After Sunil left her, Alice searched in the straw and found the little jar that the interpreter had left for her and quickly drained the water that remained within it. Her shoulders ached abominably and she shrugged and rubbed them as best she could. Then, gun in hand, she settled herself in the straw to wait. She had no great plan, but would react to circumstances. Whatever ensued, she would not let herself be taken …
She had not intended to let herself sleep but the strain of the last few days were too much for her and her eyes closed and she dreamt of riding away from Lhasa towards … she was not sure … almost certainly Simon. Then the grate of the key in the lock jerked her awake and she scrambled to her feet, hiding the gun behind her.
The door swung open and the hunched figure of the jailer appeared. He seemed to be alone, for he suddenly stiffened when he saw her standing upright and not, as he expected, hanging from the bars above. He swung around and, just as she took a step forward, he swung around on his heel and pulled the door to behind him and locked it. Once again she was alone.
Light was beginning to stream in from the window, so Alice presumed that it was a little after dawn and the jailer had come, not to bring breakfast, of course, but to check to see if she was still alive. So … what would he do now? Go to the General, of course, and/or fetch the guards.
The danger of her position, jerked Alice out of her tiredness. She looked around her once again. There was nothing in that little cell to help her, only a few ends of the rope that had constrained her. Except, of course, for her handgun. Yet firing it would sound like a cannon in this confined space and bring all kinds of retribution upon her head. And she only had six shots. Impossible to set herself up in the cell and defend it like a fortress. They would either rush and overwhelm her or leave her to starve.
On an impulse, she whipped off her blouse and pulled off the little vest that lay beneath it. Then she rebuttoned the blouse and took the vest and bound it tightly around the hand holding the automatic pistol, so that the gun was out of sight, and the barrel completely covered by several layers of the cotton. How effective it would be in reducing the sound of the gun firing she had no idea, but it presented one possible way out of the impasse. But only if other factors slipped into place.
She estimated that the jailer would waste no time in telling her captors that she had somehow escaped from the bonds that bound her to the window bars, so she did not trust herself to slump back on the welcoming straw, but instead, stood waiting, her back to the wall under the window.
Nothing happened for at least an hour and she was struggling to keep her eyelids from closing when two distinct sounds, one after the other, jerked her out of her reverie. The first was the well-remembered, high-pitched voice of the interpreter coming from, by the sound of it, the mid-distance beyond her door. He was arguing, or more likely pleading, by the tone of his voice. Ah! Alice bit her lip. That swine of a jailer had obviously come to the conclusion that it was he who had cut her down, as well as provided food and water for her and had betrayed him to the General. More treachery in Tibet! What was happening to him?
The second sound provided the answer. It was a high-pitched scream from just outside her door that ended in a half moan and then a kind of gurgle, followed by a creaking noise and then silence.
Alice took a deep breath and kept the bandaged pistol close to her side, her back pressed against the cold wall of the cell. Then there was the sound of laughter, again from the other side of her door, and then a regular creaking noise, as though a child was pushing a swing. The laughter, the creaking and the sound of muted voices continued for perhaps three of four minutes, when, once again the key grated in the lock, the door was swung open and the jailer entered once more.
This time, however, he was not alone. Behind him, grinning and making lewd gestures with their lifted fingers, came the two Khampa guards who had assaulted her before. For a moment they stood regarding her, grinning lasciviously, before they said something curtly to the jailer and they both stepped forward towards her.
Alice let them approach until the leading man had extended both arms to grasp her when she brought up the bandaged hand, pressed the trigger and fired into his chest at a distance of some three feet. Without a pause she turned on the other man and shot him too, symmetrically between his shoulders at a slightly longer range as the soldier paused for a moment, his mouth gaping.
Without a sound, the two men slumped to the floor. To Alice the noise of the shot seemed to boom in the confined space of the cell and she whirled around and directed the gun at the jailer. With a cry, however, he threw himself to the ground and lifted his hands beseechingly. Alice tightened her grip on the trigger but then paused. It was a very different thing, shooting two men who were about to seize her, to killing a man who was begging for mercy and grovelling at her feet.
