The black mountain, p.1
The Black Mountain, page 1
Kate Mosse
The Black Mountain
Contents
Monday, 3 May 1706: Two days before
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Tuesday, 4 May 1706: The day before
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Wednesday, 5 May 1706: The day of the eruption
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Saturday, 15 May 1706: Ten days later
Chapter Twenty-One
Sunday, 15 May 1707: One year later
Chapter Twenty-Two
Acknowledgements
To my beloved Greg and Martha and Felix
Monday, 3 May 1706
Two days before
Chapter One
Ana looked down into the open grave. She felt anger burning in her chest, as red and hot as fire, but she would not cry. She dug her fingers into the palms of her hands until her rage passed. The pain cleared her mind.
It was a plain coffin, made from wood from the trees that covered the lower slopes of the mountain. This northern part of the island of Tenerife, where they lived in the shadow of the Black Mountain, was filled with pine forests and cedar groves. It was a green world, filled with vineyards. The south of Tenerife, or so Ana had heard, was dry and bare. Few trees grew there and it almost never rained. One day, she would go and see for herself.
It was a cool afternoon in early May. The sky was overcast, just right for a funeral – except, of course, there had been no service. A man who took his own life could not be buried in sacred ground. ‘It is a mortal sin,’ the priest had told her. The priest was a weasel-faced man, with bad breath and long, greasy hair. All the girls of the town knew to stay away from him.
Instead, Ana, her mother and brothers had come here – to this corner of their narrow strip of land – to bury their father beneath the vines. Just the family and one or two farmers who, like them, made a living from growing grapes and making wine.
Ana shivered, suddenly cold. She had been standing still for too long. She looked over her shoulder. Everyone else had gone, even her mother with her face hidden behind a black lace veil. Ana had felt someone touch her shoulder as they left. She didn’t know whether it was in support or pity. Only the man who had been paid to dig the unmarked grave was still here. Leaning on his spade a few steps away, he was waiting for her to go so he could finish the job.
Ana looked down again. Someone had carved her father’s name on the box – Tomas Perez. Nothing else. It wasn’t much to show for a life.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered in Spanish. Ana made the sign of the cross, then dropped her offering – white and purple wild flowers – onto the lid of the coffin. There was a dull thud and the ribbon came undone, leaving the flowers scattered.
‘Rest in peace, Papa,’ she said, then she nodded to the labourer.
As Ana walked away, her long skirt sweeping the dust, she heard the sound of earth falling on the coffin, burying her father’s earthly remains in the land he had loved so much.
Chapter Two
Ana walked down through the rows of vines, with their long, twisted roots, to the path that led to their house. Her head was full of troubled thoughts.
Her father had been found in a clearing, higher up the mountain. His leather bag and his eye glass were by his side. His shotgun was between his knees. It seemed he had pulled the trigger with a string and killed himself.
Ana could not accept that. She knew they owed money. But she didn’t believe her father would have abandoned his wife and his sons. Her twin brothers were only eleven. They were good boys, though lazy. They needed their father. Most of all, Ana did not believe he would have left her to provide for the family on her own. The sole reason they were still growing grapes on their small patch of land was because she had worked so hard at his side.
‘Papa . . .’ she murmured, grief sticking in her throat.
She swallowed hard. When they had been told the news of her father’s death a week ago, her mother had collapsed. It had fallen to Ana to identify his body and collect his things. She saw the blood on his hands and chest. She saw the red mark on his right index finger where he’d tied the string tight. But when she saw the empty socket where his right eye had been, Ana had been sick on the floor of the town hall.
The thought of that made her burn with shame. The mayor had not been kind. He was the brother of the town priest and a firm Catholic. He made it very clear how he judged her father for taking the coward’s way out.
Ana suddenly felt dizzy. She had eaten nothing all day, save for a piece of dry bread and a small glass of sweet wine. Maybe that was why the world was spinning. Also, it was very humid. The air was still and heavy. Perhaps a storm was coming, though storms were rare at this time of the year.
Ana took off her straw hat. Like all the island women, she wore her hair parted in the middle and tied in a bun at the nape of her neck. She shook her long straight black hair loose. Before she had been cold, now she was too hot. When she wiped her damp hands with the corner of her petticoat, she saw the red ribbon around the hem had come loose. She sighed, realising she would have to mend it later. Another task to add to her growing list.
Ana was halfway home, but she was tired. She sat on a rock and looked north, down over the valley towards the town. Despite the greyness of the afternoon, there was colour all around. Usually, May was Ana’s favourite time of year. She loved seeing the first rows of purple and green grapes on the vine. She loved all the wild flowers that grew on the slopes of the Black Mountain – yellow broom, pink and white wallflowers. The tall, red plants that sparkled like rubies. She loved the dragon trees and the palm trees swaying in the breeze, the pine trees and cedar trees.
