Page 42 of The Bedlam Stacks

People were turning back to Raphael and half-sentences came at us, all interrupted by the others: what is he, you have to, he’ll be, for God’s sake. It was real shock and it only lasted a moment before Raphael went after him. He didn’t go quickly. He came up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder.

‘Markham.’

When Clem turned round, Raphael punched him in the face. It floored him. Raphael caught the collar of his coat and dragged him back over the salt. He threw him the last yard and Clem landed in a spray of pine needles, still conscious, just. No one seemed startled. Instead there was a collective easing. Some of the women sighed and turned away back to town. A few young men hovered near the border, watching the forest like they expected something to come howling out.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Clem coughed. ‘You – raving lunatic—’

‘Shut up.’ Raphael pulled him up and dragged him back towards the church. Clem twisted, but Raphael was exactly as immovable as he looked and none of the struggling swayed him so much as half an inch.

‘Put him down,’ I said. I sounded like a Navy officer still. ‘It was a mistake.’

‘I’m not going to hurt him, I’m going to rebaptise him.’

‘You’ll hurt him by accident. Stop.’ However badly balanced I was now, I was still taller and I thumped my forearm into his chest to make him stop. He thought about making me move and I saw it, and then I saw it fade, but not altogether. He leaned back slowly.

‘It was a misunderstanding,’ I said. ‘He thought you were pointing to the people in the woods when you talked about scribes. He hasn’t seen you talk about time. He was unconscious at Martel’s.’

‘People won’t talk to him unless he’s baptised again,’ he said, much more quietly. I felt like I was trying to stand directly in front of a furnace. It was worse for knowing he was justified; Martel had said that everyone here would be killed if Clem were. ‘Get out of my way.’

I stood aside, and helped Clem up. He was too heavy for me to support and still foggy, so Raphael took him by the arm, not gently but not roughly either. The new baptism wasn’t much more than having his head dunked into the font, but when I looked back people were watching.

‘In nomine of whatever you think is looking after you. There. Congratulations.’ He dumped him on the ground, protected from any accusations of unceremoniousness because nobody else spoke English. ‘I’ll find you a towel.’

Clem propped his wrists on his knees. ‘He’s bloody strong.’

‘I saw.’ I knelt down too, slowly, then had to sit and cross my legs. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine. I suppose being attacked by the natives is part and parcel of the job. Minna will love it.’ He cracked his jaw and winced. ‘I thought he was going to kill me.’

‘You’re all right.’

‘No more getting in the way of psychopaths, hey?’ he said, nearly smiling, but not quite. ‘He could have hurt you.’

I nodded. He could have. But it felt good to have stood in front of him without flinching and, however stupid it was, I wanted to do it again. ‘He didn’t though.’

‘God, I really thought . . .’ Clem had the shaken look new recruits have when they see guns go off for the first time at a real ship instead of a hulk in the Bristol Channel. ‘He’s mad, isn’t he. He would have done it if I’d been too far in to drag out.’

‘I think he could have dragged you quite far,’ I said. I found his handkerchief and scooped up some snow with it so that he could hold it to his chin. ‘But I don’t think he’s mad. Martel will raze the place if anything happens to us and everyone certainly thought something was about to happen.’

‘Yes.’ He sniffed, then winced. ‘That was interesting. That was fear-of-God shock, not fear of some fellow with a bow and arrow. Or Martel. You know, I’ve got a theory about this place.’

‘What?’

He pushed his wet hair back. I’d never noticed before, but he was beginning to lose it, just up from his temples. ‘You know the Incas practised human sacrifice? You find the bodies sometimes, miles up in the mountains. All the victims are children. Completely perfect children, which isn’t a coincidence in a society that didn’t know siblings marrying was a bad idea. Perfect teeth, virgins, everything. The idea is, you see, nothing impure for the gods.’ He lifted his eyebrows. ‘Notice it was him who fetched me. No one else crossed, even though it was an emergency and they wanted to. He’s the only healthy person we’ve seen here. That’s why he can go over. It’s holy ground.’

I looked back at the town and the ragged line of people limping over the bridge. ‘So cripples and invalids are . . . impure.’

‘Right, exactly. So not allowed. They’re left here, past a clearly marked line, in salt, which in itself is all about cleanliness, isn’t it. And the graveyard, and the altar, look – both beyond the salt.’

I hadn’t noticed before about the altar but he was right. It was exactly on the salt, or where the salt would have been under the church floor. Standing in front of it yesterday, Raphael and I had still been on the Bedlam side, but the statue behind it wasn’t. Which was why, I realised, the church’s layout was inverted, with the altar at the wrong end of the cross. The building was a lot older than the Conquest; it must have been a native shrine long before it was a church. When the Jesuits arrived they must have tacked on the spire and kept the old altar in place.

‘That’s interesting,’ I said dutifully. ‘Was testing your theory worth being punched in the head?’

‘Are you joking? There are about fourteen academic papers in that, which you’d know if you ever stirred yourself to join any societies.’ He looked back at the border. ‘I wonder why he went in after me.’

‘Martel.’

‘I bet he could get away with losing one of us,’ Clem muttered. ‘One could be an accident.’