Tulku Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  About the Author

  Also by Peter Dickinson

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Destiny . . . or free will?

  Alone and exhausted after a rebel attack on his father’s mission settlement in remote China, thirteen-year-old Theodore is relieved to meet the earthy and colourful Mrs Jones, a botanist, and they flee together for the forbidden land of Tibet.

  But are they really fleeing? Or being summoned? For the old Lama who rules in the many-domed monastery of Dong Pe insists they hold the clue to the birth of the long-awaited Tulku – a reincarnated spiritual master . . .

  A rich and exciting novel set at the time of the Boxer Rebellion.

  Tulku

  PETER

  DICKINSON

  1

  THEODORE WOKE IN the dark, sucked harshly out of the pit of sleep by a hand shaking his shoulder and a voice hissing in his ear. Before he could groan a question the hand covered his mouth. He jerked himself free and sat up, making the straps of his bed creak with the strain, but by now he had recognized the voice, and guessed at the urgency.

  ‘Fu T’iao! What? Why?’ he whispered.

  ‘Dress. Be quick. Your father says . . .’

  No more questions, then. As Theodore reached for his clothes where they hung from a peg in the beam above his head he saw Fu T’iao moving across the room, and knew by the fact that he could see at all that there was more light than there should be, a pinkish flicker of moving flame through the window. And there were more noises in the night than the usual faint water-rattle from the ravine and wind-hiss from the woods beyond – there was a grumbling murmur, which suddenly clacked into recognizably human shouts, and now there was Father’s voice riding above the racket, slow, heavy and confident, with the unmistakable mid-Western honk only half-modulated into the tones of the local dialect, Miao. (A visiting Baptist had once told Father that he spoke Chinese languages as though he was wearing native clothes but had forgotten to remove his tall hat.)

  Theodore pulled on his trousers, then stood and wriggled into his long over-shirt, automatically twitching his pigtail clear of the collar as his head poked into the open. Father’s voice was half-drowned now by the shouting, but he spoke on as steadily as if he had been arguing a point of doctrine. In the moment of stillness after putting on his clothes Theodore was appalled with sudden terror – not ordinary alarm, but a feeling which seemed to rush up through his body from the floor, like water surging up one of the bamboo irrigation pipes on the terraces. It was as much shock as fear, the shock of uncertainty rushing into a life whose every detail was fixed and known. Slowly he sat back on to his bed. Unwilled, his hand slid under his pillow and grasped his Bible. He was still sitting there, shivering, listening to the yells – to Father trying to speak still, and his voice stopping with a grunt in mid-sentence – when Fu T’iao came scuttling in from the living-room with a bundle in his arms.

  ‘Come now. Quick. By the back way. Carry this.’

  Shivering, Theodore rose and took what seemed to be one of the satchels which they all used for carrying their midday meals up into the further fields. He slid the strap across his shoulders and followed Fu T’iao through the living-room, moving without a stumble among the unseen furniture because it stood where it always had. In the kitchen beyond, the air smelt of the remains of supper – beans flavoured with fennel and enlivened by a few small lumps of fatty pork. Fu T’iao took several seconds to open the monkey-proof catch on the outer door, but made no attempt to shut it once they were through, scuttling off at once across the gardens, crouching into the shadows of the huts. Theodore followed without question, though his path took him straight across a fresh-sown seed-bed. It was Father’s orders.

  There was more light in the Settlement than he’d ever seen at night – far more, surely, than torches could throw. Through a gap between huts he saw three elders walking along the road towards the centre of the hubbub, their hands folded into their sleeves, as though they were going to Church. In a sudden patch of silence Mrs Teng’s voice ran on, clacking like a night bird, asking Teng how he could permit this disturbance to happen. A wild shout rose further off and a yellow light flared high and sudden, making even the trees beyond the ravine stand sharp-leaved, where before there had been dark vaguenesses. Shouts became screams.

