Lyra whispered, “Did you see that, Pan?”
“Of course I did! Now hurry out, before the Steward comes!”
But as he spoke, there came the sound of a bell ringing once from the far end of the hall.
“That's the Steward's bell!” said Lyra. “I thought we had more time than that.”
Pantalaimon fluttered swiftly to the hall door, and swiftly back.
“The Steward's there already,” he said. “And you can't get out of the other door…”
The other door, the one the Master had entered and left by, opened onto the busy corridor between the library and the Scholars' common room. At this time of day it was thronged with men pulling on their gowns for dinner, or hurrying to leave papers or briefcases in the common room before moving nto the hall. Lyra had planned to leave the way she'd come, banking on another few minutes before the Steward's bell rang.
And if she hadn't seen the Master tipping that powder into the wine, she might have risked the Steward's anger, or hoped to avoid being noticed in the busy corridor. But she was confused, and that made her hesitate.
Then she heard heavy footsteps on the dais. The Steward was coming to make sure the Retiring Room was ready for the Scholars' poppy and wine after dinner. Lyra darted to the oak wardrobe, opened it, and hid inside, pulling the door shut just as the Steward entered. She had no fear for Pantalaimon: the room was somber colored, and he could always creep under a chair.
She heard the Steward's heavy wheezing, and through the crack where the door hadn't quite shut she saw him adjust the pipes in the rack by the smoking stand and cast a glance over the decanters and glasses. Then he smoothed the hair over his ears with both palms and said something to his daemon. He was a servant, so she was a dog; but a superior servant, so a superior dog. In fact, she had the form of a red setter. The daemon seemed suspicious, and cast around as if she'd sensed an intruder, but didn't make for the wardrobe, to Lyra's intense relief. Lyra was afraid of the Steward, who had twice beaten her.
Lyra heard a tiny whisper; obviously Pantalaimon had squeezed in beside her.
“We're going to have to stay here now. Why don't you listen to me?”
She didn't reply until the Steward had left. It was his job to supervise the waiting at the high table; she could hear the Scholars coming into the hall, the murmur of voices, the shuffle of feet.
“It's a good thing I didn't,” she whispered back. “We wouldn't have seen the Master put poison in the wine otherwise. Pan, that was the Tokay he asked the Butler about! They're going to kill Lord Asriel!”
“You don't know it's poison.”
“Oh, of course it is. Don't you remember, he made the Butler leave the room before he did it? If it was innocent, it wouldn't have mattered the Butler seeing. And I know there's something going on—something political. The servants have been talking about it for days. Pan, we could prevent a murder!”
“I've never heard such nonsense,” he said shortly. “How do you think you're going to keep still for four hours in this poky wardrobe? Let me go and look in the corridor. I'll tell you when it's clear.”
He fluttered from her shoulder, and she saw his little shadow appear in the crack of light.
“It's no good, Pan, I'm staying,” she said. “There's another robe or something here. I'll put that on the floor and make myself comfortable. I've just got to see what they do.”
She had been crouching. She carefully stood up, feeling around for the clothes hangers in order not to make a noise, and found that the wardrobe was bigger than she'd thought. There were several academic robes and hoods, some with fur around them, most faced with silk.
“I wonder if these are all the Master's?” she whispered. “When he gets honorary degrees from other places, perhaps they give him fancy robes and he keeps them here for dressing-up….Pan, do you really think it's not poison in that wine?”
“No,” he said. “I think it is, like you do. And I think it's none of our business. And I think it would be the silliest thing you've ever done in a lifetime of silly things to interfere. It's nothing to do with us.”
“Don't be stupid,” Lyra said. “I can't sit in here and watch them give him poison!”
“Come somewhere else, then.”
“You're a coward, Pan.”
“Certainly I am. May I ask what you intend to do? Are you going to leap out and snatch the glass from his trembling fingers? What did you have in mind?”
“I didn't have anything in mind, and well you know it,” she snapped quietly. “But now I've seen what the Master did, I haven't got any choice. You're supposed to know about conscience, aren't you? How can I just go and sit in the library or somewhere and twiddle my thumbs, knowing what's going to happen? I don't intend to do that, I promise you.”
“This is what you wanted all the time,” he said after a moment. “You wanted to hide in here and watch. Why didn't I realize that before?”
“All right, I do,” she said. “Everyone knows they get up to something secret. They have a ritual or something. And I just wanted to know what it was.”
“It's none of your business! If they want to enjoy their little secrets you should just feel superior and let them get on with it. Hiding and spying is for silly children.”
“Exactly what I knew you'd say. Now stop nagging.”
The two of them sat in silence for a while, Lyra uncomfortable on the hard floor of the wardrobe and Pantalaimon self-righteously twitching his temporary antennae on one of the robes. Lyra felt a mixture of thoughts contending in her head, and she would have liked nothing better than to share them with her daemon, but she was proud too. Perhaps she should try to clear them up without his help.