La Belle Sauvage, Page 38

  For a moment Malcolm felt sick, and closed his eyes and held himself steady. Then the feeling passed. Moving very slowly so as not to waken Lyra, he laid her down among the blankets and climbed out of the canoe, to stand shivering on the sodden grass, taking Asta in his arms. With her now so close, he felt more shaken, sadder, more guilty, much older. She pressed her cat face into his neck. She had been hurt too when they pulled apart; one day, perhaps, they'd be able to talk about it; but for now he felt full of sorrow and regret that he'd hurt her. If it was like his, the pain she was feeling was so deep that it seemed to inhabit every atom of her.

  "We couldn't do anything else," she whispered.

  "We had to."

  "It's true. We did."

  Could he wash the blood away? Would the steps ever be clean again? His body quailed.

  "Mal? Where are you?"

  Alice's voice was faint. He lifted the canopy and saw her face blurred with sleep and still bloody from the night. He reached into the boat and took one of the crumpled towels and dragged it through the grass to moisten it. She took it silently and dabbed her eyes and cheeks.

  Then she climbed out too, very painfully, shivering and teeth chattering, and reached in for Lyra.

  The child badly needed a change of nappy. She was drowsy; instead of her usual lively chatter, she grizzled unhappily, and Pantalaimon lay limply as a mouse against her neck.

  "Her cheeks are red," Malcolm said.

  "Prob'ly caught a cold. And we only got one nappy left. I don't think we can go on much longer."

  "Well..."

  "We got to have a fire, Mal. We got to clean her, and we got to feed her."

  "I'll get some more wood."

  He reached in for the paddle, intending first to wash the blood off it, and found a catastrophe.

  "Oh, God!"

  "What is it?"

  The paddle was broken. What he'd done in the night had snapped the shaft. The blade and the handle still held together, but only just; any strain, the slightest push against the water, would break it off entirely. Malcolm turned it over in his hands, dismayed beyond expression.

  "Mal? What's the matter?" and then: "Oh, God, what's happened?"

  "The paddle's broken. If I use it, it'll just snap. I wish I...I wish I'd...If only I'd..."

  He was nearly in tears.

  "Can you mend it?"

  "I could mend it, if I had a workshop and tools."

  She was looking around. "First things first," she said. "We got to have a fire."

  "I could burn this," he said bitterly.

  "No. Don't do that. Get some wood. Try to light a fire, Mal. It's really important."

  He looked at the listless little child in her arms, the unhappy daemon pressed so close against her neck, her eyes half closed; she looked ill and weak.

  He put the paddle carefully in the canoe.

  "Don't touch that," he said. "If it comes apart altogether, it'll be harder to mend. I'll find summing to burn."

  He went with slow, reluctant steps up the slope to the mausoleum, avoiding the still-damp blood, and opened the door. He looked respectfully at the coffin he'd opened the night before and murmured, "Good morning, and sorry again, ladies and gentlemen. I'm only doing this because we really need to."

  Another fence post, another coffin lid, another skeleton to apologize to, another fire to build. A few minutes later the saucepan was heating almost the last of their clean water, and he went to search among the heap of fence posts for something to mend the paddle with.

  The problem was not finding something to bind it to; it was finding something to bind it with--twine, string, any kind of cord. But there was nothing of that sort anywhere. The best thing he could find was a length of rusty wire.

  He dragged it out of the heap of fence posts, hauling it loose from the ones it was stapled to, and began to work on the paddle. The wire was stiff and stubborn, and he couldn't wrap it very tightly, but there it was: it was all he had. And there was enough of it to go around several times, so even if the blade broke away completely, it would still be held in a cage of wire.

  His hands were cut and scraped and covered in blood-red rust. He rinsed them in the floodwater and noticed that the canoe wasn't floating anymore, but resting on the grass beneath.

  "The water's going down," he said.

  "About bloody time," said Alice.

  He was impatient to be going, and so was she; they got back in the canoe, settled Alice and the child as comfortably as they could, and pushed off once more onto the flood.

