La Belle Sauvage

  Then he beckoned, and Malcolm joined him. It was very difficult to make no noise at all, even on grass, and Malcolm watched to see how the man set his feet down: there was something leopardlike about it--something to practice himself anyway.

  Back through the orchard, to the hedge, through the brambles, into the meadow, across to the willow stump--

  Then a stronger, yellower light than the moon stabbed the sky. Someone on the bridge had a searchlight, and Malcolm heard the sound of a gas engine.

  "There they are," said Asriel quietly. "Leave me here, Malcolm."

  "No! I got a better idea. Take my canoe and go down the river. Just get me back across to the other side first."

  The idea occurred to Malcolm in the same moment he said it.

  "You sure?"

  "You can go downstream a long way. They'll never think of that. Come on!"

  He stepped in and untied the painter, holding the boat tight to the bank while Asriel got in too; then Malcolm paddled swiftly and as silently as he could across to the inn garden, though the current wanted to whirl him out into the open water, where they'd be visible from the bridge.

  Asriel caught hold of the fixed line on the little jetty as Malcolm got out; and then Malcolm held the boat while the man sat in the stern, took the paddle, and held out his hand to shake.

  "I'll get her back to you," he said, and then he was gone, speeding with long, powerful strokes down the river on the swollen current, the leopard daemon like a great figurehead at the prow. La Belle Sauvage had never gone so fast, Malcolm thought.

  In the days that followed, Malcolm thought a lot about the strange half hour or so with Lord Asriel in the moonlit priory garden. He and Asta discussed it endlessly. It wasn't something he could talk about to anyone but his daemon; he certainly couldn't mention it to his father and mother. They were always too busy with the inn to notice much about him, except whether he needed a wash or wasn't doing his homework; he knew they wouldn't realize that his canoe was gone, for example. He told no one about it except Dr. Relf. Getting to her house in Jericho would be a land-based business until Lord Asriel managed to send La Belle Sauvage back to him, and when he knocked at the familiar door on Saturday, he was later than he usually was.

  "You lent him your boat? That was generous," she said when she'd heard the story.

  "Well, I trusted him. 'Cause he was good with Lyra. He showed her the moon and kept her warm and didn't make her cry, and obviously Sister Fenella must have trusted him to let him hold her. I couldn't believe it at first."

  "He's hard to say no to. I'm sure you did the right thing."

  "He knows how to paddle a canoe, all right."

  "D'you think these enemies of his were the same people who tried to take Lyra away from the priory? The Court of Protection, or whatever it was?"

  "The Office of Child Protection. I don't think so. I thought he was going to take Lyra away himself to keep her safe from them, but he must have thought she was safer where she was than with him. So he must be in a lot of danger. I hope La Belle Sauvage doesn't get bullet holes in her."

  "I'm sure he'll look after her. Now, what about some new books?"

  Malcolm went home with a book about symbolic pictures, because what Dr. Relf had told him about the alethiometer had intrigued him greatly, and a book called The Silk Road. For some reason he thought it was going to be a murder story, but it turned out to be a true description, by a modern traveler, of the trade routes across Central Asia from Tartary to the Levant. He had to look those places up in his atlas when he got home, and soon realized that he needed a better atlas.

  "Mum, for my birthday, can I have a big atlas?"

  "What d'you want that for?"

  She was frying some potatoes, and he was eating rice pudding. It was a busy night, and he'd be needed in the bar before long.

  "Well, to look things up," he said.

  "I expect so," she said. "I'll talk to Dad about it. Come on, get that finished."

  The steamy, noisy kitchen was the safest place in the world, it seemed to him. Safety had never been anything to think about before; it was something you took for granted, like his mother's endless, effortless, generous food, and the fact that there would always be hot plates ready to serve it on.

  So he knew that he was safe, and that Lyra was safe in the priory, and that Lord Asriel was safe because he'd escaped his pursuers; but there was danger all around, just the same.

