‘No more getting in the way of psychopaths, hey?’ he said, nearly smiling, but not quite. ‘He could have hurt you.’
I nodded. He could have. But it felt good to have stood in front of him without flinching and, however stupid it was, I wanted to do it again. ‘He didn’t though.’
‘God, I really thought . . .’ Clem had the shaken look new recruits have when they see guns go off for the first time at a real ship instead of a hulk in the Bristol Channel. ‘He’s mad, isn’t he. He would have done it if I’d been too far in to drag out.’
‘I think he could have dragged you quite far,’ I said. I found his handkerchief and scooped up some snow with it so that he could hold it to his chin. ‘But I don’t think he’s mad. Martel will raze the place if anything happens to us and everyone certainly thought something was about to happen.’
‘Yes.’ He sniffed, then winced. ‘That was interesting. That was fear-of-God shock, not fear of some fellow with a bow and arrow. Or Martel. You know, I’ve got a theory about this place.’
‘What?’
He pushed his wet hair back. I’d never noticed before, but he was beginning to lose it, just up from his temples. ‘You know the Incas practised human sacrifice? You find the bodies sometimes, miles up in the mountains. All the victims are children. Completely perfect children, which isn’t a coincidence in a society that didn’t know siblings marrying was a bad idea. Perfect teeth, virgins, everything. The idea is, you see, nothing impure for the gods.’ He lifted his eyebrows. ‘Notice it was him who fetched me. No one else crossed, even though it was an emergency and they wanted to. He’s the only healthy person we’ve seen here. That’s why he can go over. It’s holy ground.’
I looked back at the town and the ragged line of people limping over the bridge. ‘So cripples and invalids are . . . impure.’
‘Right, exactly. So not allowed. They’re left here, past a clearly marked line, in salt, which in itself is all about cleanliness, isn’t it. And the graveyard, and the altar, look – both beyond the salt.’
I hadn’t noticed before about the altar but he was right. It was exactly on the salt, or where the salt would have been under the church floor. Standing in front of it yesterday, Raphael and I had still been on the Bedlam side, but the statue behind it wasn’t. Which was why, I realised, the church’s layout was inverted, with the altar at the wrong end of the cross. The building was a lot older than the Conquest; it must have been a native shrine long before it was a church. When the Jesuits arrived they must have tacked on the spire and kept the old altar in place.
‘That’s interesting,’ I said dutifully. ‘Was testing your theory worth being punched in the head?’
‘Are you joking? There are about fourteen academic papers in that, which you’d know if you ever stirred yourself to join any societies.’ He looked back at the border. ‘I wonder why he went in after me.’
‘Martel.’
‘I bet he could get away with losing one of us,’ Clem muttered. ‘One could be an accident.’
‘You’re right, I probably could,’ Raphael said. He pushed the door open and dropped a towel on Clem. ‘So don’t do that again.’
‘Is that what happened to the last expeditions?’ I said. ‘They crossed the border?’
He nodded.
‘Why would they do that?’ Clem asked.
‘Because the cinchona woods are that way.’ I pointed. ‘Through the forest. The river path traces a big loop. They thought they could save time.’
Clem looked towards the salt line again, then the path that stretched on around the river – or what should have been the path. It was nothing now except a space where snow heaped five feet high against the tree trunks. ‘How long did you say the snow would be here for?’
‘I don’t know,’ Raphael said, ‘but I doubt it will be long. It’s summer now, it should be warm. Why? Just be patient; it won’t kill you. Crossing the border will.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s not impatience. We’re going to have timing problems if we wait too long. If we hit the Indian monsoons, we won’t be able to plant anything. They start in June and last until September. We need to be well clear of them, which means we have to arrive in Ceylon at the end of May, at the latest. It will take a month to get back to port from here, and another three weeks at sea, if everything goes smoothly. If we’re to have any kind of safe leeway, we need to leave in three weeks. If we don’t stick to that, we’ll reach India with nothing but a handful of very expensive firewood, even if we manage to retrieve cuttings.’
He watched me for a second and I thought he would hit me. I leaned both hands on my cane and decided he would just have to do it, because I wouldn’t be moving.
‘That it’s problematic for you doesn’t change anything. You can’t cross the border.’
‘Can we employ someone to help clear the snow on the path around?’
‘No. People here aren’t fit enough and you can’t take the fitter ones from the cocoa farm. They have to hit their quotas or Mr Martel won’t pay. Just wait,’ he said quietly. ‘Wait another week. No one knows what the weather’s doing. This might all be gone tomorrow. This is summer. There shouldn’t be snow at all.’
‘Then I can write to Martel and ask him to send men to help clear the path,’ I said, aware I was rubbing him up the wrong way but I didn’t want to think of what I was meant to do if we couldn’t get through. ‘We can say the coffee we want is down in the valleys. After this snow, the stuff you grow around here is definitely dead now.’
‘Someone would have to walk on the river back to Azangaro for you to send a letter to him,’ Raphael said, a little dangerously.
‘We can pay. Money isn’t in short supply,’ Clem broke in. ‘I think that’s an excellent idea.’
Raphael didn’t reply at once and I could see him making a survey of the possible futures. If he forbade us from sending the letter and the snow stayed, there would be no choice this time next week but to try through the forest, and he couldn’t watch us for every minute of every day. If he said yes, we would wait for Martel. He didn’t seem angry about it any more; we were making him anxious. Not even anxious. He was starting to look frightened.
‘You won’t make yourself any friends if he comes in two days’ time only to find the snow has already gone,’ he said.
‘I’ll say I made you. He can’t be angry with you.’
‘Fine,’ he said, almost too quietly. ‘Ask around town, find someone who has the time.’
He had brought his bag out as well as the towel for Clem and he went back to the St Thomas statue to wind Maria’s prayer around its wrist properly. Once he’d done that, he took out the same glass-handled brush and wax he’d used on the way here. When he began to clean the statue’s breastplate this time, though, his hand left soft trails in the pollen and before long there was a perfect geometric pattern hanging in the light.