The Burning Altar Page 9

  Lewis turned to look up at the towering mountain peaks and gorges, and the glinting threads of fast-flowing streams and rivers. The curtain parting . . . These mountains were the guardians to Tibet’s remote mysterious interior. They were awesome, but then mountains were always awesome. They were like mirrors and cats, they had a secret inner life of their own.

  For the first time since they had left Lhasa, he said, ‘And Tashkara? Can we reach Tashkara?’

  There it was again, the flinching, the quickly averted eyes, exactly as in the hotel.

  ‘You wish to go to Tashkara?’ said Cal at length.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘It is not possible.’

  ‘Why? Doesn’t it exist?’ Lewis was almost prepared by now to find that Tashkara was nothing more than a figment of someone’s imagination, a dark Shangri-la. He would not have put it past Patrick to have amused himself by adding a few touches of fiction to his travel account.

  Then Cal said, ‘There is an ancient stone palace which is called Tashkara’s Gateway. I know it – everyone knows it.’

  ‘A palace?’ This was not quite what Lewis had been expecting.

  ‘Once it was the home of a royal people who ruled – many hundreds of years back,’ said Cal. ‘My grandfather knew of it. There were rituals and feastings, all held in great secrecy, and if anyone witnessed them, he was given a terrible death. The people had their own laws and to offend against them brought down the punishments of their gods.’

  ‘Really?’ said Lewis, but his heart had begun to race. Rituals . . . And the punishments of their gods . . . Is this it? Is this what you found, Patrick? He said, ‘What happened to the tribe?’

  ‘They were driven out, and they went deeper into the valley, taking their strange customs with them. Perhaps they are all dead.’

  ‘Or perhaps they’re not. Tell me some more.’

  ‘For a time the palace was a gompa – your word is monastery – with a shrine to the Buddha, and thankas, which you would call wall paintings.’

  ‘I see. Do you know where it is, this palace?’

  ‘I know,’ said Cal. ‘All know. But it is a place of great danger now. Bad evil. Not to be visited.’ He turned determinedly back to the Jeep. ‘We should take off the luggage. We have to walk some part, but this is a trade route and we shall meet other people as we go – hill folk, traders – all very interesting. There is a hill station where we shall sleep tonight. Very comfortable, very clean: market stalls and a small village. There are cups of tchai to drink, and then a very excellent supper, perhaps lamb with apricots and rice or—’

  ‘What kind of bad evil?’ Lewis was damned if he was going to be fobbed off. ‘And what kind of danger? Cal, tell me.’

  ‘It is a very bad story,’ said Cal apologetically. ‘Told about the people who live inside the palace now.’

  ‘The monks? You said it was a monastery—’

  ‘No, once there were monks but no longer.’

  ‘But – people live there? Cal, if you don’t tell me, I’ll tip you into the nearest gorge.’

  Cal said, ‘There are people living there.’ He sent Lewis a sudden fearful look from the corners of his eyes, and Lewis felt his skin prickle. Something here that Patrick either did not find, or did not record. Or perhaps something that was not here in his day.

  He said, ‘What people?’

  There was an abrupt silence. Lewis was uneasily aware of the brooding mountains and the vast listening silence.

  Then Cal said, ‘They are known as the Flesh-Eaters of Tashkara.’ And, as Lewis stared, ‘You understand me?’ he said. ‘The flesh they eat is human flesh.’

  Eighty years is only a drop in the glimmering seas of Tibet’s timelessness, and the palace Patrick had found and described would certainly not have altered. Lewis, staring across the deep gorge with the foaming fast-flowing river at the bottom, had the feeling of time fusing. Patrick, you had the gift of painting word-pictures in addition to everything else, he thought. This is your palace. This is the Gateway to the secret city of Tashkara.

  Patrick had described the ancient palace as a huge awe-inspiring edifice, stark and grim and built like a medieval fortress into the side of an immense crag so that it was impossible to tell where the man-made structure ended and the rockface began. It clung to the sheer mountainside, overhanging the gorge, and it was unbelievably remote. Clear pure light spilled over the stark rockface, ravens wheeled overhead and in the distance was the violet and grey smudge of the Himalayas, drenched in magical eastern twilight. I will lift up mine eyes to the hills from whence cometh my help. But what else might come stalking out of those purple shadowy summits? Lewis thought: this is one of the eeriest places I have ever come across, and when he spoke, his voice was just slightly too down-to-earth.

