When I woke, I didn’t want to get up. The hot spring was heating the ground from below and the tent smelled of warm grass and canvas. The flap was still staked open. I lay watching the steam and the pollen twine in the air. After the snow, it was wonderful. I thought I was still deaf from sleep at first, but it was only quiet because no one else was up yet. I could hear the water well enough. The ducks were laughing further upstream. I closed my eyes again. I was so warm and so exactly comfortable that I felt like I was floating.
It wasn’t until I shifted that I realised Raphael was asleep against my back, his arm across me so that it would have been almost impossible for someone, even standing right above us, to shoot me without catching him too. His rosary had imprinted a circle pattern in my arm, then a suggestion of a cross, just near the top of the anchor tattoo. I closed my fingers over the beads. It was the first time I’d been in bed beside anyone, having been tritely and pointlessly in love twice with other people’s wives until I was too old to start. I’d thought perhaps I wasn’t the sort of person who could have lived close to anyone else, but that was wrong, now I was here. It would have been good, always to wake up this way.
Because I was holding that old sadness too I didn’t notice at first that there was a tremor in his hand. It wasn’t shivering. I squeezed his fingers to see if I could stop it but I couldn’t. It was a thrum, like he was lying close to a running engine from which I was insulated.
I’d never felt the absence of a medical dictionary before, but it was only a few seconds before I had to sit up, too frustrated to lie still. He was fading in front of me and the cause would be something well known. If I ever got home, there would be a doctor at a dinner party one day who would say, oh, yes, of course it would have been this; you know I didn’t think anyone died of that any more.
All I could do was pull the blanket over him again.
Once I’d ducked out into the open, meaning to see about food, I found that the other tents – there were three and all open to let in the air – were empty except for Martel and Quispe. The others’ blankets were still inside, but the men were gone. After everything that had happened to them it seemed especially stupid for them to have ventured off the island without Raphael, until I saw the shirts and waistcoats hanging over the lowest branches of the trees on the lake bank, on the pollen side. There hadn’t been enough room for everyone’s things on the island’s small tree, and there were some clothes on the ground around the markayuq as well. She had dropped her arms now but they must have tried to hang things on her.
I frowned when I noticed that none of the blankets had been slept in. A few had been more or less shaken out but they held the last few square folds from having been fitted in packs. Watching the bank for any tall pollen trails, I lifted my shirt down from the tree. Although it smelled faintly of the sulphur in the water, it was dry and warm, like it had been in an airing cupboard. I stood holding it, surprised to be there and alive at the same time.
Raphael jerked awake. ‘Merrick?’
‘Behind you.’
He bumped back on to the ground again. His hair was auburn now. I blew the pollen near the tent flap to whirl it above his eyes. He waved his hand vaguely to say he was all right. I was still fastening my shirt when he sat up properly and came out into the light.
‘Where are the others?’ he said when he saw the empty tents.
‘Not sure. Their things are here.’ I rubbed at the rosary print on my arm, which still coiled across the anchor tattoo like rope. It didn’t go away, but then I didn’t want it to and stopped trying.
Raphael was looking at the clothes in the trees. I saw him fall still but I didn’t pay any attention until he pointed down into the water, where Hernandez was floating face down, livid red marks around his neck. He had just drifted into view from beyond the rocks. Without deciding to, I went close to Raphael again and dropped his dry shirt into his lap, not wanting him sitting there alone and half-dressed. When he turned his head, the pollen light caught in vaults of his throat.
‘I can’t see very well,’ he said softly. ‘Where’s the markayuq?’
I started to point to the statue’s outcrop on the bank, but the space was empty. I turned around once, thinking I must have lost my bearings, but everything else was where I thought it was: the tree, Martel, even the ducks and the roiling steam above the hottest part of the spring. The markayuq was gone and there was a patch of flattened moss where she had been standing.
In fact, though, she wasn’t gone. She was standing under our sapling whitewood tree. The hem of her robe dripped, the water beading on the well-waxed leather. I’d almost walked into her.