Today, everything looked different.
She let her eyes focus on the Atlantic Ocean. From this high up, the view was so wide that she could see how the horizon wasn’t straight but a curve. Higher in the middle and lower at the edges. The sea was wild in winter, the waves crashing on the rocks. Today the water was calm.
Her home town was the most important port in Tenerife, welcoming trading ships from all corners of the globe. They arrived with sugar and dyes for cloth and carried away the famous wine. Wine from the Canary Islands was sent all over the world. It was an important port and a rich one.
At this time of day, Ana knew the fishermen would be mending their nets. Their wives would be smoking seaweed and gutting fish. The port was where her twin brothers – Pablo and Carlos – were often to be found watching the tall ships. They dreamt of a life on the sea, not a life tilling the soil. They talked of rigging and sails, of countries on the far side of the world.
From here, Ana could see all the white buildings of the town and the tall, thin spire of the church of Saint Ana. Her parents had named her after the saint – the patron saint of mothers – in gratitude at finally having a child who lived. Four babies before Ana had been born dead or lived only for a few hours. Two others died after her, then the twins came along. She thought of them often, those dead sisters and brothers she would never know.
So many ghosts.
Ana fanned herself with her hat, though it made no difference. There was an odd atmosphere this afternoon, as if something was about to happen, and a strange smell. She sniffed. It was like bad eggs.
Her thoughts, her emotions, were confused. She had waited until the burial, but now there was no excuse. She had to decide what – if anything – she was going to do. Standing by her father’s grave, she had felt she could take on the world and win. Now she wasn’t certain.
If only she was sure.
Her hand went to the pocket of her striped woollen skirt. Inside was the letter that her father had left behind on his final morning. Propped in the middle of the mantel above the fire, where it could not be missed. Ana took the letter out of her pocket. She had read it so many times, she knew it by heart.
This time, she saw something new. The clue she had been looking for.
She took a deep breath, then read the words one last time. She gave a grim smile. She knew it. She had been right all along. Hidden in plain sight, was a message from her father. A name. She picked out the six letters with her finger.
Ana breathed out.
To the men who controlled the town – with their rich clothes, fine-haired wigs and silver-tipped canes – this letter was further evidence that her father had meant to kill himself. That his death had not been a hunting accident. They were from Spain, not islanders, sent here to control trade. They ruled that her father had taken the coward’s way out.
Ana didn’t think her father’s death was an accident either.
It was murder.
Chapter Three
Ana’s eyes filled with tears.
Her dear father was dead, his body lying in the cold ground. Up till now, Ana had not allowed herself to weep. Now that she knew he had not left them willingly, somehow it meant she could allow herself to cry.
Ana shook her head. No, not yet. She had to stay strong.
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, then stood up. S
From the way the shadows were falling on the mountainside, Ana knew the afternoon was almost done. She knew she should go home to their white house at the bottom of the slope with its brown wooden shutters and porch. Her mother would be worrying and she was Ana’s responsibility now. But there was somewhere Ana had to go first. It wasn’t far.
Holding her hat in her hand, she headed back up the slopes of the Black Mountain. Formed from volcanic rock thousands of years ago, the soil was good for growing grapes. It gave their wine its strong and special taste.
In the far distance, a long way south, she could see the white summit of the largest volcano that sat at the heart of Tenerife. Ana had never been that far south. Even in May, there was still snow on its peak. Sailors said that, at sunrise and at sunset when the sun was low, the volcano cast a shadow on the other islands many miles away across the sea.
The people who lived on the island before the Spanish came said that a devil lived inside. When the devil was angry, he sent fire and rock up into the sky.
Her father had told them the legend when they were little. And it was not just about the biggest volcano, but their Black Mountain too. The twins – Pablo and Carlos – had covered their ears, pretending to be scared, but Ana had loved the story and begged him to tell it again and again.
Night after night when she was little, Ana sat on the wooden balcony at the back of their house and watched the Black Mountain. She almost wished the devil would thunder and the sky would fill with fire. Year after year she waited, until she realised it was just a made-up story so that children did not go too close to the crater. Sometimes the earth trembled and shook – and there were tales of eruptions of fire and rock in other parts of the island – but the sky above their Black Mountain never did turn red.
Ana kept climbing. There was a slight breeze now. She could hear it whispering in the high grasses that grew on the upper slopes. A wall of yellow and cream reeds swaying in the afternoon air.
Her legs were tired, but she did not stop. Ana was sixteen and tall for a woman. She was broad, with strong shoulders. She took after her father and was proud of that. She loved her mother, but grief and tragedy had made Maria Perez fragile. She should never have been a farmer’s wife. She had never recovered from the death of so many children. She was often ill and spent more time in church, praying to the saints, than outside with the sun on her face. Ana was built for working in the fields.
