Treachery in Tibet (15 page)

Ottley nodded. ‘And for once,’ he said, ‘this is no job for the Mounted Infantry.’

Immediately, however, the fort gates were seen to be opened and through them came a colourful group of mounted delegates, trotting towards the camp, obviously with no aggressive intentions.

They were led by the
jongpen
, or commandant of the fort, and by Mo, a Chinese general, who was said to be an emissary of the
amban
, the resident Chinese agent in Lhasa, and whom Younghusband had met during previous abortive negotiations. The latter, with Macdonald, received them within the camp, O’Connor once again acting as interpreter. Fonthill, Ottley, some of the other British officers and the press corps, including Alice, crowded round to listen.

The
jongpen
was a smiling, round-faced and stout Tibetan with a submissive air who regretted that he was unable to hand over the fort because he was under strict orders from Lhasa to defend it to the death. Alas, he confided that he could not do that either, because most
of the garrison had fled to the north when the British approached. He was, he said, in a difficult position, but he could not open the gates, for to do so would mean that all his family and his belongings would be seized by the lamas in the capital. Could not, perhaps, the British solve his problem by simply passing by and ignoring the fort?

Equally courteously, Younghusband explained that this would not be possible and that, if the gates were not opened by 8 a.m. the following morning, artillery would be brought up and the gates blasted open. Still smiling, but insisting that he was unable to accommodate the British, much as he would like to, the
jongpen
and his party rode back to the citadel.

The next morning, the guns were brought up laboriously within range of the fort. It was not until just before eight o’clock that the great doors were opened and, under the rueful gaze of the
jongpen
and his Chinese colleagues, two companies of the 32nd Sikh Pioneers marched into the citadel. Fonthill and Alice slipped into the fort on their tail and watched as the Union Jack was hoisted on the ramparts, to cheers from the soldiers watching below.

Exploring the warren of corridors within the empty fortress, they were astonished to find one huge chamber stacked full of barley, later found to contain thirty-six tons, and another horrendously packed with the severed heads of men, women and children.

Holding her nose, Alice staggered out. ‘I thought the Buddhist code forbade the taking of human life,’ she gasped. ‘What the hell was that about?’

Simon shook his head. ‘I have no idea. But it’s clear that these monks run a very different show to those in India. I just don’t understand this very strange country.’

Leaving the fort, the two walked through the labyrinthine streets of the township beneath the monastery. Here, they met another surprise. In seeming disregard of the fact that a hostile army was camped on their doorstep, the inhabitants were going about their normal business, without sign of fear or hostility: hundreds of men in cherry-coloured coats riding lean ponies, less well-dressed women chattering away and carrying children slung on their backs, and lines of donkeys, laden with grain or fodder, plodding along in single file. Below the main entrance to the monastery a thriving market was being held.

Here booths straddled the road and pavements, laden with carpets and saddle rugs, for which Alice had heard that the town was famous, as well as tea, tobacco, sugar, cotton cloth, matches, pipes, tumblers, kerosene oil and foodstuffs, including pork, fresh vegetables and barley beer.

‘Hmmm,’ mused Simon, ‘better keep Jenkins away from here.’

Alice frowned. ‘This place is so different from anything else we have seen so far,’ she said. ‘There is an abundance here that we’ve not glimpsed before. Is it because it’s set in this fertile plain, with a much more pleasant climate, or what?’

‘Don’t know. Could be because of the fortress. It’s important because it guards the entrance to the main interior of Tibet, the road to Lhasa and so on.’

‘Well, as you said, Tibet is full of surprises.’

The next morning, Macdonald decided to move the camp away from the fort and the town, some 1,000 yards to a hamlet by the river, where water was freely available and where a Tibetan nobleman had set up a residence years before. The manor house, called Chang Lo, still stood and was surrounded by a few rustic dwellings.

Here the General produced another surprise. He announced that he was going to take approximately half of his troops – including his only effective artillery, the British-manned ten-pounders – back 150 miles to New Chumbi. This, he explained, was necessary ‘to arrange posts and communications and convoys’. To guard the mission at Chang Lo, he left four companies of 32nd Pioneers, two companies of the 8th Gurkhas, fifty of Fonthill’s Mounted Infantry, the two Maxims, Bubble and Squeak, part of a mule corps and one section of an India field hospital; in all about five hundred men.

