I Go to the Radcliffe Infirmary

I know death hath ten thousand several doors
For men to take their exits

John Webster – The Duchess of Malfi

Mistress James took charge immediately. 'Mister Cholmondley, to the shop if you please.' Elias left, with a last venomous glare in my direction

'Now, Mister Joyce. Follow me.' She led the way upstairs to the sitting room and sat down, with her starling-daemon perched on the arm of the chair next to her.. I remained standing.

'Have you been in here? In this room?'

'Yes, Mistress. I can explain…'

'Explanations will not be necessary. What brings you here from Bromwicham?' Mistress James was the only person I knew who used the proper pronunciation and spelling for my new home town of Brummagem.

'I heard that Master James was ill and there was trouble…' My voice trailed away.

'Who told you that?' Mistress James' sharp voice would have frightened me if I had been younger. Now I was determined not to let her intimidate me.

'I received a letter…'

'From whom?'

'I would rather not say, Mistress. This letter told me that Master James was seriously ill and that the shop was doing badly. I decided to come up here and find out the truth for myself.'

'Did you now?'

'Yes, Mistress. Please, is it true? Is Master James very ill?'

Mistress James looked down at her folded hands. She did not speak for several heartbeats. Then; 'Yes, Mister Joyce. He is very ill indeed.'

'Is he going to die?' The words slipped out before I could stop them. What a stupid childish thing to say.

'We are all going to die, Peter.'

'I… I know, Mistress.' I paused. 'May I go and see him? Visit him in hospital?'

'Not today. Visiting hours are over for today.'

'Then tomorrow? May I see him tomorrow? Please, Mistress?'

Mistress James looked up into my eyes and smiled. So desolate was that smile that I knew straight away that the situation was utterly hopeless.

'Master James would like that, I think. He has been asking after you.'

'Thank you, Mistress. May I stay here until then? I could bed down in the workshop.'

'The workshop is closed. You may sleep in Mason's room tonight. It was she who wrote to you, wasn't it?'

'Yes, Mistress.'

'Foolish girl! Go on now, Peter. Take your things upstairs. You did bring a bag, didn't you?'

'Yes, Mistress.'

'Good.' She dismissed me with a tiny gesture of her right hand. I returned to the kitchen, picked up my kitbag and climbed the stairs all the way up to the attic, and Carrie Mason's old room.

There was a bed, a chair, a small press and a hanging cupboard in the room. That was all, apart from a faded Persian rug and a window out of which, if you leaned dangerously over the sill, you could see the back yard. It was cramped and sparse, but it was no worse than I was used to in my digs in Brummagem and much better than the old place under the counter where I slept when I was an apprentice. I found sheets and blankets in the press and made up the bed. I wondered whether I should unpack my kitbag – how long would I be staying here? In the end, I filled the drawers and the cupboard with my clothes and spare socks. Then I took out my treasures:

Two books – one of plays by a man you haven't heard of and a small brown volume of fairy stories by another writer you don't know either. A small statuette of a little green man with pointed ears who I still called Yodatm even though I knew that wasn't his proper name. A red folding knife with a silver cross. A deep photogram – one you could see into – of the Parry family. A small black box, full of songs and moving photograms. These were all the wonders that John Parry had given me when I visited his world. They were twonkies – they didn't belong here in our Brytain.

And two more things, both of them powerful and dangerous. First, a gun so small that it looked like a kid's toy, made of a warm black slick material. Just above the grip a red light blinked once every second. It had been blinking like that ever since Arthur Shire had taken it from Miss Morley's hand in the intercision cell in Cropredy. No – if you don't already know what that word means, I'm not going to tell you. Not all knowledge is good, or needful to know.

So far as Arthur and I could tell there was no limit to the power of that gun, nor to how much charge it held. 'We thinks it collects Dust-energy and stores it,' Arthur told me once. That would mean that it would never run out of power. Arthur had given it to me the last time we met, and I had taken it from him most reluctantly. 'It's no good,' he had said. 'We is the wrong person to keep it. We would not use it wisely. We would be tempted by it.'

'It should be destroyed,' I had said.

'Yes, we knows that. But does not know how to destroy it safely. If Doctor Malone did not dare to open it, neither should we.' I should say that John Parry had told me about a weapon called a Lazy Gun that had destroyed a whole city when some experimental theologians tried to open it up. It had been booby-trapped, or it had been so full of captive energy held under pressure that it had burst.

I had had to agree with Arthur – the gun was a problem that would not go away. I had consented to keep it safe with me.

'That way at least we always knows where it is,' Arthur had said.

The last of my treasures was, of course, Lyra's alethiometer. She had left it to me in her will, and the Dean and Master of Jordan College had acceded to her wishes and not tried to take it back from me. Nor had the Boreal Foundation ever attempted to steal it, so far as I knew. It was an infinitely precious thing – absolutely priceless, in fact – but I was only its guardian, not its user. I could, as I did the first day I met Lyra, frame a question with the three pointers and start the indicator spinning, but my training was incomplete, cut short as it was by Lyra's untimely death. From time to time I took it out and tried to divine the truth with it but, nine times out of ten, my attempt failed. For all I knew that tenth time was a fluke, anyway.

