My mind had been working very slowly: “But if they had you—why are you here?”
A smug expression spread across Champlon’s face: “It is not possible it keep Gaston Champlon prisoned,” he announced.
I refrained from pointing out that they had found it surprisingly easy in the past to keep him prisoner—and blackmail him into doing their bidding.
“You see, ze sug wiz ze monkey, ’e surprise us when we ’ave come down ze path from ze Yongden’s cave. ’E took my gun, my loverly Webley. ’E bound our ’ands and took us to meet ze Baker Brothers. But zey do not reckon wiz Gaston Champlon. I always keep annuzzer pistol in my left sock. I manage to break my ’ands free, et voilà!” In his excitement Champlon relapsed into French.
So Champlon had fought free. Of course he was a magician with a gun. He had taken one of the Baker Brothers captive, only releasing him when their donkeys and pistol were returned.
“How did you manage to stop them? Hypnotizing you, I mean?” asked Isaac. I wondered if it was suspicion I heard in his voice and glanced quickly at Champlon, who looked away guiltily.
“Ze monkey, I did not let it near me,” Champlon replied quickly.
Yongden had been listening to our talk impassively: now he stood up and said we should be on our way. But before we went on, I needed to have a private word with him. I walked right up to the monk and murmured:
“Please give it back to me.”
Standing so close to him, I could feel the tug of my map. Was it my imagination that sensed it, pulsing, pulling, in an inner pocket of the monk’s loose saffron robe? The monk looked me in the eye and inclined his head.
“Please,” I begged.
“Not yet.”
There was nothing I could do. Though a bitter taste welled up from my stomach, and my hands itched to simply grab the map from him, I was powerless.
“We must get going now,” my aunt announced. “Several days’ march to the border.”
Immediately there was a wail of protest from Rachel, Isaac and Waldo.
“We haven’t had lunch,” Isaac complained.
“I haven’t even had breakfast” I snapped.
“I can’t walk without lunch,” Isaac went on. “My legs won’t work.”
“Lunch?” Yongden said, as if he didn’t understand the word. I had a sudden vision of his life. Eating delicious food, I sensed, would be far down on his list of priorities. “Please eat. Then must go.”
Sadly, even Chamba was unable to conjure something tasty out of our supplies in this frozen wasteland. I watched as he took out a flint pouch and struck a fire with rock. A few twigs of kindling blazed and then a log. It was a small, weak fire. Still it was hot. I had my first taste of what was to become our staple meal. Tsampa—a Tibetan barley grain—and dried meat. The barley tasted like wallpaper glue and chewing the dried meat felt like eating one of Aunt Hilda’s boots. Even Isaac looked as if he wished he hadn’t insisted on lunch. Seeing the look on our faces as we silently gulped down this fare, my aunt gruffly told us to cheer up. This was the good times, she explained, our food would get steadily worse.
Rather glumly, we finished our lunch and, shouldering our packs, got to our feet. So, we were about to try to sneak into a ferocious and hostile country under the direction of an enigmatic sorcerer monk. A man whose intentions were unclear, and who had stolen my map. Days of tramping through snow, rock and ice, some of the harshest terrain in the world, lay ahead of us.
Were we brave explorers? Or lunatics? As my feet began to plod forward—of their own accord, for the rest of me was terribly tired—I was truly not sure!
Chapter Twenty
Yesterday I stopped feeling my toes. Earlier today it was the turn of my fingers. My hands were protected by three pairs of gloves, layers of wool tucked into fleecy sheepskin mittens. They were wadded till they resembled two footballs. Yet they were still turning into claws of ice.
If there is anywhere colder on this earth, please, please let me never go there.
The thermometer my aunt carried had stopped working, somewhere about twenty degrees below zero. This is colder than it ever gets at home, even on those winters when the rivers freeze and we go skating on Port Meadow. Do not believe that you know what cold means, not till you come to a landscape like this. All I could see for miles was white. White snow, white ice, white peaks, even the sky looked bleached. The sun blazed, turning the landscape into a series of dazzling mirrors.
We were lost in a land made of ice.
