The Ninth Buddha

“Very well,” he said.

“Give me my pen. I’ll sign your papers.

Then you can get out.”

Christopher wondered when the nightmare was going to end. They had shot Tsering seconds after entering the yurt. Then he and Chindamani had been tightly bound and taken outside with William and Samdup. There had been a long wait-while Zamyatin got his men ready for their move against the Khutukhtu’s palace.

Christopher had somehow managed to get close enough to William to talk to the boy, reassuring him, telling him his ordeal would soon be over. They had set off about an hour after Zamyatin first discovered them.

He remembered a maze of crooked alleyways and streets smelling of ordure and decomposition, hands holding him, pinching him, guiding him, voices whispering and whimpering in the troubled darkness, the darkness itself struggling to become flesh as faces swam in and out of view.

Then the moon had glided out from behind the clouds, copper and stained in a turbid sky, and the alleyways had become silent streets of silver filled with dogs and the dim, shrouded bodies of the newly dead. Above them, the towers of the Maidari Temple, eighty feet high, made bold pillars against the sky; on the Tower of Astrology, a single light burned in readiness for tomorrow’s Festival.

It had been a simple matter for Zamyatin and his men to effect an entry to the palace. There were fewer guards on duty than usual, with half of them preparing for the festival. Those that remained had put up little resistance, and the revolutionaries had rounded them up in a matter of minutes.

William sat on his knee, the way he had once sat when he had been a much younger child, many years ago, before all this began.

He was telling his father the details of his journey to Dorje-la.

Christopher let him talk, urging the boy to get everything off his

chest. He wondered if William would ever recover properly from

his ordeal assuming, that was, that they ever got out of this place and made it back to England alive.

Samdup had told them that the swelling on William’s neck had started to go black about a week ago. Zamyatin had been too preoccupied making the arrangement for his coup to waste time getting a doctor for the boy.

“How does your neck feel now, son?” Christopher asked.

“It’s no better. I think it’s going to burst all the time. It feels as though things are crawling round and round inside. If I touch it, it hurts terribly. Sometimes I want to scratch it off, it gets so bad.

Samdup had to tie my hands behind my back two nights ago. I’m frightened. You’ll make it get better now you’re here, won’t you?”

The boy’s trust was almost unbearable. Christopher felt more helpless than at any time in the past months. The Khutukhtu had sent instructions for his personal physician to come. Now all they could do was wait.

The Khutukhtu was growing drunk on his port. He sat on a long sofa in one cornel of the room, smoking long Turkish cigarettes with the peculiar affectation of the blind. Chindamani and Samdup sat beside him. For all the differences between them, they understood one another. They were all trulkus, they all suffered from the same deformity.

Samdup was tired, but he could not even think of sleep.

Chindamani was with him again, and the pee-ling who had helped to rescue them from Dorje-la that night, Wil-yarn’s father. He felt uncontrollably excited: perhaps something would happen now, perhaps he and Wil-yarn could escape from Zamyatin at last.

He did not like his other body. The Khutukhtu drank alcohol as though he were an ordinary person, and he appeared to be quite drunk. Samdup disliked the way the fat old man stroked and frotted him with smooth, clammy fingers. The vacant expression in those blind white eyes unnerved him. Unaccustomed to either vice or sensuality, the boy had no capacity for sympathy. He was too young to understand that sin was just as much a part of life as prayer, or that holiness, like water, would grow stagnant if it were allowed to lie too long without being stirred.

“Come here,” the Khutukhtu said, standing and taking Samdup’s hand. Samdup followed him across to a huge table on which stood a huge machine with a wooden horn. It reminded Samdup of the great trumpets on the terraces of Dorje-la. The Khutukhtu bent down and cranked a handle in the side of the machine, then, with blind fingers that shook from a combination of port and nervousness, dropped the needle heavily on to a spinning black disc.

Instantly, a raucous voice blared from the horn, accompanied by rapid, jumping music.

I would say such wonderful things to you There would be such wonderful things to do If you were the only girl in the world And I were the only boy.

“That’s a gramophone,” said the Khutukhtu.

“It makes music, as though someone were inside, singing.”

“Turn that infernal thing off!” Zamyatin was sitting at a little table at the far end of the room, sorting out the various papers he would need to legitimize his coup.

