I Cause a Great Deal of Trouble to my Friends

I'll be revenged on the whole pack of you.

William Shakespeare – Twelfth Night

This account that I've been writing about the way my life went after Master James died and I took his place – as if I could! – in the workshop of James and James, Fine Clocks and Instruments; it's very important to me. Important as a record of those times, and what happened then, and what I felt, and what the people around me went through. Looking back over it now, as I sit in my room, scratching at the pages of this exercise book, writing the words that you (by some extraordinary accident of chance) are reading, I'm tempted to give up. I'm not very good at writing, let's be honest. Give me some decent tools and materials, a place to work and a job to do, and I'll do it. I see, of course, that that is what I'm doing now – a job of work. My tools now are pen and ink and paper, my materials are my life, and the lives of those I know and have known; the job is to put my story down on paper. But it's different, somehow, from making or mending a clock. Brass and iron remember, and do not change. They can be relied upon. Memory is inherently unreliable, and what appears to be significant or profound today may turn out to be merely trivial or banal tomorrow. How can I tell what I should set down and what I should leave out?

Oh well, I'll plug on. It's my duty, to use an unfashionable word. I'll do the best I can – even though I know it's not very good – to describe the events that took place that Sunday, and over the course of the unreliable days that followed it. I know I'm going to miss out much that is vital, and include things that are of no importance. I'm sorry.

Let it be recorded, then, that I caught the Botley autobus at twenty-five to twelve that Sunday morning, and that it was a fine day in July, with the grass growing strong and tall in the lawns and the roses flourishing in the beds of the gardens that I could see from the top deck of the 'bus. Say also, that the clouds were skidding wildly across the sky and that the wind was shaking the trees, creating a constant background shush of sound. Finally, I must write down that I was feeling cheerful and light-hearted and I was looking forward to seeing my friends and finally getting the motor of Jim's Ridgeworth Steamer running.

'Have you got the kit?' Jim shouted from the back of the house as Carrie let me in at the front door. I put my bag down with a metallic crash of tools.

'Yes, of course,' I replied.

'Brazing rods?'

'Yes. And the carbide. And the water tank and the pipes. What do you take me for?'

Jim smiled. 'Peter, son of William, smith of high renown throughout all the land of Nod! Wise is he, and skilled in all the manifold arts of metal! Ugly is he also and laborious to look upon, but yet good of heart withal! Yeah, verily, shall his praises be sung from the Crafthalls of Marshall even unto the Emporia of Snelgrove!'

I laughed. 'Novel going well?'

'Not bad, my liege.'

'Then put some water in there, Jim, son of Olaf the Lofty, and let's get cooking!'

Jim filled the tank, I assembled the gear and carefully added a pound or so of carbide to the tray. Then I hauled the whole lot over to the car, which Jim had moved until it was standing right next to the back of the house, and put everything together. Jim had the safety plug ready, so I pumped up the air tank and pressed the plunger that added water to the carbide. A hissing sound from within told me that the generator was running, so I opened both the gas and the air valves a little and pointed the nozzle away from myself while Jim lit a lucifer and held it under the jet. With a pop! the gas-air mixture ignited and a brilliant white acetylene flame appeared. It was only an inch or so long, so I pumped up the air pressure a little more and opened the valves wider. Ah! That was it! A six-inch jet of incandescence shot out of the burner. I put my eye-shields on and signalled Jim to look away, for the sake of his eyesight.

'Here we go!' I cried. Holding the brazing rod in one hand and the burner in the other, I made quick work of fixing the plug back in the boiler. It was not the kind of task a clockmaker usually has to do as part of his everyday work, but Master James believed in what he called a "well-rounded education", and that included welding, cutting and brazing with a calcium carbide torch.