The General by now was clearly a sick man suffering from fevers, although he continued to chain smoke. ‘Sorry I can’t leave you in command, Fonthill,’ he explained, ‘but it has to be a line officer. So Lieutenant Colonel Brander, the CO of the Pioneers, will command. No offence meant, you know.’

‘None taken, General. Brander is a good man.’

‘Good. I am leaving you Ottley, of course.’ He gave a wintry smile. ‘If I took him back with me he’d give me a hell of a time. I am leaving the fort ungarrisoned. We just don’t have enough men to man both places – and there’s no water up there on that rock. Keep patrolling. We mustn’t be caught napping here, although I must say the natives seem friendly hereabouts.’

Immediately, Brander set about making Chang Lo more defendable. The main house stood amidst willow trees and was large and spacious, containing a hall where Younghusband could hold his hoped-for meetings with representatives of the Dalai Lama. Some of the outhouses and trees were demolished to yield lines of fire and lines of sharpened stakes, called abattis, knocked into the ground, while a loopholed wall, some 300 yards in circumference, was erected around
the main house and the remaining outbuildings. Within it was a large farmhouse, where the troops were housed, which was immediately called the Redoubt.

Macdonald set off on his long journey back to New Chumbi on 20th April, leaving three weeks rations for the mission, deemed plenty in view of the fact that the Tibetans were now freely trading with the newcomers, even setting up a standing market just outside Chang Lo, to which they brought regular supplies of food stuffs as well as souvenirs of all kinds. The Raj’s Indian rupee, it became clear, was much valued in Tibet.

Fonthill tried to persuade Alice to return with Macdonald, arguing that nothing much could happen at Gyantse while he was away. She refused, however, stating that to do so would leave her with nothing to write about except, once again, retailing old descriptions of fighting through high, snowbound passes and problems of logistics. ‘Besides which,’ she explained, ‘I am not sure I can trust you and Jenkins in the bazaars of wild Gyantse.’

Once Macdonald’s column had wound out of sight along the plain a kind of peaceful serenity descended on Chang Lo. The spring weather was quite mild, the rivers provided reasonable fishing and the plain and the surrounding foothills offered plenty of game. A large Tibetan lady was happily recruited to plant a small garden within the hamlet – she was immediately christened Mrs Wiggs, after a bucolic novel of the day – and once the defences of the little hamlet had been erected, it was only Fonthill and his Mounted Infantry who were left with serious work to do, ranging out every day on patrol.

‘How long do you think we shall be stuck here, with nothing but good food to eat and nothing to do but enjoy ourselves?’ demanded
Alice of her husband. ‘Do you think there is any chance at all of the Chinese or Tibetans coming here to negotiate with old Y?’

Simon shrugged. ‘I honestly have no idea. You know that prevarication and procrastination are the Tibetans watchwords. Younghusband keeps receiving letters, I understand, from the Chinese
amban
in Lhasa, saying that he wishes to travel here to talk but that the lamas won’t provide him with transport. I can’t help feeling that the prospects of a negotiated settlement are as remote now as ever they were.’

‘What does Y think?’

‘Probably the same, I feel. I believe he has written to the acting viceroy urging that he be allowed to go on from here to Lhasa to force the issue, but that all depends upon how the government back home view things.’ He sighed. ‘Frankly, my love, I think the days of the great British thrusts into strange lands are over. We’ve become a bit of an anachronism, not to mention embarrassment, to Whitehall and the Horse Guards.’

‘Quite right, too. We should never have invaded.’

The days of serenity were broken, however, when intelligence was received at the camp that a Tibetan army was being concentrated less than fifty miles to the east of Gyantse, at a 16,000-feet-high pass called Karo La, on the road to Lhasa. Inevitably, Fonthill and his fifty men were sent to investigate.

After a climb that left the mild air of the plain well behind them, they eventually reached the pass – to find yet another rock wall stretching across the defile and effectively blocking the road forward.

