Page 54 of The Bedlam Stacks

‘Oh, thank God.’

‘Snow’s still here, I see,’ he said, nodding towards the woods.

‘Never warmed up once.’ I paused, stuck, because I had a handful of glass and I needed both hands to push myself up again. I had to stretch to put the glass on the worktop beside the stove. The floor, I noticed, was scoured clean.

‘Where’s himself?’

‘Out. I don’t know. I upset him. I haven’t seen him properly for days.’

He snorted. ‘Only you. Only you would manage to upset someone you’re supposed to be charming into not shooting you. Nicely done.’

‘Yes,’ I said, feeling inept. I managed finally to get myself into the chair next to his. ‘But he hasn’t shot me, at least.’

‘Right, but let’s say the jury’s still out on that one?’

‘Probably.’ The joy at seeing him had deflated. He was right. It had been abundantly stupid. I wanted to say it wasn’t my fault that a letter for a relative Raphael could barely have known had upset him so much, but it was the kind of thing I should have guessed. Family in places like this was important. There was so little else.

‘Oh, it’s so warm,’ he said happily. ‘God, I love this place. I wish Minna were here.’

I looked away. Something else he thought was my fault. He was annoyed about having had to go by himself. I didn’t point out that he had wanted to, at the time. It never helped, to quote his own motives back at him.

‘Listen – give me an hour to sit down, but then take me on a tour, yes? Say you’ve explored the town, Merrick,’ he said when I hesitated.

‘Yes,’ I lied. ‘Of course I have.’

The first stop was Inti, and I was relieved when she seemed just as pleased with Clem as she had been with me. She was soon telling stories and, unlike me, he knew what to ask. Over fresh coffee, without milk because I couldn’t chase down the goat this time, she explained how the village had come to be here. One of the markayuq, the eldest, was supposed to have conquered it from some wildmen who had lived here before, then petrified to watch over the spot. I would have taken it at face value, but Clem was keen to unearth a hitherto unknown pre-Inca culture. He found a likely looking place in the steep public garden on the second stack and set to digging a trench to see if he could uncover any older walls. It was bitter in the snow, but the children loved it, and the dig soon became a sort of show to watch while people ate their pineapple and drank their coffee. He dug deep, in steps, right down to the glass stratum about eight feet under the surface. Towards noon he found the corners of an old building, but it was from Inca times. He showed the children, and me, how the bricks had been worked into the bedrock, just like they had at the church.

‘Typically Incan,’ he explained. ‘Look at that. Marvellous. The skill it would have needed.’

‘What was the point of building like this?’ I asked. ‘It would have been easier to cut the rock away.’

‘Because the bedrock is alive,’ he said. ‘You don’t know who you’re chiselling into, do you? You heard Raphael talk about the mountain. It’s alive, the markayuq are alive, the creation story is that people were made of rock, not clay; it’s all the same thing. Stone lives.’

A small rock we had already put aside fell back into the pit and he leaned down to move it, but there was a murmur above us and one of the children, a little girl with unevenly arranged limbs, hurried to take it from him. She showed it to Inti.

‘What’s the matter?’ Clem called up.

‘It could be a living stone. It fell on you twice,’ Inti explained. She held it up to the light to see.

‘How can you tell?’

‘They’re very white. Yes, check with Father Raphael,’ she added to the girl. Some of the other children darted off after her, as if a little rock were the most fascinating thing they had found all year.

‘See?’ Clem said to me.

The tiny tremor, which I hadn’t even realised was a tremor, that had disturbed the white rock before, became the rumble of a real earthquake right in the bones of the mountain. They made a sound, a kind of mechanical thrum. Stones tumbled on the mountainside and a sheet of snow swept towards the river, where it waterfalled off the edge of the cliff. A few people made a bow towards the peak and crossed themselves.

‘No wonder they think it’s alive,’ I said.

Clem’s spade chinked. ‘I’m at the glass,’ he said. ‘I don’t think anyone could have built much on that. There’s nothing but plant matter caught in it, no sign of habitation. Shame. I wanted some pre-Incan wildmen. Hard to tell what’s a story and what’s not, isn’t it? I wish they’d stick to the facts. Still,’ he said suddenly, frowning, ‘it’s interesting, isn’t it. That the markayuq . . . change the history of the place they watch over.’

‘Is it?’ I said, because I was freezing.

‘Yes. Think about it. Everyone here agrees with Inti; this ground was conquered, even though it demonstrably, archaeologically wasn’t. The man who did it is right over there; they think he turned to stone to memorialise the occasion. The statues are little loci of local history, but it’s false history. So in the moment a markayuq is made, your history changes. There’s more importance to a place. Important things happened there. Even if they . . . didn’t. A markayuq is a desirable thing partly because having one means you’re entitled to a more glorious past. History is malleable here.’

‘Or when you live in the middle of bloody nowhere with nothing except pineapples, “I came, I saw, I conquered” is a much more interesting story to tell your children than “I came, I thought it would more or less do, settled down”,’ I said. ‘Can we go inside?’

‘No, no, you must draw the dendrographs for me, before it gets dark.’