When I had finished – and the whole job only took five minutes – Carrie gave us tea, while the car's boiler cooled down. Then we filled her up. We weren't going to make the same mistake as last time. That's why Jim had moved the vehicle so close to the house, as I had to explain later. He had only a short length of hose, and to fill the car up using a bucket and funnel would have taken all afternoon. Instead, all we had to do was connect one end of the hose to the cold tap and hold the other end over the car's water tank inlet. Once that was full, I turned the tap that fed the water into the boiler (a pump would do it once the motor was running) and let it fill until it ran out of the overflow. Shut the taps and valves off, fill the burner with fuel, and we were set. I pressurised the naphtha, opened the tap and with a gentle (this time!) burp, it caught. Blue flames played over the steam tubes in the boiler and after a short while we heard the bubbling sound of water starting to heat up, like a kettle makes when you first put it on the range.

I was watching the steam pressure gauge – the one that Jim had told me to fix a few weeks earlier – and Jim was keeping an eye on the naphtha feed, making sure that the flames were burning steadily. We were both concentrating on what we were doing and so it took a while for either of us to notice that Carrie was knocking on the kitchen window. Jim heard it first.

'What is it?' he called out. 'We're busy!'

Carrie kept on knocking.

'Can't come now,' I said.

Carrie knocked for a bit longer and then opened the window. 'Come in now, both of you,' she said.

'What?' said Jim.

'Now?' said I.

'Not likely!' said Jim.

'I should coco,' I added.

Carrie looked both angry and very upset. 'You've got to come in now!'

'No!'

'No!'

'Please,' said Carrie. Pleaded, I should say. Jim and I turned to her. 'Please. You've got to.' There was an unmistakable note of anguish in her voice.

'But we're right in the middle of getting the car going!'

'Jim,' I turned to him. 'She means it.'

'You go, then.'

'No!' It was almost a scream. 'Please, please, it's got to be both of you. Please, come in now.'

'Women!' said Jim under his breath, but he got up from where he was crouching by the side of the car and went into the kitchen. I followed him. 'What is it, love?' Jim asked.

'Follow me into the front,' was all she said. It was then that I noticed what was wrong…

'Jim. Do as she says. It's Carrie's life,' I said urgently, and she nodded miserably. All three of us went into the front room. There were two men in there.

'Good girl, Carrie. Well done. Shut the door behind you, there's a dear.' It was Elias Cholmondley. He was standing by the front window of the bed-sitting room, wearing that eternal, hideous smirk on his face. In his arms Elias was holding Adrian, Carrie's daemon, and around Adrian's throat was a length of hessian twine which Elias was twisting in his hand so that it cut deeply into the poor creature's fur.

If that had been all there was to worry about, Jim and I would have leapt across the floor, seized Elias by the neck and squeezed the life out of him before another second had passed. We would have done it with joy, with relish, not caring about what retribution the law might have taken on us. We would have told the jury the truth if we had been brought to trial; and no jury, either then or now, would have convicted us. Not even the sheer horror and outrage that Elias' violation of Carrie and Adrian was causing us, making us shudder with cold despite the sunlight that streamed in through the window, would have made us hesitate for a second.

'Goodsir Peter Joyce.' It was the other man. I knew straightaway, by his voice, that he was Elias' co-conspirator, the man who I had heard in the Kings Arms the Wednesday before. He stood on the other side of the window from Elias, holding his daemon in one arm. She was, I noticed, otak-formed, like Mister Hurst's and for one wild moment I wondered if he was the pawnbroker, come to make his claim to the alethiometer absolute. But no, this man could see perfectly well and, although he was of similar height and build to Mister Hurst, they were not the same. He was much younger, for a start and although his voice nagged me with its familiarity, it was not the pawnbroker's that it reminded me of.

There were two of them, and two of us. We could have charged them and, fuelled by anger, overcome them and rescued Carrie's Adrian. But we did not. For in his free hand the man held, pointed steadily at my chest, the gun. The anbaric gun. The gun that ran off Dust. The gun that Arthur Shire had left in my charge and which, to avoid its being found by Elias Cholmondley, I had given to Jim and Carrie for safe keeping. I felt sick with anger and guilt. I had put my friends in the most appalling danger; and for what?

