Page 66 of The Bedlam Stacks

‘I was only out for ten minutes just now,’ I said. ‘Raphael was coming back when I went.’

He smiled. ‘Coming back from where, my dear?’ he said to Raphael. ‘Just at the moment one of the expeditionaries dies and ends up on your altar. Think about it carefully.’

‘I was in the forest. I lost a day and a night.’

Martel must have known about the catalepsy, because he didn’t question it. ‘And what happened to Mr Markham?’

‘He tried to go into the woods last night,’ I said. ‘They brought him back about an hour later.’

‘So, Raphael. Did you kill him or did you only tell someone else to?’

‘Neither. It was just – I was just stuck. It’s happened before. You know it has.’

Martel’s gun was on the table, a pretty revolver with filigree work on the handle. When he picked it up, around the barrel, I thought he only meant to put it away, but he hit Raphael in the face with it. ‘Not good enough. I’m afraid I’ve got to arrest you. We’re going back to Azangaro.’

‘I don’t think—’ I began, less because I was sure of Raphael’s innocence than because it wrenched at something in me to see how the blow had spun him. ‘He’d have killed me too if—’

‘In a world that ran on common sense, yes. But he didn’t want to kill you. He did it because Mr Markham crossed the border, nothing else. It’s held a particular kind of sacrilege and you haven’t seen gibbering religious madmen until you’ve seen these people and their border. But we can’t go now, we’ve just walked up the river. Quispe, keep an eye on him, make sure he doesn’t kill anyone else. If that door has a lock on it, use it,’ he added, nodding towards the chapel.

‘I need him for the funeral,’ I said.

‘Then we shall go straight after.’

It was the moment to tell him about the quinine, but I couldn’t stand there talking any more. Raphael looked like he was about to collapse and I had a strong feeling they would have been happy to leave him on the floor. He had turned his head away just in time and the butt of the gun hadn’t taken out his eye, only grazed the bone below it. I couldn’t tell if he had felt the pain, but he had definitely felt the impact. I levered him out by his elbow to get some snow against his eye and the rest of him away from Martel. I took him into the chapel and put him by the pipes to warm up, and a blanket around him. Quispe followed but he kept back. He looked worried, like he had just watched a boy flicking pebbles at something in a zoo with flimsy fences.

‘I’m fine,’ Raphael said quietly, but he sounded hazy.

‘You can’t feel what you are, don’t be stupid. Stay there.’

‘Wait. Harry, don’t . . .’

‘I’ll be back. Torment Quispe for a few minutes.’ I stayed where I was for a second, my heart thudding. I’d believed him about the catalepsy. There was no need to try and make me believe in fairytales too.

If the catalepsy was a lie, it was one he had thought through very well and maintained despite everything. As if he were just carrying on the day he had lost, from mid afternoon and not early morning, he was exhausted by six and in bed by seven, though usually he was up until midnight. He got up at three in the morning, his internal clock still apparently skewed by hours. There was no lock on the chapel door to keep him from walking straight past Quispe, who was asleep in a chair by the threshold. Like always, Raphael was quiet, but something about the pitch of the water bubbling in the stove woke me up. Half to see if he really was as awake as he would have been at a normal time, half to see if he was all right, I dragged myself up to have a cup of hot water while he made himself coffee. When he saw me, he took down a little jar of rich brown powder and handed it over, with its own small spoon. Because he had been over the border for so long, breathing pollen, it had seeped into his blood and showed now in the veins in the underside of his wrist.

‘Cacao,’ he explained. I’d started to avoid saying cocoa too. It sounded too close to coca, and coco, which meant coconut, and since we both dropped Spanish into English and English into Spanish, it was a bit dangerous.

I didn’t take it. ‘Everyone says that might as well be gold dust.’

‘Someone gave it to me. It’ll help you sleep, anyway.’ There was half a jug of milk almost frozen on the outside window ledge. Raphael tipped it into one of the bronze pans. He paused with his fingertips still on the handle, then picked up a tea towel and folded it across his hand before he moved the pan, which was already hot from having sat on the stove all evening. I smiled, much more pleased with that than I should have been.

‘Four spoons,’ he said, nodding at the jar. ‘It’s already mixed with sugar.’

He had taken his coffee back to the table and, while he let it cool down, he started to rivet together a new seam on what was going to be a set of markayuq leathers, the same I’d seen upstairs. The pegs were all gold but never the same shade and all shaped differently: puma heads and leaves, acorns. Although he had two pollen lamps ticking just in front of him, he was slow with the rivet gun.

‘Why aren’t you escaping?’ I asked. ‘If he accuses you of murder . . .’

‘He won’t. He knows I didn’t do it.’

Outside, in among the tents, a couple of fires were still burning, though I couldn’t see anyone moving about. Martel’s men had put their tents up in an interlocking row so that they all shielded each other from the wind. There was still lamplight inside one of them, and the silhouette of a man reading.

When I came back to the table, Raphael watched me as if he was about to talk, didn’t, then started after I’d almost forgotten that I’d thought he might. ‘I’ve been putting off the bees. We’ve a hive, for wax. I need to take out the honeycombs before we go. Could you help me?’

I put my cup down. Part of me thought I shouldn’t be going into the dark with him while I still wasn’t sure what had happened to Clem.

‘I hate bees,’ he said, and I believed him then, because he was too rigid and too proud to have chosen that for a lie.

‘Let me find my coat.’