Jordan College was the grandest and richest of all the colleges in

Oxford. It was probably the largest, too, though no one knew for

certain. The buildings, which were grouped around three irregular

quadrangles, dated from every period from the early Middle Ages to the

mid-eighteenth century. It had never been planned; it had grown

piecemeal, with past and present overlapping at every spot, and the

final effect was one of jumbled and squalid grandeur. Some part was

always about to fall down, and for five generations the same family,

the Parslows, had been employed full time by the College as masons and

scaffolders. The present Mr. Parslow was teaching his son the craft;

the two of them and their three workmen would scramble like

industrious termites over the scaffolding they’d erected at the corner

of the library, or over the roof of the chapel, and haul up bright new

blocks of stone or rolls of shiny lead or balks of timber.

The College owned farms and estates all over England. It was said that

you could walk from Oxford to Bristol in one direction and London in

the other, and never leave Jordan land. In every part of the kingdom

there were dye works and brick kilns, forests and atomcraft works that

paid rent to Jordan, and every quarter-day the bursar and his clerks

would tot it all up, announce the total to Concilium, and order a pair

of swans for the feast. Some of the money was put by for reinvestment

-Concilium had just approved the purchase of an office block in

Manchester-and the rest was used to pay the Scholars’ modest stipends

and the wages of the servants (and the Parslows, and the other dozen

or so families of craftsmen and traders who served the College), to

keep the wine cellar richly filled, to buy books and anbarographs for

the immense library that filled one side of the Melrose Quadrangle and

extended, burrow-like, for several floors beneath the ground, and, not

least, to buy the latest philosophical apparatus to equip the chapel.

It was important to keep the chapel up to date, because Jordan College

had no rival, either in Europe or in New France, as a center of

experimental theology. Lyra knew that much, at least. She was proud of

her College’s eminence, and liked to boast of it to the various

urchins and ragamuffins she played with by the canal or the claybeds;

and she regarded visiting Scholars and eminent professors from

elsewhere with pitying scorn, because they didn’t belong to Jordan and

so must know less, poor things, than the humblest of Jordan’s under-

Scholars.

As for what experimental theology was, Lyra had no more idea than the

urchins. She had formed the notion that it was concerned with magic,

with the movements of the stars and planets, with tiny particles of

matter, but that was guesswork, really. Probably the stars had daemons

just as humans did, and experimental theology involved talking to

them. Lyra imagined the Chaplain speaking loftily, listening to the

star daemons’ remarks, and then nodding judiciously or shaking his

head in regret. But what might be passing between them, she couldn’t

conceive.

Nor was she particularly interested. In many ways Lyra was a

barbarian. What she liked best was clambering over the College roofs

with Roger, the kitchen boy who was her particular friend, to spit

plum stones on the heads of passing Scholars or to hoot like owls

outside a window where a tutorial was going on, or racing through the

narrow streets, or stealing apples from the market, or waging war.

Just as she was unaware of the hidden currents of politics running

below the surface of College affairs, so the Scholars, for their part,

would have been unable to see the rich seething stew of alliances and

enmities and feuds and treaties which was a child’s life in Oxford.

Children playing together: how pleasant to see! What could be more

innocent and charming?

In fact, of course, Lyra and her peers were engaged in deadly warfare.

There were several wars running at once. The children (young servants,

and the children of servants, and Lyra) of one college waged war on

those of another. Lyra had once been captured by the children of

Gabriel College, and Roger and their friends Hugh Lovat and Simon

Parslow had raided the place to rescue her, creeping through the

Precentor’s garden and gathering armfuls of small stone-hard plums to

throw at the kidnappers. There were twenty-four colleges, which

allowed for endless permutations of alliance and betrayal. But the

enmity between the colleges was forgotten in a moment when the town

children attacked a colleger: then all the collegers banded together

and went into battle against the town-ies.This rivalry was hundreds of

years old, and very deep and satisfying.
Jordan College was the grandest and richest of all the colleges in