She stepped over the two bodies and that of the jailer and put her head around the door. Nobody seemed to have heard the— She jumped back in horror. The interpreter was hanging at the entrance to the courtyard, his eyes wide open but staring sightlessly and his tongue protruding from his open mouth. His smashed spectacles lay at his feet.
Alice then realised that the poor man had been pleading for his life and that the creaking noise was that of the two Khampas pushing him to and fro, having fun with his last struggles. She breathed hard. She mustn’t faint now. She stood listening quietly. There was no sound to be heard, no obvious reaction to the muffled shots she had fired. What to do now?
She stepped back into the cell and tried not to look at the two corpses sprawled on the ground before her. Trickles of blood were forming scarlet pools on either side of them. Alice tossed aside her vest, its job done, and pointed her gun to the jailer, who immediately began wailing again.
‘Oh shut up, you little worm,’ she breathed. Then she gestured to the heavy key that hung from a belt around his midriff. ‘Take it off,’ she hissed, moving the barrel of the automatic towards the man’s temple. The jailer quickly unbuckled the belt and threw it at her feet.
‘Good.’ She put her finger to her lips and pointed to the gun and said ‘shush’. The man stared back at her speechlessly. She had no idea if she had been understood, but she picked up the belt and its appendage and backed out of the door, shutting it firmly behind her and turning the key which had remained in the lock.
Alice had briefly forgotten the interpreter and she almost walked into his hanging body. She started back and then stood still for a moment, tears springing into her eyes. ‘I am so sorry, my old friend,’ she whispered. ‘Your very kindness to me led to your death.’ And then, more brusquely, ‘But I can’t stop to cut you down.’ She stepped around him and went into the little passageway. The doorway to the jailer’s cubbyhole of an office led off it and, hesitantly in search of some more substantial weapon, she entered. There was a large cabinet hanging on one wall but little else. She fingered the key that still hung from the jailer’s belt in her hand and slipped it into the keyhole in the cabinet. It swung open. Inside were two rows of similar-sized keys to that which opened her own cell.
Again she stood for a moment in thought. Then, a ghost of a smile began to spread across her features and she took down each of the keys from their hooks, noting that they were numbered. Presumably, they were the keys to the cells that fringed the courtyard and perhaps elsewhere. Tucking her automatic into the pocket of her breeches, she set out opening each of the locked cells that she found.
Some were empty but at least half were occupied – if that word could be used to describe the vacant-faced wretches, all in solitary confinement, who were sprawled on straw within. Each man struggled to his feet in his rags and looked, slack-jawed, at Alice as she stood in the doorway. ‘Come on, you poor devil,’ she called, ‘get out. You’re free now. Move yourself. Move back into the world.’
Then she moved on. As she looked back, she saw each prisoner poke his head round the door and, then, slowly, shamble out into the courtyard. Then, as she worked her way around, she heard a growing babble of voices from them all, as they stood, attempting to understand this latest, quite unexpected development in their grim, solitary lives.
Looking at them, huddled together in the churchyard, she wondered why they did not move to the jail’s entrance. Then she remembered that the door was closed. After their incarceration, they lacked the initiative or courage to leave their place of imprisonment. So she pushed through them and swung the great door open, and then stood by it in the dark passageway, making ushering motions with her arms, as though she was shepherding a flock of sheep onto good grazing grounds.
‘Goodbye,’ she called. ‘Spread out. Enjoy yourselves.’
Then Alice closed the gate and realised that she was shivering. She was not cold. It was the anticlimax, of course, and the realisation that she did not know, now, what the hell to do next. She had shot two men, locked up a third and freed the inmates of the whole bloody prison. The General would be wondering why his two henchmen had not returned with her. And hadn’t she been told that ten of his bodyguard were stationed in the prison? Where the hell were they? She had to get out quickly to … to … where?
