Silently we followed. The sun was sinking over the mountains in a Himalayan explosion of crimsons and pinks. How it had changed our ice-bound world, turning it from a blue-tinged undersea grotto to one of the most fantastic reds. The ice rose in cruel spikes, each one dripping in bloody paint. It looked magnificent and alarming. About as inviting as a bed of nails. As our donkeys clopped into the glacier my heart filled with dread. Ice all around and the Baker Brothers and their hired ruffians lurking in the darkness without.
For an instant I wished I had never come here. I wished I had listened to my father’s entreaties and was back in the Maharajah’s palace or safely home in Oxford, clopping through meadowsweet and willow on my loyal mare Jesse. It was but a moment of weakness. As we picked our way through the glacier and began to unpack our tents for the coldest night of our lives, I told myself that this was what adventure is all about. It wasn’t all fun, frolics and digging up buried treasure; easy as helping yourself to barley sugar in a sweet shop. It was about fear. Cold. Hunger.
Most of all, it was about not knowing if you were going to survive till the morning.
Chapter Twenty-two
“Rachel,” I whispered.
“Go back to sleep,” she growled, shuffling in her blankets.
“I thought I heard a noise.”
Rachel opened one eye. Tangled curls and tanned skin, lit by a moonbeam slanting through an opening in the tent. “That’ll be your aunt,” she said.
“It’s them. The Baker Brothers.”
On the other side of me, snuggled a little too close in our canvas tent, Aunt Hilda was snoring loudly. On our third night in the mountains we had decided to sleep in the same tent in order to conserve heat. I had grown used, now, to the presence of other bodies, even to my aunt’s guttural grunts and sighs. Besides, I had exhausted myself so utterly during the last day, I could have slept in the middle of Waterloo Station.
“The Bakers are here,” I repeated.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Kit,” Rachel snapped, but I heard the fear in her voice. “They couldn’t find us here, in the middle of nowhere.”
“Stop pretending to yourself.”
We both went very quiet. In the pin-drop silence we heard Aunt Hilda’s rhythmic snoring and then something else.
“Listen, Rachel,” I said, unnecessarily, for my friend was almost rigid with fear.
There it was again. A faint burbling noise, followed by a heavy thump. Sinister in the deep silence of the night.
Rachel sat up, the color bleeding from her face. I was taking no chances. I grabbed my howdah pistol and un-clicked the safety catch. Rachel was gripping on to me, staring at the gun. She muttered something about where did you get that? But I shrugged her off and shook my aunt.
“Aunt,” I hissed in her ear, while thumping her shoulder. “Wake up.”
If anything, her snores redoubled.
“I’m going out to investigate,” I told Rachel. “I’m not going to let them take us unaware.”
“No. Wake your aunt up. She’ll—” Rachel grabbed my aunt and tried to shake her.
“I’ll sort it out.”
“What makes you think you can sort it out?”
“I must.”
“Why you?” Rachel hissed. “For heaven’s sake, what’s wrong with you, Kit? Why aren’t you scared?”
I shrugged; Rachel’s interference was making me more obstinate. I know I am sometimes foolishly reluctant to take advice, however well-meaning. And she was wrong about me not being scared. I was absolutely terrified, my heart rattling like a pair of castanets. It is just, when I’m frightened I try even harder. I ignore my fear and simply make myself do the very thing I am so scared of.
“You’re not twelve-foot tall with muscles made of iron. You’re just a girl. A twelve-year-old, for pity’s sake.”
“My age has nothing to do with it.”
“Kit, you can’t—”
Ignoring her, I hurriedly forced my frozen feet into my boots and laced them up. It was hard, for even in bed I wore my gloves and mittens and my fingers were clumsy in their layers of swaddling. Taking a deep breath I stepped outside.
“Kit!” I heard Rachel implore. “Come back.”
My breath made clouds of vapor in the moonlight. The tents were dark patches, against the jagged white cones of the glaciers. Nothing was moving in the night; everything serene. Far above I heard the swift wing rush of a night bird. Or a raven perhaps, or vulture. Then I saw a sight so odd, it made me stop in my tracks.
