“Well, what have you done with him, you half-arsed pillock?”
“No one knows,” said the first gyptian. “They take em away and they ent never seen again.”
Lyra ran to the kitchen and thrust her way into the hot, clangorous, steaming bustle.
“Gobblers,” said Lyras acquaintance, whose name was Dick. “Its stupid. These gyptians, they pick up all kinds of stupid ideas.”
The catacombs were much larger than the wine cellars, but they too had a limit.
“But where is he? Has he turned up or not?”
“The...the coffins. We wanted to see all the coffins,” she said.
“Whats going on?” said Lyra to a gyptian child whod been watching open-mouthed. “Whats she angry about?”
And that precipitated a swarm. Other searchers soon joined the first ones, and before long, thirty or more gyptian children were racing from end to end of the wharves, running in and out of stables, scrambling over the cranes and derricks in the boatyard, leaping over the fence into the wide meadow, swinging fifteen at a time on the old swing bridge over the green water, and running full pelt through the narrow streets of Jericho, between the little brick terraced houses and into the great square-towered oratory of St. Barnabas the Chymist. Half of them didnt know what they were looking for, and thought it was just a lark, but those closest to Lyra felt a real fear and apprehension every time they glimpsed a solitary figure down an alley or in the dimness of the oratory: was it a Gobbler?
“Who dyou think these were when they were alive?” said Lyra. “Probably Scholars, I reckon. Only the Masters get coffins. Theres probably been so many Scholars all down the centuries that there wouldnt be room to bury the whole of em, so they just cut their heads off and keep them. Thats the most important part of em anyway.”
“Cause a gyptian kid disappeared today and all.”
The first gyptian boy said, “You know. They been stealing kids all over the country. Theyre pirates—”
“I dont mean Roger the kitchen boy. I mean children such as yourself. Nobly born children. Would you like to have some companions of that sort?” “No.”
“All right, not these, but anyone else,” said Lyra. “Lets go and look for em! And their white truck!”
Dame Hannah Relf was the head of one of the womens colleges, an elderly gray-haired lady whose daemon was a marmoset. Lyra shook hands as politely as she could, and was then introduced to the other guests, who were, like Dame Hannah, Scholars from other colleges and quite uninteresting. Then the Master came to the final guest.
Then, almost when shed lost interest in them, the Gobblers appeared in Oxford.
“Dont want to look at nothing,” Lyra muttered.
And then something else hit her heart: where was Roger?
“Yes,” said Cousins, stepping aside. “The Masters in the drawing room.”
“You catch me,” she said, and darted out before the old man could leave his doorway.
“Im going to ask,” said Lyra, and turned to leave the lodge.
But of course it wasnt. Eventually, with no success, and with the shadow of Billys real disappearance hanging over them all, the fun faded away. As Lyra and the two College boys left Jericho when suppertime neared, they saw the gyptians gathering on the wharf next to where the Costas boat was moored. Some of the women were crying loudly, and the men were standing in angry groups, with all their daemons agitated and rising in nervous flight or snarling at shadows.
“So do horses,” said one of his friends.
“They ent,” said a gyptian uncertainly. “I know em all.”
“Lyra, we all care about Roger—”
The Porter was sanctimonious.
“Well, what does entire mean?”
“Where have you been?” he said to them. “Ive seen you come in here two or three times now. What are you up to?”
They all looked around, shivering in spite of the warm sun, the crowded wharf, the familiar smells of tar and horses and smokeleaf. The trouble was that because no one knew what these Gobblers looked like, anyone might be a Gobbler, as Lyra pointed out to the appalled gang, who were now all under her sway, collegers and gyptians alike.
“Lyra! Lyra! You come in this instant!”
“Wheres Roger?” she demanded.
“I told you, Masters orders. He says if you come in, you stay in.”
“The Gobblers,” she said. “Ent you heard of the Gobblers?”
