The Flowers of Time

Chapter 1: Srinagar, March 1782

Chapter 1: Srinagar, March 1782

The tent flap was wet as Jones pushed her way out into the cool morning air. She hadn’t heard any rain beating down in the night, so it was only the early autumn’s heavy dew on the canvas. Argo was on her heel, inseparable as he had been since she returned, and she rested her hand on the soft fur of his neck as she walked over to the hearth.

The fire was already lit; she could smell the wood smoke and she followed it to its source. Sonam was brewing tea, thick and sweet-smelling and comforting in the early morning. He gestured vaguely to her and she poured them both a serving into the mugs next to the brazier and then sat down on the ground next to it.

Neither of them spoke whilst they drank. They weren’t morning people. Jones had been surprised that the men had been waiting for her at Srinagar. She hadn’t asked them to, although they had said they would. She hadn’t known how long she would be gone but had assumed at least three or four years. That she was back after not quite three was a surprise to all of them. It had been an immense relief to ride up to the small temple complex north of Srinagar where they’d habitually rendezvoused if they needed to part for a while in Kashmir and find the four of them sitting there around the fire, the mules tethered up behind the tent and all her gear packed down as it was when she had left it, ready to go. The tension that had been gripping her shoulders since she landed in Bombay eased infinitesimally and despite her father not being there, it had felt like she had finally arrived home.

It was an enormous relief to get back into the high plains of silence ringed by the distant snowy peaks. They were only waiting for the Mertons before they could head north, toward the young Indus where it ran through the high mountains of Ladakh. That had been where they were exploring when Franklin died. The waiting wasn’t onerous now she was here, simply because of her relief at being back in her natural habitat rather than the cloying heat of the ballrooms of the London season, with its interminable questions about her father and her life in India.

Sonam didn’t mind the wait, nor did the other men. They were part of a close-knit group who’d all been with her and her father for decades. Sonam and his brother Dechen were in their fifties now; Amit and Kishor a decade or two younger. They were as interested in travelling and exploring as Franklin Jones had been and as Jones was herself. They’d been working as guides and guards to travellers in the mountains whilst she had been gone but had come down to Srinagar because Sonam ‘had a feeling she’d be home soon’. Jones thought it might also have to do with the widowed lady Amit was helping with roof repairs in the small village where they were camped.

The journey to London and back for a season had been a necessary evil that she had promised Pater she would undertake to prove to herself that wasn’t the life she wanted. Despite her grief at his fading health, Jones had been angry when he had extracted the promise from her. It wasn’t something he would have asked of a son. Although to be fair, he hadn’t noticed much about her gender once she became old enough to engage with the work.

It had been an idyllic childhood, she supposed. Running barefoot round the camp, playing with the goats and yaks that travelled with them, the small herd providing them with milk and occasional meat. Listening to the adults as they discussed the day’s finds around the fire each evening, and as she got older, joining in the discussions herself.

Pater was a member of the Royal Society. She hadn’t known what that meant as a child. She had seen him writing his letters, laboriously sharpening his quill, and sitting thinking as he wrote up his notes in the golden lamplight each evening after supper. He wasn’t an old man, she thought to herself, but he needed glasses for writing. Pince-nez that he had been obsessive about caring for, for here in the wilds no replacements were available. He would sit in his breeches and a loose shirt, his long waistcoat unbuttoned in the summer or bundled in his old banyan with a shawl around his shoulders in the winter, making sure his notes were in the particular order he required, with all the addenda and footnotes he felt were necessary.

When she’d arrived in London, she’d hoped to visit the Royal Society herself. She quickly been disabused of that notion by her aunt. No women were allowed into those hallowed halls. So she had concentrated on what Pater had required of her. She had her wardrobe made and remade until her aunt was satisfied. She squeezed her feet into uncomfortable shoes and she entered the social whirl with as much acumen as she could gather. She had danced, she had flirted and been flirted with, she had made conversation from behind her fan with tedious young men who saw her as an old maid.