“Until my Lord Samdup is installed as my successor tomorrow,” said the Khutukhtu, ‘this is still my palace. If you want silence, there are plenty of other rooms to go to.”

“The boy should not be listening to music. He should be sleeping.

Tomorrow will be a long day. He is about to have responsibilities thrust upon him.”

The Khutukhtu snorted loudly.

“The boy should not be sleeping. He should be in my private chapel, praying, meditating, and generally preparing himself for his proclamation. The formalities must be observed. The boy must not go cold to his destiny.”

He paused and inhaled a stream of smoke. He remembered the days before his own enthronement as Khutukhtu: the vigils, the offerings, the fasts, the long, dull hours of liturgical recitals. Such a terrible waste of time. But he wanted the boy away from here before trouble started.

“This no longer concerns you.” Zamyatin creased his brows, more in irritation than anger. Tonight, he would not be angry.

Mongolia was his. Next month, he would sit in a gilded room at the Kremlin and dine with Lenin and Zinoviev as their equal.

“I am the boy’s tutor now,” said the Khutukhtu.

“Who better than I to train him? I mean to teach him everything I know. Don’t worry I’ll spare him my vices, if you spare him yours. He won’t need them. But he will need my experience; and my memories. I tell you that he will need prayer more than sleep tonight. And meditation more than prayer. Or do you intend to act as spiritual director to your new ruler? I hardly think you’re qualified.”

Zamyatin said nothing. Whether the boy slept or prayed meant nothing to him. So long as the child was pliable. So long as he was fit to be paraded in the proper regalia and knew how to make the right gestures tomorrow. He already had men scouring the storerooms of the palace for the clothes the Khutukhtus wore as children.

From somewhere in the distance, the sound of shouting came, followed by silence. A door slammed, heavy and muffled. Then, quite distinct, between the ticks of a clock, a series of shots rang out, clear and perfect in the stillness of the night.

Zamyatin ordered two of the guards to the door.

“See what’s happening,” he said, ‘and get back to me as quickly as possible. I’ll stay here with our prisoners. Hurry.” He took a revolver from his pocket and checked it.

The guards hurried through the door, taking their rifles with them. No-one spoke. The counter-attack had come sooner than expected, and Zamyatin’s men were thin on the ground.

Less than a minute later, the guards returned looking visibly frightened.

“An attack. Von Ungern Sternberg. He has the palace surrounded.”

“How many men?”

“Impossible to say, but the men at the gate think we’re outnumbered.”

“Any news of Sukebator and his men?”

“They’re tied up at the radio station. Ungern’s Chahar units have them pinned down.”

Zamyatin turned to Bodo.

“Think, man! Is there another way out of here? A secret passage?

This place must be riddled with them.”

The lama shook his head.

“They were blocked up by the Chinese when they held the

Khutukhtu prisoner. They’ve not been opened up again.

Except .. .”

“Yes?”

“Except for one, I think. Behind the treasure rooms. It’s better hidden than the others There’s a tunnel behind it leading to the Tsokchin. Once we’re there I can arrange for horses.”

Zamyatin thought quickly. If they could make it to Allan Bulak, where the provisional government was located, there was still a chance that they might join up with the Bolshevik forces moving in from the north. He had the Khutukhtu and the boy. All the aces were still in his hands.

“Quickly then,” he shouted.

“Lead the way. You and you’ he pointed at the two guards ‘keep our rear covered. Hurry up.”

The sound of shooting was growing louder. Ungern could be here in a matter of minutes.

The little group was assembled quickly, Bodo in front, then the prisoners, followed by Zamyatin and his guards.

The corridor outside the Khutukhtu’s study took them directly into his treasure rooms. They were like Aladdin’s cave, crammed from end to end with bric-a-brac of every description, the product of a lifetime’s obsession.

Chandeliers hung everywhere like patterns of webbed and shattered ice. Vases from China, rugs from Persia, peacock feathers from India, two dozen samovars of every size and style from Russia, pearl necklaces from Japan all jostled each other in cosmopolitan disorder. The Khutukhtu had ordered goods in multiples: a dozen of these, a score of those, sometimes the entire contents of a trading house during a visit to Mai-mai-ch’eng. It was a vast jumble sale to which no buyers ever came.

