Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  That was how they lost sight of St. Malo; Andrew was counting on Bompo Tsering to attend to that job. Tom spoke without turning his head. He didn’t want to meet Elsa’s eyes; he was trying to be impersonal.

  “Our job is to beat the old man to it and be first to find the young Dalai Lama. We’ll be out of luck if we don’t. Once Old Ugly-face is on top, we’ll be a liability.”

  “He doesn’t overlook his liabilities,” said Elsa.

  Tom ignored that, although it stopped him for a moment. He spoke to Andrew again: “No shooting! No killing! Follow me, and keep close.”

  Old Ugly-face was busy talking to someone through a hole about four inches square in a narrow postern that was part of the big gate. The top of the gate was almost invisible; through the whirling murk there was a gray bulky something up there that was probably a fortified arch. Something belched flame and there was a deadened roar — not lightning — not thunder. An old-fashioned big-bored rifle had gone off like a cannon. The naked hermit next but one to Andrew fell dead; blood pumped and then flowed through a hole in his neck. Tom was all nerves; he exploded:

  “God! Now we’re for it!”

  “This is how we get in!” said Andrew with grim confidence. “The Tibetan closed season for naked hermit shooting runs twelve months solid!”

  Old Ugly-face pounced on the chance as if he had planned, or at least foreseen it. His passionate roar was like a lion’s. He used the prayer wheel like a two-handed battle-axe and smashed it on the monastery gate. Some of the fluttering scraps of parchment fell into the hermit’s blood. Bompo Tsering and the others scrambled for them. A great bell boomed behind the monastery wall, and set a hundred bells going — more than a hundred. Old Ugly-face turned to Tom and Andrew and ordered them to burn down the gate. “How does he think we’ll do it?” Tom demanded.

  Old Ugly-face was telling what to do, not how. His own wrath could have done it better than any implements they had. Andrew was about to break open a cartridge for its smokeless powder when the gate opened, to the squeal and clatter of winch and chain. They poured through, Old Ugly-face leading. He was in his element, a pilgrim on the path of glory, as iron-willed as the angel of judgment Day — followed by nine and thirty naked hermits — a novelty, even in Tibet. He never hesitated — not once, though there was nothing to be seen but falling snow. It was darker in there than outside.

  Andrew turned back to bring in the body of the dead hermit.

  “Why — why — why?” Elsa demanded.

  “Follow Old Ugly-face! Keep close to him!” he answered.

  Elsa obeyed. Tom hesitated, just inside the gate, shouting: “Come on, you idiot! This way!” Then Tom followed the procession.

  Andrew was keeping his head. He knew that corpses cut no ice in Tibet; but sacrilege does. The evidence of sacrilege might swing the balance between success and failure. He made four men carry the corpse and lay it inside the gate, in a drain, where he could find it later if needed.

  Tom came looking for him — furious. “God dammit, what are you waiting for! We’ve Ram-pa Yap-shi and twenty-five hundred monks to beat.”

  “Where’s Elsa?”

  “Gone with Old Ugly-face — I lost sight of ’em waiting for you!”

  Bells, bells, bells — booming and clanging like fire alarms. Shouts — hundreds of voices shouting to and fro from roofs and galleries. There was a weird suggestion of a fog-bound railroad junction. The watery sun burst through for a moment. It revealed shadowy figures ghosting through the snow across courtyards, running in all directions like ants in a broken hill. Lamplight shone through slits in stone walls, some being extinguished as fast as others were lighted. Panic. Never before in Tibet’s history had one hermit, let alone nine and thirty, marched naked through a snowstorm behind a Ringding Gelong Lama to demand a monastery’s purging of the sin of spiritual sloth. Old Ugly-face’s broken prayer wheel was a symbol that stabbed the air with meanings that the monks understood; they knew their ritual; they were schooled in ceremonial and Tantric magic. Their souls shook within them. Hundreds of them bunched up their skirts and ran, bare-legged — ran anywhere — nowhere — from one building to another. Ancient guns went off at random, each one starting a new panic.

  It was like the fall of Babylon, only there was no royal banquet to interrupt. Old Ugly-face, guided by his own daemon, turned to the right. Tom recovered command of himself, shouted at Andrew, and led straight forward, guided by memory. Old Ugly-face was de facto Lord Regent of Tibet within fifteen minutes after that.

