La Belle Sauvage, Page 30

  "I could get it out of him."

  "He's not reliable. He'd say anything to avoid getting hit."

  "I'll hit him anyway."

  He chewed another mouthful of bread.

  "I'd like to ask that lady who worked there," he said. "About where everything is, where the nursery is, how to get there, all that."

  "I'll go and get her."

  She leapt to her feet and hurried to the fire, where a number of people were sitting and drinking and talking and occasionally stirring a big pot of stew.

  Malcolm struggled to sit up a bit higher, and found that although his headache had receded, a number of other aches, all over his body, had come out to claim his attention. He chewed off another piece of cheese and concentrated on that.

  Soon Alice came back with the woman who'd spoken up before. Her daemon was a ferret, who sat nibbling constantly on her shoulder.

  "This is Mrs. Simkin," said Alice.

  "Hello, Mrs. Simkin," said Malcolm, trying to swallow the cheese, and having to soften it with a sip of the stock-cube drink. "We want to know all about this priory."

  "You en't thinking of trying to get in and rescue her?" she said, sitting down nearby. Her hand kept going up to stroke her daemon, who was very nervous.

  "Well, yes," said Malcolm. "We got to. There's no question about it."

  "You can't," she said. "It's like a fortress. You'll never get in."

  "Well, all right. But what's it like when you are in? Where do they keep the kids?"

  "There's the nursery--that's where the little ones sleep and get looked after. That's upstairs near where the nuns have their cells."

  "Cells?" said Alice.

  "That's what they call their bedrooms," explained Malcolm. "Can you draw a plan?" he said to the woman.

  But she was so doubtful and uneasy that he realized she couldn't read or write, and had no idea of the principles of maps or plans of any sort. He felt embarrassed for asking, and went on quickly: "How many flights of stairs is there?"

  "There's one at the front, a big one, and a small one at the back for the cleaners and servants, people like me. And there's another, but I never seen it. Sometimes they have guests--men too--and it wouldn't be right for them to mingle with the nuns, or the servants neither, so they have their own staircase. But that only goes up to the guest rooms, and they're shut off from the rest of the place."

  "Right. Now, when you go up the servants' staircase, what do you come to at the top?"

  The woman's daemon whispered to her. She listened and then said, "He's just reminding me. On the first floor there's a small landing and a door that opens on a corridor where the nursery is."

  "Anything else in that corridor?"

  "There's two cells on the opposite side from the nursery. Whichever nuns are on duty with the little kids, they sleep in there."

  "What's the nursery like?"

  "It's a big room, with about...I dunno, maybe twenty or so beds and cribs."

  "Are there that many little kids?"

  "Not always. There's usually a bed or two empty, in case any new kids arrive."

  "How old are the kids in there?"

  "Up to four, I think. Then they're moved to the main block. The nursery's in the kitchen block, like, right over the kitchen on the ground floor."

  "Is there anything else besides the nursery on that corridor?"

  "There's two bathrooms on the right, before you get to the nursery. Oh, and an airing cupboard for blankets and that."

  "And the cells are on the left?"

  "That's right."

  "So there's only two nuns looking after the kids?"

  "There's another one sleeping in the nursery itself."

  The mouse daemon whispered again.

  "Don't forget," the woman said, "they get up ever so early for the services."

  "Oh, yeah. I remember. They did that at Godstow."

  He thought there wouldn't be much time to find Lyra and get out again, even if he could get in. And all it would take to give them away would be a nervous child crying out at the presence of strangers in the nursery....

  He asked the woman about the arrangement of doors and windows in the kitchen, and anything else he could think of. The more he heard, the more difficult it seemed, and the more despondent he became.

  "Well, thank you," he said. "That's all very useful."

  The woman nodded and went back to the fire.

  "What we gonna do?" said Alice quietly.

  "Get in and rescue her. But suppose there's twenty kids the same age all lying asleep--how could we tell which was her?"

  "Well, I'd recognize her. She's unmistakable."

