“Welcome,” the monk said.
“Gomchen Yongden?” Aunt Hilda asked.
The monk inclined his head.
“How,” I muttered. “I … I … looked there and—”
Yongden murmured: “I did not wish you to see me.”
“Impossible!” Champlon barked. More to himself than the rest of us he added, uncertainly, “It is a tricks. A cheap conjuring tricks.”
The monk shrugged.
“How do you make such tricks?” Champlon blurted.
The same smile flickered over Yongden’s face and his hands danced briefly in the air. “All this is a painted veil.”
“I stood right there,” I said, pointing to a spot a couple of feet away from Yongden.
He didn’t answer, but smiled, showing us a mouth with more gaps than teeth.
“Who did this to you?” Aunt Hilda asked, changing the subject. She looked around, at the smashed and ripped things, the marks of fire on the walls. “It’s outrageous!”
Yongden shrugged.
“Who were they?”
“Ghosts,” Yongden replied.
“Ghosts?” Aunt Hilda asked uncertainly.
“Men with no souls. Ghosts.”
“What did they look like, these ghosts?” I interrupted.
“White men, white clothes. When they not find me they say, ‘Destroy everything.’” Yongden paused a moment, reflecting. “They strange men, some type that I not met before. When I look their eyes, I saw nothing. Something gone away from them. They were people, yes, but without a soul.”
“People without souls,” I murmured, half unconsciously. The words brought to mind one image, the Baker Brothers. Their blank eyes, blank faces. They had given me the same feeling; their eyes had nothing, nothing, behind them. All of us were quiet for a moment, for the thought of people without souls blew a chill into us.
I sighed, for whatever we did it seemed the Bakers were there, ahead of us. They knew what all this was about, while I was like a blind man, groping in a dark passage. Well, at least one thing was perfectly plain: they were seeking Shambala. The Bakers would not be trudging through snow and ice; facing death by exposure and avalanche, unless there was something of immense value at the end of their quest.
Abruptly Aunt Hilda snapped into a businesslike mode and was asking Yongden if he would accompany us to Tibet as a guide. “We have heard you know these mountains better than anyone,” she pleaded. She was all ready to wheedle and flatter, do anything to persuade this strange shaven-headed hermit, but he forestalled her.
“Show me your map,” he said simply, holding out his hand to me. “I guide you.”
Aunt Hilda looked at Champlon and then she looked at me. No one had mentioned a map. A bolt of fear flashed through us all.
My hands stayed stubbornly still. I looked the monk in the eye without speaking.
He didn’t speak either. He held out his hand, perfectly still.
“Kit,” Aunt Hilda said.
“No. No, I won’t.”
“Kit, give him the map or I’ll—”
I meant to go on refusing but that monk’s eyes were burning inside me and I found my hands moving to my pocket taking out the map and handing it over. I burned with rage at myself but at the same time my hands were perfectly passive and normal.
“This is our only map,” Aunt Hilda said, as Yongden examined it. “Not much of one. Doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
“This is the map,” he said. His wrinkled hands turned over the torn parchment, so lightly his fingers hardly seemed to touch the surface. He was looking at the marking that said:
Abominable Cave
Hope and glory to those who undertake this—
and then like most of the inscriptions it ended, for the rest had been snatched away by that thieving monkey. The monk’s eyes roved over the page and I felt horribly possessive. I was hurt and raging inside. He had no right.
It was my map. I was meant to have that map.
I held out my hand for it but Yongden shook his head. “I keep.” He rolled it up carefully and put it in some unseen pocket in his loose saffron gown.
“But—” I began but Aunt Hilda dug me savagely in the ribs.
“You go now and I meet you before border,” Yongden said. “At the parting of the paths, you will see a brown-gray rock. It look like bear cub. There I be.”
I was about to protest hotly at his taking my map—my map. That piece of torn parchment and I were deeply, mysteriously connected. Its delicate markings, its mountain paths and gaping ravines, flowed quicksilver in my veins. It had become my guide and mentor. Suddenly, I was struck by the conviction that this hermit, for all his shaven head, was a common thief.