  The monastery could have lent itself, like a medieval city, to the worst kind of street fighting, but there was no one willing to fight. It was perched on the side of a mountain — all up and downhill on different levels. Courtyard led into courtyard through unlighted arches. Huge barrack-like buildings faced inward. At the rear, with its back to the mountain, was an enormous building like a keep, apron-fronted like the Potala at Lhasa. Cannon that once belonged to the Chinese Army peered through gaps in the wall. The sun was beginning to fight its way through. The storm was failing. Everything could be seen now, dimly, like a negative that is beginning to develop. Someone fired one of those old cannons. It burst — knocked down a ton of masonry — scared some monks so badly that they fled into the courtyard through a door that Tom might otherwise have missed. The main door was barred. Tom wrenched at it, but Andrew grabbed him and shoved him in the right direction. In a second they were using their fists on monks’ ears to force their way past a stream of them that poured through that other door. It was like a theater panic. None knew what he was afraid of, but they ran — ran like rats.

  Tom remembered the way now. He led as if he had the ball on the twenty- yard line. Andrew and the Tibetans bucked the hurrying stream of monks and followed him up a huge stone stairway to an upper corridor. It was lighted by parchment covered lanterns.

  Then they remembered St. Malo, because they saw him. He was at the end of the corridor, standing beside the young Dalai Lama and the Lord Regent Ram-pa Yap-shi — their backs to a door — caught in the act of flight. Andrew gasped:

  “God, for a camera!”

  St. Malo heard that. “What you need is brains!” he retorted. “Did you bring ’em with you?” He had an automatic, stolen somewhere, somehow. He placed its muzzle against the Dalai Lama’s neck — a young lad with a face like a porcelain doll’s, clothed in embroidered red silk. The boy looked bleached by being too long indoors — placid, amused, contemplative, curious. Large, long-lashed Mongolian eyes. He seemed to like St. Malo. Surely he didn’t suspect that his life trembled on St. Malo’s trigger finger.

  The Lord Regent Ram-pa Yap-shi had been hit hard by someone. There was blood on his face. Punch-drunk, he stood six feet away from St. Malo, with a dozen monks behind him. The monks weren’t eager to protect him; it might be one of them who had hit him; they were hesitating, telling each other what to do, and doing nothing. Ram-pa Yap-shi wasn’t Chinese, but with his thin beard and horn-rimmed spectacles he looked it. He was wearing the gorgeous embroidered robes of a High Abbot. Barring the spectacles, he very closely resembled the painted figure on the wall beside him — a portrait of an ancient notoriously cruel king of Tibet, represented as a suppliant at the Seat of Judgment of the dead.

  There was tense silence for about two seconds. Then St. Malo delivered his ultimatum:

  “Now you two geniuses-quick! I’ve got the kid. I’ll bring him. You shoot these monks! Grab the Abbot and run. I’ll show you where to run to. We’ll make our own terms!”

  It was no use doubting St. Malo. He meant business. As long as he had his hands on the holiest child on earth, no Tibetan would dare to touch him. He would shoot the child dead rather than surrender his advantage. But there was a chance yet.

  He interrupted a glance between Andrew and Tom. “I’ve warned you!” he said sharply.

  Andrew moved, sideways, toward a niche in the wall in which rested all kinds of religious objects, including a bronze dorje, like an orna
mental two-pound dumb-bell. Tom watched for an opening, not daring to draw his own weapon, but holding St. Malo’s attention while Andrew lifted the bronze dorje from the shelf. He hurled it — hit St. Malo on the jaw — staggered him. St. Malo fired at Andrew — missed. Before he could fire again Tom’s fist sent him staggering to the floor in a corner. Then Bompo Tsering shot him dead.

  The boy lama laughed.

  It was a strange laugh — so unexpected that it almost stopped Andrew from searching St. Malo’s pockets; but that was public duty number one that he didn’t dare to leave entirely to Bompo Tsering. He found a thin wallet, containing what looked like the key to a code. It sounded as if the boy lama was laughing at that — merrily. Or was he laughing because he had never before seen a dead man? Or because Andrew let Bompo Tsering pocket St. Malo’s money? Drawing blank in St. Malo’s remaining pockets, Andrew looked up — saw delight in the boy’s eyes — followed their gaze toward the end of the long corridor. Old Ugly-face’s head and shoulders appeared, at floor level, like a bronze bust.