  ‘Hurry!’ panted Fu T’iao. ‘Hurry!’

  When they reached the last of the huts he twisted away from the road and into the orchard, crouching even lower now to duck beneath blossom-laden boughs, but moving more and more carefully until they reached the ancient cypress that stood like a landmark on the edge of the cliff above the ravine. They halted in the blackness beneath it. Several huts were burning now, and the smoke drifted in black hummocks towards the orange-tinted clouds. Fu T’iao peered round the cypress along the line of the ravine, paying no attention to a scream, a woman’s, that rose above the hubbub and snapped short.

  ‘Men guard the bridge,’ he whispered. ‘The old path.’

  Without waiting for him Theodore turned and ran, crouching low, along the lip of the ravine. Voices were singing now – ‘Rock of Ages’ in Father’s translation – interrupted by savage yells but rising unfaltering into the flame-lit dark. Only Theodore and Fu T’iao seemed to be running away. It was Father’s order, but still there was a strangeness in it, for normally the order would have been to come forward and face the cause of fear. At the ruined heathen shrine Theodore turned and led the way down the slanting pathway into the dark, feeling for each footstep. The cliff soon blanketed the clamour among the huts, but the rattle of water grew louder and the streaky glitter of foam shone sixty feet below. He probably knew the path better than Fu T’iao, because no-one but children used it since Father had built the bridge. It was littered with loose stones, which clattered away as their feet displaced them. He reached the bottom and at once poised to jump to the first stepping-stone.

  The rains had barely begun, so the water was not knee-deep, except in hollows, but it still ran fast enough to knock a man over if he wasn’t careful. The stepping-stones stood like pillars amid the silver onrush. Theodore jumped, using the momentum of each stride to carry him into the next, and at the sixth stride on to the further shore. Fu T’iao followed more sedately.

  ‘Now, Theodore, you must go on alone.’

  ‘Why? What are you going to do? What’s happening?’

  ‘Your father says you must hide in the forest. I have put food in your bag, and money, and here is a blanket. When day comes be very careful. Trust no stranger. Look from far off to see what is happening in the Settlement. Perhaps these people will only burn a few huts, and then your father will persuade them to go away. Then, as soon as you have seen any of our people moving freely, you can return, but speak and act like a peasant boy until you are certain. If you think it is not safe to return, your father says you must find your way to Doctor Goertler at Taho.’

  ‘But what are you going to do?’

  ‘I have obeyed your father’s order to take you beyond the ravine. Now my place is with the Congregation of Christ. After the manner of men I must fight with beasts at Ephesus. May Christ watch over you, Theodore. There is cash in the bag, but remember the r
oads are full of robbers.’

  ‘My place is with the Congregation too.’

  ‘Your father gave the order. He had little time, but he was very certain. Listen! Someone on the path! Hurry, before men come from the bridge along this cliff! God guard you!’

  Fu T’iao’s voice had none of the slow confidence with which the adult members of the Congregation usually spoke. He pushed the blanket-roll into Theodore’s arms, turned and leaped for the first stepping-stone. Theodore began to climb as quickly as he could, listening through the gasping of his own breath and the thud of his heart for any sound of movement at the top. The trees, he knew, grew thickly along this cliff and the path wound away from the ravine to reach the road further along. But his alertness was only on the surface, for all his inner mind was taken up with what Fu T’iao had said. If, after the manner of men, I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth it me, if the dead rise not? Members of the Congregation knew their New Testament almost by heart, and often used its words when they were making a serious decision. Now, stumbling and panting up the cliff path, Theodore worked out what Fu T’iao had meant. The Settlement was being attacked and burnt because the people in it were Christians, and just as Saint Paul had been made to face the lions in one of the Roman circuses, so he was returning to confront these attackers. To do otherwise would be to deny his faith.

  But Theodore was running away. Father’s order, Fu T’iao had said. Father had ordered him to deny his faith, to hide in the wood and then look for Doctor Goertler. Had Father really given the order? Or had Fu T’iao, driven by loyalty to save his master’s child, acted on his own?