In one room, there were long rows of guns in glass cases: rook rifles, sniders, Remington repeaters, breech-loading pistols, carbines some purely ornamental, others quite deadly, all of them unfired. In the next was the Khutukhtu’s vast collection of mechanical inventions. There were dolls at a small piano that could play Strauss waltzes one after the other without ever tiring;

a monkey that could climb a pole and another that could spin round and round a horizontal bar; tin soldiers that marched, motor cars that rolled on painted wheels, ships that bobbed on metal seas, birds that sang and flapped their wings or hopped along branches of gold tipped with leaves of emerald all still and silent and rusting now.

Zamyatin hurried them along too quickly to see anything very clearly. They could hear loud explosions from the front of the building now, and shooting had opened up on both sides. Chindamani slipped and fell against one of the cases. At first, Christopher thought she had hurt herself. But after a few moments, she picked herself up and took Christopher’s hand. He thought she had picked up something from the case, but it was too late for him to see what its contents had been.

William kept falling behind. He was tired and sick, and running exhausted him; but he would not let Christopher pick him up and carry him. Zamyatin pushed and prodded the boy, urging him to make haste. When Christopher made to defend him, the Russian just waved his pistol at him and told him to keep going. Christopher knew the only reason Zamyatin kept him alive was the thought that he might come in useful as a bargaining counter.

They reached the last room. It was a plain room panelled in dark wood and hung with rich Tibetan tapestries. Zamyatin hustled everyone inside and shut the door.

“Where’s the way out?” he shouted.

Bodo scrambled over a pile of cushions at the rear of the room and pulled back one of the tapestries. The entrance to the tunnel had been concealed with very great skill, having been set into the panelling without any obvious join. It was opened by means of a small lever in the floor. Bodo pulled the lever and the panels slid back with a low grinding sound.

“What are you waiting for?” cried Zamyatin.

“Let’s go!”

Bodo stepped into the entrance. Chindamani stepped up, followed by the Khutukhtu and Samdup. Suddenly, there was a cry from near the main door.

“I’m not going into another tunnel! Please, father, don’t let him make me!”

It was William. The sight of the dark opening had awakened in him memories of the tunnels beneath Dorje-la. He hung back, clinging to Christopher.

“What does he say?” demanded Zamyatin.

“What’s wrong with him?” The man was growing terrified now. He was so close to victory, yet the sounds of defeat were all about him: guns, high explosives, the child whimpering.

“He says he’s frightened. He won’t go into your blasted tunnel.

You know what happened at Dorje-la. For God’s sake, let him stay here with me. He’s no danger to you.”

“And let you show Ungern straight to our exit? No-one stays. If he won’t come, I’ll shoot him here and be done with it!”

Zamyatin reached out a hand and grabbed for the boy. William struggled, twisting away from the grasping fingers. The Russian lunged and found the boy’s shoulder, but as he did so his hand slipped and struck his neck.

William screamed with pain. Zamyatin’s hand had struck the swelling, breaking the skin. The boy collapsed, falling into Christopher’s outstretched arms. Zamyatin reeled back, horror-struck.

They expected blood or poisoned matter. But there was no blood. It made no sense at first, there was just a seething, something black moving on the child’s neck. And then the blackness broke and became multiple.

The spiders had been on the verge of hatching. Now, suddenly released from the body of their host, they tumbled into the light, tiny legs unfolding and quivering across William’s neck and on to his shoulder. There were hundreds of them, each one no bigger than a very small ant.

Christopher cried out in horror and disgust. The tiny spiders were running everywhere now, masses of them, in search of food.

Chindamani ran across to Christoper and helped him brush the last of the brood from William’s neck. As though transfixed, Zamyatin stood staring at the boy. Spiders ran across his feet and vanished.

Christopher looked up at the Russian. His face was expressionless, his eyes empty of any emotion.

“He’s dead,” he whispered.

Zamyatin looked at him blankly. He did not understand.

“He’s dead,” Christopher repeated in Tibetan.

“My son is dead.”

What happened next was a blur. There was a sound of shouting outside, followed almost immediately by a crash as the door was smashed open. The two guards inside the room panicked and opened fire. Two seconds later, the barrel of a heavy pistol appeared from behind the door-jamb The guards had forgotten to take cover before firing and presented easy targets. Three shots rang out in quick succession, taking the guards and Bodo.

