Page 21 of The Bedlam Stacks

‘I don’t mind,’ I said. There wasn’t much I wanted to do less, but I needed a few minutes not speaking Spanish, and not trying to understand the strange way they were with each other. ‘Is there a particular make? Of clock, I mean.’

‘No – but decent mainsprings,’ Raphael said. ‘Do you know what a mainspring is?’

I nodded once. I knew them quite well, after a year with a clockwork-making interpreter in China. I tried not to think about Keita too much. ‘Steel or gold mainsprings. Back in a minute.’

The shop was diagonally opposite and it didn’t stock antiques, exactly, but viceroyalty tat that must have been increasing in value now that there was no supply of new things coming from Spain. There were cases and cases of Spanish books with gilt spines, and lots of dark furniture with lions’ feet – the pointless sort, tiny tables that would only hold a wine glass or footstools so miniature that a decent heel would take your feet just as far off the floor. But next to the dust and the doorless shacks, it was good to see the bronze studs in the upholstery and the scrollworked mahogany. I paused at a table hung with well-made leather bags and a stack of books in Dutch, novels and monographs all jumbled. There was a beautiful microscope too, and a whole roll of archaeological excavation tools with a trademark that said Amsterdam on it. They were much newer than everything else, brightly out of place.

‘You’re not from here,’ an old lady’s voice said from the back of the shop.

‘No. I’m looking for a clock.’ I was breathless even from having crossed the street. ‘It doesn’t matter if it’s working.’

‘Lots of clocks,’ she said. She passed me a couple over the counter.

‘Mind if I see inside?’

‘Why?’

‘Springs. Is that a screwdriver – thank you.’ I opened up the casing, pleased to have remembered the word for screwdriver. ‘All right, good. Is there another?’

‘That’s five reales, just for that,’ she said doubtfully.

‘It’s fine,’ I said, though I hadn’t been handling Peruvian money long enough to know if it was fine or ridiculous.

‘Unless you’re trading anything? Probably work out cheaper if you do.’

‘No, just the money – do people normally trade?’

She nodded to the table of Dutch things. ‘Last man to buy clocks brought all that.’

Something walked over the back of my neck. I had been admiring it all brainlessly without understanding that it was everything the missing Dutch expeditionaries had left behind last time. Raphael had been with them too.

‘Just the money,’ I said again. We found another clock, smaller. When she gave them to me wrapped in old newspaper, the clocks were heavy.

‘Careful in the snow,’ she said as I eased the door open with my elbow, my cane in one hand and the clocks under my other arm. Outside, little flurries spun thinly, just enough to sting. Quispe must have been watching for me, because he opened Martel’s front door before I was even close to it. Martel and Raphael were where I’d left them at the table. I handed over the clocks.

‘These are nice,’ Martel murmured as they unwrapped them. Raphael lifted the second one away from him and put it out of his reach at the far end of the table. He had taken a small screwdriver from somewhere and now he was opening up the first one. His eyes flicked up when he found the steel mainspring.

‘The other one’s gold-plated,’ I said. ‘I hope it’s not too soft, but everything else was rusty even on the outside.’

He looked sceptically pleased. I was on the verge of pointing out that the service he was about to do us was worth a hundred thousand steel mainsprings, but Clem stirred on the couch then and swore as he tried to sit up. I got up to go round to him, holding the edge of the table to keep myself steady, and Hernandez hurried away to the kitchen. When he came back, it was with a small cup of powerful black coffee, burned-smelling.

‘Yes, off you go,’ Martel murmured to Raphael, who ghosted away back up the stairs, chaperoned by Quispe again. There was only one tiny lamp at the top. Raphael faded into the gloom at first and then sharpened again as he climbed up into the shallow light. There was one silver bead in his rosary and it gleamed.

‘I thought you’d died,’ I said to Clem. I helped him prop himself up. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Apart from having the constitution of an invalid lady. Where are we?’

‘Azangaro. This is Mr Martel, it’s his house.’

Martel waved from the table. ‘Coca’s working. You might feel zingy for a while.’

Clem bumped back on to the cushions. ‘Don’t suppose I could have a bit more?’

At the top of the stairs, Quispe opened a door just off the landing, put Raphael inside, and locked it. He came down still fastening the keys back on to his belt.

The room upstairs had its own stove, which had no flue and which Quispe warned us to keep completely closed until the embers were dead, not just glowing. I promised I knew how not to poison myself. I meant it as a joke, but he seemed worried and backed out. Clem had dropped sideways across the bed.

‘He’s set us up with a guide,’ I said. ‘I think we’re going out with him tomorrow morning, if you’re all right.’