La Belle Sauvage, Page 24

  "That's better," said Alice. "Now keep quiet. I'll give you a feed in a minute, when that boy's boiled some water."

  She took Lyra into the little kitchen and laid her on the draining board while Malcolm nursed the little flames. He had to wrap his hands in the wet blanket to keep them from burning as he held the kettle. There was nowhere to balance it on the fire.

  "At least it's drying the blanket," he said to Asta.

  "Suppose the shopkeeper comes?" his daemon said.

  "Nobody would expect us not to change and feed a baby. 'Cept maybe Bonneville."

  "It was him in the night, wasn't it?"

  "Yeah. He must be mad. Really mad."

  "Are we really going to take her all the way to--"

  "Shh."

  He looked around, but Alice was in the other room washing Lyra.

  "Yes," he whispered. "Got to now."

  "Why not tell Alice, then?" she whispered back.

  " 'Cause she wouldn't want to. She'd stay behind or give us away or something. And take Lyra."

  The fire was settling into a proper glow, and the heat on his hands and his face made Malcolm all the more aware of how cold and soaking wet the rest of him was. He was shifting uncomfortably when Alice spoke behind him.

  "Where's that water?"

  "Oh...nearly boiling."

  "You better boil it for a few minutes. Kill all the germs. Then let it cool. So I reckon it'll be a while yet before I can mix her feed."

  "How's she doing?"

  "Well, she smells better. But her poor little bum's all sore."

  "There must be some cream or something--"

  "Yeah, there is. Good thing this is a pharmacy and not a bloody ironmonger's. Don't spill that water."

  The water was boiling, and his hand was feeling scorched.

  "Can you get me some cold water?" he said. "I need to wet this blanket again. My hand's getting burned."

  She went out and came back with a jug. She poured the water carefully over the blanket, and his hand immediately felt worse, more tender altogether. He took the kettle away and looked around.

  "What's the matter?"

  "I'm going to find something better to hold it with."

  He didn't have to look far. In the little pile of logs beside the fire, there was one that, when he propped it against the hearth, was the right height to stand the kettle on, half on and half off the fire.

  "If that falls off--"

  "I know," he said. "You stay and watch it for a minute."

  He stood up and went to look at Lyra, finding her comfortable enough on the floor with a biscuit in her fist. Asta licked the head of the little puppy Pantalaimon, and Lyra responded with a stream of gurgles.

  In the storeroom Malcolm found what he was looking for: a pencil. He wrote on the landing wall: "Malcolm Polstead of the Trout Inn at Godstow will pay for any damage and what we have taken."

  Then he found a pile of new towels and carried them through to the broken window, where he leaned out and mopped the inside of the canoe.

  "Let's try and keep you dry now," he said to her.

  The rain had stopped, but the air was saturated, and the wind was whipping spray off the flood. The level had not gone down at all.

  "Well, we've only been here half an hour," said Asta.

  "I wish we could hide it a bit. If Bonneville goes past the end of the street, he'll see it straightaway."

  "But he never saw the canoe in daylight," she pointed out. "It was pitch-dark. We might be in a punt, for all he knows."

  "Hmm," said Malcolm, fastening the canopy down all round.

  "Here, Malcolm," Alice called. "Come here."

  "What?" he said, pulling himself back in through the window.

  "Sit on that stool and keep still," she said.

  "Why?"

  She'd taken the kettle off the fire, so it must have come to a boil. She had a damp cloth in one hand, and with the other she turned his head this way and that, not roughly but firmly, while she dabbed at his face. He realized why as soon as she began.

  "Ow!"

  "Shut up. You look horrible with all them scratches. Besides, you might get germs in 'em. Keep still!"

  He put up with the stinging and held his tongue. When she'd finished cleaning off the dried blood, she dabbed some antiseptic cream on.

  "Stop wriggling. It can't hurt that much."

  It did, though he would never dream of saying so. He gritted his teeth and put up with it.

  "There," she said. "I dunno whether you need a bandage or two--"

  "They'll only come off."