As that happened, Zamyatin whipped out his own pistol and waved it at the Khutukhtu, who was sitting beside Christopher alongside William’s body. Chindamani grabbed Samdup and made for a door at the rear of the room, leading into the tunnel.

The man at the door stepped across the bodies of the guards into the room. He held his pistol high, pointed at Zamyatin’s head.

It was Sepailov.

“Drop your gun, Mister Zamyatin,” he said in Russian.

“Otherwise, I will be forced to shoot.”

“One step closer,” Zamyatin replied without looking round, ‘and your Living Buddha is a dead one.”

“Be my guest.” It was a different voice this time. Von Ungern Sternberg eased himself past Sepailov into the room. He cast a quick glance at William’s body, unable to make out what lay behind the small tragedy. His men were in control of the palace.

Sukebator’s forces had pulled back to the outskirts of the city. The remaining revolutionaries had been rounded up and were already being executed or interrogated. There was just this little matter to clear up.

“The Khutukhtu is a traitor,” he went on.

“I have in my pocket a document signed by him, instructing his forces to transfer their allegiance to the revolutionary army. I have already issued instructions for his execution. You’re wasting your time, Zamyatin. Go ahead and shoot him if you want: you’ll only be doing my job for me.

Zamyatin glanced round. Ungern and Sepailov were in the room now. Only Sepailov held a gun; the baron was too much in control to feel he needed one. Zamyatin looked back at the Khutukhtu, then at Christopher. He needed another card to play, one that would force the baron to bargain. He turned and caught sight of Chindamani and Samdup at the rear door, still hesitating.

‘For God’s sake, Chindamani!” shouted Christopher.

“Get out of here! Take Samdup and run!”

“I can’t go Ka-ris To-feh, not without you. Don’t ask me to leave you.” She had the boy and she knew she ought to make a run for it. His life was at stake: it was her duty to save him. But she could not move. With William dead, Christopher needed her more than ever. Her love for him tore at her love for the boy, like a trapped beast with its claws.

Zamyatin lifted his pistol and pointed it at Samdup.

“You!” he shouted in Tibetan.

“Come over here and bring the boy with you!” He knew Ungern would need the boy now, if he intended to execute the Khutukhtu. Ungern would not let Sepailov fire as long as he was aiming at the boy.

“Ka-ris To-feh!” cried Chindamani.

“Tell him to put his gun down or I’ll have to kill him. Please tell him!”

At the main door, Ungern and Sepailov hesitated. Zamyatin had realized they needed the boy. But why didn’t the woman take the child and run? And what did she mean, that she would kill him?

“There’s no point, Zamyatin,” Ungern said.

“You’re finished.

Sukebator has retreated. The members of your cell in Urga are either dead or in prison awaiting my orders. If you kill the boy, the Khutukhtu lives. If you kill the Khutukhtu, the boy will serve me as he has been serving you. And in either case, Sepailov will kill you. Better just to drop your gun and make the best of it.”

Zamyatin’s hand was shaking. He could scarcely control the gun. He turned from the boy to the Khutukhtu and back again.

Sepailov took a step forward. Zamyatin raised the gun and pointed it at Samdup.

Ungern nodded. Sepailov took aim and fired, hitting Zamyatin in the left shoulder. Zamyatin’s hand jerked, firing his pistol, then he dropped it. It fell like a stone to the heavily carpeted floor.

Sepailov motioned with the gun, directing Zamyatin to join

Christopher, and the Khutukhtu. Clutching his bleeding shoulder, the Buriat complied.

At first, no-one noticed what had happened at the rear of the room. But when Zamyatin moved, Christopher saw Chindamani bending over Samdup, who was lying on the floor. Her long black hair fell over the boy like a curtain, concealing his face. But from the edge of the curtain, like the petals of a tiny flower pushing themselves out above the black soil, fine drops of blood appeared, spread, and combined into a gently moving pool.

No-one spoke. Sepailov continued to cover Zamyatin with his pistol.

Ungern turned his attention to the woman and the boy.

