‘I’ll be back. Torment Quispe for a few minutes.’ I stayed where I was for a second, my heart thudding. I’d believed him about the catalepsy. There was no need to try and make me believe in fairytales too.
If the catalepsy was a lie, it was one he had thought through very well and maintained despite everything. As if he were just carrying on the day he had lost, from mid afternoon and not early morning, he was exhausted by six and in bed by seven, though usually he was up until midnight. He got up at three in the morning, his internal clock still apparently skewed by hours. There was no lock on the chapel door to keep him from walking straight past Quispe, who was asleep in a chair by the threshold. Like always, Raphael was quiet, but something about the pitch of the water bubbling in the stove woke me up. Half to see if he really was as awake as he would have been at a normal time, half to see if he was all right, I dragged myself up to have a cup of hot water while he made himself coffee. When he saw me, he took down a little jar of rich brown powder and handed it over, with its own small spoon. Because he had been over the border for so long, breathing pollen, it had seeped into his blood and showed now in the veins in the underside of his wrist.
‘Cacao,’ he explained. I’d started to avoid saying cocoa too. It sounded too close to coca, and coco, which meant coconut, and since we both dropped Spanish into English and English into Spanish, it was a bit dangerous.
I didn’t take it. ‘Everyone says that might as well be gold dust.’
‘Someone gave it to me. It’ll help you sleep, anyway.’ There was half a jug of milk almost frozen on the outside window ledge. Raphael tipped it into one of the bronze pans. He paused with his fingertips still on the handle, then picked up a tea towel and folded it across his hand before he moved the pan, which was already hot from having sat on the stove all evening. I smiled, much more pleased with that than I should have been.
‘Four spoons,’ he said, nodding at the jar. ‘It’s already mixed with sugar.’
He had taken his coffee back to the table and, while he let it cool down, he started to rivet together a new seam on what was going to be a set of markayuq leathers, the same I’d seen upstairs. The pegs were all gold but never the same shade and all shaped differently: puma heads and leaves, acorns. Although he had two pollen lamps ticking just in front of him, he was slow with the rivet gun.
‘Why aren’t you escaping?’ I asked. ‘If he accuses you of murder . . .’
‘He won’t. He knows I didn’t do it.’
Outside, in among the tents, a couple of fires were still burning, though I couldn’t see anyone moving about. Martel’s men had put their tents up in an interlocking row so that they all shielded each other from the wind. There was still lamplight inside one of them, and the silhouette of a man reading.
When I came back to the table, Raphael watched me as if he was about to talk, didn’t, then started after I’d almost forgotten that I’d thought he might. ‘I’ve been putting off the bees. We’ve a hive, for wax. I need to take out the honeycombs before we go. Could you help me?’
I put my cup down. Part of me thought I shouldn’t be going into the dark with him while I still wasn’t sure what had happened to Clem.
‘I hate bees,’ he said, and I believed him then, because he was too rigid and too proud to have chosen that for a lie.
‘Let me find my coat.’
He was rewinding the pollen lamps and gave me one once I came back. I put it in my pocket while I got my scarf on and the buttons done up, and it glowed a little even through the thick wool.
‘If I do anything you don’t like, shoot me.’ He gave me his rifle too. The strap was much older than the gun; it was so well-worn that the leather was soft, even at the stitched edges. I looped it on and felt strange to have the familiar weight against the back of my ribs again after so long. It made the bruises ache.
When I followed him out, he took me to the front of the church and the cliff, where the view of the town was full of lamplight that glittered in the glass places. A little stairway in the rock led to a small plateau. There wasn’t room for much, but it was full of useful things – opium poppies, a dense crop of them, dead now in the snow; cooking herbs; a stout coffee tree, planted to one side so that it would have room to walk; and, screened by that, a beehive. He hung his lamp over a hook in the side. It had a glass front. Inside the bees were sleepy but moving, just, in a way that didn’t look like it was supposed to be seen. It was more like the peristalsis inside one big thing than lots of small ones. The bees stirred more when they saw the light.
‘Can’t someone else keep a hive, if you don’t like it?’ I asked as he hinged up the lid. The bees mumbled.
‘The wax is for the markayuq, and the knot cords. It’s hieratic.’ He took his hands back too quickly. ‘You take out each rack and scrape the wax off. They won’t hurt you. Just go slowly.’
‘They’re lovely,’ I said, stroking a big one with my knuckle. It wiggled. They were black and a fine deep red. Peruvian bees were stingless, I knew from somewhere, although they did bite.
He gave me a pipette. ‘Sugar water. Put it in the leftover cells.’ He stood back with his arms folded. I ran his knife down the combs and watched them crumble. The honey was sticky enough to make them fall slowly, slowly enough for me to catch it all in a bowl. The quiet welled and I didn’t break it, waiting for him to say why we were out here.
‘Martel is a quinine supplier.’
I looked back.
‘You have to come back with us to Azangaro. Tell him you’ve given up and it’s not worth all this. Don’t argue with him, don’t try to arrange another guide. The men he’s brought, they are not here to help clear the path. The path doesn’t go anywhere. They blew it up years ago. He isn’t angry with me because Markham’s dead. He’s angry because you’re still alive and still here. He never believed you about the coffee; he knew what you came for. Those men are here to find you if you run. They’ll kill you.’
‘Did you kill Clem?’ I said again.
‘No.’
I foundered. ‘But if you were just supposed to kill us both – why did Martel send us with you in the first place? He could have just let us wander off and get shot by someone like Manuel.’
‘It isn’t impossible to go through the forest,’ he said, very quietly. ‘People have come out alive before, with quinine. I was supposed to make certain that you didn’t. Either persuade you to turn back or shoot you.’
‘Then why did you keep us waiting, why did you say there was a way around? Why didn’t you just let us go over the border when—’
‘I hoped you’d give up and go home.’ He let his breath out. ‘I’ve been trying to keep you safe. I only let you send word to Martel because I hoped waiting for him would keep you out of the forest for another few days. That was a few more days to scare you into leaving. The – man who attacked you. I asked him to, I’m sorry.’ He really did look sorry.