I thought he was going to spit on my aunt; instead he turned and barked out an order. Two men came hurrying forward and seized Aunt Hilda. Champlon’s hand was on his pistol, but in a flash more men were on him, pinioning his arms. A soldier seized his mustache and pulled it, as if he believed it was false. Champlon and my aunt were stripped of their gloves. Before our horrified eyes, the men produced stout bamboo cords which they wrapped around my aunt’s wrists and those of the Frenchman. The cords were tied to a stick, the soldiers scurrying around like worker ants. I swear we didn’t understand what they intended till the last minute, when we saw the sticks tied, with more rope to the tails of two mules. Champlon bore the torture coolly but my aunt was thrashing around like a thing demented, causing more men to run to her and force her into submission.
Before our horrified and helpless eyes, Champlon and Aunt Hilda were to be made to march, half dragged along, tied to the tails of the mules. It was horribly cruel and already I could see scarlet weals standing out on their wrists. The blood was draining out of their hands, the danger of frostbite all too great.
“No,” I screamed inside, but I was too scared to open my mouth.
Waldo was watching, pale and unmoving. I felt Rachel’s gloved hand creep into my arm and give me a squeeze.
“Pack tents,” Chamba yelled, spittle flying. “Pack and go. Ve must go with the men. I no vant they kill us.”
The sun was climbing up the sky, dazzling on the cones and crests of the glacier, as we hurriedly packed our belongings. Our party of explorers, Sherpas and donkeys were a silent, wary lot as we followed Aunt Hilda and Gaston Champlon off the glacier. The border soldiers rode a careful distance from us, as if they were afraid that even the wind from our passage would contaminate them.
We were “foreign devils” to these men. We were entering a country stuck in the Middle Ages, ruled by the whip and the sword. The idea of treating prisoners with respect was as remote here as hansom carriages and gas lighting.
We plodded along mutely, forced to keep pace with the mules behind which Aunt Hilda and Gaston Champlon marched. A soldier walked beside each donkey, striking it with a bamboo switch, forcing the pace. Once I tried to come up to Aunt Hilda and talk to her, but the soldier turned his stick on me. I had to dodge to avoid a blow. Aunt Hilda’s eyes were aglitter. We came off the glacier on to a path that wound its way around the mountain and began a slow descent. Later, sore and heartsick, we turned a corner and there before us stretched an endless plain. Tibet! You’ll forgive me if the sight did not fill me with the joy I expected. It was a barren landscape, bisected by a frothing river and calm sheets of water. At that moment I couldn’t understand why we had ever wanted to explore it.
Nearer to us was a frontier post, permanently in the shadow of a teetering spar of ice. Huddled together for comfort was a handful of buildings, their roofs weighted down with rocks, as if to prevent them being blown away. As we were frogmarched into the garrison, snow began to fall, blowing slantways into our faces and pulling a gray veil over Tibet. One of the houses was larger than the rest. Aunt Hilda and Gaston Champlon were untied from the mules and then we were all taken into this house and led along a dark corridor. Aunt Hilda, Rachel and I were separated from the rest of the group and shoved into a dark cell.
As we listened to our friend’s footsteps plodding away, my aunt was very quiet. She rubbed her hands together to force some blood into the flesh. They were gray, as dingy and limp-looking as wrung-out dishcloths. Her wrists were deeply indented where the bamboo cord had bit into them, spots of blood standing out on the flesh. This was a hurt, subdued Aunt Hilda. Only in her eyes was there a trace of the old fire.
I took off my sheepskin gloves and gently eased them on to Aunt Hilda’s poor hands. The pain must have been agonizing, but she has never wanted for bravery. She bit her lip so hard she drew blood but uttered not a moan.
“A bit better?” I asked.
She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.
I silently took stock of our situation. Imprisoned in the middle of a glacial expanse by wild and heathen bandits. This was a cell, no doubt of it, bare of even mat or commode. The walls and floor were of rock, the tiny window through which freezing wind blew, was barred. There was no way out of here. No way of contacting the representatives of our Empire in Simla.