She caught my arm and slashed the pollen with her other hand to make it flare. It lit the anchor tattoo clear. She looked from it to my face and I saw her realise I was a foreigner, but she didn’t have time for anything else before Raphael tore her hand away from me. She held on and it left grazes across my arm, and there was a strange unwilling creak of stone before Raphael shoved me to the island’s edge.
‘Go, go now,’ he said.
I slung my bag and boots across and dived. The sulphur in the water stung in the new cuts and for a second all I could hear was my heart banging. When I twisted back in the water, she had moved again, was moving, across the island towards Martel and Quispe. The height of the rocks took her out of view. Raphael came after me. We were only just out of the water when a gunshot boomed and the ducks went up like firecrackers. The fires sent up sparks that ignited the sparse pollen above the island. I saw it burn, and when it was gone, there was a deep well of darkness around the little whitewood tree. I could make out a shadow near the trunk, but that was all, and it was impossible to tell if the shot had hit her or, if it had, whether a bullet could do any damage.
*
We slowed down eventually and the pollen flare faded a little.
‘There aren’t lots of markayuq all through the woods, are there?’ I said. My voice came hoarse. I’d had a lungful of sulphury water. ‘The ones from Bedlam followed us. Or she followed us.’ Dead wolves on the border; no wonder. They had come straight between the markayuq. Arm’s reach. ‘What happened to the others? It wasn’t just her.’
‘They would have had to stop when the pollen on that side burned away. They need it to see by. She got to the island before, though. She was there just after us—’
‘Why didn’t you tell us about them straightaway?’ I demanded, because I’d realised I didn’t care what or how. I was almost shouting. I was less angry with him than with how wrong I had been. He had listened to Clem and me prattle about clockwork and odd religions when right beside him were stone men listening too. St Thomas had walked in front of me and still I hadn’t thought it could be anything but a trick.
He stopped walking. ‘Why did I not tell the foreign expeditionaries about our very rare, very holy saints, which are from a place I’ve sworn to keep secret? And say I had. Unless one had walked in front of you, would you ever have believed me? I can’t make them walk. They almost never do. What was I meant to say, without sounding like another stupid Indian with stupid Indian neuroses? I sounded bad enough as it was, keeping you back from the border. If I’d sat you down and explained that the markayuq were real, you wouldn’t have listened to me even for as long as you did. I couldn’t have done anything that proved they were anything but good clockwork. Not without shoving one of you over the border, and they’re not slow.’ He glanced back. ‘Especially not her. She’s young.’
I wanted to argue, because in my mind I was much better than that, but he was right.
‘What are they?’ I asked at last.
‘Just people.’
‘But they stand outside all the time. They barely move, how—’
‘They’re like trees; they don’t need to move. They do if they want to. It’s just not often that they want to.’ He was quiet for a space. ‘Just . . . we’ll be fine. All we need to do is keep out of their way. From a distance you look right.’
‘Is it far now?’
‘No. A few more miles.’
I knocked his arm. ‘Well done, by the way.’
‘For what?’
‘You knew they’d do something to her eventually.’
For someone who had reduced the odds against us so efficiently, he didn’t look pleased. ‘I wish it had been Martel.’
I couldn’t tell if he meant it or if he was only saying it to make me feel more confident. ‘If he’s still here, he won’t be for long. Unless – do bullets hurt them?’
‘Not usually.’
‘Then . . . ’
‘Right,’ he said.
The way was steeply downhill after that. There were steps in places, even the weed-choked ruins of little houses and towers sometimes, but never people.
When we came out at the river, it was sudden. I hadn’t expected the sunlight or the heat, though I should have. We had come right down into tropical forest and the river was frisky, and over the far side, the trees weren’t whitewoods but everything else. Kapok roots poured over the riverbanks, full of green parrots and big monkeys. Right under the kapoks, shaded in their canopy, were calisaya cinchona, tall ones, never cut down or barked. With their quiet colours, they looked prim and European among all the brilliant jungle plants. I brushed Raphael’s sleeve and pointed, then put my arm round him and pulled him against me. He laughed.
The hand on my shoulder was nearly gentle when it arrived. Martel was strong and he thumped me back against his chest without having to pull much.
‘Now then,’ he said, and Raphael spun around. I’d never seen anyone look more helpless than he did then.
‘Let him go,’ he said to Martel.
