’s bloody huge. It goes on and on.”
Malcolm was turning the canoe to port to go around and see how far the building extended. As they left the moon behind and passed into the great shadow of the walls, he felt a chill, though he’d been cold enough already, and to be sure, the moon gave no warmth. They were out of the main current here, and he could bring the canoe closer and look up at the towering walls, to see if there was any way in at all, but it seemed to be impossible.
“What’s that?” said Alice.
“What?”
“Listen.”
He kept still and heard a soft, continual splashing a little way ahead. There was what looked like a broad stone buttress there, running the full height of the wall, and at the top it continued into a stack of chimneys, with the moon shining brightly on them. He thought, They must have a kitchen somewhere, so maybe it’s here….And then he saw what was splashing. A square opening near the foot of the wall, in which an iron grating hung loosely, was letting a stream of water spill out and fall in a steady arc.
“Toilets,” said Alice.
“No. I don’t think so. It’s quite clean, look, and it doesn’t smell….Must be an overflow or summing.”
He paddled on to the next corner, slowly and silently. They were still in the shadow of the moon, but he knew that anything moving attracted the eye, and there were no bushes or reeds to hide among: just the bare water and the bare stone. They would be very easy to see. With infinite caution he edged the canoe past the corner of the great building and looked along what must have been the front.
Alice was gripping the gunwales and peering as hard as she could in the deceptive light. Malcolm turned the boat sideways so that anyone looking from that direction would have had a much smaller silhouette to see. Roughly halfway along the front there was a wide row of steps, surmounted by a portico where classical columns supported a pediment….Was that a figure among the columns?
Alice was twisting right round to look at it. Then she whispered, “There’s a man—two men—look, they got a boat….”
There was a powerboat tied up at the base of the steps, and Alice was right: there were two men. As Malcolm looked, they stepped idly out of the line of columns and talked together. They were smoking and had rifles over their shoulders.
With even more care than before, Malcolm maneuvered the canoe around the corner and out of sight.
“What did the man in the cave call them?” he whispered. “The Security of the Holy Spirit—they guard nunneries and monasteries and that….So we can’t go in that way.”
He looked up at the chimneys again, and an idea came to him.
“If this is the kitchen, right, just inside this wall, ’cause of the chimneys—well, you know in the priory? In Godstow?” He was suddenly excited. “In the old room they called the scullery?”
“I never went in there.”
“It’s ever so old, and they got this ancient drain—it comes out of a spring, and it runs in a sort of stone channel right across the floor and out the other side, into the river. Sister Fenella sometimes used to throw her washing-up water in it—”
“You think this is summing like that?”
“It could be. This water’s clean.”
“It’s got a bloody great iron grating across it.”
“Here, take the paddle and hold the boat up close to it….”
When she had it steady, he stood up and gripped the iron grille, and at once it came loose, in a shower of stone dust and mortar, and fell with a loud splash between the canoe and the wall.
“Blimey!” he said, steadying himself.
“We can’t go in there!”
“Why not?”
“Well, for one thing, we wouldn’t be able to get out again. There’s nothing to tie the boat up to. And s’pose there’s another grating at the top, where it comes out the kitchen or the scullery or wherever it is? Anyway, we’d get soaked. It’s freezing.”
“I’m going to try. You’ll have to stay here with the canoe. Just hold it steady and keep warm and wait.”
“You can’t—” she began, and then bit her lip. “You’ll drown, Mal.”
“If it gets too difficult, I’ll come back and we’ll think of something else. Stay close to the wall. Tuck it in close to the chimney stack. I’ll be as quick as I can.”
He gripped the gunwale of the canoe and thought, Look after her, Belle Sauvage.
Then he stood up again and reached up to the opening and took hold of the stone rim. The stream of water wasn’t great in volume, but it was cold and it was continuous, and by the time he’d managed to pull himself up, he was soaked to the skin. Asta was already inside the drain as an otter, with her teeth in his sleeve, pulling and pulling, and finally the two of them lay panting on the floor of the drain, trying to keep to one side, out of the flow of water.
“Get up,” she said. “You can crawl. It’s high enough for that….”
His shins were scraped, his fingernails broken. He knelt gingerly and found, as she said, that there was room to crawl. Asta became some kind of night-dwelling beast and clung to his back, her wide eyes taking in every tiny flicker of light. Before long, though, there was no light left, and they were crawling upwards in total darkness, and Malcolm found himself beginning to get badly frightened. He thought of the great weight of stone above them; he wanted to stand up; he wanted to raise his arms above his head; he wanted much more space than there was….