“And you,” he went on, turning to Roger. Rogers daemon anxiously wagged her terrier tail to propitiate him. “Whats your name?”
“Youll just have to wear it as it is. There ent time to take an iron to it.
Everyone knows that. They gobble em up.”
“Look at the state of this wardrobe! You ent hung nothing up for weeks! Look at the creases in this—”
Roger turned and ran. Lyra dragged her foot from side to side on the floor.
This was her world. She wanted it to stay the same forever and ever, but it was changing around her, for someone out there was stealing children. She sat on the roof ridge, chin in hands.
Ma Costas daemon was wheeling in the bright air above her head, a hawk, fierce yellow eyes snapping this way and that, unblinking. Lyra was frightened. No one worried about a child gone missing for a few hours, certainly not a gyptian: in the tight-knit gyptian boat world, all children were precious and extravagantly loved, and a mother knew that if a child was out of sight, it wouldnt be far from someone elses who would protect it instinctively.
She was beautiful and young. Her sleek black hair framed her cheeks, and her daemon was a golden monkey.
“Thats Billys cousin,” said Charlie.
Thatd be more use. They probably got mines up there. Uranium mines for atomcraft. I bet thats what it is. And if they sent grownups down the mine, theyd be dead, so they use kids instead because they cost less. Thats what theyve done with him.”
“But why?”
“Here, Lyra! Youre not to go out again this evening. Masters orders.”
“Charlie seen em in Banbury,” said a gyptian girl. “They come and talked to this lady while another man took her little boy out the garden.”
“Good girl. Well, run along.”
“Yeah,” piped up Charlie, a gyptian boy. “I seen em do it!”
“Hello, Lyra,” said Mrs. Coulter.
Lyra was too sulky even to ask why she was having to wash and dress, and no grownup ever gave reasons of their own accord. She dragged the dress over her head and dropped it on the narrow bed, and began to wash desultorily while Pantalaimon, a canary now, hopped closer and closer to Mrs. Lonsdales daemon, a stolid retriever, trying in vain to annoy him.
“Yes.”
“Cause they eat em,” said the first gyptian boy. “Someone told us in Northampton. They been up there and all. This girl in Northampton, her brother was took, and she said the men as took him told her they was going to eat him.
She stopped in midsentence, because something had suddenly come into her mind.
“The number of times you been told about going out there—Look at you! Just look at your skirt—its filthy! Take it off at once and wash yourself while I look for something decent that ent torn. Why you cant keep yourself clean and tidy...”
“Who, then?” persisted Lyra. “Have you seen em? How dyou know it ent just one person?”
“If there is anything troubling you,” he said finally, “you know you can come and tell me about it. I hope you feel you can always do that.” “Yes,” she said.
“Mrs. Coulter,” he said, “this is our Lyra. Lyra, come and say hello to Mrs.
The Intercessor was a plump, elderly man known as Father Heyst. It was his job to lead all the College services, to preach and pray and hear confessions. When Lyra was younger, he had taken an interest in her spiritual welfare, only to be confounded by her sly indifference and insincere repentances. She was not spiritually promising, he had decided.
“They ent pirates,” corrected another gyptian. “Theyre cannaboles. Thats why they call em Gobblers.”
“You dont, else youd all stop work and go and look for him right now! I hate you!”
“Well...l never properly saw em,” Charlie said. “I saw their truck, though,” he added. “They come in a white truck. They put the little boy in the truck and drove off quick.”
Bernie the pastry cook tried to calm her down, but she wouldnt be consoled.
God bless me, girl, your knees—look at the state of them....”
She seized the flannel and rubbed Lyras knees so hard she left the skin bright pink and sore, but clean.
Coulter.”
She ran across the narrow street and down into the alley where the vans unloaded goods for the covered market. This being shutting-up time, there were few vans there now, but a knot of youths stood smoking and talking by the central gate opposite the high stone wall of St. Michaels College. Lyra knew one of them, a sixteen-year-old she admired because he could spit further than anyone else shed ever heard of, and she went and waited humbly for him to notice her.
she said.