‘I’ll let him go once we’re in sight of Bedlam. Now come along.’
I closed my eyes when I felt the muzzle of his revolver press to my temple. It was cold.
‘No you won’t.’
‘Of course I will. Now back through the woods, my dear.’
‘You can’t shoot into the pollen.’
‘I won’t be shooting into the pollen. I’ll be shooting into his head.’
Raphael was still for a second, then came back towards us. Martel pulled me away from him to let him pass.
I let my breath out slowly and felt Martel’s arm sink as my ribs did, then lift again with them. He was strong but he had been living easily. His gun was an old one, well kept but not meticulously, a clunky thing, beneath the silverwork, that I couldn’t imagine had come from anything like the ferocious accuracy of the American workshops. He wouldn’t be able to shoot Raphael with it from here, or not with any real certainty.
‘You’re taller close up,’ Martel said to me in his friendly way.
‘I know. I’d forgotten too. It’s funny, isn’t it.’
He laughed. I pushed my elbow hard into his stomach and twisted the gun out of his hand. As he lurched, I spun him onto his front on the ground and thumped down after him with my knee in his back. He was still stronger than me and so, although it might have been kinder to give him a moment or two to offer him some other chance, I wasn’t sure enough that I could hold him there, or of what he had said about not firing into the pollen, so I pulled the knot string from round my wrist and strangled him with it instead. I waited until well after he had stopped struggling. When I sat back, my arms ached. Raphael came to us slowly and unevenly.
‘Is he dead?’
‘I think so.’ I rubbed at the string marks across my palms. My fingers were stiff and pale from having had the blood stopped and I had to wait for it to come back, in pins and needles. When I swallowed, my throat hurt. I hadn’t been breathing for almost as long as it had taken. The world cannoned into me, all the noise of the forest and the sound of my own breathing through the bones inside my ears, and it was all much too loud. Martel’s body didn’t look like a person any more. It might have been a clever sculpture. Something strange turned under my lungs and I felt as though someone must have done some kind of magic trick, swapping Martel for this.
I rubbed my hands again. My arms had stopped aching. It hadn’t been difficult. Like it had before when I understood that Raphael wasn’t going to shoot me, the future had an odd new breadth. That Bedlam was in danger from Martel, that Raphael was, had seemed immovable a few seconds ago.
Raphael knelt down beside me. He didn’t touch Martel, but he nodded. ‘Yes.’ He inclined his head without lifting his eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve never done anything more useless than that.’
‘You couldn’t have done anything.’
‘I would have taken that gun off anyone else.’ He looked away and then seemed to have to push hard to look back again. ‘I would have shot anyone else a long time ago.’
‘Familiar devils are important after a while, though, aren’t they? Better than nothing,’ I said, and then shook my head. I could hear how incoherent I sounded but I couldn’t see a way to sort it out.
Raphael watched me and I misread him. His neutral expression was a half-frown and it seemed cold. I had time to worry he was angry before he hugged me. I put both arms round him and had to rest forward against him, shaking now, though I couldn’t tell from what. I didn’t feel upset, but I could feel that everything I was thinking now was only skimming the surface of things, everything else shut off. He lifted me off the body and put me on my feet again. He was much stronger than Martel or me. He turned his head to his left and the rainforest beyond the river, his temple just resting against my chin.
‘Who inherits his land?’ I asked, for something else to say. I had my arms under his and my wrists resting on his shoulders, and they ached, but there was blood on my palms and I didn’t want to put them down.
‘No one. He didn’t own it, it’s someone else’s. He said he paid rent to begin with but then he stopped and nothing happened, so he just kept it. I’d have to check with the land registry. I don’t even know where that is. But whoever he was, he didn’t come after the rent, so maybe he’s dead.’
‘Either way it will take a little while for him to hear. Especially if Martel stopped paying years ago.’
‘Someone else will move in anyway. It doesn’t have to be legal.’
‘Take them for a nice walk in the woods.’
He laughed. ‘Let’s see your hands.’
