Chapter Twenty-Eight Double Thunder #3
“After her husband died. She married when she was eighteen, I think. A lovely man called Roger Lonsdale—a builder. They were exactly right for each other. He was calm and she was fiery, and she was really in love with him, passionately. They were very happy. And then he died. Some scaffolding hadn’t been properly fixed and he fell and broke his neck.
She changed at once—again—this time back to the old Alice, cynical, hard, cold.
All her friends tried to comfort her, but she said nothing, nothing at all to anyone about it.
It must have been when I was sixteen. I didn’t know how to help her.
A year or so went by and then one day she took me to her bed.
Without saying a word, just desperate and urgent.
I…It was seeing her like that, fierce and passionate and generous…
It happened again. I fell in love with her.
Just holding her was enough to make that happen.
It was the first time I’d ever kissed anyone like that; the first time for everything. It was wonderful and I loved her.”
“I’d never have imagined…” There it was again: her failure of imagination. “I mean, I must have been quite young.”
“Very young. All I knew was that looking after you was Alice’s job, really. I never saw much of you.”
“Did she love you? What happened?”
He thought for a while, and then said, “I don’t think she was in love with me. I think she just needed someone to hold her and make love to her. So that’s what I did. And I couldn’t help falling in love with her, again. She was so beautiful.”
“Do you still love her?”
“Yes, in a complicated way.”
“Why complicated?”
“I’m not in love with her, not as I used to be.
It’s unusual, or so I’ve discovered. Remaining close friends, I mean.
Often there are jealousies and betrayals and resentments and unhappinesses…
One person falls out of love before the other, that’s what it amounts to.
But with us it was just a gradual, gentle sort of change.
We stayed fond of each other without jealousy…
We were lovers for maybe six months. It was a time of enormous growing up for me.
I was so grateful to her that, well, it seemed natural for us to be close friends.
She’s part of my life. I was very lucky. ”
Lyra was quiet for a minute. Then she said, “I think she was too, probably. Thank you for telling me that. I wouldn’t ever have guessed…Did you notice how astonished I was that time at Jordan when you opened the door and came into her room?”
“Honestly, no, I didn’t. I was so struck by Asta’s reaction to Pan.”
“Oh, yes: she’d seen him alone and thought he’d stolen something.
The murdered man’s wallet. He realized that in the same moment.
He was thrown by that, and I was thrown by the thought of Dr. Polstead being close to Mrs. Lonsdale…
and Alice was so embarrassed. You must have thought I was half-witted. ”
“Never.”
Silence again for half a minute.
“I wonder where she is now,” Lyra said. “Alice, I mean.”
“I worry about that.”
“When we get back, we’ll make sure she’s safe.”
He moved a little, and pulled the big coat more tightly around them both.
Lyra was aware of his body, the boy’s body that had learned to make love with Alice, the man’s body that lay beside her now, strong and competent and warm.
Was that all? Not thrilling and intoxicating and beautiful?
No, not…Not like Will, she thought. That moment in the little wood, in the world of the mulefa, when they kissed for the first time.
Nothing like that would ever happen again.
They lay so still that she thought Malcolm must be asleep now. But Asta was purring, so she was still awake; and the grass was awake too, with a light wind moving through and making it whisper in response; and the air, as she’d felt earlier, was full of fields of intention and purpose and memory.
She felt so light that if only she let go of her body, she’d be carried away into the air, among all those fields, as insubstantial as a filament of down.
She wanted to let go, but she didn’t want to; it was cold up there; she was warm and safe in Malcolm’s coat, in Malcolm’s arms. She remembered herself sleeping close to Asta, holding her in the same way.
What did that mean? Only lovers let that happen.
Did she love Malcolm? She was moved by what he’d told her.
She thought well of Alice too, because of it.
What kindness, and what good sense for them both to know that they were lovers only for a brief time, and to remain friends!
And no, she wasn’t in love with Malcolm, but…
First the red building. Later everything else. She fell asleep.
—
Pan and Tilda flew along the northern edge of the Tien Shan range, without risking the heights where the oghab-gorgs terrorized every living thing.
The effort, for Pan, was extreme; he had to cling to the branch of cloud-pine without resting for a single second.
Tilda Vasara said little as they flew. She was intent on covering the vast distance as quickly as possible, because she had caught some impression of anxiety and urgency from her sisters, and she felt bound to these short-lived humans, to Pan and Lyra and to Malcolm and Asta, because of the impulse that had drawn her, twenty years before, to the island in the flood, to the boy and the sleeping baby.
To a witch, of course, twenty years were like the blink of an eye, but some things were still more important than others.
They flew down to sleep in the high mountains just north of the desert.