A skinny man in orange robes was sitting cross-legged in the ice. In front of him was a huge hairy bear. Five or six times the size of the human, it reared over him like a giant ink-blot, a figure from a nightmare.
Yongden was nearly naked. He had taken off his sheepskin coat; his feet, legs and arms were quite bare to the elements. All he wore was a thin saffron-colored robe.
The very sight of the monk turned my blood to ice.
Yongden’s eyes were open and he was looking at the bear, which was walking toward him on its hind legs. It was massive across the chest; its paws could fell a man with a single blow. The monk was gazing straight at the creature, but I had the awful feeling that he was so deep in trance he didn’t actually see it.
A horrible scream ripped out of the back of my throat and with shaking hands I raised my gun. I had to shoot, for the bear was only a few paces away. In seconds it would be upon the monk. But I hesitated. Some unseen hand was clutching me, preventing me from pulling the trigger.
From behind me a shot rang out. Startled, I turned. It was Waldo, his pistol raised, in the act of firing a second bullet. The bear raised its head to the heavens, opened its mouth and gave a mighty roar. The noise echoed, bouncing off the snow. Then the great animal turned and with a few bounds had vanished back into the night. Running to the monk, I noticed a crimson splash in the whiteness.
It looked like a bloody tear.
“Yongden. Are you all right?” I bent down, but I could have been a gnat buzzing in his ear. He was gazing past me, at Waldo.
“Why?” he asked.
“Crikey! That’s a stoopid question. That bear would have eaten you with one gulp.”
Yongden shook his head. “Bears do not attack people at night. They are frightened.”
“You shouldn’t have barged in,” I snapped at Waldo, without looking at him. “I had it under control.”
Yongden held up his hand, silencing me. “This bear is a friend.”
The shooting had roused our whole party. Heads were popping out of dark tents, like a series of moles emerging from their mud hills. Even Aunt Hilda had finally awoken to the fact that a great drama was under way, a drama without her at the center of it.
“I must go,” Yongden said. “I must talk to bear.”
“You can’t talk to a bear,” Waldo muttered mutinously.
“She needs my help.”
Without another word, Yongden stood up and turned away. Then, as we watched, dumbfounded, he stalked away into the night. Within seconds the darkness had swallowed him up.
Aunt Hilda stomped up to us, followed by the others disgorging from their tents, demanding to know what was going on. I explained, and for some reason she was inclined to blame me.
“You blundering child. This is a pretty kettle of codfish,” Aunt Hilda scolded. “He’d better come back or else—”
“Or else?” I asked, staring into the darkness where Yongden had vanished. I didn’t see we were in a position to issue any threats against that strange monk.
“Or else we are up the Ganges without a paddle!”
We were thinking about our predicament—stranded on the margins of the roof of the world, without guide and with dwindling supplies of food—when Waldo let out a howl. It was louder, I’m sure, than that of the bear.
“Shush, Waldo, you’ll set off an avalanche,” I began. Then I saw his face.
It was twisted—a look of sheer agony on his face. Slowly he unclenched his fingers
and dropped his pistol, which fell, a dark blur in the snow. For a moment I had the wild idea that Yongden had hurt him to punish him for wounding the bear. Foolish, of course, for Yongden was nowhere to be seen.
Waldo was staring at his hand. I followed his gaze. For a second I didn’t understand what I was looking at. Then an awful wail ripped out of my throat.
His hands were naked.
The idiot had come out without his gloves, seizing his pistol in a blind rush. He had been a fool. We had all been warned never, ever to forget our gloves. Now he had paid for his impulsiveness. The tips of my friend’s bare fingers were turning gray, glowing strangely in the moonlight. Frostbite. But it wasn’t that which made me scream with disgust.
It was his little finger. When Waldo dropped his gun, the tip of his finger had remained attached to the freezing metal and snapped off, as easily as a dry twig. Looking down I could vaguely see the thing outlined against the snow, a snip of skin and bone attached to the gun.
Now he had four and a half fingers on his right hand. His shooting hand. It looked clammy, bleached, like a hunk of cod. Thank goodness, it wasn’t bleeding at least, for it was far too cold out here.