  The sudden pang of doubt stopped Theodore in his tracks, and as his panting eased he heard voices on the far path. Fu T’iao, climbing, must have met somebody coming down, so others were running away – on Father’s orders? Because their faith had failed? There was yelling now at the bridge; along the edge of the ravine, silhouetted against the glare from the Settlement, people were streaming towards the old path, some cowering as they ran, others pursuing. They were like devils, sharp against the blaze of hell – one had a hoe raised to strike. The cypress was a warning pillar, the hard-pruned trees of the orchard were gestures of pain, all black against orange. The enemies on the bridge would see that there was an escape route here and send men to block it. Theodore scurried up the last few yards of cliff and ran between the trees. No special shouts rose, as if someone near at hand had spotted escaping prey. Instead a new noise started, the unmistakable tock of an axe. Another joined it.

  Theodore ran on. Where the path forked he chose the arm that led away from the road. About fifty yards along it he stopped and looked back. A few streaks of orange showed between the smooth trunks, and the voices and the uproar were softened by the nearer leaf-noise. The axes were striking now with a steady rhythm. There were voices in the wood. I must hide, he thought, climb a tree, find a hole or a thick bush. He knew from many games that it was not a good wood for that, the trunks too straight to climb, the leaf-cover too thick for undergrowth to flourish. Even so he was about to turn off the path when a fresh idea struck him – there was one place where no heathen Chinese would come till daylight, at least. He walked on, calmer now, until he came to the clearing.

  The glow reflected from the clouds gave just enough light for him to see the double row of mounds, all close-mown and kept clear of coarse weeds, but otherwise unmarked. Clearly, even in the dark, to anybody of any faith, this was a burial place; to the heathen Chinese it would be a haunt of ghosts, unappeased by ancestral rites, roaming for prey. To Theodore it was almost as familiar and comfortable as home. As he stepped from under the trees he whispered the customary words, just as if Father had been there beside him.

  ‘To live is Christ, and to die is gain.’

  Deliberately he chose the gap between the fifth and sixth mounds of the nearer rank. When he had spread his blanket out, lain down and rolled it round him he became just another mound in the dimness. He sighed, and the sigh set up a shudder he was unable to stop. The nights in South West China are warm at that time of year, but Theodore felt as though a heavy, chill liquid was flowing through all his veins, which the shuddering did nothing to warm. At the same time his mind was filled with nightmare imaginings about the Settlement, though as soon as he tried to think coherently about what had happened, or might have happened, his brain refused to function. He found his lips moving, repeating over and over the last words he had spoken: ‘To live is Christ, and to die is gain.’ They didn’t seem to mean anything. Twice he tried to rise and make his way back across the ravine, but his muscles wouldn’t stop shuddering long enough to obey him. He was still in this state when he slid suddenly into the pit of sleep.

  A slow, warm rain began before dawn. In his sleep Theodore imagined that he was awake, dozing on the floor of his own room, from which somebody had stolen the roof. It seemed to him that nothing could be done about this till Father came back. It was a miserable sort of dream with no centre or focus to the misery to turn it into a proper nightmare. His sleeping body tried to huddle further into the roll of blanket, whose coarse, oily, close-packed wool took a long time to let the wet through. He was properly woken at last by a little river that had formed where the rain runnelled off the mound on either side of him and flowed along the hollow in which he lay; at first the fold of blanket under his head had dammed its path, but when he groaned and shifted, the tiny torrent rushed through.