There was only one, small ray of hope. I was going to explain when Aunt Hilda did something ridiculous. She strode over to the door, which was made of thick planks of pine, and for a moment I thought she was going to batter on it with her sore hands. Instead she kicked, once, twice, raining a frenzy of blows upon the wood. It began to creak and then a splinter appeared. Outside I heard yelling and then running.
“Stop it!” I yelled.
But she would not. A wild light in her eyes, she continued to kick. It came to me that she was enjoying it, and for a moment I thought she had gone truly insane.
“Stop!” Rachel screamed and we both tried to take her arms, pull her away from the door.
A piece of wood in the middle of door slid aside, revealing a hatch. Through it slanted an angry eye. A voice called out a guttural command. She ignored it. Aunt Hilda had been driven wild by her pain and was beyond reason. She continued to kick at the door, with her steel-toed boots, the crampons doing terrible damage to the wood.
Next moment an iron cylinder slid through the door. A bullet exploded, deafening in the tiny space. Blood thrummed in my ears. The shining pellet sped through the room, ricocheting off the stone wall, sending splinters of stone spinning through the air. Rachel and I crouched instinctively but Aunt Hilda was too dazed to move, and a flying dart grazed her sheepskin-covered shoulder.
“Enough!” I screamed.
The air seemed to leave my aunt and she sagged in the corner. The hatch closed with a bang and I collapsed next to her.
“Enough, Aunt Hilda!” I screeched at her immobile form. My voice was hysterical to my own ears. “We’ve got to keep our heads if we are to survive.”
As the words left my throat I spied something in the wall just to the right of my head. In the dim light I could just about discern some writing graven into the wall. I couldn’t read it, for it was Tibetan. Each letter, about five inches tall, had been painstakingly whittled into the stone. As I saw them the awful conviction came to me that the letters formed a name. A name and a protest in the face of a horrible fate.
Perhaps the only thing that remained on earth of the last occupant of our cell.
Chapter Twenty-four
We didn’t sleep much that night. The three of us crouched together in the corner of the cell. Huddled like bats, we closed our eyes and a sort of release born of deep weariness washed over us. In my blurry, anguished dreams we were trapped on endless ice. Monsters, with fur-like hair growing on their face and hands, were prodding us with giant hairpins sharp as spears. Their jabs hurt. I opened my eyes and a man with a stick was prodding me. Rachel and Aunt Hilda were stumbling blearily about and there was a sharp ache in my chest.
“Ugh ugh,” the man grunted, gesturing to the door.
He did have hair on his face. It took me a moment to realize it was a hat that covered most of his skin.
We were marched along a dark corridor to a room that was hung with embroidered parchments, rich paintings of the Buddha and Tibetan Tankas. It was so still; with shining butter lamps spluttering away, casting a golden glow on the scene. I guessed it was the garrison’s shrine. Waldo, Champlon and Isaac were sitting, disconsolate, on a low bench. Waldo looked awful, his skin appeared as clammy as a beached whale. His right hand was limp inside the manacles, the missing fingertip painfully obvious. Champlon was horribly pale and somehow twisted, askew. I had to look twice at him to understand what was wrong. They had deprived my gallant French friend of his proudest possession, his mustache. Those luxuriant, carefully trimmed and waxed fronds had been shaved clean off. Without it Champlon was naked. Anger boiled in me. The barbarians. Why had they done that to Champlon
, save to humiliate him?
“Kit,” Waldo began before a guard dealt my friend a blow on the back of his head, effectively silencing him.
I wanted to lash out at these Tibetan savages, but I held both tongue and fire. I had to learn from Aunt Hilda’s example what not to do. Losing my temper would only make our situation worse.
The commander stomped in followed by a very frightened Chamba.
Our cook cast us an imploring look, before the commander began ranting. He was carrying a bag, which I realized with a shock, was Aunt Hilda’s. With a savage oath he ripped it open and emptied it on a low wooden table. The contents scattered. The brass and wood prayer wheel I had seen earlier, gloves, handkerchiefs, lacy bloomers and the vaguely familiar but strange steel instrument. The commander shouted at Chamba, who began to translate in a stuttering voice.
