The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage

Seven Too Soon

The headquarters of the secret service that employed Hannah Relf was known to its agents as Oakley Street for the simple reason that that respectable Chelsea thoroughfare was nowhere near it and had nothing to do with it at all.

That was not known to Hannah, though. She had never been to the headquarters of the service, and as far as she was aware, the words Oakley Street, wherever that was, meant no more than a straightforward address. Apart from Professor Papadimitriou, almost her only contact with the service was the acorn. She gathered it with its query, and left it with her reply, in one of a number of different hiding places that Oakley Street called left-luggage boxes. The person who left it for her and took it away again, the late Mr. Luckhurst, was known as an insulator: neither of them knew the other, which meant that they wouldn’t be able to reveal anything if questioned.

The one other way of talking to Oakley Street was through a cataloger at the Bodleian Library. What she had to do was submit a query about the catalog number of a particular book, which would tell him that she wanted to pass a message to the service. The book didn’t matter, but the author’s name did: the first letter of the surname was a code that indicated the matter she wanted to talk about.

Accordingly, she submitted her query on the official form, and the following day she received a note inviting her to meet the cataloger, Harry Dibdin, in his office at eleven a.m.

Dibdin was a thin, sandy-colored man, whose dæmon was a bird of some tropical kind she didn’t know. He shut the door and lifted a pile of books off the visitor’s chair before offering her a cup of coffee.

“Cataloging queries can take time,” he said. “And we always pay scrupulous attention to the views of distinguished scholars.”

“In that case, I’d like some coffee, thank you,” she said.

He plugged in an anbaric kettle and fussed with some cups.

“You can talk in here with perfect confidence,” he said. “No one can hear us at all. You wanted to contact Oakley Street. What’s it about?”

“My insulator has been murdered. I’m pretty sure of that. By the CCD. For the time being, I’ve got no way of contacting my clients.”

She meant the four or five Oakley Street officers who sent her questions in the acorn.

“Murdered?” said Dibdin. “How do you know?”

She told him the story. By the time she finished, he had poured the coffee and handed her a cup.

“If you’d like milk, I’ll have to go and hunt for some. I’ve got sugar, though.”

“Black is fine. Thank you.”

“Are your clients in a hurry?” he said, sitting down. His dæmon fluttered an exotic tail and settled on his shoulder.

“If they were in a hurry, they wouldn’t be consulting the alethiometer,” she said. “But it’s not something I want to postpone if I can help it.”

“Quite. Are you sure that Oakley Street doesn’t know about your insulator?”

“No. I’m not sure of anything. But when a system that’s worked for eighteen months suddenly goes wrong—”

“You’re worried about what he might have given away before they killed him?”

“Of course. He didn’t know me, but he knew where all the left-luggage boxes were, and they could watch them.”

“How many did you use?”

“Nine.”

“In strict rotation?”

“No. There was a code, which—”

“Don’t tell me what it was. But it meant you could pick up or drop a message and go straight to the right box? And he’d do the same?”

“Yes.”

“Well, nine… They won’t have enough agents to watch nine boxes twenty-four hours a day. Wouldn’t do any harm to find some new ones, though. Let Oakley Street know through me where they are. And if the insulator didn’t know you, you’re in no danger.”

“So for the moment…”

“Do nothing more than look for the new boxes. When Oakley Street’s put a new insulator in place, I’ll let you know.”

“Thanks,” she said. “Actually, there was something else I was wondering about.”

“Go on.”

“Is the lord chancellor, Lord Nugent — ex — lord chancellor — an Oakley Street man?”

Dibdin blinked, and his dæmon shifted her feet.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Yes, you do. And by the way you reacted, I can tell that he is.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Not in so many words. Here’s another question: What’s the significance of the child of a man called Lord Asriel and a woman called Mrs. Coulter?”

He said nothing for several seconds. Then he rubbed his jaw, and his dæmon chirruped something quietly in his ear.

“What do you know about a child?” he asked.

“That child is in the care of some nuns at Godstow. She’s a baby — six months old or so. Why is Lord Nugent interested in her?”

“I can’t imagine. How do you know he is?”

“I think he was responsible for getting her placed there.”

