The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth (Book of Dust, Volume 2) (27 page)

“What kind of cargo does he think we’ll pick up in Cuxhaven anyway?”

“Not cargo. Passengers.”

“Piss off! Who’d pay to sail on this filthy old wreck?”

“I heard him talking, him and Herman. These are a special sort of passengers.”

“What’s special about them?”

“They en’t got no passports, no papers, nothing like that.”

“Money? They got any money?”

“No, they en’t got that either.”

“Then what’s in it for the old man?”

“He’s got a deal with some big farmer in Essex. There’s more and more people coming up the rivers from the south, I don’t know, Turkey or somewhere. There’s no work for ’em in Germany, but this farmer reckons he likes the idea of a bunch of workers he doesn’t have to pay. Well, I suppose he has to feed ’em and give ’em somewhere to sleep, but no wages, sod that for a lark. Slaves, basically. They won’t be able to get away because if they en’t got papers…”

“We’re running slaves now?”

“I don’t like it either. But whatever happens, he’ll do all right, Hans Flint. He always does.”

“Mad bowlegged bastard.”

They smoked in silence for a few minutes more, and then the first man knocked out his pipe and stamped the ashes deep into the bilgewater slopping to and fro.

“Come on,” he said, “get some spuds, and I’ll see if I can find some beer. If there’s any left.”

“Tell you what,” said the other. “I’m sick of this. Soon as I get me pay, I’m going to scarper.”

“Don’t blame yer. Course, Flint’ll hold out till he’s sold the propeller, and then till he’s got his fee from the farmer, and he’ll go on holding out time and time again. Remember old Gustav? He scarpered in the end without the pay he was owed. Just gave up and buggered off.”

He shoved the hatch cover up, and the two of them climbed out into the rain, leaving Pan in the dark and the cold and the solitude. Even the ghosts left him alone; perhaps they were dreams after all.

Lyra woke up in the early evening, feeling heavy-headed and anxious and not in the least refreshed. After eating a meal of mussels and mashed potato with Ma Costa, and telling her about life at school and college, she did as Farder Coram had suggested and went to see him again. She found him bright-eyed in the lamplight and eager to talk, as if he had a secret to tell her, but he asked her to put another log in the little iron stove and pour them both a glass of jenniver before he’d say anything about it.

She sat in the other armchair and took a sip of the clear, cold spirit.

“Well, now,” he said, “it was something you said, or it might have been something I said, or it might have been neither of those, but it set me thinking about this journey of yours. And witches.”

“Yes!” she said. “I wonder if we’re thinking the same thing. If people think I’m a witch, then they won’t—”

“Exactly! If a witch came this far south, like my Serafina did—”

“And she lost her cloud-pine, or it was stolen, or something—”

“Thassit. She’d have to stay earthbound till she found her way back north. We
are
thinking the same thing, gal. But it en’t going to be easy. People might accept that you’re a witch, and that’d account for Pan being missing, but don’t forget they fear witches, and they hate them, sometimes.”

“I’ll have to be careful, then. But I can be careful.”

“You’ll have to be lucky too. But you know, Lyra, maybe this
could
work. Except…well, that scheme might work with ordinary people. But suppose you met a real witch?”

“Whatever would a witch be doing in Central Asia?”

“Them regions where you’re going, in Central Asia, they en’t unfamiliar with witches. They travel a long way sometimes, for trade, for learning, for diplomacy. You’ll have to work out all you’re going to say. And specially what you’ll say if you meet a real witch.”

“I’ll be very young. Only just separated from my dæmon at that place in Siberia…”

“Tungusk.”

“That’s it. And I’m still learning a lot of witch ways. But I don’t look like a witch, that’s one problem.”

“I don’t know about that. How many witches did you see when we were in the north?”

“Hundreds.”

“Yes, but all from Serafina’s clan, or related ones. They look similar, naturally. But they don’t all look the same. There’s fair-haired witches with Scandinavian-looking eyes and ones with black hair and different-shaped eyes. I think you could
easy
pass for a witch, if it was just a matter of looks.”

“And Ma Costa did say once that I had witch oil in my soul.”

“There you are, then!” He was becoming enthusiastic about the idea, crazy as it was.

“But then there’s language,” she said. “I don’t speak any of their languages.”

“Cross that bridge later. Fetch me that atlas off the bookshelf.”

The atlas was old and much used, and the pages were held together by the very last of the stitching. Farder Coram opened it on his lap and turned at once to the pages showing the far north.