Jenkins pulled on his moustache. ‘This lot is a nation of bricklayers, it seems to me, bach sir,’ he observed, ‘except that they’ve never
discovered mortar. Do they just go about the place, look you, stickin’ stones across the bloody road all the time?’

‘Probably. What else is there to do up here?’ He studied the wall through his binoculars. ‘Seems unmanned.’ He focussed up the steep mountain slopes on either side. ‘Can’t see any one there.’ He lowered the glasses. ‘Come on. Let’s take a walk and have a look. William, stay here with the men.’

They dismounted and began walking warily towards the wall. At about 200 yards from it, however, a fusillade of fire sprang from along the wall and from the surrounding rocks, matched by stones hurled down on them from the side of the mountains.

Without a word, the two spun on their heels and ran back out of range, where they stood, panting.

‘Another little surprise, look you,’ gasped Jenkins.

Fonthill drew out his field glasses again from their case and examined the wall and the hillside. ‘I can see hundreds of them now,’ he murmured, focusing the lenses. ‘Thank God they can’t shoot straight. There must be well over 1,000.’ He lowered the glasses. ‘Let’s get back. I’ve seen enough. We’ve found the Tibetan army, old chap.’

Back at Chang Lo, he reported to Colonel Herbert Brander, a short, bright-eyed officer, younger than Fonthill, of course, who had already distinguished himself on the march from the border.

‘How many d’yer say, old man?’

‘Could be as many as 1,500. And they seem well armed – though they still can’t shoot straight.’

‘Then I shall go and clear them out.’

‘What, and leave the camp virtually undefended? You will need as
many troops as you can muster to get them out from behind that wall.’

Brander grinned. ‘Oh, I think we are pretty well housed here and I shall leave as many as I can spare. We can’t afford, Fonthill, to have that many of the enemy hanging about as near to us as this. I want to hit ’em while they are not expecting us.’

Simon grimaced. ‘Well, it’s your decision, Brander. But I suppose you must get Y’s agreement. And what about Macdonald?’

The Colonel’s grin widened. ‘I think Y will agree. He’s all for getting on with things. And I shall get a telegram off to the General, although, alas, I am afraid he won’t receive it until after I have set out. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to wait for his reply. I would like you and your chaps to come with me, if you will?’

For a moment, Fonthill hesitated. Alice would be left in a camp which, if things went wrong, would have had its garrison severely reduced, whatever Brander said. But the Colonel would need scouts patrolling ahead of him to protect his force. There was no choice.

‘Of course we will come. We and the horses will need a good night’s rest, though. We had to ride pretty hard coming back here.’

‘Very well. We leave at dawn.’

Alice rose at 4 a.m. to see off her husband for, as always, the Mounted Infantry had to leave before the main column to range ahead of the marching men. Brander had taken the decision to ban the correspondents from riding with him because, he explained, he needed to move fast and wished to have no additional responsibility for civilians in what could prove to be a stiff fight. Grudgingly, therefore, Alice returned to the small room she shared with Simon within the compound, turned up the wick of her lantern and began writing a report, detailing the despatch of Brander and his force.

Communications with London were now more tenuous, because the telegraph line had not been extended to Gyantse, running only to Kala Tso, some sixty miles away. She would need, then, to find a despatch rider quickly to take her story back to the telegraph station.

It was this delay in communicating, of course, that Brander had relied on in riding out immediately to fight the Tibetans. He had a pretty sure feeling that Macdonald would forbid him to leave the camp, but, of course, he would be well on his way before such an order could reach him. And so it proved.

Alice, of course, was unaware of this manoeuvring and, once she had despatched her story, she decided that, rather than sit and mope, worrying about Simon, she would offer her services to the mission’s medical officer, Captain Walton, who had set up a small hospital just outside the perimeter walls and who had already built up a thriving practice, with peasants from the town as his patients.

In fact, she spent a busy and rewarding day, helping the Captain and his orderlies, applying dressings and administering doses of colic and other basic medicines. Her attendance was welcomed by Walton and Alice decided to return the following day.

That morning, however, she noticed a sudden and surprising slackening in the number of patients attending. In fact, as the day progressed, the inmates of the sickroom all picked themselves up and hobbled away, or were picked up by their relatives.