  --

  The next day was Sunday, and the rain was coming down harder than ever. Hannah Relf made an inspection of the sandbags protecting her front door and went along to the end of the street to see how much the level of the canal had risen. She was alarmed to see, beyond the canal, the entire stretch of land called Port Meadow, acres of open ground, invisible under a gray and rain-swept wilderness of water. The wind gave it the appearance of flowing, although she knew it couldn't be: a great mass of water flowing inexorably towards the houses and businesses of Jericho behind her.

  It was too bleak and depressing to stand and look at for long, and besides, the rain was coming down harder than ever, so she turned back, intending to shut her door and put another log on the fire and sit with her studies and a cup of coffee.

  But there was a van outside her house, an unmarked vehicle that nevertheless said "official" in every line of the gray unwindowed metal of the bodywork.

  "Cross over," said her daemon. "Just walk naturally and go on past."

  "What are they doing?" she whispered.

  "Knocking. Don't look."

  She tried to keep a steady pace. She had nothing to fear from the police, or from any other agency, except that like every other citizen she had everything to fear. They could lock her up with no warrant and keep her there with no charge; the old act of habeas corpus had been set aside, with little protest from those in Parliament who were supposed to look after English liberty, and now one heard tales of secret arrests and imprisonment without trial, and there was no way of finding out whether the rumors were true. Her association with Oakley Street would be no help; in fact, if anyone found out about it, it might even make things worse. These agencies and half-hidden powers were fiercely rivalrous.

  But she couldn't walk in the rain all afternoon. It was absurd. Besides, she had friends. She was a highly respectable member of a great Oxford college. She would be missed; questions would be asked; she knew lawyers who could get her out of any cell in a matter of hours.

  She turned back and made straight for her house. Splashing through the water that already lay an inch or two deep on the pavement, she called out when she was close enough: "Can I help? What do you want?"

  The man knocking turned and looked. She stood at the gate, trying to seem as if she wasn't afraid.

  "This your house, ma'am?"

  "Yes. What is it you want?"

  "We're from Environmental Protection, ma'am. Just calling on all the houses in this street and the others to see if you're all right in case we get any flooding."

  The speaker was a man in his forties, whose daemon was a bedraggled-looking robin. The other man was younger. His daemon was an otter, and she had been standing on the sandbags outside Hannah's door. When Hannah spoke, the daemon flowed over to the young man, who picked her up.

  "I--" Hannah began.

  "These sandbags are leaking, ma'am," the young man said. "They'll let water in down in that corner."

  "Oh. Well, thank you for letting me know."

  "All right round the back?" the other man said.

  "Yes, that's sandbagged as well."

  "Mind if we have a look?"

  "No, I suppose not....Round this way."

  She led them along the narrow space between her house and next door's fence, and stood back while they looked at the sandbags at the foot of the back door. While the younger man examined the gap between the door and the frame, the older man said, pointing next door: "Any idea who lives there, miss?"

  Miss, now, she thought.

  "It
's a man called Mr. Hopkins," she said. "He's rather old. I think he's gone to stay with his daughter."

  He peered over the fence. The house was dark and quiet.

  "No sandbags there," he said. "Charlie, we better put a few bags here, front and back."

  "Righto," said Charlie.

  "Is it going to flood, then?" Hannah asked.

  "No way of telling, really. The weather forecast..." He shrugged. "Best to be ready, I always think."

  "Quite true," she said. "Thank you for checking."

  " 'S all right, miss. Ta-ta."

  They splashed away to their van. Hannah pulled and pushed and kicked at the corner they'd said was leaking, to redistribute the sand, and then went inside and locked the door.

  --

  Malcolm was keen to speak to Sister Fenella and ask her what Lord Asriel had said to her in the night, but she simply refused to talk about it.

  "If you want to help, peel those apples" was all she said.

  He had never known her to be so stubborn. She didn't even acknowledge his questions. Finally he felt he was being rude, and also felt that he should have realized that from the first, so he kept quiet and peeled and cored the Bramley apples, all misshapen and full of brown spots. The nuns sold their best specimens and kept the less perfect ones to eat themselves, though Malcolm thought Sister Fenella's pies tasted pretty good, whatever the apples looked like. She generally kept back a small slice for him.

