Page 14 of The Bedlam Stacks

I made Clem practise taking cuttings every day until we ran out of apple trees. He still couldn’t do it very well, but he was seasick and I hoped it was the nausea making him unsteady, not his natural clumsiness. He kept to their cabin except at mealtimes and Minna moved into the mess room, where she took over the long table with charts and squashed the crew, who didn’t know what to do with her, down one end.

‘Evening,’ she said when I stopped to sit down and have a rest between the hold and the kitchen on Christmas Eve. The crew had made an effort, which had surprised me, because left to myself I would have forgotten about it; but there were as many candles as the mate would allow, and wreaths on all the narrow doors, full of oranges pincushioned with cloves that made all the passageways smell of the holidays. The cook, who was German and had grown his moustache like Prince Albert’s, had made nearly nothing but mince pies and mulled wine for three days and it was wonderful. I couldn’t remember when I’d last eaten so badly or so happily. ‘Eat my pie for me,’ Minna added. ‘I haven’t wanted it. I’m off everything except tooth powder.’

‘You’ll have to call it Minty. What are you doing?’ We had met some rough water, and above the table copper pots and pans swung on their hooks. Their shadows oscillated over the chart she had been looking at. A few of the candles tipped wax on it but we pretended not to notice. The mate was threatening to put them all out if they proved too hazardous. The pipes under the grille floor rattled as someone turned the heating up. Nearly at once, hot air drifted up round our ankles, pumped round from the engine furnace. Minna dropped her set of compasses when the table tipped and lifted her hands to surrender.

‘I’m planning your route. I was trying to work out what would be quickest. And cheapest. The India Office accounting forms are formidable.’

I twisted my head so I could see it upside down. My spine twanged. I tried to ignore it. ‘How long will it take, do you think? Cuttings are all right for a month but anything after . . .’

‘All being well, from the coast to the Andes, it’s about ten days. Through the Andes – it isn’t too far as the crow flies but of course it will be longer. I can’t find any record of how high the pass through the mountains is, so I don’t know the real distance. But I’d say give that a few days as well. Then there’s a river called the Tambopata – you’re close when all the place names go into Quechua – and after that . . . no one knows. New Bethlehem isn’t on any maps. It’s too far into the interior. That’s when you’ll need a guide. So say three weeks there, three weeks back? But that’s an absolute guess.’

‘You keep saying you.’

‘I can’t come like this,’ she said quietly. Her eyes went briefly past me to be sure Clem wasn’t here yet. ‘I don’t think I’ll be able to carry it to term anyway but . . . I don’t want to take the chance of falling off a mule or drinking something horrible. I don’t even know what the altitude does. Do you?’

‘Do you think I’ve got a clutch of other female acquaintances in a cupboard somewhere? I haven’t. I don’t know anything about it.’

‘Really? Handsome bachelors tend to know . . . sometimes . . .’

‘No bastard children kicking round China, sorry. I’m not that exciting. What will you tell Clem?’

She looked pained. ‘I’ll make noises about there being no plumbing in Amazonian mission colonies, I suppose.’

‘Say he shouldn’t be worrying about both of us. Worrying about me is enough and I have to be there.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘You haven’t an extensive history of minding about plumbing.’

‘He’s coming,’ she murmured.

Clem dropped down on the bench next to me. ‘This is not all right. I was never seasick in the Navy, was I?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘But those were bigger ships and you were always outside.’

‘Been outside,’ he said. ‘Got wet. Not worth it.’

Minna shifted with a tiny creak of the whalebone in her corset. It was almost exactly like the creak that rigging makes in a breeze and, although it actually represented something wholly unfamiliar, it was homely. ‘Um . . . I’ve worked out your route, more or less.’

He noticed at once. ‘Our route? You’re coming with us.’

‘I’m not. I’d be a distraction if push came to shove.’

‘Oh, what on earth do you mean?’

‘I mean,’ she said, ‘that if you’re arrested, you could fight your way out and take the cuttings. If I’m held hostage, you’ll give up the cuttings in a heartbeat. Honestly, why do you think the East India Company loved unmarried childless men so much?’ She inclined her head at me. ‘What I will do is stay at Arequipa and arrange as fast a passage to Ceylon as our money can buy. I think we might need it.’

‘I swore I’d never leave you behind just because it wasn’t safe. We’d never have done anything together otherwise. You always said—’

‘It’s not about safety, it’s about the integrity of the expedition. If I go, you’re more likely to fail. You’re hostage to the first person who works out that you’ll drop it all if he grabs me, and I’m not big enough to reliably fight anyone off. If I don’t go, you might just bluff it out with your cuttings intact.’ She paused. ‘And if it does all go wrong, you’re going to need someone to come and fetch you out of prison.’

‘Bugger prison. We’ve been everywhere, and you’ve never been kidnapped or thrown off a building or trampled by a llama, or anything—’

‘Markham,’ she laughed. ‘You can’t worry about Merrick and about me at the same time. While you ought not to be worrying about either of us, I know that you will, and this expedition hangs on your mind being on the job, and on someone knowing what it is you need to bring back.’ She tipped her eyelashes at me. ‘The expendable element in this equation is me.’

‘I don’t worry about Merrick! He’s – perfectly capable.’

Although we had agreed for her to say it, it still stung to see what Clem thought. There was only a tiny pause before he rallied properly, but it was still a pause.