The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials 3)

He explained what had happened and gave her the envelope.

“You should destroy it at once,” he told her. “One single hair would be enough, the man said.”

She looked at the little curl of dark blond hair and shook her head.

“Too late for that,” she said. “This is only half the lock I cut from Lyra. He must have kept back some of it.”

Lord Roke hissed with anger.

“When he looked around!” he said. “Ach—I moved to be out of his sight—he must have set it aside then . . .”

“And there’s no way of knowing where he’ll have put it,” said Mrs. Coulter. “Still, if we can find the bomb—”

“Shh!”

That was the golden monkey. He was crouching by the door, listening, and then they heard it, too: heavy footsteps hurrying toward the room.

Mrs. Coulter thrust the envelope and the lock of hair at Lord Roke, who took it and leapt for the top of the wardrobe. Then she lay down next to her dæmon as the key turned noisily in the door.

“Where is it? What have you done with it? How did you attack Dr. Cooper?” said the President’s harsh voice as the light fell across the bed.

Mrs. Coulter threw up an arm to shade her eyes and struggled to sit up.

“You do like to keep your guests entertained,” she said drowsily. “Is this a new game? What do I have to do? And who is Dr. Cooper?”

The guard from the gatehouse had come in with Father MacPhail and was shining a torch into the corners of the room and under the bed. The President was slightly disconcerted: Mrs. Coulter’s eyes were heavy with sleep, and she could hardly see in the glare from the corridor light. It was obvious that she hadn’t left her bed.

“You have an accomplice,” he said. “Someone has attacked a guest of the College. Who is it? Who came here with you? Where is he?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about. And what’s this . . . ?”

Her hand, which she’d put down to help herself sit up, had found the locket on the pillow. She stopped, picked it up, and looked at the President with wide-open sleepy eyes, and Lord Roke saw a superb piece of acting as she said, puzzled, “But this is my . . . what’s it doing here? Father MacPhail, who’s been in here? Someone has taken this from around my neck. And—where is Lyra’s hair? There was a lock of my child’s hair in here. Who’s taken it? Why? What’s going on?”

And now she was standing, her hair disordered, passion in her voice—plainly just as bewildered as the President himself.

Father MacPhail took a step backward and put his hand to his head.

“Someone else must have come with you. There must be an accomplice,” he said, his voice rasping at the air. “Where is he hiding?”

“I have no accomplice,” she said angrily. “If there’s an invisible assassin in this place, I can only imagine it’s the Devil himself. I dare say he feels quite at home.”

Father MacPhail said to the guard, “Take her to the cellars. Put her in chains. I know just what we can do with this woman; I should have thought of it as soon as she appeared.”

She looked wildly around and met Lord Roke’s eyes for a fraction of a second, glittering in the darkness near the ceiling. He caught her expression at once and understood exactly what she meant him to do.

TWENTY-FIVE

SAINT-JEAN-LES-EAUX

A bracelet of bright hair about the bone …

• JOHN DONNE •

The cataract of Saint-Jean-les-Eaux plunged between pinnacles of rock at the eastern end of a spur of the Alps, and the generating station clung to the side of the mountain above it. It was a wild region, a bleak and battered wilderness, and no one would have built anything there at all had it not been for the promise of driving great anbaric generators with the power of the thousands of tons of water that roared through the gorge.

It was the night following Mrs. Coulter’s arrest, and the weather was stormy. Near the sheer stone front of the generating station, a zeppelin slowed to a hover in the buffeting wind. The searchlights below the craft made it look as if it were standing on several legs of light and gradually lowering itself to lie down.

But the pilot wasn’t satisfied; the wind was swept into eddies and cross-gusts by the edges of the mountain. Besides, the cables, the pylons, the transformers were too close: to be swept in among them, with a zeppelin full of inflammable gas, would be instantly fatal. Sleet drummed slantwise at the great rigid envelope of the craft, making a noise that almost drowned the clatter and howl of the straining engines, and obscuring the view of the ground.

“Not here,” the pilot shouted over the noise. “We’ll go around the spur.”

Father MacPhail watched fiercely as the pilot moved the throttle forward and adjusted the trim of the engines. The zeppelin rose with a lurch and moved over the rim of the mountain. Those legs of light suddenly lengthened and seemed to feel their way down the ridge, their lower ends lost in the whirl of sleet and rain.

“You can’t get closer to the station than this?” said the President, leaning forward to let his voice carry to the pilot.

“Not if you want to land,” the pilot said.

“Yes, we want to land. Very well, put us down below the ridge.”

The pilot gave orders for the crew to prepare to moor. Since the equipment they were going to unload was heavy as well as delicate, it was important to make the craft secure. The President settled back, tapping his fingers on the arm of his seat, gnawing his lip, but saying nothing and letting the pilot work unflustered.

From his hiding place in the transverse bulkheads at the rear of the cabin, Lord Roke watched. Several times during the flight his little shadowy form had passed along behind the metal mesh, clearly visible to anyone who might have looked, if only they had turned their heads; but in order to hear what was happening, he had to come to a place where they could see him. The risk was unavoidable.

He edged forward, listening hard through the roar of the engines, the thunder of the hail and sleet, the high-pitched singing of the wind in the wires, and the clatter of booted feet on metal walkways. The flight engineer called some figures to the pilot, who confirmed them, and Lord Roke sank back into the shadows, holding tight to the struts and beams as the airship plunged and tilted.

Finally, sensing from the movement that the craft was nearly anchored, he made his way back through the skin of the cabin to the seats on the starboard side.

There were men passing through in both directions: crew members, technicians, priests. Many of their dæmons were dogs, brimming with curiosity. On the other side of the aisle, Mrs. Coulter sat awake and silent, her golden dæmon watching everything from her lap and exuding malice.

Lord Roke waited for the chance and then darted across to Mrs. Coulter’s seat, and was up in the shadow of her shoulder in a moment.

“What are they doing?” she murmured.

“Landing. We’re near the generating station.”

“Are you going to stay with me, or work on your own?” she whispered.

“I’ll stay with you. I’ll have to hide under your coat.”

She was wearing a heavy sheepskin coat, uncomfortably hot in the heated cabin, but with her hands manacled she couldn’t take it off.

“Go on, now,” she said, looking around, and he darted inside the breast, finding a fur-lined pocket where he could sit securely. The golden monkey tucked Mrs. Coulter’s silk collar inside solicitously, for all the world like a fastidious couturier attending to his favorite model, while all the time making sure that Lord Roke was completely hidden in the folds of the coat.

He was just in time. Not a minute later a soldier armed with a rifle came to order Mrs. Coulter out of the airship.

“Must I have these handcuffs on?” she said.

“I haven’t been told to remove them,” he replied. “On your feet, please.”

“But it’s hard to move if I can’t hold on to things. I’m stiff—I’ve been sitting here for the best part of a day without moving—and you know I haven’t got any weapons, because you searched me. Go and ask the President if it’s really necessary to manacle me. Am I going to try and run away in this wilderness?”

Lord Roke was impervious to her charm, but interested in its effect on others. The guard was a young man; they should have sent a grizzled old warrior.