The Rose Field, page 42
“Aaacchh—filthy bandits—bastard swine—dogs—tapeworms—dung eaters—oh, look at this—oh, this is intolerable…”
He hung his wet socks on the window bars, mopped his feet with the blanket, and slouched back to the bunk. He thought he might as well take a little warmth from the mug of whatever it was, discovered it tasted even worse than the bitter drench he’d had at the priest’s house, and simply held it between his palms for the warmth as he gnawed a small mouthful of gritty bread.
When the bread was all gone, he lay down and felt sorry for himself. He could do that at the same time as wondering how to get out, and wondering most of all whether these barbarians would steal the alethiometer or just smash it to pieces. But it was too cold to lie still for long, and presently he got up and inspected the door.
It was just a heavy cell door made of some much-scratched and graffitied dark wood. There was no handle on the inside, naturally, but no keyhole either. The open window was too high to look through, and the iron legs of the bed were set directly into the concrete floor.
Bonneville badly wanted the initiative back. He took the tin cup and bashed on the door with it, as hard as he could, over and over.
“Messieurs!” he called. “Soldats! Gentilhommes de la garde! Venez, s’il vous plaît! Au secours!”
He spoke in French, because everybody understood it. The guards understood the bashing on the door even better, and after a minute or so they opened it suddenly, snatched away the cup, hit Bonneville smartly on the head with it, and went out again.
“Oh, mais non—messieurs! Venez! Venez! C’est important! Je suis ambassadeur de Genève! Diplomate! Immunité diplomatique!”
He heard heavy footsteps going away, and distant laughter. He kept on shouting, with no result at all except a sore throat to match his sore head.
Eventually he lay down and slept from pure disgust.
* * *
—
Prince Keshvād and Gulya met joyfully halfway up the mountain path, while Malcolm and Lyra and Asta hurried on towards the jetty. Sometimes a turn in the path would let them see down to the shore, sometimes that view was hidden from them, but finally they came to a place that gave them a clear view of the jetty and the rocky shore, and there was no doubt about it: a boat, some kind of motor yacht a little larger than the fishing boat that had sunk, arrived from the sea and tied up to the jetty. They could see it happen, but they were much too far away to shout and be heard. Ionides and Leila were making their way towards it.
“What are they doing?” said Lyra.
“They’re leaving the boatman. Yusif. Look, he’s asking to be taken as well, and they’re saying no, you can’t come, you have to stay.”
“But…this is horrible. I can’t understand what’s happening.”
“Maybe Yusif can tell us.”
“Where are the witches?” Lyra scanned the sky, but saw no sign of them.
“Flown back towards Damāvand to tell them about Gulya killing Sorush. Probably. Though they might be watching the boat, I suppose.”
“I don’t think they’d feel that had much to do with them.”
“You’re probably right. I don’t know witches very well.”
Lyra felt as if her fear and doubt had physical form, like a bruise caused by a stone flung at her heart. She pressed on down the path, with Malcolm watching to see she didn’t stumble, because her every limb seemed to be trembling, and soon they found the little rocky cove, with the jetty intact, and the mast of Yusif’s sunken boat still protruding from the water nearby.
The boatman was pacing up and down, clearly distraught. He saw them coming and hurried to speak.
Malcolm listened, and then calmly held up his hand. The boatman was speaking in a language Lyra didn’t recognize, and he was agitated, gesticulating passionately.
Malcolm said something in reply, and the boatman took a deep breath and rubbed his hands over his head.
Malcolm said something else, in a different language, Lyra thought, and the boatman nodded and replied.
“He says that Ionides and the woman went willingly,” Malcolm explained. “As if they knew the boat was coming.”
Yusif spoke again, and Malcolm gestured to say, “More slowly.”
Yusif nodded and said some more, and Malcolm listened closely, holding up his hand from time to time to clarify something, or to ask the boatman to slow down.
He did, and little by little the account became clearer. Lyra understood that the boat had come straight in, as if those aboard knew exactly where to land; that it was larger and more powerful than his own boat, which now lay on the seabed; and that those on board, four men, he said, seemed to know the woman, who greeted them warmly and went on board without hesitation. Furthermore, he said that Ionides didn’t seem to be known by them, but that they’d welcomed him as a companion of the woman, and that they all spoke easily together.
Finally, Yusif said that in his own opinion, the crew had some kind of official authority. They wore uniforms, and their boat flew a flag with the emblem of a lamp on it. He told Malcolm that they had pointed their guns at him, Yusif, but that the woman had spoken and persuaded them not to kill him. Then they turned the boat around and made out to sea at full speed. The whole account strained at the edges of Malcolm’s linguistic ability, and it took some time before they learned all Yusif could tell them.
“Well,” said Lyra, “I’m going to give him a bit of money. It wasn’t his fault, and now he’s lost his boat as well.”
She had nearly come to the end of Farder Coram’s store of coins, and the one she gave Yusif might have been more than his boat was worth, or less, she couldn’t tell; but he thanked her, and bowed to them both, and set off to walk towards the lighthouse, where, he said, he could stay for the night.