“Perhaps he’s a friend of the parents. Not everything’s connected to Oakley Street, you know.”

“No. You’re probably right. Thanks for the coffee.”

“A pleasure,” he said, opening the door for her. “Anytime.”

As she made her way back to Duke Humfrey, she resolved never to mention Oakley Street to Malcolm. He didn’t need to know anything about that. And she would have to subdue the guilt she felt about asking him to spy; there was nothing about this business that was comfortable, nothing at all.

Malcolm spent some time helping Mr. Taphouse with the shutters. He liked the new anbaric drill very much, and when Mr. Taphouse, after much pestering, let him try it, he liked it even more. They put up all the shutters that Mr. Taphouse had made, and then went back to the workshop and made some more.

“Had to pay a fortune for this oak,” the old man grumbled. “Sister Benedicta don’t like paying so much, but I says to her deal’s deal and oak’s oak, and she saw the sense in the end.”

“It’s only as strong as the fixing anyway,” said Malcolm, who’d heard Mr. Taphouse say those words many times.

“Yeah, but big wood like this’ll hold a big fixing. It’d take a long time with a screwdriver to get them screws out the wall.”

“I was thinking,” said Malcolm, “about these screws, right. You know when the slot gets worn away, it’s much harder to undo, because the screwdriver can’t bite?”

“What about it?”

“Well, s’pose we filed the head of the screw so you could do it up but not undo it?”

“How d’you mean?”

Malcolm put a screw in the vise and filed away part of the head to show Mr. Taphouse what he meant.

“See, you can turn it to screw it in, but there’s nothing to turn against if you want to unscrew it.”

“Oh, yeah. That’s a good idea, Malcolm. A very good idea. But suppose Sister Benedicta changes her mind next year and tells me to take ’em all down again?”

“Oh. I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Well, let me know when you have,” said the old man.

His dæmon cackled. Malcolm wasn’t put out; he liked his idea and thought he could work on it to improve it. He put the screw in his top pocket and helped Mr. Taphouse with the next shutter.

“You going to varnish ’em, Mr. Taphouse?” he said.

“No. Danish oil, boy. Best thing there is. You know what you got to watch out for with Danish oil?”

“No. What?”

“Spontaneous combustion,” the old man said roundly. “You put it on with a rag, see, and if you don’t soak the rag in water after you’ve finished and dry it flat, it’ll catch fire all by itself.”

“What did you call it? Spon—”

“Spontaneous combustion.”

Malcolm said it again for the pleasure of it.

After the carpenter had gone home, Malcolm went to the priory kitchen to talk to Sister Fenella. The old nun was cutting up a cabbage, and Malcolm took a knife and helped her.

“What have you been up to, Malcolm?” she said.

“Helping Mr. Taphouse,” he said. “You know those shutters he’s making, Sister Fenella? Why are you having shutters put up?”

“It was some advice we had from the police,” she said. “They came and saw Sister Benedicta and told her there’d been a lot of burglaries in Oxford recently. And they thought of all the silver and plate and the precious vestments and so on, and advised us to put up some extra protection.”

“Not for the baby, then?”

“Well, it’ll protect her as well, of course.”

“How is she?”

“Oh, she’s very lively.”

“Can I see her again?”

“If there’s time.”

“I made her a present.”

“Oh, Malcolm, that’s kind… ”

“I’ve got it here. I always carry it, just in case I can see her.”

“Well, that’s very good of you.”

“So can I see her?”

“Well, all right. Have you done that cabbage?”

“Yes, look.”

“Come along, then.”

She put her knife down and wiped her hands, and led him down the corridor to the room where they’d been before. The crib stood in the middle of the floor, and one gloomy lamp was all the illumination in the room, so the baby was in semi-darkness. She was making all kinds of baby noises to her dæmon, who stood on his hind legs as a rat and stared at Sister Fenella and Malcolm before fleeing to the pillow and making chirruping noises into Lyra’s ear.

“She’s teaching him to talk!” Malcolm said.

With the greatest of care Sister Fenella lifted her up, and Lyra’s rat dæmon leapt onto her tiny shoulder and became a shrew.

