Page 55 of The Bedlam Stacks

‘Clem, I might die of cold,’ I said. I hadn’t told him what had happened to me the last time I had tried to draw the carvings on the border. Having offended Raphael was bad enough. I wasn’t sure I could cope with looking any more useless.

‘Oh, don’t be silly. It won’t take you half an hour,’ he said. ‘Besides, you shoved me in the river and then you made me go back to Azangaro by myself. Consider this penance.’

I stayed quiet about the second part. I was too tired to fall out again. Once we had climbed out of the trench and I started for the border, I stopped when Clem didn’t come. ‘Are you . . .?’

‘I’m staying here,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Inti’s giving me a Quechua lesson.’

‘So I go out to the border in the freezing cold to draw your dendrographs while you sit and learn Quechua in the warm?’

‘Come on, old man, we might be off any day, and it would be such a waste not to have some record of them. I’ve already used my daguerreotype slides. And I’ve a singular resistance to drawing lessons.’

Raphael would be on the border. I wondered if I could finish my original drawing from memory, or through some binoculars.

‘All right,’ I said, but paused as the children came running back. They all climbed straight down into the pit to start sifting through the soil at the bottom in a clatter of sharp happy Quechua. They were looking for more of the white stones, and one of them said something about pieces of an old markayuq. One of the girls held up a piece to her ear in the way I’d listened to shells when I was that age. I watched them, full of the feeling that Raphael had told them it was something interesting so that it would be a good afternoon for them.

I couldn’t find any binoculars, so I went to the trees but not right up to the border, and sat down on some roots by St Thomas, my back to him so that no one could come up behind me again. Inti had made me a carving of him from glass, tiny and perfect. It was a good-luck charm – he was the patron saint of gardeners, according to the local church – and I’d had it in my pocket for two days. She said that nobody knew his real name any more, but before the Spanish arrived, he had been a bodyguard for the King in Cuzco. When he first came to Bedlam to escape Pizarro’s men, he had told stories about the Inca courts, but nobody could speak to stone now, apart maybe from Raphael, who evaded the subject. More magic for children, probably, but I couldn’t fault it.

I had been there for a while before I noticed Raphael was just beside the next markayuq on from Thomas. He was smaller than the statue, so he fitted inside its silhouette. He was watching me.

‘If you want to avoid me, don’t stay stuck there, just walk fast,’ I said. ‘I can only chase you for about eight feet.’

He ignored me. ‘Are you sure it’s a good idea to sit there?’

‘No. But Clem wants pictures of these and I don’t want to annoy him again.’

‘Even less than you want to be beaten up and left half-dead on the ground.’

‘I wasn’t half . . .’ I sighed, because I’d breathed too deeply, which still hurt my ribs. ‘He got back this morning. He walked for four days, I didn’t. It’s the least I can do, isn’t it.’

‘For a whingeing little prick who quietly hates you for not being able to walk? I could probably manage less, if it were me.’

‘Which is why you’ve got queues of friends outside the church door,’ I said easily, because it was nice to be sympathised with, even in his annoyed way. ‘But listen, he got there. Azangaro. Martel should be sending men soon.’

He let his weight tip back a little as if the idea of Martel was exhausting. ‘Good.’

‘If they can’t clear the way—’ I began.

‘I’m not taking you across the border.’

‘I know. But you can cross. If I taught you to take cuttings, then perhaps you could go? We’d . . . make it worth your while.’

I thought he would ask what could be worth ending up like the thief on the cliff and I was ready to say we could take him to India with us if we had to, but he didn’t touch it.

‘Maybe,’ he said. He stood so still I thought it might have been catalepsy again. He had been working with his waistcoat undone and a breeze pushed it back to show a flash of the Indian lining. It wasn’t catalepsy. He let the same wind turn his head as if the bones in his neck were on as fine a balance as a weathervane. ‘Maybe,’ he said again, in a deadened echo.

I hesitated, not sure where we stood with each other any more. ‘I’m going for some coffee soon, I can’t feel my hands.’

‘Right,’ he said. He stepped backward over the border, one slow step, and then walked away into the graveyard. If he said anything else, I didn’t hear him. I waited, but after half an hour he still didn’t appear and the snow was blowing in from the river. It sparked coldly in the pollen. Thinking he must have come out further along and gone home without me, I turned back for the church, expecting to find him in the kitchen. He wasn’t. The fire had burned down to embers. I built it up again and settled to finish drawing.

I didn’t notice the dusk falling until I started having trouble seeing the pencil shading. I wound up a pollen lamp without thinking and then stopped as it began to tick around. I leaned back to see through the window to the forest. The wind was gusting in the pollen still, but there were no trails. Suspecting that Clem had stayed at Inti’s for dinner, I cooked myself some quinoa and a cut of the venison someone had brought for some ceremony or other Raphael had performed earlier in the week. I did enough for Raphael too but even after I’d eaten there was still no sign of him. By then the dark was inky. A point of light came over the bridge from the stacks. I thought it would be Clem, but when I opened the door it was Francesca, the baby tied to her back with a green shawl. She looked unsettled to find me and not Raphael, and when she spoke she did it in careful, halting Spanish.

‘I was wondering where Father Raphael was,’ she explained. ‘He was supposed to come and see Juan this afternoon, but he never – has something urgent happened?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘He’s in the woods still, I think.’

She leaned back from me, startled. Her uneven shoulders moved back different distances. ‘He shouldn’t be at this time of night.’

‘Is there anywhere else he goes?’