He was telling his father the details of his journey to Dorje-la.
Christopher let him talk, urging the boy to get everything off his
chest. He wondered if William would ever recover properly from
his ordeal assuming, that was, that they ever got out of this place and made it back to England alive.
Samdup had told them that the swelling on William’s neck had started to go black about a week ago. Zamyatin had been too preoccupied making the arrangement for his coup to waste time getting a doctor for the boy.
“How does your neck feel now, son?” Christopher asked.
“It’s no better. I think it’s going to burst all the time. It feels as though things are crawling round and round inside. If I touch it, it hurts terribly. Sometimes I want to scratch it off, it gets so bad.
Samdup had to tie my hands behind my back two nights ago. I’m frightened. You’ll make it get better now you’re here, won’t you?”
The boy’s trust was almost unbearable. Christopher felt more helpless than at any time in the past months. The Khutukhtu had sent instructions for his personal physician to come. Now all they could do was wait.
The Khutukhtu was growing drunk on his port. He sat on a long sofa in one cornel of the room, smoking long Turkish cigarettes with the peculiar affectation of the blind. Chindamani and Samdup sat beside him. For all the differences between them, they understood one another. They were all trulkus, they all suffered from the same deformity.
Samdup was tired, but he could not even think of sleep.
Chindamani was with him again, and the pee-ling who had helped to rescue them from Dorje-la that night, Wil-yarn’s father. He felt uncontrollably excited: perhaps something would happen now, perhaps he and Wil-yarn could escape from Zamyatin at last.
He did not like his other body. The Khutukhtu drank alcohol as though he were an ordinary person, and he appeared to be quite drunk. Samdup disliked the way the fat old man stroked and frotted him with smooth, clammy fingers. The vacant expression in those blind white eyes unnerved him. Unaccustomed to either vice or sensuality, the boy had no capacity for sympathy. He was too young to understand that sin was just as much a part of life as prayer, or that holiness, like water, would grow stagnant if it were allowed to lie too long without being stirred.
“Come here,” the Khutukhtu said, standing and taking Samdup’s hand. Samdup followed him across to a huge table on which stood a huge machine with a wooden horn. It reminded Samdup of the great trumpets on the terraces of Dorje-la. The Khutukhtu bent down and cranked a handle in the side of the machine, then, with blind fingers that shook from a combination of port and nervousness, dropped the needle heavily on to a spinning black disc.
Instantly, a raucous voice blared from the horn, accompanied by rapid, jumping music.
I would say such wonderful things to you There would be such wonderful things to do If you were the only girl in the world And I were the only boy.
“That’s a gramophone,” said the Khutukhtu.
“It makes music, as though someone were inside, singing.”
“Turn that infernal thing off!” Zamyatin was sitting at a little table at the far end of the room, sorting out the various papers he would need to legitimize his coup.
“Until my Lord Samdup is installed as my successor tomorrow,” said the Khutukhtu, ‘this is still my palace. If you want silence, there are plenty of other rooms to go to.”
“The boy should not be listening to music. He should be sleeping.
Tomorrow will be a long day. He is about to have responsibilities thrust upon him.”
The Khutukhtu snorted loudly.
“The boy should not be sleeping. He should be in my private chapel, praying, meditating, and generally preparing himself for his proclamation. The formalities must be observed. The boy must not go cold to his destiny.”
He paused and inhaled a stream of smoke. He remembered the days before his own enthronement as Khutukhtu: the vigils, the offerings, the fasts, the long, dull hours of liturgical recitals. Such a terrible waste of time. But he wanted the boy away from here before trouble started.
“This no longer concerns you.” Zamyatin creased his brows, more in irritation than anger. Tonight, he would not be angry.
Mongolia was his. Next month, he would sit in a gilded room at the Kremlin and dine with Lenin and Zinoviev as their equal.
“I am the boy’s tutor now,” said the Khutukhtu.
“Who better than I to train him? I mean to teach him everything I know. Don’t worry I’ll spare him my vices, if you spare him yours. He won’t need them. But he will need my experience; and my memories. I tell you that he will need prayer more than sleep tonight. And meditation more than prayer. Or do you intend to act as spiritual director to your new ruler? I hardly think you’re qualified.”
Zamyatin said nothing. Whether the boy slept or prayed meant nothing to him. So long as the child was pliable. So long as he was fit to be paraded in the proper regalia and knew how to make the right gestures tomorrow. He already had men scouring the storerooms of the palace for the clothes the Khutukhtus wore as children.
From somewhere in the distance, the sound of shouting came, followed by silence. A door slammed, heavy and muffled. Then, quite distinct, between the ticks of a clock, a series of shots rang out, clear and perfect in the stillness of the night.
Zamyatin ordered two of the guards to the door.
“See what’s happening,” he said, ‘and get back to me as quickly as possible. I’ll stay here with our prisoners. Hurry.” He took a revolver from his pocket and checked it.
The guards hurried through the door, taking their rifles with them. No-one spoke. The counter-attack had come sooner than expected, and Zamyatin’s men were thin on the ground.
Less than a minute later, the guards returned looking visibly frightened.
“An attack. Von Ungern Sternberg. He has the palace surrounded.”
“How many men?”
“Impossible to say, but the men at the gate think we’re outnumbered.”
“Any news of Sukebator and his men?”
“They’re tied up at the radio station. Ungern’s Chahar units have them pinned down.”
Zamyatin turned to Bodo.
“Think, man! Is there another way out of here? A secret passage?
This place must be riddled with them.”
The lama shook his head.
“They were blocked up by the Chinese when they held the
Khutukhtu prisoner. They’ve not been opened up again.
Except .. .”
“Yes?”
“Except for one, I think. Behind the treasure rooms. It’s better hidden than the others There’s a tunnel behind it leading to the Tsokchin. Once we’re there I can arrange for horses.”
Zamyatin thought quickly. If they could make it to Allan Bulak, where the provisional government was located, there was still a chance that they might join up with the Bolshevik forces moving in from the north. He had the Khutukhtu and the boy. All the aces were still in his hands.
“Quickly then,” he shouted.
“Lead the way. You and you’ he pointed at the two guards ‘keep our rear covered. Hurry up.”
The sound of shooting was growing louder. Ungern could be here in a matter of minutes.
The little group was assembled quickly, Bodo in front, then the prisoners, followed by Zamyatin and his guards.
The corridor outside the Khutukhtu’s study took them directly into his treasure rooms. They were like Aladdin’s cave, crammed from end to end with bric-a-brac of every description, the product of a lifetime’s obsession.
Chandeliers hung everywhere like patterns of webbed and shattered ice. Vases from China, rugs from Persia, peacock feathers from India, two dozen samovars of every size and style from Russia, pearl necklaces from Japan all jostled each other in cosmopolitan disorder. The Khutukhtu had ordered goods in multiples: a dozen of these, a score of those, sometimes the entire contents of a trading house during a visit to Mai-mai-ch’eng. It was a vast jumble sale to which no buyers ever came.