I glared at him, putting all my anger into my eyes. He barely seemed to notice.
“You do us great honor, Gomchen Yongden, to accompany our journey. We offer humble thanks and salutes. When shall we meet you?” Aunt Hilda asked.
“When you are there. So will I.”
With that we took our leave, the grown-ups practically pushing me out of the cave. I was so fuming inside I could barely bring myself to put one foot in front of the other. Outside I turned on Aunt Hilda and Champlon.
“Well,” I said. “I expect we will never see hair nor hide of Mister Yongden again.”
Aunt Hilda glared at me. “You just don’t understand, do you?”
“Understand what?”
“Frostbite. Savage border guards. Temperatures of 30 degrees below freezing. Avalanches. Glaciers. The whole kit and caboodle.”
“I know about that.”
“You read a few story books and you think you know everything,” she scoffed. “The reality, my little dreamer, is very different. If we are to have any chance—any chance whatsoever—of getting into Tibet, that strange man is our only hope.”
Champlon agreed. “’E is our lifeline in these mountains.”
“So you see where this stands,” Aunt Hilda snapped and turning she began to tramp down the rocky mountain. “We need him a far sight more than we need some pesky child who always thinks she is right.”
She shouted over her shoulder, as a parting shot: “I’ve already told you. Talk less and listen more! Then you might become half-bearable.”
Why was Aunt Hilda suddenly being so nasty? She was a big bully. For a moment I wanted to pick up a piece of wood and throw it at her. But to be honest, I didn’t dare. Tears spurted in my eyes. I sat down on the ground with a thump, my thoughts in a whirl. My map stolen, my stomach churning. I felt sick and hot. To cap it all Aunt Hilda was so beastly. How dare she treat me like some ninny of a girl? How dare she? How dare she?
For some time I sat like this, tears hot on my face. I felt very alone, because my map had so occupied my imagination it had given me stomach for this whole journey. So I sobbed, till the pain eased a little and the sun had crawled up the sky. My tears were finally spent and my sheepskin coat was covered in soot. Never mind Aunt Hilda—or, though even the thought hurt me—my map. I had to go on with the plan. We had to meet the others at the rendezvous point, or risk destroying our elaborate precautions for putting the villagers off our scent. I would play along with her plans—and see if Yongden really did meet us at “bear-cub rock.” Sighing, I got to my feet and scrambled down the path my aunt and Champlon had taken.
But when I got to the bend in the path, my aunt and Gaston Champlon had vanished.
Chapter Nineteen
I hurtled down the mountain. My heart was thumping away madly, an awful sick fear welling up in my mouth. Where on earth were my aunt and Champlon? They couldn’t have abandoned me on a mountain, not over a tiff. By the time I reached the place where we had left the donkeys, I was finding it difficult to breathe in the thin air and my calves had taken a pounding.
Thank goodness Tara was waiting where I had left her, tethered to a fir tree. But where were Champlon and Aunt Hilda’s donkeys? We were in a ravine. To the left of us was a dizzying precipice, a sheer dr
op down to the valley below. To the right a craggy and impassable wall of grayish-white rocks, studded with trees and hardy grass. Up and down the mountain there was no sign of the two of them. Nothing whatsoever.
So, they thought they could give me the slip did they? Typical of my aunt. Well, I would jump on Tara and ride hard to catch them up.
“Tara! Tara!” I called striding toward my donkey.
Tara made no answering whinny. She was oddly mute, as if she didn’t recognize my voice. This was all wrong. Tara always greeted me with delight, charming me so she would receive some tasty titbit.
“Tara what’s wrong!” I wailed, coming up to her from behind, placing my arm round her neck. “You silly old donkey! I had no choice. You would have fallen down the mountain!”
My dear donkey made a movement, the tiniest of shrugs. I looked into her eyes and in a rush realized everything was wrong. Her eyes were covered with a white film. Were no longer seeing. Worse, when I glanced down horror awaited me. Tara had a horizontal gash in her throat, which was dripping red. Stupidly, frozen into panic, I watched her blood drop on to the earth.