  "When she's awake, yeah. Pan would recognize Asta, and Ben too. But if she's asleep...We can't wake 'em all up."

  "I won't mistake her. Nor will you, actually."

  "Let's go now, then."

  "You all right to do that?"

  "Yes. I'm feeling much better."

  In fact, Malcolm was still aching and a little dizzy, but the thought of lounging in the cave while Lyra was captive was too horrible to bear. He stood up slowly and took a step or two towards the entrance, going carefully, making no fuss, saying nothing. Alice was gathering their possessions and wrapping them in the blanket as Boatwright had.

  Once they were outside, he said softly to Alice, "Those biscuits she likes--are they still in the canoe?"

  "Well, we didn't bring 'em up here. They must be."

  "We can give her one of them to keep her quiet."

  "Yeah, if..."

  "Keep a watch out for Andrew."

  "Can you remember the way to the canoe?"

  "If we keep going down, we'll get there eventually."

  That was what he hoped anyway. Even if George Boatwright had fully recovered, which he probably hadn't yet, it wouldn't have been a good idea to ask him to guide them down. He'd have wanted to know where they were going and what they planned to do, and he'd have told them not to.

  Malcolm stopped thinking about that. He was discovering a new power in himself: he was able to stop thinking things he didn't want to think. Quite often, he realized as he led the way down the moonlit path, he had pushed aside thoughts of his mother and father and how they must be suffering, wondering where he was, whether he was still alive, how he'd ever find his way back against the flood. He did it again now. It was dark under the holm oaks, so it didn't matter if he made a face of anguish. He could stop that too after a few seconds.

  "There's the water," said Alice.

  "Let's go carefully. There might be another boat snooping around...."

  They stood still just inside the darkness of the trees, watching and listening. The expanse of water was clear ahead of them, and the only sound was its rush against the grass and the bushes.

  Malcolm was trying to remember whether they'd left the boat on the left or right of the path.

  "D'you remember where..."

  "There it is now--look," she said.

  She was pointing to the left, and as soon as he followed her line of sight, he saw it. The canoe was barely concealed at all, and yet it had been invisible a moment before. The moon was so bright that everything under the trees was caught in a net of confusing shadows.

  "You can see better'n I can," he said, and pulled the boat out onto the grass, checking all around and turning her the right way up. He was tender with her, feeling all along her hull, checking that all the hoop brackets were firm, counting the hoops themselves as they lay inside the canoe, making sure the tarpaulin was folded and stowed away neatly. It was all shipshape, and the skin of the hull was undamaged, though the neat gyptian paintwork was a bit scratched.

  He pushed her down to the water, and once again he felt as if this inanimate thing was joyously coming alive as she met her own element.

  He held the gunwale as Alice got in, and then handed her the rucksack he'd taken from the dead Bonneville.

  "Blimey, this is heavy," she said. "What's in here?"

  "H
aven't had time to look. As soon as we've got Lyra and found somewhere safe to stop, we'll open it up and see. Ready?"

  "Yeah, go on."

  She wrapped a blanket around her thin shoulders and kept watch behind as he began to paddle. The moon was brilliant, the water one sheet of fast-flowing glass. Malcolm felt good to be paddling again, despite his bruises, and he worked their way steadily to the center of the flood. The only sense of speed he had was the cold air against his face and the occasional tremor of the hull as some obstruction far below raised a slight wave in the water.

  He had a thousand misgivings. If they were to miss the priory, they would never be able to work their way back against the power of the water. And if they got there and found it guarded? Or impossible to get inside? And suppose...And so on. But he thrust all those thoughts aside.

  On they sped, and the moon continued to shine. Alice continually scanned the stream behind, on both sides, and as far back as the horizon; but she saw no other boats, no sign of life at all. They said little. Since their fight with Bonneville, something large had changed in the relationship between them, and it wasn't just that she'd started calling him Mal. A wall of hostility had fallen down and vanished. They were friends now. It was easy to sit together.

  Something ahead was gleaming, on the horizon, nowhere near yet.

  "Is that a light, d'you reckon?" he said, pointing.

