Page 38 of The Bedlam Stacks

‘They went into the forest? Chuncho then?’ He looked sparkly at the idea.

‘I only saw pollen trails.’

‘But that’s interesting,’ Clem murmured. ‘If someone’s keeping up a colony, then the colony must do something for them. Otherwise it would be Spartan-style over the cliff.’

‘I said that. Raphael says not, though.’

‘I think Raphael would withhold interesting facts just to be irritating.’ He went out to congratulate the Huamans.

Raphael came back to the door as everyone else closed round the new family. He went straight to the stove to make himself some more coffee. Outside, people were leaving over the bridge. Someone was playing a guitar. While he waited for the slow tap to fill his cup, he pulled the lacing of the cassock open down his back, his arms bent behind him and his fingertips precise on the strings. He had laced it crosswise so that he could get out of it himself, although it didn’t look as if it had been made for that. It had a red velvet ribbon in the back of the collar.

I’d always thought it was gaudy, but standing there watching him beside the gold and glass shrine, I realised that his was a candlelight faith. It didn’t work in the clear unforgiving light in London or Scandinavia, where even the dust in the cathedrals showed. But in the warm dimness and the shadows, what would have been tasteless at home made sense. The shrine looked like an oil painting made into real substance. So did he. England’s was a reading religion, one it was difficult to understand at the bleak unimpressive first glance, one that needed books to explain itself. But his was images and images, the same as the old stages, in a place where not everyone could read and good light was expensive.

He had an ordinary shirt on underneath. He pulled the sleeve over his knuckles and pushed his hand over his eyes.

‘That was astonishing,’ Clem laughed, tumbling in from outside. He brought snow and cold air in with him. ‘People can write their names on khipu – is that a revival or unbroken tradition since the Inca?’

‘Do I look like I’ve got a time machine in the cutlery drawer?’ Raphael said, halfway into the waistcoat he had left draped like a tea towel over the oven door. It was old, but the lining was new. It was blue Indian chintz, the best sort, handpainted with birds. I’d seen it before; it was the same as the lining of Dad’s coat sleeves. But that coat had been old by the time he had it. It had been his father’s. Harry Tremayne must have brought a bolt of it here as a present for someone who had used it sparingly enough for there still to be fresh offcuts. Seeing it new made me feel as if I must only just have missed him.

‘Shocking,’ Clem said, disappearing into the chapel with a very purposeful stride.

Raphael took his cup from under the tap and didn’t look when there was a clunk from the chapel, Clem tipping his bag out on the start of a pencil hunt. His eyelashes looked blacker because they were still starred.

‘If you can’t feel heat,’ I said.

He lifted his eyes. They were raw. Three or four children a year, he had said; hard if he wanted children. I didn’t ask, but pulling his own name from the strings seemed like the kind of thing a priest wouldn’t be allowed to do.

‘Does coffee not taste the same, hot or cold?’

‘I can taste if it’s boiled or not. And steam has a smell, so . . .’

‘Oh, right.’

‘Off out,’ Clem chirped, on his way back and halfway into his coat. He had his journal too and a pencil sticking out of his waistcoat pocket.

‘No you’re not.’ Raphael put the coffee aside. He hadn’t drunk any of it. ‘I’m taking you to see the forest and where you can’t go. I’m not having anyone say I didn’t make it clear to you.’

‘Honestly I tend not to get much out of topiary, it’s altogether more Merrick’s thing—’

‘There are six markayuq out there,’ Raphael interrupted.

‘Lead on.’

I lagged behind them with my cane hooked over my arm while I buttoned my coat up. There was new snow even since everyone had left. It creaked as we walked. Like last night, Raphael went without his coat and I realised that he couldn’t feel the cold any more than burns. After another few steps came a following thought I should have had earlier too. He was keeping the house warm for us; he would have needed the stove to cook, but whether the heating pipes were going or not wouldn’t have made a blind bit of difference to him. I looked hard at the firewood stacked round the church so that I’d remember, when we came back, to find out how much it cost, or at least, how much time it took him to bring it all in.

FOURTEEN

The trees cast everything into shade. The canopy had blocked the snow, but frost crunched in the grass and our footsteps stayed frozen in it behind us. The spider webs strung through the grass snapped and fell whole, winking where tines of light cut down through the branches. When no sun filtered through at all and we were past the first of the trees, each of their roots as thick as an ordinary birch, a shimmer started to follow my cane hand, like yesterday but much fainter and only as bright as the imprint of the sun on closed eyes. Ahead of me Clem was waving his hand to and fro in front of his face.

‘It’s the pollen,’ I said. ‘It’s thicker further in, you’ll see.’

Raphael looked back. He had left the ghost of a wake that looked more like a less shadowy patch of shadow than its own light. ‘If you can ever see by it, you’ve strayed too far.’

When we were both paying attention to him and not doing light experiments, he pointed to a broad line of dead earth, which was greyish although the soil wasn’t clay, then above it, to the animal bones hanging in the trees. It stretched in both directions for as far as I could see, disappearing into the hazy morning on one side and round the cliff on the other.

‘This is the border. You can’t miss it. Salt, bone,’ he said, pointing down and then up. ‘It’s well maintained for fifty miles in either direction. They’re always here; they always watch it, and they’ll see it like a lighthouse if you cross. They’ll kill you.’ He stood on the salt line and lifted both arms. It gave him light wings and showed the red in his hair. While it lasted, just for a few seconds, he looked like his namesake must have when archangelic work still hinged on wrestling prophets. ‘Please don’t wander,’ he said quietly.

‘Oh, God.’ I jerked back from what looked like a man clawing his way out of the ground right beside me, but it was only a clever carving in the roots of the nearest tree. Something about seeing it shifted the way I was looking at the trees and then I saw them all. They were everywhere: howling carvings straining away from the salt. I stepped back again, then shuddered when something cold dropped down the back of my collar.