He was near panic, but Asta whispered, “Not far now—honestly—I can see the light of the kitchen—just a little further—”
“But suppose—”
“Don’t suppose anything. Just breathe deeply.”
“Can’t help shivering—”
“No, but keep going. There’s bound to be a range in the kitchen burning all night. Big place like this. You can get warm in a minute. Just push the thoughts aside, like we learned how to do. Keep going—thassit….”
His hands and legs were numb with cold, but not so numb that he couldn’t feel a lot of pain in them under the numbness.
“How are we going to get Lyra down here—”
“We’ll find a way. There is a way. We just don’t know it yet. Don’t stop….”
And after another desperate minute, his eyes began to see what he’d disbelieved that hers could: a glimmer of light on the wet sides of the tunnel.
“There you are,” she said.
“Yeah—just hope there isn’t—”
A grating at the top like there is at the bottom, he was going to say. But of course there was: if something fell into the drain, the kitchen workers wouldn’t want it to disappear. He nearly despaired at that point. Dark bars of iron stood heavy and still between him and the dimly lit scullery beyond. There was no way through. He choked back a sob.
“No, wait,” said Asta. She was a rat now, and she scampered up the grating and examined it closely. “They’ll need to clean the drain sometimes—they’ll need to get brushes and things down here….”
Malcolm pulled himself together. One more sob, of cold as much as of despair, shook his chest, but after that he said, “Yeah, that’s right. Maybe…”
He gripped the bars, shook them, felt them move. They swung back and forth a tiny way.
“Is there a—at the top—”
“A hinge—yes!”
“So down at the bottom…”
Malcolm put his arm through the grating and felt around and, as simply as that, found a heavy iron bolt lying across the bars just above the water, the end deep in a hole in the stone. It was well greased, and it slid out with no effort. The grating swung up towards the kitchen, and Malcolm’s numb and trembling hands found a catch above that held it firmly.
A moment later he had scrambled underneath and into the room, which was, as he’d guessed, a scullery, with sinks for washing and racks for drying crockery. After the darkness of the drain, his eyes welcomed the dim light that let him see everything there. The stream ran across the floor, just like the one at Godstow, in a channel lined with bricks. And, mercy of all mercies, there was a range, slumbering but alight, and above it a rack of warming towels, hanging there to dry after having been washed. He tugged off his sweater and his shirt and wrapped a large towel around his shoulders, huddling near the range, rocking back and forth as the cold gradually left his body.
“I’ll never be warm again,” said Malcolm. “And if I’m shivering like this, I’ll never keep quiet in that nursery looking for Lyra. Are you sure we’ll recognize her? Babies are all pretty much the same, en’t they?”
“I’ll recognize Pan, and he’ll recognize me.”
“If you say so…We can’t stay here for long.”
He was thinking of Alice. It must be nerve-racking for her outside on the water, with nowhere to hide. He dragged his shirt and sweater back on, wet as they were, and shivered again violently.
“Come on, then,” said Asta. “Oh, look! That box…”
She was a cat now. The box she meant was a wooden thing of the sort that might have contained apples.
“What about…Oh, yeah! Right!”
It was big enough for Lyra. If he lined it with towels, she might stay dry as he pulled her down the drain. He dragged some towels off the rack and laid them inside it, ready for her.
“Let’s go, then,” he said.
He opened the scullery door and listened. Silence. Then, from high above and some way off, a deep bell rang three times. He tiptoed along the stone corridor, making, he hoped, for the back staircase. There were dim anbaric lamps along the wall, which was otherwise bare and whitewashed, with doors to the left and right.
Then the bell rang again, much louder than before, and he heard a choir singing, as if the door to a chapel or an oratory had opened. He looked around—there was nowhere to hide. The singing got louder still, and then to his horror a line of nuns, hands pressed together and eyes lowered, came around a corner and straight towards him. Evidently, like the Godstow nuns, they got up at all times of the night to sing and pray. He was caught. There was nothing he could do but stand and shiver and lower his head.
Someone stopped in front of him. He kept his head low, so all he could see were her sandaled feet and the hem of her habit.
“Who are you, boy? What are you doing?”
“I wet me bed, miss. Sister. Then I got lost.”
He tried to sound sorry for himself, and in truth it wasn’t hard. He sniffed and wiped his nose on his sleeve, and the next moment there came a resounding slap on the side of his head that sent him staggering to the wall.
“Filthy brat. Go upstairs to the bathroom and wash yourself. Then take an oilcloth and a fresh blanket from the airing cupboard and go back to bed. We’ll discuss your punishment in the morning.”
