Tulku

4

OFTEN, DURING THE journey to the mountain, Theodore would remember the argument in P’iu-Chun’s house and the laughter that had ended it. Lung had lost the argument, but now he was behaving as though he had won. Theodore would look ahead and see above the bobbing hats of the line of porters, the yellow umbrella, the little round embroidered cap and the blue quilted sur-coat, all enhancing Lung’s air of dignified swagger as he rode Sir Nigel at the head of the procession.

P’iu-Chun had apparently settled the argument while Theodore slept. It was quite simple – there was no point in going east, because the rage against foreigners was sweeping through the province like a brush fire. The Governor was trying to suppress the Boxers, but this only had the effect of driving the young fanatics outwards and spreading the blaze. A week ago they had reached Taho and burnt the mission. Dr Goertler was either fled or dead. Nor did P’iu-Chun dare to hide the travellers for more than another day and a night – he was rumoured to be a rich man, and the local townsmen would be delighted to ransack his house. But to the west lay the great barrier of the Yangtze, and if Mrs Jones and her party could only cross that they might be Safe, because the authorities would use the river to prevent the Boxer madness spreading that way. But for the time being Mrs Jones must travel in disguise.

So next morning Lung had ridden into the town and bribed the local magistrate to supply him with papers authorizing a rich widow to cross the river and journey to the Plain of Shrines, where she could burn incense at the tomb of her husband’s ancestors. P’iu-Chun himself had provided the disguise – clothes and a litter belonging to his dead wife, Lung’s uniform, a similar jacket for Theodore, a Chinese-style saddle for Sir Nigel. He had insisted that all these were gifts, but he had had no hesitation in accepting a gift of gold coins from Mrs Jones, in fact the two of them had conducted the exchange with complete understanding, and Theodore had needed to do very little translation. When it was over P’iu-Chun had added one genuine gift, the map from his rejected survey.

So now here they were, doing what Mrs Jones longed to do, heading towards the mountains where she might find flowers no botanist had ever seen. Three days earlier they had crossed the Yangtze with no trouble at all, and now were travelling almost due west along a steep-sided valley; below them rushed a tumbling tributary, green with melted snows. As they climbed, the climate changed, the rain ceasing earlier each day until by now it had ended before they were moving. But the forests that clothed the valley’s flanks were ancient and reeking with decay, and though the air grew steadily cooler, the valley still breathed out a heavy, sodden odour which seemed as oppressive as the heat in the lower hills. Only sometimes, brought into view by a curve of the track or the crest of a ridge, was there a glimpse of anything beyond this prisoning cleft – far off, blue against blue, the snow peaks of the Himalayas. No day’s journey, however long, seemed to bring them nearer.

They hired porters at the villages, each sourer and poorer than the last, a huddle of ramshackle huts spilt down the hillside like a rubbish-tip. The poorer each village seemed, the more sullen were its inhabitants, though they must have needed the money they were paid. Lung conducted all the negotations with great lordliness while Mrs Jones encouraged him with fierce mutters from behind the closed curtains of her litter.

On this third morning the track narrowed and began to climb erratically away from the river. Mostly the party was forced into single file, with Lung at the head, followed by half a dozen porters carrying their burdens slung fore and aft on coolie-poles and jogging up the track with an apparently tireless shuffle. Next came Theodore, leading Bessie, who carried the front end of the litter; its rear end was carried by Albert, because the litter-poles prevented him from straying and Mrs Jones was close enough to coax or bully him into tolerable behaviour. Then came two more porters with coolie-poles, and finally Rollo, led by an elderly, tiny man who carried no load but had a huge old pistol stuck in his belt to show he was guarding the party against bandits and so was worth his extra copper coin a day. He spoke a little Mandarin and Miao, beside his native Lolo. He wore a long wisp of grey beard, so Mrs Jones called him Uncle Sam.

‘Come and look here,’ called Mrs Jones after they had been travelling for a couple of hours. ‘Path’s wide enough for two, and old Bessie’ll jog along without you. I been looking at these here hangings.’

Theodore hitched Bessie’s reins to a basket and dropped back. Mrs Jones had drawn the litter curtains and was looking around for something to amuse her. The litter was a gaudy affair, like a miniature pavilion with gold tassels dangling at the corners; its curtains were scarlet, embroidered with green trees through which swooped blue and yellow birds. At the foot of each tree sat a man and a woman, fully clothed and not touching each other, but with something about their poses and expressions which produced in Theodore a flicker of unease.

Mrs Jones was dressed in much the same style as the women in the pictures, with her hair piled up into a bun, stuck through with great wooden pins, and her face painted white and scarlet like a doll’s. Her small hands fluttered inside the huge sleeves as she spoke.

‘Isn’t it perfectly marvellous needlework?’ she fluted in her upper-crust accent. ‘I can’t help wondering what they’re up to. What do you imagine the story is, Theo?’

