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She didn’t take the chair, but sat with him on the moss-covered rocks at the entrance to the cave. She sounded so kindly, and there was such sad wisdom in her eyes, that Will’s mistrust deepened. He felt that every word she said was a lie, every action concealed a threat, and every smile was a mask of deceit. Well, he would have to deceive her in turn: he’d have to make her think he was harmless. He had successfully deceived every teacher and every police officer and every social worker and every neighbor who had ever taken an interest in him and his home; he’d been preparing for this all his life.
Right, he thought. I can deal with you.
“Would you like something to drink?” said Mrs. Coulter. “I’ll have some, too . . . It’s quite safe. Look.”
She cut open some wrinkled brownish fruit and pressed the cloudy juice into two small beakers. She sipped one and offered the other to Will, who sipped, too, and found it fresh and sweet.
“How did you find your way here?” she said.
“It wasn’t hard to follow you.”
“Evidently. Have you got Lyra’s alethiometer?”
“Yes,” he said, and let her work out for herself whether or not he could read it.
“And you’ve got a knife, I understand.”
“Sir Charles told you that, did he?”
“Sir Charles? Oh—Carlo, of course. Yes, he did. It sounds fascinating. May I see it?”
“No, of course not,” he said. “Why are you keeping Lyra here?”
“Because I love her,” she said. “I’m her mother. She’s in appalling danger and I won’t let anything happen to her.”
“Danger from what?” said Will.
“Well . . .” she said, and set her beaker down on the ground, leaning forward so that her hair swung down on either side of her face. When she sat up again, she tucked it back behind her ears with both hands, and Will smelled the fragrance of some scent she was wearing combined with the fresh smell of her body, and he felt disturbed.
If Mrs. Coulter saw his reaction, she didn’t show it. She went on: “Look, Will, I don’t know how you came to meet my daughter, and I don’t know what you know already, and I certainly don’t know if I can trust you; but equally, I’m tired of having to lie. So here it is: the truth.
“I found out that my daughter is in danger from the very people I used to belong to—from the Church. Frankly, I think they want to kill her. So I found myself in a dilemma, you see: obey the Church, or save my daughter. And I was a faithful servant of the Church, too. There was no one more zealous; I gave my life to it; I served it with a passion.
“But I had this daughter . . .
“I know I didn’t look after her well when she was young. She was taken away from me and brought up by strangers. Perhaps that made it hard for her to trust me. But when she was growing up, I saw the danger that she was in, and three times now I’ve tried to save her from it. I’ve had to become a renegade and hide in this remote place, and I thought we were safe; but now to learn that you found us so easily—well, you can understand, that worries me. The Church won’t be far behind. And they want to kill her, Will. They will not let her live.”
“Why? Why do they hate her so much?”
“Because of what they think she’s going to do. I don’t know what that is; I wish I did, because then I could keep her even more safe. But all I know is that they hate her, and they have no mercy, none.”
She leaned forward, talking urgently and quietly and closely.
“Why am I telling you this?” she went on. “Can I trust you? I think I have to. I can’t escape anymore, there’s nowhere else to go. And if you’re a friend of Lyra’s, you might be my friend, too. And I do need friends, I do need help. Everything’s against me now. The Church will destroy me, too, as well as Lyra, if they find us. I’m alone, Will, just me in a cave with my daughter, and all the forces of all the worlds are trying to track us down. And here you are, to show how easy it is to find us, apparently. What are you going to do, Will? What do you want?”
“Why are you keeping her asleep?” he said, stubbornly avoiding her questions.
“Because what would happen if I let her wake? She’d run away at once. And she wouldn’t last five days.”
“But why don’t you explain it to her and give her the choice?”
“Do you think she’d listen? Do you think even if she listened she’d believe me? She doesn’t trust me. She hates me, Will. You must know that. She despises me. I, well . . . I don’t know how to say it . . . I love her so much I’ve given up everything I had—a great career, great happiness, position and wealth—everything, to come to this cave in the mountains and live on dry bread and sour fruit, just so I can keep my daughter alive. And if to do that I have to keep her asleep, then so be it. But I must keep her alive. Wouldn’t your mother do as much for you?”
Will felt a jolt of shock and rage that Mrs. Coulter had dared to bring his own mother in to support her argument. Then the first shock was complicated by the thought that his mother, after all, had not protected him; he had had to protect her. Did Mrs. Coulter love Lyra more than Elaine Parry loved him? But that was unfair: his mother wasn’t well.
Either Mrs. Coulter did not know the boil of feelings that her simple words had lanced, or she was monstrously clever. Her beautiful eyes watched mildly as Will reddened and shifted uncomfortably; and for a moment Mrs. Coulter looked uncannily like her daughter.
“But what are you going to do?” she said.
“Well, I’ve seen Lyra now,” Will said, “and she’s alive, that’s clear, and she’s safe, I suppose. That’s all I was going to do. So now I’ve done it, I can go and help Lord Asriel like I was supposed to.”
That did surprise her a little, but she mastered it.
“You don’t mean—I thought you might help us,” she said quite calmly, not pleading but questioning. “With the knife. I saw what you did at Sir Charles’s house. You could make it safe for us, couldn’t you? You could help us get away?”
“I’m going to go now,” Will said, standing up.
She held out her hand. A rueful smile, a shrug, and a nod as if to a skillful opponent who’d made a good move at the chessboard: that was what her body said. He found himself liking her, because she was brave, and because she seemed like a more complicated and richer and deeper Lyra. He couldn’t help but like her.
So he shook her hand, finding it firm and cool and soft. She turned to the golden monkey, who had been sitting behind her all the time, and a look passed between them that Will couldn’t interpret.
Then she turned back with a smile.
“Good-bye,” he said.
And she said quietly, “Good-bye, Will.”
He left the cave, knowing her eyes were following, and he didn’t look back once. Ama was nowhere in sight. He walked back the way he’d come, keeping to the path until he heard the sound of the waterfall ahead.
“She’s lying,” he said to Iorek Byrnison thirty minutes later. “Of course she’s lying. She’d lie even if it made things worse for herself, because she just loves lying too much to stop.”
“What is your plan, then?” said the bear, who was basking in the sunlight, his belly flat down in a patch of snow among the rocks.
Will walked up and down, wondering whether he could use the trick that had worked in Oxford: use the knife to move into another world and then go to a spot right next to where Lyra lay, cut back through into this world, pull her through into safety, and then close up again. That was the obvious thing to do: why did he hesitate?
Balthamos knew. In his own angel shape, shimmering like a heat haze in the sunlight, he said, “You were foolish to go to her. All you want to do now is see the woman again.”
Iorek uttered a deep, quiet growl. At first Will thought he was warning Balthamos, but then with a little shock of embarrassment he realized that the bear was agreeing with the angel. The two of them had taken little notice of each other until now—their modes of being were so different—but they were of one mind about this, clearly.
And Will scowled, but it was true. He had been captivated by Mrs. Coulter. All his thoughts referred to her: when he thought of Lyra, it was to wonder how like her mother she’d be when she grew up; if he thought of the Church, it was to wonder how many of the priests and cardinals were under her spell; if he thought of his own dead father, it was to wonder whether he would have detested her or admired her; and if he thought of his own mother . . .
