Edgar began to mutter an apology, but the Doctor didn’t respond. Ahead, where the path narrowed, Nok Lek was waiting. The party dropped into single file and followed the trail into the forest on the other side of the ridge.
They rode for nearly three hours. Descending from the ridge, they entered an open valley that rose slowly, south of the vertebral hills. The trail was soon wide enough for two ponies, and while Nok Lek again went ahead, the Doctor rode alongside the piano tuner. It became obvious very quickly that Carroll had absolutely no interest in hunting. He spoke about the mountains in whose shadow they rode, how he had mapped the area when he first arrived, measuring altitude with boiling-point barometers. He told stories about the geology, the history, local myths about each outcrop, glen, and river they crossed, Here is where the monks keep catfish, Here is where I saw my first tiger on the Plateau, rare, Here is where mosquitoes breed, where I am doing experiments on the spread of disease, Here is an entrance to the world of the nga-hlyin, the Burmese giants, Here is where Shan sweethearts court, at times you can hear the sound of flutes. His stories seemed inexhaustible, and his tale about one hill only ended when they passed another. Edgar was astounded; the Doctor seemed to know not only every flower but their medicinal uses, scientific classification, local names in Burmese and Shan, their stories. Several times, pointing to a flowering bush, he would exclaim that such a plant was unknown to Western science, and that “I have sent samples to the Linnean Society and the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, and I even have a species like it that bears my name, an orchid, which they have named Dendrobium carrollii, and a lily named Lilium carrollianum, and another, Lilium scottium, which I named after J. George Scott, the political administrator of the Shan States, a friend whom I admire deeply. And there are other flowers…” and with this he even stopped his pony and looked directly at Edgar, his eyes bright, “my own genus, Carrollium trigeminum, the species name meaning ‘the three roots,’ a reference to the Shan myth of the three princes, which I promise to tell you soon, or perhaps you should hear the Shan tell it…Regardless, the flower in profile looks like a prince’s face and it is a monocotyledon, with three paired petals and sepals, like three princes and their brides.” He stopped occasionally to pick flowers and plants and press them into a worn leather book which he kept in a saddlebag.
They stopped by a bush covered with small yellow blooms. “That one,” he confided, pointing, his shirtsleeve rolled up over a tanned forearm, “has not been given an official name yet, as I hope to send samples to the Linnean Society. It has been quite a struggle to get any of my botanical work published. The army seems to be concerned that somehow my writing about flowers will reveal state secrets…as if the French didn’t know of Mae Lwin.” He sighed. “I suppose I will have to retire before I publish a pharmacopoeia. Sometimes I wish I were a civilian without the rules and regimentation. But then I suppose I wouldn’t be here.”
As they rode further, Edgar’s nervousness and disorientation began to dissipate under the onslaught of the Doctor’s enthusiasm. All of his own questions, mostly about music, about the piano, about what the Shan and the Burmese thought of Bach and Handel, about why Carroll remained, and ultimately why he himself had come, were temporarily forgotten. Oddly, there seemed nothing more natural than marching on horseback to hunt plants without names, trying to make sense of the Doctor’s river of stories, Shan histories, Latin nomenclature, and literary references. Above them, a raptor circled and caught a rising current, and he imagined what the bird must see, three tiny figures winding their way along a dry trail that traced the collar of the karst hills, the tiny villages, the Salween snaking languidly, the mountains to the east, the Shan Plateau dropping to Mandalay, and then all of Burma, of Siam, of India, of the armies gathered there, grids of French and British soldiers blind to each other but visible to this bird, gathered waiting, while in between, three men rode together, collecting flowers.
They passed houses on stilts, dusty roads leading to small villages, their entrances marked by wooden portals. At one, a tangle of branches was strewn on the pathway, and a piece of tattered paper covered with swirls of writing was pinned to the portal. Doctor Carroll explained that smallpox had struck the village, and the script was a magical formula to fight the disease. “It is terrible,” he said. “We vaccinate people in England now with cowpox—it has been mandatory for several years—yet they won’t give me enough supplies to do so here. It is a horrid disease, so contagious, and so disfiguring. If one survives.” Edgar gripped his reins uneasily. When he was a boy, there had been a smallpox outbreak in the slums in East London. Sketches of victims had appeared daily in the broadsheets, young children covered with pustules, gaunt, pale cadavers.
Soon rocky outcrop began to appear, pushing out of the earth like worn molars. Edgar was mindful of the comparison, for the broad open landscape narrowed quickly, and they followed a ravine down between high pinnacles, as if descending into the earth’s intestines.
“This track would be completely flooded in the rain,” said Carroll at his side. “But we are experiencing one of our worst droughts in history.”
“I remember reading about it in a letter you wrote, and everyone I have spoken to has mentioned it.”
“Whole villages are dying of starvation because of the meager crops. If only the army understood how much we could accomplish with food. With food alone, we wouldn’t have to worry about the war.”
“They said they can’t bring in food because of the dacoits, because of a Shan Bandit Chief named Twet Nga Lu—”
“I see you have read that history too,” the Doctor said. His voice echoed off the cliffs. “There is some truth to that, although Twet Nga Lu’s legend is exaggerated in all the boisterous conversations in the officers’ messes. They just want a face to put on the danger. That is not to say he isn’t a danger—he is. But the situation is more complicated, and if we are to hope for peace, it requires more than the defeat of one man…But I am philosophizing, and I promised you I wouldn’t. How much of the story do you know?”
“Only a little. To be honest, I am still confused by all the names.”
“We are all confused. I don’t know which report you read or when it was written—I hope they gave you something I wrote. Although officially we annexed Upper Burma last year, the Shan States have been impossible to control, and thus it is almost impossible to station troops here. In our effort to pacify the region—‘peaceful penetration,’ in the parlance of the War Office, a term I find vile—we have been engaged in fighting a federation of Shan princes calling itself the Limbin Confederacy, an alliance of Shan sawbwas–the Shan word for their princes—who want to overthrow British rule. Twet Nga Lu is not part of the Confederacy, but an illegitimate chief operating across the Salween. We would call him a dacoit, but he has too many followers. His name is perhaps more legendary because he works alone. The Limbin Confederacy is less easily vilified because they are organized, and even send their own delegations. In other words, they seem like a real government. But Twet Nga Lu refuses to cooperate with anyone.”
Edgar began to ask about the rumors of the Bandit Chief that he had heard on the river steamship, but there was a rattling from above. The men looked up to see a large bird lifting off from the crags.
“What was that?” asked Edgar.
“Raptor, although I didn’t get a good look at it. What we need to beware of here are the snakes. They often come out at this time of day to get warm in the sun. Last year I had a pony bitten by a viper, leaving her with a terrible wound. The bite can cause humans to go into rapid shock.”
“You know much about snakebites?”
“I have made a collection of poisons and have tried to study them. I have been helped by a medicine man, a hermit who lives in the hills, who, the villagers say, sells the poisons to assassins.”