“The commander tell you are the spy,” Chamba said to Aunt Hilda. “You have come here as spy for the English government.”
“Poppycock. Never heard such a bunch of piffle in my life,” Aunt Hilda declared confidently.
The commander waved his hands at the odd assortment of possessions on the table, his voice yapping and persistent as a basset hound.
“He tell you are here to steal Tibet’s secrets.”
“That’s nonsense,” Rachel cut in to my surprise. “We’re explorers. Here on a scientific expedition.”
“Fringies no allowed in Tibets,” Chamba translated. Fringies was the slang in this part of the world for foreigners.
“Well, we wouldn’t have been in Tibet if he hadn’t brought us here,” I retorted.
I was thankful that Aunt Hilda’s spurt of lunacy in the cell seemed to have passed. Her eyes had lost that wild glitter and she was holding her peace remarkably well. Indeed, she looked thoughtful.
The commander had picked up that spiky steel instrument etched with numbers and containing a section of revolving bands. He was looking at it and muttering furiously to Chamba, who shook his head. I had the feeling the Tibetan was puzzled by this piece of equipment that he didn’t understand, but that only made him more suspicious. The commander barked at him and, quaking, Chamba translated.
“The commander know what this is. It for finding gold. You come with your gold machine to steal Tibet’s gold.”
“I will not stand for this,” Aunt Hilda replied, sternly. “That is a perfectly harmless instrument for calculating the position of the stars. I happen to be a keen astronomer. Tell the commander that I know all the magic of the stars.”
My mind was working furiously as Chamba translated Aunt Hilda’s remarks. What the commander said must be a fairytale. But on the other hand, it was clearly no star charter that Aunt Hilda had in her possession. I had seen one of these complex instruments before in my father’s study. This was a theodolite, a piece of modern equipment for precisely calculating the altitude of mountains and surveying land mass.
What exactly was my aunt doing with a theodolite?
The commander had not finished. Now, his eyes almost manic with hate, he delivered his coup de grâce. He picked up the prayer wheel: a smooth, polished cylinder of wood, engraved with Tibetan characters which revolved with a clicking sound. I had seen Yongden flicking a similar object while chanting prayers. I knew they were as sacred to Buddhists as a cross was to us Christians.
With a flourish the commander removed the top of the prayer wheel and took a sheaf of papers from a hollow inside. This was all wrong. The papers were finely printed, bound together with a red ribbon. I could only read one word, but that word made my legs turn to jelly. It was GOLD. “He tell you are a spy,” Chamba said. “He tell you are a dirty, rotten, English spy.”
My aunt opened and closed her mouth but no words came out. The commander’s yapping voice went on.
“The men tell him you are on Nangchpa glacier,” Chamba translated. “They tell him he find spy there.”
Shock jolted through me. “What men?” I blurted. Chamba asked my question, which brought forth a fresh spume of words, which the cook translated.
“These are good men. True friends of Tibet. They two Russian princes and vith them Indians, and a very clever monkey. He know they are good, because they give him much presents and tell him about you and so commander give them pass to Tibet.”
So, the Baker Brothers had set a trap for us as neat as could be. We had walked straight into it. The commander was working himself up into a crescendo of anger. Now Aunt Hilda began to protest her innocence. He didn’t listen, words bubbled out, a molten flow of anger. At the end of this surge of hate he spat out an order to Chamba.
Our cook looked at us, a hunted expression in his eyes. I could see he was being ripped apart. He didn’t want to translate the commander’s speech but was too frightened not to. The commander struck him with the flat of his hand. A blow that Chamba took full on the cheek. Finally he dragged out the words.
“Commander say you are spies. Tomorrow you hanged.”
Chapter Twenty-five
Back in the cell, the three of us slumped in the corners as far away as possible from each other, as if to avoid contagion. Our prison was a tiny space, no more than seventeen square foot. We could have been back on that glacier, separated by miles of freezing ice, so carefully did we avoid each other. I was caught in my own private nightmare. What do you do on your last night on earth? You can’t waste it in sleep. Besides, I was too angry with Aunt Hilda to find solace in dreams. Terrifying, empty thoughts flooded me, as did a sick fear. I looked again at the scratchings in the wall. Should I write our names so someone, some day, would guess what had happened to us?
