A Love That Never Tires (29 page)

They had no food left in any of their packs. With hunger chewing at their stomachs, the Talbot-Martin team began their slow climb up the side of the mountain.

Morning clouds hung heavy in the air. Birds called out from the thin, straight pines above, and the carved stone steps were slick and damp beneath the team’s feet. Despite being tired, sore, and hungry, everyone seemed in good spirits. No one even scolded Linley for chatting with Patrick.

“Isn’t this the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen?” she asked him, trailing her fingertips along the wet rock of the mountainside.

Patrick looked out onto the valley. They had come a long way since yesterday, hiking up the stone trail, which grew steeper and steeper the higher they climbed. Patrick did not know how much further the team would have to go, but he prayed the trek would not last much longer.

“It is magnificent,” he said. “You cannot even see the valley floor anymore.”

Linley peered down over the edge of the stone steps. It was a long way down, for certain. “I bet this is what it looks like when you fly in an aeroplane. I’ve always wanted to go up in one, you know.”

She dreamed of what it must feel like to soar over clouds, and cities, and rivers. What a marvelous age they lived in where such things were possible!

By noon, the Talbot-Martin team reached the ceiling of thick, white clouds that blanketed the valley. Their clothes hung limply off their bodies, damp from sweat and the moisture in the air. The canteens on their belts were dry. No one had eaten anything since the day before. Hunger and thirst dragged their tired bodies down.

“Not to complain, Bedford,” Schoville said, “But I’m not sure how much longer we can go on without food or water.”

Suddenly, Linley’s father stopped. “Do you hear that?”

Archie cupped his hand around his ear, straining. In the distance, the sound of low, deep voices rumbled through the rocks, clouds, and trees. “What…is…that?”

“Chanting!” Sir Bedford said. “Hurry!”

They scurried up the mountain, climbing right through the clouds. Hand over hand, the team stumbled blindly through the white air that covered everything around them. Moments passed where they could not see the feet of the person in front of them, but they followed the sound of the voices like lost sheep running after the call of a shepherd.

Sir Bedford Talbot-Martin was the first to emerge from the clouds. The rest of his team followed a few steps behind, their bodies bursting out of the muddled sky one by one. On the other side, the chanting rang clear through the peaceful valley. Colorful flags hung from ropes strung through the treetops. Reds and blues and yellows flapped in the soft breeze that swirled through the mountaintops and down into the valley.

A few hundred yards away, a large white structure clung to the side of the mountain. Its red roof peaked above the trees and clouds, a silent guardian watching over the earth below.
 

“The hidden monastery!” Linley’s father said, breathless with wonder. If the scrolls were anywhere, they were there.

The team raced up the stone trail. In what seemed like only seconds, they reached the foot of the brightly painted steps that led up to the entrance of the monastery.

A red-robed monk stood at the top of the stairs. He watched them approach, his arms folded under the swaths of his simple garment. He did not speak, but as plainly as if he’d called out, a dozen more monks materialized from the doorways of the monastery.

The Talbot-Martin team stilled beneath the man’s gaze. They dared not climb the steps of this sacred place without an invitation.

Leaning heavily on a cane, the monk took step by slow step until he reached the point where Sir Bedford and the others stood. He pressed his hands together and bowed.

For lack of any better idea, Linley’s father bowed in return.

The monk only smiled and bowed again.

“Hello,” Sir Bedford said.

Again, the monk bowed a series of short bows.

Linley’s father turned to Reginald. “I doubt he speaks English. Could you try to communicate with him?”

Reginald stepped forward and said something to the man. When that did not seem to work, he tried another language, and then another. All his university-taught languages failed him. The man appeared not to understand a word he spoke.

What an impasse. They’d come all the way to Himalayan India, and now they had no way to communicate! This would make finding the scrolls much more difficult than Sir Bedford planned.

The monk made another bow and then motioned for the team to follow him. He led them up the wide, stone steps to the terrace at the entrance of the monastery. The other monks grouped there stared after them as they walked across the expanse of weather worn stone slabs to the front door.