Alice took a deep breath. Having delved in for a penny she was undoubtedly in for a very deep pound. She had killed and this would bring consequences – and very soon. She was standing just behind the jail door, with her fairish and now unkempt hair straggling down her back, wearing her very English riding breeches and boots, and her dirty blouse, looking less like a Tibetan woman than was possible. If she attempted to walk down a Lhasa street in these clothes she was bound to attract attention. How to disguise herself?
She strode back into the jailer’s office. There was some old woollen, hand-knitted garment hanging on a peg and also a blanket, slung over a chair. She pulled on the old cardigan, wrinkling her nose in disgust at the encrusted food stains on its front, and then wrapped the blanket round her midriff so that it hung down low like some misshapen skirt, almost hiding her riding boots. A tattered cotton scarf completed the outfit, tied over her head and under her chin, peasant-fashion. There was no mirror to study the effect but it would have to do.
Alice moved to the jail door and pulled it slightly ajar. Would the poor prisoners she had freed be milling about outside, drawing attention to themselves and to her? She peeped out, looking up and down the street. It was deserted, thank God. The inmates must have dispersed. She closed the door behind her, turned right and, head down, hurried away.
The street ended abruptly in a T-junction and, once again, she had to choose the direction to walk. For a brief moment, the thought occurred to her that to make all that had happened to her in Lhasa meaningful, she should return to her original objective and, somehow, find where one of the great monasteries stood and attempt to talk to the lamas or – what were they called? – the Chamber of Secretaries or something like that. Then, equally quickly, she realised what nonsense that would be. She had killed two Tibetans and her actions at the jail in freeing the prisoners – a spur-of-the-moment decision that she was beginning to regret – would surely count against her. Who would listen to a woman who came preaching peace and pacifism who had just killed twice?
No. She must find her way back along the main road that led south-westward towards the Indian border; the way that Simon hopefully would be taking now towards Lhasa. South-west …? Which way was that, for God’s sake? She looked up at the sky. The sun was hiding behind a high bank of cloud – and was she now in the southern hemisphere and, anyway, did that matter? Her brain in a whirl and anxious to avoid drawing attention to herself by her hesitation, she turned left.
At least this street seemed to be much more of a main thoroughfare than the other. Men and women, all dressed alike in the dun-coloured, long tunics of the Tibetan peasant, walked by in that nonchalant, unhurried way of their kind; going to market perhaps? But what day of the week was it? She had no idea.
Alice stole a glance behind her, hoping to catch a glance of some gilded temple that was supposed to characterise the centre of Lhasa – at least this would indicate that she was walking away from the heart of the city. But the shoddy dwellings rose too high and too close on either side to give her any kind of distance perspective. She bent her head and tried not to hurry.
It was important that she left the area of Lhasa that was controlled, she remembered hearing, by the Lhasa General, who was some sort of area governor. If she was to be apprehended again, it was better – far better – that it was not by a Khampa. Again, she fought back the desire to break into a stumbling run.
Now, market stalls were beginning to materialise on either side of the street. Oh lord! Was this, she wondered, a good or a bad sign? Did it show that she was going away from the city, perhaps into some semi-prosperous suburb, or that she was walking away from the direction she sought? At least she seemed to be attracting only the odd, inquisitive stare. Thank goodness that Lhasa was a well-populated city, at least by Tibetan standards.
The stalls, however, made Alice realise that she was ravishingly hungry. Apart from the interpreter’s sandwich, she had had little to eat since leaving the house of Sunil’s uncle – how long ago? She had no idea for she had lost all sense of time. But the aromas that were coming from the little trays and tables on either side of her assailed her nostrils and made her salivate.
Oh, how she wished she had mastered even a few words of Tibetan! She doubted if her very basic Hindi would be of use here. But … she pushed her hand underneath the blanket and fingered the handful of rupees that jingled in the pocket of her breeches. The Tibetans loved the rupees of the British Raj! This much she had learnt from Sunil as he had bartered for them in the little bazaars they had passed. Could she use them now? Well, they were all she had.
