The Rose of Tibet

by Lionel Davidson

  ‘Oh, Lord Buddha, lighten our load. …’

  ‘Oh, Lord Buddha, help with our task. …’

  ‘Oh, Boundless One, we need your strength. …’

  ‘Oh, Buddha, Lord, we call to you. …’

  Perhaps the Boundless One heard; perhaps the expedition was merely easing into a routine. The second day sped past with, for Houston, few of the strains of the first.

  They shot the bridge before midday, passing swiftly beneath and seeing not a soul; and with this link with caravan routes and possible pursuers behind him, he began to feel a certain swelling confidence. Someone, after all, had to lead. It was not a duty calling for years of scouting experience; simply one of convenience so that one voice should speak and the rest follow. There was plenty of skilled assistance. Several of the guards had tracking experience, and all twelve of them were well-armed. He had merely to get them to the mountains of the south, and once there to pick a route to the east that would bring them from an unexpected angle into the Chumbi valley.

  The snag was, as he realized that evening, that the hurtling river was now taking them in a direction well to the west. The map was a Tibetan one, very detailed in its information as to the location of communities of mountain and water devils, less detailed in purely geographic lore. Towards nightfall, when the river, had emerged from its canyon-like tunnel into a broad, rock-strewn tundra, the sunset had lit up distant brick-coloured peaks. Ringling thought he recognized one of them as Nanga Parbat, and another as Cho Oyu. The peaks were many miles ahead of them still; but mysteriously to the east. They should have been far to the west.

  It seemed to be time to leave the river.

  The boatmen remained with them that night, but in the morning collapsed their craft and set off overland to Yamdring. Houston watched them with some uneasiness. It would take them a couple of days to reach the caravan route (where the Chinese might then have reached); and in two days his own party could be well out of sight in the mountains. It was a risk, all the same. He had had to balance it against another, that of taking extra mouths with them into unknown country.

  He had made the decision alone, and nobody had questioned it; but Houston questioned it then himself.

  ‘May the Buddha guide your steps!’ cried the boatmen as the parties diverged.

  ‘And yours. Go slowly!’ replied the guards.

  It was the normal formula of leavetaking in Tibet. Houston hoped they would heed it; but had his doubts. It would take them a week, going overland, to get to Yamdring, and he had given them exactly a week’s rations.

  That was another decision he was questioning as he turned his horse to the distant peaks.

  3

  From the river bank the stretch of country facing them had appeared flat; but in less than an hour its true nature became plain. It was covered entirely, and very closely, by a series of wearying hillocks of sandy rock. The wind came up at ten o’clock, after they had been going four hours. It was a dry, cold, dust-laden wind, peculiarly hateful, and they took shelter in the lee of boulders and made tea and waited for it to die down.

  The wind did not die down. It went on all day (stopping abruptly at sunset and starting up again punctually at ten the next morning, as though some gigantic machine had been switched on and off in the mountains). They waited an hour, and went on, noses and mouths muffled and eyes goggled against the dry spray, their faces at first raw and then merely numb from the incessant blast. With the hearse-like palanquin in their midst they picked their way through the geological debris like a party of mourners in a valley of bones.

  In the late afternoon, with the horses stumbling and sneezing miserably, and the governor’s wives and children moaning again, he decided to camp, early. They got the tents up with some difficulty in the shelter of boulders, and Houston crawled into his own and lay there with eyes closed.

  Ringling shook him presently.

  ‘Sahib, come and see.’

  He went out. The wind had dropped. In the vast uncanny stillness, a great red sun had appeared, arcing swiftly. The barren wilderness was suddenly alive, a glowing bed of fiery red, writhing and vibrating in the fast-changing angle of declension of the huge disc in the sky. He saw the others standing to watch, silent, red-tipped figures, immobile in a spectacle of unearthly stunning beauty.

  The boy had not, however, called him out to admire the spectacle; he was pointing to the peaks, visible again, still distant – but to their right now, Nanga Parbat far to the west, Cho Oyu less so. They had passed them both.

  On this day, 27 October, despite the dust and the depressing terrain, they had covered nearly forty miles.

  ‘We can go in the mountains now, sahib,’ the boy said.

  By noon the following day, they were in the foot hills. They camped that night in the shelter of a frozen waterfall. There was no wood to burn, and they cooked with butter lamps. The cold was intense, but Houston felt it less than on the outward trip, for on the governor’s advice he was wearing under his clothes a shift of silk.

  They were on the move early, before it was light; and it was still not quite light when the first accident occurred. Four horses had passed over the spot when the track suddenly gave; the fifth (with, as it happened, Wister tied to it) simply disappeared. The following horse pulled up sharply, but the preceding one was dragged backwards and fell in a flurry of limbs, hindlegs into the gap.

  They had been riding roped together, and the guards were quickly taking the strain. The horse that had fallen completely had broken both forelegs; they dragged it, whinnying and threshing with pain out of the crevasse (Wister, comatose for the past couple of days, no whit the worse) and cut it loose. The other animal, uninjured, climbed out itself.