Skidding on this ice, or walking into a snowdrift taller than a man, was not the greatest threat here. It was avalanches. The load of snow and rock teetering on the mountain beside us could collapse, burying us forever. We were warned in no uncertain terms that we must be very quiet. So save for the clop of our donkeys’ feet on ice and the sharper crackle of our crampons, we moved without a sound.
I was trudging along, my feet heavy as bricks in their four-spiked crampons, which we had put on to get a better grip in the slippery ice. My face was burning, as if the skin had been doused in boiling oil. I was keeping up with Yongden, who was leading a donkey piled with food, but only just. Without warning he turned and looked at me, his eyes inky shadows.
“You suffer,” he said—his voice though low, rang over the ice.
Yongden spoke so rarely that everyone stopped, our whole caravan of Sherpas and donkeys and cooks.
My eyes were watering again. We all wore goggles made from yak antlers. They were narrow strips of bones with slits cut into them, which were held in place by straps of braided sinew. The slits blocked light glaring from the snow all around. They made us look like demented bees. Nevertheless, several of us began to suffer from swollen eyes. Luckily, Isaac, our resident genius, had a brilliant idea. He had made little flaps from the see-through gauze we carried in the medical supplies, which he strung over our goggles. But it wasn’t my eyes to which Yongden was referring. I could just about see. It was the rest of me that was in trouble.
“You look like a pork chop,” Waldo jeered. “A scarface steak.”
“Broiled and ready for the luncheon table!” Isaac grinned.
“Waldo! Isaac! That’s really unkind. You shouldn’t make fun of people for looking odd,” Rachel scolded. Then she stopped abruptly realizing she’d been rude. Even ruder than Waldo—for she hadn’t meant to tease.
Oddly enough it was Rachel I was most cross with. I know I was being unreasonable but it wasn’t fair. I was meant to be the strong one, the brave explorer who would weather the elements and cheerfully face all sorts of dangers. In my head at least, Rachel was the wilting violet. She was the pretty one, who only wanted to sit at home embroidering cushion covers and playing the pianoforte. She was kind and good but not exactly tough.
Yet she was taking this grueling journey quite in her stride.
Ever since she had seen off the monkey at Simla, Rachel had seemed to grow stronger. She had marched uncomplainingly through the mountains. She’d learned to brave altitude sickness. She hadn’t suffered from snow blindness. She even looked ravishing in her layers of sheepskin. It wasn’t fair! How the mountains conspired against me. The scorching sun skinned my face and eyes, the freezing cold crept into my bones. Just my luck that all the others managed. My aunt and Champlon both had skin like elephant hide, which could withstand any extreme. It was only me! I was the weak one! The runt of the litter.
Stop this self-pity, I told myself sternly. You have to soldier on, however much your skin boils and your eyes swell.
My aunt had turned around to see what was happening and saw the others clustered around me. “Buck up, Kit,” she bellowed.
“I can’t help it if everyone finds my face so interesting.” I flushed, my scar burning.
“Hmm,” she came closer and looked me over like a vet examining a sick cow. “I believe you are suffering from an unusual combination of snow blindness and sunburn. Rather interesting.”
“What?” I growled.
“Do yo
u know that Tibet is the only country in the world where you can burn and freeze at the same time? It’s simultaneously icy and scorching up here, because the sun reflects off the snow. No wonder they call it the roof of the world. This can result in severe burning as well as frostbite. At the same time!”
“How fascinating!” I said, but my aunt did not notice my attempt at sarcasm.
“You have to remember,” she continued, gesturing to the icy path. “That we are hiking at 5,600 meters above sea level. That is 800 meters above Mont Blanc, the tallest mountain in Europe.”
“I don’t want a lecture on geography. My face is killing me!”
“Yes, it does look rather painful,” my aunt said, as if that was a noteworthy fact as well.
All of them were peering at me, as if I was an object of mild interest. Were they going to chitchat about my troubles all day? Only Yongden looked at me as if I was normal. He said something to Chamba which caused the cook to scurry away to the donkeys. There he delved into a pack carried by one of them and turned round with a package clasped in his hand. Yak butter. The packet of yak butter was frozen solid, of course. It had to be heated on our Bunsen burner. I could sense my aunt’s impatience at the waste of time. Finally it was about the consistency of normal butter and a coating of gloop was applied to my eyelids. It smelt unbelievably foul. Like a vat of rancid milk. Waldo wrinkled his nose, smirking at Isaac. Who smirked back.