“Sorry, Sister…”
“Stop whining. Do as I tell you, and don’t make a noise.”
“I dunno where the bathroom—”
“Of course you do. Up the back stairs and along the corridor. Just keep quiet.”
“Yes, Sister.”
He dragged his feet in the direction she pointed and tried to look contrite.
“Good! Good!” whispered Asta on his shoulder. She had subdued her natural wish to change into something that could bite and threaten, and remained a robin.
“ ’S all right for you. It wasn’t your head she smacked. The oilcloth’ll be useful, though. For the box.”
“And the blankets…”
He found the staircase easily enough. It was lit, like everything else he’d seen so far, with a dim anbaric bulb, which made him wonder how they still had power.
“Surely in a flood that would be the first thing to go,” he said.
“They must have a generator.”
They were barely whispering. At the top of the staircase, a drab corridor stretched out ahead, with rough coconut matting on the floor. The light here was even dimmer. Remembering what the woman in the cave had told them, Malcolm counted the doors: the ones on the left were cells for the nuns, and those on the right were first the two bathrooms and then the nursery.
“Where’s the airing cupboard?” he whispered.
“There, between the bathrooms.”
He opened the little door and was met with a wave of musty heat. Shelves of thin folded blankets rose above a hot-water tank.
“There’s the oilcloths,” said Asta.
They lay in rolls on the top shelf. Malcolm took one down, together with a couple of blankets.
“Can’t carry any more, not with her as well. This’ll be hard as it is.”
He closed the cupboard silently, and then, with Asta as a mouse, listened as hard as he could outside the nursery. A light snore, which might have been the nun on duty, a little snuffling and whimpering—no more than that.
“No point in waiting,” Malcolm whispered.
He turned the handle, trying to do it silently, but the little noise he made sounded to him like a stick banging a bucket. Nothing to be done about it: he slipped inside and shut the door, and then stood absolutely still, assessing the place.
A long room, with a dim anbaric light at each end. A line of cribs along one wall, and small beds along the other, with an adult’s bed at the nearer end, where a nun was sleeping and, as he’d heard from outside, gently snoring.
The floor was drab linoleum, and the walls were bare. He thought of the pretty little nursery the nuns had made for Lyra at Godstow and clenched his fists.
“Concentrate,” whispered Asta. “She’s in one of these cribs.”
There were so many things that could go wrong that Malcolm could scarcely manage to push them all aside in his mind. He tiptoed to the first crib and peered in. Asta was a night bird of some kind, perching on the side and looking down. A large heavy child with black hair. No. They shook their heads.
The next: too small.
The next: the head was too round.
The next: too fair.
The next: too big.
The next— The nun in the bed behind them groaned and murmured in her sleep. Malcolm stood stock-still and held his breath. After a moment the woman sighed heavily and fell silent again.
“Come on,” said Asta.
The next child was the right size and coloring, but she wasn’t Lyra. He was surprised: it was easy to tell, after all.
They moved on to the next, and then the door handle turned.
Without thinking, Malcolm darted to the nearest bed against the opposite wall and pulled himself underneath, clutching the blankets and the oilcloth.
Two voices were speaking quietly at the other end of the room, and one was a man’s.
Malcolm was already freezing cold, but a shiver took hold of him. Help me stop shivering! he thought desperately, and Asta instantly became a ferret and lay close around his neck.
Footsteps came slowly towards them. The voices continued in a murmur.
“Are you sure about this?” the woman said.
“As sure as I can be. That child is the daughter of Lord Asriel.”
“But how did she come to be in a cave in the woods with a lot of poachers and common thieves? It doesn’t make sense.”
“I don’t know how, Sister. We’ll never know. By the time we send someone back to interrogate them, they’ll have gone. I must say this has been a complete—”
“Keep your voice down, Father.”
They both sounded testy.
“Which one is she?” said the priest.
Malcolm lifted his head and watched as the nun led him to the seventh crib from the end.
The priest stood gazing down at the child in the crib. “I’ll take her with me in the morning,” he said.
“I beg your pardon, Father, but you won’t. She is in our care now, and there she will remain. That is the rule of our order.”
“My authority outweighs the rule of your order. In any case, I should have thought that the one thing a Sister of Holy Obedience ought to do was obey. I will take this child in the morning, and that is the end of it.”
He turned and walked to the end of the room and out the door. One or two of the sleeping children muttered or whimpered in their sleep as he passed, and the nun in the bed at the end gave a soft shuddering snore and turned over.