Linley kept her eyes straight ahead. She tried not to look at the red and yellow-robed monks who gawked at her. Hadn’t they ever seen a white person before?

The Talbot-Martin team entered a brightly painted room. The guide monk smiled as they looked around in awe of the meticulous artwork that adorned the ceiling, the walls, the cut timber columns, and even the floor. It must have taken the monks years—decades, even—to create such beautiful paintings and murals.

He led them down a narrow corridor lit only by light that spilled through the windows. Patrick dared not touch anything, but he saw Archie, Sir Bedford, and the others running their fingers over everything they could reach.

At the end of the corridor, the monk motioned for them to wait before disappearing behind a large woven tapestry.

“Can you believe this place?” Linley turned around and grinned at Patrick.

After a moment, the monk returned and held the tapestry back so they could enter the little room. It, too, was covered with vivid paint and colorful cloth. The monks may have lived a simple life, but no one could argue that it was not one surrounded by beauty.

At the far side of the room, a small, elderly man sat cross-legged on a pedestal. “Welcome,” he said. “Please sit.”

They all sat on pillows at the man’s feet.

The lama studied each member of the team. “You are English?”

“Yes,” Sir Bedford said. “I am Sir Bedford Talbot-Martin.”

The lama smiled. “Very good.”

“And this is my team,” Linley’s father continued. “We travel the world exploring different cultures and preserving the past.”

“I see.”

“We read of your monastery in an ancient book,” Sir Bedford said. “We have traveled for many weeks just to speak to you.”

The lama scratched his chin with his long, skinny fingers. “We not see visitors for many year. I was a boy when the last white man came.” He slapped his hand on his knee. “That eighty year ago.”

Eighty years since the last white man came to the monastery? Patrick found that most interesting.

“We have very little here,” the lama continued. “But what we have, we glad to share.”

“Thank you,” Sir Bedford said. “I believe there is much to be learned from you and your people. My team and I would be honored to live among you and study your ways, even if only for a few weeks.”

“You may stay until the rains leave India,” the lama told them. “It not good to travel during monsoon.”

With that, the other monk stepped forward and motioned for the Talbot-Martin team to rise. He bowed to the lama. Bedford and the others followed his example, and one by one, they shuffled out of the room and into the corridor beyond.

Either by fate or good fortune, Patrick and the Talbot-Martin team had found the monastery deep in the foothills of the Himalayas. But it seemed they would not be leaving this place for quite some time.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Patrick stood at the window of his room, looking out at the lush green valley. Huge white clouds drifted lazily between the mountains, and he felt like he could reach out and push them from one side of the valley to another. This couldn’t be Earth. It had to be another world entirely. One where men looked down on clouds. Stood eye level with mountain peaks. Spending time in a place like this seemed more of a blessing than a curse.

A knock sounded on the wall outside his room.

“I’m going to do my laundry,” Linley said, poking her head through the open doorway “Do you want me to wash your things, too?”

Patrick ran a hand over his wrinkled, sweat-stained shirt. “I’ve almost forgotten what it feels like to wear clean clothes.”

She smiled. “Leave everything in a pile outside your door and I will get them on my way out.”

“Thank you,” he said. Patrick never thought about the girls who washed his clothes back home at Wolford Abbey. In Kyre, to wake up every morning to clean, freshly pressed shirts and trousers was a right, but in those past few days, Patrick realized it was a privilege.

One he would not take for granted again.

***

Later that evening, he lay on his pallet on the hard stone floor, blankets pulled up to his stomach, and his bare back resting against the cool wall. A pitcher of water and a basin had been delivered earlier, and Patrick washed and shaved, and for the first time in weeks, felt truly clean.

Another knock sounded outside his door.

“Yes?” Patrick called through the curtain that had been pulled closed.

“It’s me,” Linley said. “May I come in?”

He made certain the blankets covered everything they needed to, and then replied, “Just poke your head through. Since you have all my clothes, I’m not properly dressed.”