For Lyra, the sight of Ionides calmly leaving with the forces of the Magisterium hit her like a heavy punch to her heart. Leila…she hardly knew Leila; but he was a friend. At least he hadn’t taken their rucksacks; hers and Malcolm’s were still where they’d been put. Lyra felt dizzy, uncertain about her footing on these slippery rocks where the waves were still dashing their spray, uncertain about everything.
And then Gulya glided down to land on the shore. She explained that Prince Keshvād had set off for the south, to tell the Queen and the rest of the gryphons the news that Sorush was dead and his captives were freed, and that untold quantities of gold were waiting to be taken. Meanwhile, Gulya herself would fly Malcolm and Lyra and Asta to a safe place further along the coast, where she could guard them while they slept.
So they climbed on her back, and she took to the air with no effort at all, it seemed; and on a grassy headland a little further north, with the sea below them, and a grove of trees some way inland, and the vast snow-capped range of the Caucasus behind, Lyra and Malcolm climbed down again. Gulya took to the air again, to enjoy the power of her new size, they thought.
Lyra stood and looked at everything. Her head was as full as her heart. The night was not cold, and the storm had blown itself out; the moon shone clearly over the headland, and laid a silver path on the sea. And there was Malcolm, taking off his coat.
“Lie down on this,” he said. “It’ll get cold later on.”
He spread it on the grass near some bushes in the moon-shadow of a rock the size of the fishing boat.
“What about you?”
“It’s a big coat.”
Asta had already taken possession of the middle.
“In a minute,” Lyra said, and wandered to the edge of the cliff, and scanned the sea; but there was no sign of the boat, or of the witches.
Her mind was full, and she was overpoweringly tired. She lay down on Malcolm’s coat and fell asleep at once.
* * *
—
Olivier Bonneville was dreaming about Leila Pervani, and she was flirting with him, and he was treating her scornfully, which his waking mind approved of; though he enjoyed it when she trailed her fingertips across his head. Half awake, he tried to reawaken the feeling, and encountered the lump where the guard had rapped him with the tin mug.
He winced and sat up carefully. Oh, it was cold.
He draped the single blanket around his shoulders and stood up, careful where he put his feet.
“Alethiometer,” said his dæmon, her wounded wing held awkwardly.
“I know, I know. I’m thinking of the best way…”
“Use it to tell their fortunes.”
He looked at her. It wasn’t a bad idea, at that. “And tell them…”
“Don’t think it out in detail,” she said. “Improvise when you get to it.”
“How’s that wing?”
“Bad still.”
“Bitch had some sort of weapon…”
“She had a small stick.”
“She kicked me in the kidneys.”
“No, she wasn’t fighting fairly at all.”
Bonneville gave her a sour look, and sat down again. “What we need to know,” he said, “is what angle these police or whatever they are—”
“Listen. They’re coming back.”
He heard voices from the corridor outside, but he couldn’t tell what they were saying, or even what language they were speaking. An older man and a younger one, that was all; and then a key rattled in the lock.
He stood up. “Que voulez-vous?” he said as they came in, and then, just in case, “What do you want?”
“We want to give you something to eat and drink, Mr. Bonneville,” said the older man, in English.
They were both in uniform, but the older man’s was smarter. The younger man was the one who had knocked him on the head with the tin cup. He was only a thug, and Bonneville would have kicked him in the balls at once, if he’d had any shoes, but the older man needed careful handling. Bonneville could manage that too, he told himself.
“May I know why I have been arrested?” he said, in English so as to exclude the younger man from any exchange.
“Of course. You may be aware that an emergency situation has arisen, and the authorities have suspended the civil law for the time being. Our main task is to make sure that the general population is safe. You understand the necessity for that.”
“I don’t present any danger to the general population. I am an envoy from the President of the Magisterial Council in Geneva, and as such I have the immunity of any diplomat. I insist that you set me free at once.”
“Let’s go somewhere a little more comfortable, and discuss the matter,” said the older man, and held out Bonneville’s shoes. “You might like to put these on first.”
Bonneville took them without a word and sat down to put them on. His socks were still hanging from the window bars, sopping wet. The older man saw them and said, “I think we can find you a clean pair, Mr. Bonneville.”
“I have been scandalously mistreated.”
“These are difficult times,” said the officer, and his soothing voice made Bonneville think that his own tone was peevish and feeble. He resolved to speak more firmly.
“I need my rucksack, and everything that was in it,” he said.
“We shall discuss it all. Follow me, please.”
He lifted his dæmon from the bunk, and the officer led him along the cold corridor to an office that probably wasn’t his, because he had to wait for the other guard to unlock the door for him.
The first thing Bonneville saw was the alethiometer, undamaged, in the middle of the blotter on the desk. His other property was nearby, his clothes folded neatly. Everything that should be there was there. There was also an anbaric heater glowing in the fireplace, and he sat on the chair in front of the desk and held out his hands to the warmth.
