Page 23 of The Bedlam Stacks

Quispe stared at the floor.

‘Fair enough,’ said Martel, who was making something at a side table where there were steaming kettles and cups. ‘But if any of them come back with a broken ankle, my dear, I’ll break yours.’

‘Yes,’ said Raphael.

Martel stopped by me and gave me a cup of chocolate. I looked down at it and then up at him, surprised.

‘It’s good for you,’ he said gently. He gave a second to Clem, who had just eased in, holding himself tentatively. ‘You need to keep having something sweet at this altitude. Keeps your blood going.’

‘Oh, lovely,’ Clem murmured. I moved my cane, which I’d propped against his chair, over the back of mine instead, and put my hand out to give him something to lean on. He did and smiled, but it was watery.

‘It’s local,’ Martel said. ‘From my cocoa farm, actually.’ He nodded towards Raphael to say he meant the one at New Bethlehem. ‘Marvellous stuff. Grows back very fast if somebody sets it on fire too,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Doesn’t it?’

He was talking to Raphael, who almost smiled. ‘I don’t know. I’ve never set your cocoa on fire.’

‘Look, take care,’ Martel said to him, more seriously. ‘The weather’s mad. It’s going to be madder up on the passes.’

‘I’ll be careful with the horses.’

‘I did mean with yourself too. Here you are. Sugar cake for the way. Make sure you don’t give it all to other people.’

Raphael lost some of his usual stiffness and took it. Martel rubbed his shoulder. In his fine velvet waistcoat, he looked like the most accomplished sort of ringmaster, with a lion that was just getting used to him.

The way after Azangaro was frozen. That night we stayed at a horrible place called Crucero, huddled at the foot of the jagged mountains. When I boiled a cup of water and dunked a thermometer in it, the reading in Clem’s logbook said we were at almost fifteen thousand feet. It had laid him out flat, although it was a variation, at least, on his nosebleeds. I was queasy too, and slow and tired. I couldn’t think properly to read and even working out that I could put a shirtful of snow on my leg to keep it from hurting so much was a long, creaking exercise. I went through my bag to find an old shirt but then gave up when it occurred to me I’d have to go back outside again for snow.

When we arrived, Raphael had lifted me down from the saddle as if that were as ordinary and certain as taking down the bags. He must have been used to doing it for someone else, because he knew not to let it become nothing but a controlled fall. He took my whole weight until I was almost on the ground and then still kept it slightly more on the right while I found my uneven balance again. Usually I was too tall for anyone to help reliably but he didn’t struggle. He seemed like he could have managed someone twice as heavy before it gave him any trouble, though he was a good few inches smaller than me.

‘Thanks,’ I said, surprised. I’d been about to ask Quispe to give me a hand.

He looked just as surprised to be thanked, and disapproving, but he didn’t say anything and only dropped my bag into my arms by way of telling me not to get too used to it.

Inside the inn, I wedged myself into a corner with a blanket, near Clem, so that I’d notice if he stopped breathing. It was a bizarre feeling, having half my brain taken away, but it meant that to sit and do nothing was much less boring than it would have been usually. We were sharing the place with other people, Indians crossing back over the mountains after trading, so I watched them for a while. Closer to me, Raphael drove an old tent peg into the dirt floor and looped a piece of string around it. He had a book open in his lap in Spanish, and while he read, he tied knots into the string. After a while, I noticed that all the other Indians had crowded over the far side of the room, although there was plenty of space to sleep nearer to him if they had wanted to stretch out. Eventually, one of them came up to him and crouched down to give him a vial full of something white, and spoke in earnest Quechua. He nodded and put it into his bag. He saw me watching, but he didn’t explain.

Beside me, Clem was almost translucent, his lips colourless. He was breathing hard.

‘We need to get him down from here,’ I said to Raphael, barely able to bring out Spanish at all now.

Raphael glanced across, too quickly to have taken in much but that Clem was lying down. ‘He’s fine.’‘No, look at him. I know you were born up here but he could die of this, for Christ’s sake, people die—’

‘No.’ He left the knots and knelt down in front of me, and caught my shoulders. I shied, certain he meant to bang my head back against the wall to make me shut up.

‘Don’t—’

‘Listen. I’ve seen men die of it. It doesn’t look like that.’ He nodded at Clem. ‘This panic you’re feeling is part of mountain sickness. It’s nothing to do with him. Feel how fast your heart’s going.’ It was thundering when he put my hand against my chest.

‘What?’ I said weakly. That he hadn’t hit me was confusing more than it was any relief.

‘You can’t get enough air,’ he said, quiet and slow. ‘That’s all. You panic when you drown, you panic up here. It’s the same but stranger, because you’re still breathing. But neither of you is anything like close to dying. If you were, I wouldn’t be sitting reading. Do you believe me?’

I nodded, shocked to find I was starting to cry. ‘God, it’s strong, isn’t it.’

He dipped his head once and didn’t seem surprised or annoyed that I was so upset. ‘Very. You’re right, it can kill you. But it’s not going to kill you this minute.’ He gave me some coca leaves. Like everyone he seemed to carry them around always. ‘Take those.’

‘How do you . . .?’

‘Just chew. Keep them behind your back teeth.’

I took them from him like a little boy and concentrated while I tried them. It was a bitter grassy taste, much worse than the tea. He tucked the bag of it next to me under the hem of the blanket.