“Hearts are like cups of porcelain,” she whispered.
“Once they are broken, they can never be mended.” The smile left her face and she grew serious.
“Very well,” he said.
“We’ll visit Thondrup Chophel’s room. Can you get me there without being seen?”
She nodded.
“I think so.”
She lifted her hand nervously to her forehead. The blood had dried a little and the wound was beginning to sting.
They travelled by dark or partly-lit passages, creeping like mice in and out of shadows, listening for voices or footsteps. Occasionally there were sounds in the distance, and twice they had to take cover in darkened rooms until little bands of monks went past. They acted on the assumption that, if anyone was moving, he was unfriendly. On the lower floors, Zamyatin’s handiwork was in evidence. The bodies of his victims lay in untidy bundles everywhere. Some had had their throats cut, others had broken necks, and a few had died from injuries to the skull. It had been silent work, mute and bloody.
Chindamani explained in whispers that a limited number of monks received training in Chinese martial arts from Tsarong Rinpoche. These men had been foremost among those attracted to Zamyatin. She thought he exercised some sort of control over them through Tsarong Rinpoche.
As they neared the Lha-khang, a low droning sound came to their ears.
“Listen,” whispered Chindamani.
“They’re chanting hymns to Yama.”
“Who is Yama?” asked Christopher.
She looked at him oddly, a distant lamp catching fire in the black pupils of her eyes.
“He is the Lord of Death,” she answered simply, turning her face away.
They left the Lha-khang behind, but the sound of chanting followed them on heavy feet. At the far end of the corridor, they came to a red-painted door in the right-hand wall.
“Is this the only entrance?” asked Christopher.
She nodded.
They put their ears to the door, but no sounds could be heard from behind it. Christopher felt naked, with only the small knife to defend himself with.
“This is no good,” he said.
“We need weapons. These people mean business we can’t keep them off with our bare hands.”
She thought for a while, then nodded.
“All right,” she said.
“Wait in here.”
There was a small room nearby, where robes and other items were kept for use in the Lha-khang. Chindamani left Christopher there and hurried off down the corridor. Her feet made no sound on the cold stones; she might have been a shadow. He waited in the darkness for her, anxious and nervous, knowing that matters were reaching a climax.
She returned within five minutes carrying a short sword. It had come from the gon-kang, she explained. Most of the other weapons had already been taken.
They went back to the door of the Geku’s room and listened again. It was still silent. But from the Lha- khang the hymn to Yama continued. Christopher put his hand to the door and pushed.
Afterwards, Christopher often wondered why he had not cried out at that moment. Had the horror been too great for his mind to take in all at once? Or had he passed in a single instant beyond all ordinary horror, into another realm where silence was the only speech?
He felt Chindamani clutch his arm, but it was as if his flesh and her flesh both belonged in a world he had just left behind. Someone had lit lamps and hung them at intervals from the walls, so that eveything in the room stood out clearly.
Ropes had been tied to rafters in the ceiling, dozens of them, like creepers in a forest, hanging down from low branches into a bright clearing, bearing obscene and over-ripened fruit. The ropes were taut, and they twisted slowly in the shadows. Something heavy hung at the end of each one, a man’s body, turning ponderously in the gloom. The bodies hung like dummies in a tailor’s warehouse, anonymous, waiting to be displayed in a shop window in a distant town; or like rag dolls waiting for giant children to cut them down and play with them.
Christopher felt a terrible cold pass through him. All his body was filled with it, his veins flowed with ice. He remembered his dream of the girls hanging in the orphanage, the staring eyes turned to him, the red lips parted. But this was no dream.
He stepped into the room, walking slowly among the bodies, looking for one body among the rest. To one side he saw the stool on which the victims had been made to stand while they were despatched. He imagined a practised foot kicking the stool out from underneath each time, the body dropping, the face in agony as the rope bit into the neck. All the men’s hands had been tied behind their backs. Death had been slow and painful.
Suddenly, he heard Chindamani call out behind him, a cry of pain or horror. He whirled round, ready to run to help her. But it was too late. Tsarong Rinpoche held her firmly, one arm round her throat. In his free hand he held a pistol pointed at her head.
Behind him, in the doorway, stood a group of monks, all armed.
“Drop your weapon to the floor, Wylam-la,” the Rinpoche said.
“If you do not, the Lady Tara will have to look for a new body.”
“You were warned not to enter Tibet,” Tsarong Rinpoche said, addressing Christopher. His voice was sad, as though he found his position distasteful but unavoidable.
“You decided to ignore that warning. A boy died. Now your own life hangs in the balance. I would have saved you from all this. Remember that.”
But inwardly the Rinpoche was very pleased with himself. The gods had smiled at his efforts. The Russian was pleased and his masters in Moscow would send the assistance they had promised.
There would be no more fumbling now that he was in control. The gods would repay him abundantly. He turned to Chindamani.
“I’m sorry, my lady,” he said, ‘but I have instructions to bring you with me. If you behave yourself, no harm will befall you.” He removed his arm from her neck and let her move away from him.
She stepped back towards Christopher and took his hand tightly in her own.
“Were you responsible for .. . this?” She gestured towards the room behind her.
“The executions were necessary,” the Rinpoche said, ‘if there was to be no attempt to undo my work. Zam- ya-ting supervised them.
He has carried out such tasks before.”
“What about my father?” Christopher asked.
“Has he been harmed?”
Tsarong Rinpoche shrugged.
“He was the abbot,” he said.
“I could not leave him alive and hope to rule in his place. He was a trulku. It was time for him to be reborn.”
For the second time in his life, Christopher received news of his father’s death in silence. The old man had come back to him out of darkness and returned to it again, unrecognized, unforgiven, almost unremembered. Christopher was an heir to darkness now.
In the shadows behind him, the heavy bodies moved as a single body:
this was his inheritance and he knew it would soon be time for him to claim it.
“Was the Russian responsible for his death as well?”
The Rinpoche shook his head.
“No. I took care of it myself.” He paused.
“There is no time to talk. Zam-ya-ting would like to see you. You have been much on his mind since your arrival here.”
They set off at once, Tsarong Rinpoche leading the way, followed by Christopher and Chindamani, each with a monk at either arm.