'You all know what this is,' said the other man. I nodded. 'Good. Then you will, while my friend here keeps his hand on this young lady's daemon, all sit down of the floor over there by the door. Mister Cholmondley and myself will occupy the other side of the room. You will appreciate that by keeping you close together, I make all of you an easy target. Would you go there now please, slowly and with no sudden movements.'

We shuffled around the room to the door and crouched on the floor. Each of us, except Carrie of course, held our daemons tightly in our hands.

'Good.' The stranger was standing by the fireplace now while Elias remained in his place by the window.

'Please,' begged Carrie, 'can I have him back?'

The man thought for a few seconds, then nodded. 'Go on,' he said to Elias.' You'll need your hands free.' Elias untied the cord and let Adrian fall to the floor. He ran over to Carrie and she gathered him up into her arms with a grateful sob.

'Say thank-you to the nice man.' The gun pointed.

'Thank you, Mister Cholmondley,' Carrie gulped.

'Good girl, Carrie,' Elias said again. 'You're learning some manners.' He grinned even more hatefully than before. I could never forget my nightmares of him – the pain, the humiliation – and both Viola and I felt again the agony of our remembered torment.

Through my mind, the thought was running – I have been here before. Yes, before, in Lyra's study, when Miss Morley had stood holding another gun like this one and threatened us with extermination. That time I had charged at my attacker, and had been killed or, alternatively, saved from death by those mysterious armoured figures that had come between me and her, causing her to die instead of me. But that was all in another world, in another time, and here I was, neither properly alive nor dead, facing death yet again.

'Keep still, Peter,' said Viola.

'Excellent advice,' said the man with the gun.

'What's all this about?' asked Jim. 'What do you want?'

'Many things. Things which your pathetic attempts at concealment will not keep from me. I have most of them already, now.'

Most of them.

'I suppose you followed me from Shoe Lane.'

'I suppose we did.'

'And what do you want of mine that you haven't got?'

'Oh, let's see. For a start, there's a theological instrument which properly belongs to the Church, not you.'

I ought to write down here that the man's voice was as calm as an oil-smoothed sea throughout everything that took place in Jim and Carrie's house that terrible afternoon.

'You won't get the alethiometer. It's safe.'

'Won't I? When I'm free to search through all your belongings at my leisure perhaps I'll find out where it is.'

'You'll be lucky.'

'I am lucky. Very lucky.' The man stroked his otak-daemon with his fingers. The gun did not move. Then something happened which I did not, for a moment, understand. There was a flicker of light under the man's fingers and, just for a moment, I saw pale wings fluttering. I blinked.

'Let us see how very lucky I am.' That voice. Who was it? Who?

The fingers moved and again I saw the beat of wings. 'I am this lucky. Watch.' The man threw his arm into the air and the bird – a thrush – which lay upon it darted about the room before settling on his shoulder. The otak had gone.

For seconds Jim, Carrie and I sat paralysed. This was like nothing we had seen before. Only we had, lots of times. Lots of times.

'She… changed,' Jim said at last.

'You are not as stupid as you look, young Jim. Indeed, my fair Lillian has just changed form.'

'But she can't have!'

'Whereas you, fat girl, are every bit as dim as you appear to be.'

'Bastard! Don't talk to Carrie like that.' said Jim. The gun pointed briefly at him, then returned to me. The man's face twitched for a moment.

'It… it ain't right. You're not natural,' said Carrie, with a sob.

'But indeed I am! Large as life, and twice as natural, as they say.'

I'd had time to think. Perhaps my encounter with Miss Morley's fake cat-daemon at the Boreal Foundation office in Cropredy, seven years before, had prepared me for this moment. I was less upset, I think, by the sheer strangeness of this man than Jim and Carrie were. 'I know who you are,' I said.

'You do? Then who am I, Mister Joyce?'

'You are Master James' brother. The one who got into trouble with the Church. The one who has cost us fifteen thousand pounds and nearly lost us the shop too.' I was trembling with anger. 'You have tried to wreck everybody's lives…'

'Oh, no, not everybody's lives. Just your life, Peter Joyce. That is all I want.'