  --

  The rest of that day was dull going, under a cold gray sky, but they made a fair distance, by Malcolm's reckoning. And the water was going down, and the land they were passing through was more and more urban; there were houses to left and right, roads and shops, and even some people moving about, wading along the streets.

  The paddle felt loose and weak, but he didn't have to push against the current, after all. He used it mainly to steer, and he kept as close in to the bank as he could without danger. He and Alice looked intently at the places they passed, because they were both aware, without saying anything about it, of the state Lyra was in.

  "Go down there!" said Alice suddenly, pointing to a street of little shops at right angles to the current. It was a struggle to get the canoe to turn and go back, with every nerve in Malcolm's arms aware of exactly how much strain it was putting on the paddle; but finally he had them safely in the backwater that had been a street, and moving laboriously up along the shopfronts.

  "There," said Alice, pointing to a pharmacy.

  It was closed and dark, of course, but there was someone moving about inside. Malcolm hoped it wasn't a looter. He brought the canoe up next to the door and tapped on the glass.

  "Hold her up so he can see," he said to Alice.

  The man inside came to the door and looked out. Not an unfriendly face, Malcolm thought, but anxious and preoccupied.

  "We need some medicine!" he shouted, pointing at Lyra, who lolled pale in Alice's arms.

  The man peered at her and nodded. He gestured: Come round to the back. An alleyway between his shop and the next led to an open door, and the water inside the shop was just as high as it was outside, up to Malcolm's thighs, in fact, as he found when he stepped out and tied the canoe to a drainpipe. It was so cold it shook his heart.

  "You better come," he said to Alice. "You can explain what we need."

  He took Lyra while Alice got out, gasping at the shock of the cold. He held on to the child as they made their way into the shop.

  "I hope the stuff we need en't on the low shelves," he said.

  The man met them inside a little kitchenette.

  "What is it?" he said, not unkindly.

  "It's our little sister," Malcolm said. "She's ill. We got swept down in the flood and we been trying to look after her. But..."

  The man pulled back Lyra's blanket to look at her face, and put the back of his fingers against her forehead.

  "How old is she?" he said.

  "Eight months," said Alice. "We just run out of milk powder, and we got nothing else to give her. And we need more nappies, the throwaway ones. Anything babies need, really. And medicine."

  "Where are you going?"

  "Since we got swept away in the flood, we en't been able to go back home, which is Oxford," Malcolm explained, "so we're trying to get to Chelsea, where her father lives."

  "She's your sister?"

  "Yes. She's Ellie, and I'm Richard, and this is Sandra."

  "Whereabouts in Chelsea?"

  The man seemed twitchy, as if he was trying to listen for something else as well as Malcolm's answer.

  "March Road," Alice said before Malcolm could speak. "But can you give us some of the things she needs? We en't got any money to pay. Please. We're ever so worried about her."

  The man was about the age of Malcolm's father. He looked as if he might be a father himself.

  "Let's go and see what we can find," he s
aid loudly, with a false cheerfulness.

  They splashed their way through into the front of the shop, where they found a chaos of floating bottles, tubes, cardboard packets gone soggy.

  "I don't know if we'll ever recover from this," he said. "The amount of stock that's ruined...Now, first of all, give her a spoonful of this."

  He reached up to a top shelf and took down a box containing a little bottle of medicine and a spoon.

  "What is it?" said Malcolm.

  "It'll make her feel better. A spoonful every couple of hours. How's her teeth? She started teething yet?"

  "She's got a couple," said Alice. "And I think her gums are sore. Maybe there's more coming."

  "Let her chew one of these," said the pharmacist, taking a box of hard biscuits from a shelf just above where the water had reached. "What else was it?"

  "Milk powder."

  "Oh, yes. Lucky about that too. Here y'are."

  "This is a different sort from the one we had. Are they made up the same?"

  "They're all made up the same. How d'you heat the water?"

  "We make a fire. We got a saucepan. That's how we heat her washing water too."

  "Very resourceful. I'm impressed. Anything else?"

  "Nappies?"

  "Oh, yes. They're on the bottom shelf, so none of these'll do. I'll see if there's any out the back."

