The Maharajah's Monkey (20 page)

I was trudging along, my feet heavy as bricks in their four-spiked crampons, which we had put on to get a better grip in the slippery ice. My face was burning, as if the skin had been doused in boiling oil. I was keeping up with Yongden, who was leading a donkey piled with food, but only just. Without warning he turned and looked at me, his eyes inky shadows.

“You suffer,” he said—his voice though low, rang over the ice.

Yongden spoke so rarely that everyone stopped, our whole caravan of Sherpas and donkeys and cooks.

My eyes were watering again. We all wore goggles made from yak antlers. They were narrow strips of bones with slits cut into them, which were held in place by straps of braided sinew. The slits blocked light glaring from the snow all around. They made us look like demented bees. Nevertheless, several of us began to
suffer from swollen eyes. Luckily, Isaac, our resident genius, had a brilliant idea. He had made little flaps from the see-through gauze we carried in the medical supplies, which he strung over our goggles. But it wasn't my eyes to which Yongden was referring. I could just about see. It was the rest of me that was in trouble.

“You look like a pork chop,” Waldo jeered. “A scarface steak.”

“Broiled and ready for the luncheon table!” Isaac grinned.

“Waldo! Isaac! That's really unkind. You shouldn't make fun of people for looking odd,” Rachel scolded. Then she stopped abruptly realizing she'd been rude. Even ruder than Waldo—for she hadn't meant to tease.

Oddly enough it was Rachel I was most cross with. I know I was being unreasonable but it wasn't fair. I was meant to be the strong one, the brave explorer who would weather the elements and cheerfully face all sorts of dangers. In my head at least, Rachel was the wilting violet. She was the pretty one, who only wanted to sit at home embroidering cushion covers and playing the pianoforte. She was kind and good but not exactly
tough
.

Yet she was taking this grueling journey quite in her stride.

Ever since she had seen off the monkey at Simla, Rachel had seemed to grow stronger. She had marched
uncomplainingly through the mountains. She'd learned to brave altitude sickness. She hadn't suffered from snow blindness. She even looked ravishing in her layers of sheepskin. It wasn't fair! How the mountains conspired against me. The scorching sun skinned my face and eyes, the freezing cold crept into my bones. Just my luck that all the others managed. My aunt and Champlon both had skin like elephant hide, which could withstand any extreme. It was only me! I was the weak one! The runt of the litter.

Stop this self-pity, I told myself sternly. You have to soldier on, however much your skin boils and your eyes swell.

My aunt had turned around to see what was happening and saw the others clustered around me. “Buck up, Kit,” she bellowed.

“I can't help it if everyone finds my face so interesting.” I flushed, my scar burning.

“Hmm,” she came closer and looked me over like a vet examining a sick cow. “I believe you are suffering from an unusual combination of snow blindness and sunburn. Rather interesting.”

“What?” I growled.

“Do you know that Tibet is the only country in the world where you can burn and freeze at the same time? It's simultaneously icy and scorching up here, because
the sun reflects off the snow. No wonder they call it the roof of the world. This can result in severe burning as well as frostbite. At the same time!”

“How fascinating!” I said, but my aunt did not notice my attempt at sarcasm.

“You have to remember,” she continued, gesturing to the icy path. “That we are hiking at 5,600 meters above sea level. That is 800 meters above Mont Blanc, the tallest mountain in Europe.”

“I don't want a lecture on geography. My face is killing me!”

“Yes, it does look rather painful,” my aunt said, as if that was a noteworthy fact as well.

All of them were peering at me, as if I was an object of mild interest. Were they going to chitchat about my troubles all day? Only Yongden looked at me as if I was normal. He said something to Chamba which caused the cook to scurry away to the donkeys. There he delved into a pack carried by one of them and turned round with a package clasped in his hand. Yak butter. The packet of yak butter was frozen solid, of course. It had to be heated on our Bunsen burner. I could sense my aunt's impatience at the waste of time. Finally it was about the consistency of normal butter and a coating of gloop was applied to my eyelids. It smelt unbelievably foul. Like a vat of rancid milk. Waldo wrinkled his nose,
smirking at Isaac. Who smirked back.

“Well, Kit, you've held us up long enough,” my aunt boomed. “Best foot forward now … If you can't keep up I'll send a couple of Sherpas back to the village with you.”

