“Why did you hide when Dr. Polstead came through?” she said.
“I didn’t,” said Pantalaimon.
“You did. You shot under my coat as soon as you heard his voice.”
“I just wanted to be out of the way,” he said. “Let’s open this and have a look.” He was peering closely at the rucksack and lifting the buckles with his nose. “It’s certainly his. Same smell. Not the sort of cologne that Miriam’s father makes.”
“Well, we can’t do it now,” she said. “We’ve got twenty minutes to get back to St. Sophia’s and see Dr. Lieberson.”
It was a meeting that each undergraduate had with her tutor near the end of term: an appraisal, a warning to work harder, a commendation for good work done, suggestions for vacation reading. Lyra had never missed such a meeting yet, but if she didn’t hurry…
She got up, but Pan didn’t move.
“We’d better hide this,” he said.
“What? No one comes in here! It’s perfectly safe.”
“Seriously. Think of the man last night. Someone wanted this enough to kill him for it.”
Lyra saw the point, and pulled back the worn carpet. Under the floorboards there was a space where they’d hidden things before. It was a tight squeeze, but they got the rucksack in and pulled the carpet back. As Lyra ran downstairs, she heard the Jordan clock chime for eleven-forty-five.
* * *
* * *
They made it with a minute to spare, and had to sit hot and red-faced through Dr. Lieberson’s appraisal. Apparently Lyra had worked well and was beginning to understand the complexities of Mediterranean and Byzantine politics, though there was always the danger of thinking that a superficial mastery of the events was as good as a fundamental understanding of the principles at work underneath. Lyra agreed, nodding hard. She could have written it herself. Her tutor, a young woman with severely cut blond hair and a goldfinch dæmon, looked at her skeptically.
“Make sure to do some reading,” she said. “Frankopan’s good. Hughes-Williams has a very good chapter on Levantine trade. Don’t forget—”
“Oh, trade, yes. Dr. Lieberson, the Levantine trade—sorry to interrupt—did it always involve roses and perfumes and things like that?”
“And smokeleaf, since it was discovered. The great source of rose oil, attar of roses, in medieval times was Bulgaria. But the trade from there suffered from the Balkan wars and the duties the Ottoman Empire imposed on traffic through the Bosphorus, and besides, the climate was changing a little and the Bulgarian rose growers found it harder to cultivate the best sort of plants, so gradually the trade moved further east.”
“Do you know why it might be suffering now?”
“Is it?”
Lyra told her briefly about Miriam’s father and his problem with obtaining the supplies for his factory.
“That’s interesting,” said Dr. Lieberson. “History’s not over, you see. It’s happening all the time. The problem today would mainly be regional politics, I imagine. I’ll look into it. Have a good vacation.”
* * *
* * *
The end of the Michaelmas term was marked by a number of ritual occasions, which varied from college to college. St. Sophia’s took a narrow-eyed view of ritual in general, and with an air of “If we really must” produced a slightly better dinner than usual when celebration was unavoidable. Jordan, on the other hand, held a Founder’s Feast of great splendor and culinary excess. Lyra had always looked forward to the Founder’s Feast when she was younger, not because she was invited (she wasn’t) but because of the chance it gave her to earn a few guineas polishing the silver. This task had become a tradition of its own, and after a quick lunch with some friends at St. Sophia’s (during which Miriam seemed to have cheered up a great deal), Lyra hurried to the pantry at Jordan, where Mr. Cawson, the Steward, was getting out the dishes, the bowls, the plates, the goblets, and the large tin of Redvers’ powder.
The Steward was the senior servant in charge of all the college ceremonies, the great dinners, the silver, the Retiring Room and all its luxuries. Lyra had once been more terrified of Mr. Cawson than of anyone else in Oxford, but recently he’d begun to show signs of quite unsuspected humanity. She sat at the long table with its green baize cloth and dabbed a damp cloth into the tin of powder and polished bowls and dishes and goblets until their very surfaces seemed to swim and dissolve in the naphtha lamplight.
“Good going,” said Mr. Cawson, turning a bowl over between his palms and scrutinizing the flawless gleam.
“What’s it all worth, Mr. Cawson?” she said, taking up the very biggest dish, a shallow platter fully two feet across with a bowl-shaped depression in the center.
“Priceless,” he said. “Irreplaceable. You couldn’t buy anything like this now, because they don’t make ’em anymore. They’ve lost the skill. That one,” he said, looking at the great dish Lyra was polishing, “that’s three hundred and forty years old and as thick as two guineas. There’s no money value that would make any sense in connection with that. And,” he said, sighing, “this Feast is probably the last time we shall use it.”
“Really? What’s it for?”
“You’ve never attended a full Feast, have you, Lyra?” the old man said. “Dined in Hall any number of times—High Table often enough—but never a full Feast, am I right?”
“Well, I wouldn’t be invited,” said Lyra piously. “It wouldn’t be right. I’d never be allowed in the Retiring Room afterwards, never mind anything else.”
“Hmm,” said Mr. Cawson, without any expression at all.
“So I’ve never seen what this big plate’s for. Is it for truffles, at dessert?”
“Try and put it down.”
Lyra laid it on the baize, and because of its rounded bottom, the dish tipped over and lay awkwardly to one side.
“It looks uncomfortable,” she said.
“Because it’s not for putting down, it’s for carrying. It’s a rosewater dish.”
“Rosewater?” Lyra looked up at the old man, suddenly more curious.
“That’s it. After the meat, and before they change places for dessert, we take around the rosewater dishes. Four of ’em, and this is the finest. It’s for gentlemen and their guests to dab their napkins in, rinse their fingers, whatever takes their fancy. But we can’t get the rosewater anymore. We’ve got enough for this Feast, and that’s it.”