  She turned and looked.

  "Could be. But it looks more like summing's just white, with the moon shining on it."

  And there it was again: the spangled ring, his personal aurora. It was so familiar now that he almost welcomed it, in spite of the difficulty it caused in seeing things behind it. And right inside the lovely celestial curve as it grew was the thing Alice mentioned, the great building gleaming white under the moon.

  They were going so fast that it soon became clear that she was right: a large building, something like a castle, rising out of the water; but it wasn't a castle because instead of a great keep at the heart of it, there rose the spire of an oratory.

  "That's it!" Malcolm said.

  "It's bloody immense," she said.

  It lay on the left as they floated swiftly towards it. It was built of a light stone that shone almost like snow in the glare of the moon, a vast spreading complex of walls and roofs and buttresses, all surrounding the slender spire. Black windows pierced the flat blank cliffs of white, occasionally flashing a reflection of the moon as the canoe floated by. It was just as bright and just as black as the scintillations on the spangled ring, which was now close enough to be almost out of sight behind him. The building had no windows low enough to climb into, no doors at all, no flights of steps; just immense vertical sheets of white stone, with any break in the smoothness high above anything they could reach from the level of the water. Like a fortress, it seemed designed to repel any attempt to get inside.

  Malcolm was holding the canoe back now, trying to resist the power of the flood, and La Belle Sauvage responded sweetly. She could almost dance on the water, Malcolm thought, and he stroked the gunwale with love.

  "Can you see a way in?" Alice said quietly.

  "Not yet. But we won't be going in through the front door anyway."

  "S'pose not....It's bloody huge. It goes on and on."

  Malcolm was turning the canoe to port to go around and see how far the building extended. As they left the moon behind and passed into the great shadow of the walls, he felt a chill, though he'd been cold enough already, and to be sure, the moon gave no warmth. They were out of the main current here, and he could bring the canoe closer and look up at the towering walls, to see if there was any way in at all, but it seemed to be impossible.

  "What's that?" said Alice.

  "What?"

  "Listen."

  He kept still and heard a soft, continual splashing a little way ahead. There was what looked like a broad stone buttress there, running the full height of the wall, and at the top it continued into a stack of chimneys, with the moon shining brightly on them. He thought, They must have a kitchen somewhere, so maybe it's here....And then he saw what was splashing. A square opening near the foot of the wall, in which an iron grating hung loosely, was letting a stream of water spill out and fall in a steady arc.

  "Toilets," said Alice.

  "No. I don't think so. It's quite clean, look, and it doesn't smell....Must be an overflow or summing."

  He paddled on to the next corner, slowly and silently. They were still in the shadow of the moon, but he knew that anything moving attracted the eye, and there were no bushes or reeds to hide among: just the bare water and the bare stone. They would be very easy to see. With infinite caution he edged the canoe past the corner of the great building and looked along what must have been the front.

  Alice was gripping the gunwales and peering as hard as she could in the deceptive light. Malcolm turned the boat sideways so that anyone looking from that direction would have had a much smaller silhouette to see. Roughly halfway along the front there was a wide row of steps, surmounted by a portico where classical columns supported a pediment....Was that a figure among the columns?

  Alice was twisting right round to look at it. Then she whispered, "There's a man--two men--look, they got a boat...."

  There was a powerboat tied up at the base of the steps, and Alice was right: there were two men. As Malcolm looked, they stepped idly out of the line of columns and talked together. They were smoking and had rifles over their shoulders.

  With even more care than before, Malcolm maneuvered the canoe around the corner and out of sight.

  "What did the man in the cave call them?" he whispered. "The Security of the Holy Spirit--they guard nunneries and monasteries and that....So we can't go in that way."

  He looked up at the chimneys again, and an idea came to him.

  "If this is the kitchen, right, just inside this wall, 'cause of the chimneys--well, you know in the priory? In Godstow?" He was suddenly excited. "In the old room they called the scullery?"

  "I never went in there."