  ‘It looks virtually inaccessible, although I don’t suppose it is.’ He looked at Cal. ‘How do people get across the gorge?’

  There was another of the nervous pauses, then Cal said, ‘There is a rope bridge. Woven ropes and cables and wires, nothing more. If you fall, you are smashed against the rocks below. It is said that it is put there for the Tashkara people to catch victims.’

  ‘Like snaring a rabbit for supper?’ said Lewis, with a lightness he was not feeling. He looked down into the gorge. The river hurtled along its channel, dashing against the crags and the boulders, white spume rising up.

  ‘I do not go beyond here,’ said Cal. ‘Never at all. If you pay me the wealth of all my ancestors together and double it tenfold, I still do not.’

  ‘Then,’ said Lewis, hoisting the larger of the haversacks on to his back, ‘I shall have to go without you.’

  Into the ancient Palace of the Flesh-Eaters.

  Chapter Nine

  Extract from Patrick Chance’s Diary

  Tibet, June 1888

  Promised ourselves we will cross the gorge at first light and request admittance to the ancient stone palace. Theodore worried about etiquette of this, but have pointed out that behaviour suitable for Kensington probably inappropriate out here and it’ll be perfectly in order to ask for a night’s lodging and a bite of food before going on across the valley.

  According to Sherpa guides (English virtually nonexistent but we communicate by sign language), the palace was once some kind of gateway to a forbidden realm in the valley beyond. They point and use the word gompa, which means a monastery, and I have pointed out to Theo that all monks, no matter their religious persuasion, are honour bound to provide rest and food to travellers; in fact it’s a basic Buddhist tenet. Theo promptly said, Not all monks, what about Trappists? and looked disapproving, exactly as he did when I locked him out of our railcar in order to while away afternoon with little Eurasian car attendant.

  (On subject of which am rather pleased to record that I managed to time rhythms to coincide with vibration of wheels, although just as I was congratulating myself, the engine hit a fast downhill stretch and I nearly succumbed to premature ejaculation, which is a bétise in any country and would have been embarrassing with a total stranger. These Eastern females appear more concerned with giving pleasure than with receiving it, and their ideas on massage are v. erotic, although fear may suffer irritation in awkward place from too-liberal application of scented oil . . .)

  Later. I’m not sure I like this place much. We are facing the gorge and have made camp, setting up a tent and lighting a fire on which we cooked our supper. (Rice and dried strips of an anonymous meat – think it was lamb, which I don’t much like, but beef impossible out here, of course.) The Sherpas stayed to eat and then unaccountably took to their heels and, as one man, left. This was extremely disconcerting, although Theo says he never trusted them in the first place, what can you expect from foreigners, and we should never have come. No spirit of adventure, Theo. All the same I’m beginning to think he may have a point . . .

  Later still. Darkness creeping over the mountains now, and it’s getting colder by the minute. That’s the altitude, of course. We’re o
n the roof of the world, and on balance I’d prefer to be in the cellar – at least it would be warmer. We have each had a good pull at the brandy flask, in fact we have had several, and it’s helped the cold, never mind letting down a few barriers because Theo suddenly apologised for chronic disapproval, which he said was because he envied me. I said, Why? Nothing about me to envy, dear boy.

  Whereupon he replied, with owlish insobriety, ‘I envy your success with women, Patrick. M’father said that you’ve only got to look at them and they—’

  ‘That’s nonsense,’ I said, quickly, half from embarrassment (cannot cope with displays of naked sentiment) and half because of proximity of religious establishment across gorge.

  ‘’S true. Money an’ looks an’ panache. Got everything. Unfair distribution.’ Upon which he fell abruptly asleep.

  This is too astonishing a revelation to digest when half-drunk, and I will have to re-examine it in sober daylight.