Pan was nearly crazy with the desire to sleep, and Tilda was troubled by several thoughts that assailed her as they turned their course south over the heights.
Her daemon, the tern, skimmed alongside them and tried time and again to urge her to land, to sleep, to rest.
“The daemon will fall,” he said in their language. “He can’t hold on for much longer. Land, Tilda, fly down, find a cave or any shelter at all. You’ll kill him, and then the girl will die too.”
She didn’t reply; she was exhausted, and she knew he was right.
“Going down to rest,” she called, and Pan heard her and nodded. He had no strength to call back.
It was towards the end of a murky night; the peaks ahead of them and to east and west were covered in snow, and the dim light that clung to them was all Tilda had to see by.
She flew in a wide circle, heading down towards what looked like a glacier.
Mindful of the daemon’s weariness, she didn’t spend much time looking for a comfortable valley: there was little chance of that anyway.
She found a narrow gully in a massive rock face on the western side of the glacier, and made for that. As soon as her feet touched the ice, Pan fell off the pine branch.
“I told you to hold tight,” she said quietly.
“I did.”
“Come to me.”
She knelt beside him and opened her arms. All the taboos had evaporated; there were no rules in the empire of the oghab-gorgs. He crept painfully to her breast and she embraced him, and she was warm, and like Lyra, he fell asleep.
—
Olivier Bonneville was awake before the guard kicked him, so he was able to squirm aside and avoid the worst of it.
“What’s that for? What are you doing?” he shouted, clutching the thin blanket to himself at the end of the bed.
“Time to get up. We’re moving. Don’t hang about.”
“What? Where? What’s going on?”
The guard spat on the floor and went out, leaving the door open.
A sour light leaked in from the corridor; there was no daylight yet, and the cell was thick with cold gray-black stuffy air.
Bonneville hauled himself to his feet, shivering, and felt around for his trousers.
His socks, still damp from the day before, hung over the bed rail. He grimaced as he pulled them on.
“What next?” he muttered. “Did you hear what they’re doing?”
His daemon shook her tail and stretched her wings. Bonneville could see that her left wing was not yet healed. She said nothing.
“No, of course you didn’t. You heard what he said, though? Moving on?”
A shadow fell through the doorway, and a strong whiff of cologne preceded the brigadier, who stood there tapping a swagger stick against his leg.
“Hurry,” he said.
“Why? What’s happening?”
“You’re moving on.”
“Where?”
“East. That’s all I know. Come on, get dressed. Don’t waste time.”
“My clothes are damp. I can’t put them on quickly. This is ridiculous.”
“I can call for the sergeant and a couple of men to help you, if you like.”
Bonneville said nothing and went on struggling. Tap, tap, tap went the swagger stick. The hawk daemon raised her wings again, which only emphasized her weakness. The brigadier looked at his watch.
“Where are you taking me?” said Bonneville, trying to maneuver one of the socks over his cold foot.
“Not taking you anywhere. Well, I’m not. I’d leave you to rot here. The President wants you to go with him.”
“But where?” said Bonneville, trying to sound impatient, but inwardly delighting.
Someone called from further down the corridor. The brigadier called back in the same language. Bonneville pulled up the sock and felt the flesh of his leg shrinking away from it.
“Hurry, boy!”
“Where are my possessions? Where is the rucksack you stole from me?”
“You haven’t got any possessions. You dressed yet?”
Well, Delamare will have the alethiometer, and I’ll soon get that back, Bonneville thought. He stood up. “Let me have a coat. And my shoes. If I die of cold, the President will hold you responsible.”
The brigadier indicated the way out with his swagger stick. Bonneville tried to saunter out, but he was shivering too much to make it look convincing.
The sergeant, or whatever he was, took hold of Bonneville’s arm and tugged him forward, nearly dislodging the hawk daemon from his shoulder.
“Careful, you ugly fool! Where do they find shitheads like you? Do they breed them in the mountains?”
The sergeant looked at the brigadier and received a nod in response, so he punched Bonneville hard on the side of his head. This time his daemon did fall. The sergeant’s dog daemon growled as her wings fluttered in his face, and Bonneville snatched her up before they could fight.
“Enough of that, boy. Keep quiet and do as you’re told,” said the brigadier.
“I demand to speak to the President!”
This time the swagger stick came into action. The brigadier lashed at Bonneville’s arm, and the boy cried out in pain.
No one said anything else. All Bonneville could do was stumble out of the corridor, out of the lobby, out of the building, and into the back of a motor van, where he fell clumsily onto the cold metal floor as they slammed and locked the door behind him.
The engine was already running, and within seconds the van was moving, and Bonneville was able to cry without anyone seeing his tears.
Except his daemon, and she didn’t count.