“I imagine you’ll find it very difficult traveling through Tibet without official Tibetan permission,” Reggie says.
“I…we…,” begins the Deacon. He hits the table with his fist. “Lady Bromley promised that she would obtain such permission and that we should receive the documents here in Darjeeling.”
“And so you shall,” says Reggie. She lifts her hand over her right shoulder and Pasang puts another rolled-up document into it. She smooths the thick parchment out over the map of our planned five-week trek from Darjeeling to Rongbuk and then Mount Everest. “Would you all care to read it?” she asks, turning the document.
All three of us half-stand to lean over the table to read. It is a handwritten document, in beautiful script, and affixed with half a dozen stamped and waxed seals.
TO THE JONGPENS AND HEADMEN OF PHARIJONG, TING-KE, KAMBA, AND KHARTA:
You are to bear in mind that a party of Sahibs are coming to see the Cho-mo-lung-ma mountain, even though the Dalai Lama has set a temporary ban on such travels by foreigners due to bad manners after the 1924 so-called “Mt. Everest Expedition.” This exception is given by the Sacred Dalai Lama only because this party’s leader, Lady Bromley-Montfort, has long been a friend of the Tibetans and of the many jongpens and we wish her to be able to travel with her associates to and onto Cho-mo-lung-ma in an attempt to retrieve the body of her deceased cousin, British Lord Percival Bromley, whom many of you have met. He died on the sacred mountain in 1924 and our friends the Bromleys would like to see him properly buried. We trust that Lady Bromley-Montfort’s group will, in the tradition she has long established at her Darjeeling plantation, continue to evince great friendship and generosity towards the Tibetans. Therefore, on the request of the Great Minister Bell, and by the express wish of His Holiness the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, a letter of passage has been issued requiring you and all officials and subjects of the Tibetan government to supply transport, e.g., riding ponies, pack animals, and coolies as required by Lady Bromley-Montfort and her Sahib helpers, the rates for which should be fixed to mutual satisfaction. Any other assistance Lady Bromley-Montfort may require, either by day or by night, on the march or during the halts, in or near their encampments or in our villages, should be faithfully given, and their requirements about transport or anything else should be promptly attended to. All the people of the country, wherever Lady Bromley-Montfort and her Sahib helpers may happen to come, should render all necessary assistance in the best possible way, not merely to re-establish friendly relations between the British and Tibetan Governments, but to continue the long amity between Lady Bromley-Montfort’s tea plantation—long famed for its hospitality to our travelers—and all the people of Tibet.
Dispatched during the Water Dog Year
Seal of the Prime Minister
The Deacon has nothing to say. His expression is as blank as I’ve ever seen it, even blanker than on the day nine months earlier atop the Matterhorn when we learned of Mallory’s and Irvine’s deaths.
Reggie—I take the liberty of thinking of her with that name almost immediately—rolls up both the prime minister’s document and the large map, hands them to Pasang, and says, “I’ve told the valets to have your clothes packed. We should leave now for the plantation so that we can have the rest of the day to discuss your proposed route, the climbing details, food for the trip, plans for our dealings with the Tibetan jongpens, and all the rest. Then tomorrow morning you shall choose your personal Sherpas and your ponies. I have enough good men waiting that we should be able to choose the sixty or so porters we need by teatime tomorrow, and they’ll have the gear loaded on pack animals before nightfall.”
She stands and strides out of the room, Pasang—Dr. Pasang, I remind myself—keeping a step behind her and not falling farther behind only because of his liquid, giant strides. After a moment, J.C. and I stand, stare at each other a second, manage not to grin outright in front of the silent Deacon, and go up to supervise the final packing of our luggage.
Eventually the Deacon follows us up the stairs.
Chapter 11
The monks have turned into quite the performing troupe, some dancing while others play drums and blow on thigh-bone trumpets. It’s been very popular with English cinema-going audiences.
T he maps are spread out all over the long reading table in the library at Reggie’s main plantation house. I’ve seen few libraries this extensive, either in the homes of rich Boston friends or in England. Even Lady Bromley’s library did not extend to so many multiple levels, mezzanines, iron circular staircases rising toward broad skylights, or movable ladders. The reading table is probably fourteen feet long and flanked by globes of the earth—one showing ancient geography, one showing quite current—that must be six feet across. We stand around one end of the table as more colored maps are set under and beside the map of our proposed route Reggie showed us in the hotel.
We traveled up to the plantation that morning in style. At least Reggie and two of us traveled in style. Three trucks, the lead one driven by Dr. Pasang, hauled our food and gear up into the hills, but J.C. and I rode with Reggie in the plush compartment of a 1920 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost. The chauffeur’s front seat was open to the elements—and it had started to rain—but Jean-Claude was comfortable on the thick cushions of the rear seat next to Reggie under the black top, not crowding her, while I sat opposite J.C. on a little jump seat that was no more than a leather-wrapped panel that folded down from the firewall separating us from the driver’s front seat. Every time we hit a deep pothole or serious bump—and the dirt road was all potholes and bumps—I’d fly up in the air off my little springboard, my bare head contacting the hard canvas of the roof, and come crashing down again. My long legs were all but intertwined with J.C.’s shorter ones, and I kept apologizing after every bounce.
The Deacon had chosen to sit up front, to the left of the chauffeur—a silent, short Indian man named Edward, so short that I wondered how he could see over the Silver Ghost’s endless hood. It was called the“Silver Ghost” but it was more a pale cream color than silver, except for the gleaming radiator, headlight mounts, five chrome stripes running down from the radiator to the equally gleaming bumper, windshield frame, and a few other shiny odds and ends, including the gleaming chrome spokes of the enclosed spare tires riding forward of the front doors on the low parts of the fenders.
The sliding panel that allowed Reggie to talk to the chauffeur opened only on the right side, the driver’s side. Between the roar of the engine and the roar of the sudden downpour on the thick roof, any of us would have had to shout for the Deacon to hear us. The glass on the panel behind the Deacon was frosted and etched with the same Bromley crest of a gryphon holding a jousting pike that I’d seen on the flag flying at Lady Bromley’s estate in Lincolnshire.
“How large is your plantation, Lady…Reggie?” asked Jean-Claude over the drumbeat of the sudden squall.
“This primary plantation, closer to Darjeeling, is around twenty-six thousand acres,” said Reggie. “We have a larger and higher plantation to the northwest, but the small train from Darjeeling doesn’t run to its fields the way it does here at the main plantation, so it costs more to get the tea leaves to market.”
More than fifty thousand acres, I’d thought. That’s a hell of a lot of tea. Then I remembered how Brits both in England and here in India drank the stuff morning, noon, and night, not to mention the hundreds of millions of Indian people who’d taken up the habit.