Alice paused and moved slowly to a stall kept by an elderly woman with a face like a wrinkled Pekingese dog. She was presiding over trays containing meatballs fried in what looked like onions and herbs, with what appeared to be local black bread at the side. Delicious …
The woman gave a wrinkled smile and spoke to her quickly. Alice pointed to the meatballs and, opening her mouth and pointing inside with a finger, made a negative sign, shaking her head from side to side, in what she hoped was a universal gesture indicating that she was dumb. Immediately, the woman snarled and shook her head vigorously and waved her away.
Alice then tried to smile and offered a few rupees in her hand. Immediately, the woman’s manner changed. She looked up sharply but Alice kept her head down. The old woman then extended a finger and turned one of the rupees over, fastidiously. Then she grabbed all of the coins and thrust them into her apron pocket. For a terrible moment, Alice thought that that would be the end of the matter, but, still scowling, the woman scooped up some of the meatballs, loaded them onto a piece of the bread, put them onto what appeared to be a sheet of almost parchment-like paper, thrust them at Alice and then waved her away.
Gratefully, Alice grabbed the steaming bundle and did her best to melt into the passing crowd, eating the delicious half sandwich as she went. It was, she assured herself, probably the best meal she had ever had.
It had, however, been bought at a cost, for she had drawn attention to herself. Inquisitive faces now peered into hers, noticing her grey eyes, the fragments of brown hair that escaped from under her scarf and the un-oriental set of her face. Several of the men spoke to her, but she shook her head and scurried on, head bent, feeling like some figure from the lurid novels of the late Mr Dickens.
Soon, conscious of the gazes she was drawing, she turned off abruptly into a side street and, prompted by the spices contained in the meatballs, she realised that she was now as thirsty as she had been hungry. Blessedly, there to her right a little trickle of water was issuing from a tap in the wall of a more substantial house and dropping invitingly into an ornamental bowl. Tossing aside her grease-stained paper, Alice bent her head and sucked in the water. For a moment, she let it run over her face and then rubbed it into her face.
It was then that her head was pulled back and she looked up into the black eyes of a tall man, dressed in a colour-washed blue smock. Alice’s heart fell. Oh no! A Khampa!
The warrior snarled something at her. Alice immediately produced her dumb woman gestures, but the man stepped back and seized her blanket and pulled it away from her. He then stripped her of her makeshift skirt, revealing her once smart, elegantly flared riding breeches and her riding boots. Then he struck her smartly across the face and called back over his shoulder.
Immediately, two more Khampas appeared, running. Still reeling from the blow, Alice fumbled for her automatic but it was too late. Her hands were seized and a cord immediately produced and wound tightly around her wrists. The men were grinning and talking excitedly. Alice realised with a deep sense of foreboding that her freedom had ended. She had been sought and now had been found.
If she had been a subject of some small curiosity before, now she became an object of derision as she was pulled backwards through the streets by the Khampas, who had attached a longer piece of rope to the cord around her wrists. How had they traced her? Ah, of course. The rupees! This must still be a Khampa-controlled area of Lhasa, with the inhabitants completely under the sway of and fearing these brutal warriors. Alice realised that the tears were flowing. The vendor of the meatballs must have betrayed her. Treachery in Tibet again! She felt impotently but fiercely angry. To have got so far and then been recaptured!
Then she held up her head as she skipped backwards, her calves aching, as she was roughly pulled through the crowd. She still had her handgun. Well, if this was the end, she was determined to bring down some of her captors with her – particularly General Kemphis Jong. Somehow, she felt a little better at the thought.
They turned a corner and, with a sickening sense of familiarity, Alice realised that they were now in the narrow street which housed the jail – and, she now remembered the interpreter telling her, the house of the General himself. She recalled the cries of the little man and the sight of his body swinging from the cross-beam in the jail and her heart sank.
The house of General Jong seemed unimposing from the outside, but once through the door, Alice realised that it was the residence of a man of importance. Fine rugs, probably from Afghanistan, were strewn across the floor and low divans lined the walls. She strained her neck to find some images of the ubiquitous Buddha, but there were none. Did this mean that this General in the Tibetan army was a heathen? Probably. The thought did nothing to cheer her up.