So it was no good my taking it out of its blue velvet pouch and asking it "Will Master James die?" Firstly, as Lyra had told me, the alethiometer did not make predictions. And secondly, I would more than likely not be able to interpret the truth that it gave to me. With a sigh I placed it on the top of the press, along with all the other inestimably valuable and dangerous things. Later I went out for a stroll around the familiar streets of Oxford and took my supper in a Tartar restaurant not far from the Martyr's Memorial at the Town end of St Giles. Then I returned to Shoe Lane and my borrowed bedroom.

I should have expected it, I know, with us being back in Oxford and staying in Master James' house, but it still came as quite a shock when, just as I was drifting off to sleep, the bedroom door opened and Carrie walked in. She was around sixteen years old, I think, wearing her housemaid's outfit of a white apron over a black mercerised pinafore dress. She sat on the edge of the bed, kicked off her shoes, stretched and yawned and, to my great embarrassment, broke wind loudly. I was inclined to giggle, but Viola hushed me.

Carrie took off her apron and frock, slipped down her lisle stockings and linen drawers and, putting her mob-cap on the press and her clothes on the back of the chair, got into bed, still wearing her cotton shift. I was suffering from a mixture of mortification and lust. I felt like a peeper, because I had invaded Carrie's bedroom (at my mistress' direction, it is true) and seen her disrobe; but I was also aroused by the sight of her naked form.

'Stop it, Peter,' said Viola. She knew where my thoughts were leading. 'She's only a time-ghost. You know that.'

Of course she was. How could we both lie in the same bed and yet not touch one another if we were not separated by a gap of (I guessed) at least ten years? Both Carrie's virginity and my abstinence were guaranteed by the distance of Time that lay between us. This Carrie - the Carrie who was gently snoring on the same pillow as me - had not yet heard of Peter Joyce. In fact, she had only recently taken up her position of maid-of-all-work in Master James' household. I was still living in Tring with my mother, father and baby brother Tom, and would not be coming up to Oxford to begin my apprenticeship for another three or four years.

I've called this chapter of my story I Go to the Radcliffe Infirmary but, now that it comes to it, I find that I don't want to write very much about my visit to the hospital where Master James lay dying.

He knew it, of course. Even if the doctors and nurses hadn't told him, he would only have had to look at his visitors' expressions to know that it would not be very long before the end. My face must have given me away too, just as the faces of the others had betrayed them. How could it be, that he was both swollen up and shrunken, shrivelled and bloated? The disease that was eating him away was a terrible thing, a foul invasion of his spirit.

He had been in a great deal of pain, but he was now receiving doses of poppy that were, in themselves, lethal and an implicit admission by the hospital that there was now little more that they could do but ease his passing as best they could. His breathing was laboured and irregular and his eyes were nearly shut, but I sat by his bedside, leaned over him and said, as steadily as I could, 'Hello, Master. It's Peter. I've come to see you.'

His eyes opened then, and his ocelot-daemon Amanda, lying on his pillow, looked up slowly. Viola left my coat pocket and lay down next to her, enfolding Amanda's body in her own. I felt – oh, I can't describe it. We were linked, Master and I and, for a while, Viola and I were able to lend Amanda and him some of our strength.

We spoke of the old days. I told him a little about what had happened that summer when I had first gone to Jordan College and met the Professor. He told me about the times when he had been a "snotty-nosed apprentice" and the misadventures that he had got himself into. We talked and talked and all the time our Dust – Viola's and mine – streamed into Amanda and him and sustained them. Even so, despite all that we could do, it was becoming ever clearer that Master was weakening fast. Finally, he made a great effort and lifted his head from the pillow.

'Peter,' he said. 'You will look after the shop, won't you, when I'm gone?'

'Yes, Master,' I replied. We both knew that there was no point in my trying to encourage him by saying that he would soon be well again and back at his old workbench in Shoe Lane. What would Lyra do? Tell the truth, of course.

'And Matilda and Emily?'

'Yes, Master. I'll take care of them'

'Thank you, Peter. I knew I could rely on you.' He sighed, and his head fell back onto the pillow with his eyes closed. Amanda looked at his face longingly for a minute, or it may have been longer. Then she kissed Viola, slipped out of her embrace, and with a last gentle whispering breath she disappeared. Master James lay completely still.

I sat by the side of my Master's bed, staring blankly at his face, not noticing the tears that were running down my cheeks and falling, one by one, onto him. Eventually a kindly nursing sister came to me and led me away, still sobbing, to her room where she gave me a cup of kaffee and asked me the necessary questions that her professional duties required. Later, when I was more composed, she put me in a hansom cab and I returned to Shoe Lane, where I let Mistress James know what had happened.

I told you I didn't want to write about it.