‘No, no. Someone came up early last week from Lake Titicaca to tell me to expect a pair of Englishmen. I have a sort of . . . alert out,’ he said ruefully. ‘Anyone planning to go over the mountains comes this way; it’s the only decent pass for miles. It can be dangerous for foreigners. This used to be quinine country and there are still men working for the northern suppliers who would shoot anyone who might threaten the monopoly, you see?’
‘Sorry – what? Quinine monopoly?’ I said. I only just had the thinking capacity to lie, and felt pleased to have managed it. The coca tea was clearing the haze, just. There were still some dry leaves left, so I made myself another cup. ‘I didn’t know any quinine came out of Caravaya now.’
‘Well, it doesn’t any more. It used to. It’s mostly been harvested out – certainly there’s nothing like enough trees to be of any commercial use – but the northern suppliers pay a great deal to make sure no one takes anything. Every so often we have expeditionaries coming through here trying for cuttings, and you only need the one tree for that. The Dutch are trying to raise a plantation in Java, apparently. There are rumours that the India Office are too.’
He and Raphael were both watching me hard. In spite of the altitude, gears I hadn’t used for a long time clicked into place and my thinking sped up. It shouldn’t have been remarkable, but I’d been worried that they were all rusted and I had a surge of happiness at hearing them whirr like new again.
‘Oh. That sounds . . . complicated,’ I said.
‘Does it?’ said Martel. ‘God, I suppose I’m too used to the whole headache of it. Essentially . . . there are cinchona woods up and down Peru, as I’m sure you know.’
I nodded.
‘But we’re a poor country. In order to drive up the price, there is a monopoly. We make sure that no one but local suppliers take quinine or cinchona trees from Peru. If they did, our economy would be crippled overnight; it’s quite as simple as that. Do you know what our largest export is? The one we’d rely on entirely without quinine.’
‘No.’
‘Guano. Oh, you laugh, but it is. Anyway, there are a few cinchona woods in Bolivia but it would be hard work to get through. Too much rainforest, not enough road. Peru is the only country in the world with a meaningful supply of cinchona trees. You follow so far?’
‘I think so.’
‘Now, it would be stupid to have everyone growing the stuff and selling it. There would be a huge supply and the price would go down. Not good. So it’s run like the diamond trade. You let only a few diamonds out of the country at a time. There are cinchona forests elsewhere, but they’re kept untouched now, except for one cluster in the north. If someone is caught trying to set up a cinchona farm or a quinine supply unauthorised . . .’ He made a gun of his first two fingers and touched his own temple. ‘So, members of the northern monopoly pay to keep people out of the southern regions. If someone catches you and convinces the right person that you’re here for quinine, he would be paid a lot of money and you would be shot. It’s an unfortunate place to be white at the moment, the Andes.’
‘Oh. I didn’t . . . how dangerous? Should – we not be here?’
‘Well, may I ask why you are here?’ he said gently.
‘We – coffee.’ I was good at being nervous. I’d always had the right face for it, and with my leg now, it suited even better. I pushed my hand through my hair. ‘We’re hoping to get into the Sandia Valley – towards a town called New Bethlehem. Something above five thousand feet anyway. We’re hoping to find plants more resistant to colder weather.’
He swept his eyes down at the wine and then back up at me. ‘That is exactly where the last of the cinchona woods are.’
‘Yes, I . . . know that. I’m a gardener. God, I know what this must sound like. I knew they were an indigenous plant, I just – I didn’t know about the politics around them.’
Hernandez and Quispe were listening too now. Over by the fire, the boys looked up, worried. Clem was still unconscious. I’d missed it often, but it came back with a nasty sharpness then, that I’d used to be as strong and slow as Raphael. I lifted my hands up from the cutlery and let them shake a little. It was easy; ever since China, they had had a tiny natural tremor when I was anxious, although usually I could stop it if I concentrated. It was much worse here than at home.
‘I’m not who they’d send if it was something as dangerous as all that.’
Martel nodded. ‘No, quite. But listen; I would hate for you to be offended, but have you any way of proving it’s coffee you want, and not cinchona?’
‘I can’t prove a negative, all I – I can tell you how I know about the coffee, is all.’
‘Go on.’
‘I told you about my grandfather. He stayed at New Bethlehem and he brought back all kinds of things – orchids, white pines – and among them was a kind of coffee that showed some resistance to frost. The samples were lost, and there’s been interest now from Kew and the India Office, so we were hoping for new ones. I’ve never heard of it anywhere else, so we came . . .’
Martel swivelled in his chair to Raphael, a theatric precise ninety degrees. ‘Well? How are you for frosty coffee?’
‘Well off,’ he said.
‘It exists?’
‘I’ve got a garden full of it. You’ve had some. It tastes like chocolate.’ The other Indians we had met, including the boys, spoke Spanish mixed with Quechua, but his was glassy. He was quiet too. It was elegant.
‘Oh, that. God, I didn’t realise it was coffee; I thought you just didn’t know the Spanish for whatever it was.’
Raphael gave his wine glass a blank look and didn’t say anything.
‘Don’t look like that. You didn’t know the Spanish word for the cathedral, remember, the other day?’
‘No,’ he said, without looking up from the glass, ‘you didn’t know. It’s the Qorikancha in Spanish too.’
‘It’s Cuzco Cathedral.’
‘And what do you call the much older place it’s built over?’ Over anything more than a sentence, he had a strange voice. It sounded like he was dragging it up through a shale quarry.
‘The foundations,’ Martel said firmly.
‘For God’s sake.’
I looked between them, prickling and sure that Martel had run on with that to keep me waiting for his verdict about my coffee story. Raphael lifted his eyes just enough to catch mine while Martel was still laughing. There was something bleak in them. He hadn’t smiled once. My heart was going fast again. I couldn’t tell if he didn’t believe me or if he only would have preferred to be elsewhere.
Martel smiled at me. ‘I frightened you, I’m sorry.’ He put his glass down and leaned forward against the table, his forearms flat to the cloth. When they closed over mine, his hands were warm. I made an effort not to shy. ‘I believe you, but I have to be careful, you understand? If you were here for quinine I’d have to turn you back or risk your life. And – as you can imagine, there would be trouble for me too, if the northern suppliers found out I’d let you through.’
‘Yes, I’m . . . starting to see that.’
‘Good.’ He must have felt how cold I was, because he chafed my knuckles. I wanted to take my hands back, but I’d already offended people by not letting them kiss me. ‘So, you see you must travel safely, with a proper guide. That’s why Raphael is here now. I brought him so that he could take you over the mountains. He’s from New Bethlehem, in fact.’