‘Yes,’ I lied. ‘Of course I have.’
The first stop was Inti, and I was relieved when she seemed just as pleased with Clem as she had been with me. She was soon telling stories and, unlike me, he knew what to ask. Over fresh coffee, without milk because I couldn’t chase down the goat this time, she explained how the village had come to be here. One of the markayuq, the eldest, was supposed to have conquered it from some wildmen who had lived here before, then petrified to watch over the spot. I would have taken it at face value, but Clem was keen to unearth a hitherto unknown pre-Inca culture. He found a likely looking place in the steep public garden on the second stack and set to digging a trench to see if he could uncover any older walls. It was bitter in the snow, but the children loved it, and the dig soon became a sort of show to watch while people ate their pineapple and drank their coffee. He dug deep, in steps, right down to the glass stratum about eight feet under the surface. Towards noon he found the corners of an old building, but it was from Inca times. He showed the children, and me, how the bricks had been worked into the bedrock, just like they had at the church.
‘Typically Incan,’ he explained. ‘Look at that. Marvellous. The skill it would have needed.’
‘What was the point of building like this?’ I asked. ‘It would have been easier to cut the rock away.’
‘Because the bedrock is alive,’ he said. ‘You don’t know who you’re chiselling into, do you? You heard Raphael talk about the mountain. It’s alive, the markayuq are alive, the creation story is that people were made of rock, not clay; it’s all the same thing. Stone lives.’
A small rock we had already put aside fell back into the pit and he leaned down to move it, but there was a murmur above us and one of the children, a little girl with unevenly arranged limbs, hurried to take it from him. She showed it to Inti.
‘What’s the matter?’ Clem called up.
‘It could be a living stone. It fell on you twice,’ Inti explained. She held it up to the light to see.
‘How can you tell?’
‘They’re very white. Yes, check with Father Raphael,’ she added to the girl. Some of the other children darted off after her, as if a little rock were the most fascinating thing they had found all year.
‘See?’ Clem said to me.
The tiny tremor, which I hadn’t even realised was a tremor, that had disturbed the white rock before, became the rumble of a real earthquake right in the bones of the mountain. They made a sound, a kind of mechanical thrum. Stones tumbled on the mountainside and a sheet of snow swept towards the river, where it waterfalled off the edge of the cliff. A few people made a bow towards the peak and crossed themselves.
‘No wonder they think it’s alive,’ I said.
Clem’s spade chinked. ‘I’m at the glass,’ he said. ‘I don’t think anyone could have built much on that. There’s nothing but plant matter caught in it, no sign of habitation. Shame. I wanted some pre-Incan wildmen. Hard to tell what’s a story and what’s not, isn’t it? I wish they’d stick to the facts. Still,’ he said suddenly, frowning, ‘it’s interesting, isn’t it. That the markayuq . . . change the history of the place they watch over.’
‘Is it?’ I said, because I was freezing.
‘Yes. Think about it. Everyone here agrees with Inti; this ground was conquered, even though it demonstrably, archaeologically wasn’t. The man who did it is right over there; they think he turned to stone to memorialise the occasion. The statues are little loci of local history, but it’s false history. So in the moment a markayuq is made, your history changes. There’s more importance to a place. Important things happened there. Even if they . . . didn’t. A markayuq is a desirable thing partly because having one means you’re entitled to a more glorious past. History is malleable here.’
‘Or when you live in the middle of bloody nowhere with nothing except pineapples, “I came, I saw, I conquered” is a much more interesting story to tell your children than “I came, I thought it would more or less do, settled down”,’ I said. ‘Can we go inside?’
‘No, no, you must draw the dendrographs for me, before it gets dark.’
‘Clem, I might die of cold,’ I said. I hadn’t told him what had happened to me the last time I had tried to draw the carvings on the border. Having offended Raphael was bad enough. I wasn’t sure I could cope with looking any more useless.
‘Oh, don’t be silly. It won’t take you half an hour,’ he said. ‘Besides, you shoved me in the river and then you made me go back to Azangaro by myself. Consider this penance.’
I stayed quiet about the second part. I was too tired to fall out again. Once we had climbed out of the trench and I started for the border, I stopped when Clem didn’t come. ‘Are you . . .?’
‘I’m staying here,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Inti’s giving me a Quechua lesson.’
‘So I go out to the border in the freezing cold to draw your dendrographs while you sit and learn Quechua in the warm?’
‘Come on, old man, we might be off any day, and it would be such a waste not to have some record of them. I’ve already used my daguerreotype slides. And I’ve a singular resistance to drawing lessons.’
Raphael would be on the border. I wondered if I could finish my original drawing from memory, or through some binoculars.
‘All right,’ I said, but paused as the children came running back. They all climbed straight down into the pit to start sifting through the soil at the bottom in a clatter of sharp happy Quechua. They were looking for more of the white stones, and one of them said something about pieces of an old markayuq. One of the girls held up a piece to her ear in the way I’d listened to shells when I was that age. I watched them, full of the feeling that Raphael had told them it was something interesting so that it would be a good afternoon for them.
I couldn’t find any binoculars, so I went to the trees but not right up to the border, and sat down on some roots by St Thomas, my back to him so that no one could come up behind me again. Inti had made me a carving of him from glass, tiny and perfect. It was a good-luck charm – he was the patron saint of gardeners, according to the local church – and I’d had it in my pocket for two days. She said that nobody knew his real name any more, but before the Spanish arrived, he had been a bodyguard for the King in Cuzco. When he first came to Bedlam to escape Pizarro’s men, he had told stories about the Inca courts, but nobody could speak to stone now, apart maybe from Raphael, who evaded the subject. More magic for children, probably, but I couldn’t fault it.
I had been there for a while before I noticed Raphael was just beside the next markayuq on from Thomas. He was smaller than the statue, so he fitted inside its silhouette. He was watching me.
‘If you want to avoid me, don’t stay stuck there, just walk fast,’ I said. ‘I can only chase you for about eight feet.’