I could see the family resemblance now, but it was as if my master's features had been twisted by some mad puppeteer into a caricature of the man I had known and loved. His kindness and intelligence were gone; and in their place were substituted indifference and cunning. This man would be unpredictable, dangerous and cruel. I would have, somehow, to keep one step ahead of him if I were to save my life, and the lives of Jim and Carrie. Perhaps…

'What are you getting out of this?' I asked Elias. 'He's not natural, you know. You said so yourself.'

'When?'

'In the Kings Arms last Wednesday.'

'How do you know that?'

'You're not the only one who can follow people without being seen, you know.'

Elias glanced over to Mister James. 'He's seen us, Martin!' So that was the man's name. I jumped in.

'Yes, Martin James, I've seen you. Did you think I walked in here without any support from my friends? Do you think that there are only the three of us here in this house?'

Elias looked worried. 'Do you want me to look outside? There could be the constables out there or anyone!'

Martin James slowly shook his head. 'No, Elias. There is nobody else. Peter is trying to bluff us. He's only playing games. Whereas we are not playing any kind of game.'

The sun shone, the clouds sprinted across the sky, the trees hissed in the wind.

'Bad blood, Mistress called it,' I said 'I didn't know what she meant then, but I do now. You're a freak, Martin James, with your unsettled daemon.' I remembered what Lyra had said about Miss Morley, all those years ago. 'You're not a real person. You have no sense of moral truth. You've not grown up.'

'But I have, Peter Joyce.' Martin James smiled sardonically. 'I've grown up special. Do you know why your daemon doesn't settle until you have passed puberty?'

'It's part of growing up, like I said. Everybody's does it.'

'Except for yours,' Jim interrupted.

'Shut up. I won't warn you again.' That twitch of the face… I prayed that Jim would have the sense to keep quiet.

'You lay off him,' said Carrie. Martin James ignored her and turned his attention to me..

'You are so ordinary, Peter Joyce, so conventional of thought, so dull. What I was asking was; why do children's daemons have the ability to change form, when so-called adults' do not?'

'I… I don't know.'

'Then I will tell you. What is it to be a child? What is its essence? It is this – it is freedom. Freedom to love, hate and act with a joy, an abandonment that adults can only dimly remember, if at all. Do you remember it?'

'Sort of.'

'"Sort of." No, you don't. That freedom was taken from you when your daemon settled. You became inhibited and slow in your actions. You lost that freedom. You fell from grace.

'I did not lose it. I did not Fall. I can do what I like, when I like, and my dear Lillian will not prevent me. That's one advantage I have over you, Peter Joyce. But there's another reason why your daemon can change form when you are still a child, and it is this: survival. A fixed daemon is vulnerable to physical attack. A daemon that can change form at will can escape from danger more easily than one that is constrained to only one shape. Attack me now, and my Lillian will simply fly away to safety, whereas the girl's dog-daemon was easily caught and held by my friend Elias here. This is God's way of ensuring that children will live to reach that state which some call maturity and become breeders, able to produce children of their own. See!'

And Lillian blurred in his hand, changing shape – eagle, otak, mouse, butterfly, cat, otak, dormouse, hamster, otak.

'She prefers this form, as it happens.'

I felt sick. Not just because Martin James was so alien, but because I could clearly see that he would be absolutely ruthless in his dealings with us. He would not be persuaded, or cajoled, or bullied. Have you ever tried to make a child do something he would rather not? Have you ever faced a child's absolute determination? It is only the difference in size and strength between us that allows we adults to dominate our children. Now imagine a child in the body, and with the strength of, a fully-grown man and you may begin to see how formidable our adversary was, and how much he frightened us.

'What do you want, Martin James?'

'Your life, as I said.'

'Kill me, then.'

'Oh, no. I'm not going to kill you. That would be murder.'

'Are you going to have him do it?' I indicated Elias, still standing by the window.

'And have his blood on my, excuse me, conscience? That would be a grave sin, Peter Joyce. A mortal sin.'

Elias looked disappointed.

