What an impasse. They’d come all the way to Himalayan India, and now they had no way to communicate! This would make finding the scrolls much more difficult than Sir Bedford planned.
The monk made another bow and then motioned for the team to follow him. He led them up the wide, stone steps to the terrace at the entrance of the monastery. The other monks grouped there stared after them as they walked across the expanse of weather worn stone slabs to the front door.
Linley kept her eyes straight ahead. She tried not to look at the red and yellow-robed monks who gawked at her. Hadn’t they ever seen a white person before?
The Talbot-Martin team entered a brightly painted room. The guide monk smiled as they looked around in awe of the meticulous artwork that adorned the ceiling, the walls, the cut timber columns, and even the floor. It must have taken the monks years—decades, even—to create such beautiful paintings and murals.
He led them down a narrow corridor lit only by light that spilled through the windows. Patrick dared not touch anything, but he saw Archie, Sir Bedford, and the others running their fingers over everything they could reach.
At the end of the corridor, the monk motioned for them to wait before disappearing behind a large woven tapestry.
“Can you believe this place?” Linley turned around and grinned at Patrick.
After a moment, the monk returned and held the tapestry back so they could enter the little room. It, too, was covered with vivid paint and colorful cloth. The monks may have lived a simple life, but no one could argue that it was not one surrounded by beauty.
At the far side of the room, a small, elderly man sat cross-legged on a pedestal. “Welcome,” he said. “Please sit.”
They all sat on pillows at the man’s feet.
The lama studied each member of the team. “You are English?”
“Yes,” Sir Bedford said. “I am Sir Bedford Talbot-Martin.”
The lama smiled. “Very good.”
“And this is my team,” Linley’s father continued. “We travel the world exploring different cultures and preserving the past.”
“I see.”
“We read of your monastery in an ancient book,” Sir Bedford said. “We have traveled for many weeks just to speak to you.”
The lama scratched his chin with his long, skinny fingers. “We not see visitors for many year. I was a boy when the last white man came.” He slapped his hand on his knee. “That eighty year ago.”
Eighty years since the last white man came to the monastery? Patrick found that most interesting.
“We have very little here,” the lama continued. “But what we have, we glad to share.”
“Thank you,” Sir Bedford said. “I believe there is much to be learned from you and your people. My team and I would be honored to live among you and study your ways, even if only for a few weeks.”
“You may stay until the rains leave India,” the lama told them. “It not good to travel during monsoon.”
With that, the other monk stepped forward and motioned for the Talbot-Martin team to rise. He bowed to the lama. Bedford and the others followed his example, and one by one, they shuffled out of the room and into the corridor beyond.
Either by fate or good fortune, Patrick and the Talbot-Martin team had found the monastery deep in the foothills of the Himalayas. But it seemed they would not be leaving this place for quite some time.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Patrick stood at the window of his room, looking out at the lush green valley. Huge white clouds drifted lazily between the mountains, and he felt like he could reach out and push them from one side of the valley to another. This couldn’t be Earth. It had to be another world entirely. One where men looked down on clouds. Stood eye level with mountain peaks. Spending time in a place like this seemed more of a blessing than a curse.
A knock sounded on the wall outside his room.
“I’m going to do my laundry,” Linley said, poking her head through the open doorway “Do you want me to wash your things, too?”
Patrick ran a hand over his wrinkled, sweat-stained shirt. “I’ve almost forgotten what it feels like to wear clean clothes.”
She smiled. “Leave everything in a pile outside your door and I will get them on my way out.”
“Thank you,” he said. Patrick never thought about the girls who washed his clothes back home at Wolford Abbey. In Kyre, to wake up every morning to clean, freshly pressed shirts and trousers was a right, but in those past few days, Patrick realized it was a privilege.
One he would not take for granted again.
***
Later that evening, he lay on his pallet on the hard stone floor, blankets pulled up to his stomach, and his bare back resting against the cool wall. A pitcher of water and a basin had been delivered earlier, and Patrick washed and shaved, and for the first time in weeks, felt truly clean.
Another knock sounded outside his door.
“Yes?” Patrick called through the curtain that had been pulled closed.