Malcolm took out his present. It was the lanyard he’d made, tied to a little ball of beechwood that he’d rounded and sanded carefully. He’d consulted his mother, who’d said, “As long as it’s too big to swallow, it’s probably safe.”

“I was going to paint it,” he told Sister Fenella, “but I know babies chew things and there’s all kinds of stuff in paint that might not be good for her. So I sanded it as smooth as I could. She won’t get splinters or anything. And if she swallows the lanyard, you can use the ball to pull it out again. It’s really safe.”

“Oh, it’s lovely, Malcolm. Look, Lyra! It’s a— It’s a block of— What is it?”

“Beech. See, you can tell by the grain. It’s really smooth. And the way it’s tied, it’ll never come off.”

Lyra seized the lanyard at once and put it in her mouth.

“She likes it!” said Malcolm.

“She might — I don’t know — if she tries to swallow the string, she might choke… ”

“I suppose that’s a possibility,” Malcolm granted reluctantly. “Maybe she ought to wait and have it later. Or else you could bring her crib in the kitchen, and if she started to make choking noises, you could save her right away. I bet her dæmon’d make a racket if she started to choke. What’s his name?”

“Pantalaimon.”

“He could probably pull it out.”

“It’s not safe,” said Asta firmly. “Give it to her when she’s older.”

“Oh, well,” said Malcolm, and he tried to take the lanyard away gently. Lyra didn’t care for that and started to object, but then Malcolm pretended to get hiccups and she laughed so much she forgot the lanyard and let go.

“Can I hold her?” he said.

“Better sit down first,” said Sister Fenella.

He sat on an upright chair and held out his arms, and Sister Fenella put Lyra very carefully on his lap. Her little dæmon scampered up and down to avoid touching Malcolm, but Lyra herself was intrigued by this change of perspective and gazed calmly around, and then focused her eyes on Malcolm himself.

“That’s Malcolm,” said Sister Fenella in a soft bright voice. “You like Malcolm, don’t you?”

Malcolm felt that, nice as the old nun was, she didn’t know the best way of speaking to a baby. He looked down at the little face and said, “Now, see, Lyra, I made you that lanyard and the beech-wood ball, but you’re not old enough for it yet. That was my fault. I didn’t think you’d probably choke on the lanyard. Well, you might not, but it’s too dangerous at the moment. So I’ll keep it till you’re old enough to play with it without stuffing it in your mouth all the time. When you’re old enough, I’ll show you how to make one. It’s quite easy when you know how. I made it with cotton cord, but you could use anything — twine, marline… I’ll take you for a ride in La Belle Sauvage when you’re a bit older, how’s that? That’s my boat. I s’pose you better learn to swim first. We’ll do that in the summer, all right?”

“I think she’ll still be a little young…,” said Sister Fenella, and then she stopped because they heard voices in the corridor. “Quick!” she whispered, and took the baby from Malcolm’s arms just as the door opened.

“Oh! What is this boy doing here?”

The speaker was a woman with tightly rolled gray hair and a hard face. She was not a nun, but the dark blue suit she wore looked like a uniform of some kind, and in the lapel was a small enamel badge showing a gold lamp with a little red flame coming out of it.

“Sister Fenella?” said Sister Benedicta, entering behind her.

“Oh! Well — Malcolm— This is Malcolm—”

“I know who Malcolm is. What are you doing?”

“I made a present for the baby,” Malcolm said, “and I asked Sister Fenella if I could give it to her.”

“Let me see,” said the stranger.

She examined the wooden ball and the soggy string with some distaste.

“Not at all suitable. Take it away. And you, young man, go home. This is none of your business.”

When Lyra heard the woman’s harsh tone, her face crumpled, her dæmon burrowed his face into her neck, and she began to cry quietly.

“Bye, Lyra,” Malcolm said, and squeezed her little hand. “Bye, Sister Fenella.”

“Thank you, Malcolm,” the old nun managed to say, and Malcolm noticed how frightened she was.

Sister Benedicta took Lyra away from Sister Fenella, and the last thing Malcolm heard as he left the priory was the baby wailing properly.

That was something else to tell Dr. Relf, he thought.