The Rose of Tibet (26 page)

He swung himself up on the horse behind her. He dug in his heels and bent forward over the girl’s back and set the horse’s head to the river slope. He looked round once, and saw the horseman with the loudhailer pursuing him, and actually found himself laughing out loud with pure exhilaration. There had been no plan, no plan at all in his mind; he had acted in response to some gay, some irrepressible summons of the blood. But now the drop was approaching, and just at the last, seeing what it had not seen before, the animal jibbed; and Houston, seeing it in the same moment, jibbed also.

There was no kind of slope at all from the edge; the ground simply fell away quite sheer for fifty feet or more, and below, thickly studded with boulders, dropped only slightly less precipitously for another fifty before losing itself in the curtain of snow.

Between his legs, Houston could feel the girl’s body rigid with fright, and felt his own arms go stiff as ramrods as he leaned back to slew the animal’s head round.

But weight and momentum had done their work. With fore
legs raised high like those of a rocking horse, and carrying on its back the abbess of Yamdring, the man from beyond the sunset and a fortune of three million pounds, the animal sailed sickeningly over the edge.

T
HE
horse did not touch for quite sixty feet. It touched and flew, and touched and flew, screaming with every breath; for a hindleg had snapped at the first impact, and a foreleg seconds later. Houston hung on, quite paralysed with fright. Because of the bales, one at each side, he could not get his legs down; he was up high like a jockey, and leaning so far forward against the girl that her head was buried in the animal’s mane.

Despite its hideous injuries, the horse managed to remain upright, frantically dodging the enormous boulders that reared on every side; but could not dodge them all. A glancing blow on the breast slewed it round and then they were over, and rolling, the girl leeching to the horse, and Houston to the girl, so that all three, locked together, careered down the mountainside like some ungainly snowball.

The reins had become caught below Houston’s elbow, and the animal’s long hairy head was twisted round towards him, eyes rolling, yellow teeth snapping, from its mouth issuing a scream so human that Houston could not be sure it was not coming from the girl.

There was another blow, a dull stunning one to the neck, which stopped it screaming, and then a third – a blow so final that it brought a single great belch from the animal as all the air and all the life were driven from its body.

They had brought up on a slope like the side of a house, against a rock so razor-edged that the horse seemed almost to have been cut in two. A great gout of blood washed up out of it and spat back into Houston’s face, and he lay in the snow, stupefied with shock, feeling the warm rivulets trickling
down his neck. He saw a leg, which was his own, and another, which was not, and tried to kick it away.

He felt her then, the faintest of movements below him.

He had landed on his side with the horse still between his legs, and she was somewhere below. He twisted about and dug frantically, and found her fur hat, and tugged at it; but realized that it was caught below her chin and that he might be strangling her, and made a space for her to breathe instead.

She gasped for air, her veil off, her face deathly pale.

‘Mei-Hua, don’t struggle. Don’t struggle. I’ll get you out.’

He bore down, swinging one leg back off the horse and wrenching the other from beneath her, and managed to drag her half out. They lay back, panting in the churned-up snow, and he felt a dreadful lurch of vertigo; for it seemed to him that even lying back they were only a few degrees off the vertical. A good deal of row seemed to be going on above: a dull deadened row, the single-shot cough of rifles, the sneezing pop-pop of the automatic weapons, voices shouting. All about them now, the snow had begun to turn red.

‘Mei-Hua, we can’t stay here.’

She didn’t answer, and he saw her face screwed up in pain.

‘Are you hurt?’

‘My foot is twisted.’

‘Give me your hand.’

But when he stood to help her, he felt so like a fly upon a wall that he fell back again abruptly.

‘Wait. Wait a minute. Rest first.’

They rested for several minutes, and he tried again, feet planted deep in the snow and leaning backwards.

‘Now.’

She cried out with pain and fright. ‘Oh, no. No, Chao-li.’

‘Don’t look below. Look at me.’

‘Chao-li, no, I can’t. Please.’

‘Mei-Hua, dearest,’ he said weakly. ‘We must get away from here. They can see the blood. Try again.’

She tried again. He turned her on her back, and on her front, holding first her arms and then her legs. The girl dug herself with terror into the snow.

‘Mei-Hua, I am holding you. I won’t let you go. Please, please, dearest. …’

She was sobbing at the last attempt. ‘Chao-li leave me alone. Leave me for a minute.’

