Douglas Child - The Wheel of Darkness

“His Holiness ask to direct attention to

thangka

painting of Green Tara.”

There was a murmuring and shuffling of the monks as they rose from their seats and respectfully stood in a circle around the painting, like students waiting for a lecture.

The old lama flapped a bony arm at Constance Greene to join the circle, which she hastily did, the monks shuffling aside to afford her space.

“This is picture of Green Tara,” Tsering continued, still translating at one remove the mumbled words of the old monk. “She is mother of all Buddhas. She have constancy. Also wisdom, activity of mind, quick thinking, generosity, and fearlessness. His Holiness invite female to step closer and view mandala of Green Tara.”

Constance stepped forward tentatively.

“His Holiness ask why student given name of Green Tara.”

Constance looked around. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Your name Constance Greene. This name contain two important attribute of Green Tara. His Holiness ask how you get name.”

“Greene is my last name. It’s a common English surname, but I’ve no idea of the origin. And my first name, Constance, was given to me by my mother. It was popular in . . . around the time I was born. Any resemblance of my name to the Green Tara is obviously a coincidence.”

Now the abbot began to laugh, shakily, and struggled to stand with the help of two monks. In a few moments he was standing, but just barely, as if the slightest nudge would jostle him into a loose heap. He continued to laugh as he spoke again, a low, wheezy sound, displaying his pink gums, his bones almost rattling with mirth.

“Coincidence? No such thing. Student make funny joke,” Tsering translated. “The abbot like good joke.”

Constance glanced at Tsering to the abbot and back again. “Does that mean I’ll be allowed to study here?”

“It mean your study is already begun,” said Tsering, with a smile of his own.

2

IN ONE OF THE REMOTE PAVILIONS OF THE GSALRIG CHONGG monastery, Aloysius Pendergast rested on a bench beside Constance Greene. A row of stone windows looked out over the gorge of the Llölung to the great Himalayan peaks beyond, washed in a delicate pink alpenglow. From below came the faint roar of a waterfall at the head of the Llölung Valley. As the sun sank below the horizon, a dzung trumpet sounded a deep, drawn-out note that echoed among the ravines and mountains.

Almost two months had passed. July had come, and along with it spring in the high foothills of the Himalayas. The valley floors were greening, speckled with wildflowers, while a furze of pink wild roses flowered on the hillsides.

The two sat in silence. They had two weeks until the end of their stay.

The dzung sounded again as the fiery light died on the great triumvirate of mountains—Dhaulagiri, Annapurna, and Manaslu—three of the ten highest peaks in the world. Twilight came swiftly, invading the valleys like a flood of dark water.

Pendergast roused himself. “Your studies are going well. Extremely well. The abbot is pleased.”

“Yes.” Her voice was soft, almost detached.

He laid a hand on hers, his touch as light and airy as a leaf’s. “We haven’t spoken of this before, but I wanted to ask if . . . everything went well at the Feversham Clinic. If there were no complications to the, ah, procedure.” Pendergast seemed uncharacteristically awkward and at a loss for words.

Constance’s gaze remained aimed deep into the cold, snowy mountains.

Pendergast hesitated. “I wish you would have let me be with you.”

She inclined her head, still remaining silent.

“Constance, I care for you very much. Perhaps I haven’t expressed myself strongly enough on that point before. If I didn’t, I apologize.”

Constance bowed her head further, her face flushing. “Thank you.” The detachment vanished from her voice, replaced by a faint tremor of emotion. She stood abruptly, looking away.

Pendergast rose as well.

“Excuse me, Aloysius, but I feel the need to be alone for a while.”

“Of course.” He watched her slim form move away from him until it vanished like a ghost into the stone corridors of the monastery. Then he turned his gaze to the mountainous landscape beyond the window, falling deep into thought.

As darkness filled the pavilion, the sounds of the dzung stopped, the last note sustained as a dying echo among the mountains for many long seconds. All was still, as if the coming of night had brought with it a kind of stasis. And then a figure materialized in the inky shadows at the foot of the pavilion: an old monk in a saffron robe. He gestured at Pendergast with a withered hand, using the peculiar Tibetan shake of the wrist that signified come.

Pendergast walked slowly toward the monk. The man turned and began to shuffle off into the darkness.

Pendergast followed, intrigued. The monk took him in an unexpected direction, down dim corridors toward the cell that held the famed immured anchorite: a monk who had voluntarily allowed himself to be bricked up in a room just large enough for a man to sit and meditate, walled up for his entire life, fed once a day with bread and water by means of moving a single loose brick.

The old monk paused before the cell, which was nothing more than a featureless dark wall. Its old stones had been polished by many thousands of hands: people who had come to ask this particular anchorite for wisdom. He was said to have been walled up at the age of twelve. Now he was nearly one hundred, an oracle famed for his unique gift of prophecy.

The monk tapped on the stone, twice, with his fingernail. They waited. After a minute, the one loose stone in the façade began to move, ever so slightly, scraping slowly over the joint. A withered hand appeared, white as snow, with translucent blue veins. It rotated the stone into a sideways position, leaving a small space.

The monk bent over to the hole and murmured something in a low voice. Then he turned to listen. Minutes passed, and Pendergast heard the faintest whisper from within. The monk straightened up, apparently satisfied, and gestured for Pendergast to step close. Pendergast did as requested, watching the stone slip back into position, guided by an unseen hand.

All of a sudden, a deep scraping sound seemed to come from within the rock next to the stone cell, and a seam opened up. It enlarged to become a stone door, which grated open on some unseen mechanism. A peculiar scent of some unknown incense wafted from within. The monk held out his hand in a gesture for Pendergast to enter, and when the agent had passed over the threshold, the door slid shut. The monk had not followed—Pendergast was alone.

Another monk appeared out of the gloom, holding a guttering candle. During the past seven weeks at Gsalrig Chongg, as well as in his previous visits, Pendergast had come to know the faces of all the monks—and yet this one was new. He realized he had just entered the inner monastery, whispered about but never confirmed—the hidden sanctum sanctorum. Such access—which, he’d understood, was absolutely forbidden—was apparently guarded by the immured anchorite. This was a monastery within the monastery, in which a half dozen cloistered monks passed their entire lives in the profoundest meditation and unceasing mental study, never seeing the outside world or even coming in direct contact with the monks of the outer monastery, guarded by the unseen anchorite. They had so withdrawn from the world, Pendergast once heard it said, that the light of the sun, should it fall upon their skin, would kill them.

He followed the strange monk down a narrow corridor, leading into the deepest parts of the monastic complex. The passages became rougher and he realized that they were tunnels cut out of the living rock itself: tunnels that had been plastered and frescoed a thousand years before, their paintings now almost obliterated by smoke, humidity, and time. The passage turned, and turned again, passing small stone cells containing Buddhas or thangka paintings, illuminated by candles and drifting with incense. They passed no one, saw no one—the warren of windowless rooms and tunnels felt hollow, damp, and deserted.