  He sat up violently, trying to shake the rain out of his hair. The memory of last night swept through him like a storm-gust, making him huddle back instantly into his soggy hiding-place and then twist, taut-muscled and slow, until he lay on his stomach and could inch his head up to peer around. The low gravestone of the right-hand mound confronted him. ‘Constance Halliday Tewker. Born in darkness. Died in Grace. April 17 1891, aged 32.’ Theodore could barely remember his mother, except as a vague and silent presence, far back. She was more real to him dead than alive, a grave-mound to be mown and weeded, a source of warmth and cheerfulness in Father’s voice, a saint known to be at the side of Christ in heaven. The message on the stone struck him with no new force; he was aware of it, but more aware of the stone itself as some cover for his raised head as he peered through the veils of dawn-grey rain into the dripping shadows under the trees.

  Nothing but rain moved. No hunting cry told that he had been seen. No far voices called. A low roll of thunder trundled its way among the clouds, emphasizing the absence of man-made noises. He wriggled out of his squelching blanket, picked it up, and his food-bag, and walked steadily towards the nearest trees. There, after a little searching, he found a drip-free area and knelt down on the soft leaf-litter to pray.

  It was impossible to concentrate. As soon as he closed his eyes the wood was full of creeping presences, their movements muffled by the rattling streamlets shed from the leafage far above; but when he opened them and looked round he saw nothing but the smooth, reddish trunks and the glistening thin threads of falling water. He would start again, but inside his mind the memories of last night nudged and jostled for attention: Father’s voice, the shouts, the flames, the dwindling hymn, Fu T’iao in the ravine, the demon-figures running along the cliff-top. ‘When you speak to God you may be sure that He will hear, but you must not assume that He will answer.’ That was one of Father’s favourite sayings, but now Theodore felt for the first time in his life that his attempts to speak were being cut short, were not going out of him towards any hearer, but instead were scurrying round in his skull like mice in a box.

  He tried several times, even finding a fresh dry place to pray in in case that made a difference, but it was no good. Something enormous had changed, inside him as well as outside, and slowly, achingly, he realized what it was. Suppose he were to go back to the Settlement and find out that all was well there, that nobody had been really hurt and only a few huts burnt, and that Father had persuaded the attackers to go away – even then things could not be the same. He ha
d run away. He was cast out from the Congregation.

  As this certainty dawned he stopped trying to pray, rose to his feet and walked round towards the cemetery path. By the time he was on it he was running, but where it branched into the path that led from the road to the cliff he stopped again. If he was cast out it was because he had obeyed Father’s orders, or thought he had. At least he could continue to obey. To be both cast out and disobedient . . . He must look from far off to see what was happening in the Settlement, Fu T’iao had said. There was only one place this side of the ravine where he could do that.

  He walked cautiously along the path that led to the road, looked left and right through the drizzle, then darted across into the trees beyond. The wood was younger here, and the leaf-cover not thick enough to suppress all the undergrowth, so the people from the Settlement did not come here much, but there was a place some way down where the whole Settlement was visible, tilted on its small plateau towards the west with its fields and terraces rising behind it. Theodore knew this because there was a painting by Mother of the Settlement from the place; it hung – had hung – on the wall beside Father’s desk. He took a chunk of bread from his bag, blessed it automatically as he broke it, and munched untasting as he picked his way south.

  Twenty minutes later he stood at the edge of the ravine once more; the rain had let up for the moment and the low cloud-roof was ridged with pink and gold where the rising sun, almost straight in front of him, shot its horizontal rays through some gap out of sight behind the hill. The Settlement was still in shadow. Slant in the south wind the streams of smoke rose thinly from the huts until they reached the sunlight, where they changed from grey to gold. Each hut sent up its wisp, though only memory and longing told Theodore that those shaggy piles had once been dwelling-places. No-one moved between the charred heaps. The roof-tree of the Church was down, but its end-frames still stood, draped with smouldering thatch. Someone had left a brass cooking-pot upside down on a doorpost. One or two of the smoking piles showed a patch of colour where a cloth or blanket had not burnt completely. There was nothing else. Where were the pigs, the cats, the ploughs, the rakes and hoes, the water-buckets, the beehives, the looms and spinning-wheels? Where were the people?