Page 68 of The Bedlam Stacks

‘Where did you find Jamaica rum out here?’ I asked, picking up the bottle. It was three-quarters full still, although the date on the label was from the middle of last century. ‘This is what the smugglers at home bring in,’ I said.

‘I know.’

I felt the way I did when I was about to dive into deep water. The last pause was to look for shadows that might be rocks. There were plenty that might have been, but nothing broke the surface and the more I looked the fewer there were. ‘Which is . . . why you speak last century’s English. And you recognised me. At Martel’s. And . . . that letter was for you, not your uncle.’

He nodded once, very slightly.

‘Inti’s story was true. You disappeared for seventy years.’

‘Yes.’

‘Where?’

‘Just . . .’ he waved towards the forest. ‘About half a mile inside. It was the same as yesterday. But longer.’

‘Jesus, Raphael.’

‘What was I meant to say?’ he snapped.

‘I’m not Jesusing at you. I meant, what a bloody horrible thing to happen to anyone. What happens, how do you not starve to death? Or – age?’

He lifted his shoulder. ‘It isn’t sleep. You stop, it’s like being frozen. Blink and it’s gone. When you wake it looks like the light changes suddenly.’ He was quiet for a while. ‘You go out for a few days at first when you’re small, then a month, then a year, then three; little intervening spells in-between – fifteen minutes, twenty – but those get longer too when you come up to a big one. Anyone here will tell you, everyone knows how priests are, everyone . . . counts, from the second you arrive.’ He looked tired. ‘Harry soon found out. I mean your grandfather. He was here when it happened.’ He was looking into the rum. ‘When I came back there was a letter from him with his address.’

‘Did you write?’

‘No. Inti said his son had stopped coming. It seemed a bit late.’

I poured us both some more rum, thinking. ‘How long can it last? One of these . . . frozen spells.’

‘A hundred years, if you’re healthy otherwise. If not . . . two hundred. Longer. You never wake properly.’ He sounded like he was staring into an endlessly deep gorge. I didn’t ask if he knew anyone who had slept for two hundred years.

‘So all priests have it . . . how?’

‘Other way round. If you have it, you become a priest here.’

‘How do they know which children to send? The – people who bring children, I mean,’ I said, not wanting to say Chuncho when he didn’t like the word. ‘You wouldn’t know if a baby had catalepsy.’

‘They bring us when we’re ten.’ He breathed between sentences, for long enough to let me squeak if I wanted to, to make him say what was in the forest, who the people were, but I didn’t want to. ‘There are only a few families left that carry the disease, so they know more or less who to watch. It’s rare now; sometimes you wait a hundred years for a child to manifest it. Which is why it was so late, before they brought Aquila. He’ll be next, after me, when he’s old enough. Well. He almost is. I was his age when I took over.’

‘And when he can take over, what happens to you?’

‘I can leave.’

‘And go where?’

He nodded towards the forest where the pollen glow looked black-striped, because it silhouetted the trees. ‘Home. You do your time in Bedlam and after that they take care of you. There’s a monastery.’

‘We’re not talking about some little tribe of raiders getting ratty about their territory, are we?’

‘No.’ He hesitated as if he wouldn’t go on, but he was only choosing words. ‘The border isn’t about territory, exactly. It’s a quarantine line. Sick people on this side, healthy people on the other side. It’s a religious . . . do you know?’

‘Clem said you have to be whole, for the gods. He said human sacrifices were always healthy virgins, in Inca times.’

‘Oh, they still are,’ he said, shaking his head. He put his hands up a little when I widened my eyes at him. ‘I knew a boy. But yes. And that’s holy land, in there. Like the Vatican. So. If you’ve got a limp, you’re out. But priests are immune to everything; it’s something to do with what we already have. I don’t know. So we’ve always been sent out to the hospital colonies.’ He was rubbing his hand down his other wrist like he was pushing away something crawling. ‘Then there was smallpox in Cuzco and it became much stricter. No one from this side could cross. Then the Spanish arrived too and they closed it permanently. There used to be half a dozen hospitals all along this river but Bedlam is all that’s left and they only maintain this place because they need the salt. I’m not supposed to be talking about it,’ he added abruptly.

‘It’s all right. I don’t care who they are. I was only asking because I was trying to tell if by monastery you mean a hut on a cliff somewhere or a nice place with hot water and proper doctors.’

He smiled. ‘It’s not a hut.’