Kit Salter Rachel Ani
My secret should have comforted me, but it only added an edge to my desperation. I had not told Rachel or Aunt Hilda that I still possessed my howdah pistol. The guards had taken away all the men’s weapons, but they’d never searched me, obviously believing that no mere girl could be armed. Inside me a resolution was gathering, to shoot my way out. I might die in the attempt. Still it was better than being hanged, or tortured to death.
“Tell me it’s not true, Aunt Hilda.”
To my own surprise I found I had spoken. My words were movements of lips and air. Talking for the sake of shutting out the cold and the fear. Rachel cast a dreary glance at me. Inside, I knew that whatever words Aunt Hilda used to deny the charge of spying, I would not believe her.
“True? Merciful heavens! Of course it’s true.” Aunt Hilda looked me squarely in the face and spoke without a moment’s hesitation.
“You’re a spy then?”
“Obviously.”
“You led us into danger, knowing that we could be executed for spying?”
“Hellfire and demnition, child! It’s a bit rich to say I led you into danger. You’re harder to shake off than a limpet. I could no more get rid of you than I can get rid of the wax inside my ear!”
“But why, Aunt Hilda? Why did you stoop so low? Just for gold. I thought you were searching for Shambala. For ancient relics.”
Aunt Hilda rose, shaking herself like a bulldog coming out of a dirty lake. “Your problem, Kit, is that you’re muddled.”
“What?”
“You have cotton wool inside your head instead of brains. You’re a hopeless romantic. Lost in airy-fairy clouds of make-believe.”
Rachel was watching our exchanges, as bewildered as I was, probably, to hear myself described as a romantic!
“How dare you,” I spluttered. “I’m not a romantic. You got us into this mess and you’re not even saying sorry!”
“Do you remember what I said to you on the steamer?” Aunt Hilda, as usual, never bothered to listen to things she found uncomfortable.
“Pardon?”
“I gave you some advice on the steamer to India. You weren’t paying attention. That’s pretty obvious. You should have been, my girl, it’s the best advice you’ll ever be given.”
“What was it then? These great words of wisdom.”
“Exactl
y that!” Aunt Hilda pounced, a satisfied look on her face. “Words of wisdom. Don’t bother with fine sentiments and noble ideas. Gold. Gold, gold. That’s what matters, my girl, that’s what makes the world go round.”
From her corner, Rachel gave Aunt Hilda a look of utter disgust, then she buried her head in her lap, cutting herself off from any further communication with us.
“I can’t really believe you think like this, Aunt Hilda,” I said slowly.
“Oh I do. I really do.” She was growling now, eyes flickering with an anger I couldn’t understand. “Have you heard of the Tibetan gold fields? Warren Hastings learned of them over a century ago. They’ve tantalized the British government ever since. You know about Black Hills?”
I nodded, of course I’d heard of the famous gold rush. It was a fever that had ravaged America, luring thousands to abandon home, wives, children. To forsake everything in the search for the shiny metal.
“Thok Jalung. That’s a name to make the heart sing, Kit. Bigger, better, shinier than Black Hills. Nuggets as big as my fist. If I found them, I would be rich beyond your wildest dreams, my girl. I’m not talking trinkets for your jewelry box, here. I’m talking of enough wealth to fund an army. I’d be richer than the Baker Brothers. I would be able to fund any expedition I liked. Do precisely what I wanted!”
The deranged glitter had returned to my aunt’s eyes. Angry red spots stood out clownishly on her cheeks. She was staring at something on the bare cell walls. I believe that it was gold, great nuggets of shining gold, she was seeing there.
“What about Shambala?” I said, quietly. Of course I like gold as much as the next person, but it was not what I was really searching for. Gold seemed to me to be a chimera. All my dreams were of riches deeper than metal, however precious. These mountains held out the promise of so much more. My missing map was still a dull ache inside me. It had teased me, calling me to some ancient mystery, only to be snatched away. I didn’t believe we would ever see Yongden, or my map, again.
The Maharajah's Monkey Page 17