  Malcolm was pouring some of the medicine into the spoon.

  "Can you hold her up?" he said, and then whispered, "There's someone else here. He's gone out to talk to 'em."

  "I hope it's nice, else she'll spit it out," said Alice, and then whispered, "I seen her. She's keeping out of sight."

  "Come on, Lyra," said Malcolm. "Sit up now. Come on, love. Open your mouth."

  He put a drop of the pink liquid on her lips. Lyra woke up and began to complain, and then tasted something strange and smacked her lips.

  "Taste nice? Here's another drop," said Malcolm.

  Alice was looking intently at the reflections in the glass of a medicine cabinet.

  "I can see 'em. He's whispering to her...and she's going out," she muttered. "Bastards. We better move off quick."

  The shopkeeper came back. "Here you are," he said. "I thought I had a few packets left. Anything else you need?"

  "Can I take one of these rolls of adhesive tape?" Malcolm asked.

  "You'd be better off with individual bandages, wouldn't you?"

  "I need it to mend something."

  "Go on, then."

  "That's very kind of you, sir. Thank you very much."

  "What are you going to eat?"

  "We got some biscuits and things," Malcolm said, as impatient to be away as Alice was.

  "Let me go next door--see if I can find you something from the grocer's--I'm sure he won't mind. You wait here a minute. Tell you what. Go upstairs--get out of the water, warm up a bit."

  "Thank you very much, but we got to move on," said Alice.

  "Oh, no, keep the little one out of the cold for a while. You all look as if you could do with a rest."

  "No, thank you," said Malcolm. "We'll go. Thank you very much for these things. We don't want to wait."

  The shopkeeper kept insisting, but they moved out and got back into the canoe, cold and wet as they were, and pushed off straightaway.

  "He was trying to keep us there while his wife went for the police," said Alice quietly, watching him over Malcolm's shoulder as he paddled them down to the main stream. "Or the CCD."

  As soon as they were clear, Malcolm pulled off the rusty wire and wrapped the roll of adhesive tape as tightly as he could around the paddle. It felt better than the wire, but it had little strength, and it wouldn't last very long; but perhaps they didn't have much further to go. He said so to Alice.

  "We'll see," she said.

  --

  Over the centuries, the engineers and builders of the Corporation of London had learned to make the outward flow of the river and the inward surge of the tide come together more or less smoothly. All the way upriver as far as Teddington, the water level rose when the tide came in and fell when it went out again, and only the skippers and barge owners whose vessels crowded the water and used the city docks took much notice.

  But the flood had changed everything. Twice a day, as the tide came in up the estuary, the great weight of the floodwater leaned its might against the sea and tried to force it back; and until the tide turned and went out again, the two vast masses of contending water roiled and seethed in a wild confusion.

  All kinds of boating except the most urgent had ceased for the time being. Some barges and lighters held hard to their moorings, though in many cases they were torn loose and swept up or down the river to slam into the embankments, into the wharves and quays or the piers of the great bridges, or to capsize in the surge, or to be carried out to sea and lost.

  A number of bridges were shaken badly. Only Castle Bridge and Westminster Bridge held fast entirely. Black Friars, Battersea, and Southwark collapsed, their debris adding to the churning turmoil as the waters met. In the small powerboat he'd hired, Bud Schlesinger rode the wild water, scouring the chaos all around with his eyes, and trying to calm the fears of the owner.

  "There's too much debris in the water!" the man shouted. "It's dangerous! It could smash open the hull!"

  "Where's Chelsea?" Schlesinger called back from the bow, where he was leaning out and trying to keep the rain out of his eyes.

  "Further on," the owner shouted. "We got to pull in and tie up! This is crazy."

  "Not yet. Is Chelsea on the left bank or the right?"

  The owner shouted back, "Left!" followed by a string of curses. The boat plunged on. The embankments on both sides, as far as Schlesinger could see, were under several feet of water, and on the right a large submerged park spread out beyond a line of great bare trees, whereas on the left a succession of imposing houses and stately apartment buildings stood silent and deserted.