Waldo was looking at his hand, blankly. His reaction was the same as mine, though far slower. He felt the pain but his brain must have frozen too, for it couldn’t comprehend what was happening to him. I saw the moment of truth on his face. It hit him in a rush of terror and he mewled, a small, pathetic noise, a mouse caught in a trap.
I had to help, and fast. I rushed over to him and took his hand in my sheepskin glove while he struggled away from me. All the things I had ever learned about frostbite came flooding back to me. Ice crystals form inside the flesh. You have to rub the affected area to restore circulation of the blood. No, that was wrong. You had to do something else, but for the moment I had clear forgotten what.
What was I meant to do? I panicked, for perhaps I was making it worse, holding his hand.
“Water. Warm water,” Isaac shouted. He was besides us and had taken in the situation in a flash. “Wake Chamba. Fast. If he gets gangrene, we’ll have to cut the rest of his fingers off.”
The fear on Waldo’s face made my heart contract. He didn’t scream again, just turned very pale and his cheeks trembled a little.
“Look in my pack!” Aunt Hilda ordered. “I have some salve. I’ll see Chamba doesn’t make the water too hot. We can’t have them burning Waldo’s fingers, on top of everything else.”
I dived back into our tent for the salve. Unbelievably, Rachel was still sitting up in her blankets, her face terrified under her disordered dark curls. I filled her in on the events while I undid Aunt Hilda’s pack. It was hard to see anything in the moonlight that filtered through the tent opening and very hard to undo the numerous buckles on the bag. There was a jumble of things inside: letters, a strange shiny instrument whirring with cogs and levers, a compass, some spare gloves and socks. No sign of the liniment pot.
“Dratted child. What on earth are you doing?”
Aunt Hilda squatted wide-legged in the entrance to our tent. It took but a glance to see she was boiling with rage.
“You told me to look in your pack,” I exclaimed.
She crawled in to the tent, her breath coming in angry gasps as she shoveled the contents back in her bag.
“What’s that anyway?” I asked pointing to the shiny instrument. “Is it some new type of compass?”
“None of your business,” she barked. “I meant this pack, of course.” With that she delved in another bag, the one her donkey carried, and took out a small pot of Holloway’s liniment.
I grabbed it and raced outside. I didn’t have time for Aunt Hilda’s oddities now. There was a chaos of whinnying donkeys and milling Sherpas. Chamba had managed to fire up the Bunsen burner and melt some snow. My poor friend though, had not been able to take the pain. Isaac told me that it is when the frostbitten fingers thaw and feeling returns to your digits that it is most agonizing. He had fainted away and lay cradled in Isaac’s lap, while Champlon tenderly held his hand in a bowl of warm water. I smoothed back some of his blond curls, which were limp across his eyes.
“Don’t worry,” Isaac whispered. “We’ll be able to save his fingers.”
“Thank God!”
“Er … Well, most of them, anyway.”
Most of them! It didn’t seem fair. Something like this shouldn’t happen to someone so young and alive as Waldo. I relieved Champlon of Waldo’s hand, taking it out of the water and gently applying some of the salve. As I did my mind went back to Aunt Hilda. Why had she flared up so oddly in the tent? What was she up to? All through our voyage she’d had some murky plan of her own. I had known, in the back of my mind, she was keeping me out. It was only now, stranded here amongst the ice and snow I realized why it had been bothering me so much.
I didn’t trust Aunt Hilda.
Chapter Twenty-three
I was woken up the next morning by the sounds of a commotion outside. The mats where my aunt and Rachel slept were empty. Hurriedly lacing my boots, I stuck my head outside the tent to be greeted by a scene of confusion. Donkeys neighing, Sherpas screeching, my friends and Aunt Hilda gabbling away and, most awful of all, Champlon waving his pistols as if he was about to shoot one and all.
“What’s happening?” I asked Isaac, who was hopping up and down on the ice.
“Disaster,” he mumbled.
“Use your eyes, Kit,” Rachel mumbled.