Someone had cut her throat.
I howled, throwing back my head, scaring a flock of crows which squawked in a nearby tree. I flung my arms around her neck. Hugs, tears, could do no good. My donkey, if not already dead, was very nearly there. All I received for my pains was a crimson blotch on my pale coat. Tara’s life was draining away, drop by drop. Her eyes were filmed over, nearly gone.
I had no choice.
I drew my howdah pistol and looked away. The shot scared the crows. They erupted like black fire from the tree and scattered into the sky. When I could bring myself, finally, to look, Tara was no more. In her place was a pile of flesh on the rocks. Without another glance I walked away, hurrying as fast as I could.
I was unsure what to do. Should I go back and tell the monk what had happened? That thieving monk? Or should I make haste to find my friends? In the end it was quite clear. With all his sorcerer’s tricks, Yongden could look after himself. My friends could not. I had to warn them. You see, Tara’s murder was a clear warning. The Bakers’ gang had found my donkey. In all likelihood, they had spirited my aunt and Champlon away.
Shivering in the cold, despite my furry coat, it took me a full forty-five minutes of hard tramping to reach the rendezvous point. I was obviously late, for Waldo, Isaac and Rachel were waiting with our convoy of donkeys and porters, almost stamping the ground in their impatience. As soon as I saw them, I realized something else was wrong. They were cross. I knew by the way they moved apart when they saw me, that they had been talking about me.
“The wanderer returns,” Waldo burst out, nastily. “Please welcome our conquering heroine Dr. Scarface Livingstone.”
“The Great Explorer Kit Salter,” Isaac said in a loud, theatrical voice. “And over here, her junior assistants Isaac, Waldo and Rachel.”
I was so full of grief for my donkey and fear for my aunt I could hardly understand the meaning of my friends’ words. Why had everyone chosen this horrible day to discover my faults?
“Listen to me,” I begged. “I haven’t time for this, right now.”
“You never have time for your friends,” Waldo said curtly.
“Something awful has happened.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful, that is,” Waldo butted in, sarcastically. “Something awful. You and your precious aunt go off having all the adventures while the rest of us are stuck here looking after the luggage.”
“Look here, Kit,” Rachel intervened, her brown eyes shining with anger. “We are all in this adventure together. It is not decent of you to sneak off in the night without telling us. We’re all taking risks here. We’re all cold and tired. You have to let us into what is going on! We all sense it and feel upset. You and your aunt have secrets. We always see you huddling together. Well, if you don’t want us, we will just leave, won’t we, Waldo?”
Waldo nodded, while in the back of my throat I felt a terrible roar of frustration building up.
“Enough!” I screamed. “I’m sorry if I’ve done wrong but I don’t have time for this now! Aunt Hilda and Champlon have disappeared and Tara has been murdered.”
The porters were watching our argument silently, their slanting eyes betraying no emotion.
“Murdered?” Rachel asked stupidly. I saw shock on her face—and maybe a little regret for picking this time for silly grievances.
I walked toward them, thrusting the dark, damp patch on my sheepskin coat forward. “See this? Know what it is? No? Tara’s blood!”
Rachel screamed. Suddenly, it was all too much and I found myself dry throated. There was a tear gathering in the corner of my eye. Quickly brushing it away, I explained what had happened.
“Who could do that to a defenseless animal?” Rachel asked. “What kind of person would murder Tara?”
The cook, Chamba, a plump and smiley man, stepped forward and began muttering about how the murderers would suffer “bad karma.” The followers of the Buddhist religion believe that bad deeds you commit in this life haunt you in your next life. This form of luck they call karma—if you are very wicked you could be reborn as a slug. I don’t know if I believe in next lives—and anyway, it wasn’t good enough for me. I wanted revenge on the murderers who had cut Tara’s throat. In this life.
“We need help from someone who knows these mountains,” Waldo interrupted. “We’ve got to go back and find this hermit fellow.”
“Yongden said he would meet us up the mountain,” I interrupted, gesturing in the direction of the towering Mana peak. All my doubts about the monk resurfaced, but I put them aside. Waldo was right, we needed help. “Something about a place where the paths part. A rock shaped like a bear cub.”
