‘Sahib, I can’t tell. Come and see,’ the boy said distractedly.
The screaming had mercifully stopped as they went out of the cave. The boy sat on the edge and lowered himself, and stepped sideways on to the rock, and turned to help Houston. His mouth was shaking and the narrow wrist trembling. Houston looked below through the frozen straggling bushes, and could see at first very little; a couple of bobbing caps, a steel rod swaying, the back of a jeep.
The boy had got down on his stomach and parted the vegetation, and Houston did the same. Two men were squatting over a fire prodding at food in a swinging pot. Another was sitting in the jeep fiddling with a wireless set; the rod was the aerial. He couldn’t see anything else. The boy shook his arm, and he followed his glance and by craning could see, a little farther along the track, two more soldiers. He couldn’t make out what they were doing. One seemed to be kneeling as if in prayer, and the other was standing watching him. As he watched, the kneeling man got up, and he saw what he had been doing. The woman was lying on the icy track with her clothes bundled about her head like a bag of rubbish. As one man got up, the other got down, and Houston turned away, afraid he was going to be sick.
The boy had caught his arm tightly, however, as he turned, and Houston saw that he was watching not the men along the track but the one in the jeep, who had now begun to speak into his microphone.
He was shaking so violently that even with the boy’s help he could barely drag himself back into the cave. He lay just inside, sickened and infuriated, fighting down a savage desire to hurl himself among them; aware that for the first time in his life he wanted with his own hands to kill somebody.
That made it, of course, very much easier later on.
Every trail leading from the river had been blocked; where possible jeeps had been flown in to work back quickly along the tracks. The men below had found the track too narrow for their jeep to negotiate, and were asking for mule transport. They were told to remain where they were to rendezvous with a party now on its way to them.
There were several transmissions on the wireless set. The boy could not understand all that was said. But the girl could. The three of them sat, famished, in the grey, icy chill, listening to the soldiers eating, and to the transmissions.
The woman was raped four times more after lunch, and twice towards dark by the wireless operator, who had been missing his share. A wind had come up, and he dragged her back to the shelter of the cave to do so in comfort. As she passed below, the boy had for the first time seen her face. He was weeping as he returned to the cave.
Houston didn’t ask him why, for he had already guessed. But the boy told him, all the same.
The expected party arrived after dark. It was a small party, consisting only of a man on a mule. He said that further transport could not be sent until the following afternoon, and that the jeep was to be returned immediately. The fire had to be stamped out before it could be manhandled round on the track; but within minutes, Houston saw it roaring away in low gear, headlights blazing. The four soldiers, the newly arrived visitor, and the woman remained. The fire was built up again. The visitor began to interrogate the woman.
He had been screening females in a near-by nomad encampment, he said, but had been checked by a peculiar difficulty. …
Houston went back to the cave, for he had heard and seen enough; he held the girl in his arms and put his hands over her ears so that she should not hear.
There was no particular reason why anyone should have suspected the chief medical monk; and it was plain why the governor had not spotted him from his dossier. The man was not an easterner. He looked to be a full Tibetan. His voice came quite clear above the crackling of the fire.
‘My sister, what is the use of resisting? Tell what is asked of you and the pain will stop.’
The pain did not stop. Within minutes, the screaming began again, even more agonized than before.
‘My sister, learn wisdom. Shorten the Mother’s journey and your own. She has no hope of escape. Describe her exactly and your troubles will be over.’
Alas, her troubles were not to be over so soon. Houston lay at the back of the cave, the girl’s head pressed tight in his shoulder, and listened to her enduring them. Only two people in the world had known what the Mother looked like under her mask, and he did not think the one below would be telling. Little Daughter had given up her virginity, and, by the sound of it, almost her reason. But he didn’t think that, apart from her life, she would be giving up anything else.