When she raised her face at last, it was smeared with blood, and blood clung in fantastic drops to her hair. She said nothing. All her eloquence was in her face, in the blood that had fastened to her cheeks and lips, in her eyes, staring past her matted hair into the still room.

Christopher rose from his seat. He felt a great numbness come over him, striking his limbs into immobility. He remembered Chindamani’s words, speaking of the prophecy: he will have to die in order to be reborn yet again. Her blood-streaked face chilled him. He knew that some terrible doom had taken hold of them and was harrying them towards an end of sorts. Or a beginning: it was all the same now.

“Let me go to her,” he said in English, addressing Sepailov. The Russian did not move. He held his pistol pointed at Zamyatin, ready to fire again. Christopher stepped towards him, but Sepailov did not alter his position. He let Christopher pass.

Ungern watched as though fascinated as Christopher walked up to Chindamani and raised her. Samdup’s head had been shattered by the bullet: there was no question of saving him. He held her against his chest, feeling the futility of everything.

They stood like figures of wax, separate, immobile, dreaming individual dreams. There were no prayers to take away the blood or the spiders, no gestures to bring life back to the dead. No-one saw Chindamani move, or if they did, they ignored her.

From the folds of her jacket, she took out a gun, a small Remington she had somehow managed to palm and hide during the tour of the Khutukhtu’s treasures. She had no certain idea how it worked, or whether it was loaded, or whether it worked at all.

She had picked it up without my notion of what she intended to do with it. Now she knew.

The first shot found Sepailov’s back. He dropped without a murmur, dead or paralysed. Zamyatin saw his chance. He ran forward, fingers clutching for the gun that had fallen from Sepailov’s hand. As he picked it up, she fired again. And twice more.

Zamyatin clutched the air. He tried to breathe and swallowed blood. He tried harder and blood came gushing out of his mouth and throat. Suddenly, his legs felt like lead and his head was spinning through space, divorced from his surroundings. He heard himself coughing, choking, drowning in his own blood. The red flag fluttered in front of his eyes against a velvet sky. Then it was blood, smothering the world. And at last he was one with History and the sky was empty and as black as night.

Chindamani dropped the gun. With a moan, she bent forward, burying her face in her hands, sobbing without control. With Samdup, the last vestige of her world had vanished. Her love for Christopher had destroyed the boy and the world he had symbolized.

Christopher picked up the gun. He had guessed who the baron was, guessed what he had to do if they were to get out of here alive.

Von Ungern Sternberg carried a pistol in a leather holster strapped to the belt around his waist, but still he had not drawn it. He had watched everything without emotion, a spectator rather than a participant. Now, he looked at Christopher and the gun in his hand as if it were a flower he held out to him.

The precision of death, its absoluteness, its finality these had been the things that had commended it to him and made him linger over it in the long days and nights at Urga. How simple it was, he thought, how plain, how lacking in affectation. It was all that he admired, the ultimate statement of man’s innate simplicity.

There was a perfection in it such that he had never found in anything else, and he loved to see that perfection renewed, that bold simplicity restated time after time in his presence.

And now his own death. It had come sooner than expected, but it was welcome all the same. It seemed like a good enough time to die.

Christopher raised the pistol. There were still a few bullets left,

but he would need only one. He stepped up close to the baron,

it looking him directly in the eye. Yes, he could understand the stories he had heard. It would be better for everyone if von Ungern Sternberg were removed. He put the pistol to the baron’s head and felt the trigger start to give to the pressure of his finger. The baron did not move or flinch. He stared into Christopher’s eyes patiently, without reproach.

It was no good. Christopher could not be an executioner. Not even of this man. He lowered the gun and threw it away from him, into a corner.

There was a sound of running feet outside.

“Why didn’t you shoot?” Ungern asked.

“You would never understand,” Christopher replied, turning away and putting his arm round Chindamani. She was trembling.

The door opened and a group of armed men ran into the room.

They stopped dead, slowly taking in the scene before them. Two of them stepped past Ungern and took hold of Christopher and Chindamani, dragging them apart.

“Let them go.” Ungern’s voice was sharp.

The soldiers looked puzzled, but the baron’s tone had been unmistakable. Their hands dropped, leaving Christopher and Chindamani free. Christopher bent down and picked up Samdup’s body. He was still warm. Blood ran unimpeded over Christopher’s hands. He cradled the small body against his own for a moment, then passed him tcxCIhindamani. Ungern watched as Christopher crossed the roorrr to where his own son lay and picked him up carefully.