The nun who had come in remained by the crib for a few moments, and then made her way more slowly to the door. Malcolm could see along the length of the room under the beds, and in the dim light from the corridor he saw her sandaled feet under her long habit as she stopped and turned to look back. She stood there for some time, and he thought, Has she seen me? What’s she going to do?
But finally she turned and left and shut the door.
Malcolm thought of Alice, faithfully waiting outside in the cold, cut off from any knowledge of what was happening. How lucky he and Lyra were to have her to rely on! But how long could he stay lying here? Not much longer. He was aching with cold.
Slowly, carefully, he pulled himself out from under the bed. Asta was watching all around, cat-formed, ears pricked. When he stood up, she flew to his shoulder as a wren.
“She’s gone down the corridor,” she whispered. “Come on!”
Malcolm, shivering hard, tiptoed to the seventh crib. He was about to reach down when Asta said, “Stop—”
He stood back and looked around, but she said, “No—look at her!”
The sleeping child had thick black curls.
“That’s not Lyra,” he said stupidly. “But she said—”
“Look in the other cribs!”
The next one was empty, but the one after that—
“Is this her?”
He was so bewildered now that he couldn’t even guess. It looked like Lyra, but the nun had been so sure….
Asta, silent-winged, flew down to the pillow. She bent her head to the little dæmon fast asleep around the child’s neck and nudged him gently. The child stirred and sighed.
“Is it?” said Malcolm, more urgently.
“Yes. This is Pan. But there’s something—I don’t know—something not right….”
She lifted the little ferret dæmon’s head, and it flopped back as soon as she let go.
“They should have woken,” said Malcolm.
“They’re drugged. I can smell something sweet on her lips.”
That would make it easier, at least, he thought.
“Are you absolutely sure it’s her?”
“Well, look. Aren’t you?”
The light was very dim, but when he peered down close and looked at the child’s face, he knew beyond any doubt that this was the Lyra he loved.
“Yes, it’s her. Course it is. Well, let’s go.”
He spread the blankets he was carrying on the floor, and while Asta carefully lifted the sleeping Pan away, he bent and picked up the child, feeling a little surprised at her solidity. She neither stirred nor murmured, but hung in his arms profoundly asleep.
He laid her on the blankets and rolled them around her. Asta, badger-formed now, carried Pan in her mouth, and they made their way silently between the row of cribs and the row of beds, past the sleeping nun at the end of the room, still gently snoring, and opened the door.
Silence. Without waiting a second, Malcolm stepped through and Asta followed, and then they shut the door and tiptoed back towards the stairs.
As they were about to take the first step down, the great bell rang and startled him so, he nearly dropped the clumsy bundle; but it was only telling the time. Nothing happened. They went on down through the kitchen and into the scullery, and found the wooden box where they’d left it.
Malcolm laid Lyra on the table, lined the box with the oilskin, and put the child and blankets inside. Then Asta settled the limp dæmon in his place around Lyra’s neck, and Malcolm said, “Ready?”
“I’ll go first,” said Asta.
Malcolm was shivering so hard he thought he’d never be able to hold the box, but he managed to step into the drain, his back to the way out, and pull the box after him. Once they were under the grating, he reached up and set it free from the catch. He couldn’t prevent it from falling with a loud clang and wished he’d left it, but there was nothing to be done.
He clambered backwards down the drain, moaning with cold, bashing his head, scraping his knees, slipping, falling on his face, pushing himself up again, into the darkness, until Asta said, “There it is! We’re nearly there!”
He could see a faint light gleaming on the wet walls; he could smell fresh air; he could hear the lapping of water.
“Careful—don’t go too fast—”
“Is she there?”
“Course she’s there. Alice—Alice—come closer….”
“Took your bloody time, didn’t you?” came her voice from below. “Here—gimme your foot—thassit—now the other—”
He felt the rock and swing of the canoe underfoot and let his whole weight down into it. Then he didn’t know what to do with the box. He was nearly stupid with exhaustion and fear and cold.
“I got it steady—don’t hurry,” she said. “Just bring it out slow and careful. No hurry. Got the weight? Take your time. Turn round this way. I got it—I got it—and she slept through all this? Lazy little cow. Come here, sweetheart, come to Alice. Here, Mal, sit down and put them blankets round you. For God’s sake, get warm. And eat this—here. I kept it from the cave. If you got summing in your belly, it’ll warm you up quicker.”
She shoved a lump of bread and a piece of cheese into his hands, and he gobbled down a bit at once.
“Gimme the paddle,” he mumbled, and with another bit of bread and cheese in his mouth, the blankets around his shoulders, and the paddle in his hand, he pushed away from the walls of the great white priory and brought the faithful canoe out once more onto the flood.