“The what?”
“But where is he? You mustve heard!” Lyra shouted at the chef, who boxed her ears and sent her storming away.
Lyra said, “We wanted to look down in the crypt.”
Ma Costa looked half-blindly over the little group of children and turned away to stumble through the crowd on the wharf, bellowing for her child. At once the children turned back to one another, their feud abandoned in the face of her grief.
“Is Jessie Reynolds disappeared?”
Suddenly she felt afraid. Pantalaimon, as a miniature lion, sprang into her arms and growled. She said goodbye to the youths by the gate and walked quietly back into Turl Street, and then ran full pelt for Jordan lodge, tumbling in through the door a second before the now cheetah-shaped daemon.
“They said there was Gobblers in Banbury a couple of weeks ago,” Lyra insisted, “and there was five kids taken. They probably come to Oxford now to get kids from us. It mustve been them what got Jessie.”
“What is them Gobblers?” said Simon Parslow, one of Lyras companions.
“Well, I dunno,” he was saying. “He was here one minute and gone the next. I never saw where he went....”
It was about the time of the horse fair, and the canal basin was crowded with narrowboats and butty boats, with traders and travelers, and the wharves along the waterfront in Jericho were bright with gleaming harness and loud with the clop of hooves and the clamor of bargaining. Lyra always enjoyed the horse fair; as well as the chance of stealing a ride on a less-than-well-attended horse, there were endless opportunities for provoking warfare.
It also lit up the guests, and Lyra realized why they werent going to dine in Hall: three of the guests were women.
It was news to the other boys as well, and apart from a few coarse comments they listened closely to what she told them.
“He was helping you! He was holding your bloody horses for you!”
Half a dozen brats turned with expressions of derision, and Lyra threw her cigarette down, recognizing the cue for a fight. Everyones daemon instantly became warlike: each child was accompanied by fangs, or claws, or bristling fur, and Pantalaimon, contemptuous of the limited imaginations of these gyptian daemons, became a dragon the size of a deer hound.
“We all know that,” said Lyra. “We been playing kids and Gobblers for months, before you were, I bet. But 1 bet no ones seen em.”
“Me,” said half a dozen voices. “I seen him holding Johnny Fiorellis old horse—I seen him by the toffee-apple seller—I seen him swinging on the crane—”
“Why?” Lyra said at last. “I never wash my knees usually. No ones going to look at my knees. Whatve I got to do all this for? You dont care about Roger neither, any more than Chef does. Im the only one that—” Another smack, on the other leg.
One of Lyras brat companions picked up a stone automatically when he heard the commotion, but Lyra said, “Put it down. Shes in a temper. She could snap your backbone like a twig.”
In fact, Ma Costa looked more anxious than angry. The man she was addressing, a horse trader, was shrugging and spreading his hands.
“You see, none of us would want you to miss all the usual childhood pleasures and pastimes. I sometimes think it must be a lonely life for you here among a company of elderly Scholars, Lyra. Do you feel that?” “No.”
“I ent seen him. Hell be for it, too. Ooh, when Mr. Cawson catches him—”
“If youre a servant, where do you work?” “In the kitchen, Father.” “Should you be there now?” “Yes, Father.” “Then be off with you.”
But what Pantalaimon thought had to wait, because someone began to shout from below.
The evening sky was awash with peach, apricot, cream: tender little ice-cream clouds in a wide orange sky. The spires and towers of Oxford stood around them, level but no higher; the green woods of Chateau-Vert and White Ham rose on either side to the east and the west. Rooks were cawing somewhere, and bells were ringing, and from the oxpens the steady beat of a gas engine announced the ascent of the evening Royal Mail zeppelin for London. Lyra watched it climb away beyond the spire of St. Michaels Chapel, as big at first as the tip of her little finger when she held it at arms length, and then steadily smaller until it was a dot in the pearly sky.