4
The boy thought he heard something above the screaming soon after nine o’clock, and came in to tell Houston so. Houston went out with him. They stood upon the projection of rock, listening. Fresh rhododendron wood had been piled on the fire, and it was hissing and singing as the ice melted. But Houston could hear it himself after a moment.
He said, ‘It’s the wind.’
‘It isn’t the wind, sahib.’
‘The wind is blowing in that direction.’
‘Yes, sahib. It can smell the food and hear them.’
‘How long since it ate?’
‘Not since yesterday at midday.’
‘Can you get to it?’
‘Not without going down.’
Houston looked up at the cliff above them; it shone with ice in the leaping ruddy light.
‘You can’t get to it from above,’ the boy said watching him. ‘You can’t even see it. That’s why I tied it there.’
But he went, without Houston telling him.
He was away for nearly two hours. He was blue with cold when he returned, lips and eyebrows frosted. He had not been able to get to the horse. He had worked to a point directly above it, and had let himself down on the rope. He had swung near enough to shoot it, but had been afraid to use his pistol. From the top of the cliff he had had an excellent view of the surrounding country, and all about him, as far as he could see, camp fires had gleamed; the soldiers were bivouacked in every tiny trail, and a considerable number seemed to be sited on the plain a few miles ahead. The horse had been kicking up such a din, however, and had so nearly bitten through its bridle, that in desperation the boy had tried other measures. He had collected rocks and, swinging on the rope in the freezing night, had tried to kill the horse that way. He had gone up and down on the rope for his rocks several times, and knew that he had caught it about the head and shoulders. But he had not killed it, or even quietened it. He was certain the horse would break free within hours.
Houston was so numb with cold and hunger and the strain of waiting that he could scarcely think.
‘Is there no other way at all of getting at it?’
‘None, sahib. I tried.’
‘Couldn’t you go beyond it on the clifftop and get down wherever you can and go up from the track?’
‘Sahib, it might take all night. We haven’t got all night,’ the boy said. He was very frightened, his face again pointed and shrivelled like that of some small animal. ‘We’ve got to leave here. We’ve got to leave as soon as possible.’
Houston thought at first he was offering the mad suggestion that they should all climb the cliff – for it was plain that the girl was not in a condition to climb anywhere. But Ringling was not suggesting that. He was half starved and half frozen, and shaking all over with fright; but the suggestion he had to offer was more fantastic still.
Houston thought he had taken leave of his senses.
‘Sahib, it’s our only hope.’
‘Forget it.’
‘Sahib, if we don’t they’ll get us. The horse will give us away.’
‘They have to find us first.’
‘They don’t have to. They would starve us out. They will know we are here somewhere.’
‘There are five of them below, you bloody young idiot!’
‘Tomorrow there will be five hundred!’ the boy said furiously. ‘Sahib, we have only this chance. Two of them are asleep now. The monk and one more will turn in soon. Only one picket will stay up. We
deal with him.’
‘How?’
‘With the knife.’
‘Kill him?’
‘All of them. It’s the only thing.’
They looked at each other.
Houston found that he was trembling, too.
By midnight, two men were still awake, and it was still not time. Little Daughter had subsided, but she was still being worked upon. The medical monk had carried her out of the cave, and back in it, and was now outside with her again. He had tried arak and douches of icy water, and also the fire, which had been recently made up. None of these methods seemed to have worked and as Houston watched, the man took a rest. He accepted a cigarette from the picket and sat by the fire with him, chatting, the naked body of Little Daughter alongside like some scarred stranded whale, the mule, heavily blanketed, dozing near by.
Distantly, against the wind, the horse was trumpeting: Houston heard it quite clearly, and he saw from the way the mule’s ears twitched, that it could hear it, too. Beside him on the rock, the thin body trembled continuously. Ringling was to be the first one down the rope, and hence the one who would take on the picket.
