The Ninth Buddha (40 page)

He set William down on the couch and stepped towards her.

Tentatively, he took her in his arms.
 
The shock of what had happened was rapidly leaving him, and he realized that it would not be long before someone came to investigate the gunshots.

“Chindamani,” he whispered.

“We’ve got to go.
 
Zamyatin will send someone to see what’s going on.
 
The monk who was here will tell others.
 
We have to leave now or we’ll never make it.”

She was still staring ahead, her eyes unfocused, her body rigid.

He took her by the shoulders and began to shake her.
 
She did not respond.

Suddenly, he noticed Samdup by his side.
 
The boy had made a tremendous effort to shut out the horrors he had seen.

“Chindamani,” he said.

“Please answer me.
 
Thepee-ling is right we have to escape.
 
Please hurry or they’ll find us here.”

As if the boy’s voice worked some sort of magic on her, the girl blinked and began to relax.
 
Her arms dropped to her side and she looked down at Samdup.

“I feel cold,” she said in a scarcely audible whisper.

Samdup looked up at Christopher.

“There are things for the journey in that chest,” he said.

“I was supposed to get them ready, but I had to look after Sonam and forgot.”

“William,” said Christopher.

“Come and help us get ready to leave.
 
Help Samdup take things out of the chest.”

While the boys hurried to sort out clothes, tents, and bags of food, Christopher helped Chindamani to a seat.
 
He put his arm round her, remembering how, not so very long before, their roles had been reversed.

“Where are we going, Ka-ris To-feh?”
 
she asked.

“Away from here,” he answered.

“Far away.”

She smiled wanly and reached down to pick up some bags from the floor.

“Don’t waste time tying those on,” said Christopher.

“We can do that later.
 
The main thing at the moment is to get out of this room.”

Chindamani turned and took a last look at Sonam.
 
The old woman lay back on the bed where she had fallen, a startled look in her eyes.
 
Chindamani bent down and straightened her arms and legs.
 
With one hand she closed her eyes, then kissed her softly on the lips.

A sound of running feet came from the passage outside.

“Quickly!”
 
Christopher hissed.

“Let’s go!”

While Christopher held back the hanging, Chindamani slid the door aside and stepped in after Samdup and William.
 
Christopher followed, closing the door behind him with a click.
 
Even if someone drew the hanging aside, the entrance would remain invisible to the casual eye.

A lamp was burning on a bracket nearby.
 
Chindamani took it and led the way along the passage.
 
Behind them they could hear muffled voices coming from the apartment they had left.

“What happened, Chindamani?”
 
Christopher asked, as soon as they had put some distance between themselves and the entrance.

“What did you do to him?
 
Why did he kill himself?”

She did not answer at first.
 
Christopher could not see her face as she walked on ahead of him, holding the lamp.
 
The walls of the passage were rough and unfinished; but at one point someone one of Chindamani’s predecessors, no doubt had painted a domestic scene, a mother and her children standing outside their farm, surrounded by sheep and yaks. The light played on the painting for a moment, then passed on into darkness.

“It was a curse,” she said at last, to no-one in particular.

“A curse?
 
Surely you don’t believe .. .?”

“Sonam didn’t know what it meant.”
 
Chindamani continued, as though she had not heard him.

“It was a Tantric curse, a very powerful one.
 
She should not have known it that was what frightened him.
 
Only the most advanced adepts know it.
 
But Sonam used to come down this passage to the Lha-khang when they were undergoing instruction.
 
It fascinated her, and she learned all sorts of things.
 
She understood nothing, of course; but she memorized whole rituals, whole spells .. . whole curses!”
 
She stopped and turned around to face Christopher.

“I think Tsarong Rinpoche was almost mad with guilt already.

When he heard that curse spoken by someone who had no knowledge of such matters as he thought he must have imagined that the gods were speaking, condemning him.”

“And you.
 
How did you know how to continue?”

“Oh, Sonam taught me all the things she heard down in the Lhakhang.

Sometimes we’d go together and watch the rituals for hours.
 
But .. .”

She hesitated.

“There was something else, something that made me do what I did.
 
The feeling’s gone now.
 
But when he shot Sonam, I felt as though something took me over.”

“Anger?”

“No, more than that.
 
Something quite different.
 
I can’t explain.”

“There’s no need.
 
Come on, we’ve got to get moving.
 
You still have to explain to me how we’re supposed to get out of Dorje-la.”

From the Tara chapel, a series of wooden steps and short passages led them down to the gon-kang.
 
The small crypt-chapel was empty, save for the stuffed animals and gods that kept watch over it.
 
A few lamps were lit, filling parts of the room with a creamy, yellow glow.

Chindamani explained to Christopher the details of the escape route described by Sonam.
 
He listened to her grimly, unable to guess how much of the old woman’s story might be true and how much mere legend.

They tightened their travelling clothes and tied on the items of equipment Chindamani had prepared.
 
Christopher found a short rusty sword among the small clutter of weapons left in the gonkang and slipped it into his belt.

“William,” he said.
 
The boy was close by his side, determined not to let his father out of his sight again.
 
Christopher reached into a fold of his chuba and drew out something soft.
 
It was a small and very battered teddy-bear.

“I’ve brought old Samuel from Carfax,” said Christopher, holding the ragged toy out to the boy.

“I thought you might like to have him with you.
 
To remind you of home.”

The boy took the bear and hugged it to his chest.
 
It had always been his favourite toy, his inseparable bedtime companion, repaired, restuffed, restitched half a dozen times.
 