The officer dismissed the guard and sat down behind the desk.
“You claimed to be an envoy of the Presidential Council of the Magisterium. It did not take long to discover that was a lie. You absconded from the custody of the nuncio in Aleppo, and before that, you stole this instrument and two of these books from the Palais de Justice in Geneva. You are urgently sought by agents acting directly for Monsieur Marcel Delamare, the President of the General Assembly of the Magisterium. What have you got to say to that?”
“Firstly, that I feel reassured, Colonel, to have fallen into the hands of someone who clearly understands the importance of my mission—”
“I am not a colonel. Address me as Brigadier.”
“I beg your pardon. And I understand the purpose of your question, which was to test whether I was truly who I claimed to be. The Magisterial Council is not called the Presidential Council, nor is it called the General Assembly of the Magisterium; and the building in Geneva is not the Palais de Justice but La Maison Juste. Have I passed the test?”
As soon as he said that, Bonneville imagined a crevasse opening under his feet. Perhaps, since he’d left, they had made all these changes, and he’d fallen into a horrible trap.
But the brigadier merely smiled and nodded. “Good,” he said, and the ground closed up again. “Now tell me about this instrument.”
“It is an alethiometer—”
“I know that much. What is it doing in your possession?”
“I am the Magisterium’s appointed reader. It’s in my care, not in my possession. I am traveling east, using it as a guide, in order to find a certain young woman, who has stolen another instrument like this, intending to use it to find a great treasure, which rightfully belongs to the Magisterium.”
“ ‘A certain young woman’? The same one mentioned recently by the President?”
“Of course the same one.”
“Can you prove that the instrument was given into your care? That you are the authorized reader?”
“The proof is that it is in my care.”
“You might have stolen it.”
“Another proof is that I can read it, and no one else can.”
“Go on, then. Read me what you judge to be the truth about the desert of Karamakan, and about that young woman. Where she is now, for instance?”
“I can’t do that here. I need a room away from noise and disturbance. I need something palatable to eat and drink, a table and a comfortable chair, pencils and paper, and access to a bathroom. I also need enough time to formulate the questions and interpret the answers, and the assurance that I shall be free to leave when I’ve done that, taking with me everything I brought here, including the alethiometer.”
“You may have most of that, except the bathroom. Do you think this is a first-class hotel? And you have my assurance that whether your answer is true or not, if it fails to convince me in any detail, I shall hand you over to the civil police. Without the alethiometer, and without shoes.”
“Very well,” said Bonneville, who knew he had no choice.
They locked him in a room with only one window, with frosted glass, and time went by. It was days since he’d engaged with the alethiometer and the new method, and the usual difficulties occurred; but he persevered. This room was noisier than the cell he’d been in, and the sounds of stamping and the slamming of doors and shouted orders might have distracted a less-accomplished reader. At one point a gyropter flew down and landed not far away, followed by more shouting, more stamping; he ignored it all.
Sometime later the brigadier threw open the door and said, “Well?”
Bonneville lifted his eyes languidly and said, “I haven’t finished.”
“You’ve had an hour.”
“I need longer.”
“That should be long enough.”
“You have no idea of the complexity—”
The brigadier slammed the door hard, staying in the room. Bonneville flinched.
“I’m not interested in your complexities,” the brigadier snapped. “You claim to be an expert. What have you discovered?”
Bonneville sighed with sympathy, but without contempt. He was pleased with his ability to do that so accurately, but then the brigadier kicked his chair away and sent him sprawling.
“Come on! Get up! You’re wasting my time and yours. Tell me what you’ve found out about Karamakan.”
Luckily, Bonneville had not been holding the alethiometer, or it might have fallen and smashed. He got up carefully and sat down, trembling only slightly. His face, the brigadier noticed, was very pale, and he looked nauseous.
“The research station is occupied again,” Bonneville said as steadily as he could.
“Who by?”
“I haven’t had time to see. As far as I can make out, one of the former investigators has returned. There is no way of telling his name. He, or they, have been experimenting. That’s all I can find out.”
“And the girl? The renegade?”
“She is not far away. I don’t know where we are, mind you. Where are we?”
“You don’t need to know that.”
“It would help.”
The brigadier opened the frosted-glass window, which only disclosed a brick wall an arm’s length away. He breathed deeply and turned back.
“Tell me where she is,” he said. “You can tell that, because you’ve said she’s not far away. Tell me more.”
“As far as I can make out, she’s at the edge of—I suppose it’s the Caspian Sea. A coast, anyway, in mountainous country. She’s not alone.”
“Who else, then?”
“Well, that’s what I need more time for.”
The brigadier said, “Are you feeling unwell?”
“Yes. As I tried to tell you, this process is physically and intellectually demanding in the highest degree. It can’t be rushed. There are physical…costs.”
“You should have asked to use the bathroom.”
“I completely agree. I asked you about a bathroom, if you remember. Your attitude made it clear that you didn’t care whether I used a bathroom or not. As a result, I had to vomit into that wastepaper bin at your feet.”
