The Maharajah's Monkey (23 page)

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.”

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.”

“Exactly 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.

“Pish and tush,” my aunt scoffed. “Schoolgirl dreams.”

“You must be after Shambala—and my map.”

“The only map I'm interested in, my girl, showed the way to the Tibetan gold fields. That map you think shows the way to paradise, actually shows the way to Thok Jalung. I met a spy captain in Simla. Did you know that?”

I remembered how Aunt Hilda had melted away from me at the Lower Bazaar in Simla. She had been so evasive that day.

“You gave me the slip in Simla, to meet your spy master?”

“The captain promised me a queen's ransom if I found those mines. An absolute mountain of gold.”

Bleakness settled like dust on me. All my dreams had ended here, in rocky cell and greedy search for gold. Then something struck me, something not quite right.
Why would the Baker Brothers risk everything for gold?

“The Baker Brothers must be after something else. They already have more than enough gold.”

Aunt Hilda sighed, and spoke very slowly, as if communicating with a nincompoop. “Kit, learn one thing and one thing only from me. You—can—never—have—enough—gold.”

I'd had enough of this conversation. If this was to be my last night on earth, I did not want it to be spent in sordid argument over riches. The cell walls pressed in on me. The slowly ticking minutes till our jailers came to collect us for the noose.

“That's all very well, dear Auntie,” I said, sweet as honey. “But you can't take gold where we're going. What does the Bible say? It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God.”

If nothing else, that stopped her mouth.

I must have fallen into sleep, despite the icicles settling in my veins and in my heart. Sometime in those despairing hours I was woken by a clatter of feet, the crash of a cell door against the wall. A burly figure in a sheepskin coat stood in the darkness without. He held a butter lamp, which lit his face from below. The flickering light turned an ordinary man into monster, with dark puddles for eyes and slanting cheekbones as cruel as knife slashes.

Through our tiny cell window I could see dark sky. Deep, black, star-speckled night in the center of which cruised a gibbous moon, wrapped in scarlet clouds. A time for sleep, but already our executioner had arrived.

His entrance awakened the others. Rachel's face like a crumpled rose, Aunt Hilda repressing a gasp. Silently we all watched the man as he stood on the threshold and raised the butter lamp to light his way.

“Yongden?” I gasped.

“Is time,” he replied.

I had been sure we would never see the monk again, yet here he was. I did not wonder where a man who we had last seen walking barefoot into the snow, had acquired a sheepskin coat, stout boots and a butter lamp. How had he suddenly appeared in our cell? With Yongden it did not do to ask too many questions. Instead we meekly did as he bid, walking past a snoring guard in a chair, down the corridor and turning right, where there was another pine door.

“Wait,” he commanded and turned the door handle. It swung open, revealing a sleeping Champlon and Isaac. Waldo was standing up, staring at the door with huge, lunatic eyes.

“I'll die before you take me,” he muttered, clenching his fists into a ball. “I'll kill you. Savages.”

“Shush, Waldo,” I hissed. “It's us.”

“Kit?” His blue eyes were bleary, and he stared at me as if fearful I was an apparition.

The others had woken as Yongden stepped into their cell. Such was his mastery of us all that he didn't need to speak, just beckoned with a crooked finger. Hardly trusting myself, not knowing whether he was a phantom borne of our need for a savior, I was the first to follow him. Aunt Hilda, Waldo and then the others falling into step behind us. We went past half a dozen soldiers, all fast asleep. Waldo removed their guns, our
own Martini-Henry rifles, and they didn't stir. As we sped by on feet of air, Waldo passed the weapons out to the others. Never had I felt so fleet, so made of spirit and light. We seemed as insubstantial as wraiths to our jailers, our passage disturbing no more than the air around them. In a flash we were outside in the cobbled courtyard where our donkeys were stamping their feet, and our Sherpas waiting for us in a mute huddle.

My breath created shimmering mushrooms of vapor in the air. It was freezing out here, with Tibet at our feet. We were ants against the majestic mountain, that jutting dazzle of ice silhouetted against the raven sky. Above it all hung the same blood-drenched moon I had glimpsed from my cell. Vultures circled above us, their harsh caws rising and falling in the wind. A dark omen? No matter. I have never been happier to feel the air on my face, to taste freedom in my mouth.

“Go,” Yongden addressed my aunt and Champlon.

“We must make haste,” Aunt Hilda agreed. “Press onwards.”

“No.”

“What … c-can … you … m-m-mean?” Aunt Hilda stuttered.

“Go home. It is time.”

Aunt Hilda blinked, for a moment I thought she was going to argue, but she merely hung her head. It was
Champlon, his face naked and furious, who protested, refusing to mount his donkey and waving his gun. A bullet cut him off, cracking past his face, fizzling out in the snow. A clamor from inside the building told us the strange spell that blanketed the garrison had been lifted.

More bullets careened past us; a donkey brayed in sudden sharp pain. Ebony figures were flitting in the snow darkness; crouching, running toward us.

“Go!” urged Yongden.

There was a stampede of donkeys' hooves, of braying and thumping of Sherpas cursing and running. More and more guards had emerged from the house, inky shadows against the overwhelming darkness. Arrows, silent and deadly, mingled with bullets. Champlon, wheeling away on his steed, was taking aim, picking off the soldiers with unerring accuracy. Waldo, I saw with a pang, was raising a quavering left hand, trying to shoot.

An arrow pelted toward me. A streak of eagle feathers, a deadly tip. I ducked. Behind me someone shrieked.

Yongden, trotting by me on a fine piebald stallion, laid his hands on the flank of my donkey, calming my panicking beast. He gestured to me to follow him. Miraculously we seemed to cut a path through the mayhem; the hiss, the cries, the bullets exploding in bursts of white light.

We were among the last to escape, bringing up the
rear behind Rachel, my aunt and the mass of Sherpas. Finally came Champlon, his face set and desperate, but his pistol steady. He was holding off our attackers, cutting off their advance with deadly gunfire. On the edges of my senses I was aware of another sound, underpinning the hiss and whine of fighting. A deep ominous sledgehammer under our feet and in our ears. A rumble that froze all battle and instantaneously scattered our attackers in panic.