  "Suit yourself. Now let me have the stool. I got to feed Lyra."

  She tested the temperature of the water as Sister Fenella had done, and then sprinkled in some milk powder and stirred it up well.

  "Give us that bottle," she said.

  Malcolm passed her the bottle and the rubber teat.

  "Ought to sterilize everything, really," she said.

  He went to pick the child up. Pan was a sparrow chick now, so Asta became a bird too, a greenfinch this time.

  "You finished your biscuit?" he said to Lyra. "You won't want any milk, then. I'll have it."

  She was full of beans, as his mother would have said. He passed her over to Alice and then went to the window again, because the thought of his mother had brought sudden, helpless tears to his eyes.

  "What's the matter?" said Alice suspiciously.

  "Stinging."

  He leaned out the window, trying to see any sign of movement in the other buildings, but there was none. Windows were curtained or uncurtained, but there were no lights glowing, no sounds apart from the surge and rush of the water.

  Then he did see something moving. Asta saw it first and uttered a little gasp and fled to his breast as a kitten, and then he saw it too. It came floating down the street towards them, bumping into the housefronts, dull and soft and half submerged. It was the body of a woman facedown in the water, drowned and dead.

  "What should we do?" whispered Asta.

  "Nothing we can do."

  "I said 'should.' That's different."

  "I suppose...we should pull her out and lay her down. Sort of treat her with respect. I dunno. But if the shopkeeper came back and found a dead woman in his shop..."

  For a few moments it looked as if the poor dead woman was trying to get lodged between the shopfront and the canoe. Malcolm dreaded having to reach for the paddle and push her away, but in the end the current carried her down the street. Malcolm and Asta stopped looking; it felt disrespectful.

  "What happens to daemons when people die?" Asta whispered.

  "I dunno...maybe her daemon was small, like a bird, and he's in her pocket or something...."

  "Maybe he got left behind."

  But that was too horrible to think about. They looked back once at the dead woman, now some distance away, and tried to think of something else.

  "Stores," said Malcolm. "We ought to take as much as we can pack in the boat."

  "Why?" demanded Alice. She was standing right behind them, giving Lyra a break. He hadn't known she was there.

  "In case we can't get back," said Malcolm calmly. "You saw how strong the flood is. In case we get swept further down where there aren't any shops or houses or anything."

  "We could stay here."

  "Bonneville's going to find us if we do that."

  She thought. "Yeah," she said. "Maybe."

  She patted Lyra on the back, and the child burped loudly.

  "What's he want her for, anyway?" Alice said.

  "He wants to kill her, prob'ly. Vengeance."

  "For what?"

  "On her parents. I dunno. Anyway..."

  "Anyway what?"

  "That sanctuary thing...We prob'ly couldn't have got her into Jordan College, even if we could've reached it, because you have to say something in Latin, and I don't know what it is. So maybe--"

  Alice looked at him narrowly. Something had changed.

  "What
?" he said.

  "You never meant to go back, did you?"

  "Course I did--"

  "No, you didn't. I can read you like a book, you little bastard."

  Suddenly she reached forward and snatched the little white card from his shirt pocket. She read both sides, her face pinched with anger, and flung it to the floor.

  Then she kicked his leg hard. She couldn't do anything else with the baby in her arms, and now Lyra was picking up her anger and seemed frightened. Malcolm moved out of range.

  "You're just imagining--"

  "No I en't! You meant to, didn't you? Eh? I saw you look at this card in the canoe when you thought I was asleep. And you meant to take me with you to look after the kid."

  She kicked him again, and her daemon growled and tried to seize Asta, who became a bird easily enough and flew up out of reach. Malcolm simply retreated and picked up the stool.

  "And what you gonna do with that, eh? Hit me over the head? I'd like to see you try. I'd-- Hush, hush, little one. Don't cry now. Alice has just lost her temper with that little piece of sewage over there, but not with you, my lovely. Put that bloody stool down where it was. I haven't finished feeding her. And put another log on the fire."

