Across the worlds they have converged, each with their own memories of, their own feelings towards, the one who has died and to whom they have come to say goodbye.
Time links them. This is a particular time, the time that is common to them all, the time that has converged, narrowing down to this one singular point. It is approaching twelve o'clock on the twenty-first of June, Midsummer's Day, and they have come to bury Lyra Belacqua, sometime Professor of Literature at Jordan College, Oxford, who has died at the bitterly unfair age of only forty-seven.
Oxford
Adèle Starminster, journalist, stands near to the entrance of the Botanic Garden, observing the mourners as they pass through the wrought-iron gates and into the grounds. One by one, or in pairs, or larger groups, they come, black-clad and sombre of face.
There is the Master of Jordan College, accompanied by a flock of dons, their gowns flapping behind them, taking off their mortarboards as they approach the graveside. Learned Scholars and Professors all, well-used to the stately procedures of formal ritual, they will not fail to observe the proprieties today.
Here is a boy of sixteen or seventeen, and his sister, or maybe she is his girl, with him, holding his hand. He is very distressed, Adèle can see, but being as brave as he can, and the young couple make a fine counterpoint to the elderly academics who have preceded them. How is he connected with Lyra? Adèle wonders. She makes a note to talk to him later.
There are other townsfolk too, shuffling behind Lyra's colleagues, carrying their caps and hats in their hands, eyes downcast. It is quite a turnout for an obscure academic, but then Adèle remembers that Lyra was also a skilled alethiometrist. Her readings must have benefited the lives of many people who would otherwise have had little to do with Jordan College. There must be many folk whose lives were changed for the better by learning the truth – the truth about their lives, their prospects, those who sought to harm them.
'Adèle! Here you is.' It is Arthur Shire; who once helped Adèle through a personal crisis in her life; not by divining an external truth with an alethiometer, but by opening her own heart to her and allowing her to see herself whole, and by understanding what she saw, giving her the ability to forgive herself. They embrace, and her butterfly-daemon Lysander greets Arthur's magpie-formed Sarastus. There is a man with Arthur, another survivor of Bolvangar, and she shakes Harry Owen's hand warmly.
It is rumoured that there will be a very important mourner at this funeral, and the police who have been a circumspect presence among the crowds of people who have gathered by the gates of the Botanic Garden are moving now, pressing the onlookers back against the railings and clearing the roadway so that a carriage may pass through without danger.
Adèle has received a tip-off in advance, so she is ready to observe and note the stunned reaction of the crowd who are now lining the pavements when a coach, painted in deepest glossy black and bearing the royal coat of arms drives slowly up the road from the railway station and through the gates. The King! Suddenly, the burial ceremony has become an event of national importance, not simply the interment of an obscure Professor of English Literature.
The white-haired figure, in the stooped posture which is familiar to everyone from his appearances in newspapers and newsreels, steps down from the coach where it has halted just inside the gates, turns to wave sadly to his assembled people and walks slowly to the side of the hole in the ground which is waiting, ready to receive Lyra's coffin. He takes his place there, head bowed, next to the Bishop of Oxford and the Master of Jordan, who have been waiting to receive him.
Everybody stands in silence for ten minutes. The hush is disturbed only by the cries of the birds, or of children, and the rustle of the gentle wind in the leaves of the trees and hedges which fill this less formal part of the Botanic Garden. The sun shines down on them all, the rich and the poor, the inconsequential and the leaders of men. Some hold their daemons closely, many are absorbed in themselves, lips moving in involuntary speech.
By their daemons shall ye know them thinks Adèle, recalling other similar times, in peace and in war. So often, a person's brave or honest face is betrayed by his cowardly or cunning daemon.
At last, as the clocks of the city start to chime for midday, there is a rumbling of wheels, clearly heard in the strange hush which has overtaken, so it seems, the whole of Oxford, and the hearse which carries Lyra's coffin, laden with wreaths and strewn with the flowers which have been thrown onto it on its short journey from the Oratory of Jordan College, where she has been lying in a small side-chapel, slowly, carefully, taking no chances with its precious burden, enters the Botanic Garden and comes to a stop next to the royal carriage.
