HE WAS GLAD TO LEAVE LIMA AT LAST. THE CITY WALLS rising at his back, the sea ahead. His only companion was Guido, a gruff, mustachioed native of mixed blood who had been in the Feebeses’ employ ever since the Lima House was first established.
It was hot. Edward mopped his brow, felt pit stains spread under his arms. Ships jostled in the harbour, their sails down, looking like restless gulls. The road turned south, away from city and harbour both, away from all signs of habitation. This was desert country.
It made Lima seem so puny, he thought. The games of Salazars, Castillos and Vivancos so childish. Here there was only the desert and the sea, eternal under the beating sun, indifferent to these ant-like humans and their petty feuds and funny-money markers. It was a slow journey, past Miraflores and Chorrillos, then through a large sugarcane plantation. Edward mopped sweat and breathed laudanum. Then at last, some hours later, to a river. They followed its contours, and Edward beheld the ruins of the vast pyramid of the temple of the Sun. These were the first Inca ruins he had seen. He stopped and stared a while, at this St Paul’s of the desert, while Guido smoked a small hand-rolled cigar.
An empire was here once, and stretched across vast distances and was rich besides. And now it wasn’t. And Edward thought of the House of Feebes, which could by itself be, if not an empire, then the banker of one. For all empires needed money, and if he played his cards right the House of Feebes would be his. They crossed the river over a handsome stone bridge and rode through another sugar plantation, and at last reached the village of Lurin, in a temperate valley in which the great god Pachacamac was once worshipped.
They spent the night at an Incan tambo, a large way-station built with stones, and managed by a dour-faced Ichma man and his wife. It was another reminder to Edward that these were Inca roads he was traversing, and he felt ill at ease falling asleep within their old habitat. He didn’t know much about the Inca. Stories of blood sacrifices and all that. He slept fitfully and was cold in the night. Birds flew overhead, numerous beyond count, and three islands rose in the ocean, and the birds rained excrement upon those lonely outcrops of rock, and their shit turned to gold and shone in the sun, and men in bowler hats knelt down before it on the shore and offered prayers.
‘Time to go.’
‘What? What?’ Edward said.
‘Time to go,’ Guido said. Edward sat up. It was dark. ‘Travel while it’s cool,’ Guido said.
They set off under a dismal moon and too many stars. They rode along a sandy road, a short distance from the sea, and the air was filled with the sound of breaking waves. The world lightened gradually. They stopped in a small village with little vegetation and houses made of sticks and mud, drank water and continued on their way, until they crested a low hill and Edward beheld another green valley, planted with maize and sugarcane. In the village of Mala they stopped at the tambo and bolted down their dinner. Guido disappeared to visit a girlfriend that he kept there, or so he said. Edward paced a while, dazed by the heat and the distance he had come. Lima was a world away now, England but a dream he once had. He felt as though he had fallen off the map of the known world. He took a few drops of laudanum and fell asleep listening to the roaring of the sea.
Sunlight and distant shouts woke him, and he staggered out to see the conductor of the post, riding in from Lima on his way to Cuzco. Edward took breakfast with the conductor in the post house, of cold beef and chocolate, and he and Guido joined the mail for the next leg of their journey. On they rode, to Cerro Azul, a small fishing village with nothing much, Edward thought, to recommend it. It was too hot to ride but he did not want to tarry, and Guido acquiesced with some muttering. They waded through a shallow river in the valley of Cañete, then past sugarcane plantations and along the rocky shore until they came to a small, lonely house in the sands, where they had fresh water and Edward was overcharged for a small loaf of bread and some oranges. He rested there a while. The sun was growing low in the sky and so they rode on though it wasn’t much cooler, and came at last to Chincha Alta.
The islands, which were his destination, were almost within reach. He watched the merchant ships sail sedately beyond the shore, and supped on a good meal and drank a measure of pisco, the local liquor, and his sleep was deep and untroubled.
In the morning he felt a reluctance to go on. He set Guido to take him to the Inca ruins. This proved elucidating, if hot work, for the ancient Inca had built palaces and temples in this valley, and Edward felt himself alone amidst them (alone but for Guido, who didn’t count), and wished he had with him one of those Daguerreotype machines by which one was able to take a life-like image – what Sir John Herschel called a ‘photograph’. Had Edward been an artist he may have considered drawing the extensive ruins, but his talents did not lie in that direction, and his mind, attuned as it was to the profits and the loss, was busy calculating the annual income collected in such a valley, and the cost of the building works, and how much the upkeep of the place must have been. He was, indeed, so sunk in his reverie (in his dream he was the tax-collector), that he did not notice when they were no longer alone, and was indeed quite startled when he heard a cheery ‘Halloo!’ come booming at him from the shadow of a tall tower.
This, it transpired, came from a rather small white woman, conservatively and appropriately attired, and holding a parasol. She was accompanied by two native companions, a man and a woman, and had set herself a comfortable-looking camp there in the ruins, with a small table and a picnic basket and a bottle of pisco that was half-full.