I boiled with indignation. I wasn't the one to halt our caravan. “I'm perfectly ready,” I said coldly,

Yongden uttered a command, the convoy of donkeys and Sherpas was reassembled and we all continued on our weary march. I did not think of anything, not how I smelt like an abattoir and looked like a measle. No, I concentrated on putting one icy boot in front of the other. I could imagine, one day, feeling as if I had a face, rather than a big, red blister, above my neck. In the meantime we must get to Tibet. I had my pride. Even if it killed me, I wouldn't be the one who held us back. How dare Aunt Hilda suggest I was a laggard!

It is at times like this, when I am feeling really very low, that Rachel is kindest. Without saying a word, she slipped her arm through mine. Together we trudged on, and I found that I didn't really mind that Rachel was coping with the sun and cold while I wasn't.

“Don't worry, Kit,” she whispered. “You'll show them.”

I looked at her mutely. Her brown eyes were glowing beneath her halo of fur.

“You're a fighter.” Her fingers pressed mine, comfortingly.

We were toiling up a particularly painful stretch of mountain, our legs aching. Suddenly, the clouds up above descended. I can give no other explanation. One moment the clouds were in the sky. The next moment they had come down to earth.

It was thick, clammy stuff. Not like the sulfurous fog of a London afternoon, but brighter, whiter. It was so dense it clothed us in a shimmering layer and I could no longer see the Sherpas up ahead. Nor the rest of our party. Rachel and I clutched each other. All I could see were her eyes, hazel lanterns shining through the mist.

“What happened?” she shrieked. “Where is everyone?”

“I don't know.”

“I'm scared, Kit.”

We were stranded near the top of a mountain, wreathed in mist. Dusk was coming. And we had no sight of our companions. Even more terrifying than the loss of sight was the fact that we couldn't
hear
a thing. No clop of hooves. No murmuring voices. No braying mules. I wanted to scream out at the top of my voice, but was too fearful. It could be fatal if we set off an avalanche.

“Come, Rachel.” I held on to her harder. “We must find the others.”

It was hard to walk fast though, because our view of the ground was obscured by the cloud. Carefully, testing every step, I moved forward. Not carefully enough, for at the tenth or fifteenth step I fell and nearly dragged down my trembling friend with me.

I had tripped over something. I saw it most clearly—something of ochre color, with a craggy, pitted surface. The mist had not descended quite to the ground level and I had a horrifyingly good view.

“Get up, Kit,” Rachel hissed. “We have to move if we're not to freeze to death here.”

The bony thing was nearly touching the tip of my nose. Its jaw opened in a grimace revealing a toothless mouth. Above it were empty eyes.

A skull. A toothless old skull. Under it, cruelly splayed at an angle to the head, was the rest of the skeleton. It looked horribly like a huge fish-bone, the spine feathering out. But no fish would have such delicate, such heart-breakingly human hands. They sat in the skeleton's lap, folded one on top of the other. The bones had been bleached by time and sun. Every scrap of flesh eaten by vultures.

My mouth opened in a scream, but with a supreme effort of will I squeezed it back.

“Stand up, Kit,” Rachel said, urgently. “Are you all right? Have you hurt your leg?”

That was not the worst of it. My brain was unwilling to understand what my eyes were telling it. Behind the old skeleton, in a heap just off the path, were other objects. The whitened bones of a horse, another human skeleton. The thing became a blur. An awful muddle of long-dead corpses.

What had happened to this caravan? Had they been beset by bandits? I suspected it was something far simpler. The mists had come down. Men and mules frozen to death as they wandered lost in these cruel heights.

“Kit!” Rachel's panicked face loomed just above my head, her hands picking at me. “What's wrong? Do you want me to carry you?”

Whatever happened, Rachel must not see this dreadful thing. This horror would haunt her dreams.

“No. No,” I said scrambling up and speaking cheerfully. “I'm perfectly well. Let's find the others.”

As we set off, shrouded in cloud like walking ghosts, I prayed that we would not be stranded here on the top of the world. Till the cold ate into our bones and the mountains took our lives. To Rachel, I said not a word. Clutching each other, we moved slowly down the path.

“Thank heavens!” my aunt exclaimed, looming toward us in the tattered remnants of the mist. “We thought we'd lost you.”