  "It's ever so old, and they got this ancient drain--it comes out of a spring, and it runs in a sort of stone channel right across the floor and out the other side, into the river. Sister Fenella sometimes used to throw her washing-up water in it--"

  "You think this is summing like that?"

  "It could be. This water's clean."

  "It's got a bloody great iron grating across it."

  "Here, take the paddle and hold the boat up close to it...."

  When she had it steady, he stood up and gripped the iron grille, and at once it came loose, in a shower of stone dust and mortar, and fell with a loud splash between the canoe and the wall.

  "Blimey!" he said, steadying himself.

  "We can't go in there!"

  "Why not?"

  "Well, for one thing, we wouldn't be able to get out again. There's nothing to tie the boat up to. And s'pose there's another grating at the top, where it comes out the kitchen or the scullery or wherever it is? Anyway, we'd get soaked. It's freezing."

  "I'm going to try. You'll have to stay here with the canoe. Just hold it steady and keep warm and wait."

  "You can't--" she began, and then bit her lip. "You'll drown, Mal."

  "If it gets too difficult, I'll come back and we'll think of something else. Stay close to the wall. Tuck it in close to the chimney stack. I'll be as quick as I can."

  He gripped the gunwale of the canoe and thought, Look after her, Belle Sauvage.

  Then he stood up again and reached up to the opening and took hold of the stone rim. The stream of water wasn't great in volume, but it was cold and it was continuous, and by the time he'd managed to pull himself up, he was soaked to the skin. Asta was already inside the drain as an otter, with her teeth in his sleeve, pulling and pulling, and finally the two of them lay panting on the floor of the drain, trying to keep to one side, out of the flow of water.

  "Get up," she said. "You can crawl. It's high enou
gh for that...."

  His shins were scraped, his fingernails broken. He knelt gingerly and found, as she said, that there was room to crawl. Asta became some kind of night-dwelling beast and clung to his back, her wide eyes taking in every tiny flicker of light. Before long, though, there was no light left, and they were crawling upwards in total darkness, and Malcolm found himself beginning to get badly frightened. He thought of the great weight of stone above them; he wanted to stand up; he wanted to raise his arms above his head; he wanted much more space than there was....

  He was near panic, but Asta whispered, "Not far now--honestly--I can see the light of the kitchen--just a little further--"

  "But suppose--"

  "Don't suppose anything. Just breathe deeply."

  "Can't help shivering--"

  "No, but keep going. There's bound to be a range in the kitchen burning all night. Big place like this. You can get warm in a minute. Just push the thoughts aside, like we learned how to do. Keep going--thassit...."

  His hands and legs were numb with cold, but not so numb that he couldn't feel a lot of pain in them under the numbness.

  "How are we going to get Lyra down here--"

  "We'll find a way. There is a way. We just don't know it yet. Don't stop...."

  And after another desperate minute, his eyes began to see what he'd disbelieved that hers could: a glimmer of light on the wet sides of the tunnel.

  "There you are," she said.

  "Yeah--just hope there isn't--"

  A grating at the top like there is at the bottom, he was going to say. But of course there was: if something fell into the drain, the kitchen workers wouldn't want it to disappear. He nearly despaired at that point. Dark bars of iron stood heavy and still between him and the dimly lit scullery beyond. There was no way through. He choked back a sob.

  "No, wait," said Asta. She was a rat now, and she scampered up the grating and examined it closely. "They'll need to clean the drain sometimes--they'll need to get brushes and things down here...."

  Malcolm pulled himself together. One more sob, of cold as much as of despair, shook his chest, but after that he said, "Yeah, that's right. Maybe..."

  He gripped the bars, shook them, felt them move. They swung back and forth a tiny way.

  "Is there a--at the top--"

  "A hinge--yes!"

  "So down at the bottom..."

  Malcolm put his arm through the grating and felt around and, as simply as that, found a heavy iron bolt lying across the bars just above the water, the end deep in a hole in the stone. It was well greased, and it slid out with no effort. The grating swung up towards the kitchen, and Malcolm's numb and trembling hands found a catch above that held it firmly.