His Dark Materials Omnibus (7 page)

“ ’Course not. They wouldn’t tell servants about a thing like that. And I
have
been in the Retiring Room, so there. Anyway, my uncle’s always doing that. He done it to some Tartars when they caught him once. They tied him
up and they was going to cut his guts out, but when the first man come up with the knife, my uncle just looked at him, and he fell dead, so another one come up and he done the same to him, and finally there was only one left. My uncle said he’d leave him alive if he untied him, so he did, and then my uncle killed him anyway just to teach him a lesson.”

Roger was less sure about that than about Gobblers, but the story was too good to waste, so they took it in turns to be Lord Asriel and the expiring Tartars, using sherbet dip for the foam.

However, that was a distraction; Lyra was still intent on playing Gobblers, and she inveigled Roger down into the wine cellars, which they entered by means of the Butler’s spare set of keys. Together they crept through the great vaults where the College’s Tokay and Canary, its Burgundy, its brantwijn were lying under the cobwebs of ages. Ancient stone arches rose above them supported by pillars as thick as ten trees, irregular flagstones lay underfoot, and on all sides were ranged rack upon rack, tier upon tier, of bottles and barrels. It was fascinating. With Gobblers forgotten again, the two children tiptoed from end to end holding a candle in trembling fingers, peering into every dark corner, with a single question growing more urgent in Lyra’s mind every moment: what did the wine taste like?

There was an easy way of answering that. Lyra—over Roger’s fervent protests—picked out the oldest, twistiest, greenest bottle she could find, and, not having anything to extract the cork with, broke it off at the neck. Huddled in the furthest corner, they sipped at the heady crimson liquor, wondering when they’d become drunk, and how they’d tell when they were. Lyra didn’t like the taste much, but she had to admit how grand and complicated it was. The funniest thing was watching their two dæmons, who seemed to be getting more and more muddled: falling over, giggling senselessly, and changing shape to look like gargoyles, each trying to be uglier than the other.

Finally, and almost simultaneously, the children discovered what it was like to be drunk.

“Do they
like
doing this?” gasped Roger, after vomiting copiously.

“Yes,” said Lyra, in the same condition. “And so do I,” she added stubbornly.

Lyra learned nothing from that episode except that playing Gobblers led to interesting places. She remembered her uncle’s words in their last interview, and began to explore underground, for what was above ground was only a
small fraction of the whole. Like some enormous fungus whose root system extended over acres, Jordan (finding itself jostling for space above ground with St. Michael’s College on one side, Gabriel College on the other, and the University Library behind) had begun, sometime in the Middle Ages, to spread below the surface. Tunnels, shafts, vaults, cellars, staircases had so hollowed out the earth below Jordan and for several hundred yards around it that there was almost as much air below ground as above; Jordan College stood on a sort of froth of stone.

And now that Lyra had the taste for exploring it, she abandoned her usual haunt, the irregular alps of the College roofs, and plunged with Roger into this netherworld. From playing at Gobblers she had turned to hunting them, for what could be more likely than that they were lurking out of sight below the ground?

So one day she and Roger made their way into the crypt below the oratory. This was where generations of Masters had been buried, each in his lead-lined oak coffin in niches along the stone walls. A stone tablet below each space gave their names:

“What’s that mean?” said Roger.

“The first part’s his name, and the last bit’s Roman. And there’s the dates in the middle when he was Master. And the other name must be his dæmon.”

They moved along the silent vault, tracing the letters of more inscriptions:

On each coffin, Lyra was interested to see, a brass plaque bore a picture of a different being: this one a basilisk, this a serpent, this a monkey. She realized that they were images of the dead men’s dæmons. As people became adult, their dæmons lost the power to change and assumed one shape, keeping it permanently.

“These coffins’ve got skeletons in ’em!” whispered Roger.

“Moldering flesh,” whispered Lyra. “And worms and maggots all twisting about in their eye sockets.”

“Must be ghosts down here,” said Roger, shivering pleasantly.