  He was ascending a curving stairway at the far end. The boy had recognized him; the laugh was spontaneous greeting; he hadn’t turned his head even to glance at the shooting; he appeared unconscious of it — bright-eyed, pleased and relieved beyond words. Old Ugly-face as he mounted the stairs looked like a great hobgoblin with a hundred ghosts behind him. He had left all except one of the hermits somewhere; that one, wrapped now in a curtain snatched from a wall, strode beside Elsa — a bearded skeleton in a toga. The rest were monastery monks. Counter-revolution brooded on their stern faces. Reaction. Grim, unforgiving piety. As Old Ugly-face paused midway along the corridor, four monks overtook him, genuflected and then robed him is the vestments of high office, shaking incense on him. He was no longer a ragged pilgrim. His Holy Diplomatic Eminence the Ringding Gelong Lama Lobsang Pun no longer wore Andrew’s blanket over a peasant’s rags. He gave the blanket to the hermit. He stood arrayed in the embroidered yellow and crimson to which high rank entitled him. Then he went down on his knees and touched his forehead to the floor, doing reverence to the child who had laughed with delight when he first appeared. Elsa, close behind him, knelt beside the hermit.

  “You’ve lost her!” Tom murmured. “We’ve both lost her.” He sounded ashamed.

  There wasn’t one weapon in sight among the monks who followed Old Ugly- face. As they reached the corridor they, too, laid their foreheads on the floor. Rifles clattered as Bompo Tsering, Ga-pa-dug and the others followed suit. There was almost no other sound as Old Ugly-face moved slowly forward, giving the monks time to make their obeisance. The child lama blessed Old Ugly-face with a gesture of his right hand and a movement of his lips. Then he blessed Elsa, the hermit, the monks, Tom, Andrew. He beamed, exuded blessings. Andrew watched Ram-pa Yap-shi-gaunt, tall, high cheeked — something less than inscrutable. Tibetan — in-bred — autocrat — caught unaware — dazed. No Tibetan fears death. But pride fears humiliation, and the prouder the rogue, the worse he fears it. The paralysis of fear resembled dignity — almost — until one noticed his eyes.

  Breath steamed in the chill air. Outside, on roofs and in courtyards, there was a prodigious clamoring of bells. In the corridor, silence — almost like the silence of the painted Bodhisattvas on the wall. At last, Old Ugly-face made an imperious gesture. He made it with his left hand. Four monks advanced from behind. Ram-pa Yap-shi didn’t move; nor did his attendants. The four monks unceremoniously disrobed Ram-pa Yap-shi. They took his rosary and jewels, and the rings from his fingers, but offered him no other indignity. They left him standing in a long black cassock, with bowed head, shivering a little because it was very cold in the corridor. Then Old Ugly-face moved both hands and the monks behind him opened a lane through their midst.

  Without a word being spoken, Ram-pa Yap-shi strode forward with folded arms. His attendants followed. Old Ugly-face did not get out of Ram-pa Yap- shi’s way. He almost appeared not to see him; but as Ram-pa Yap-shi approached he made a very slight gesture with the fingers of his left hand. Ram-pa Yap-shi obeyed the gesture — passed left to left, instead of right to right. It signified condemnation, commination, excommunication and acceptance of defeat. Only an outcast, stripped of hope in this world and condemned to unimaginable ignominy in the next, would pass to the left of anyone or anything that symbolized a religious idea. Even Tom Grayne shuddered.

  The astonishing thing was the boy lama’s behavior. He took it all unemotionally, as if it were part of a ritual. The impression was that he had been expecting this — knew it would happen — had foreseen it. Since that one peal of delighted recognition of Old Ugly-face he hadn’t made a sound. He gazed chiefly at Elsa. She puzzled him. Since he was weaned he had been denied any association with women, even of his own race. But his gaze was as unselfconscious as a statue’s — it suggested intelligent interest. Andrew stared at him without a thousandth of his manners, memorizing his features, for a portrait, to be carved before memory should have time to grow dim.

  Old Ugly-face said something in Tibetan to a monk behind him. Two monks, one on either hand, strode forward and struck the double door, both together, with the palms of their right hands. One panel opened. The boy lama smiled, turned and led the way into his apartment. Old Ugly-face followed.