  Unfortunately daylight is many hours off and by night the mountains are brooding and sinister as if they have taken on a different persona. It’s the creeping murmur and the pouring dark filling up the vessel of the universe, and God alone knows what’s out there watching us.

  The fire is burning well and has warded off some of the cold. But the flames cast odd shadows and I keep thinking about the teachings of one of the old philosophers (Plato?), who handed down that vivid eerie picture of Man crouching in the dark, studying the shadows cast by the fire flickering on his cave wall, but never daring to look out at the reality of what cast those shadows . . .

  What in God’s name am I doing huddled on the side of a Tibetan mountain, freezing cold, swigging brandy and quoting philosophy?

  Elinor was trying to be philosophical about the strange creature she had glimpsed on the iron stairs, because Lewis’s explanation had to be the true one. An intruder, some poor confused soul high on drugs or drink or both. It was the only logical conclusion. The creature she thought she had seen could not exist outside of the mind of some mad surreal artist or some way-out film-maker.

  And the image was fading, exactly as all nightmares faded, although it did not quite vanish. One day, thought Elinor, one day when Lewis is away, I’ll prove that that wretched ghost doesn’t exist. When he’s attending one of his conferences or his dinners, I’ll go down into the cellars, and I’ll prove there’s nothing there: recluse or subhuman or anything!

  She was trying to be philosophical about the way he had sat with her in her flat as well, and she was certainly keeping at bay the memory of how he had given her brandy for shock and talked to her in his velvet voice and smiled with his silver eyes. It was important to keep it in proper proportion and Elinor thought she was just about managing it. Her niece, Ginevra, would have said: Why keep it at bay? And: I hope at least you had your Janet Reger nightgown on, Nell. And Elinor would not dare admit that she had been wearing the pale blue candlewick dressing gown that she had donned to eat her solitary supper and that made her look bundly. Lewis would not find bundliness attractive; he would be used to satin and lace and to sexy slithers of perfumed silk on his women. All those dozens of them.

  Ginevra was due home from Durham this weekend, and in the half-guilty hope that she might find Kensington stifling, Elinor had written a hesitant invitation for Ginevra to stay at Chance House. It had been very gratifying to receive Ginevra’s enthusiastic acceptance – ‘Because the thing is, I’ve been tangled with somebody I shouldn’t have been tangled with, Nell, and I’ve been dreading Kensington on account of being preached at.’ Elinor had been touched to be regarded as preferable to Kensington and preaching, although she had misgivings about the tangle.

  She might even be able to tell Ginevra about Lewis, because although Ginevra was likely to say something flippant such as, ‘Jesus God, Nell, trust you to fall for the boss!’ she would be whole-heartedly on Elinor’s side. She would instantly want to drag Elinor off to a ruinously expensive hairdresser and through half a dozen outlandish boutiques with the idea of Elinor’s outshining the slitherers – ‘Because all you need is confidence!’ – and she would come up with a bagful of outrageous seduction plots, none of which would be practical but all of which would seem perfectly possible and even rather fun when Ginevra outlined them.

  Elinor was going to find her a great comfort.

  Raffael’s reaction to Lewis’s carefully worded story of Grendel’s disappearance was unexpected.

  He said, ‘You are satisfied, are you, that Grendel was taken against his will?’

  Lewis, who had been half expecting protestations of self-exoneration, stared. ‘Of course he was taken against his will,’ he said. ‘It’s a classic case of kidnapping. Why?’

  ‘Just a thought. You haven’t called in the police?’

  It was the obvious question and this time Lewis was prepared. He said coldly, ‘I have not. And I must ask you not to do so either. Not yet, at least. Grendel was always a prime target for a kidnapping and I was always a prime target for blackmail.’

  He held Raffael’s eyes, and after a moment Raffael said softly, ‘“Wealthy philanthropist keeps maniac son hidden away for twenty years . . . Pay what we ask or that’s the headline we’ll give to the press . . .”?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘But,’ said Raffael softly, ‘your instant response to that would be, “Publish and be damned!” Wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Certainly.’ Lewis was not going to be tipped off balance a second time. He said, ‘You know that, but a blackmailer wouldn’t.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘What all victims of kidnap do. Wait for them to make their next move.’

