Page 31 of The Bedlam Stacks

‘Come on, man, a rough figure would be—’

‘I said,’ he interrupted, not loudly. He had never been loud. ‘Not today. It would be a long talk. I’m tired enough already.’

‘All right, all right,’ Clem said. His crossness had taken on an edge of alarm. I felt it too. I had to step back. Raphael was too sharp and too strong, and he was standing side on to us as if he meant to punch one of us in the face. It might only have been how he happened to stop, but I was nearly sure he knew exactly what it looked like, and whether or not he was really thinking of hitting someone, standing close to him had made my spine fuse up. The need to back off was there in the air, like negative magnetism.

‘Mr Martel will burn this place down if anything happens to you, and it’s not safe for you to go off by yourselves,’ he said quietly, more to me than to Clem, like I was an almost acceptable halfway mark. ‘Do you understand? You don’t go anywhere alone. I will take you round on the supply road in the morning. And you can see for yourselves that there’s nothing left, and then you can get out of here before anyone guesses why you came.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

He didn’t look as if he believed me, but he started towards the wharves again. We had to rush through the blue shadows of the stacks in the shade of boulders. The smell of steam hung in those places. The air writhed and the water boiled as it came in over the glass beach.

Chiselled on all the wharves were notices to keep out of the sun in Spanish and that odd, Spanish-phonetic Quechua. There was a barnacle-rough ladder and a set of steps. When we reached the top, there were more steps, far more, spiralling up the stack. They were stone for only a few yards, then the stone crumbled and was replaced by weatherbeaten wood. I thought Raphael would start up them, but he stopped instead by what I thought at first was a cargo winch whose pulley was a dot hundreds of feet above us. There was a loop at the end, the knot cemented into place by age and run through a straight metal bar to make a flat step, broad enough for two or three people to stand on or one to sit down on it like a swing. He nodded us across.

‘On there and don’t fall off.’

‘Really?’

‘It’s higher than St Peter’s. Walk if you like.’

I stepped on and wrapped my arm around the rope. Clem followed me, more unsteadily. He had never been a rigging sort of sailor. Raphael kicked a lever. As we started to rise, he stepped up with us. His weight made almost no difference to the speed. His clothes smelled of burned honey now, from the wax he had used on the statue.

After a few seconds we were well above the docks and passing the great twists in the glass. The winch had been built just where the strongest sun never reached, but there were still intensely hot patches, as hot as open ovens, while snow still feathered only forty feet away downriver. When we rose up beside the falling counterweight, it was an old Spanish cannon stamped with a pomegranate sigil.

‘How big is the obsidian flow?’ Clem said. He was still shivering from the river. ‘If you ever stirred yourself to find out.’

‘It comes from up there. Those mountains are all volcanoes. There are streams of it all around these hills, if you dig.’

By the time we were near the top, the view back down the river must have been fifty miles long. Further up, where it disappeared into steep turns and spars in the cliffs, the water churned white and was soon lost. Away in that direction, the mountains were flinty. Waterfalls made fine white lines down their faces, so far off that I couldn’t see them moving.

The gantry was built just in front of a rock that had been carved into the shape of the nearest mountain, a sawtooth monster capped with what must have been permanent snow.

‘Don’t snigger too much,’ Raphael said, ‘but people are going to ask if I introduced you to the mountain and they’ll think it’s strange if I haven’t.’

‘Introduce us to the . . .?’ Clem said.

Raphael motioned over his shoulder at the replica. ‘Consider it an introduction to the local lord. If I have, everyone will know you’re all right. Leave him an offering.’

‘Like what?’ I said. ‘What do mountains like?’

‘Silver. Shells. Salt. Nothing stupid; people will look to see what you left.’

I put down some of the glass shells I’d found and Clem turned out his pockets for his shinier coins.

‘People believe the mountain is alive?’

‘Mm.’ He watched us. ‘Stand straight, look polite. Cultural experience,’ he added when we exchanged an uncertain look. ‘This is the Inca tour.’ He glanced towards the mountain and said something quiet in Quechua, which made Clem squeak.

‘Did you call it Father?’

‘Yes,’ he said, drawing out the sibilant in a way that didn’t in the least encourage any more questions. ‘Shall we go? Before you freeze.’

As soon as Raphael had turned away, Clem beamed at me and made a hallelujah gesture at the sky, and then a little apologetic bow at the mountain. I laughed. Raphael was waiting at the corner where the path turned, not for us but for a pair of men and a wooden cart with one front wheel coming the other way. The cart was the one I’d seen from the boat, full of pineapples trussed down with a lattice of rope. One of the men had a withered arm and without being asked, Raphael pulled down the hook of the winch to loop it under some of the rope straps.

‘Thanks very much, Father,’ the carter said in what I only just recognised as Spanish, but he was speaking carefully, and he had only started after a glance towards us. ‘Who are these gentlemen, then?’

‘They’re just visiting,’ Raphael said. He was so much clearer than the carter that he might as well have been speaking English. ‘Exploring. We were just introducing them to the mountain.’

‘Oh, lovely,’ the man said happily. He and his friend both glanced up at the mountain and then away again, just shy of an obeisance. He smiled at me. ‘He’s a good still mountain,’ he explained. ‘Not feisty at all. People here are very kind and steady.’