“That might be what theyre going to do to Roger and the gyptians and the other kids.”
“I bet them Gobblers wouldnt dare come in here,” said Lyra to Simon Parslow, as the two of them stepped over the threshold into the great lodge of Jordan.
“Why not?”
“But other girls, perhaps...” “No.”
“Roger, Father.”
“You seen him?” she demanded of Lyra. “You seen Billy?”
“Remember what they said in the RetiringRoom.” “What?”
“No,” he said uncertainly. “But I know theres a kid missing from the market.”
“But why do they call em Gobblers?” Lyra asked.
God knows, I even care about you, and you give me little enough reason and no thanks.”
“She dont know whats going on! She dont know the Gobblers is here!”
“Do you say your prayers?”
With a barely concealed sigh of relief, she turned and left. Having failed to find Gobblers below ground, Lyra took to the streets again. She was at home there.
The gyptian boy turned away to call to his friends, who were all watching Ma Costa.
He got no further, because Ma Costa suddenly dealt him a mighty blow on the side of the head, and followed it up with such a volley of curses and slaps that he yelled and turned to flee. The other horse traders nearby jeered, and a flighty colt reared up in alarm.
“Its her kid,” said the child. “Its Billy. She probly reckons the Gobblers got him. They mightve done, too. I aint seen him meself since—”
During that strange evening shed spent hidden in the Retiring Room, Lord Asriel had shown a lantern slide of a man with streams of light pouring from his hand; and thered been a small figure beside him, with less light around it; and hed said it was a child; and someone had asked if it was a severed child, and her uncle had said no, that was the point. Lyra remembered that severed meant “cut.”
“What did they look like?” said Lyra.
“Who?” Lyra said. She knew most of the market children, but she hadnt heard of this.
“They eat kids?” said Lyras other crony, Hugh Lovat, a kitchen boy from St.
“Jessie Reynolds, out the saddlers. She werent there at shutting-up time yesterday, and shed only gone for a bit of fish for her dads tea. She never come back and no oned seen her. They searched all through the market and everywhere.”
“I think—”
And this year she had a grand plan. Inspired by the capture of the narrowboat the year before, she intended this time to make a proper voyage before being turned out. If she and her cronies from the College kitchens could get as far as Abingdon, they could play havoc with the weir....
“Well, it was only yesterday. She mightve turned up now.”
“Dunno. They cut em in half, probably. I reckon they make slaves out of em.
When Lyra and Roger had explored every corner of them and were sure there were no Gobblers to be found there, they turned their attention elsewhere—but not before they were spotted leaving the crypt by the Intercessor, who called them back into the oratory.
“So,” she said, “sometime in the last two hours there mustve been Gobblers here....”
“Whatever for?”
“This is different,” said Lyra. “This is a kid. We was looking for him all afternoon and the other kids said the Gobblers got him.”
“But I wonder about your choice of companions. Are you a lonely child?” “No,”
A gyptian girl standing nearby began to cry loudly.
it was Mrs. Lonsdale, the Housekeeper. There was no hiding from her.
“The reason for this is youre going to have dinner with the Master and his guests. I hope to God you behave. Speak when youre spoken to, be quiet and polite, smile nicely and dont you ever say Dunno when someone asks you a question.”
She turned and looked down into the shadowed quadrangle, where the black-gowned figures of the Scholars were already beginning to drift in ones and twos toward the buttery, their daemons strutting or fluttering alongside or perching calmly on their shoulders. The lights were going on in the Hall; she could see the stained-glass windows gradually beginning to glow as a servant moved up the tables lighting the naphtha lamps. The Stewards bell began to toll, announcing half an hour before dinner.
It was a mighty voice, a womans voice, but a woman with lungs of brass and leather. Lyra looked around for her at once, because this was Ma Costa, who had clouted Lyra dizzy on two occasions but given her hot gingerbread on three, and whose family was noted for the grandeur and sumptu-ousness of their boat. They were princes among gyptians, and Lyra admired Ma Costa greatly, but she intended to be wary of her for some time yet, for theirs was the boat she had hijacked.