She was taken to a small room that had few furnishings and left standing, with one warrior to guard her, while the other left, presumably to find the General. The man grinned and approached her, put his face close to hers and began fingering her breasts. Alice slowly drew back her head and then quickly crashed her forehead onto his nose. The soldier staggered back and then hit her with his fist, sending her reeling back against the wall. But he did not approach her again.
‘Yes,’ hissed Alice. ‘Don’t you dare do that again.’ She attempted to wriggle her wrists free of her bonds, but the cord was too tightly bound. If only she could get one hand free and reach the little automatic in her pocket …!
She was still struggling – and realising that her eye was closing from the force of the blow – when a coterie of Khampas, led, of course, by the giant figure of the General, long sword clanking from his belt, swept into the room.
The big man came and stood quite close to her, his eyes running up and down her body. Alice realised that they were almost certainly the blackest and coldest she had ever seen. His face was quite expressionless but slowly, with finger and thumb, he examined the swelling under the right eye. With infinite care, he then pressed it hard with his thumb, extracting a cry of pain from Alice.
‘Oh, you bastard,’ she exclaimed through clenched teeth. She drew back one booted foot and kicked hard at the General’s shins, connecting just above one ankle.
Now it was his turn to double up in pain and he swung his hand and struck her hard across the cheek, sending her brain reeling. Holding his shin, he growled an order and Alice was seized by two of the guards and bundled forward out of the room, along a dimly lit corridor into another, larger room, more, in fact, of a chamber, for there was very little furniture in it, not that Alice could take much note, for her head was still singing from the force of the blow. The General was a big, powerful man and he had hit her hard.
But now she sucked in her breath. Clearly there was more pain to come, for she glimpsed a kind of crucifix attached to the far wall. It had cords attached to the ends of the crosspieces and also to the bottom of the vertical wooden post. She closed her eyes as she was bundled across to it and silently began to pray: ‘Oh God, please make it quick and don’t let me suffer too long …’
Her wrists were untied and, just as she thought she could make a bid to extract the pistol from her pocket, her arms were pushed against the crosspieces of the crucifix and her wrists tied to their ends. Her ankles were similarly bound to the vertical post.
Alice kept her eyes firmly closed and waited for the pain to start. She was startled, then, when a heavily accented voice spoke to her in English. ‘Madam, you are going to be asked some questions. It would be best for you to answer them honestly.’
She opened her eyes and realised that she was being addressed by what appeared to be a monk, dressed in a roughly woven, grey habit, the hood of which was thrown back to reveal a face, completely Oriental in appearance, with high cheekbones, a large forehead and slit-like eyes that blinked at her, expressionlessly, from behind round-framed spectacles.
Alice moistened her lips. ‘Who are you?’ she asked.
‘It does not matter who I am, madam, I am here to interpret for General Jong. We shall ask you questions. I warn you that if you do not reply honestly pain will be inflicted upon you.’
The monk spoke with a cold imperturbability that sent a chill through Alice’s heart. At his side stood the General, looming over the interpreter, his black eyes gleaming, behind them loomed two of the Khampas, knives in their hands. Knives! Were they to be the torturers? Could she appeal to this man of God – or at least, Bhudda?
‘Are you a lama?’ she asked.
‘No. I am merely a monk who has learnt your tongue. I repeat, it does not matter who I am.’
‘Oh, but it does, I assure you. The last man who interpreted between me and the General was killed by him. I saw his body hanging in the jail. This man has no time for humble interpreters, it seems.’
For the first time the shaft seemed to have hit home, for the eyebrows behind the wire frames of the spectacles rose slightly. He cleared his throat. ‘I am not aware of that and I do not believe you. Now—’
Alice interrupted. ‘Am I to be tortured, then?’
‘Pain will be inflicted if you do not answer honestly.’
‘You are a man of God. Your Bhudda did not preach that harm should be done to unarmed, innocent people.’
‘Madam. You know nothing of the preaching of our lord. You have already killed two of our soldiers, so you are not unarmed or innocent. The Governor here is anxious to know why you are here and who sent you. He has a responsibility to defend this city against the unbelievers who are approaching it. Just answer without lying and you will not be harmed.’
