Page 69 of The Bedlam Stacks

‘Good.’ I finished my rum. ‘Do you mind if I have some honey?’

‘Have the lot, get it off my table. I only want the wax.’

‘Thanks.’

He watched me spread the honey over some bread. ‘Are you drawing a bee?’

‘Y . . . es.’ I tipped the bread so that the head-splodge would run and make antennae, then showed him.

He laughed. It showed how he had been when he was younger. Mild-mannered and handsome. In a shilling-spin of an instant I realised that he wasn’t crude work but the ruin of something fine. The same as everything else here. I felt ashamed for not having noticed before. There was a knack to seeing how things had used to be but I’d never had it; I was no archaeologist. The new understanding lit up the edges of my mind and like always they were closer and more worn than I would have liked or thought.

‘Listen,’ I said at last. ‘Once I’m gone, get everyone out of here. The army will be coming. The British army.’

‘What?’

‘No one thought we would be able to do this. Come out with cinchona cuttings, I mean. The real point of this expedition was to make a good map and give the army a reason to come. Clem is Sir Clements; his death is a good enough reason, and they’ll use it.’

He frowned. ‘What would you have done if he hadn’t got himself killed?’

‘He didn’t get himself killed, I did. I could have stopped him but I didn’t because I had orders to do it if it looked like we wouldn’t be able to bring out any cuttings.’ It came out like a confession more than an explanation. I swallowed. He wasn’t even looking at me now, but hard at the floor. ‘I’m sorry. It was better than waiting for the Navy to shell Lima—’

‘How the fuck is it better?’

‘Because they won’t come at all if I can bring out some cuttings now. Do you think Martel would help if I told him it was that or the army?’

‘No, I think he’d shoot you for having made a fool of him.’

‘What about you?’ I asked, business-like and clear, and hating myself.

He straightened as if I’d let a little firework go off too close to him. I thought he was going to kill me; for being a snake, for bringing it all to his home – for not, in the end, being a thing like my grandfather, though I’d brought his ghost. When he did speak again, his voice was weakening. ‘I can’t take plant cuttings.’ He looked up just enough to show me his eyes. There was a haze over the colour, those grey penny-scratches I’d noticed before but more pronounced even since this morning. ‘I can’t see small things close to. But I will take you through. We can go in daylight when the pollen trails won’t show so much.’

‘You can get us past . . . whoever watches the border?’

‘Yes.’

I pushed my hand, still sore, round the hook of my cane. I was fitter than I had been at home, much, but miles through the woods and miles back was still impossible. ‘Can we ride through?’

‘No. But it will only take a couple of days, and I can help your leg.’

‘How?’

‘If I can get you walking, will you come with me?’

I frowned. ‘Yes. But—’

‘Good. Meet me by St Thomas after the funeral. Bring what you’d be taking with you to go back to Azangaro. I’ll take the tent from Markham’s things.’ He was quiet for a second. I couldn’t tell if he was angry. It was much worse than his normal bad temper. ‘I can tell Martel you’re dead. If you go back avoiding Bedlam and Azangaro once you have your cuttings, he’ll never know different. I can show you how to go through Bolivia. There are Indians who will help you if you tell them you came from here. It’ll take years to grow a quinine plantation, won’t it?’

‘Yes,’ I said. Exactly what I’d hoped would happen was happening, but it was a Pyrrhic victory now it was here. I hadn’t realised even when he had been gone that what he thought of me mattered. I’d been pleased, in that stupid little-boy way, that he had thought I was more or less acceptable even when Clem wasn’t.

‘By the time he hears of it, the cuttings could have come from anywhere.’

‘Right.’

‘Good then.’

I left him riveting the markayuq leathers, slowly, because he was doing it by touch. Before I went, I fitted a bowl over the honey and put it in the cupboard so he wouldn’t catch the smell of it. In the little chapel I fell asleep wondering if he might just shoot me anyway now, whether I looked like his friend or not.

PART FOUR