Oxford. It was probably the largest, too, though no one knew for

certain. The buildings, which were grouped around three irregular

quadrangles, dated from every period from the early Middle Ages to the

mid-eighteenth century. It had never been planned; it had grown

piecemeal, with past and present overlapping at every spot, and the

final effect was one of jumbled and squalid grandeur. Some part was

always about to fall down, and for five generations the same family,

the Parslows, had been employed full time by the College as masons and

scaffolders. The present Mr. Parslow was teaching his son the craft;

the two of them and their three workmen would scramble like

industrious termites over the scaffolding they’d erected at the corner

of the library, or over the roof of the chapel, and haul up bright new

blocks of stone or rolls of shiny lead or balks of timber.

The College owned farms and estates all over England. It was said that

you could walk from Oxford to Bristol in one direction and London in

the other, and never leave Jordan land. In every part of the kingdom

there were dye works and brick kilns, forests and atomcraft works that

paid rent to Jordan, and every quarter-day the bursar and his clerks

would tot it all up, announce the total to Concilium, and order a pair

of swans for the feast. Some of the money was put by for reinvestment

-Concilium had just approved the purchase of an office block in

Manchester-and the rest was used to pay the Scholars’ modest stipends

and the wages of the servants (and the Parslows, and the other dozen

or so families of craftsmen and traders who served the College), to

keep the wine cellar richly filled, to buy books and anbarographs for

the immense library that filled one side of the Melrose Quadrangle and

extended, burrow-like, for several floors beneath the ground, and, not

least, to buy the latest philosophical apparatus to equip the chapel.

It was important to keep the chapel up to date, because Jordan College

had no rival, either in Europe or in New France, as a center of

experimental theology. Lyra knew that much, at least. She was proud of

her College’s eminence, and liked to boast of it to the various

urchins and ragamuffins she played with by the canal or the claybeds;

and she regarded visiting Scholars and eminent professors from

elsewhere with pitying scorn, because they didn’t belong to Jordan and

so must know less, poor things, than the humblest of Jordan’s under-

Scholars.

As for what experimental theology was, Lyra had no more idea than the

urchins. She had formed the notion that it was concerned with magic,

with the movements of the stars and planets, with tiny particles of

matter, but that was guesswork, really. Probably the stars had daemons

just as humans did, and experimental theology involved talking to

them. Lyra imagined the Chaplain speaking loftily, listening to the

star daemons’ remarks, and then nodding judiciously or shaking his

head in regret. But what might be passing between them, she couldn’t

conceive.

Nor was she particularly interested. In many ways Lyra was a

barbarian. What she liked best was clambering over the College roofs

with Roger, the kitchen boy who was her particular friend, to spit

plum stones on the heads of passing Scholars or to hoot like owls

outside a window where a tutorial was going on, or racing through the

narrow streets, or stealing apples from the market, or waging war.

Just as she was unaware of the hidden currents of politics running

below the surface of College affairs, so the Scholars, for their part,

would have been unable to see the rich seething stew of alliances and

enmities and feuds and treaties which was a child’s life in Oxford.

Children playing together: how pleasant to see! What could be more

innocent and charming?

In fact, of course, Lyra and her peers were engaged in deadly warfare.

There were several wars running at once. The children (young servants,

and the children of servants, and Lyra) of one college waged war on

those of another. Lyra had once been captured by the children of

Gabriel College, and Roger and their friends Hugh Lovat and Simon

Parslow had raided the place to rescue her, creeping through the

Precentor’s garden and gathering armfuls of small stone-hard plums to

throw at the kidnappers. There were twenty-four colleges, which

allowed for endless permutations of alliance and betrayal. But the

enmity between the colleges was forgotten in a momentrunescape gold farming when the town

children attacked a colleger: then all the collegers banded together

and went into battle against the town-ies.This rivalry was hundreds of

years old, and very deep and satisfying.