THE BURNING ALTAR

London, March 1888

I’m writing this surrounded by cabin trunks and Thos. Cook itineraries and a general atmosphere of upheaval.

It’s been decided to send me abroad, which is a way of keeping me quiet about the Duke of Clarence/Chloe Cambridge scandal, of course. Expect they think another scandal in the Royal Family would be untenable at present, what with poor old Eddy reportedly prowling the streets around Cleveland Street on the lookout for young boys again. Still, if they never say any worse of him than that, he’ll have cause to be grateful.

I thought of protesting, but after listening to Father ranting about shame and ruination for the last three days will happily take the road to hell to get out of earshot – it’s said to be an easy road to travel anyway, quite apart from the gate being permanently open and broad the way that leadeth. Father and Freddie Inchcape seem to think I’m halfway there as it is.

‘And you’ll take a travelling companion,’ shouted my father, by way of Parthian shot as he stormed off to the City, empurpled as to complexion and choleric as to humour. ‘You’re not rampaging and womanising across Europe unchecked, Patrick, so don’t think it!’

It would serve them all right if I did rampage and womanise across Europe and then write my memoirs afterwards.

Am afraid that by companion he means keeper, which will be a dreadful bore, unless it turns out to be Theodore Chance, who’s some kind of second cousin and hasn’t a bean, but is reasonably good company, although a touch prim. But if I have to go abroad I don’t see why I shouldn’t have some fun while I’m travelling, and it might be amusing to corrupt the virtuous Theodore.

We’ve settled on the very Far East although Thomas Cook’s people are sepulchral about the choice – Can’t guarantee safety, sir . . . Extremely hazardous routes, to say nothing of lack of sanitation and uncomfortable travelling conditions. And then there’s the language problem . . . Dear me, sir, wouldn’t you prefer Kitzbühel – very nice at this time of year – or perhaps Venice?

But I have stuck out for Tibet from sheer contrariness, because if they’re sending me into exile I’ll damn well make it a dramatic exile and as much trouble to everyone as possible. Freddie Inchcape and the Withering idiot can sort out visas and permits and whatnot; it’ll serve them right for stirring up scandal-broth.

Dare say the actual journey will be unbearably tedious, even so.

If this was the road that Patrick had taken it was a very long and arduous road indeed: in fact it was more like the road to hell than Flecker’s visionary Golden Road to Samarkand.

Even in the high-tech 1970s, reaching the East was an exhausting affair of long hours in the air, of swapping planes at half-staffed airports, and of uncomfortable Eastern hotels with nonexistent air-conditioning and a plenitude of insect life, some of it nocturnal, most of it apparently on permanent cannibal duty.

But he had been twenty-five and his name had become synonymous with greed and deceit on that huge scale, and the thought of running away – of donning Patrick’s mantle – had been immensely tempting. The thing had had to be done on a shoestring, of course, because there had been hardly any money left by that time. What had not gone in dividends to creditors (shamefully small), had gone to pay the costs of the public examination and the later court costs for the fraud hearing.

But even without the money, he had done it with panache. He had donned the arrogance he was already learning to assume – Patrick’s arrogance although no one had ever guessed – and although Tibet was still wrapped in its deliberate isolation in those days, he had bullied visas and permits out of government departments. In the end he had actually gone directly to the airport from his father’s funeral, the smooth black limousine speeding effortlessly through sheeting November rain, its boot loaded with suitcases. I’m leaving it all behind, thought Lewis. I’m stepping out of one world into another – through that falling curtain of rain, and out the other side. There was delight in the knowledge but there was a trickle of unease as well. Because of what might lie beyond the beaded rain-curtain? But at least I’m going beyond the reach of the accusing whispers and the curious stares, and out of range of the swarming newsmen.

But the newsmen had tracked him down; they were waiting at the airport like buzzing flies, firing machine-bullet questions and flashing cameras as he loaded a trolley with luggage.

Why should he not leave England? he had said angrily. What was there to stay for? The Belgravia apartment and the Wiltshire property had been sold along with the rest of the disposable assets. The Banking House was in the hands of its trustees and Lewis himself had no money and no job.

‘And,’ he had said coldly, ‘I certainly don’t intend to live in furnished rooms in Watford or Hackney.’

Hackney had been an unfortunate choice of word because half the subeditors in Fleet Street had seized on it with glee, and the next day’s headlines had read: ‘Disgraced banker’s son refuses to live in Hackney-ed squalor.’ Lewis, scowling at this gem at a stopover halfway across the Northern Hemisphere, thought you could always trust the gutter press to dredge up the mot juste.

I’m an exile, he thought, folding the newspaper and waiting for the continuation flight to be called. I’m an exile, just as Patrick was an exile.

