The Station

'Molly! Are you there? Are you all right?' Arthur clung to the side of the upturned boat.

'Here, sir.'

Molly was hanging on to the other side of the rowing boat, her fox-daemon with his claws sunk into her shoulders, his eyes brilliant in the moonlight. None of them had seen the huge black-painted hull of the barge as it drifted, tide-driven, upriver. Arthur doubted very much if the vessel's crew had even noticed the collision. Only a fool would be out on the river tonight in a small boat. He made his way hand over hand to Molly's side of the boat.

'Whatever shall we do now, sir?'

'What we've got to do is climb up the side of the boat. That'll pull it upright.'

'The oars! I let go of mine when we went over.'

'So did I. We'll worry about them when we've got the boat back upright.' Together Arthur and Molly heaved the boat over. It lay deep in the water. Arthur helped Molly back on board.

'Use your cap to bail her out. We're going to find the oars. Sal?'

'Over here.'

'Can you see them?'

'One's still in the boat.' Oh yes. It was caught in a rowlock. 'The other's over there.'

'Fly to it, would you?' Arthur's magpie-daemon opened her wings and flapped over the water to where the oar lay bobbing on the surface. She perched on its blade. Arthur, feeling the invisible cord that bound them together stretch painfully, swam over to her. He took hold of the oar. 'Wish I could fly, Sal.'

'Wish I could swim.'

Arthur joined Molly in the boat and they bailed most of the water out of it. Arthur pointed the craft down-river. He brushed the moisture out of his hair with a hand.

'Come on, Molly. We'll have to go faster now. We've lost time.' He looked upwards. 'Sal?'

'Yes?'

'Stay up there would you, and keep a lookout for us? There's a dear.'

With a whoosh and a ball of orange-red flame the naphtha-soaked wood caught. Fire licked up the outside of the north-west tower and the varnish with which the door was covered began to bubble and char. Studies have shown that even a simple panel door can retard the spread of a fire for anything up to half an hour. These studies are doubtless correct, but they fail to take into account the effects of the gallons of naphtha which, thrown forcefully against the door by the guards outside, flowed underneath it and set fire to the furniture which was piled up behind. Now the fire was inside the tower as well as outside. It would not stand for long.

'More naphtha!' called the bishop, taking a perverse joy in feeding the fires of Hell.

Lyra sprang to her feet when the fire struck the tower. She looked down to Alfred where he sat under the window. He shook his head.

'You knew, didn't you? You knew that'd do this.'

The king stood up next to her. 'I'm afraid so. Lyra, everything I have done tonight has gone wrong. I'm sorry. I wish you'd escaped when Elizabeth warned you about the plot. You'd be safe by now.'

'Nobody will be safe if the Church succeeds tonight. We must stand up against them.'

The first tendrils of smoke were making their way up the main stair, mingled with a powerful smell of naphtha. 'Come on Lyra. We can't stay here.' The king took Lyra by the hand and led her to the back stair. They clattered up it, smelling burning wood as they did so.

'Quickly Lyra. They have set fire to the King's Stair too.'

There was a metal trapdoor at the top of the stair. Alfred pushed it open and they clambered through it. Alfred bolted it behind them. For all the good that will do. The were standing at the end of a passageway which curved away to the left. The wall on the right-hand side was built of unfinished sandstone. It was obviously the outside wall of the tower. The wall on the left was painted grey. Alfred stepped up to it and rapped it with his knuckles. The wall reacted with a hollow boom. Lyra looked at Alfred with puzzlement. The king smiled back to her – the first smile she had seen on his lips since they had left his bedchamber.

'Now I remember what's in the loft!'

The stone steps ran down from the dockside to a pontoon moored next to it. Arthur jumped up onto it and tied the boat to a bollard. 'This is it!' He pointed to a sign on the wall. 'Quickly now!' He held out his hand and Molly took hold of it. Together they ran up the steps. At the top stood an open space with a cluster of low buildings at the far side of it. At the end of one of the buildings there was a latticework tower, to which was attached a huge shape which bulked over them, gleaming silver in the light of the moon.

Arthur and Molly ran across the yard to the nearest of the buildings. The gyptian hammered on the door while Molly shouted at the top of her voice, 'Captain! Captain Hollins!'