“There was a kid lost over Cowley way,” said one of the other boys. “I remember now. My auntie, she was there yesterday, cause she sells fish and chips out a van, and she heard about it....Some little boy, thats it...I dunno about the Gobblers, though. They ent real, Gobblers. Just a story.”
Tight-faced, Lyra slid down the roof and into the gutter, and then climbed in through the window again. Mrs. Lonsdale was running some water into the little chipped basin, to the accompaniment of a great groaning and hammering from the pipes.
“Better put it back,” said Roger uneasily, and Lyra upturned the skull and dropped the disk back into its immemorial resting place before returning the skull to the shelf. Each of the other skulls, they found, had its own daemon-coin, showing its owners lifetime companion still close to him in death.
Five minutes later Lyra was knocking on the door of the Masters lodging, the grand and slightly gloomy house that opened into the Yaxley Quadrangle and backed onto the Library Garden. Pantalaimon, an ermine now for politeness, rubbed himself against her leg. The door was opened by the Masters manservant Cousins, an old enemy of Lyras; but both knew that this was a state of truce.
Pantalaimon scampered before her, flowing up the stairs to the very top, where Lyras bedroom was. Lyra barged open the door, dragged her rickety chair to the window, flung wide the casement, and scrambled out. There was a lead-lined stone gutter a foot wide just below the window, and once she was standing in that, she turned and clambered up over the rough tiles until she stood on the topmost ridge of the roof. There she opened her mouth and screamed. Pantalaimon, who always became a bird once on the roof, flew round and round shrieking rook shrieks with her.
“They have,” said one boy.
“I never heard about that!” said Lyra, indignant. She considered it a deplorable lapse on the part of her subjects not to tell her everything and at once.
But before they could all join battle, Ma Costa herself waded in, smacking two of the gyptians aside and confronting Lyra like a prizefighter.
She dragged the best dress onto Lyras skinny frame, tugged it straight, fished a bit of red ribbon out of the tangle in a drawer, and brushed Lyras hair with a coarse brush.
His tone was not accusatory. He sounded as if he were genuinely interested. His daemon flicked a lizard tongue at them from her perch on his shoulder.
Mrs. Lonsdale smacked her leg. “Wash,” she said ferociously. “You get all that dirt off.”
But here was Ma Costa, a queen amongthe gyptians, in a terror for a missing child. What was going on?
“Ah, Lyra,” said the Master. “Im so glad you could come. Cousins, could you find some sort of soft drink? Dame Hannah, I dont think youve met Lyra...Lord Asriels niece, you know.”
“Well, he shouldve stayed there, shouldnt he? Runs off in the middle of a job—”
“Mrs. Lonsdale said I was to come,” said Lyra.
Lyra said, “Who saw Billy last?”
Pantalaimon became so agitated at this that he changed into a bat and flew up and down uttering shrill cries and flapping his wings in her face, but she took no notice: it was too good a joke to waste. She paid for it later, though. In bed in her narrow room at the top of Staircase Twelve she was visited by a night-ghast, and woke up screaming at the three robed figures who stood at the bedside pointing their bony fingers before throwing back their cowls to show bleeding stumps where their heads should have been. Only when Pantalaimon became a lion and roared at them did they retreat, backing away into the substance of the wall until all that was visible was their arms, then their horny yellow-gray hands, then their twitching fingers, then nothing. First thing in the morning she hastened down to the catacombs and restored the daemon-coins to their rightful places, and whispered “Sorry! Sorry!” to the skulls.
They found no Gobblers, but the catacombs under the oratory kept Lyra and Roger busy for days. Once she tried to play a trick on some of the dead Scholars, by switching around the coins in their skulls so they were with the wrong daemons.
