He ignored me. ‘Are you sure it’s a good idea to sit there?’
‘No. But Clem wants pictures of these and I don’t want to annoy him again.’
‘Even less than you want to be beaten up and left half-dead on the ground.’
‘I wasn’t half . . .’ I sighed, because I’d breathed too deeply, which still hurt my ribs. ‘He got back this morning. He walked for four days, I didn’t. It’s the least I can do, isn’t it.’
‘For a whingeing little prick who quietly hates you for not being able to walk? I could probably manage less, if it were me.’
‘Which is why you’ve got queues of friends outside the church door,’ I said easily, because it was nice to be sympathised with, even in his annoyed way. ‘But listen, he got there. Azangaro. Martel should be sending men soon.’
He let his weight tip back a little as if the idea of Martel was exhausting. ‘Good.’
‘If they can’t clear the way—’ I began.
‘I’m not taking you across the border.’
‘I know. But you can cross. If I taught you to take cuttings, then perhaps you could go? We’d . . . make it worth your while.’
I thought he would ask what could be worth ending up like the thief on the cliff and I was ready to say we could take him to India with us if we had to, but he didn’t touch it.
‘Maybe,’ he said. He stood so still I thought it might have been catalepsy again. He had been working with his waistcoat undone and a breeze pushed it back to show a flash of the Indian lining. It wasn’t catalepsy. He let the same wind turn his head as if the bones in his neck were on as fine a balance as a weathervane. ‘Maybe,’ he said again, in a deadened echo.
I hesitated, not sure where we stood with each other any more. ‘I’m going for some coffee soon, I can’t feel my hands.’
‘Right,’ he said. He stepped backward over the border, one slow step, and then walked away into the graveyard. If he said anything else, I didn’t hear him. I waited, but after half an hour he still didn’t appear and the snow was blowing in from the river. It sparked coldly in the pollen. Thinking he must have come out further along and gone home without me, I turned back for the church, expecting to find him in the kitchen. He wasn’t. The fire had burned down to embers. I built it up again and settled to finish drawing.
I didn’t notice the dusk falling until I started having trouble seeing the pencil shading. I wound up a pollen lamp without thinking and then stopped as it began to tick around. I leaned back to see through the window to the forest. The wind was gusting in the pollen still, but there were no trails. Suspecting that Clem had stayed at Inti’s for dinner, I cooked myself some quinoa and a cut of the venison someone had brought for some ceremony or other Raphael had performed earlier in the week. I did enough for Raphael too but even after I’d eaten there was still no sign of him. By then the dark was inky. A point of light came over the bridge from the stacks. I thought it would be Clem, but when I opened the door it was Francesca, the baby tied to her back with a green shawl. She looked unsettled to find me and not Raphael, and when she spoke she did it in careful, halting Spanish.
‘I was wondering where Father Raphael was,’ she explained. ‘He was supposed to come and see Juan this afternoon, but he never – has something urgent happened?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘He’s in the woods still, I think.’
She leaned back from me, startled. Her uneven shoulders moved back different distances. ‘He shouldn’t be at this time of night.’
‘Is there anywhere else he goes?’
‘No, he’s the priest,’ she said, as if that meant he was chained to an anchor caught between the stacks. She stepped back to see more clearly into the trees, whose white trunks looked amber in the glowing pollen. There was no sign of anyone inside. ‘God, they’ve taken him again. It could be years.’
‘Or he can’t feel the cold and he’s collapsed somewhere,’ I said. ‘If he can’t be anywhere else, we need to look for him. Can we find some people to help?’
‘Yes,’ she said. She brushed past me to the ropes that stretched up into the dark of the church tower, above the loft space where Raphael slept, and rang the bells. They sang out and it must have been possible to hear them for miles through the trees, but still nothing moved there.
NINETEEN
Stars of lamplight began to come over the bridge to the mainland. When Francesca explained what was going on, there was a weird stir, more interested than worried, as if none of them believed at all in the chance of hypothermia or falling over a tree root, or bears. Even though she said we would have to look for him, they all ignored her and went automatically to the markayuq. The statues looked alive in the lamplight and they moved their hands to take things, almost constantly – salt vials and shells and knotted prayer strings – because whatever pressure pads were in the ground were being bumped on and off by everyone around them. Maria had propped herself against St Thomas, her fingers closed over his sleeve, watching the crowd with unhappy eyes.
Inti took charge when she arrived and organised a long line down the border. Maria hung back. Her mother was nowhere I could see. I fetched her out from behind the markayuq and took her with me. She held my hand too tightly at first, and I gave her our lamp so that I could hold onto her and my cane at the same time.
The pollen was just thick enough in the air to leave strange, half-visible illusion trails behind us. Further into the forest, beyond the border, the trees stopped the wind and it was possible to see where the bats were swooping, invisible themselves but leaving tangles of gold light behind them.
The trees skittered. Sometimes a stream of pine needles fell down when something passed overhead in the canopy, and every now and then stingingly heavy drops of water fell and splashed on to us. Everyone was walking slowly down the border, calling and moving their lamps, or throwing pine cones to make light arcs in the dark. Maria slowed right down after a little while. We were at the back. She had a cord tied around one of her coat buttons and she was putting new knots into it, upside down if the way Raphael did it was normal.
‘Do you want to leave a prayer with one of the markayuq?’ I said.
She shook her head. ‘My knots aren’t very good. And my hands are cold.’ I liked talking to her. Her Spanish was exactly at my level, about a middle-sized child’s. ‘I’ve spelled it wrongly.’
‘I’m sure you could just tell it to him.’
She twisted her nose and then shook her head. ‘Nobody can talk to markayuq any more. They don’t understand.’
‘Why don’t they?’
‘They’re old. They spoke another language in those days.’ She was watching a big pollen trail in the forest, the wrong shape for a person.
‘Maria, Raphael is strong. And he can fight. I don’t think anyone has taken him anywhere. He’s here somewhere, we’ll find him.’