  Malcolm did as she said. When she'd sat down and put the bottle back to Lyra's mouth, he said, "Think what happened last night. We didn't have any choice. We couldn't have done anything different. We had to come to the Trout--there was nowhere else to go, no other way to be safe. There was only the canoe. We had to get in it and--"

  "Shut up. Just stop bloody talking. I got to think what to do now."

  "We can't stay here. He'll find us."

  "Shut up!"

  Something was trickling down his forehead into his right eye. It was blood: the scratches had opened up. He mopped it with his handkerchief, which, like everything else, was still damp, and retreated to the storeroom.

  "Well, we knew she had a temper," whispered Asta.

  "Hmm."

  The fact was, they were both shaken. Alice's fury was harder to face than the dead woman in the water, harder than the thought of Gerard Bonneville.

  Malcolm turned to the shelves, but he couldn't see anything. He couldn't think of stocking the canoe or anything else; his mind was swirling like the flood.

  "We got to explain," he said quietly to Asta.

  "D'you think she'll listen?"

  "At least if she's got Lyra on her lap..."

  He found a bottle of orange juice and twisted the top off.

  "What's that for?" snapped Alice when he offered it to her.

  "Breakfast."

  "Stick it up your arse."

  "Just listen. Let me explain."

  In return she glared, but said nothing. He went on. "Lyra's in danger wherever she is--wherever in Oxford, anyway. Even if the priory is safe and the nuns are all alive, there's two lots of people, at least, trying to get hold of her. One's Bonneville. I dunno what he's up to, but he wants her, and he's violent and he's mad. He beats his own daemon. I think it was him that broke her leg so she lost it. We can't let him get hold of Lyra. Then there's the..."

  "Office of Child Protection," said Asta.

  "Office of Child Protection. You heard, when I was telling Mum about them. And your daemon..."

  "Oh, yeah," said Alice. "Bastards."

  "But there's scholastic sanctuary, right. Like I told you in the night."

  "Oh, yeah. If it's true. And if we could get back to Jordan College, with the flood like this. They'd never let us in anyway. So much for that idea."

  "But there's Lord Asriel. Lyra's father. You remember, I told you...he's on the other side from the CCD. And he clearly loves her--that's obvious. So I thought we should take her to him because no one else would protect her. The Office of Child Protection people will come back to the priory, and the nuns will be all busy with clearing up and rebuilding and they wouldn't be able to look after her properly, even Sister Benedicta. And then there's Bonneville. He's...well, he's wild. He's out of control. He could snatch her anytime. And Sister Katarina, she'd give her away to him...."

  Alice considered that, and then said, "What about your mum and dad? Why couldn't they look after her?"

  "They got their hands full with the pub. And the CCD could come again. There's no defense against the CCD. If they wanted to search the pub from top to bottom, they could do it, and no one could stop 'em. And then there's the League of St. Alexander. Someone could tell their kid that Lyra was there and the kid might be a member and he'd give her away."

  "Hmm," said Alice. She put the bottle down and lifted Lyra up to pat her back. "Well, there's her mother."

  "She's on the side of the CCD. She started the League of St. Alexander!"

  Alice stood and walked up and down slowly. Pantalaimon began a chirruping conversation as a baby swallow, and Lyra joined in, and so did Asta. Alice's daemon, lying mastiff-shaped on the hearth, opened one eye to look. Malcolm said nothing and kept still. Finally Alice turned and spoke: "How you going to find him, then, this Lord Asriel?"

  Malcolm picked up the card. "This is his address," he said. "That's what made me think of it. Anyway, the gyptians'll know. If we see any gyptians. Besides, he's a famous man. It won't be hard to find him."

  Alice snorted. "You're a mooncalf," she said.

  "I don't know what one of them is."

  "Look in the bloody mirror, then."

  He said nothing because it seemed safer. Alice moved to the window and looked out briefly.

  "Get me one of them blankets," she said.

  He found one, opened it, and put it around her shoulders.

  "Why didn't you tell me?" she said.

  " 'Cause it all happened so quick."

  "But you'd been planning it. The stuff you already had in the canoe."