  When enough minutes had gone by, he said, "I wonder what Mr. Boatwright's doing."

  "If they haven't caught him, I expect he's still hiding in the woods," said Sister Fenella.

  "He might be in disguise."

  "What d'you think he'd disguise himself as?"

  "As a...I don't know. His daemon would have to be disguised as well."

  "Much easier for children," said her squirrel daemon.

  "When you were little, what sort of games did you play?" said Malcolm.

  "Our favorite game was King Arthur," said the old lady, putting down her rolling pin.

  "How did you play that?"

  "Pulling the sword out of the stone. You remember, no one else could pull it out, and he didn't know it was impossible and he just put his hand on the hilt, and out it came...."

  She took a clean knife from the drawer and thrust it into the big lump of pastry she hadn't yet rolled.

  "There, now you pretend you can't pull it out," she said, and Malcolm went into a pantomime of vast effort, straining and grunting and gritting his teeth and hauling at the knife without moving it at all. Asta joined in, heaving at his wrist as a monkey.

  "And then the boy Arthur goes to fetch his brother's sword--" said Sister Fenella's daemon.

  "--and he sees the sword stuck in the stone and thinks, Oh, I'll take that one," said Sister Fenella, and her daemon finished, "And he set his hand on the hilt, and it came out--just like that!"

  Sister Fenella pulled out the knife and waved it in the air.

  "And so Arthur became the king," she said.

  Malcolm laughed. She was contracting her features in what she thought was a majestic frown, and the squirrel daemon ran up her arm and stood on her shoulder in triumph.

  "Were you always King Arthur?" said Malcolm.

  "No. I always wanted to be. Usually I was a squire or someone lowly."

  "We played on our own, though, too," said her daemon. "You were always King Arthur then."

  "Yes, always," she said, and wiped the knife clean and put it back in the drawer. "What games do you play, Malcolm?"

  "Oh, I suppose exploring games. Discovering lost civilizations and stuff like that."

  "Going up the Amazon in your canoe?"

  "Er--yeah. That sort of thing."

  "How is your boat these days? Is she surviving the winter?"

  "Well...I lent her to Lord Asriel. When he came and saw Lyra."

  She said nothing and went back to rolling the pastry. Then she said, "I'm sure he was very grateful."

  But her tone was as close as she ever got to being severe.

  --

  After they left the kitchen, Asta said, "She was embarrassed. She was ashamed because she knew she'd done something wrong."

  "I wonder if Sister Benedicta found out."

  "She might stop Sister Fenella from looking after Lyra altogether."

  "Maybe. But maybe she hasn't found out."

  "Sister Fenella would confess."

  "Yes," Malcolm agreed. "She probably would."

  They didn't look in on Mr. Taphouse because there was no light in his workshop. He'd probably gone home early.

  "No--wait," said Asta suddenly. "There's someone there."

  It was dusk already; the gray rain-sodden sky was ushering darkness in the better part of an hour before it was really due. Malcolm stopped on the path to the bridge and peered back towards the dark workshop.

  "Where?" he whispered.

  "Round the back. I saw a shadow...."

  "It's all shadows."

  "No, like a man--"

  They were about a hundred yards from the workshop. The gravel path lay open and clear in the gray twilight and the little glow of yellow from the priory windows. Nothing moved. And then from behind the workshop came, in a sort of lurching limp, a shape the size of a large dog, but hunched and heavy in the shoulders, which stood and stared at them directly.

  "It's a daemon," Asta breathed.

  "A dog? And what's--"

  "Not a dog. That's a hyena."

  "And it's got...It's only got three legs."

  The hyena didn't move, but behind it the shape of a man detached itself from the darkness of the building. He looked directly at Malcolm, though Malcolm couldn't see his face at all, and then merged back into the shadow.