At this point, the General growled and interjected. The monk nodded impassively. ‘Governor say that his patience is becoming exhausted. You answer now. Why you here?’
Alice sighed. ‘I have already told the General that I am the wife of a general in the British army that is approaching Lhasa now. I am also a correspondent for a leading British newspaper. I have been reporting on the invasion and have grown tired of witnessing your army – most of it comprising ordinary peasants, as far as I can see – being killed by the superior firepower and discipline of the British soldiers. I came here of my own volition to plead with your government not to oppose the British army any further and to sit down with Colonel Younghusband, the leader of the political mission, and negotiate with him …’
‘Wait. I translate.’
He did so and his words produced a torrent of vituperation from Jong, who stamped his foot, leant forward and tore open Alice’s blouse. He then wrenched away her brassiere, revealing her left breast.
The monk seemed completely unfazed. ‘General say,’ he continued, ‘you lie. Why should you, a woman, think you could have any influence on holy men who rule our country? He think you come here, in some sort of disguise to spy on Tibetan military … ahh … dispositions for your army. Your generals think woman would not be suspected by us of doing such thing, so you slip into city unnoticed.’
Alice shook her head. ‘That is not true …’
Without waiting for the translation, General Jong shouted an order. One of the Khampas stepped forward, knife in hand. He waved the blade under Alice’s face and she shrank back and closed her eyes. A sharp, agonising pain swept through her as the blade was inserted into the lower part of her breast and, involuntarily, she screamed.
As though from afar, she heard the interpreter murmur, ‘He cut off all your breast if you don’t tell truth …’
Then, from even further away, as she bit her lip, awaiting a greater pain, she heard a distant but familiar voice cry, ‘Alice, Alice, we are coming …’
She opened her eyes and saw the door crash open and Simon, sword in hand, rush through, followed by a limping Jenkins, Sunil, rifle in hand, and a handful of Gurkhas, kukris gleaming in the dim light.
Fonthill’s jaw dropped and momentarily he stopped, for Jong had leapt forward, thrusting both the interpreter and the knife-wielding Khampa aside. Drawing his sword, the General thrust the tip to Alice’s throat and shouted something at the interpreter.
The monk quickly licked his lips and said, ‘General say, he kill woman if you come nearer. He prepared to die but will take your wife with him if one man takes step nearer.’
Sunil lifted his rifle. ‘I shoot him, sahib,’ he said.
‘No. No. You might hit Alice.’
Perspiration was now trickling down General Jong’s face. Without taking his eyes off Fonthill, he said something to the interpreter. ‘He ask,’ translated the monk, ‘if you are British general who is married to this woman?’
Ignoring the question, Simon, still standing near the door, his sabre in his hand, called in a broken voice: ‘Alice, you are bleeding. What have they done to you?’
Alice tried to force a smile. ‘Just a little cut, my love. You seem to have arrived just in time. Be careful. This man is a monster. You’d better answer him.’
‘Yes,’ Fonthill called out. ‘I am her husband. And if you hurt a hair of her head I shall kill you.’
At this, the General nodded, as though contemplating his course of action. Then he answered, via the interpreter: ‘I am not afraid to die. You have more men here than I have, but my guards will arrive soon. I sent them after you—’
Simon, his brain racing, interrupted: ‘They will not come. We lured thirty Khampas who had followed us into the courtyard of your prison and my men killed them all.’ He nodded over his shoulder. ‘You can see that these kukris are still bloodstained. Put down your sword. Let my wife go and I promise no harm will come to you, but you will be tried by the British for what you have done.’
Jong’s eyes widened. Then he smiled. ‘You sound as though you are a great warrior,’ he said. ‘I have heard of you and what your cavalry have done in your invasion of this country.’ He lifted his sword point away from Alice’s throat, pointed it briefly towards Fonthill, then returned it.