The clouds had lifted as swiftly as they had fallen, revealing our caravan, anxiously waiting by a mound of ice. I'd expected a scolding from Aunt Hilda but instead she opened her arms and folded me in a warm embrace. I could see from the expression on her face that she'd been very worried. She clung on to me even as she began to scold me.

“Don't ever lag behind again. If you get cut off from the main party you can easily freeze to death. Foolish child.”

“What were you thinking of?” burst out Waldo, sounding as if we had done it on purpose. “You're so reckless, Kit.”

“Oh Waldo, how lovely,” Rachel grinned. “You were worried about Kit.”

“Don't be ridiculous,” he snapped, turning away. “I'm just cross that she's always wasting time.”

“We're safe,” I said, trying to wriggle out of Aunt Hilda's hold. “We're here aren't we?”

We had descended the mountain and come to a huge glacier that flowed between ranges. To our right towered icy ridges, sharp as the folds in a newly starched tablecloth. To the left was a spreading snowfield. I had always thought glaciers were a flat white, like blank sheets of paper. This one was littered with rocks and boulders, especially on the edges. Inside the glacier, the ice rose in jagged spikes and whorls, many of them higher than a man and so deadly they could cut flesh to shreds. The sky felt close, pressing down on us. We moved among shimmering blues and whites, more watery than earth-bound. My thoughts were very confused and, for a moment, I felt as if, I flailing under the sea.

“
Where
are we?” Rachel wondered.

“Brlags Pa Rmi Lam glacier,” Yongden said. “Glacier of lost dream.”

A still, vast bowl. Bare of trees and grass, home only to the mysterious: the snow leopard, the vulture, the great beast—like a monstrous over-grown bear—Tibetans call the yeti.

A wail from one of the Sherpas, followed by a chorus
of shush and be quiet, cut into the silence. He was a quiet, squat fellow, our guide and tracker who was walking up in front, leading one of the first donkeys. I had talked to most of the Sherpas, but I realized I did not even know this man's name and had never heard him utter a word. Yongden and the man were talking, a whispered conversation that we couldn't understand. The Sherpa was alarmed, Yongden was soothing him, I thought.

I hurried over to where the two men were talking, peering over my aunt's shoulder who'd got there a moment before. Champlon stood beside her—he seemed as agitated as the Sherpa. All of us were crowding round, which was ridiculous because I didn't know what we were supposed to be looking at.

“What is it?” I asked, bewildered, because all I could see was a faint dent in the ice, slightly larger than a gold sovereign.

“It is a hoof mark,” Champlon said. “But not yak or donkey.”

“Horse,” the Sherpa said. He was staring at the mark as if he simply could not believe it and on his blunt face was astonishment. “A Bombay racehorse.”

“Only a fool would bring such a horse up here,” my aunt spat. “Such horses are not adapted to the ice. It will break a leg, or die of exposure.”

“It ees cruel,” Champlon agreed.

“I'll bet you a half a crown it's those Bakers,” Waldo hissed. “They don't care about ruining a fine horse. They'll probably just shoot it and eat it when it dies.”

The whispering around the hoof-print had become heated. Yongden raised his hand, his usual signal for silence; we quieted down like a group of well-trained schoolchildren.

“There have been many men before us. It is no matter. We will stay here,” Yongden gestured to the middle of the snow field and turning his horse began walking into the glacier.

He couldn't mean it. We were to camp on a glacier?

Silently we followed. The sun was sinking over the mountains in a Himalayan explosion of crimsons and pinks. How it had changed our ice-bound world, turning it from a blue-tinged undersea grotto to one of the most fantastic reds. The ice rose in cruel spikes, each one dripping in bloody paint. It looked magnificent and alarming. About as inviting as a bed of nails. As our donkeys clopped into the glacier my heart filled with dread. Ice all around and the Baker Brothers and their hired ruffians lurking in the darkness without.

For an instant I wished I had never come here. I wished I had listened to my father's entreaties and was back in the Maharajah's palace or safely home in Oxford,
clopping through meadowsweet and willow on my loyal mare Jesse. It was but a moment of weakness. As we picked our way through the glacier and began to unpack our tents for the coldest night of our lives, I told myself that this was what adventure is all about. It wasn't all fun, frolics and digging up buried treasure; easy as helping yourself to barley sugar in a sweet shop. It was about fear. Cold. Hunger.