“Well, Kit, you’ve held us up long enough,” my aunt boomed. “Best foot forward now … If you can’t keep up I’ll send a couple of Sherpas back to the village with you.”
I boiled with indignation. I wasn’t the one to halt our caravan. “I’m perfectly ready,” I said coldly,
Yongden uttered a command, the convoy of donkeys and Sherpas was reassembled and we all continued on our weary march. I did not think of anything, not how I smelt like an abattoir and looked like a measle. No, I concentrated on putting one icy boot in front of the other. I could imagine, one day, feeling as if I had a face, rather than a big, red blister, above my neck. In the meantime we must get to Tibet. I had my pride. Even if it killed me, I wouldn’t be the one who held us back. How dare Aunt Hilda suggest I was a laggard!
It is at times like this, when I am feeling really very low, that Rachel is kindest. Without saying a word, she slipped her arm through mine. Together we trudged on, and I found that I didn’t really mind that Rachel was coping with the sun and cold while I wasn’t.
“Don’t worry, Kit,” she whispered. “You’ll show them.”
I looked at her mutely. Her brown eyes were glowing beneath her halo of fur.
“You’re a fighter.” Her fingers pressed mine, comfortingly.
We were toiling up a particularly painful stretch of mountain, our legs aching. Suddenly, the clouds up above descended. I can give no other explanation. One moment the clouds were in the sky. The next moment they had come down to earth.
It was thick, clammy stuff. Not like the sulfurous fog of a London afternoon, but brighter, whiter. It was so dense it clothed us in a shimmering layer and I could no longer see the Sherpas up ahead. Nor the rest of our party. Rachel and I clutched each other. All I could see were her eyes, hazel lanterns shining through the mist.
“What happened?” she shrieked. “Where is everyone?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m scared, Kit.”
We were stranded near the top of a mountain, wreathed in mist. Dusk was coming. And we had no sight of our companions. Even more terrifying than the loss of sight was the fact that we couldn’t hear a thing. No clop of hooves. No murmuring voices. No braying mules. I wanted to scream out at the top of my voice, but was too fearful. It could be fatal if we set off an avalanche.
“Come, Rachel.” I held on to her harder. “We must find the others.”
It was hard to walk fast though, because our view of the ground was obscured by the cloud. Carefully, testing every step, I moved forward. Not carefully enough, for at the tenth or fifteenth step I fell and nearly dragged down my trembling friend with me.
I had tripped over something. I saw it most clearly—something of ochre color, with a craggy, pitted surface. The mist had not descended quite to the ground level and I had a horrifyingly good view.
“Get up, Kit,” Rachel hissed. “We have to move if we’re not to freeze to death here.”
The bony thing was nearly touching the tip of my nose. Its jaw opened in a grimace revealing a toothless mouth. Above it were empty eyes.
A skull. A toothless old skull. Under it, cruelly splayed at an angle to the head, was the rest of the skeleton. It looked horribly like a huge fish-bone, the spine feathering out. But no fish would have such delicate, such heart-breakingly human hands. They sat in the skeleton’s lap, folded one on top of the other. The bones had been bleached by time and sun. Every scrap of flesh eaten by vultures.
My mouth opened in a scream, but with a supreme effort of will I squeezed it back.
“Stand up, Kit,” Rachel said, urgently. “Are you all right? Have you hurt your leg?”
That was not the worst of it. My brain was unwilling to understand what my eyes were telling it. Behind the old skeleton, in a heap just off the path, were other objects. The whitened bones of a horse, another human skeleton. The thing became a blur. An awful muddle of long-dead corpses.
What had happened to this caravan? Had they been beset by bandits? I suspected it was something far simpler. The mists had come down. Men and mules frozen to death as they wandered lost in these cruel heights.