‘Why, hello,’ Edward said, when they had climbed down to her place. He took off his hat. ‘Edward Feebes,’ he said.
‘Why, you are an Englishman!’ the woman said. She extended her hand for a shake, startling Edward. When he took her hand it was callused, her grip strong. ‘Mary Stephenson,’ the woman said. ‘Formerly of Queenstown, currently of no fixed abode.’
‘The naturalist!’ Edward said.
‘You’ve heard of me?’ She seemed amused.
‘My firm brokers the sale of guano from the islands,’ Edward explained.
‘I see.’ The woman considered. ‘Care for some brandy?’
‘Only a drop,’ Edward said. ‘Thank you, yes.’
Miss Stephenson poured. The pisco was strong but smooth. It polished off the edges of the day.
‘I met with one of your staff,’ Miss Stephenson said. ‘A Mr… Moens?’
‘John Moens, yes.’
‘I did not much care for him,’ Miss Stephenson announced.
Edward smiled.
‘I share the sentiment,’ he said. ‘Besides, I rather suspect he tried to have me killed.’
‘Indeed?’ Miss Stephenson, Edward noticed, didn’t seem unduly surprised. ‘They do that way here,’ she said. ‘All those recent battles have been quite the nuisance for my work.’
‘I was hoping to talk to you about that,’ Edward said. ‘Your work.’
‘Yes? But it is just birds,’ Miss Stephenson said.
Edward laughed. ‘Just birds?’ he said. ‘They are the source of a fortune, Miss Stephenson.’
‘You refer to the guano,’ she said, frowning. ‘I do not approve of guano, Mr Feebes.’
‘How so?’ he said, taken aback.
‘Its use for agriculture is one thing, Mr Feebes,’ Miss Stephenson said. ‘But you and I both know that is not the only commercial use one can put bird… excrement to. Do we not?’
‘I’m not sure to what you are referring, Miss Stephenson…’
She smiled thinly. ‘But I think you do,’ she said. ‘Bird guano contains a high concentrate of potassium nitrate, Mr Feebes. That is the main component of gunpowder.’
‘But Miss Stephenson!’ Edward said.
She shook her head. ‘Do not play the wide-eyed innocent with me,’ she said. ‘You and I both know the use to which these exports are put. The money the trade generates is beyond considerable. But where does it go? What good use has been made of the millions and millions of pounds which the guano has raised? For Peru as a nation, hardly any! Yet individuals have enriched themselves, and much money has been spent in powder and balls, in cannons, rifles, swords and in iron-clad men of war.’ She shook her head again. ‘Thank the Lord it is depleting,’ she said.
Edward, despite his protestations, was aware of the use Miss Stephenson mentioned. It troubled him not, for the House of Feebes were mere brokers, and the end use of the product was hardly their concern. Fertiliser or gunpowder, both grew flowers of a sort. But her final pronouncement arrested him.
‘Depleting?’ he said, in some alarm.
‘I told your man Moens all this,’ Miss Stephenson said. ‘It is a blessing, really.’
‘How do you mean, Miss Stephenson?’
She shrugged. ‘The natural balance of the birds’ environment has been disturbed,’ she said. ‘Shall I put it crudely? There are less birds, and those that remain no longer poop over the Chinchas as much as they once did. The shipping and industry puts them off, I think. The islands have centuries of deposits on them. But they have been worked steadily for decades now, Mr Feebes. Sooner or later, you will run out of guano.’
‘But that is terrible,’ Edward said.
‘On that,’ Miss Stephenson said, and smiled that thin smile of hers, which he was quite growing to detest, ‘we are both agreed. Though perhaps not for the same reasons. Care for another drink?’
‘No,’ Edward said. ‘Thank you. I must be off.’
‘Then have a safe journey, Mr Feebes.’
‘And you, Miss Stephenson. Tell me…’ as though it had just occurred to him.
‘Yes?’
‘How long?’
‘How long what, Mr Feebes?’
‘How long before the guano is depleted?’
‘I don’t know,’ Miss Stephenson said. ‘A few years. A decade maybe, if you’re lucky. But of course, there might be other guano islands out there.’
‘Of course. Well, goodbye.’ He touched the brim of his hat and turned on his heels.
‘Come, Guido!’ he said.
*
They rode at night, Edward not wishing to remain in Chincha Alta any longer, and further calculating in his head the truth or otherwise in Miss Stephenson’s words and in Moens’ books of accounts. He was troubled, and only the tincture of opium helped alleviate his mood, though his stock of Ayer’s Cherry Pectoral was – like the guano, perhaps – fast depleting.
The ride was pleasant, through thick vegetation, and after some eight leagues they arrived in Pisco, a small town built in the Spanish way, and with many churches. There were ships moored offshore and business being conducted in the Custom House. Edward sought accommodation with the postmaster, and slept soundly. He took a leisurely breakfast, washed and shaved, and by the time he was done Guido had returned to inform him the ship to the islands was waiting.