‘You are a general,’ he continued. ‘I am a general. You have a sword, I have a sword. In my part of Tibet, general’s fight, we don’t just leave it to our soldiers. If you want your wife to live, then you fight me, with your sword, here and now. If I win, your men let me go. If you win, I don’t care. I die anyway. Are you man enough to fight for your woman, General?’
The last sentence was spat out scornfully.
A silence fell on the room. It was broken by Alice. ‘Don’t do it, Simon,’ she called. ‘He is a brute. Don’t fight him,’
‘She’s right,’ said Jenkins. ‘’E’s bigger than you, bach sir. Let me take ’im on. ’E’s more my size.’
Fonthill realised that his lips were dry. He looked round the room. His Gurkhas had now edged through the doorway and were silently extending round the walls. But they were listening intently. If he gave the order they could descend upon the big man in a flash. But there were four Khampas, two of them with drawn knives, who were between the General and them. This would give Jong time to carry out his threat. He had only to flick his wrist and Alice would be dead …
‘Let me shoot him, sahib,’ whispered Sunil. ‘This man kill my uncle, my aunt and my cousins.’
‘No.’ Simon licked his lips and answered Sunil in a monotone. ‘Do not fire. I will fight him. If he wins, shoot him then. And shoot to kill.’
‘Don’t be daft.’ Jenkins’s voice was hoarse. ‘’E looks as though he could be ’andy, like, with that sword. You’re no swordsman, bach. Let me do it.’
‘No. I will fight him. He’s probably a year or two older than me and he carries too much weight. I am fitter and I’ve become quite a hand with this sabre recently.’ He addressed the interpreter. ‘Tell the General to step forward and fight me.’
As the message was translated a grin crossed the Khampa’s face. He beckoned one of his men forward and spoke to him in a low voice. As the General’s sword was lowered, the knife of the soldier replaced it at Alice’s throat.
‘Just a precaution,’ explained the interpreter, ‘in case you shoot the General when he step away from woman.’
‘Shrewd bugger,’ murmured Jenkins.
Now the two men faced each other in the centre of the room. Jong looked a formidable figure alongside Fonthill. He was some four or five inches taller than Simon, with a consequent longer reach, and the breadth of his shoulder indicated his strength. His sword, slightly thicker at its point and curved in the Khampas’ fashion, seemed longer and heavier than Fonthill’s sabre. Yet he was certainly corpulent and heavier on his feet.
‘Simon, don’t …’ Alice’s voice ended in a sigh as she slumped into a faint.
It was as though Jong was waiting for her signal, for he immediately stamped forward and launched a series of slashes, horizontal and vertical at Fonthill, swinging his sword in a succession of arcs so swiftly executed that his blade seemed almost a blur.
‘Oh blimey,’ muttered Jenkins. ‘’E’s done this before, all right.’
Somehow, however, Simon survived the attack, ducking and parrying and moving his feet like a dancer.
‘Bloody good, bach,’ Jenkins called out.
But the Tibetan was undaunted. He returned to the attack, hacking and swinging, as though the heavy sword was thistledown in his hand. Simon had no recourse but to back away, defending desperately and making no attempt at a riposte. The Khampa soldiers shouted encouragement.
It was clear, however, that the energy expended in this series of fierce attacks was taking its toll on the big man. His face was now shining with perspiration and, under its moustache, his mouth was open, gulping down air. Simon seized the opportunity and, feinting to the head, launched a low thrust at his opponent’s midriff, grazing the man’s side and tearing his tunic.
At this, the Gurkhas all raised a cheer and shouted encouragement in Gurkhali to their man.
‘Bloody ’ell,’ grunted Jenkins, ‘it’s like a bloody football match.’
‘Let me shoot him,’ cried Sunil again. ‘I kill him easy.’
‘No, lad. Leave him be. Don’t shoot him till you ’ave to. I think the Colonel might just do this.’
The cut to his side seemed to galvanise Jong with new energy and he renewed his assault, stamping his feet flatly to the floor as he thumped forward with a new series of attacks. It seemed inevitable that his great strength and the force of his blows would bring the Khampa success in the end, for Fonthill was finding it increasingly difficult to ward off the blows. It was no surprise, then, that the big man drew blood when Simon was only able to divert one huge downward sweep away from his head and onto his left upper arm, the Tibetan’s blade slicing through the jacket and cutting into flesh.