Wearing white surplices, eight boys from the Dragon School, where she often taught, step forward and take the simple pine coffin, sliding oaken bearers through its brass hoops and, as they have been instructed, lifting it up and over the bier on which it lies. They wait, and as soon as the last bell in the last clock tower of the city has finished sounding twelve o'clock, they carry the coffin to its last resting place, to the beat of a muffled drum.
They stop under the spreading branches of a low-hanging tree, before an old wooden bench, both of which have long been preserved unchanged by order of the Master of Jordan College. Here, in the place she loved best, is where she will lie forever.
The chaplain of Jordan walks to the graveside and, opening his copy of the Book of Common Prayer, speaks the opening words of the Order of Burial.
'Dearly beloved, men and daemons together, we are gathered…'
Suddenly, in breach of all protocol, a large silver-grey car pulls up outside the gates and a middle-aged, but still very beautiful, woman gets out of it without waiting for the chauffeur to open the door for her. She strides up to the graveside, curtseys elegantly to the King and the Bishop, and takes her place next to them, this being no more than her due as Lyra's last next of kin.
Elizabeth Boreal! Adèle can hardly believe it. The gall of the woman! Turning up here, where she is least wanted, exploiting her rights as Lyra's last living relative to ride roughshod over the feelings of everybody else! She's gloating, the evil bitch! I know she is. Adèle knows that she must not antagonise the Boreal Foundation in her reports. They own a large share in the Chronicle, and if her editor is forced to dismiss her, following an uncomplimentary article, she will be blacklisted and not be able to find work as a journalist anywhere else. She must record the appearance of Lady Boreal as if it were the most natural thing in the world
Elizabeth turns to the chaplain. 'So terribly sorry,' she says. 'Awful traffic in Cowley. I really thought we wouldn't get here in time. You'd only just got going, hadn't you? Shall we start again, from the top?' She gives him a wide smile and her serpent-daemon raises his head above her left ear.
The poor bemused cleric has no choice in the matter. He begins again:
'Dearly beloved, men and daemons together, we are gathered…'
Oxford
There are a few tourists and the usual lunchtime regulars in the Botanic Garden this sunny Monday. One of the regulars is a woman in her late forties who has taken to visiting the Garden as often as she can, in remembrance of a dear friend who died many years before, and who once taught her the importance of stories, and truth. And lost me my place on the footy team, she thinks, recalling her visits to the History Professor's room and the wisdom he passed on to her. She looks up and, bang on time, sees the man she sees there each Midsummer's Day, accompanied by a boy who is obviously his son, a woman whom she presumes to be his wife and an older woman, grey-haired and stout. They are dressed in unseasonable, formal, dark clothes.
Will, who has seen this woman in the Garden nearly every Midsummer's Day for the past twenty years or more, but never stopped to speak to her or learn her name, smiles forlornly in her direction. Then the four of them turn to face the tree, and the bench where the woman has seen him sit, every year on this day, for an hour of quiet reflection, and stand, heads bowed and hands clasped in front of them, as the clocks of Oxford proclaim the coming of midday.
Cittagazze
Neither Giancarlo nor Guilietta ever met Lyra, so their loss is not so personal as that of those who weep for her in the two Oxfords. But they remember Will Parry and know how much Lyra meant to him, so they stand on the summit of the hill overlooking Cittagazze in honour of them both. A single bell sounds in the town below. It is noon.
How can it be that they know when the ceremony of burial begins; that they share the outrage of Arthur and Adèle when Elizabeth Boreal makes her unwelcome appearance? They are not there, in that Oxford, although Giancarlo and his father Giovanni visited that world many times to rescue the Exiles, in the fulfilment of their first Task. What is the universal principle that has brought them all together for this sad celebration?
Time, remember. It is Time that has united them – Time which, for a short while, has linked their essences across the worlds. Time binds them now, so that all Lyra's friends, whether they knew her or not, whichever world their physical bodies occupy, stand sorrowing before her grave, as the chaplain speaks the words of the burial service and her coffin is lowered with infinite loving care into the place that has been prepared for it.