He looked up at his father and, for the first time, smiled.
 
With Samuel, he could face any number of dangers.

Samdup watched, bewildered.
 
Stuffed animals were nothing new to him, but he had never seen one like this before.
 
And why did the strange pee-ling boy want to carry one round with him?
 
Was it some sort of god?

William put Samuel into his bag.

“We’ll soon be back in Carfax, Samuel,” he said.
 
Christopher smiled.

How he wished he could believe that.

They rolled back several rugs in front of the main altar.
 
Underneath, they could make out the shape of a narrow hatchway set flush with the floor and provided with a brass ring.

Christopher turned to Chindamani.
 
Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes gleamed in the sickly light.
 
He scarcely dared look directly at her.

“You don’t have to come,” he said.

“You or Samdup.
 
You’ll be quite safe, I’m sure of it.
 
Tsarong Rinpoche is dead.
 
You were a threat only to him.
 
Zamyatin will find it better to let you live.
 
He’ll use you as a symbol, but you will be alive.
 
And the boy he’s more use to Zamyatin alive than dead.
 
You don’t know what there is down there.
 
Or what could be waiting on the journey.”

“I was responsible for the Rinpoche’s death,” Chindamani said.

“Or at least that is what the monk who was with him will say.
 
His followers won’t stand for that.
 
And Samdup wouldn’t be safe with Zam-ya-ting.
 
You know that.
 
You know why.”

There was nothing he could say to that.
 
She was right: he knew why.

“Very well,” he replied.

“We’ll go together.
 
We can’t afford to wait here any longer they’ll already be looking for us everywhere.

I don’t know what’s down beneath this hatch.
 
It may be nothing;

it may be something more dangerous than anything Zamyatin and his men have to offer.
 
But we’ve no choice.
 
If we’re going out, this is the only way left open to us.”

He turned to Samdup and spoke to him directly for the first time.

“What about you, Samdup?
 
Do you feel up to this?”

The boy did not answer at once.
 
He looked back at Christopher with an unsettling seriousness in his eyes.
 
Since his discovery as a trulku and his installation here at Dorje-la, he had never really been treated as a child.
 
He had clearly recovered his composure quickly since the scene in Chindamani’s room.

“You should not call me “Samdup”,” he said finally.

“My proper name is Dorje Samdup Rinpoche.
 
You may call me Samdup Rinpoche or, if you prefer, Lord Samdup.
 
Only those who are very close to me may call me by my given name alone.
 
And you must use the proper verbal forms at all times when addressing me.”

There was that in the boy’s look and tone of voice that endowed his words with an adult seriousness few British children of his age could possibly have emulated.
 
Christopher felt thoroughly rebuked.

“I’m sorry .. . my Lord,” he said.

“There are many things I have to learn.”

“Don’t worry,” the boy said.

“I will teach you.
 
As for leaving here - I don’t think we have much time to waste.”

Christopher said nothing.
 
The die was cast.
 
They were going into the passages beneath the gon-kang.
 
He bent down and lifted the ring of the hatch in his right hand.

The hatch was heavy.
 
It came up slowly, without a sound.

There was nothing below but darkness, black, clammy, and cold.

A stale smell rose out of the pit, or perhaps it was a mixture of smells, not quite identifiable in themselves, not quite reducible to ordinary odours.
 
It was an evil stench and it clung to the nostrils with grim tenacity.
 
Chindamani turned her face away and made a brief gagging sound.
 
Christopher pulled his heavy scarf up over his mouth and nose.
 
The others followed suit.

“I’ll go first,” whispered Christopher.

“Then William, then Lord Samdup.
 
Then Chindamani.
 
We’ll all carry lamps, and if anyone’s goes out they’re to say so immediately and get a fresh light from someone else.
 
Make as little noise as possible.
 
And close the hatch behind us.”

Peering into the hole with the help of his lamp a large one that Chindamani had found on a side altar Christopher made out the first few rungs of a wooden ladder.

They went down slowly.
 
The ladder took them about ten feet below the floor of the gon-kang.
 
When Christopher, William and Samdup reached the bottom, Chindamani tossed the more bulky baggage down to them before closing the hatchway and climbing down herself.

The darkness was absolute, a thing in itself, an object and not a mere absence of light.
 
It seemed to breathe and live and grow stronger every moment.
 
The light of their lamps was swallowed up in it and rendered flat and insubstantial.
 
It clung to them like a dim halo, scarred and denatured by the all-encompassing blackness.

They were in a small stagnant chamber about fifteen feet by ten.

Against one wall, Christopher made out the shapes of lacquered chests and boxes.
 
Beside them stood a huge, jewel-encrusted throne.
 
He stepped across to a tall box ornamented with bright red peonies and lifted the lid.
 
For a moment, it seemed as though the light thrown by his lamp had been shattered into a thousand fragments.
 
Everywhere, tiny specks of coloured light danced in the darkness.
 
Rubies, emeralds, diamonds and amethysts lay packed in the chest like pebbles on Brighton beach.

Christopher picked up a handful and let them trickle back through his fingers.
 
They felt cold to the touch and curiously light, as though all their substance lay in colour and luminosity.
 
The colours shifted and flew about, like the quick wings of hummingbirds in a forest glade, shimmering in a sudden ray of sunlight.

He picked up a second handful.
 
They would need money for their journey.
 
And after that, money to look after Chindamani and the boy.
 
Out there, in what Christopher regarded as the real world, to be a representative of a goddess or an incarnation of the Maidari Buddha counted for nothing.