«Hush,» she whispered. «Listen.»
«Dr. Grumman was once a Scholar of this College,» said the Dean hotly.
"To fall into the hands of the Tartars—" "But that far north?"
"They must have penetrated further than anyone imagined!"
"Did I hear you say you found it near Svalbard?" said the Dean.
"That's right."
"Are we to understand that the panserbj0rne had anything to do with this?"
Lyra didn't recognize that word, but clearly the Scholars did.
"Impossible," said the Cassington Scholar firmly. "They'd never behave in that manner."
"Then you don't know lofur Raknison," said the Palmerian Professor, who had made several expeditions himself to the arctic regions. "It wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that he had taken to scalping people in the Tartar fashion."
Lyra looked again at her uncle, who was watching the Scholars with a glitter of sardonic amusement, and saying nothing.
"Who is lofur Raknison?" said someone. "The king of Svalbard," said the Palmerian Professor. "Yes, that's right, one of the panserb)0me. He's a usurper, of sorts; tricked his way onto the throne, or so I understand; but a powerful figure, by no means a fool, in spite of his ludicrous affectations—having a palace built of imported marble—setting up what he calls a university—"
"For whom? For the bears?" said someone else, and every-one laughed.
But the Palmerian Professor went on: "For all that, I tell you that lofur Raknison would be capable of doing this to Grumman. At the same time, he could be flattered into behaving quite differently, if the need arose."
"And you know how, do you, Trelawney?" said the Dean sneeringly.
"Indeed I do. Do you know what he wants above all else? Even more than an honorary degree? He wants a daemon! Find a way to give him a daemon, and he'd do anything for you."
The Scholars laughed heartily.
Lyra was following this with puzzlement; what the Palmerian Professor said made no sense at all. Besides, she was impatient to hear more about scalping and the Northern Lights and that mysterious Dust. But she was disappointed, for Lord Asriel had finished showing his relics and pictures, and the talk soon turned into a College wrangle about whether or not they should give him some money to fit out another expedition. Back and forth the arguments ranged, and Lyra felt her eyes closing. Soon she was fast asleep, with Pantalaimon curled around her neck in his favorite sleeping form as an ermine.
She woke up with a start when someone shook her shoulder.
"Quiet," said her uncle. The wardrobe door was open, and he was crouched there against the light. "They've all gone, but there are still some servants around. Go to your bedroom now, and take care that you say nothing about this."
"Did they vote to give you the money?" she said sleepily.
"Yes."
"What's Dust?" she said, struggling to stand up after having been cramped for so long.
"Nothing to do with you."
"It is to do with me," she said. "If you wanted me to be a spy in the wardrobe, you ought to tell me what I'm spying about. Can I see the man's head?"
Pantalaimon's white ermine fur bristled: she felt it tickling her neck. Lord Asriel laughed shortly.
«Don't be disgusting,» he said, and began to pack his slides and specimen box. «Did you watch the Master?»
«Yes, and he looked for the wine before he did anything else.»
«Good. But I've scotched him for now. Do as you're told and go to bed.»
«But where are you going?»
«Back to the North. I'm leaving in ten minutes.»
«Can I come?»
He stopped what he was doing, and looked at her as if for the first time. His daemon turned her great tawny leopard eyes on her too, and under the concentrated gaze of both of them, Lyra blushed. But she gazed back fiercely.
«Your place is here,» said her uncle finally.
«But why? Why is my place here? Why can't I come to the North with you? I want to see the Northern Lights and bears and icebergs and everything. I want to know about Dust. And that city in the air. Is it another world?»
«You're not coming, child. Put it out of your head; the times are too dangerous. Do as you're told and go to bed, and if you're a good girl, I'll bring you back a walrus tusk with some Eskimo carving on it. Don't argue anymore or I shall be angry.»
And his daemon growled with a deep savage rumble that made Lyra suddenly aware of what it would be like to have teeth meeting in her throat.
She compressed her lips and frowned hard at her uncle. He was pumping the air from the vacuum flask, and took no notice; it was as if he'd already forgotten her. Without a word, but with lips tight and eyes narrowed, the girl and her daemon left and went to bed.
The Master and the Librarian were old friends and allies, and it was their habit, after a difficult episode, to take a glass of brantwijn and console each other. So after they'd seen Lord Asriel away, they strolled to the Master's lodging and settled in his study with the curtains drawn and the fire refreshed, their daemons in their familiar places on knee or shoulder, and prepared to think through what had just happened.
«Do you really believe he knew about the wine?» said the Librarian.
«Of course he did. I have no idea how, but he knew, and he spilled the decanter himself. Of course he did.»
«Forgive me, Master, but I can't help being relieved. I was never happy about the idea of…»
«Of poisoning him?»
«Yes. Of murder.»
«Hardly anyone would be happy at that idea, Charles. The question was whether doing that would be worse than the consequences of not doing it. Well, some providence has intervened, and it hasn't happened. I'm only sorry I burdened you with the knowledge of it.»
«No, no,» protested the Librarian. «But I wish you had told me more.
The Master was silent for a while before saying, «Yes, perhaps I should have done. The alethiometer warns of appalling consequences if Lord Asriel pursues this research. Apart from anything else, the child will be drawn in, and I want to keep her safe as long as possible.»
«Is Lord Asriel's business anything to do with this new initiative of the Consistorial Court of Discipline? The what-do-they-call-it: the Oblation Board?»
«Lord Asriel—no, no. Quite the reverse. The Oblation Board isn't entirely answerable to the Consistorial Court, either. It's a semiprivate initiative; it's being run by someone
who has no love of Lord Asriel. Between them both, Charles, I tremble.»
The Librarian was silent in his turn. Ever since Pope John Calvin had moved the seat of the Papacy to Geneva and set up the Consistorial Court of Discipline, the Church's power over every aspect of life had been absolute. The Papacy itself had been abolished after Calvin's death, and a tangle of courts, colleges, and councils, collectively known as the Magisterium, had grown up in its place. These agencies were not always united; sometimes a bitter rivalry grew up between them. For a large part of the previous century, the most powerful had been the College of Bishops, but in recent years the Consistorial Court of Discipline had taken its place as the most active and the most feared of all the Church's bodies.
But it was always possible for independent agencies to grow up under the protection of another part of the Magisterium, and the Oblation Board, which the Librarian had referred to, was one of these. The Librarian didn't know much about it, but he disliked and feared what he'd heard, and he completely understood the Master's anxiety.
«The Palmerian Professor mentioned a name,» he said after a minute or so. «Barnard-Stokes? What is the Barnard-Stokes business?»
«Ah, it's not our field, Charles. As I understand it, the Holy Church teaches that there are two worlds: the world of everything we can see and hear and touch, and another world, the spiritual world of heaven and hell. Barnard and Stokes were two—how shall I put it—renegade theologians who postulated the existence of numerous other worlds like this one, neither heaven nor hell, but material and sinful. They are there, close by, but invisible and unreachable. The Holy Church naturally disapproved of this abominable heresy, and Barnard and Stokes were silenced.