Lights flickered on in one of the adjacent buildings. Someone threw a window up and leaned out. 'What d'you want?'

'Is Captain Hollins here? We've got to talk to him. It's terribly urgent.'

'Captain's here, but he's asleep in his cabin. You tell me what you want first.'

'Tell the captain this: it's Lyra – Professor Belacqua. She's in terrible danger; and the king too. He's got to help us!'

'Water?'

'Yes. Nearly three million gallons of water. Hundreds of tons of it. This tank,' the king indicated the grey-painted metal wall, 'supplies all the kitchens, all the bathrooms and all the privies in the whole Palace of Westminster. I really should have remembered sooner. This is the highest point of the entire building. It's the obvious place to put the water tank.'

'How can we put the fire out with it? Is there a tap we can turn?'

'We'll have to see. Let's take a walk around it and see what we can find.'

'Who the hell are you?' Captain Hollins stood in the Deptford Naval Station commander's office. The two bedraggled figures standing in front of him were an unprepossessing pair – a girl wearing the soggy remains of a maid's uniform, her lank hair hanging down her back and her cap long gone, and a man, small and weasel-faced in damp tweeds, holding a disreputable cloth cap in front of him. 'What's all this nonsense about Professor Belacqua and the king?'

'Sir, they're going to kill him. Him and Lyra.'

'Kill the king? Who is going to kill the king?'

'The bishop, sir.'

'Which bishop? This is absurd. Bishops don't go around trying to kill people.'

'He tried to kill you.'

'What?' The man must be raving.

'He sent your ship up in the storm, when all other ships were grounded.'

The captain stared at the gyptian. 'That? That was an accident… a cock-up. The stop-captain at Witney got his wires crossed, poor devil.'

'It was deliberate. Believe me, Sir Captain.'

Arthur returned the captain's stare, and in the violet light of the gyptian's eyes the aëronaut saw, and believed.

'Yes. I see. What do you think we should do?'

'Raise ship, Sir Captain. Raise ship, and fly to Westminster and pray that we're not too late!'

Alfred put his hand to the stone floor of the loft. It was warm to the touch, despite the immense thickness of the structure which supported the water tank. The loft had no windows, so he could only imagine the holocaust raging below. The whole of the Star Chamber must be ablaze now, flames pouring out of its windows, a fiery beacon in the soft spring night.

The airship cast off from the mooring tower and, all six engines racing, headed up-river. There had been no time to make repairs after the damage that the storm had done to it, so it handled a little awkwardly.

Arthur, Molly and the go-captain stood by the helmsman in the forward control gondola. There was no doubt as to where they should be steering. The north-west tower of the Palace of Westminster guided them, a blazing torch drowning out the lesser lights of London. 'They must be in there,' Arthur said to the go-captain.

'Then they must already be dead,' Captain Hollins replied. They could see the flames which were wrapped around the tower quite clearly now.

'How close can we go, Sir Captain?'

'As close as we need. This is a ship of the King's Flight. We will have to be wary of the updraft over the tower, however. The air will be funnelled upwards by the fire.'

'Then let us go there. Captain, I do not believe that they are dead. Not yet.'

The stopcock was chained and padlocked. Lyra and the king searched, but they could not find the key, not that they expected to.

Alfred took both Lyra's hands in his. Pantalaimon and Eleanor stood side by side, almost touching. 'Lyra, it has come to this. I think that this is the place where we are going to die. Do you fear death?'

'No, I do not. I fear the manner of my dying, perhaps. But do you really think that we will be killed? Won't the water put the fire out?'

'Yes it will, but it will kill us at the same time. The water in the tank is sucking the heat out of the fire directly below it and that part of the floor will not fail. It is well protected. But the walls of the tower are not protected; they will weaken and give way soon under the weight of the water. Then the tank will fall on the fire underneath us and extinguish it, but we will die in its fall. I expect that this whole corner of the Palace will be destroyed.'

'Yes. I see. All we can do, then, is wait for death with as good a grace as we may. Alfred, I am proud to die with you. You are a good man.' Lyra pulled Alfred's arms around her waist, stood up on tiptoe and kissed him tenderly on the lips. He pressed her to him. They stood in each other's arms, calmly waiting for the end.