  But his daemon stayed where she was, and then spread her two back legs and pissed right in the middle of the path. Her heavy-jawed face never moved as she glared at Malcolm; all he could see of it were two glints where her eyes caught the light. She took a lurching step forward, propping her weight on her one front leg, and looked at Malcolm for a moment more before turning and loping clumsily back into the shadow.

  The little episode shook Malcolm considerably. He'd never seen a maimed daemon before, or a hyena, or felt such a wave of malevolence. Nevertheless...

  "We've got to," said Asta.

  "I know. Be an owl."

  She changed at once, and sat on his shoulder, staring intently at the dark shape of the workshop.

  "Can't see them," she whispered.

  "Don't take your eyes off that shadow...."

  He moved back along the path, or rather along the grass beside the gravel, and came to the kitchen door again, fumbling at the handle and almost falling inside.

  "Malcolm," said Sister Fenella. "Have you forgotten something?"

  "Just something I need to tell Sister Benedicta. Is she in her office?"

  "I expect so, dear. Is everything all right?"

  "Yes, yes," said Malcolm, hurrying to the corridor. The smell of paint was still faintly apparent near Lyra's nursery. He knocked on Sister Benedicta's door.

  "Come in," she said, and blinked in surprise when she saw him. "What is it, Malcolm?"

  "I saw-- I just-- We were going home past Mr. Taphouse's workshop and we saw a man--and his daemon was a hyena with three legs--and they--"

  "Slow down," she said. "Did you see them clearly?"

  "Only the daemon. She--she had three legs, and she...I didn't think they ought to be there, so-- I mean, I thought you ought to know, so you could make extra sure the shutters were locked."

  He couldn't tell her what the hyena had done. Even if he'd found the right words, he wouldn't have been able to express the contempt and hatred in the action. He felt soiled and belittled by it.

  She must have seen something of that in his face because she put down her pen and stood up to put a hand on his shoulder. He couldn't remember her ever touching him before.

  "And yet you came back to warn us.
Well, Malcolm, that was a good deed. Now let's go and make sure you get home safely."

  "You're not going to come with me!"

  "You wouldn't like me to do that? Very well, I'll watch you from the door. How would that be?"

  "Be careful, Sister! He-- I don't know how to say it-- Have you ever heard of a man with a daemon like that?"

  "One hears all sorts of things. The question is whether they matter. Come along."

  "I didn't want to frighten Sister Fenella."

  "That was good of you."

  "Is Lyra--"

  "She's asleep. You can see her tomorrow. And she's perfectly safe behind Mr. Taphouse's shutters."

  They went through the kitchen, where Sister Fenella watched them, puzzled, and Sister Benedicta stood at the door.

  "Would you like a lantern, Malcolm?"

  "Oh, no, thanks, really. There's enough light...and Asta can be an owl."

  "I'll wait till you're on the bridge."

  "Thank you, Sister. Good night. You better lock all the doors."

  "I will. Good night, Malcolm."

  What she could actually do, if the man leapt out and attacked him, Malcolm didn't know, but he felt protected by the nun's attention, and he knew she wouldn't take her eyes off him till he was on the bridge.

  When he was, he turned and waved. Sister Benedicta waved back and went inside and closed the door.

  Malcolm ran home, with Asta flying ahead of him. They tumbled into the kitchen together.

  "About time," said his mother.

  "Where's Dad?"

  "On the roof, signaling to Mars. Where d'you think?"

  Malcolm ran into the bar and then stopped dead. Sitting on a stool, with his elbow on the counter, was a man Malcolm had never seen before, and at his feet lay a hyena daemon with one foreleg.

  The man had been talking to Malcolm's father. There were half a dozen other drinkers there, but none of them were close by; in fact, a couple of men who were always found standing by the bar were sitting at a table in the far corner, and the rest were near them, almost as if they wanted to be as far away from the stranger as they could get.

  Malcolm took this in at once, and then saw the expression on his father's face. The stranger was looking at Malcolm, and behind him his father was looking down with weary, helpless loathing. When the stranger turned back, Mr. Polstead lifted his head and forced a bright smile.

  "Where you been, Malcolm?" he said.