  The injured horse was quickly destroyed, the guards licking their lips as they hacked the carcase into manageable loads. The ropes were retied, and the horses, unmounted, led across a different section.

  Horse steaks, somewhat underdone, were on the menu that night.

  As near as they could manage they were going due east, but with insufficient altitude and surrounded on all sides by a jumble of mountains, found it hard to get their bearings. From time to time in the first couple of days, Ringling thought he identified peaks; but on the third when the vagaries of the passes had taken them in all directions and rather to the north than to the east, had to confess himself beaten.

  He confessed this towards noon as they were proceeding along a broad defile; and shortly afterwards they saw the monastery. It was a tiny place perched like a bird’s nest in the angle of two sheer rock faces far above them, approached evidently by a flight of rock steps that began at some point beyond their line of vision.

  Houston weighed up the chances as they stopped to eat. Sited so far from any caravan route or village, it was plainly a retreat for mystics. It seemed unlikely that such a remote community would have any frequent or regular business with the outside world. He decided to chance it.

  He moved the party back down the defile out of sight of the monastery. He sent a couple of guards up to it with a request for the loan of guides. He sent Ringling to watch the guards.

  By three o’clock the boy had not returned, and Houston found himself in something of a quandary. They were in an unsuitable spot for camping the night. It would be dark in an hour or so. There had been some other spots that he had marked as suitable.

  He sent two more guards after Ringling.

  They met on the way, and all returned together. The boy was puzzled. The ascent had evidently been more difficult than it looked. He had only been able to see the latter half of it, for an overhang was in the way. One of the guards seemed to have injured himself; the other one had helped him up the steps. He had waved to them, and was sure they must have seen him, but they had not waved back. He had seen the uninjured one come out of the monastery after some time with a couple of orange-robed monks, and they had been pointing, evidently indicating a route. They had gone back into the monastery, but although, mindful of the com
ing dark, he had waited as long as he could, no one had emerged again.

  ‘Didn’t you call to them?’

  ‘No, sahib, they knew where I was.’

  ‘Maybe they couldn’t see you. They might have lost the direction on the way up.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Yes,’ Houston said.

  He knew the guards would not have lost their direction, and he knew why the boy had not called. He would not have called himself. After days of hiding, and particularly since sighting the monastery, an oppressive silence had fallen on the party. Even the governor’s children had stopped their snuffling.

  Houston didn’t know quite what to make of this. If the climb were as difficult as it sounded, the guards were unlikely to return in the dark. There was no point in waiting; he must either go on or go back. He turned the party round and went back down the defile.

  Although the light was failing with every minute, he let a couple of suitable spots go by and picked a third because it was protected by a little promontory of rock that commanded the track. Beyond the promontory was a hollow with scattered boulders. He camped there, posting half the guards on the promontory, and the rest back along the track. The cold was so bitter that he knew they would not be falling asleep in it, so he made no arrangement for reliefs.

  He didn’t think he would be sleeping very much himself that night.

  4

  There was no point in getting the party out of sleeping bags into the bitter chill until they were ready to move; so though he turned out himself at dawn, he let them sleep on. He had tea, and sent out an urn to the guards on the promontory, and when they had drunk it, swapped round the shifts so that those along the track could warm themselves, too. He sat in his tent, licking the tsampa from the bottom of his mug, and tried to decide what to do.

  The dirty grey light was brightening outside. He thought he would give it till eight o’clock, and if nothing happened, move on, leaving two men to wait and to follow them with news.

  But soon after seven something did happen; a thin, distant clamour on the air, a gong sounding in the monastery.

  Houston walked back along the defile; he found the pickets very nervous, two men watching the monastery from behind a boulder.

  ‘Any movement up there?’

  ‘Some monks have been out for water, trulku.’

  ‘No sign of your comrades?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  The steps, he realized suddenly, continued above the monastery; he had not seen this in the afternoon light. He realized it now only because an orange-robed figure appeared on the clifftop and began to descend slowly with a pitcher. He watched the figure disappear behind the monastery. It did not appear again.

  ‘Is there another entrance at the back?’

  ‘There must be, trulku. That is where the monks have come from. Nobody has come from the front yet.’

  Houston watched for some minutes longer, and walked back. He had gone only a few yards when one of the men ran after him. He returned.

  Three figures had emerged from the back of the monastery and were climbing the steps; two orange figures, one dun- coloured; one of the guards he had sent up.

  ‘Has he looked down here yet?’

  ‘None of them have.’

  The figures mounted slowly.

  ‘Should we call, trulku?’

  ‘No,’ Houston said. ‘No, don’t call. Keep out of sight. We’re leaving now.’

  Something was very seriously wrong. As he walked back along the track, his face carefully scanned by the guards posted along it, he tried frantically to think what to do. The man evidently did not wish to give their position away. They had to move away from this spot, fast. Where? The track backwards led nowhere. They had been lost in it for two days, a twisting, boulder-strewn defile. It occurred to him that it was not a bad position to defend if he had to defend it. But he didn’t want to defend it; he wanted to get away from it. It also occurred to him that the Chinese might be moving up in their rear, and that this might explain the reason for the mysterious delay.

