He nodded towards the forest where the pollen glow looked black-striped, because it silhouetted the trees. ‘Home. You do your time in Bedlam and after that they take care of you. There’s a monastery.’
‘We’re not talking about some little tribe of raiders getting ratty about their territory, are we?’
‘No.’ He hesitated as if he wouldn’t go on, but he was only choosing words. ‘The border isn’t about territory, exactly. It’s a quarantine line. Sick people on this side, healthy people on the other side. It’s a religious . . . do you know?’
‘Clem said you have to be whole, for the gods. He said human sacrifices were always healthy virgins, in Inca times.’
‘Oh, they still are,’ he said, shaking his head. He put his hands up a little when I widened my eyes at him. ‘I knew a boy. But yes. And that’s holy land, in there. Like the Vatican. So. If you’ve got a limp, you’re out. But priests are immune to everything; it’s something to do with what we already have. I don’t know. So we’ve always been sent out to the hospital colonies.’ He was rubbing his hand down his other wrist like he was pushing away something crawling. ‘Then there was smallpox in Cuzco and it became much stricter. No one from this side could cross. Then the Spanish arrived too and they closed it permanently. There used to be half a dozen hospitals all along this river but Bedlam is all that’s left and they only maintain this place because they need the salt. I’m not supposed to be talking about it,’ he added abruptly.
‘It’s all right. I don’t care who they are. I was only asking because I was trying to tell if by monastery you mean a hut on a cliff somewhere or a nice place with hot water and proper doctors.’
He smiled. ‘It’s not a hut.’
‘Good.’ I finished my rum. ‘Do you mind if I have some honey?’
‘Have the lot, get it off my table. I only want the wax.’
‘Thanks.’
He watched me spread the honey over some bread. ‘Are you drawing a bee?’
‘Y . . . es.’ I tipped the bread so that the head-splodge would run and make antennae, then showed him.
He laughed. It showed how he had been when he was younger. Mild-mannered and handsome. In a shilling-spin of an instant I realised that he wasn’t crude work but the ruin of something fine. The same as everything else here. I felt ashamed for not having noticed before. There was a knack to seeing how things had used to be but I’d never had it; I was no archaeologist. The new understanding lit up the edges of my mind and like always they were closer and more worn than I would have liked or thought.
‘Listen,’ I said at last. ‘Once I’m gone, get everyone out of here. The army will be coming. The British army.’
‘What?’
‘No one thought we would be able to do this. Come out with cinchona cuttings, I mean. The real point of this expedition was to make a good map and give the army a reason to come. Clem is Sir Clements; his death is a good enough reason, and they’ll use it.’
He frowned. ‘What would you have done if he hadn’t got himself killed?’
‘He didn’t get himself killed, I did. I could have stopped him but I didn’t because I had orders to do it if it looked like we wouldn’t be able to bring out any cuttings.’ It came out like a confession more than an explanation. I swallowed. He wasn’t even looking at me now, but hard at the floor. ‘I’m sorry. It was better than waiting for the Navy to shell Lima—’
‘How the fuck is it better?’
‘Because they won’t come at all if I can bring out some cuttings now. Do you think Martel would help if I told him it was that or the army?’
‘No, I think he’d shoot you for having made a fool of him.’
‘What about you?’ I asked, business-like and clear, and hating myself.
He straightened as if I’d let a little firework go off too close to him. I thought he was going to kill me; for being a snake, for bringing it all to his home – for not, in the end, being a thing like my grandfather, though I’d brought his ghost. When he did speak again, his voice was weakening. ‘I can’t take plant cuttings.’ He looked up just enough to show me his eyes. There was a haze over the colour, those grey penny-scratches I’d noticed before but more pronounced even since this morning. ‘I can’t see small things close to. But I will take you through. We can go in daylight when the pollen trails won’t show so much.’
‘You can get us past . . . whoever watches the border?’
‘Yes.’
I pushed my hand, still sore, round the hook of my cane. I was fitter than I had been at home, much, but miles through the woods and miles back was still impossible. ‘Can we ride through?’
‘No. But it will only take a couple of days, and I can help your leg.’
‘How?’
‘If I can get you walking, will you come with me?’
I frowned. ‘Yes. But—’
‘Good. Meet me by St Thomas after the funeral. Bring what you’d be taking with you to go back to Azangaro. I’ll take the tent from Markham’s things.’ He was quiet for a second. I couldn’t tell if he was angry. It was much worse than his normal bad temper. ‘I can tell Martel you’re dead. If you go back avoiding Bedlam and Azangaro once you have your cuttings, he’ll never know different. I can show you how to go through Bolivia. There are Indians who will help you if you tell them you came from here. It’ll take years to grow a quinine plantation, won’t it?’
‘Yes,’ I said. Exactly what I’d hoped would happen was happening, but it was a Pyrrhic victory now it was here. I hadn’t realised even when he had been gone that what he thought of me mattered. I’d been pleased, in that stupid little-boy way, that he had thought I was more or less acceptable even when Clem wasn’t.
‘By the time he hears of it, the cuttings could have come from anywhere.’
‘Right.’
‘Good then.’
I left him riveting the markayuq leathers, slowly, because he was doing it by touch. Before I went, I fitted a bowl over the honey and put it in the cupboard so he wouldn’t catch the smell of it. In the little chapel I fell asleep wondering if he might just shoot me anyway now, whether I looked like his friend or not.
PART FOUR
TWENTY-THREE
The administrative ordinariness of a death took over in the morning. The village was so small that there was no need for a delay before a funeral; Raphael rang the church bell and people came straightaway, wrapped in black shawls. I didn’t hear any of it, because I slept right up until he came in and touched my shoulder and said it was time to go. It made me jump and I caught his wrist. He only kept still and waited for me to wake up properly. He was all neat and ironed in clerical black again. In the light through the glass bricks, his hair was red – much darker than Clem’s, but still red. I didn’t ask what was happening to him. I hated it when people asked too much about my leg.