Linley pushed her face through the curtain, which served as the room’s door. “I’ve finished your laundry,” she said, trying not to look at him too closely. Trying to seem like it was completely normal for her to speak to a man with his shirt off. “Although I can’t promise it will be dry by the morning.”

“That’s fine. By now, I’ve grown quite used to wearing damp clothes.”

Linley grinned. How very like him to make jokes while sitting there with no clothes on! And oh how good he looked while doing it… “You know, I wondered where your handsome face went, but it turns out it’s been hiding underneath that beard all along.”

Patrick scratched his smooth jaw, enjoying the feel of it after so many days of coarse brown stubble. “Handsome, you say?”

“Yes, I said it. Go ahead and rub it in.”

“I would never dream of it,” he said, trying hard to hold back the smile playing at his lips. “I gladly take compliments whenever they are offered to me.”

“Then while we are on the subject, and while I am feeling so generous, I may as well tell you that I’ve missed your dimples, too.” This time there was no hint of self-consciousness in her admission.

Patrick said nothing. He only smiled up at her from his position on the floor.

“At any rate,” Linley said, feeling herself growing warm at the sight of those beautiful little dents in his cheeks. “I’ve done your laundry, and it is hanging up to dry.”

“You are an angel.”

She grinned and blushed a little deeper. Pulling her head out of the curtain, Linley resisted the urge to skip down the little narrow corridor. The lama had placed his English guests in one of the red-roofed towers of the monastery, separated from the monk’s quarters by a stone courtyard. It was not their custom to live under the same roof as a woman, or to sleep in the same room for more than three days with anyone who wasn’t a Buddhist monk. Despite these difficulties, the monks seemed a generous and understanding group of men.

If only the men in her group were as understanding, because as Linley turned to make her way down the hall, she realized her father had been standing there all along.

“You did Lord Kyre’s laundry?” he asked, arms crossed over his chest.

Linley tried to wave him off. “It’s not like the poor man could do it himself.”

“No daughter of mine is anyone else’s laundress!”

It was the first time her father raised his voice at her since she was a little girl. Startled, Linley took a step back. “Papa, don’t be ridiculous…”

Sir Bedford Talbot-Martin uncrossed his arms and raked his hands through his white hair. “I’ve been putting this conversation off for some time, but I am afraid I cannot delay it any longer.” He motioned for her to follow him down the stairs.

Outside in the stone courtyard, Linley walked with her father to a bench that overlooked the expanse of valley below.

“For years, I have played the role of both father and mother to you,” he said, sinking down onto the bench. “You remember when you got your first monthlies…”

Linley sat down beside him. “Yes, Papa. I do.”

“And do you think that was pleasant for me to explain to you?”

“No. I suppose not.”

Her father fidgeted in his seat. “Well, neither is this, so I hope you will have patience with an old man.” He paused for a long time, seeming to gather his thoughts and choose his words carefully. “Button, men are very different from women. And not just in the physical sense…”

“Yes, I know.”

“…Men want different things than women want.”

Linley nodded. “Yes, Papa, I know. I’ve already had this conversation.”

Sir Bedford scratched his head, partly relieved, and partly frightened that someone else had talked to his daughter about such things. “With whom?”

“With Patrick.”

Her father nearly fell off the bench. “You’ve been talking about this with Lord Kyre?”

“He talks to me about all sorts of things,” Linley explained. “He told me that a woman expects different things from a man when she goes to bed with him. That sleeping with someone will not make them love you.”

“Kyre told you all that, did he?”

“Yes, Papa,” she said. “Patrick is my friend.”

“That may be so, but it isn’t proper for him to be telling you about relations between men and women.”

“But who better to do so? You?” Linley asked. “You haven’t been married for twenty years. Things concerning men and women and…relations…have changed since your day.”

Sir Bedford sighed. Perhaps Linley was right. He was a tired old man. In his day, the notion of falling in love was as preposterous as jumping off a cliff and flapping paper wings, expecting to fly like the birds.