Serafina Pekkala looked around carefully and saw someone else in the room as welclass="underline" a thin-faced man with a frog daemon, seated to one side at a table laden with leather-bound books and loose piles of yellowed paper. She thought at first that he was a clerk or a secretary, until she saw what he was doing: he was intently gazing at a golden instrument like a large watch or a compass, stopping every minute or so to note what he found. Then he would open one of the books, search laboriously through the index, and look up a reference before writing that down too and turning back to the instrument.
Serafina looked back to the discussion at the table, because she heard the word witch.
«She knows something about the child,» said one of the clerics. «She confessed that she knows something. All the witches know something about her.»
«I am wondering what Mrs. Coulter knows,» said the Cardinal. «Is there something she should have told us before, I wonder?»
«You will have to speak more plainly than that,» said Mrs. Coulter icily. «You forget I am a woman, Your Eminence, and thus not so subtle as a prince of the Church. What is this truth that I should have known about the child?»
The Cardinal's expression was full of meaning, but he said nothing. There was a pause, and then another cleric said almost apologetically:
«It seems that there is a prophecy. It concerns the child, you see, Mrs. Coulter. All the signs have been fulfilled. The circumstances of her birth, to begin with. The gyptians know something about her too — they speak of her in terms of witch oil and marsh fire, uncanny, you see — hence her success in leading the gyptian men to Bolvangar. And then there's her astonishing feat of deposing the bear-king lofur Raknison — this is no ordinary child. Fra Pavel can tell us more, perhaps….»
He glanced at the thin-faced man reading the alethiometer, who blinked, rubbed his eyes, and looked at Mrs. Coulter.
«You may be aware that this is the only alethiometer left, apart from the one in the child's possession,» he said. «All the others have been acquired and destroyed, by order of the Magisterium. I learn from this instrument that the child was given hers by the Master of Jordan College, and that she learned to read it by herself, and that she can use it without the books of readings. If it were possible to disbelieve the alethiometer, I would do so, because to use the instrument without the books is simply inconceivable to me. It takes decades of diligent study to reach any sort of understanding. She began to read it within a few weeks of acquiring it, and now she has an almost complete mastery. She is like no human Scholar I can imagine.»
«Where is she now, Fra Pavel?» said the Cardinal.
«In the other world,» said Fra Pavel. «It is already late.»
«The witch knows!» said another man, whose muskrat daemon gnawed unceasingly at a pencil. «It's all in place but for the witch's testimony! I say we should torture her again!»
«What is this prophecy?» demanded Mrs. Coulter, who had been getting increasingly angry. «How dare you keep it from me?»
Her power over them was visible. The golden monkey glared around the table, and none of them could look him in the face.
Only the Cardinal did not flinch. His daemon, a macaw, lifted a foot and scratched her head.
«The witch has hinted at something extraordinary,» the Cardinal said. «I dare not believe what I think it means. If it's true, it places on us the most terrible responsibility men and women have ever faced. But I ask you again, Mrs. Coulter — what do you know of the child and her father?»
Mrs. Coulter had lost her flush. Her face was chalk-white with fury.
«How dare you interrogate me?» she spat. «And how dare you keep from me what you've learned from the witch? And, finally, how dare you assume that I am keeping something from you? D'you think I'm on her side? Or perhaps you think I'm on her father's side? Perhaps you think I should be tortured like the witch. Well, we are all under your command, Your Eminence. You have only to snap your fingers and you could have me torn apart. But if you searched every scrap of flesh for an answer, you wouldn't find one, because I know nothing of this prophecy, nothing whatever. And I demand that you tell me what you know. My child, my own child, conceived in sin and born in shame, but my child nonetheless, and you keep from me what I have every right to know!»
«Please,» said another of the clerics nervously. «Please, Mrs. Coulter, the witch hasn't spoken yet; we shall learn more from her. Cardinal Sturrock himself says that she's only hinted at it.»
«And suppose the witch doesn't reveal it?» Mrs. Coulter said. «What then? We guess, do we? We shiver and quail and guess?»
Fra Pavel said, «No, because that is the question I am now preparing to put to the alethiometer. We shall find the answer, whether from the witch or from the books of readings.»
«And how long will that take?»
He raised his eyebrows wearily and said, «A considerable time. It is an immensely complex question.»
«But the witch would tell us at once,» said Mrs. Coulter.
And she rose to her feet. As if in awe of her, most of the men did too. Only the Cardinal and Fra Pavel remained seated. Serafina Pekkala stood back, fiercely holding herself unseen. The golden monkey was gnashing his teeth, and all his shimmering fur was standing on end.
Mrs. Coulter swung him up to her shoulder.
«So let us go and ask her,» she said.
She turned and swept out into the corridor. The men hastened to follow her, jostling and shoving past Serafina Pekkala, who had only time to stand quickly aside, her mind in a turmoil. The last to go was the Cardinal.
Serafina took a few seconds to compose herself, because her agitation was beginning to make her visible. Then she followed the clerics down the corridor and into a smaller room, bare and white and hot, where they were all clustered around the dreadful figure in the center: a witch bound tightly to a steel chair, with agony on her gray face and her legs twisted and broken.
Mrs. Coulter stood over her. Serafina took up a position by the door, knowing that she could not stay unseen for long; this was too hard.
«Tell us about the child, witch,» said Mrs. Coulter.
«No!»
«You will suffer.»
«I have suffered enough.»
«Oh, there is more suffering to come. We have a thousand years of experience in this Church of ours. We can draw out your suffering endlessly. Tell us about the child,» Mrs. Coulter said, and reached down to break one of the witch's fingers. It snapped easily.
The witch cried out, and for a clear second Serafina Pekkala became visible to everyone, and one or two of the clerics looked at her, puzzled and fearful; but then she controlled herself again, and they turned back to the torture.
Mrs. Coulter was saying, «If you don't answer I'll break another finger, and then another. What do you know about the child? Tell me.»
«All right! Please, please, no more!»
«Answer then.»
There came another sickening crack, and this time a flood of sobbing broke from the witch. Serafina Pekkala could hardly hold herself back. Then came these words, in a shriek:
«No, no! I'll tell you! I beg you, no more! The child who was to come … The witches knew who she was before you did…. We found out her name….»
«We know her name. What name do you mean?»
«Her true name! The name of her destiny!»
«What is this name? Tell me!» said Mrs. Coulter.
«No… no…»
«And how? Found out how?»
«There was a test…. If she was able to pick out one spray of cloud-pine from many others, she would be the child who would come, and it happened at our consul's house at Trollesund, when the child came with the gyptian men…. The child with the bear…»