Patrick would not have had swift hire cars at his disposal, nor, of course, air travel, although it was astonishing to count the inconveniences that Patrick would not have had to endure and that Lewis did. Inconveniences such as discovering that two pieces of luggage had not found their way to Delhi Airport, and queuing for two hours with a cosmopolitan assortment of travellers in similar plights.

Patrick would simply have directed a few porters to load a cabin trunk on to a steamer, paid a few more to reload it on to a ponderous but probably not uncomfortable railcar, and sat back and enjoyed the journey in between. That he had enjoyed it was evidenced by his book, in which he devoted an entire chapter to describing two separate encounters with two different ladies en route in the railcar, which must have enlivened the journey very considerably. Trying to recapture his belongings, struggling with unfamiliar languages and incomprehensible dialects, Lewis began to think that by comparison, Patrick’s journey must have been almost luxurious, particularly if you took into account the railcar.

But Tibet, the remote rooftop world, the ancient realm of the Dalai Lama, certainly would not have changed much since Patrick’s time. It was for ever drenched in its pre-Christian beliefs and its deep tranquil religion, and Lewis, hurtling through the streets of Lhasa in a ramshackle cab, stared out at the tumbling raucous market stalls and the baked-clay houses, and the beggars and vendors and scavenging dogs, and thought this must be almost exactly how it had looked to his ancestor.

Beneath the rattle-trap cars and the modem cool hotel and the unexpectedly efficient English-speaking desk clerk, he was aware of an undertow; of beliefs and rituals and cults that had been old before Man had learned to speak and walk upright. The machines and the urbanity were grafted on, and although there was a thin veneer of civilisation it was so thin that the slightest tap would shatter it and you would be through to the real Tibet. The ancient realm where magic sometimes walked; the place ruled by the priest-king in the glowing crimson pavilion that dominated Lhasa. Lewis glanced up at the glittering tiered palace of the Dalai Lama, and a tremendous sense of excitement began to unfold. I’m nearly through the curtain, he thought. I’m almost there.

It turned out to be unexpectedly easy to engage a guide who would drive him into the remoter parts of Tibet’s interior. This was a thing many travelling gentlemen requested, explained the hotel clerk, all smiling urbanity, all modern civilisation. And there was a very good route that could be taken, very nice, very full of interest, although perhaps – the now-familiar spreading of hands – perhaps a little arduous for those of advancing years.

‘I’m not of advancing years and I don’t mind an arduous journey,’ said Lewis, and asked how the journey would be made.

It appeared that a Jeep would be used for part of the journey. ‘As much as possible,’ said the desk clerk, avoiding Lewis’s eyes. ‘Then by walking. The Jeep is of American manufacture,’ he added. ‘Very good, very strong.’

He eyed Lewis optimistically, and Lewis said, ‘American. How unexpected. Will it take me to Tashkara?’

The thin shell of civilisation splintered. I’ve hit a nerve, thought Lewis. He leaned on the desk and waited, and presently the clerk said uneasily that Tashkara was a very difficult journey, very long, very hazardous . . .

‘Oh, very. It is not,’ said the hotel clerk, ‘a journey many make.’ In another minute he would say in a sepulchral voice, Many go there, but few return.

Before he could say it, Lewis said, ‘Never mind. I’ll thrash it out with the guide.’

The Jeep turned out to be a relic from the Second World War, and looked as if it might have been abandoned by Roosevelt’s troops when the suspension gave out. Lewis eyed it doubtfully, remembering the hotel clerk’s explanation about making some of the journey on foot. He had been prepared for that but it looked as if the on-foot part would come sooner than he had expected.

Patrick, in his diary, had not given much detail about the practicalities of this part of his journey: probably he had thought it too tedious to record. ‘Looked out of the window of the railcar for four hours this morning. Played chess with companion for two hours this afternoon. And so to bed.’ He had usually recorded the bed part.

Thomas Cook’s seemed to have provided a guide for most of the journey, and Patrick had referred to two or three Sherpas who had taken him and his cousin into Tibet’s interior, and whom he seemed to have found companionable. Good for you, Patrick. Gregarious all along the line. You probably fared a whole lot better with your Sherpas than I shall with this rusting heap, thought Lewis. It’ll break down before we’ve gone five miles.

It did break down. It misfired like a shying horse at the sight of the treacherous rocky gorges and the desolate mountain passes, emitting furious clouds of steam from the leaking radiator like an angry dragon, and refusing to budge. The guide, whose exact name and precise calling Lewis never managed to elicit, but who answered amiably to Cal and spoke English with a cheerful blend of accents acquired from other travellers, said they would be on foot now, this was all right?

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.

‘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.’

‘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.’

‘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 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.’

‘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.

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.’

Chapter Eight