“Here,” he said, his finger on one of the maps of the Arctic Ocean.

“What’s that?” she said, and came around to look over his shoulder.

“Novy Kievsk. This is where you can come from. It’s that little island, and there
is
a witch clan there, and it’s fiercer and prouder for being so small. You invent a story to explain how something’s sent you all the way south on some high purpose. When you were a little gal, you could’ve spun out a yarn like that for hours on end, and had everyone around listening and half believing every word.”

“Yes, I could,” she said, and for a moment all the exhilaration of telling a story like that returned to her heart, and the old man saw the light in her eyes as she remembered it. “But I’ve lost it,” she went on. “I can’t do that anymore. That was just fancy. I was spinning those tales out of the air, nothing more than that; there was nothing solid in them. Maybe Pan was right, and I haven’t got a real imagination. I was bullshitting.”

“You were
what
?”

“That’s a word Mr. Scoresby taught me. He told me there were truth tellers, and they needed to know what the truth was, so as to tell it. And there were liars, and they needed to know what the truth was, so they could change it or avoid it. And there were bullshitters, who didn’t care about the truth at all. They weren’t interested. What they spoke wasn’t the truth and it wasn’t lies; it was bullshit. All they were interested in was their own performance. I remember him telling me that, but I didn’t realize it applied to me till much later, after the world of the dead. The story I told there for the ghosts of the kids wasn’t bullshit; that was truth. That’s why the harpies listened….But with all those other stories I told, I was bullshitting. I can’t do it anymore.”

“Well, I’m blowed. Bullshitting!” He laughed gently. “But listen, gal, bullshit or not, you’re going to need to keep in touch with Hannah Relf and young Malcolm. Are you going to let ’em know before you set off?”

“Yes. When I left here earlier, I got a letter….”

She told him about Malcolm’s letter, and what she’d said in reply.

“He says he’s off to Central Asia?” he said. “There’s only one reason for that. Oakley Street’ll have sent him. No doubt there’s good cause, but…Still, he’ll find ways of getting in touch. And I’ll tell you something else: there’s Oakley Street agents and friends in places you might not suspect, and he’ll have let ’em know your predicament, and they’ll be keeping an eye out for you.”

“How would I know who they are?”

“Leave it to young Malcolm. He’ll find ways of doing that.”

Lyra fell silent and tried to imagine this journey of several thousand miles, alone, truly alone, and conspicuous too, if her witch disguise was penetrated.

Farder Coram was leaning over the side of his chair and rummaging in the bottom drawer of a little cabinet beside him. With an effort he heaved himself up again.

“Here,” he said. “I don’t think I ever ordered you to do anything before. I never thought I’d dare. Now you do as I tell you, and don’t argue. Take this.” He held out a little leather bag closed with a drawstring.

She hesitated.

He snapped, “Take it. Don’t argue,” and his eyes darkened.

For the first time in her life, she felt afraid of him. She took the little bag, and felt by the weight of it that the coins in there must be gold.

“Is this—”

“Listen to me. I’m telling you what to do. If you won’t listen to Farder Coram, you can listen to a senior officer in Oakley Street. I’m giving you this because I got a high regard for you, and for Hannah Relf, and for young Malcolm. Now open it up.”

She did, and poured the coins into her hand. They were all kinds of currency, from a dozen or more countries and every kind of shape: mostly round, to be sure, but also square with rounded corners, and octagonal, and seven- or eleven-sided; and some had holes in the middle, and some were worn smooth, and others were clipped or bent; but every single one was heavy and lustrous and gleaming with the purity of gold.

“But I can’t—”

“Hush. Hold ’em out.”

She did, and he turned them over with a trembling finger and picked out four, which he put in his waistcoat pocket.

“That’ll do me. I don’t need any more’n that, no matter what happens. The rest is for you. Keep it tight about yourself, but not all in the same pocket. Another thing: if you remember the witches you’ve seen, you’ll recall the little coronet of flowers they wear. Little tiny Arctic flowers. You remember that?”

“Some of them did. Not all. Serafina did.”

“The queens always do. Sometimes other witches do as well. It wouldn’t do no harm to make yourself a little coronet, something simple, a piece of cotton braid, even. It’d give you an air. Never mind how little it cost. Witches are poor, but they bear theirselves like queens and great ladies. I don’t mean conceit and swagger—that’s the last thing I mean—but there’s a majesty, a kind of pride and awareness, a sense of magnificence. I’m not finding the right words. It can exist in the same place as modesty, strange as it seems. They’re modest in their clothing, and they have the bearing of panthers. You could do that. You do it already, only you don’t know it.”