There had been a few people she had enjoyed meeting. The cousins—the Romillys, Aunt Caroline’s children—had been pleasant and welcoming, if a little confused by her. Carruthers and Merton were uncommonly interesting. And Edith Merton was…lovely. Simply…lovely. Her artwork was outstanding, she would be a real asset to the Merton and Carruthers expedition. It had been wonderful to speak with her at Lady Nailsbourne’s ball. The trips to the Chelsea Physick Garden and out to Kew later that week had been amazing. Such well laid out gardens and such interesting plants. It was such a shame that the Merton party hadn’t been able to get the same boat as Jones. Their departure had been delayed by a commitment at the East India Company headquarters that Carruthers had not been able to avoid. It had to do with his remit of mapping the ancient trade routes across the mountains into China.

Nevertheless, they had made plans to rendezvous in Srinagar in the spring. Carruthers had a singularly definite idea of his route, which fitted with the Mertons’ plans to travel the uplands as widely as possible, gathering plants for the new Himalaya area at Kew, and that fitted well enough with her own desire to reach Leh before the monsoons. She hoped they hadn’t been delayed on their journey. She’d pushed quickly on her trip north from Bombay, with only herself and a couple of men she had hired to accompany her, all mounted.

She hoped to make it to the high valley of the Indus before the rains began in July and settle there for the winter so that in the spring she could return to the cave-temple that her father had been exploring during his final two summers. She thought the Mertons would probably travel more slowly and really had no idea when they would arrive. It had been a slightly foolish arrangement to make, virtually a spur of the moment decision based on how much she enjoyed the company of all three of them. If their ship hit bad weather or they encountered some sort of problem, Jones might miss the whole travel season waiting for them. Carruthers and Merton were experienced in the ways of India, however, and hopefully they would manage. And Miss Merton did not seem the type to be fazed by travel.

It was such a dashed relief to be home. She sprawled back on to her elbow as she finished the last of her tea, upending the dregs from the cup into the dust beside her. The sun was rising. It was time to get to work. She had animals to buy and supplies to organise. She thought she might take a house for a few months, or a houseboat at the very least. Camping was fine, but a proper bed and somewhere to wash without the possibility of an audience was an attractive proposition.

* * * *

Jones began to deeply resent the time she was wasting hanging about Srinagar waiting for the Merton party. She made all the preparations she could in the meantime. Her tents were mended. She sold the large horse she had ridden up from Bombay and replaced him with a smaller pony she named Dancer, more suitable for the mountain paths with his quick, neat gait. She acquired three additional mules to carry their equipment over the mountains. She repeatedly checked the animals’ feet. She bought a small flock of sheep and a couple of goats to accompany them rather than buying them along the way when they needed meat and arranged to collect them when they were ready to leave. She had bought blocks of tea and sacks of barley and dried fruit in case supplies were scant on the trail. She was planning to pick up some yaks in Kargil if the mules and horses found it heavy going, to give them a break.

The rest of the time, she worked on her translation of the green book. She had finally ground to a halt with it, despite having dug out her father’s journal that covered the period of her mother’s death, fortuitously tucked in with the possessions she had left behind with Sonam. Tediously, it was written largely in cypher and took time to translate. It wasn’t a difficult code—he used to say that it was merely in order to avoid prying eyes—but nevertheless, she didn’t have the key to it. She needed her father’s other notebooks and possibly the advice of Jamyang, her father’s old friend at the monastery at Leh.

There was a sketch-map of the place they’d been camped when her mama died. On the next page, there was one of the cave system he had been exploring at the time. They were in the Dras Valley and they would be passing extremely close by on their journey after the difficult Zoji La mountain pass. She wasn’t sure exactly where, and his notes were woeful on that count, presumably because the place had been fixed in his memory. Despite that, she was sure that with a little exertion and help from Sonam, she could find it.