Beyond the first crypt they found a passage lined with stone shelves. Each shelf was partitioned off into square sections, and in each section rested a skull.

Roger’s dæmon, tail tucked firmly between her legs, shivered against him and gave a little quiet howl.

“Hush,” he said.

Lyra couldn’t see Pantalaimon, but she knew his moth form was resting on her shoulder and probably shivering too.

She reached up and lifted the nearest skull gently out of its resting place.

“What you doing?” said Roger. “You en’t supposed to touch ’em!”

She turned it over and over, taking no notice. Something suddenly fell out of the hole at the base of the skull—fell through her fingers and rang as it hit the floor, and she nearly dropped the skull in alarm.

“It’s a coin!” said Roger, feeling for it. “Might be treasure!”

He held it up to the candle and they both gazed wide-eyed. It was not a coin, but a little disc of bronze with a crudely engraved inscription showing a cat.

“It’s like the ones on the coffins,” said Lyra. “It’s his dæmon. Must be.”

“Better put it back,” said Roger uneasily, and Lyra upturned the skull and dropped the disk back into its immemorial resting place before returning the skull to the shelf. Each of the other skulls, they found, had its own dæmon-coin, showing its owner’s lifetime companion still close to him in death.

“Who d’you think these were when they were alive?” said Lyra. “Probably Scholars, I reckon. Only the Masters get coffins. There’s probably been so many Scholars all down the centuries that there wouldn’t be room to bury the whole of ’em, so they just cut their heads off and keep them. That’s the most important part of ’em anyway.”

They found no Gobblers, but the catacombs under the oratory kept Lyra and Roger busy for days. Once she tried to play a trick on some of the dead Scholars, by switching around the coins in their skulls so they were with the wrong dæmons. Pantalaimon became so agitated at this that he changed into a bat and flew up and down uttering shrill cries and flapping his wings in her face, but she took no notice: it was too good a joke to waste. She paid for it later, though. In bed in her narrow room at the top of Staircase Twelve she was visited by a night-ghast, and woke up screaming at the three robed figures
who stood at the bedside pointing their bony fingers before throwing back their cowls to show bleeding stumps where their heads should have been. Only when Pantalaimon became a lion and roared at them did they retreat, backing away into the substance of the wall until all that was visible was their arms, then their horny yellow-gray hands, then their twitching fingers, then nothing. First thing in the morning she hastened down to the catacombs and restored the dæmon-coins to their rightful places, and whispered “Sorry! Sorry!” to the skulls.

The catacombs were much larger than the wine cellars, but they too had a limit. When Lyra and Roger had explored every corner of them and were sure there were no Gobblers to be found there, they turned their attention elsewhere—but not before they were spotted leaving the crypt by the Intercessor, who called them back into the oratory.

The Intercessor was a plump, elderly man known as Father Heyst. It was his job to lead all the College services, to preach and pray and hear confessions. When Lyra was younger, he had taken an interest in her spiritual welfare, only to be confounded by her sly indifference and insincere repentances. She was not spiritually promising, he had decided.

When they heard him call, Lyra and Roger turned reluctantly and walked, dragging their feet, into the great musty-smelling dimness of the oratory. Candles flickered here and there in front of images of the saints; a faint and distant clatter came from the organ loft, where some repairs were going on; a servant was polishing the brass lectern. Father Heyst beckoned from the vestry door.

“Where have you been?” he said to them. “I’ve seen you come in here two or three times now. What are you up to?”

His tone was not accusatory. He sounded as if he were genuinely interested. His dæmon flicked a lizard tongue at them from her perch on his shoulder.

Lyra said, “We wanted to look down in the crypt.”

“Whatever for?”

“The … the coffins. We wanted to see all the coffins,” she said.

“But why?”

She shrugged. It was her constant response when she was pressed.

“And you,” he went on, turning to Roger. Roger’s dæmon anxiously wagged her terrier tail to propitiate him. “What’s your name?”