  ‘Everybody out, please. We’re moving now.’

  ‘They’re back, are they?’ Hugh said with relief.

  ‘Not yet. We’ve just spotted them going up the cliff for a better look.’

  ‘Aren’t you waiting for them, then?’

  ‘We can get organized meanwhile.’

  He didn’t want to explain anything. He didn’t know what there was to explain; merely a profound feeling in his bones that they must not be caught here in a confusion of tents and bedding, and that he must not himself spread panic.

  He thought he would go stark raving mad at the slow motion quality that descended on them suddenly. Endless hours seemed to elapse while the tents were struck and bedding rolled and equipment packed on the horses. But he bethought himself in this hiatus of something else the governor had suggested, and moved over to the palanquin.

  He said, ‘Little Daughter, the Mother wished to leave her palanquin and ride in the open. She can do so now.’

  ‘She cannot, trulku. She cannot ride. She has never ridden a horse.’

  ‘I will help her.’

  ‘No, trulku, this is not wise. It is my duty to help her, not yours.’

  He said in her ear, ‘Little Daughter, you must go in the palanquin, and the bags must come out. She will ride your horse. It is for her safety.’

  Little Daughter’s face went stiff and her mouth trembled. But she dismounted without another word.

  The guards turned their heads as the abbess stepped out of the palanquin. She was blind in her heavy veil, and Houston helped her to mount, and adjusted the stirrups and held her gloved hand while the two cloth-bound bales were strapped to the horse.

  She said clearly, ‘Is there some trouble, trulku?’

  ‘No trouble, Good Mother. We are getting guides. It will be an easy ride today. I will be beside you.’

  ‘I know it,’ she said, squeezing his hand.

  The governor’s wives had put up their own veils against the wind, and with fur hats and earmuffs in place were indistinguishable at a few paces from the abbess.

  ‘All right,’ Houston said. ‘Let’s go.’

  They had to pass within sight of the monastery; there was no help for that. But nothing moved in the now sinister little eyrie high on its mountain perch.

  Hugh came up beside him.

  ‘What about the fellows you sent up to the monastery? Aren’t you leaving anyone to tell them?’

  ‘There’s only one way we can go. They’ll have to follow.’

  ‘There isn’t anything wrong, is there?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean I don’t bloody well know,’ Houston said.

  Hugh dropped back.

  Ringling moved up.

  ‘You are not leaving anyone to wait for the guards in the monastery, sahib?’

  ‘No.’

  The boy rode silently beside him for some minutes. He said softly, ‘I have two pistols, sahib. I have them under my cape. One is for you.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘I will keep close to you, sahib.’

  ‘All right,’ Houston said again.

  The idea seemed to be catching on.

  They had gone for perhaps a quarter of an hour when the voices began calling them from the hills. Because the monastery was on the right, and the guards had gone to the right, they looked to the right; it was a minute or two with the sound ricocheting deceptively from side to side of the defile before they realized the cries were coming from the left.

  They halted to listen, and Houston found the procession bunched closely in round him.

  It was possible to see that the cries were coming from the two monks and the guard; now far to the left on the opposite side of the defile.

  ‘What are they shouting?’

  Nobody could tell what they were shouting, the sound distorted in the hills.

  ‘Should we call
to them, sahib?’ Ringling said.

  ‘All right,’ Houston said, seeing there was no point now in silence. ‘Tell them to come down here.’

  The party on the hilltop did not come down.

  ‘They are waving, trulku. They are waving us to come to them.’

  ‘How? Where is the track?’

  Nobody could tell that, either.

  He sent a guard trotting ahead to see if he could find a track. They waited, bunched closely together. From behind them, the faint reverberations of the monastery gong began to sound again in the thin air.

  Hugh said, ‘How the hell did they get up there? There doesn’t seem to be any way down from where they were.’

  ‘Maybe there is a wall of rock bridging one side of the valley with the other, sahib,’ Ringling said. ‘It would be easier than climbing down. We have seen it before.’

  They had seen it before. They had seen every kind of geological freak in the past three days.

  The guard trotted back.

  ‘There is a kind of track, trulku, very rocky. It is a hard climb.’

  ‘Where does this main track go to?’

  ‘There is a rock ridge ahead of us. The track goes on underneath it. There is a bad fall of rock there.’

  There seemed to be a kind of sense in this. There would be little point in the guard climbing dangerously down to lead them away from the rock fall when he could do so with ease merely by walking over the rock bridge to a point where he could see them coming.

  The party on the hilltop had stopped shouting now. They had stopped waving, too. They must have seen the guard ride out to look for the track, and now they stood and waited; they had shouted enough only to attract attention.

  ‘What about it?’ Hugh said.

  Houston turned to the guard. ‘This rock fall – how bad is it? Can we get past?’

  ‘I don’t know, trulku. I don’t know if it is blocked farther on.’

  ‘Maybe that’s what they were shouting about,’ Hugh said.

  ‘Maybe.’

  Maybe it was. He couldn’t see very much else for it.

  He said with a good deal more cheer than he felt, ‘Well, let’s have a go.’