‘Really?’
‘There are only a few towns up that way,’ Martel said. ‘New Bethlehem is by far the biggest. I’m sorry to spring it on you, but it would be dangerous for you to ask around cold.’
I shook my head. ‘Pardon my asking, but why are you helping us? If you’ll be in trouble if I’m lying, you should be turning us away whether you believe me or not.’
He lifted his eyebrows. ‘I don’t think you realise how often this happens. It’s at least once a year. I am very tired of sitting down to dinner one evening with a man, then hearing of his death a week later, whether he was here for quinine or pepper. Very tired. I’m damned if I’ll live in fear of them over nothing but coffee.’
Raphael sat forward. It made the bones and muscles in his shoulders show. I leaned back without meaning to. It was like sitting across from a big animal. There was a right-angled nick in his eyebrow, not old. Someone had smacked him over the head with the butt of a gun. It was a scar I recognised, common in the Navy, common in all the expeditionary arms of the East India Company. I realised he had moved to get a little further away from Martel. He didn’t want to be sent out with us.
‘Would I be right in thinking Raphael is also there to keep an eye on us and make sure we don’t try and dive off into any cinchona woods?’ I said.
‘You would,’ Martel admitted. ‘But – you do understand? Unless you go with him, I can’t let you go at all. It wouldn’t be safe. For any of us.’
‘Of course I do. It’s kind of you to have thought of it all. I’m afraid we must look very haphazard to you.’
He smiled, not all the way. ‘You can’t be expected to know what’s going on here if all you were given is vague orders about coffee. Brave of you to come at all, in your condition.’
I touched my cane without meaning to. The fact was, and chivalrously he hadn’t pointed it out, that he would have no trouble stopping a cripple and a man crippled by altitude sickness if we tried to make a run for it alone. We were stuck with Raphael now. Even if we did run off successfully, he lived in the place we were going to. How to get round him would have to be a problem we saved for New Bethlehem. I didn’t mind. I was too tired to have all our problems stacked up here and now, and hopefully, New Bethlehem was a bit lower down and I might be able to think more like a human being there than a clever sheep.
‘And you’re happy to take us?’ I said.
Raphael was staring into his wine, but his eyes came up when he realised I was talking to him. They were black, real black like I hadn’t seen even in Asia. He set his glass down softly. The cross on the rosary around his wrist chimed against the crystal. ‘Yes.’
‘R . . . ight,’ I said, not full of confidence. ‘You don’t sound very happy.’
He glanced at Martel. ‘He’ll burn my village down if I don’t keep you safe.’
‘Only way,’ Martel said cheerfully. ‘Firm hand. Negotiation not a Chuncho strong point.’
Raphael gave him a look full of threadbare hate. Resignation showed through the worn-out places. Martel saw it too and clapped the back of his neck, only gently. Raphael turned his head away but not fast. It looked like token resistance to me. Nearly like a joke between them.
‘Are you allowed to do that?’ I said to Martel.
‘It’s my land. It’s all my land, out that way. The villagers all work for me. It’s their only livelihood. I wouldn’t like to burn it down, it’s a charming place. Unless Raphael does something especially Indian to change my mind.’
‘I’ll show you especially Indian one day,’ Raphael murmured, with no force.
Martel snorted. ‘You get used to him.’ He watched Raphael for a second or two, looking quietly pleased. Then he leaned across to share the last of the wine out between us all. ‘Cheers. To coffee.’
I lifted my glass but didn’t drink. Sitting down with nothing urgent happening, I was feeling the pressure inside my skull more and the wine looked like nothing but a thumping headache in a glass.
‘Listen, what would be appropriate to pay you, for being our guide?’ I said to Raphael.
‘I don’t need paying,’ he said, as if the idea were halfway to alarming. ‘Mr Martel looks after me.’
‘There must be something,’ I pressed. However glad I was to be able to do it, it felt grimy to lie to them, and the urge to be fair in my dealing, at least, was strong. ‘Not money if that isn’t right, but . . .?’
He waited for something from Martel, who nodded.
‘A clock,’ Raphael said. ‘There’s an antiques shop round the corner. Doesn’t matter if it’s working or not. Whichever one doesn’t seem like robbery to you.’
I frowned. ‘Is that all?’
‘Two clocks if you feel generous.’
Martel had been holding Raphael’s shoulder, which I’d seen men in charge doing to men not in charge all the way across Peru, and now he leaned on it more. ‘Are you making bombs, my dear?’
Raphael inclined his head away. ‘Leaving them in your wardrobe.’
‘Clocks then,’ I said.
‘Thank you,’ he said. He was losing his voice, even though he had hardly spoken. It must have happened often, because he didn’t seem surprised. I wasn’t either. Even at the start of the conversation it had sounded maltreated.
‘Didn’t you go to the antiques shop on Monday?’ Martel asked, shooting me a little sideways look to say, watch this. I shifted, not wanting to see it, whatever it was.
‘No, I said I’d go next Monday on the way home,’ Raphael said. He moved his hand back, towards his shoulder, like he was pointing at something behind him. He hadn’t spoken with his hands much before, but with his voice fading it must have felt the natural thing to do. ‘And I asked you last Monday. You said no.’ This time he brought his hand down in front of him, not too close. I was confused until Martel slapped his hand. Forward was the past, behind was the future.
‘Don’t talk about time in Spanish and think in Quechua, dear. It doesn’t match and it gives me a headache.’
Raphael turned his head slowly to look at him properly. ‘Can your superior Spanish brain not recognise ordinary things when they’re backwards? You must be a menace around reversing horses.’
Martel laughed. ‘Interesting, isn’t it?’ he said to me.
‘Y . . . es,’ I said, wishing I could think of an inoffensive way to say that as a rule Englishmen found bull-fighting awkward more than interesting.
‘Anyway, I’m sure Quispe can go for the clock. You can’t be expected to brave it across in sleet and ice.’
‘I don’t mind,’ I said. There wasn’t much I wanted to do less, but I needed a few minutes not speaking Spanish, and not trying to understand the strange way they were with each other. ‘Is there a particular make? Of clock, I mean.’
‘No – but decent mainsprings,’ Raphael said. ‘Do you know what a mainspring is?’