Lyra asked him to tell her more about Oakley Street, and he told her some things that might be useful, such as a catechism by which she could tell whether or not someone was trustworthy; and she asked about the witches, little details of their life, ways of behaving, habits, as much as she could think of. She felt contented, because she’d made a decision. She was in charge again.

“Farder Coram, I don’t know what to say, except thank you.”

“We en’t finished yet. See that locker up there over the bookshelf? Go and look in there.”

She did as he said, and found a mass of notebooks, a roll of something heavy in a soft leather covering, an elaborate leather belt, together with some other bits and pieces she could only examine if she took them out.

“What am I looking for?”

“A short heavy stick. It’d be nearly black by now. It en’t round—it’s got seven sides.”

Her hands found it under the notebooks and brought it out. It was almost black and surprisingly heavy, so heavy it might have been made of brass; but the warmth and the very slight oiliness of the surface showed that it was clearly wood.

“What’s this?”

“It’s a fighting stick. It’s called Pequeno.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means Little One, more or less. Little Stick.”

It tapered slightly inwards towards the handle, which was bound tightly with some sort of hard cord. At its thickest it was about as thick as three of her fingers together, and the handle was only a little thicker than her thumb. In length it was about the distance between the inside of her elbow and the palm of her hand.

She held it, testing the weight, swinging it lightly to and fro. The balance made it feel almost like part of her.

“What’s this wood?” she said.

“It’s lignum vitae. The hardest wood in the world.”

“Has it got lead or something inside it?”

“No, that’s the weight of the wood itself. I got that—where’d I get that?—in High Brazil. A slaver attacked me with it. Trouble is, he wasn’t fast enough. His dæmon was an old monkey, and she’d got fat. We took the stick away from him, and I used it ever since.”

Lyra imagined the weight of it swung by a strong arm; it would be quite enough to smash a skull.

“Pequeno?” she said. “All right. Pequeno it is.” Having a name made it feel more alive to her. She weighed it in her two hands. “Well, thank you, Farder Coram,” she said. “I’ll take it, though it frightens me. I didn’t think I might need to fight. I’ve never prepared for it.”

“No, it didn’t look like being necessary, once you come home from that other world.”

“I thought all the danger was over….Everything, the good as well as the bad, it was all over. There was nothing left but learning and…Well, just that, really.”

She looked down. He was watching her tenderly. “That young boy,” he said.

“Will.”

“I remember Serafina saying to me, last words we ever had, she said that boy has more power of vanishing than a witch, and he don’t know it. Imitate him, Lyra, when you can. Be aware all round. Be aware of boys and men. Older men, in particular. There’s a time to show your own power, and a time to seem so insignificant, they don’t even notice you, and if they do, they forget you in a moment. That’s how Will done it, and that’s why Serafina was so impressed.”

“Yes. I’ll remember that. Thank you, Farder Coram.”

“You en’t never left Will, really, have you?”

“I think about him every day. Probably every hour. He’s still the center of my life.”

“We could see that, John and me. We could see that then. There was a question come up, as should we let you sleep beside him as you did? You both being, what was it, only twelve, thirteen…We talked about that, and it troubled us.”

“But you didn’t try and separate us.”

“No.”

“And we never…It never seemed to be…All we ever did was kiss. Again and again, as if we’d never stop. As if we’d never have to stop. And that was enough. If we’d been older, I don’t know, then it wouldn’t have been enough. But for us then, it was.”

“I think we knew that, so we said nothing.”

“That was the best thing you could have done.”

“But you got to let him go sometime, Lyra.”

“D’you think so?”

“Yes, I do. Serafina taught me that.”

They sat in silence for a while. Lyra thought, If I haven’t got Pan, and if I must give up Will too…But it wasn’t really Will, she knew; it was a memory. All the same, she thought, it was the best thing she had. Could she really ever let it go?

She felt the boat rock slightly, and recognized Rosella’s step. A moment later the door opened and the girl came in.

“It’s time for your hot drink, Farder Coram,” she said.

The old man was looking tired. Lyra got up and kissed him good night. “Rosella,” she said, “do you know how to stew eels?”

“Yes,” said the girl. “It was the first thing my mum showed me when I was little.”