Page 18 of The Bedlam Stacks

When he had mentioned Raphael, I’d thought Martel was talking about a dog, but Quispe came back with a man. Martel pushed out the chair opposite mine with his ankle but didn’t introduce him and left a vague impression in the air of some kind of clerk or bodyguard, someone whose name wouldn’t matter. The man didn’t seem like either. He held himself very straight, not like a servant, in good but old clothes that must just have been ironed, because I caught the smell of hot cotton when he came in past me. He was Indian, but from a different nation to Quispe and Hernandez and the boys. He didn’t have the Incan nose and his hair was cut short, and he was far taller. He moved so slowly it was ostentatious, the way very strong men do, and I wrote him off after about half a second as probably an arrogant bastard, although after meeting so many beaten-down people on the road, it was a relief to see someone who looked like he might punch anybody trying to make him sweep a yard.

He stopped when he saw me, just before reaching his chair. His expression opened as if he knew me, but then he saw he was wrong and sat down. Martel thumped him to say hello. It didn’t sway him in the least and Martel looked as if he might have hurt his hand. Raphael was still watching me hard, taking measurements. Whoever he had mistaken me for, I must have been a good lookalike.

‘Merrick Tremayne,’ I said, when nobody introduced us properly.

They still didn’t, and nor did he, but he shook my hand. He felt like he was made of hydraulics. He only glanced at me before his eyes skipped past my shoulder. Our boys were staring at him. Quispe was trying to give them some bread. The younger one shrank close to the older one, who finally noticed the bread and took it quickly. Hernandez rubbed the little one’s hair and said something in Quechua to distract him. Raphael looked away from them and down at the edge of the table. That he knew he had frightened them was written across his face, but he seemed resigned too and I wondered if there was caste trouble I didn’t know about, something that couldn’t be made better by smiling.

‘What was all that?’ I asked him, but it was Martel who answered.

He was pouring me some wine. ‘The Indian nations beyond the mountains are known for their savagery, you see. It’s often hard to make any Indians from this side work with them. They call them all Chuncho. They say it means barbarian, but I think barbarian sounds rather more genteel than what it really is. Heard the term?’

‘Viking,’ I said, feeling odd, because I knew them from stories, but since Dad had put them in with elves and dragons I hadn’t thought they were real. They were the men who came from the deep woods in winter and burned everything they didn’t take, from Indians or from white men. They weren’t either one, and nobody – not the Inca nor the Spanish kings – had ever made much of a dent in their lands beyond the mountains; if anyone tried, all that was left in the end was charcoal and salted ground. ‘I mean . . . raiders.’

Martel laughed. ‘No, that’s good. Vikings. I’ll steal that from you, if you don’t mind. It’s rather difficult to explain to foreigners what they are.’

Raphael looked away from us in a way that made it clear he thought it was all hyperbole. It was hard not to agree with him. If he was from one of the tribes in the rainforest, he was thoroughly hispanicised. His clothes were all Spanish and he had a rosary around his wrist; no tattoos, no native jewellery, not even an earring.

‘But . . . you two are colleagues?’ I said, not sure why Martel had called him down.

‘Raphael works for me. He’ll take you over the mountains.’

‘Mr Martel,’ I said in the pause that followed, struggling, ‘you said before that you were expecting us. I’m . . . worried that you might have mistaken us for someone else.’

‘No, no. Someone came up early last week from Lake Titicaca to tell me to expect a pair of Englishmen. I have a sort of . . . alert out,’ he said ruefully. ‘Anyone planning to go over the mountains comes this way; it’s the only decent pass for miles. It can be dangerous for foreigners. This used to be quinine country and there are still men working for the northern suppliers who would shoot anyone who might threaten the monopoly, you see?’

‘Sorry – what? Quinine monopoly?’ I said. I only just had the thinking capacity to lie, and felt pleased to have managed it. The coca tea was clearing the haze, just. There were still some dry leaves left, so I made myself another cup. ‘I didn’t know any quinine came out of Caravaya now.’

‘Well, it doesn’t any more. It used to. It’s mostly been harvested out – certainly there’s nothing like enough trees to be of any commercial use – but the northern suppliers pay a great deal to make sure no one takes anything. Every so often we have expeditionaries coming through here trying for cuttings, and you only need the one tree for that. The Dutch are trying to raise a plantation in Java, apparently. There are rumours that the India Office are too.’

He and Raphael were both watching me hard. In spite of the altitude, gears I hadn’t used for a long time clicked into place and my thinking sped up. It shouldn’t have been remarkable, but I’d been worried that they were all rusted and I had a surge of happiness at hearing them whirr like new again.

‘Oh. That sounds . . . complicated,’ I said.

‘Does it?’ said Martel. ‘God, I suppose I’m too used to the whole headache of it. Essentially . . . there are cinchona woods up and down Peru, as I’m sure you know.’

I nodded.

‘But we’re a poor country. In order to drive up the price, there is a monopoly. We make sure that no one but local suppliers take quinine or cinchona trees from Peru. If they did, our economy would be crippled overnight; it’s quite as simple as that. Do you know what our largest export is? The one we’d rely on entirely without quinine.’

‘No.’

‘Guano. Oh, you laugh, but it is. Anyway, there are a few cinchona woods in Bolivia but it would be hard work to get through. Too much rainforest, not enough road. Peru is the only country in the world with a meaningful supply of cinchona trees. You follow so far?’

‘I think so.’

‘Now, it would be stupid to have everyone growing the stuff and selling it. There would be a huge supply and the price would go down. Not good. So it’s run like the diamond trade. You let only a few diamonds out of the country at a time. There are cinchona forests elsewhere, but they’re kept untouched now, except for one cluster in the north. If someone is caught trying to set up a cinchona farm or a quinine supply unauthorised . . .’ He made a gun of his first two fingers and touched his own temple. ‘So, members of the northern monopoly pay to keep people out of the southern regions. If someone catches you and convinces the right person that you’re here for quinine, he would be paid a lot of money and you would be shot. It’s an unfortunate place to be white at the moment, the Andes.’

‘Oh. I didn’t . . . how dangerous? Should – we not be here?’

‘Well, may I ask why you are here?’ he said gently.

‘We – coffee.’ I was good at being nervous. I’d always had the right face for it, and with my leg now, it suited even better. I pushed my hand through my hair. ‘We’re hoping to get into the Sandia Valley – towards a town called New Bethlehem. Something above five thousand feet anyway. We’re hoping to find plants more resistant to colder weather.’

He swept his eyes down at the wine and then back up at me. ‘That is exactly where the last of the cinchona woods are.’

‘Yes, I . . . know that. I’m a gardener. God, I know what this must sound like. I knew they were an indigenous plant, I just – I didn’t know about the politics around them.’

Hernandez and Quispe were listening too now. Over by the fire, the boys looked up, worried. Clem was still unconscious. I’d missed it often, but it came back with a nasty sharpness then, that I’d used to be as strong and slow as Raphael. I lifted my hands up from the cutlery and let them shake a little. It was easy; ever since China, they had had a tiny natural tremor when I was anxious, although usually I could stop it if I concentrated. It was much worse here than at home.