‘I am armoured in faith,’ he whispered several times.
Whatever happened God would not let him be harmed, but moved beside him now so that all the demons of the mountain could not touch him. This exaltation of certainty lasted while he walked silently above the courtyards, round behind the temple of the oracle, down a stair and out into the main courtyard through the arch from which he had first seen it.
It was full night now, with many stars, though they were smudged out to the north where the thunderstorm was rising and nearing. He picked his way along beneath the slope of natural rock to the stairs he had climbed so often, going to lessons at the Lama Amchi’s house. Almost nonchalantly he started up them, reached the ledge where the two houses stood side by side, crossed it diagonally and began to climb the steeper, more irregular stairs to the caves. Stirred by the fringes of the storm, the night wind, icy cold, slashed and whipped at the mountain, snatching his panted breath from his lips and tugging at his clothes. He slowed his pace, taking care over each step, husbanding his energy as if he had the whole mountain to climb. When he looked over his shoulder he was astonished by how far he had come; the rock-face plunged down, seeming far steeper from above than from below, and the whole monastery was mapped out beneath him. The thought struck him that he should have come up here before and looked at the whole valley from this height. But mostly he kept his eyes on the individual steps, which were often no more than scooped footholds in the rock, no larger than a dinner-plate. At the steepest places a coarse rope, greasy with use, ran beside them.
At last came a change, a step that was wider than the others, and broader too, a place to rest and recover breath without feeling that the wind would scour him off the mountain. But it was too cold to stand still for long, and Theodore was about to climb on when his eye was caught by a dim yellow light to his left and he realized with a shock that he had reached the first line of caves. His eye was now trapped by that light and could see nothing else, so he had to feel his way, trembling suddenly with the knowledge of the sweep of rock below him, till he reached the cave mouth. Heavy curtain was stretched across it just inside. Eagerly he slipped through.
‘Hullo, Theo,’ said Mrs Jones.
She was sitting cross-legged on a prayer-mat on the floor, opposite a place where the cave wall had been roughly plastered and then whitewashed. Elsewhere it was naked rock, but hung with the usual banner-like pictures and patterns that decorated all the monks’ cells. The butter-lamp on the stool beside her cast slant shadows upward across her face. Her eyes were open but they looked heavy with sleep, and she was smiling dreamily, a smile that reminded Theo of the remote sweet smile of the Buddha in the temple.
‘I thought you’d still be in the temple,’ he said.
‘Gracious me! I’ve missed it! I was having a vision – ’salright, you didn’t interrupt nothing. I think it was finished.’
‘It’s time to go. They’ve sent me to fetch you. Everything’s ready. We couldn’t get a message to you earlier, but . . .’
‘I know, ducks. Listen, I’m afraid you’ll have to go back and tell them I ain’t coming.’
‘Not . . . But the baby! Proper doctors! India!’
‘It wasn’t never going to be India, love, not if that Sumpa had anything to do with it. He wanted the Tulku born where the Chinese could get their hands on him. But it’s no odds either way, ’cause I’m staying here. We’ll be all right, me and him – that’s one of the things I seen in my vision.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘No more do I. I was just sitting here, humming one of me hums, when all of a sudden that wall there started a-glowing, all kinds of colours and shapes, real beautiful, like nothing I never seen, and I sat where I was with my eyes on stalks, and somehow the patterns became a lotus, and it opened and opened, and there he was at the heart of it.’
‘Who?’
‘Tojing Rimpoche, the Siddha Asara.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘I don’t know. It wasn’t that sort of seeing. The lotus was, but I seen him somehow different, in a way as won’t go into words. But he was there, right enough.’
‘I thought he was supposed to be . . .’
She chuckled like her old self and slapped her belly.
‘In here. Not really. It ain’t like that, far as I can make out. Matter of fact, I don’t think any of them’s proper clear how it all works – you see they don’t usually find a Tulku till he’s four years old, about, when he can talk and tell ’em things about his old life, so as they can be sure they’ve got hold of the right kid . . . Do you know, couple of nights back he gave me a great kick from inside – funny how they do that – but it’s early, innit? Shows the little beggar’s going to be strong . . . bit of a shock for you, young fellow, climbing all the way up here and finding I’m going to cry off.’
‘No,’ said Theodore slowly. ‘I guess I’ve known for a long time that you weren’t coming. I guess Lung’s known too . . . Oh, Mrs Jones, won’t you come and tell him yourself? I can’t! I just can’t!’
She nodded briskly.
‘Quite right. ‘Course it’s up to me. I s’pose I wasn’t proper come to after my vision, trying to put it on you . . .’
She had learnt the Lama’s trick of rising so that she seemed to float to her feet.
‘Sumpa gave me a monk’s robe,’ said Theodore. ‘In case anyone tries to stop you.’
‘They won’t . . . it’ll be funny going out without my escort. Wonder where they got to. Probably they come to take me to the temple and found me having my vision, and they understood what was up and cut along without me. You go first, young fellow. Heavens, hark at that thunder!’
The storm had drifted closer now and was rubbing against the lower slopes of the mountain, the glare of its flashes making the landscape jump into being, sharp as cut paper, and then float dazingly on the retina when all was darkness again. The wind threshed among the many-faceted roofs below and thudded against the rock-face. If the monks were still singing in the temple, their voices were drowned by the voice of the storm. Clutching the hand-smoothed rope Theodore started down the first slant of steps, feeling for each foothold in the dark.
‘You ain’t scared?’ called Mrs Jones. ‘Want me to go first?’
‘No. It’s all right,’ called Theodore.
He had in fact hesitated at the first step, full of a sudden horror of falling, but then he remembered the assurance of safety that had surrounded him as he had come up this way, and he went down confidently, flight after flight, until he reached the platform where the Lama Amchi’s house stood beside the one that had belonged to Tojing Rimpoche. He was only half surprised to find that Mrs Jones had followed close on his heels, as if there were neither night nor storm.
‘That’s where he’ll get born,’ she said, flicking a thumb towards the empty house. There was something not exactly false about the gesture, but still not quite right. Indeed, since she had first spoken her manner had jarred. If he hadn’t come to know her so well in the past months he would never have noticed, but now he realized that she was play-acting. The role of Mrs Jones – the exuberant, warm, resourceful, crude-spoken horsewoman, who had worn her make-up so thick and her clothes with such an air – no longer quite fitted her. She had changed. She was somebody new and different, trying to fit herself back into the old role for the moment and getting it subtly wrong, too boisterous, too coarse-grained. He shook his head, unhappy at the distances that had stretched between them, and led the way down to the main courtyard.