  There was a glimpse of a long carpet in a stone walled passage lined with paintings of saints on silk. Then the door closed behind them and a murmur went up, of monks whispering to one another, that filled the corridor. It suggested a waterfall in an echoing cavern.

  Elsa, Tom Grayne and Andrew stood facing one another for a moment, each waiting for the other to speak — until Andrew noticed blood flowing from St. Malo’s body and began looking for something to cover it with. Front-rank monks guessed what he was looking for — whispered. Other monks came from the rear with a piece of carpet and covered the corpse contemptuously, as the attendants at a bull fight cover the gored dead horses.

  Andrew and Tom waited for Elsa to tell what had happened and was happening outside. Surely she must be bursting with news. But when she broke the strained silence she said:

  “Tom, only one of us may remain here with Lobsang Pun.”

  “Yes, I know it,” he answered glumly. “You win.”

  “He takes only one chela at a time. Never more. And only one who needs his help and whom he knows he can enlighten.”

  “Yes. I’ve heard that of him.”

  “I had asked him to accept me as his chela before I knew you intended to ask. — Tom-please believe me: if I had known you wanted it, I would never have—”

  Tom interrupted her: “If so, why did you return from India?”

  “Tom, to give you your freedom, face to face — no other reason! When I left Tibet for Darjeeling you never expected to see me again, did you?”

  “I don’t know,” Tom answered. “I didn’t suppose the baby would have a chance to live. I was surprised when you did come back. I thought we had parted good friends, and you’d see the—”

  He hesitated. The monks were staring at them. Andrew was listening. Elsa’s eyes looked straight at his. She seemed to be expecting something — almost praying for it. He yielded.

  “I’m ashamed,” he said abruptly. “I tried, as you know, to learn your gift from you. The effort only exasperated both of us. All winter long I tried to learn it from the Tibetan who shared my hide-out. He said I’m unteachable. So I set my heart on Lobsang Pun. It made me jealous — envious — suspicious. I behaved like a cad.”

  “Tom, then do we part good friends?”

  Andrew was about to speak, but the door opened and all the monks stopped whispering. The door closed again quietly behind Old Ugly-face. The monks genuflected. Old Ugly-face stared at Tom as if he hadn’t seen him before — scowled — his eyes flashed with anger:

  “Your believing Jesus saying — asking being same as getting! Yes. But who asking? And who getting? My telling you, it is more blessed to give! His saying that also!”

  He
took no notice of anyone else. The monks opened up and he passed down their midst as Ram-pa Yap-shi had done, but his head was unbowed and his hands weren’t folded on his breast. The monks faced about and followed, so that the hermit came last. Tom shrugged his shoulders and followed the hermit. Andrew touched Elsa’s arm. She met his eyes. He looked more troubled than she had ever seen him.

  “Andrew,” she said, “Andrew, I have trusted you — through thick and thin. We are all on the verge of death. Will you trust me — this once — now?”

  “I must,” he answered. “I have said: I love you.”

  She nodded. “Then for my sake, please keep your promise and stand by Tom Grayne, to the end. — Follow him now! No — this isn’t the end — not yet.”

  She slipped away from him, struck the door with the palm of her hand and vanished into the boy lama’s apartment. The door closed behind her. A bolt clicked.

  CHAPTER 61

  The snowfall had ceased when Andrew overtook Tom in the courtyard. The sun was fighting its way through breaking clouds. Wind, whirling the snow off roofs and walls and piling up deep drifts under archways and cloisters, saved both their lives; monks, as ferocious as hornets, couldn’t gee at them in sufficient numbers or quickly enough. They were able to dodge from cloister to cloister; they had to keep hiding, pausing, ducking behind columns and into doorways.

  Lusty-lunged bull-bellowers, instructed by Old Ugly-face’s hermits, were hard at work proclaiming that Ram-pa Yap-shi’s fall was due to sinful intrigue with foreigners. Lo and behold, the foreigners! Who should distinguish, in a crisis, between good and bad ones? Old Ugly-face had pitched on Tibet’s xenophobia as the basis for his coup d’etat. He was playing it up. In the name of religion, the law, the prophets, and the higher spiritual beings to whom Tibet yearns for guidance, he denounced all foreign influences — at the top of his lungs — to the booming of gongs and the blare of the big radongs that sound like foghorns in a fog-bound sea.