I Visit the Botanic Garden

With drooping wings ye cupids come,
And scatter roses on her tomb.
Soft and gentle was her heart,
Keep here your watch and never part.

Nahum Tate - Dido and Aeneas

I reached the top of Park End Street and stopped for a moment. Should I go directly to Shoe Lane or would it be better to take a roundabout route? 'Go there now. They need you,' said Viola from her place on my shoulder, but I hesitated. If what Carrie had told me in her letter was even half-true then yes, I was needed at James and James right away. But somehow, now that I was only half a mile from the shop, I found that I needed more time.

'No,' I told Viola. 'We'll go somewhere else first.' She knew where I meant.

It was the same as ever, of course. I knew it would be – the Master of Jordan was an influential figure and used to getting his way. He had a sense of duty too, and had promised, so they said, to honour the commitment which his predecessors had made. And so, as I reached the lower end of the High Street by Magdalen Bridge and walked through the gates of the Botanic Garden I knew that I would find what I sought, kept safe from all change or decay. A tree, a bench and near to it, set in the ground, a granite plaque whose inscription I still could not read, even though five years had passed since it was first placed there, without feeling the tears starting in my eyes:

Near this place lie the mortal remains of
LYRA BELACQUA MA D.LITT DD D.ALETH
and
PANTALAIMON
1985 – 2032

The wording could have been no plainer. No Roman verse or epitaph, no celebratory lines or eulogy would have served any better, I knew, to express our loss.

To my great relief the bench was free, so I sat down and was quiet for a time. I linked my hands and Viola sat in them, gazing up into my eyes. I wanted to be alone and so I, selfishly I know, put my kitbag down next to me so that the bench was completely occupied. Around us the trees and bushes moved gently to and fro in the warm breeze which wafted from the south-west; driven up from the Atlantic Ocean and over the hills and fields of Brytain.

After ten minutes or maybe more, my spirits refreshed, I freed my hands. Viola leapt onto the bench and climbed a little way up the trunk of the tree behind us. Perhaps she was looking for more of the grey squirrels whose form she had taken. I took Carrie's letter, whose arrival that morning had sent me on my way to Oxford, out of my pocket and read it over again:

Dear Peter,

I did not think I shud write to you but Jim said I shud so here it is.

Dear Peter, there is truble at Master's shop and I am afraid that it is going too be bad. Master is terible poorly, he had been bad these last months but now it is much worse. It is breaking my Hart to see him lying so ill. I said to him Shall I call Peter to come back to us but He said no, Peter has to live his own life and cant be doing with old crocks like me and he said no. The shop is all going to rack and ruin and Mistress is looking so sad.

And now they say there is no money to pay my Wages because of Business being Very Bad, which it is and I have to go away so I spake to Jim and he say that Master is wrong and that you must come and help us. I am at Jim's house now, we are very Poor but we woud Love to see You if you woud com and See us.

Pleease come when you can, we are all very sad and upset here.

Youre Loving Carrie

'Why didn't she write before, silly girl?' I thought Adrian or she would have had more sense than to let matters slide for so long before getting in touch with me.

Viola spoke comfortingly. 'She didn't want to take you away from your work. She was thinking of your future. So was Master.'

'I know.' But I had applied the same test that morning that I always used, when I was faced with a hard choice. What would Lyra have done? The answer that that question was perfectly obvious, so I went to Goodsir Moore's office and explained to him that I had to go away for a few days' unpaid leave to help a friend in trouble. His face darkened at that news, for we had a lot of work on hand and he did not want to slow down production. I showed him Carrie's letter, and when he saw that it was Master James whom I was going to aid he gave me his blessing.

'There's no man in the Guild of Temporalists more respected than your old master, Peter. You must go and see what you can do to help him. We'll keep your place ready for you until you feel able to return to us.'

I rose to my feet and picked up my kitbag, slinging it over my shoulder. As Viola and I walked away from the bench I saw that a small group of children had gathered by Lyra's plaque, shepherded by a stiff-backed lady with her grey hair tied in a bun, wearing a blue skirt and jacket over a white blouse. For a moment I felt faint with confused recollection: Miss Morley! But it was not her, of course. How could it be? Miss Morley, Elizabeth Boreal's most trusted lieutenant, was dead. Many times dead.

I've called this story Time and Peter Joyce, because I have long known that Time and I have a special relationship. I am not sure, even now, that I am living in my proper place in Time; or Space either for that matter. It is as if, ever since I made my journey to the world of Will Parry, and Judy and John Parry, and Mary Malone, I have become detached – just a little – from the Time-Stream down which the flow of worldly events passes. I live, I know, in more than one universe of Time; there are some in which I am dead, and many others in which I still live. I saw Miss Morley die in one world – and I died there too, I suspect – but I seemed to awake in another in which I was not dead and where she had died several days previously.

How could I be sure that the world I inhabited now was not a further world in which she did live, accompanied by a housecat trained to behave like a daemon and still travelling to and from my world and hers by means of the Dust of murdered children?

Only this – that Lyra was dead, and remained so. I would have known it straight away, I am convinced, if I had gone to sleep in a world where she had died, and woken up in another world where she yet lived; just as I had felt it – as a blade sunk deep in my heart – the very moment that she was taken away from me, five years previously. To find her again; living, breathing, speaking! It was the one thing I desired most, and the one thing which I knew would forever be denied to me.

Out of the gates of the Botanic Garden, back up the High and right at St Aldates, and I was in the Cornmarket which was busy with afternoon shoppers and schoolchildren released from their studies for the rest of the day. Should I go into the Talbot Inn for a minute or two and gather up some Doytch courage in a glass of whiskey?

'No,' said Viola firmly. 'You can't put it off any longer.'

No, I couldn't, so I took my kitbag and, hoisting it up once more, I walked slowly down Shoe Lane towards my master's shop.