They said nothing as they left. Ungern sent a man with them, to see that they got through. They left the Khutukhtu behind, sitting on a heap of cushions, kneading his soft robes with nervous fingers.

His hands still held traces of scent from the boy’s skin. By dawn, even that faint perfume would have faded forever. He closed his eyes as though something had crept into his darkness, and he dreamed of freedom.

They carried the bodies to the Maidari Temple and left them there, at the foot of the giant statue of the Maidari Buddha. There was no resemblance between the statue and Samdup, except that neither lived nor breathed. Chindamani tidied Samdup’s clothes and hair, but otherwise did nothing to disguise the fact that he was dead. Christopher took the small teddy-bear and put it in William’s hands as he had done in England when he was asleep. There were no words.

It was dawn when they left the temple. The first rays of the sun were striking its towers, and everywhere pilgrims were rising to pray the first prayers of the Festival. They prayed for paradise and an easy death to take them there, for the removal of the weight of their sins and enough food for the journey home. Today, nothing would be refused them.

Christopher and Chindamani walked out of the city without any very clear idea of where they were headed. Their clothes and hair were covered with blood, but they walked on without stopping to wash or refresh themselves.

It was well after noon before they halted. They had long since lost anything that looked like a road or a track, but had gone on as though they had found a path of their own to follow. They went north into the Chingiltu Ula mountains, making their way by guesswork. The sides of the steep hills through which they passed were heavily forested with dark conifers. They passed no-one. They could hear birdsong, but saw no birds or any other form of wildlife.

The place they stopped in was a small temple, abandoned and partly ruined. They spent that night there, huddled against one another for warmth. The following morning, Christopher went into the forest to find food. There were berries on low bushes and small mushrooms that he gathered in his shirt. He found a small stream close to the temple and carried water back in an abandoned bowl he discovered in an inner room.

They spent the rest of that day in the temple, resting, and decided to spend the next night there too, lighting a fire with wood Christopher collected from the forest floor. By now, they could talk about what had happened.

There was no point at which they decided to stay in the temple.

But gradually, they made themselves more comfortable there, and soon they regarded it as home. No-one came there. Nothing disturbed them. Christopher found abundant game deeper in the forest and made small traps for deer and rabbits; but Chindamani would eat no flesh and subsisted on what they could gather from the trees and bushes.

She suffered badly from a sense of guilt. She was convinced that her illicit passion for Christopher had in some way been responsible for Samdup’s death. Her hesitation at the entrance to the tunnel had, she was certain, cost Samdup his life. No amount of reasoning could convince her otherwise.

She was a trulku, she said, a vehicle for the Lady Tara. She had not been born to love or marry or have children. That was for mortals; but the’gbddess in her was not mortal. He used the arguments that she had used with him before, that she herself was a woman, that she was not a goddess, that their love was its own justification; but she would not listen, or if she did, she chose not to accept his reasoning.

For the first two months, she would not sleep with him. He, for his part, neither pressed her nor made her feel unwelcome. But when they walked in the forest together, she would sometimes hold his hand, and at those times he would feel she still loved him in spite of herself. And one day towards the end of June he kept a rough calendar on the trunk of a tree outside the temple she came to his bed as she had done the first time, without explanation.

The summer passed in shadows and bars of sunlight slanting through me trees, restless and delicate. Chindamani prayed each day in a small shrine that formed part of the temple, and together they restored the building as best they could. They never spoke of leaving or finding a place for the winter, although they both knew they could not stay where they were much longer.

At the beginning of September, a traveller passed near the temple. A lama, he spoke adequate Tibetan, and was able to explain to them what had happened since they left Urga. At the end of May, von Ungern Sternberg had taken his forces out of Urga for a last engagement with the Soviet troops now entering the country in large numbers. He had been defeated, captured, and, it was rumoured, executed exactly one hundred and thirty days from the time of his visit to the Shrine of Prophecies in Urga, when the words recorded on the placard to the south had been whispered to him. Sukebator and his partisans had taken Urga at the beginning of June, assisted by Bolshevik troops, and a People’s Republic had been proclaimed. A sense of normality was beginning to return to the country.