They had worked out how it was to be done. They had worked it out in the cave. The boy had felt for Houston’s heart under his jacket, and had traced it round to the back, and had measured with his fingers the distance from the spine where the knife must go. For the best part of an hour they had scuffled softly in the darkness, rehearsing it and the remainder of the night’s work; for the men in the sleeping bags posed another kind of problem. It would be necessary to slit their throats; and each would have to be dispatched in his bag, silently and economically, before the next one was attended to. Writhing strongly against each other on the floor, they had developed a number of desperate refinements to facilitate this bloody and most odious operation: the gag made from a bundled glove; the sharp stab into the windpipe before the knife was turned in the wound and drawn across. They had practised so conscientiously that by now Houston could almost believe himself capable of it, and prayed only that he would be allowed to try before his resolve weakened.
The monk, however, seemed in no hurry to meet his fate. He smoked his cigarette. He chatted with the picket. He examined a boil in the picket’s ear, and told him minutely what to do about it. He even got down on his knees again to recommence work on Little Daughter; but after flicking up an eyelid and shaking her chin, rose suddenly and stretched himself and went in the cave.
Houston and the boy looked at each other. The monk had said nothing further; no good nights had been offered. Would he be reappearing to carry Little Daughter back into the cave, or to cover her up in the freezing night?
The guard seemed just as uncertain. He got up presently and looked into the cave, and stamped about on the track, and collected more wood and flung it on the fire. The horse trumpeted again in the night, much more clearly this time. The dozing mule came awake and tossed its head.
The boy eased himself gently up on the rock. Houston felt in his pockets for the stones. The idea was for him to throw the stones one at a time to the other side of the track to distract the guard while Ringling shinned down. At the bottom, he would still be out of sight of the picket, and Houston would tug the rope when the man was in position.
They waited a few minutes more, watching the cave.
But then something happened that indicated quite certainly that the picket was not expecting the monk out again; and that the stones would not be needed, either.
The man had been examining Little Daughter; and after another brief glimpse into the cave, seemed to have satisfied himself.
It was a moment or two before Houston saw what he was doing; and he felt then such rage and loathing that he would most willingly and with all his heart have gone down the rope himself.
But that was not in the plan.
‘Now?’ the boy said.
‘Yes,’ Houston said. ‘Oh, yes. Now.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
1
THERE was the barest rustle from the undergrowth as the boy went down. Houston stayed on one knee, ready to follow him and yet keeping his view of the track. Within seconds, he felt the faint tug in his hands, and returned it immediately, for the picket would never be in a better position and was quite distracted enough. But he stayed himself some seconds more, knowing he could not move as silently as the boy, and not daring to set up the ghost of a sound before he saw him at his goal. There was the faintest of movements below, a mere change in the quality of darkness, and the boy stepped out into the firelight. He held himself still for a moment, and then glided surely in like a cat. He came on the picket sideways, crooking an arm round his neck and plunging in the knife almost in one movement like a man scything.
Without fear suddenly, in a kind of drunken elation, Houston found himself swarming down the rope. He heard, as he did so, a gentle cough, the smallest of shuffles, as though a sleeper were turning over in some other room; and as he came on to the track, saw that the man was indeed trying to turn, his legs kicking feebly, shoulders arching. The boy bore down intently, and suddenly withdrew the knife and plunged it swiftly in again, leaning upon it with such grave concentration, his head turned a little to one side as he gazed at Houston that he was reminded fantastically of a mechanic turning some hidden screw.
The man expired like that, quite silently, with only the gentlest of shudders, and the boy lowered him to the body of Little Daughter, and pulled out his knife and wiped it on his back. He was panting as he raised himself. Houston realized he had been holding his breath. He grasped his arm and pressed it. The boy nodded, no longer trembling, and inclined his head towards the cave, and began to move there.
Houston had been holding the knife in his hands for the best part of an hour, for the most part in utter terror, but now that the moment had come to use it, he felt nothing at all. He looked at it in utter disbelief, and his only thought was that he had used it last to cut his toenails and that it was too ludicrously familiar and domestic a little tool for the incredible tasks it would have to perform.