‘If the snow stops they will see us.’

‘I can’t help it.’

‘Try again. We’ll find another way.’

‘There isn’t any other way. I’ll do it. Just leave me for a minute. …’

But there was another way, and the instant he thought of it, he was climbing back the few feet to the horse. He sat in the sticky red mess and heaved at the ropes, and scooped out snow to get at the one underneath, and dragged both bales clear. Each bale was wrapped around with stout ropes which she could easily grasp, and he tied them together again, and spreadeagled her on them to distribute the weight, and lowered the sled to clear snow. It handled with ease, weighty enough to bed down a few inches and prevent it running away, wide enough not to plough in entirely.

Within minutes he had developed the technique to a degree of some proficiency, taking the strain with both arms, and shuffling down on his haunches, a brisk sideways shuffle of the backside giving sufficient lateral motion; and in this manner, with the abbess and her treasure, dropped in a gentle diagonal to the Li-Chu river.   

The snow stopped at about midday, and the soldiers came over the edge soon after. Houston watched them from behind a boulder. He had not managed to get down to the river, but had taken cover some minutes earlier, aware that the snow was petering out and that he must allow for their most recent tracks to be covered. He could no longer see the red mess of the horse, but could not be sure that it was not visible from above.

The men were being lowered on ropes. He could see the officer with the loudhailer and several other horsemen directing operations from the clifftop. The shooting had stopped a long time before. The soldiers came down slowly and very cautiously, a dozen or so of them, with their automatic weapons. They began quartering the mountainside.

They found the horse soon after one o’clock, and the officer had himself lowered immediately. Houston saw them digging
under the horse, and observed the officer’s growing agitation as nothing came to light. The man had himself hauled up again, and seeing soon after the flash of binoculars, Houston had to get his head down. He kept it down for a couple of hours, hearing the occasional boom of the loudhailer, and the strange chattering of the groups of soldiers on the mountainside.

The snow started again at about three o’clock; but aware that a group of Chinese soldiers was no more than fifty yards above him, Houston did not dare to move again. He lay with his arms about the girl on the two bales, listening.

‘What are they saying?’

‘Some wish to return but the others say they have no orders and will not be pulled up. They are roped together but not from above.’

He thought after a while that the voices had passed to their right, but, afraid that the snow might suddenly stop, he still could not nerve himself to move; which was just as well, for minutes later he heard voices immediately below him, evidently of another party which had come down more directly, and was now traversing.

He lay, feeling the girl trembling in his arms; both of them on their sides facing each other, the snow settling heavily upon them. The voices passed below them. He heard the two groups calling to each other, and then a third group, and slowly all of them receded. Soon after the snow stopped again.

He could see very clearly how near the men below had come – the deep footprints not twenty yards away – and thanked providence for his decision not to move, and lay silently with the girl, waiting.

At four o’clock (breathing on his watch to clear the ice) he heard the loudhailer going again, and chancing another look, saw that ropes were being lowered to draw the men back up the cliff face. By half past, all were up, and there was no further sight or sound of the party. He stayed where he was. It would be dark in half an hour. It must be obvious to the Chinese that they were on the slope somewhere. The bales had been taken from the horse, and there had been insufficient time for them to get down to the river. He thought that if he
were the Chinese officer he would himself have called off the search and quietly stationed observers to watch.

He waited till the light was almost gone before cautiously getting to his knees behind the boulder and working his limbs to restore the feeling. In the bitter, creeping cold the girl had gone into a sort of doze and he did not wake her yet. He thought she might as well enjoy what oblivion she could while she could.

He gave it a few minutes more, until he could no longer pick out the division between the clifftop and the sky, and shook her.

‘Mei-Hua, we’re going to move again now.’

She came to with a little moan, and he took her hands and removed the gloves and worked her fingers with his own.

‘Can you feel with them?’

‘I don’t know. Where are we going?’

‘Just down a little farther to the river. The soldiers have gone now. Can you hold on?’

The girl was not too clear what she could do or where she was. Her teeth were chattering violently. He spreadeagled her on the bale again, and waited a few minutes more until even the footprints in the snow were no longer distinguishable, and got moving.

The girl fell off at once.