The lama was on his way to a monastery north of the mountains, a place called Amur-bayasqulangtu, situated on Mount Buriinkhan, of which both Christopher and Chindamani had heard. It was the site of the tomb of Ondiir Gegen, the first of the Jebtsundamba Khukukhtus.

They persuaded the lama to stay with them for a day or two. He explained to them that the temple in which they now lived was known as Maidariin sume and that it had been dedicated to the Maidari Buddha. When it was time for their visitor to leave, he asked if they would accompany him to Amur-bayasqulangtu, and they agreed. The nights were growing cold and before long food would become scarce. But they had another reason for leaving.

Chindamani was one month pregnant.

Amur-bayasqulangtu was a vast establishment that amounted to a small town, with some two thousand lamas in permanent residence. The abbot, known as the Khambo Lama, was happy to receive them and provided them with quarters where they could spend the winter. During the coming months, Christopher and Chindamani lived together as man and wife. Once, a deputation from the new government paid a visit to the monastery to assess it for taxes; but the lamas hid their guests until the officials had gone.

Once winter set in hard, they were not troubled by further visits.

But Christopher knew the monks would not be left in peace for ever.

There would be fields to dig and roads to build and armies to train.

There would be a price to pay for independence.

Years later, Christopher thought he was never so happy as during that

winter and spring. All his time was spent with

Chindamani or doing things for her. And he believed she too was happy.

“If I left you, Ka-ris To-feh, could you bear it?” she once asked him

while they lay in bed together listening to the wind flapping against

the walls of their yurt

“No,” he said, and held her hand beneath the rough blanket.

The wind blew and snow fell and ice lay packed against their door. It was a bad winter, during which many of the monastery’s livestock died. But in the end spring came and the ice melted and turned to water. At the beginning of May, Chindamani’s baby was born. It was a boy. They called him William Samdup.

Christopher woke one morning a week later to find both Chindamani and the baby gone. He looked everywhere, but could not find them. Then, on the table where they had eaten supper the night before, he found a note in Tibetan. It was not easy for him to ready-but he persevered, and in the end he understood it.

Ka-ris To-feh, it read, I am sorry that I could not leave you in any other way. Forgive me if this causes you pain, but it is hurting me too, more than I can bear. If I could choose, I would stay with you forever.

Even if it meant endless lifetimes, I would willingly stay with you. I love you. I have always loved you. I shall continue to love you until I die.

But I cannot stay with you. You already know that, I am sure. Our child cannot stay here, he will always be in danger. We cannot go to your country, for you have told me there are no gompas there. I think you know who the child is, who he is destined to be. I will tell him about you. Every night when the sun goes down and the monks leave us alone, I shall talk to him about you. I will never forget you. Please remember me.

He remembered the last evening at Gharoling, when she had gone out to the terrace to gaze at the darkness. Don’t think I can be yours forever, she had said. You must not think that. But he had thought it and he had wanted it.

He left the monastery two days later. He knew where she had gone, of course. In his mind, he could see the little lake on the borders of Tibet and the rocky island in the centre, with the tiny temple. And he heard her voice, speaking into the wind: I have been here before. And I shall come here again. More than anything, he wanted to go there, to see her just once more. But of all the places in the world, he knew it was the one place he could not go.

He headed for Urga. For the first time that year, there were no clouds in the sky. England was a long way away.

-----------------------------------------------

Thanks to everyone who helped with this book, especially my agent, Jeffrey Simmons, John Boothe and Patricia Parkin at Grafton, Patrick Filley and Jennifer Brehl at Doubleday; Frs. John Breene and Tony Battle for their patience; Dr. Dermot Killingley for his rendering of the Bengali song on pages 44 and 96; and Beth, for everything.

Daniel Easterman was born in Ireland in 1949. He studied English, Persian and Arabic at the universities of Dublin, Edinburgh and Cambridge, and is a specialist in several aspects of Iranian Islam. He has lived in Iran and Morocco, but in 1981 returned with his wife to England to teach Arabic and Iranian studies at Newcastle University. In 1986, he gave up teaching to concentrate on writing full-time.

When not researching or writing, he devotes much of his time to the study and promotion of alternative medicine. He is currently working on a new novel.