La Belle Sauvage

by Philip Pullman

thumb|The Trout Inn

thumb|Ruins of Godstow Abbey Eleven-year-old Malcolm Polstead and his dæmon Asta live three miles from Oxford. Malcolm works alongside fifteen-year-old Alice in his parents' inn, The Trout, close to the Priory of St. Rosamund where Malcolm helps the nuns with maintenance and cooking. One day, three men, led by the former Lord Chancellor, Lord Nugent, arrive at the inn and question Malcolm about the priory. Shortly afterwards, an infant aged around six months named Lyra arrives in the care of the nuns.

Walking near the river, Malcolm sees a failed attempt at a dead drop and finds a secret message. The intended recipient is Hannah, an Oxford academic specialising in the alethiometer who is secretly helping an organisation known as 'Oakley Street' in its fight against the theocratic extremism of the Magisterium. Using the alethiometer Hannah finds Malcolm and retrieves her message. The two strike up a friendship in which Malcolm assists her intelligence-gathering and she provides him with books to read from her own library.

The Magisterium's influence grows. At Malcolm's school, students are encouraged to join the League of St. Alexander, and to report anybody - including teachers - who contradicts the Magisterium's religious views. Coram van Texel, also working for Oakley Street, is investigating the activities of Marisa Coulter in Sweden. He discovers that she is looking into the Rusakov field and has asked an alethiometrist to find her daughter Lyra's location. Coram is followed by a man with a malevolent hyena dæmon and fights him, badly wounding the dæmon's front leg. Lyra's father, Lord Asriel, visits the inn and Malcolm takes him to visit Lyra. To escape his pursuers Asriel borrows Malcolm's canoe, La Belle Sauvage. As a token of thanks, he returns it significantly improved. Coram warns Malcolm of an impending flood, but Malcolm is unable to convince people to act. A man named Gerard Bonneville arrives at the inn, accompanied by a three-legged hyena dæmon, and Malcolm sees him snooping around the priory.

Heavy rain starts to fall. Alice warns Malcolm about Bonneville, whom they see trying to take the baby Lyra. As the flood arrives, Malcolm and Alice rescue the child and escape down river in La Belle Sauvage. They intend to stop at Jordan College to seek academic sanctuary for Lyra, but are prevented by the ferocity of the floodwaters. Instead, they head to London, where Lord Asriel lives, pursued by Bonneville; both Oakley Street and the Magisterium are also searching for them. They narrowly escape from Bonneville when Malcolm stabs him in the thigh and Alice shoots his dæmon, shattering her other leg. They take his heavy backpack. Shortly afterwards, they meet George Boatwright, a former patron of The Trout who has been in hiding with a small community since running foul of the Church. Their arrival is reported to The League of St. Alexander by one of the boys in the group, and Lyra is captured and taken to an orphanage run by a convent. Malcolm enters through the scullery and rescues Lyra.

The children have two more mystical stops in the canoe. In the first, a fairy woman named Diania gives them food and feeds Lyra, whom she claims and intends to keep. In Bonneville's pack, they find his scientific papers describing the Rusakov field and an alethiometer in a puzzle box. They use the box to help them escape by tricking Diania and winning a challenge to keep Lyra. In the second, they find themselves in an elegant garden where a party is being held. Nearby, behind a wall of mist, are all the things the partygoers wish to forget. Their onward passage is blocked by a pair of massive lock gates controlled by a river giant, whom they persuade to open the gates, pretending to have authorisation from the King. The canoe ends up at a mausoleum, where Bonneville attacks again but is killed by Malcolm.

Alice, Malcolm, and Lyra finally make it to London, closely followed by the forces of the Magisterium. Lord Nugent and Lord Asriel rescue them from La Belle Sauvage, which is breaking up, and Lord Asriel takes them by gyrocopter to Jordan College where he obtains academic sanctuary for Lyra and leaves her in the care of the Master. Malcolm secretly places Bonneville's alethiometer with Lyra's possessions.