The snow was freezing into ice now, and she slid gently, quite stiff like a fresh-killed salmon for several yards until she could dig her elbows in. He lowered the sled and got her on again, and thrust her wrists beneath the ropes and tied them there with the bight that he had been holding, and took a turn round his own wrists, and began shuffling down again at once, for the girl, supported by her wrists now, and feeling the pain in them, was protesting weakly, and there was nothing he could do to ease her except to get it over with quickly.

He had the strangest feeling of treading water and of moving quite automatically for there was no sensation in his backside and he could not feel himself touching the ground at all. His knees came up and his heels dug down, and in some way he was descending, diagonally, skirting the boulders and the short vertical drops.

The light went entirely after some minutes, and in the still, freezing evening he heard a distant volley of firing, and took it to be a signal recalling the observers on the clifftop, and soon after heard a series of single shots, two, three, four, and another one seconds later, five, evidently the men replying; and at the same time, feeling some return of sensation in his limbs, an old familiar nagging ache, thought he might take a rest. He dug his heels in, and slewed the sled sideways, and lifted her up off her wrists and kissed her. She was moaning softly into the cloth of the bales, her face icy cold against his lips.

‘Oh, Chao-li, Chao-li.’

‘You’ve been very brave, little rose. It won’t be long now.’

He didn’t know what it would not be long
until
; for even in the dark he could see the pale spuming line of the river and hear its muffled hiss. It was going very fast. Until now it had seemed goal enough merely to get to it.

He felt her shuddering in his arms; and had a sudden vision of the nightmarish day through her eyes – and heart-stopping tumble down the icy mountain, the sudden exposure to hostility after the years of veneration and love and protection. How soon the outside world had ceased to be marvellous!

He had eaten nothing since his mug of tsampa at dawn, and couldn’t be sure that the girl had eaten even that. He thought he had better see what steps he could take to cross the river while he still had strength, and in a few minutes, kissing her gloved wrists before tying them once more, set off again.

The hissing of the river swelled into a soft, deepening roar as they dropped slowly down to it. It was evidently not at the full, for a little beach was dimly visible, and through the flying spray he saw that large rocks were left uncovered.

He left her to lie on the bales on a gentle slope, and lowered himself down to the beach and stood there in the steady, rushing roar, stamping his feet and beating his gloved hands as he looked about him. He had seen immediately that he was not going to swim across; the far bank was out of sight, and the spray, lashed viciously back from the rocks, gave a discouraging indication of the current. The tops of the uncovered rocks were, however, clearly visible, and a little
farther on a line of them seemed to stretch across like stepping stones.

He picked his way along the beach to the line of rocks, but before reaching them thought he heard her calling, and turned back.

He was climbing the slope when he heard the voice again, and went flat on his face and lay there, for the voice was not Mei-Hua’s, but a man’s.

He prayed that she would not sit up and give away her position, and lay with his heart choking, trying to distinguish, above the roar of the river, which direction the man was coming from. He heard a clink of stone from his right, and got his head up cautiously, and thought he saw something, a vague moving blur against the pale river; and a moment later looked again, and spotted it quite clearly this time; an angular figure, very tall, moving in a curious jogging motion, and he screwed up his eyes and blinked a few times, and saw what it was. It was a man on a horse. He was moving quite slowly along the beach, his head thrown back to look up at the hillside. With his heart thumping, Houston took off his glove and reached inside his clothing and drew out his silver knife and opened the blade.

It didn’t seem possible – unless the man had been addressing his horse – that he could be alone, and Houston didn’t know how much use his little knife would be to him in the circumstances. He held himself ready to use it, however, and as the horseman passed directly beneath him, turned very gently on his side.

The man called again, then, just as he nerved himself to do it.

‘Sahib!’ he cried softly. ‘Sahib! Are you there, sahib?’

The boy had got a little bag of tsampa with him, and they ate it dry as they moved briskly along. He had passed on his journey a stretch of river that he thought might be negotiable, and he led the horse hurriedly towards it along the beach, the abbess and the bales mounted, Houston stumbling beside him.

The shots Houston had heard had not been a code of signals, but the Chinese firing after Ringling and one of the guards who had escaped with him. Ringling had given the man his second pistol (and was now regretting it, for he thought the guard had been hit and recaptured) and they had each shot a horseman and mounted a horse and bolted.