Everyone had gone by then and the morning mist had cleared just enough to show the farmland. It was a patchwork of allotments, crammed into the space between the cliff and the border. I helped Clem up.
‘Let’s write that letter and see if we can’t find someone to take it,’ he said. ‘I’d feel a damn sight better with twenty strong men keeping an eye on Raphael, even if they can’t do much about the snow.’
‘Yes. Good idea. And we should send off your maps too. And make a sketch of the one on his wall.’
‘Why?’
‘Because then if we’re killed, the India Office will still have their charts. Which is what will be important, for whoever comes next.’
He looked queasy at that. ‘They do train you up a particular way, don’t they,’ he said.
‘I know, I’m sorry. But we still should.’
‘No, no, you’re right. The map’s done.’ He paused. ‘Em, what the hell are we going to do? It will take days for Martel to come, if he even feels like coming.’
‘Settle in, do some drawing.’
‘And wait for his temper to fray?’ He nodded back at Raphael, then winced and mouthed a much worse word than he would have said aloud. ‘It’s pretty damn frayed already and we shot ourselves in the foot telling him about the cinchona plan. All he has to say is that we were here for quinine after all and judging from what you told me, Martel would be only too glad for us to be killed by Chuncho instead of caught by quinine barons who might hold him responsible for letting us through in the first place.’
‘If he were sure Martel would believe him, he wouldn’t be so worried—’
Clem was already shaking his head. ‘No. We can’t bet our lives on that. Look, he has to like one of us at least and it’s not going to be me.’
‘I’m not his favourite soul either—’
He caught my arms too hard. ‘Just – you need to find a way and you need to start now.’
I looked across to where Raphael was still cleaning the statue. ‘Right. All right, I’ll try.’
‘Good,’ he mumbled. He made himself another snow poultice. ‘I’ll go and draft that letter to Martel.’
‘You should go.’
‘What?’
‘To Martel’s. Raphael can’t hurt you if you’re not here.’
Clem swallowed. He wanted to go.
‘I don’t want to leave you here with him, Em. I don’t like this at all. He doesn’t want foreigners here – he certainly doesn’t want us round the border or the markayuq and I think it might be verging on sacrilege for us even to be asking about them, never mind disturbing them – and there are so many accidents that could happen in snowy weather if he gets it into his head that you’re pushing too much or . . .’
‘No, look – it’s better if you go. Then you can courier the maps to Minna too. I’ll be fine.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Fifty-fifty. It’s good enough.’
‘All right.’ He deflated, relieved. ‘I shouldn’t be more than four days.’
I crushed the little boy in me that was frightened of being left behind. Clem wasn’t a coward. Someone had almost killed him and if he stayed, he would be resentful, which would annoy Raphael even more. He had to get away for a while.
‘Well, you go inside, I’ll . . . be with you in about ten seconds, I imagine, after he’s thrown something at me. There’s something I want to ask him.’
Clem patted my arm and turned away and into the church. He went slowly, holding his head at a careful angle. I crunched over the frosted pine needles towards Raphael and the markayuq and stopped two yards shy of them.
‘If you’re trying to be quiet, you’re not,’ he said without looking around.
‘No. But . . . listen. The statue – the markayuq, I mean – that my father brought home. My mother thought it killed her dog when I was small. Went to an asylum for it. Could a markayuq do that?’
He didn’t seem to think it was an unusual question. He went back to the waxing, and I thought he wouldn’t speak again, but he did. It sounded unwilling. I wondered why he bothered to make an effort. Martel hadn’t said he had to be polite to us. ‘What was the dog doing at the time?’
‘Biting me, I think.’
I’d been sitting with Dad, outside. It had been a hot evening. Heat is a difficult thing to remember in cold but I’d only had one jumper at the time and I hadn’t been wearing it, and there had been flowers everywhere. The dog had been a gigantic thing that, like Caroline, was well meaning but had a snappish disposition. It had come up to us calmly enough and tried to nudge me away from Dad, who it didn’t like. When we tried to chivvy it on, it caught my sleeve firmly enough to drag me up. I pulled back and it had clamped its teeth round my arm instead – that I remembered clearly, because now, under the anchor tattoo on that arm, there were still tiny scars. Caroline came out from the house to see what the noise was about and they argued over my head.
And then they’d both yelled, and the dog was dead on the ground. The crack of its neck had been like a thick twig snapping hard.
I still wasn’t sure if Dad had killed it, or me, or someone else.
‘You set them off standing near, never mind having a fight with a dog,’ Raphael said. ‘They move slowly but if they catch you wrongly they’ll break your arm. Certainly kill an animal.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. Write to the asylum. She’s not mad.’
I nodded, although I couldn’t imagine that Charles would believe me even if I told him.
By then, Raphael had been standing there for long enough to set the clockwork off again. The statue put its hand against his chest to give him the same little push it had given me, but instead of stepping back, he leaned into it, letting his weight hang forward against the stone. More than anything the statue looked as if it had just picked up a rag doll, a good one, but worn out. I went to another to watch it move. Clem had sneered at the idea that Indians had made them, but the Ancient Greeks had had clockwork temple marvels, hydraulic doors, steam-engine toys, everything. There was nothing to say that somebody else, undisturbed by Christians burning the libraries, hadn’t thought of it too.
PART THREE
FIFTEEN