Ana arrived at the place. A narrow track was half hidden between two large broom trees, their yellow flowers like a burst of sunlight. It led to the clearing where her father had died. Ana had come here just after it had happened. There had been nothing to see. At least, nothing that told a different story – a man dead by his own hand, a splatter of rust-brown blood on the rocks and the ground, the marks of his boots in the dust.
A sense of sadness and of loss.
But for a week now, something had been preying on Ana’s mind. Now that she had read her father’s letter with fresh eyes, she hoped she might see something here she had missed before. Ana hoped that, if she listened hard enough, maybe his ghost might speak to her.
Chapter Four
Pablo and Carlos were bored. Their sister Ana had told them to stay at home. But as soon as they were sure their mother was asleep, they sneaked out of the house and went down to the port. She thought they spent too much time watching the tall ships, but she didn’t understand. All they wanted was to go to sea.
The twins, as alike as peas in a pod, were sitting on the low wall by the beach. Banging their heels against the wall, they were seeing which of them could throw stones the furthest.
The boys took after their mother. They were small and pale, with long brown curly hair to their shoulders. Everyone struggled to tell them apart. But Pablo had a tiny scar on the inside of his left wrist. When he was six years old, he had torn his skin on a jagged piece of wire when trying to steal apples from an orchard. The older twin by five minutes, he had always been the more adventurous. Pablo was the leader, Carlos followed him.
‘Haven’t you more sense than to be throwing stones?’
The twins scrambled up from the wall just as the face of widow Silva loomed up from the black sand below them.
‘You’re old enough to know better,’ she said. ‘Haven’t you something useful to do?’
Carlos pulled a face. ‘Not today.’
Pablo jabbed him in the ribs with his elbow. Carlos remembered they weren’t to tell anyone about the burial.
‘How old are you?’ Carlos blurted out.
Carlos had always been scared of widow Silva. She was tall and broad. Dressed from head to toe in black, with a small white collar, her grey hair was parted in the middle and tied into a bun. A comb held her widow’s veil in place over her head and shoulders. Her face was turned brown by the sun and criss-crossed by a thousand lines.
‘You should be ashamed of yourself, asking such a question,’ she said.
Carlos flushed. ‘Everyone’s got to be something.’
‘People don’t like being asked their age.’
Pablo shielded his eyes and stared at her. ‘Why not?’
Widow Silva leaned towards the boy, casting a shadow across his face.
‘Because it makes them think about dying,’ she said quietly. ‘No one likes to do that.’
Although the boys were young and healthy, they both shivered.
‘Come on,’ Pablo said quickly. Pulling his twin down from the wall, they ran across the black sand towards the harbour.
Widow Silva watched them go, wondering why the Perez boys were so jumpy.
She looked around, but there was no sign of their mother. That wasn’t unexpected. She was a timid creature. Maria Perez rarely came out of the house except to go to church. She went to confess her sins on Fridays and to Mass on Sundays. She never came down to the port.
Even before the family’s recent troubles, Mrs Perez had seemed scared of her own shadow. Since the attack on their vineyards last January, she’d withdrawn even further. The death of her husband, Tomas, must have been the final straw and everyone knew there were money troubles.
Widow Silva shook her head. She knew what it was to lose a husband – hers had been lost at sea – but life carried on. A woman had no choice but to carry on.
She was feeling every one of her sixty years in her bones today. Nothing was easy. She pulled her veil over her shoulders and walked slowly over the black sand towards the local fishing boats. She wondered where Ana was. Ana usually kept a close eye on her brothers, trying to keep them out of trouble. The old woman sucked her teeth. Ana had her hands full with those boys.
A few moments later, widow Silva arrived at her smoking racks. She put down her basket, filled with dried seaweed, and sat heavily on her stool. Taking out her tinder box, she struck a piece of flint against the back of the blade of her knife. The sparks jumped away from the flint and settled in the dry tinder. She leant over and blew. The tinder was in a small circle of black stones. It began to glow and then the glow became a flame.
‘Pass me that dry seaweed,’ she said.
The thin boy in torn clothes, hiding behind the fishing boat, jumped. ‘How did you know I was here?’
She grunted. ‘You’re always here when I light the fire.’
Rudi grabbed a handful of seaweed. ‘Is this enough?’
‘For now.’
Careful not to stare at him, she put the seaweed on top of the burning tinder. It started to burn, giving off a beautiful smell of salt and earth. She passed Rudi the delicate wooden struts of the smoking rack.
‘Hold this.’
The boy stepped back as if he’d been struck. ‘I can’t.’
‘You can,’ she said firmly, and looked the other way as he struggled to balance the wooden pieces on his withered arm. Rudi had been born too early, and his left arm and left foot were as twisted as the roots of a vine. He could not climb or run like other boys, but he was clever, as sharp as a tack.