“Roger, Father.”

“If you’re a servant, where do you work?”

“In the kitchen, Father.”

“Should you be there now?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Then be off with you.”

Roger turned and ran. Lyra dragged her foot from side to side on the floor.

“As for you, Lyra,” said Father Heyst, “I’m pleased to see you taking an interest in what lies in the oratory. You are a lucky child, to have all this history around you.”

“Mm,” said Lyra.

“But I wonder about your choice of companions. Are you a lonely child?”

“No,” she said.

“Do you … do you miss the society of other children?”

“No.”

“I don’t mean Roger the kitchen boy. I mean children such as yourself. Nobly born children. Would you like to have some companions of that sort?”

“No.”

“But other girls, perhaps …”

“No.”

“You see, none of us would want you to miss all the usual childhood pleasures and pastimes. I sometimes think it must be a lonely life for you here among a company of elderly Scholars, Lyra. Do you feel that?”

“No.”

He tapped his thumbs together over his interlaced fingers, unable to think of anything else to ask this stubborn child.

“If there is anything troubling you,” he said finally, “you know you can come and tell me about it. I hope you feel you can always do that.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Do you say your prayers?”

“Yes.”

“Good girl. Well, run along.”

With a barely concealed sigh of relief, she turned and left. Having failed to find Gobblers below ground, Lyra took to the streets again. She was at home there.

Then, almost when she’d lost interest in them, the Gobblers appeared in Oxford.

The first Lyra heard of it was when a young boy went missing from a gyptian family she knew.

It was about the time of the horse fair, and the canal basin was crowded with narrowboats and butty boats, with traders and travelers, and the wharves along the waterfront in Jericho were bright with gleaming harness and loud with the clop of hooves and the clamor of bargaining. Lyra always enjoyed the horse fair; as well as the chance of stealing a ride on a less-than-well-attended horse, there were endless opportunities for provoking warfare.

And this year she had a grand plan. Inspired by the capture of the narrowboat the year before, she intended this time to make a proper voyage before being turned out. If she and her cronies from the College kitchens could get as far as Abingdon, they could play havoc with the weir.…

But this year there was to be no war. Something else happened. Lyra was sauntering along the edge of the Port Meadow boatyard in the morning sun, without Roger for once (he had been detailed to wash the buttery floor) but with Hugh Lovat and Simon Parslow, passing a stolen cigarette from one to another and blowing out the smoke ostentatiously, when she heard a cry in a voice she recognized.

“Well, what have you
done
with him, you half-arsed pillock?”

It was a mighty voice, a woman’s voice, but a woman with lungs of brass and leather. Lyra looked around for her at once, because this was Ma Costa, who had clouted Lyra dizzy on two occasions but given her hot gingerbread on three, and whose family was noted for the grandeur and sumptuousness of their boat. They were princes among gyptians, and Lyra admired Ma Costa greatly, but she intended to be wary of her for some time yet, for theirs was the boat she had hijacked.

One of Lyra’s brat companions picked up a stone automatically when he heard the commotion, but Lyra said, “Put it down. She’s in a temper. She could snap your backbone like a twig.”

In fact, Ma Costa looked more anxious than angry. The man she was addressing, a horse trader, was shrugging and spreading his hands.

“Well, I dunno,” he was saying. “He was here one minute and gone the next. I never saw where he went.…”

“He was helping you! He was holding your bloody horses for you!”

“Well, he should’ve stayed there, shouldn’t he? Runs off in the middle of a job—”

He got no further, because Ma Costa suddenly dealt him a mighty blow on the side of the head, and followed it up with such a volley of curses and slaps that he yelled and turned to flee. The other horse traders nearby jeered, and a flighty colt reared up in alarm.

“What’s going on?” said Lyra to a gyptian child who’d been watching open-mouthed. “What’s she angry about?”

“It’s her kid,” said the child. “It’s Billy. She probly reckons the Gobblers got him. They might’ve done, too. I ain’t seen him meself since—”