AN INVITATION ARRIVED AT THE British Residency inviting the Bells and their visitors to tea at the palace — which was in fact a large bungalow built in the British style with a red-painted iron roof and verandas around the sides. It stood, a little lower than the Residency, at the other end of the flowery promenade they called The Ridge.
The Dowager Queen Drolma received them in a sitting room filled with overstuffed chintz-covered sofas pushed against the walls, and a great many small tables scattered about. The walls were covered in a rose-patterned English paper, and tea arrived in a silver pot, on a tray with flowered china teacups and tiny silver spoons.
Queen Drolma was a small, slender woman, still handsome though no longer young: a regal figure in crimson silk and a dazzling amount of heavy gold jewelry. What Sophie noticed, more than the gorgeousness of her robes and the rich weight of gold at throat and ears and wrists, was the coldness in her dark eyes, the hard set of her mouth. She looked, thought Sophie, as though she had agreed to perform a tedious duty and would much prefer to be somewhere else. She did not seem to speak any English and responded to their polite small talk — translated by Charles Bell into Sikkimese — with a terse phrase or two, or simply a nod. When Lady Bell remarked on how fond they had all been of Prince Sidkeong, and how distressed by his death, the Dowager Queen’s response was a faint, somewhat absent-minded smile. She seemed, thought Sophie, remarkably unaffected by her stepson’s fate.
The tea party went on for a long time, with Jeannie and the Bells doing their best to keep up the one-sided conversation, while the servants refilled the teacups as fast as they were emptied. Though Alex was trying hard to play the part of a well-behaved young English lady, she was starting to fidget. At the moment she was tugging absently on one of her ringlets while her gaze drifted through the window into the sunny garden.
“Sophie,” said Lady Bell, “perhaps you could take Alexandra for a walk in the palace gardens. That is if Her Highness has no objection?”
Charles inquired, and Her Highness nodded without much interest. Presently a young female servant was summoned to escort Sophie and Alex outdoors.
As they followed the girl along a corridor, Alex whispered, “Doesn’t Queen Drolma make you think of the Red Queen in Alice?”
“She does, a bit,” said Sophie, smiling.
“I was afraid,” said Alex, “that she was going to say ‘Off with their heads!’”
Part way along the passage they came to a door that stood slightly ajar — left unlatched perhaps by a careless servant. Alex, with her usual curiosity, stopped to open it wider and peer inside. The room was filled with sunlight, and through a window on the far wall they glimpsed a view of the mountains. Elsewhere in the palace, as far as Sophie had seen, the rooms were quite dark and often windowless. She wondered why this large bright space had dustcovers over the furniture and was apparently unused.
Unused — and yet not empty. Standing with Alex in the doorway while the servant waited in dutiful silence, Sophie felt a premonitory chill. There was a presence in this room, unseen but palpable — a vague dark thickening of the air, a gathering of shadow in a sunlit place where no shadow should exist.
And then without warning something clutched at her chest so that it was hard to breathe. There was a harsh, acrid burning in her throat and lungs, a sensation of stifling heat and a weight crushing down on her. Her head throbbed, her stomach churned with a sudden nausea. Dizzy and disoriented, she felt herself swaying, her knees threatening to give way. The servant reached out just in time to steady her with a hand beneath her elbow.
With an immense effort, Sophie drew herself upright. She stepped back from the doorsill, moved down the hall, and quickly as it had happened, it was over. Her head cleared, her breath came more easily, her stomach settled. The strength returned to her limbs. She looked round and saw the servant was staring at her in dismay. She thinks she will be blamed for this, Sophie thought; and she smiled, a little shakily, to show that nothing was amiss.
Whatever horror had once happened in that room, Sophie knew she had come perilously close to witnessing it. The ineradicable presence of death, the enduring resonance of it, was like dark water seeping through the fabric of time; now it was threatening to engulf her.