Montoya took a deep breath, let it out slowly, thinking. He called over the two paddlers from the canoe, where they’d pulled up onto the riverbank. Each man shouldered a musket. Montoya pointed to a couple of openings in the forest near where they stood and sent each man to take a look.

‘You think he’s out for a walk?’ Elisabeth said.

‘Who knows?’

Elisabeth took off her hat and stepped into the shade of a tree. It was a scorching day. There’d been a slight breeze on the river, but here at the monk’s hut there wasn’t a whisper. She fanned herself with the brim of her hat and watched Montoya as he walked around the hut and looked over the ground. She’d resisted him and had nothing to regret, but felt ashamed now at her thoughts, which had succumbed and imagined much. Away from the settlement, alone with him here, she realised they would all come true.

‘Maybe he went back to Caracas,’ she said.

‘Maybe.’

Elisabeth von Hoffmann could no longer endure a life of waiting. It had taken its toll and crept into her sleep. Waiting was no life and the général wasn’t coming back and these were things she needed to attend to.

One of the paddlers came running out from the forest.

‘Monsieur! Monsieur!’ He’d found Brother Salinas.

Montoya told Elisabeth to wait but she ignored him. They followed the paddler back through the forest, twisting through the thick and tangled growth.

‘The monk,’ the paddler said, ‘he lives in a tree!’

The tree was enormous, the size of a cathedral. They couldn’t see him at first, but then Brother Salinas threw something (narrowly missing Montoya) and the paddler took the musket from his shoulder and pointed up into the foliage.

‘There he is!’

They saw him. He was standing on a huge branch, one hand holding onto the branch above, dressed in rags that must have once been a cassock, his long legs bare, his head completely bald and white against the green all around him. He stared down at them and said nothing.

‘Brother Salinas!’ Montoya called out, moving closer. ‘I have come a long way to see you!’

The monk picked up something on the branch beside him, cocked his free arm and threw whatever it was at Montoya; again, it almost struck him. The paddler put the musket to his shoulder.

‘Be calm,’ Montoya said. ‘Put the barrel down.’

‘He is crazy!’

Montoya turned to Elisabeth. ‘Stay where you are.’

She smiled at the serious look on his face. ‘The hairless man of genius,’ she said. ‘In a tree.’

‘Brother Salinas! My name is Alejandro Joaquin Montoya! I have come to speak with you of science!’