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Cardinal.
    “In the other world,” said Fra Pavel. “It is already late.”
    “The witch knows!” said another man, whose muskrat dæmon 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 dæmon, 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,