It was only then that I saw what was going on. We were no longer alone in the emptiness of the glacier. Surrounding us on all sides were flitting, shadowy shapes. They resolved themselves into men on stocky ponies, dressed in a ragbag of uniforms. Some were garbed in round otter-skin hats and ancient clanking chainmail; others wore fur cloaks with conical breastplates glinting over their chests. They were carrying spears, daggers, bows, swords and antique muskets. Though a ragged bunch, they were definitely a force to be reckoned with.
“What on—” I began.
“It’s the border guards. The Tibetans,” Waldo cut in. His face was bloodless after the ordeal with his finger, his hands invisible inside his mittens. He was watching the arrival of the frontier force with an awful, gray resignation.
“What are we going to do?” I gulped, looking around wildly. I couldn’t see any way out. We were hemmed in by the soldiers on all sides; trapped too by the ice and mountains.
“Nothing. We’re done for,” came the dull reply.
“We can’t just give up.”
The Sherpas were terrified. They had gone into a protective, murmuring huddle. I didn’t know who to turn to, who was our guide and leader after the disappearance of Yongden, the monk. The Sherpas obviously felt the same way, for I could tell that there was much argument among them. Finally, Chamba the cook was almost pushed out of their group. His face was ashen but he bravely went toward the intruders. One of the men, who wore a seal-skin coat surmounted by chainmail, a shining conical breast-plate, and a flat top hat circled by a ruff of scarlet fur, dismounted and went up to Chamba.
I could not understand their talk. But the sense was clear, by the gabble of voices drifting over and ice and the harsh way the Tibetan waved his arm toward us.
“What does he say?” Aunt Hilda demanded once their talk was over and Chamba had limped his way over to us.
“We are prisoners,” Chamba replied. “We must go with this man; he is commander of Tibetan border guards.”
“That blooming monk has left us slap-bang in the lurch,” my aunt growled. “Listen, tell him we are a British scientific expedition.”
“He not know what that mean.”
“Confounded impertinence. My goodness, man, this is India. The property of her Imperial Highness Queen Victoria!”
“He say we in Tibets.” Chamba shrugged his shoulders, hopelessly. “Tibet’s prisoners.”
The Tibetan commander was watching these exchanges with a superior smile.
“We weel shoot our
way out,” Champlon blustered. Luckily he was no longer waving his pistol around for I feared what would happen if he were to start banging off bullets. The Tibetans flintlock muskets were ancient, granted, but their bows and arrows looked lethal. There were so many of them and so few of us. Plus, I knew in my bones the Sherpas wouldn’t fight.
“It not possible fight,” Chamba said, echoing my thoughts. “Too many.”
“Yes,” Aunt Hilda agreed. “I think this is a case for the silver tongue rather than the iron fist.” I let out a breath on hearing this. The soldiers—spread out over the glaring ice on their horses—were menacing in their stillness.
“Commander tell us pack.” Chamba’s words came out in a jumbled hurry. “He take us see governor.”
“No,” Aunt Hilda said.
“Vat?” Chamba gasped.
“We will not go anywhere. We are subjects of the Queen. This peasant has no right to order us hither and thither.”
I should have remembered that Aunt Hilda’s idea of a silver tongue was different from other people’s. “Please, Aunt,” I begged. “Let’s go.” My hands were trembling
“Please, Memsahib Salter,” Chamba begged. “Please, ve vill all die, if you refuse go.”
“I am staying right here,” Aunt Hilda declared, her bulldog chin tilting up defiantly. She had never been more splendid, more fearless—and more plain foolish—as she glared at that brute of a commander. The Tibetan was clearly trying to follow the exchanges. Now he intervened, barking at Chamba, who I could tell was trying to wriggle out of the situation.
Aunt Hilda wasn’t having this. She marched up to the commander, waving her hands dismissively. “No,” she mouthed, so even if you didn’t speak English you couldn’t fail to understand. “We are staying here.”
The man lurched, as if she had struck him. On his broad, weather-beaten face was a look of utter surprise. My aunt’s courage must have seemed foolish beyond belief to him. His mouth was cruel, but I caught something uncertain, from him, a breath of fear. This made him even more terrifying, for in his cowardice he might be driven to violence.
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