The cave was in complete blackness. They paused, just inside. They had decided in the interests of safety to deal first with the last man in, the monk. But the cave was evidently so much smaller than the one above, its low roof so muffled and flattened the snores of the sleepers that it was impossible in the darkness to tell their dispositions. The boy caught Houston’s sleeve and moved on again, slowly; and suddenly stopped and drew back like a scalded cat. There was a grunt in the darkness, a shifting, a muttering. Houston realized he must have stepped on someone.
They stood perfectly still, not breathing, waiting for the sleeper to subside. The sleeper did not subside. He threshed restlessly, and coughed, and presently began to do something else. Houston couldn’t tell what it was, but after a second felt the boy’s hand withdrawn, and heard suddenly in the darkness a rasp and saw the cave leap horrifyingly into life as a flint sparked; and in the same moment, without thought, had thrown himself forward with the boy on to the barely- glimpsed figure of a man in the bag. He had an impression of a broad Asiatic face yawning and staring with absorption into a little brass lighter before the light was smothered. He did not see the man’s expression change (or indeed anything else at all in the next extraordinary few minutes, retaining only the one dim visual memento of the experience like an imperfectly synchronized flashlight photograph). He doubted if the man ever saw them.
There was a nose under his hand, and he rammed the gag in below it and forced the man backwards; and felt through the gag the single muffled hawk as if he was being sick. But the boy had struck too quickly and missed the windpipe, and the man writhed strongly so that he had to plunge again and again, forgetting the lessons they had learned, and hissing himself at the horrifying work; and as he did so another voice murmured in the darkness, someone else waking, and the boy shook him frantically with his other hand, and Houston found a glove in it, and took it and went mindlessly to deal with the next one him
self.
He thought he had placed the murmur in the darkness, and was not wrong, for just as he leaned over the man spoke to him. He spoke directly into his face. Houston was driven so much into a panic by this simple but unexpected occurrence that he almost fell over backwards, but he held himself for a moment with the glove poised, and just as he spoke again rammed it down hard, and with horror felt the whole glove go into the open mouth and his knuckles with it, and stabbed with the knife.
The man leapt under the knife, his chest straining up out of the bag. Houston got his knee on it, and pressed with all his strength, and heard presently the muffled hawking and was almost sick himself. He thought the little blade was too short to complete the job, and tried to draw it out to stab harder, but blood had begun to run incredibly, and the knife was no longer in his hand. He searched frantically for it, and found it still there as the man thrummed below him, stuck in the throat, and grasped desperately, and found he had grasped a handful of what felt like hot raw liver, and in a paroxysm of horror got his fingers among it to feel the thin metal handle and sawed there and back to free it and felt the blade cutting as though through hosepipe.
He did not need to stab again when he got it out; and indeed could not for the life of him have done so. He kneeled on the chest for some moments longer, feeling cold sweat trickling over his eyebrows and down his face, so sickeningly nauseated that he hadn’t the strength to stand. His hands were running with blood. The crumpled glove was soaked with blood. He hadn’t in his darkest horrors expected so much blood. He had expected to be afraid, and he was not afraid. And he had expected a quick economical death; and it was not that, either. He had an impression of having fumbled inside a bag of blood and soft organs to sever tough cords; and it was the idea of the bag still spilling out over his hands and knees that, more than the boy’s sudden gasped imprecations, brought him staggering to his feet in the darkness.
He knew then that the noise had been going on for a little while, and he lurched towards it, horribly afraid that he had already started to be sick. There was a sweet-sour stench of a butcher’s shop as he moved, and he knew he was carrying it on his hands and couldn’t bear to close them; and he realized with a certain refinement of horror that he was still carrying the glove also, holding it with a tea-table delicacy by one finger.
The Rose of Tibet Page 27