I showed him, starting to feel raw. He had to hold them still. He found his flask and cleaned up the places where the string had cut me. I hadn’t felt any of it. Across from us, an eagle swept down from the canopy and landed on Martel’s body. It was a giant white thing with evil eyes but a downy hesitancy, just a baby still, and it blinked up at us to ask if this was ours, its wings flickering and ready to fly again. We didn’t wave it away.
‘All right?’ he said quietly.
‘I – if I were less all right, I think it would be better,’ I said, not sure if I was speaking too loudly. The blood was still humming through my skull, electric. I’d never felt so awake.
He glanced up, without moving his head. ‘Everyone feels like that. Everyone with any sense.’
‘No, I mean . . .’
‘I know what you mean. It was a bit good, is what you mean. That isn’t evil. All it means is that you won’t be one of those people who spiral off into guilty nightmares and never recover. Just . . . recognise the feeling and see the shape of it, and you won’t aim it at the wrong person.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’ He watched the eagle and I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.
‘We haven’t got anything to dig with,’ I said.
‘Have you heard of sky burials?’
‘No. Sounds nice.’
‘It’s not. It’s that.’ He nodded to the eagle, which had settled now. ‘But that’s what we can say if anyone asks. Right. Let’s go and fetch your plants. There’s a crossing up there.’
So we walked along a little way until we found some rapids where there were rocks across the river in a kind of natural dam, although perhaps beavers had filled in the spaces. There, where the whitewood trees petered out, was another salt border. Once we were across, the relief at being on the right side of it again crashed through me like a cribbar and I floated for a while on the outrush. Raphael slowed down as we came to the rocks and the river.
‘I could go back to Bedlam with you now, once we have the cuttings,’ I said. ‘Without Martel.’
‘No. The markayuq knows you. We were lucky this time, but she’d catch you on the way back. We’d have to stop for the night again and she wouldn’t. She’s a foot taller than me. I can’t fight her.’ He looked ashamed and I wished I could say, without sounding like I was talking down to him, that I understood about Martel, that I didn’t think he was a coward for not having fought, or for not risking it against a markayuq twice his size. But I couldn’t think of a way and it just left a painful quiet before he shook his head at himself and pointed to the mountains ahead of us. They were close, very close. We must have come parallel to them. ‘This is Bolivia. Those are the Andes. You can loop back to Lake Titicaca that way.’
‘Is it possible?’ I said, looking down at the rainforest, and it really was the rainforest beyond the river. Dense, unbroken, roadless jungle. ‘When we planned the expedition we wrote off Bolivia quite quickly, it . . . we were told there was about to be a war. The borders are closed, they’re not letting foreigners through. The roads are full of soldiers.’
‘They’re not letting foreigners through. But “they” is the Bolivian government. People who live round here have nothing to do with all that.’ He managed to encompass the Bolivian government, modern borders, anything established by the Spanish, all in one bubble that ordinary people might look on with occasional interest but nothing more pressing. No government would be able to dictate anything much to people here. It was a simple matter of not being able to reach. They could stop foreigners using the roads, but there would be no way in heaven or earth they could put a man on every animal trail through the woods. ‘There’s a village of hunters about a mile south.’ He pointed. ‘I’ll go with you that far and they’ll take you over the mountains.’
‘Will you be all right?’ I asked.
‘When?’
‘Going back. You can’t see.’ In the shade of the trees where the daylight made the pollen invisible, he had been walking close to me to be sure of the footing, and hesitated if I’d stopped talking for too long.
‘I’m fine.’
‘How many fingers?’
He slapped my hand. ‘Fuck off.’
‘That doesn’t work on bears.’
‘Damn. Stalked as I often am by bears hellbent on ophthalmographical studies.’
‘I’m not going through Bolivia and you’re not walking through that forest by yourself. We already know there’s a great chunk of it with no pollen.’
‘No.’
‘I didn’t mean to imply it was your choice. And your English is hateful, I hope you know. It isn’t decent to learn another language that bloody well.’
‘I had to. Your grandfather was useless at languages.’ He had laughed to begin with, but he lost it when he mentioned Harry. ‘Come on.’
The way across the river came out almost straight into a cinchona glade. I had to sit in it for a while and look at the trees and the fallen leaves and fruit and roots to be sure they were the kind we wanted. They were, and there were thousands.