  "Slow down a little," Bud called, and made his way to the cockpit at the stern. "You ever heard of October House?"

  "Big white place further down-- What the hell's that fool doing?"

  A powerful boat with a navy-blue-and-ocher hull had surged up close, crowding them on the starboard side. A deckhand with a boat hook leaned out and tried to hit Schlesinger, but he swayed back and let it pass in front of him. The man nearly overbalanced, but held on to the rail and swung the boat hook round in another attempt. Schlesinger drew his pistol and fired above the boat, and by sheer luck hit the boat hook, knocking it out of the man's hand.

  "You can't do that!" wailed the owner of Bud's boat, throttling back hard. The bigger boat lunged ahead, but then met some obstruction in the water and reared up suddenly. Bud could see the helmsman wrestling with the wheel, trying to get the vessel to turn to starboard, but clearly there was something impeding the propeller. The engine screamed and the boat lost way, and in a few seconds was wallowing helplessly behind them.

  "What the bloody hell!" Bud's helmsman was almost incoherent. "Didn't you see the colors? You know what they were?"

  "CCD," said Bud. "We gotta get to October House before they do."

  "Insane!"

  The man's dog daemon was crouching beside his legs, shivering. The owner shook his head but pushed the throttle forward a notch. Bud wiped the rain from his eyes and looked all around: in the spray and the confusion there were many shapes on the water, and it was impossible to tell which of them might be a canoe with a boy and a girl and a baby.

  --

  Half a mile downstream, Lord Nugent's boat slammed into the landing at the foot of a great lawn leading up to a white building in the classical style. The landing stage was under the surface, of course, and it was only the hull of the boat that made contact with it, and there was nowhere to tie up; but Nugent was over the side in a moment, waist-deep in the freezing water, and wading, trying to hold his balance in the strong current, up towards what looked like a massive boathouse at the left of the lawn
, whose front, open to the surging river, glowed with anbaric light. There were sounds from inside that came clearly even over the storm and the rage of the water: hammering, drilling, a turbinelike whine.

  Nugent made it, still knee-deep, and grasped the handle of a door on the landward side. He hauled it open and went in. Under the glare of floodlights, no doubt powered by the generator that was thudding just outside the door, half a dozen men were working on a long, slender boat. Nugent couldn't see what they were doing: he had eyes only for the man who was crouching on the foredeck, using a welding torch.

  "Asriel!" he called, and hurried forward along the temporary decking towards the boat.

  Lord Asriel pushed up the mask that covered his face and stood, astonished.

  "Nugent? Is that you? What are you doing here?"

  "Is this boat ready to go out on the water?"

  "Yes, but--"

  "If you want to save your daughter, take it out right now. I'll come with you and explain. Don't waste a second."

  --

  As La Belle Sauvage floated more and more swiftly down into London, the tide was nearing its height, and the consequences for the little canoe were serious. Slammed this way and that, battered by lurching waves and crosscurrents, she kept her course as well as Malcolm could manage, but every time she twisted on the rough water, he heard a creak, as if part of her framework was giving way. If only they could stop...

  But they couldn't stop. They couldn't stop anywhere. As if the tide wasn't enough, a wind had begun to blow, and was lashing the water into white-topped waves and whipping off the spray; and the sky above, gray and cold and dull all day, had been invaded by hefty rain-bearing thunderclouds. Malcolm kept turning this way and that to look for a place to put ashore, so as to attend to that horrible creak that he could hear now even above the wind, and he could feel it too, a sickening twist that began as the merest suspicion of structural looseness but soon became bigger with every lurch, every sideways rise and fall.

  "Mal--" Alice called.

  "I know. Hold on."

  They were swept onwards past a great palace set so far back in its garden that he could hardly see it through the rain, past streets of elegant brick houses, past a pretty oratory; and whenever he thought he could see shelter, he dug the paddle deep and tried to turn towards it, but it was hopeless; and now the blade was coming loose again, to make everything worse.

  Through the murk ahead, he could just see four huge chimneys on the southern bank, rising from each corner of a great clifflike building. Were they near Chelsea? And if they were, how could he stop?