Chapter 58
Rega staggered along the broken pathway, clutching on to Drang’s arm. The toes of his sandals caught on the loose stones, tripping him forward, while his spare arm reached out into thin air, fingers splayed wide.
Everything was so unfamiliar. There was no corridor to guide him, no indentations in the stone wall to show him the way. His whole world had been based on familiarity and memory, and now all that had gone.
The wind streamed across his face and Rega inhaled the cold air deep into his lungs. It smelled bitter and fresh, and he didn’t recognise a single part of it. In the monastery he had been able to tell every storeroom from the smell of its countless jars and vials. He could navigate the twists of the library just from the aroma of the dry parchments. Yet here, in the open vastness of the mountains, all that knowledge suddenly counted for nothing.
The wind blew harder, tugging at his cowl and billowing out his robes.
The moment he was banished from Geltang, the gates bolted shut behind him, Rega had felt a terrible sense of helplessness overcome him.
‘
He could feel Drang tugging at his sleeve. They were moving tortuously slowly down the path and he guessed his aide’s patience was fast running out. In the mountains, an old blind man could only slow him down.
‘
Drang only grunted, his good eye staring down the slope in front of him. Gauze bandages were wrapped tight across his face, and where the skin was visible it shone with a greasy extract used in the treatment of burns. Under the bandages, weeping patches of raw skin clung to the gauze.
‘
Drang grunted again, pressing him forward. Across the far line of mountain peaks he could see clouds rolling over the sky, blotting out the sun. The wind had already changed direction, bringing an icy cold from the higher slopes. A storm was brewing.
Rega stumbled on a rock lying in the centre of the pathway, his hands digging into Drang’s arm for support. He pulled himself upright, his breathing laboured, and quickly tried to gather himself to continue. Drang simply watched, his expression unchanged, as Rega staggered forward once more.
For another hour they continued before Drang pulled him to a halt.
‘
Rega nodded and very slowly uncurled his hands from Drang’s arm. He stood on his own, shifting his weight and reaching out his arms to balance himself. He heard Drang leave a bag at his feet, then the scuffing of his boots across the uneven ground just ahead and some loose pebbles tumbling away down the slope. After that, there was only the noise of the mounting wind.
For over two hours Rega stood where he was, in the vain hope of Drang returning. Even when he understood that his aide was never coming back, he remained in the same place for want of anywhere else to go. The wind whipped around him, sending ripples across the folds of his robes, but he did not reach down into the bag at his feet and put on one of the heavy jackets they’d been given.
Turning back in the direction they had come, Rega tilted his head up towards the distant walls of Geltang, his expression shadowed with remorse.
‘I’m so tired,’ he whispered. Then, sitting down on the hard ground, he lowered his head, letting the cold slowly claim him.
Chapter 59
Jack Milton was discussing Phd potential with an undergraduate in his study when there was a knock at his door. It opened a fraction to reveal the left side of Luca’s face.
‘Jesus, Luca!’ he said, jumping up from behind his desk. ‘We’ll continue this later,’ he muttered to the student, waving him up from the armchair and out of the room.
As Luca stepped hesitantly into the office, Jack took him by the shoulders. As soon as he touched him, he could feel just how much weight Luca had lost. His grey eyes looked paler than normal and were ringed with fatigue. Despite his clean clothes, Lucasunburned face and matted hair made him look weathered and somehow uncivilised, a far cry from the pale academics who normally inhabited Jack’s study.
‘Why didn’t you call?’ he demanded. ‘We hadn’t heard from you in so long, we thought the worst had happened.’
He pulled his nephew forward, hugging him tight in his arms. Eventually, with a couple of awkward pats on his back, Jack stepped away and turned to the window. Behind his reading glasses, Luca could see his eyes were clouded with tears.
‘Next time you go on a trip, I’m giving you a bloody satellite phone,’ he said, busying himself by making some coffee. Pouring the dregs from the glass pot into the top of the coffee machine again, he packed in some new grounds from a well-thumbed packet and pressed the switch. Soon they were settled into the two armchairs, facing each other.
For over an hour Luca talked. In all that time Jack did not interrupt or ask questions, but sipped his coffee long after it had turned cold. A mixture of disbelief and horror spread across his face as his nephew related every step of the journey. When Luca explained what had happened to Bill, Jack reached up his hands to his face and covered his eyes. His shoulders shook from sobs and for a long time after that they both sat in silence. Eventually Luca got up from his chair and poured his uncle another coffee, resting his hand briefly on his shoulder as he passed him the cup.
When Luca had finished what remained of his story, he reached into his satchel to pull out two battered books, setting them down on the wide armrests of his chair.
‘So the Chinese captain was dead when you saw him on the cliff-face?’ Jack asked.
Luca nodded. ‘He was on a ledge, about ten minutes down from the top, pressed up against the back wall with his eyes frozen open. Must have died of exposure during the night.’
‘Bastard deserved nothing less,’ Jack said vehemently. After another pause, he exhaled deeply. ‘So how did you get back to Lhasa?’
Luca almost smiled as an image of Rene came to mind. He had been there when Luca finally got down off the mountain. Approaching the charred remains of Menkom village, Luca had spotted him in a makeshift chair that was tilted towards the cliff-face, fast asleep in the heat of the midday sun. A towel shaded his face as he slept, while his right leg lay trussed up in bandages, resting on a gnarled wooden tree stump.
He had woken as Luca drew closer across the field, pulling the towel from his face and letting out a shout of laughter. Despite being in obvious pain, he had been tireless in organising yaks with the locals he had befriended, arranging to take them back along the trail to Tingkye, where they had then rejoined a proper road.
‘Rene waited for me that whole time,’ Luca said, shaking his head. ‘He got me out of Tibet, risking everything once again to smuggle me over the Friendship Bridge into Nepal. All that, and I barely even knew the guy.’
‘The kindness of strangers,’ Jack said. ‘It never ceases to amaze me what human beings are capable of.’
Then he shifted forward in his chair, eyes resting on the two books lying in front of his nephew. Luca followed his gaze, picking up the first and holding it out in front of him.
‘I found this in my rucksack when I got back to Lhasa,’ he said, unclipping the delicate gilded clasp. ‘Shara must have put it there without my knowing.’
As it fell open on Luca’s lap, Jack’s eyes passed over the white writing set on thick black parchment. The book looked old and well travelled, with angular Tibetan characters stamped across the densely packed pages.