Simon was forced to cry out and the General’s mouth extended into a wolfish grin as he leapt in for the kill. As he raised his sword, however, Fonthill’s point, delivered in a classic low, forward lunge, took him in his left shoulder and it was the Tibetan’s turn to gasp in pain as he staggered back.
But neither wound was fatal and the two men now circled each other, their breath coming in great gulps as the blood from their cuts dripped onto the floor. It was clear, however, that the Khampa was now the more tired of the two and it was Fonthill’s turn now to attack and he forced the big man back to the wall in a series of thrusts.
‘That’s it, bach,’ shouted Jenkins. ‘The point, not the edge and you’ve got ’im.’
But Jong was by no means defeated. He had been brought up in the East of Tibet in a wild corner of the country, where the sword and the dagger ruled, unlike the pastoral, passive hinterland, and where he had come up through the ranks of the Khampa army by the force of his strong right arm. Now he summoned up all of his energy and stamped forward again in a new series of heavy swings of his great sword.
Fonthill was forced to retreat, parrying each blow as best he could until his foot slipped in a slither of blood that marked the centre of the chamber. Down on one knee, he desperately thrust his sword upwards to meet the next swing – and felt the shaft break and the blade shatter under the force of the blow.
Simon held up his wounded arm in a last form of protection and the giant Tibetan, his sweating face broken in a great grin, lifted up his sword to administer the coup de grâce. It was then that Sunil fired his rifle, the bullet taking the big man in the side of the head and breaking him down in a crash. At almost the same moment, Jenkins whirled and threw his knife in a whirl of flashing steel, so that the blade embedded itself deeply between the shoulder blades of the Khampa who held his knife at Alice’s throat.
The other two Khampas and the interpreter threw up their hands in submission as the Gurkhas suddenly swept forward, but they were too late to prevent the kukris rising and falling, bringing them, too, to the ground in a grim silence.
Simon tried to struggle to his feet but slipped again. ‘Alice,’ he cried. ‘See if Alice is all right.’
But Jenkins was already there, together with Sunil. Tenderly they held the still-unconscious figure as they untied the cords that bound her to the crucifix. She recovered just as they were laying her on the ground.
‘Simon,’ she whispered. ‘Is he all right?’
‘All right,’ grunted the Welshman hoarsely, his eyes moist. ‘All right? Yes, ’e’s all right. In fact, ’e’s just about the best swordsman since Robin Bloody ’Ood, I’ll tell you.’
Sunil frowned. ‘Who is this robinbloodyood man, bach?’
‘Oh, I’ll tell you later. You go and see to the General. I’ll look after the missus.’
Within the hour, Simon’s wound had been patched up and, with rather more difficulty, the bleeding from the incision in Alice’s breast had been stemmed and she had been bandaged and cold compresses applied to the bruises on her face. She insisted on riding herself, so the horses had been fetched from where they had been left in the prison courtyard, two more ponies had been taken from the General’s stables at the rear of the house for Alice and Sunil to ride and the little party set off down the still-deserted street towards the south-west and the advancing British army.
Simon decided to leave the bodies as they had fallen in the courtyard and in the General’s house. ‘When people find them,’ he said, ‘let them just believe that a well-deserved nemesis had overtaken them, as a result of all their misdeeds.’
Their pace was slow but two hours later they met a vastly relieved Captain Ottley, riding at the head of the Mounted Infantry, scouting in advance of the army, and were ushered through to the main body, just as it was preparing to camp for the night before entering Lhasa the next day.
Younghusband hailed Simon, shortly after Alice had been put to bed under a hastily erected tent. ‘Well done, Fonthill,’ he called. ‘I heard you’d brought your wife back safely. Did you meet any trouble?’
Simon forced a faint smile. ‘Hardly any really, thank you. Perhaps I may report in the morning?’
‘Of course. Good night.’