“Kit!” Rachel’s panicked face loomed just above my head, her hands picking at me. “What’s wrong? Do you want me to carry you?”
Whatever happened, Rachel must not see this dreadful thing. This horror would haunt her dreams.
“No. No,” I said scrambling up and speaking cheerfully. “I’m perfectly well. Let’s find the others.”
As we set off, shrouded in cloud like walking ghosts, I prayed that we would not be stranded here on the top of the world. Till the cold ate into our bones and the mountains took our lives. To Rachel, I said not a word. Clutching each other, we moved slowly down the path.
Chapter Twenty-one
“Thank heavens!” my aunt exclaimed, looming toward us in the tattered remnants of the mist. “We thought we’d lost you.”
The clouds had lifted as swiftly as they had fallen, revealing our caravan, anxiously waiting by a mound of ice. I’d expected a scolding from Aunt Hilda but instead she opened her arms and folded me in a warm embrace. I could see from the expression on her face that she’d been very worried. She clung on to me even as she began to scold me.
“Don’t ever lag behind again. If you get cut off from the main party you can easily freeze to death. Foolish child.”
“What were you thinking of?” burst out Waldo, sounding as if we had done it on purpose. “You’re so reckless, Kit.”
“Oh Waldo, how lovely,” Rachel grinned. “You were worried about Kit.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he snapped, turning away. “I’m just cross that she’s always wasting time.”
“We’re safe,” I said, trying to wriggle out of Aunt Hilda’s hold. “We’re here aren’t we?”
We had descended the mountain and come to a huge glacier that flowed between ranges. To our right towered icy ridges, sharp as the folds in a newly starched tablecloth. To the left was a spreading snowfield. I had always thought glaciers were a flat white, like blank sheets of paper. This one was littered with rocks and boulders, especially on the edges. Inside the glacier, the ice rose in jagged spikes and whorls, many of them higher than a man and so deadly they could cut flesh to shreds. The sky felt close, pressing down on us. We moved among shimmering blues and whites, more watery than earth-bound. My thoughts were very confused and, for a moment, I felt as if, I flailing under the sea.
“Where are we?” Rachel wondered.
“Brlags Pa Rmi Lam glacier,” Yongden said. “Glacier of lost dream.�
��
A still, vast bowl. Bare of trees and grass, home only to the mysterious: the snow leopard, the vulture, the great beast—like a monstrous over-grown bear—Tibetans call the yeti.
A wail from one of the Sherpas, followed by a chorus of shush and be quiet, cut into the silence. He was a quiet, squat fellow, our guide and tracker who was walking up in front, leading one of the first donkeys. I had talked to most of the Sherpas, but I realized I did not even know this man’s name and had never heard him utter a word. Yongden and the man were talking, a whispered conversation that we couldn’t understand. The Sherpa was alarmed, Yongden was soothing him, I thought.
I hurried over to where the two men were talking, peering over my aunt’s shoulder who’d got there a moment before. Champlon stood beside her—he seemed as agitated as the Sherpa. All of us were crowding round, which was ridiculous because I didn’t know what we were supposed to be looking at.
“What is it?” I asked, bewildered, because all I could see was a faint dent in the ice, slightly larger than a gold sovereign.
“It is a hoof mark,” Champlon said. “But not yak or donkey.”
“Horse,” the Sherpa said. He was staring at the mark as if he simply could not believe it and on his blunt face was astonishment. “A Bombay racehorse.”
“Only a fool would bring such a horse up here,” my aunt spat. “Such horses are not adapted to the ice. It will break a leg, or die of exposure.”
“It ees cruel,” Champlon agreed.
“I’ll bet you a half a crown it’s those Bakers,” Waldo hissed. “They don’t care about ruining a fine horse. They’ll probably just shoot it and eat it when it dies.”
The whispering around the hoof-print had become heated. Yongden raised his hand, his usual signal for silence; we quieted down like a group of well-trained schoolchildren.
“There have been many men before us. It is no matter. We will stay here,” Yongden gestured to the middle of the snow field and turning his horse began walking into the glacier.
He couldn’t mean it. We were to camp on a glacier?
The Maharajah's Monkey Page 15
