“Because Pasang and six others and I did just that in August a year ago,” says Reggie.
All three of us turn to gaze at her in silence. Dr. Pasang’s presence is only half-registered in the flickering firelight as he stands behind the wingchair in which Reggie leans forward over her brandy. Finally, the Deacon says, “Did what?”
“Went to Everest,” Reggie replies, with an edge to her voice. “In an attempt to find Cousin Percy’s body. I would have gone earlier in the summer, but the monsoon was at its worst right after Colonel Norton, Geoffrey Bruce, and the others in Mallory’s former party beat their retreat back this way. Pasang and I had to wait until the worst of the rains—and the snows on Chomolungma—stopped before we trekked in with six Sherpas.”
“How far did you get?” says the Deacon, sounding dubious. “As far as Shekar Dzong? Further? Rongbuk Monastery?”
Reggie looks up from her brandy, and her ultramarine eyes seem much darker in her anger at the tone of the question. But her voice remains firm and under control. “Pasang and two of the other Sherpas and I spent eight days above twenty-three thousand feet at Mallory’s Camp Four. But the snow kept falling. Pasang and I did press on to Mallory’s Camp Five one day, but there were no supplies left there, and the storm grew worse. We were lucky to get back down to the North Col and were trapped there for four more of the eight days, with no food for the last three.”
“Mallory’s Camp Five was at twenty-five thousand two hundred feet,” Jean-Claude says in a very small voice.
Reggie only nods. “I lost more than thirty pounds during those eight days on the North Col at Camp Four. One of the Sherpas, Nawang Bura—you shall meet him tomorrow morning—almost died from altitude sickness and dehydration. We finally had a break in the weather on eighteen August, and we retreated all the way back to Mallory’s Camp One—the four Sherpas who’d remained at Camp Three below the Col all but carried Nawang down the glacier—where we regrouped before trekking out. The snows never stopped. The downpour continued as we clumped back through the steaming Sikkim jungles in mid-September. I thought I would never get dry.”
The Deacon, Jean-Claude, and I exchange glances in the firelight. I am sure my thoughts are being echoed. This woman and that tall Sherpa climbed to above 25,000 feet on Everest at the height of the monsoon season? Spent eight consecutive days above 23,000 feet? Almost no one in the three previous Everest expedition spent so much time so high.
“Where did you learn to climb?” the Deacon asks. The brandy seems to be affecting him, which is something I’ve never seen before. Perhaps it’s the altitude here.
Reggie gestures with her empty glass, Pasang nods toward the darkness, and a servant moves into the light to refill all of our brandy snifters.
“I’ve climbed in the Alps since I was a girl,” she says simply. “I’ve climbed with Cousin Percy, with guides, and solo. My trips back to Europe from India were more often to the Alps than to England. And I’ve climbed here.”
“Do you remember the names of your alpine guides?” asks Jean-Claude. There is no sound of challenge in his voice, only curiosity.
Reggie gives the names of five older Chamonix Guides so famous that even I know them well. Lady Bromley had named three of those guides as having climbed with her son Percival in years past. Once again, as he’d done when Lady Bromley had given three of these five names, Jean-Claude whistles softly.
“What summits did you do solo?” asks the Deacon. His tone has changed.
Reggie shrugs slightly. “Pevous, the Ailefroides, the Meiji, the north face of the Grandes Jorasses, the north east face of Piz Badille, the north face of the Drus, then Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn. And some peaks around here—only one eight-thousand-meter summit.”
“Alone,” says the Deacon. His expression is strange.
Reggie shrugs again. “Believe it or don’t, it makes no difference to me, Mr. Deacon. What you need to understand is that when my aunt, Lady Bromley, wrote me last autumn asking me to seek permission for access to Chomolungma, for your expedition to—and I quote—‘find Percival,’ I had already been to Lhasa to receive permission from the Dalai Lama and the prime minister…for another attempt this spring. My own second attempt—with Pasang and more Sherpas this time.”
“But the permission refers to ‘other Sahibs,’” says the Deacon.
“I expected to find some on my own, Mr. Deacon. Indeed, I had contacted them and invited them to join me on the recovery expedition this spring. I would have paid them, of course. But when Aunt Elizabeth sent me your names, I did some research and found you…adequate. Plus, you had been a friend of my cousin Charles and you’d met Percy. I thought it best to give you a chance.”
I suddenly realize that the tables have been turned, that we are now supplicants to her for this trip, not the other way around. I can see in the Deacon’s somewhat glassy gaze that he has accepted that fact as well.
“How is your cousin Charles?” he asks, as much to change the subject, it seems, as to receive an answer.
“I received a cable from Aunt Elizabeth only a week ago,” says Reggie. “Charles finally died from the progressive lung failure while you were in transit to Calcutta.”
All three of us express our condolences. The Deacon seems especially disturbed by the news. There follows a long silence broken only by the crackling of the log fire.
J.C. and I finish our cigars and I follow his example of tossing the cigar butt into the fire. We set empty glasses on tables.
“We have to make some changes to the route and your plans for provisions,” says Reggie, “but we can do that in the afternoon, after you’ve chosen your Sherpas and ponies. The Sherpas will be here at first light—they’re camping less than a mile from here tonight—and I want to be outside to greet them. I’ll have Pasang knock you up in case anyone sleeps late. Good night, gentlemen.”
We rise as Reggie stands and leaves the circle of firelight. A few minutes later, still silent, we follow one of the male servants to our rooms on the second floor. I notice that the Deacon seems to be having trouble lifting his feet as we climb the wide, winding stairway.
Chapter 12
But how do you keep a chicken carcass fresh over weeks if the snows hit you at Camp Three below the North Col, Mr. Deacon? Do you plan to carry ice with you? An electric refrigeration unit?
We awake early at Reggie’s estate. The plantation house has a neatly manicured backyard as trim and broad and long as a cricket field. Above and below the house, morning fogs seem to be rising like respiration from the green rows of tea plantings, and suddenly I can see silhouettes of men moving between and then out of those rows, onto the yard, as if the fog had congealed itself into human forms. I count thirty figures as the sun brightens and the fog begins to dissipate. Beyond the plantation hills rise the distant white peaks of the Himalayas so brilliant with the dawn’s sunlight that I have to squint toward them, and yet still their white glare makes my eyes water.
“Too many men,” says the Deacon. “I’d planned on only a dozen or so Sherpa coolies.”
“Just ‘Sherpas,’ not ‘coolies,’” says Reggie. “‘Sherpa’ means ‘people from the east.’ They came over the nineteen-thousand-foot Nangpa La generations ago. They’ve fought a thousand years for their land and independence. And never have they been anyone’s ‘coolies.’”