‘There’s got to be a story?’

‘Oh, yes, please. I wouldn’t trust this gentleman here one inch. Why’s he giving her that lily – lilium tigrinum, I’d say? He’s just the type to deceive an innocent girl. Would you say she looked innocent?’

‘The rain has spoilt them.’

‘I don’t know,’ she cooed. ‘These vegetable dyes don’t run and wool stands a lot of wetting . . . Now is this the same lady? Ooh, fancy, she’s got a knife! Is it for herself or for him? It’s a different gentleman, I think . . .’

Theodore knew quite well what she was doing, deliberately steering the conversation as close as she could to the frontiers of indecency, to see how he would take it. At first she had been amused simply to play the mourning widow, a figure of mystery behind her curtains – to peep out at the fabulous Yangtze and the busy ferry-towns, or to wait with her gun cocked beneath the litter-rugs while Lung bargained with porters or officials. She had positively enjoyed the danger, and the triumph of using that danger to force both Lung and Theodore in the direction she wanted to go, towards the forbidden mountains. But now she was bored – bored with the slow job of the porters, and with her role as a female, mere baggage, not allowed to ride her own horse, let alone to halt the procession and botanize in the teeming woods. She had spent twenty minutes swearing at Albert, pitching her voice just below the level at which Theodore could pick out definite blasphemies, and now she was bored of that too and had found a subtler way of teasing him. He looked at the embroidered picture, and smiled.

‘I guess she’s going to cook him dinner,’ he said. ‘Isn’t that a turnip?’

‘Oh! Men!’ she said. ‘You ain’t got no souls, none of you!’

Theodore smiled again. Even the careless phrase gave him barely a twinge. Since the decision to travel west, the break with Father’s last definite order, he had felt an odd sense of freedom from anything in his old life. The inner numbness was still there. He prayed morning and evening, but not as if anyone was listening to his prayers. He was cast out from the Congregation. But for most of the time he hardly thought about any of this, and was happy to play his part in the journey and let Mrs Jones tease him if she wished.

Before she could start again he had to trot forward and lead Bessie down a sudden slope. In front of him the porters used the incline to swing into a faster trot which opened a gap between them and the litter ponies. They were wizened little men, dressed in layer on layer of rags all bound to their limbs with leather thongs. They were the first Chinese Theodore had seen who didn’t wear the pigtail, but whose hair stood out in shaggy plaits beneath little grey fur caps with tight-rolled brims.

The path swung right between close-packed trunks and emerged into a clearing of lush, fine grass patched with pink flowers. The morning’s rain twinkled off the grass-blades and dripped all round from forest leaves. The earth seemed to whisper to itself as it sucked the moisture in.

‘Might be a plant or two worth looking at here,’ said Mrs Jones. ‘Time for a halt anyway. Give Lung a yell, Theo.’

Theodore put a hand to his mouth and shouted. Lung, almost at the far trees now, reined and swung Sir Nigel up the slope to circle back towards the litter.

‘Hey! Look out!’ shouted Mrs Jones, grabbing suddenly beneath her litter-rug.

Her voice was answered by yells from the wood, and a shot. From the trees ahead, a little above the path, sprang a group of men as wild as animals, brandishing short curved swords or rough clubs. The porters dropped their loads and stampeded down the slope into the trees. Bewildered, Theodore looked to see what their guard, Uncle Sam, was doing. The old man had drawn his pistol and was pointing it roughly level with the tree-tops; with his head turned well away he pressed the trigger; there was a far louder explosion than any normal shot, and a lot of black smoke. The last coherent thing Theodore saw for a while was Uncle Sam running for the trees, screaming and nursing his arm.

By this time Albert was rearing and twisting sideways between the shafts and Bessie was trying to bolt down the path. The litter was empty. Theodore wrestled with the bridle, dragging Bessie’s head down. Under her neck he glimpsed Lung toppling from his saddle and still beating down with his umbrella at a wild man swinging a sword. Three sharp bangs. The shriek of a bamboo litter-pole twisting into shredded splinters, but still not breaking. A scream of pain from Albert, and a lunge that rushed Bessie forward, with Theodore tumbling under hooves, and then somehow up, still holding the bridle, with a bandit rushing down at him, club swung high two-handed. A fresh lunge from Bessie, dragging him off his feet, letting him slither somehow round to her far side. He struggled up, still gripping the plunging halter and twisting to face the attacker, but as he rose he saw the bandit topple, all of a piece like a falling tree, with his mouth wide open. He remembered hearing the shot as another banged out, and another, close by. Mrs Jones was kneeling in her Chinese clothes, with her doll-face cradled to the stock of her rifle and her left elbow steadied on a fallen basket. Her finger tightened on the trigger, and before the snap of the shot ended she was working the bolt again. The triple click of metal seemed to create new silence. Even Albert stopped rearing and stood between the broken shafts, twitching and foamy with sweat. Mrs Jones got to her feet. Theodore could hear that she was swearing to herself. She turned to him biting her scarlet lip.