She hadnt seen him since the morning....
“Theyre always disappearing, gyptians. After every horse fair they disappear.”
No one seemed interested.
“If theyd let me know earlier, I couldve given your hair a proper wash. Well, thats too bad. As long as they dont look too close...There. Now stand up straight. Wheres those best patent-leather shoes?”
There was a banging on the window frame. Lyra knew the voice and the impatience:
“They got him! Them bloody Gobblers, they oughter catch em and bloody kill em! I hate em! You dont care about Roger—”
Lyra turned and ran out of the kitchen, knocking over a stack of silver dish covers and ignoring the roar of anger that arose. She sped down the steps and across the quadrangle, between the chapel and Palmers Tower and into the Yaxley Quad, where the oldest buildings of the College stood.
“As for you, Lyra,” said Father Heyst, “Im pleased to see you taking an interest in what lies in the oratory. You are a lucky child, to have all this history around you.” “Mm,” said Lyra.
“What?”
“None of that nonsense. Im a Parslow, same as Rogers father. Hes my second cousin. I bet you didnt know that, cause I bet you never asked, Miss Lyra. I bet it never occurred to you. Dont you chide me with not caring about the boy.
He showed her into the large room that overlooked the Library Garden. The last of the sun shone into it, through the gap between the library and Palmers Tower, and lit up the heavy pictures and the glum silver the Master collected.
“I had to ring the Master and tell him,” he said. “He ent pleased at all. I wouldnt be in your shoes, not for money I wouldnt.”
He tapped his thumbs together over his interlaced fingers, unable to think of anything else to ask this stubborn child.
She shrugged. It was her constant response when she was pressed.
“The Gobblers? Has they come to Oxford, then?”
When they heard him call, Lyra and Roger turned reluctantly and walked, dragging their feet, into the great musty-smelling dimness of the oratory. Candles flickered here and there in front of images of the saints; a faint and distant clatter came from the organ loft, where some repairs were going on; a servant was polishing the brass lectern. Father Heyst beckoned from the vestry door.
“There could be a dozen reasons why Roger ent turned up. Listen to sense. We got dinner to prepare and serve in less than an hour; the Masters got guests in the lodging, and hell be eating over there, and that means Chef11 have to attend to getting the food there quick so it dont go cold; and what with one thing and another, Lyra, lifes got to go on. Im sure Roger11 turn up....”
Michaels.
Look at this, look at that...Lyra didnt want to look. She shut her eyes as she rubbed at her face with the thin towel.
“We better rescue him, Pantalaimon,” she said. He answered in his rook voice from the chimney. “Itll be dangerous,” he said. “Course! I know that.”
“Something about a child up in the Arctic. The one that wasnt attracting the Dust.”
“Theyre bound to look like ordinary people, else theyd be seen at once,” she explained. “If they only came at night, they could look like anything. But if they come in the daylight, they got to look ordinary. So any of these people might be Gobblers....”
“Clear off, Lyra! Were busy here!”
“They are!” Lyra said. “The gyptians seen em. They reckon they eat the kids they catch, and...”
“They said it was an entire child....What about it?”
“Yeah. Why?”
When Lyra had sorted it out, she gathered that Billy had been seen for certain not less than two hours previously.
“Wheres Roger?” she shouted.
“Yeah? What do you want?” he said finally.
The first Lyra heard of it was when a young boy went missing from a gyptian family she knew.
“No,” Lyra said. “We just got here. I ent seen Billy for months.”
But this year there was to be no war. Something else happened. Lyra was sauntering along the edge of the Port Meadow boatyard in the morning sun, without Roger for once (he had been detailed to wash the buttery floor) but with Hugh Lovat and Simon Parslow, passing a stolen cigarette from one to another and blowing out the smoke ostentatiously, when she heard a cry in a voice she recognized.
But she hadnt got out of the gate before the Porter called her.
“Do you...do you miss the society of other children?” “No.”