  ‘Yes, I see.’ Raffael studied the man in front of him. ‘What about Miss Craven?’ he said suddenly. ‘You said she heard something—’

  ‘I told her it was an ordinary burglar, although I don’t think she entirely swallowed it. She’s a very perceptive lady.’

  ‘Could she have guessed? Because if so, it might be better to trust her with the whole.’

  ‘No. The fewer people who know the safer. I don’t know what Elinor thinks really happened, but I’d stake any sum you like to name that she doesn’t know about Grendel.’

  ‘Ah yes, I recall that you have been spoken of as a gambler,’ murmured Raffael.

  ‘It is possible that Grendel’s genuinely been kidnapped,’ said Raffael, seated opposite to Cardinal Fleury in the book-lined room in Bloomsbury. ‘And his mental condition would make him very suitable for a blackmail plot – Lewis Chance is quite right about that. To have it made public that he had been hiding the boy for twenty-three years would ruin him. For the second time,’ said Raffael. ‘And that’s something else that rings an odd note,’ he added thoughtfully.

  ‘What?’

  ‘How did he get back to prosperity so soon after he returned from Tashkara?’ said Raffael. ‘His father’s debts were described as monumental. I could bear to know a great deal more about what happened in Tashkara twenty-five years ago, because whatever it was, the noble baronet came out of it with a sum of money so substantial he not only paid his father’s creditors in full, he also set the House of Chance on its feet again.’

  ‘Do you think this is an ordinary kidnapping?’ said Fleury

  ‘I don’t know. There’s been no demand for money yet – or if there has, Lewis Chance isn’t saying. But he’s certainly wealthy enough to make the boy a prime target.’ Raffael broke off and frowned. ‘No, it’s too coincidental. I think we should assume that the League of Tamerlane have taken Grendel. And I think Lewis Chance knows it – or at least guesses it.’

  ‘Why?’

  Raffael said, ‘Think about what we know, Eminence.’ He ticked the points off on his fingers. ‘Grendel was almost certainly born while Lewis Chance was inside Tashkara. Somehow he got the child to England in what seems to have been immense secrecy, and from then on he kept him in immense secrecy – one nursing home after another, always moving him, never leaving him in one
place for too long. Why?’

  ‘Because a moving target is seldom hit.’

  ‘Exactly. And with the emergence of the League of Tamerlane out of Tashkara, what’s Chance’s first reaction?’

  ‘He buys an old house with exactly the right accommodation to hide the boy once again,’ said Fleury, ‘and removes him from the Highgate nursing home.’ He considered this, and then said, ‘You are sure that the boy couldn’t have got out by himself?’

  ‘I couldn’t be surer. The door to his room was double-locked, and so was the outer cellar door. They were both good stout doors and there was no sign that they’d been forced. Grendel himself was always chained and the chain had been cut through with steel pliers—’ Fleury made an involuntary gesture of distaste and Raffael looked up. He said gently, ‘A thin strong steel linkage about one ankle, but the chain long enough for him to move about his small realm with complete freedom. I dare say he hardly noticed it. And it was far more humane than gradually destroying his intelligence by huge doses of sedatives.’

  ‘I have to accept your judgement,’ said the cardinal, ‘although I question the reasoning. What is your conclusion?’

  Raffael smiled inwardly at the switch to theological polemics. What is your point? Keep to the argument. Reason with logic and precision and brevity, and present your case with a quod erat demonstrandum. He said, ‘You told me that the League of Tamerlane were dissidents: a rebel group trying to overturn the ways of their people.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What do dissidents do when they’re trying to topple an existing rule?’ Raffael leaned forward, his eyes alight. ‘They set up a figurehead, someone to rally their followers. A lodestar.’

  ‘But no resistance group would use a madman as a figurehead,’ said Fleury, staring at him.

  ‘They might,’ said Raffael. ‘And Grendel has considerable charm when he’s sane. It’s a possibility.’

  ‘It’s a very remote possibility,’ said Fleury. ‘But I agree it should be borne in mind. What are you going to do next?’