‘Give me that horse,’ she said in a shaky voice. ‘Go and see what’s happened with Lung. Don’t get near any of them others.’

On his way up the clearing Theodore found that his left upper arm and the ribs beside it seemed very sore and guessed that a hoof had caught them. He passed Sir Nigel, who was nervously edging down towards his mistress, head high and alert, tail swishing. A little above the path a bandit lay face down, arms spread wide. All the porters had vanished, but a heavy erratic rustling came from the trees below the clearing.

Two bodies lay close to each other in the grass. One was a bandit, huddled sideways, the rags round his chest stained with blood. The other, lying on his back, was Lung. A sword lay between them, its hilt hidden in one of the patches of pink flowers.

‘Lung?’ whispered Theodore.

The young man groaned and sat slowly up. His right hand felt the back of his head and then patted around among the grass until it touched his little cap. He put it on and stood up.

‘The Princess is not hurt?’ he said, staring down the glade to where Mrs Jones, bridle in one hand and gun in the other, had moved up the slope to look at a third body.

‘She shot them,’ said Theodore.

‘She is a soldier,’ exclaimed Lung.

He prodded the dead bandit with his foot, then stooped and picked up the sword. They went slowly back down the twinkling turf, glancing from side to side among the trees but seeing no movement. Mrs Jones turned towards them as they came and Theodore saw that her make-up was runnelled with tears which still flowed helplessly down.

‘Never thought as how I’d have to do that,’ she whispered. ‘Always thought just pointing a gun would be enough . . . Theo, see if you can catch that Rollo – he’s got the shot-gun in his left-hand basket. Then Lung can hold that and look dangerous while I re-load this one – I’ll have to get the fresh rounds out of my saddle-bags, and Rollo’s got that too. I don’t want the bastards rushing us while I’m mucking around.’

‘Not many live,’ said Lung. ‘Missy shoot three.’

‘Them porters is in it too,’ said Mrs Jones. ‘They knew as it was coming – look how quick they scarpered.’

‘The old man shot at the top of the trees,’ said Theodore. ‘His pistol blew up. He wasn’t aiming anywhere near them.’

‘That shows,’ said Mrs Jones. ‘Fair enough, we’ll get along like we was before we reached Mr What’s-is-name’s. If we don’t have the litter there’ll be two horses spare . . .’

It must have been more than an hour before they were ready to move again. Mrs Jones was unusually sharp and bossy about the details of packing. All round them the rotting woods seemed to watch them move, and Theodore’s nape prickled at every crackle and whisper from the shadows, but even while Lung and Theodore held the guns so that Mrs Jones could change into her riding-habit, no sign of attack came. The ponies grazed. Sir Nigel champed at his feed-bag. Lung and Mrs Jones mimed an elaborate argument about whether to go on up the track or back to the porter’s village and pretended to settle on the latter. At last, shivery with nerves, they were ready.

‘Now Missy foreign woman again,’ said Lung, with a touch of sadness in his voice which rang strangely in this scene of danger and urgency. Theodore guessed he felt that somehow he had been demoted – there was a difference between leading a ritual procession for an important Chinese woman and being guide and factotum for a foreign plant-hunter.

‘Looks like you’re as foreign as I am round these parts,’ snapped Mrs Jones. ‘Tuck that sword you found away and take the shot-gun. Ride with your thumb on the safety-catch, too, and keep your eyes skinned. With a bit of luck they’ve guessed we’re going back, but then again they might of split up, ready to have a go at us either way, once we’re in among the trees. You first, Lung. Theo, you’ll have to ride Bessie and lead Albert – don’t stand no nonsense from him. I’ll be rear-guard. Off we go.’

Lung started towards the dark chasm between the trees. Theodore coaxed Bessie into movement and Albert followed, nervous but subdued. As they reached the trees a voice called in the wood below, but some way back.

‘Don’t hang about, Lung,’ shouted Mrs Jones. ‘We got to get well ahead.’

Lung slapped his pony into a bouncy trot, and Bessie followed the example. One more alarm, Theodore guessed, and she’d try to bolt again. He was tense with readiness when, just before he reached the first bend in the track, a weird wailing rose behind him, shrill and throbbing, like a dog baying. He glanced back and saw that Mrs Jones did the same. Beyond her, framed in the arch of light where the path opened into the glade, Uncle Sam was kneeling by one of the bodies. He looked up to the sky and raised his arms, one swathed in blood-soaked rags. Still wailing, he bowed over the body and covered his face with his hands. His fingers tore at his tangled grey hair.

‘Move along,’ called Mrs Jones. ‘I can’t stomach no more of this. Looks like it might of been his son.’