She was speaking at a slower pace than her usual rush, and had dropped into the slurred and twanging accent which Theodore had heard only once before, when she had been talking in the cave in the rock pillar about her childhood in the Thames-side slums. It was as though the years of her life between those old days and this had been an almost meaningless interlude. She spoke quietly but with great emphasis, and paused at the end of almost every phrase for Theodore to translate. When he reached this point there was a gasp and a mutter. Clearly most of the Council were not aware that Lung was the father of the unborn child. The Lama Amchi must know – yes, of course, Mrs Jones had told him very early on when they were discussing the signs announced by the oracle – but presumably he hadn’t told the others. They wouldn’t quite so easily accept a Tulku of half-Chinese parentage, perhaps.
‘Is he still alive?’ said Mrs Jones.
‘His body lives,’ said the Lama.
‘I want to see him.’
‘It is better not.’
‘Now, look here. This is what I mean when I say you’re beginning to muck things up. For a start, it ain’t right if the Father of the Tulku don’t get proper respect, whatever he might of done in a moment when he was a bit off his rocker. And next, I am very fond of that young man. I ain’t fond of him in quite the same way as what I was four months back, but I want to see as he’s all right. I want that almost as much as I want to see that you get your Tulku born proper. Matter of fact, the one goes with the other. If I start thinking as how Lung got into trouble ’cause of what I did, then I won’t be able to do my meditating and all, will I? That bit of guilt will be like a ruddy great mountain, bang in the middle of my road to enlightenment. I’ll put it stronger. Unless I see as Lung’s all right, and going to stay all right, then I’m going to turn round. I’m going to walk all the way back down the road as I’ve come so far along, and be what I was before I became your chela. ’Cause of why? ’Cause you’ll of shown me, by the way you treated my friend Lung, that none of what you been teaching me matters. Perhaps it’s true – fact I still think it is – but it still don’t matter one blind bit if it lets you do that to a fellow like Lung. No, wait. I got something else to say. It’s no use you thinking fair enough. She can go back and be what she was before, and have the baby, and after that it don’t matter what she thinks or feels. It ain’t true. I’m old for child-bearing. What’s more I’ve only had one kid before, and that time I wasn’t happy and I near as a toucher died, spite of the best doctors in England, and so did the baby. And I can tell you now it’ll be worse this time. Oh, I can have your Tulku, soft and easy, with hardly a pang, spite of my age, ’cause of what you’ve taught me. But you know as well as I do it’ll only work if I’ve got faith in it. Absolute, stark, unquestioning faith, body and soul. And if you ain’t careful, that’s not going to happen. So, now, let’s have him up here and see what you done to him.’
‘He is a profaner of holy things,’ said the Lama. ‘He cannot come to this place.’
‘No he ain’t,’ said Mrs Jones. ‘He was off his rocker, so it don’t count. And what’s more he’s the Father of the Tulku. So this is where we start. If you say he’s a profaner of holy things and I say he ain’t, that means I’m turning back along the road you shown me. Don’t it?’
‘It is strange when the chela begins to teach the guru,’ said the Lama, mild as ever.
‘I’m not teaching you. I’m just stating facts. And I’m not threatening you neither. If any of this happens, it won’t be because I want it. I don’t. I want the Tulku to be born, here in Dong Pe, safe and sound. I want to follow on the path you shown me. But it looks like you’re not going to let it happen.’
There was a short silence.
‘Let us ask the Council what it thinks of this matter,’ said the Lama.
Theodore had been aware, during all this exchange, of other voices straining to speak, but held back by the two powerful personalities at the focus of the argument. Now the pent waters burst. One monk started to argue sedately enough, but almost at once three others joined in. Angry shouts rose. An old man was on his feet, yelling the same short phrase over and over until his neighbours pulled him down. There was no mistaking the surge of intense hostility and hatred, not for anybody in the room, but for poor Lung, an invisible presence, at whom the monks shook their fists and screamed as if he had been standing there. There was a terrifying note in the tumult, as though the demons whose roles were being enacted outside by the masked dancers had been summoned to this room in their real selves, invisible powers of cruelty and rage and ignorance, occupying the bodies of the Council members in much the same way as the other powers had occupied that of the oracle-priest. Not all those present were shouting for vengeance on Lung. Perhaps almost half of them seemed to be arguing on the other side, but it made no difference – the contorted faces were the same, the gestures of violence, the bellows and screams. They were all possessed, beyond reason, whatever their original impulse.
The Lama Amchi waited with his bell poised, judged his moment and shook it vigorously. The noise was like a whiplash, but the shouting barely faltered. He had to shake the bell twice more before the yelling diminished into a tingling silence. Theodore saw for the first time how thin was the old man’s control, for all his prestige. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps only he could command and save Dong Pe. Perhaps it was not only love of power which had forced him into some of his actions.
‘The Council is divided,’ said the Lama with a smile.
‘So it’s between you and me,’ whispered Mrs Jones.
This time the silence was longer. Mrs Jones and the Lama faced each other, as they had in their first meeting on the mountainside, and energies flowed between them as they had seemed to then, like the lines of force between the poles of a magnet. The other souls in the room were constrained and held in place by the flow of energies until the Lama smiled again, raised his head and gave a longish order in Tibetan. One of the soldier monks at the door left the room.
‘It will take a little time,’ said the Lama. ‘Perhaps now the child will tell us what happened in his encounter with the oracle this morning.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Mrs Jones. ‘I think you won your point, Theo. You might as well let ’em see you mean to play fair by them.’
‘All right,’ said Theodore in Mandarin. ‘I’ll tell you what I thought happened, though later I wasn’t so sure. It began after breakfast, when Lung told me to leave our room because he wanted to be alone . . .’
He told the story carefully, in the right order, leaving nothing out, not even the fact that he had thought the oracle spoke to him in Father’s words and tone, nor the fact that he had to all intents and purposes accused the Master of Protocol of cheating over the oracle’s messages. They listened closely, but questioned him only about the exact words he had used before the oracle-priest became possessed and the exact words of the reply. These the Master of Protocol wrote down on a slate which he drew from the folds of his robe. As Theodore finished he heard a shuffle and murmur at the door.