There were indrawn breaths at the name Yongden from the Sherpas. I could see them eyeing each other warily.
“Yongden is sorcerer. In good time we do not go near,” Chamba, who seemed to be their leader, said. “In bad time he help. Follow me. I know bear rock.”
So it was agreed. I was given another donkey, though I scarcely noticed which one it was, and we moved off. I sat hunched in my saddle as we trotted upward, scarcely taking in our dizzying ascent, toward the wall of ice—the glacier between us and Tibet. All my thoughts were inside—for my aunt and Champlon—and my poor old Tara. We could have been walking up Woodstock Road in my home town for all the notice I took of our surroundings.
At some stage the way became too perilous to ascend sitting on our donkeys—too narrow and littered with stones—so we had to get off and walk. We had been trudging some three or four hours, concentrating on the rhythm of our feet and not letting our spirits flag, when the cook suddenly gave a shrill cry. Jerking out of my reverie I glanced in the direction the cook had been pointing. Suddenly, I realized I hadn’t been looking as I walked—not really! We had left the trees and greenery of Mana village behind and were now truly in the wilderness. A boulder was lying across the path, one of a hundred or so that had fallen from the mountain. There was no tree, or flower, or patch of green in sight. Everything was a desolation of rock, snow and ice, a landscape from another planet.
This, I imagined, was what it would be like to go for a hike on the moon.
But it wasn’t the landscape the cook was pointing out. It was a rock rearing over the road. It was grayish, patterned with lighter veins of white stone—a strange and monstrous eruption from the mountain. The rock was shaped exactly like a standing bear cub. It had one paw raised as if it was about to shake your hand. In this bleak place it was an oddly friendly sight. We all quickened our pace.
Part of me wanted to be right about Yongden. For him not to turn up. Of course the other, more sensible part, desperately wanted him to be at the rock rendezvous. Who else was there to turn to in our attempt to find my aunt and Champlon?
I was the first to reach the rock, and see it fully. I almost fell down the cliff in shock. Sitting on a flat ledge were three bundles of sheepsk
in. One of them looked up and, framed like an Eskimo in a halo of white fur, was the pugnacious face of my aunt. With her were Champlon and Yongden. They had cleared the snow away, set down an oilskin and were chatting companionably as they munched on leathery strips of dried meat. For all the world as if they were having a picnic in Hyde Park! At least my aunt and Champlon were munching. Yongden was not. I presumed that, like many Buddhists, he was a vegetarian who regarded the taking of an animal’s life as a sin.
“Thank heavens,” I blurted out, completely forgetting how we’d parted. “I thought they’d got you!”
“Who do you mean by they, pray tell?” Aunt Hilda asked tartly. “Please try and be more precise.”
“The Baker Brothers.”
I held my breath and waited. Aunt Hilda’s grim face was all the answer I needed.
The clammy spirit of those malevolent millionaires had hovered over us for much of the voyage. It wasn’t a surprise that they were behind the desecration of Yongden’s cave. Who else could it have been? The villagers would have been far too fearful of the holy man’s reputation.
“The curse,” Waldo exclaimed. “Has it—I mean how do they look?”
It was rumored that the curse of the mummy we had encountered in our last adventure had struck the brothers and destroyed their health. Their villainous behavior in Egypt was said to have displeased ancient forces.
Champlon shrugged. “They are not the pretty sight.”
“Hideous,” Aunt Hilda muttered. “Specially one of them. His skin looks like porridge!” She shuddered. “I suspect they are after the same thing we are …”
For a moment I was about to interrupt and ask exactly what Aunt Hilda was after. However, she wouldn’t have told me, so I let her continue.
“We think, Champlon and I, that they mean to break into Tibet and get to the prize before us. I wouldn’t put any type of skulduggery past them!”
“They ’ave some bad men around wiz zem.” Champlon agreed gloomily.
“That monkey and a gang of the most dishonest brigands they could recruit in India,” Aunt Hilda went on.
The Maharajah's Monkey Page 14