'We both want you to die, Peter Joyce. The good Elias Cholmondley; because you have insulted him and treated him like a servant for all these years. Me, because you stand in the way of my inheriting the well-found business of James and James. And also because you stand in the way of my masters recovering the alethiometer and this useful weapon.'

'Your masters?'

'God's Holy Church, yes.'

'But Mistress James said you got into trouble with the Church! She called it an ecclesiastical matter.'

'And so it was. A Papal indulgence for my, er, difference, did not come cheap. You would not have had me excommunicated, or burned at the stake, would you?'

'I certainly would, you bastard freak,' said Jim, suddenly. 'You creep, you changeling, you monster, you abomination, you nasty piece of shit…'

'No Jim!' Carrie cried, anguished. 'Don't make him angry!'

She was too late. The muzzle of the gun moved from me over to Jim and Martin James squeezed the trigger. A lance of the purest indigo fire blazed from the barrel for the merest fraction of a second. A fraction, I say, but it was enough to blind us all, except Martin James, who had, I suppose, closed his eyes when he fired. Jim made no sound, but I felt him slump against the wall next to me. The horrible smell of roasted human flesh insinuated itself into my nostrils and I retched. I dared not move – none of us did. There we sat in a row up against the base of the wall – Viola and me, Carrie and Adrian, and Jim. Carrie screamed.

Oh no! Tattycoram!

Ah – but there she was, lying in Jim's lap. Martin James had not killed him, then. Carrie flung her arms around him and her Adrian jumped into Jim's lap, next to Tattycoram, and snuggled down with her.

Martin James' voice was unchanged – calm, deliberate, assured and in full control, despite the dreadful thing he had just done.

'Oh dear. My hasty temper. Still, can't be helped. It'll be a useful lesson in politeness for you, fat girl, and you, Peter Joyce. I see that the impetuous young man's shoulder is somewhat charred. It will probably heal in time, given the appropriate medical attention. And see! This weapon is in full working order. I congratulate you, Peter Joyce, on looking after it so well for me. Now, let's get back to business. I have this gun – it was used in the Great Rebellion by the way, by one of the heretic Asriel's henchmen. It is wonderful to be able to acquire it for the use of Mother Church. It is believed to have a rather useful property, you see. That is; in addition to its ability to silence dirty mouths.'

Carrie was rigid in shock. She had not yet begun to weep. Neither had I. Martin James pointed the gun straight at my heart.

'Now – where is the alethiometer?'

'Tell him, Peter,' said Viola.

'I haven't got it.' The gun twitched.

'Who has it, then?'

I hesitated. Mister Hurst had been very good to us. Was betrayal any way to repay him for his kindness?

'Who?'

'If you shoot me, you'll never know.'

'Why do you think I would shoot you?'

Carrie. He would hurt Carrie, too. I knew bitter despair then, sour in the stomach and foul-tasting in the mouth. If only Lyra had been here, as she was before when we faced Miss Morley! She would have known what to say and do so much better than I did.

'It's at Hurst's the pawnbroker's. The ticket is in my wallet, back at the shop.'

'Lillian?' The otak-daemon leapt from Martin James' arm and ran over to where we sat. She grabbed at Viola with her barbed claws, pulling her head around and forcing her to look directly into her eyes. I cried out with the pain – the claws digging deep into our flesh – that it gave us, and the horror of the unexpected contact with Martin James' daemon.

'Good, Peter Joyce. Very, very good. You are telling me the truth. Good heavens, if it weren't that you're a witness to what I just did to our mutual friend Jim I'd almost be tempted to let you go with no more than a simple ticking-off. What a pity! Come here now, Lillian.'

Moth-formed, Lillian returned to Martin James' arm. I was shaking with fear and disgust.

'Splendid. Super. Well, Elias, that only leaves one little thing left to do, and then we can go home. I shall pop in to Shoe Lane first to have a few words with my sister-in-law, I think, about a little matter of an inheritance.'

'Can I kill him now, Martin?'

'No, Elias, you silly boy. I told you. We are not murderers. Neither of us is going to kill Peter Joyce. Neither of us is going to need to kill him. He is going to save us that trouble by killing himself.'