  "I wasn't thinking of going away, not yet. I didn't know the flood would come so soon. And if I had, I'd have prob'ly taken Sister Fenella, 'cause I couldn't look after a baby and paddle the--"

  "Sister Fenella? What did I call you? A mooncalf? You're a bloody gormless staring idiot."

  "Well, someone--"

  "It always had to be me. There en't anyone else."

  "Well, why'd you kick me, then?"

  "Why didn't you tell me? Or ask me, better."

  "I only just thought of it in the night, when we were tied up to that tree."

  She went back to the fire and put the last log on. "So what's the plan, then?" she said.

  "Keep going downstream. Keep out of Bonneville's way. Find our way to Lord Asriel."

  He had to clean the blood out of his eye again. He wiped his hand on his trousers, which were nearly dry now.

  "Sit down and take Lyra," said Alice. "I'm going to put a bandage on there--I don't care what you say. You're going to drive me mad, blinking blood out of your eye all the time."

  She did it more gently than before. Then she held out the packet of bandages and the tube of antiseptic cream.

  "You can put them in the boat, to start with. And more blankets and some pillows, if they got any. It was bloody freezing last night. And a load of them nappies that you can throw away. And matches. And that saucepan. And all them biscuits..."

  She went on without a pause, listing so many things that the canoe would have sunk under them all. Malcolm nodded earnestly to everything.

  "Well, go on, then," she said.

  So he began. He gathered the things in the order he thought them important, so pillows and dry blankets came first, and then nappies and baby milk and other things for Lyra. Alice didn't seem inclined to help, and he dared not ask, so with each armful of cargo he had to lean out the window, pull the canoe close, drop it in, and then climb down and stow it in as shipshape a way as he could. He put a number of blankets in the prow for Alice to sit on, to keep the cold of the water below the hull away from her, and a couple of pillows there for her to lean on.

  "She's very strange," Asta whispered when they were outside. "She could have whined and moaned al
l night, but she said nothing."

  "I wish she hadn't kicked me, though."

  "But she looked after your scratches...."

  "Shh!"

  Malcolm had seen a movement at the end of the street, and then it became clearer: a dinghy, with two men in it, neither of them Bonneville. One was rowing, so the other could look forward, and as soon as he saw Malcolm in the canoe, he said something to the rower, who turned to look.

  "Hey!" one of them shouted. "What you doing?"

  Malcolm didn't answer. Instead, he called in through the window, "Alice, bring Lyra here."

  "Why?" she said, but he'd turned away.

  The dinghy was much closer: the man was rowing fast. When they were near enough for Malcolm not to have to shout, he said, "We got a baby to look after. We had to go in here because she was freezing."

  Alice appeared beside him and saw the men, who were now close enough to reach out and take hold of the canoe.

  "What you want?" she said, holding Lyra in her arms; the child was nearly asleep.

  "Just making sure everything's all right and no one's doing what they shouldn't," said the man who wasn't rowing.

  "You got a baby there?" said the rower.

  "It's my sister," said Alice. "Our house was going to fall down when the flood come, so we got away in the boat. But we been out all night and she's ever so cold and we had to stop and find somewhere to feed and change her. If there was someone here, we'd have asked, but the place was empty."

  "What you putting in the boat?" the other man asked Malcolm.

  "Blankets and pillows. We're going to try and get home because our parents'll be worried. But in case we got to stay in the boat another night--"

  "Why don't you just stay here?"

  " 'Cause of our parents," said Alice. "Didn't you hear? They'll be worried. We got to try and get back soon as we can."

  "Where to?"

  "You a policeman or something? What's it got to do with you?"

  "Sandra, they're just looking after the place," said Malcolm. "We live in Wolvercote. Last night we got swept all down Port Meadow. We're going to try and get back through the city, but in case we get stuck again..."

  "What's your name?"

  "Richard Parsons. This is my sister Sandra. And the baby's Ellie."

  "Where was your mother and father last night?"

  "Our grandmother was took ill yesterday. They went to see her, and while they was out, the flood come."