‘Thank you,’ she said, taking the last strut from his hand and putting it in place.

  She reached down into an old pot, full of briny water. She took out a dozen small, silver-backed fish with blank dead eyes, and laid them on the smoking rack one by one.

  Rudi edged closer.

  ‘Once they’ve dried, how long will they last?’ he asked.

  ‘Long enough to be put aside in case the fishing boats can’t go out.’

  ‘Is a storm coming?’

  Widow Silva looked at the horizon through the gap in the high harbour wall that protected the port. The Atlantic Ocean was flat and dark. But even here, right down by the water, the air was humid and heavy. There was something unsettling in the stillness.

  ‘I don’t think so . . .’ She turned and looked inland towards the Black Mountain. ‘But something’s coming.’

  Rudi followed her gaze. The lower slopes were all green with grass. Higher up the land was dry and brown. Over the mountain, the sky was white. Everything looked the same to him.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

  The old woman shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I am old, so perhaps I imagine what is not there . . .’ Pressing her hands on her knees, she hoisted herself to her feet. ‘Stay here and look after the fish for me.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  Widow Silva did not seem to hear. ‘Keep them in the way of the smoke, but out of the flames.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ he asked again.

  ‘Don’t let the fire go out.’

  At first, Rudi enjoyed his task.

  It was fun to pile the seaweed onto the flames and see the fish change colour as they dried. But then he put too much seaweed on the fire in one go and the flames leapt up, scorching the tail-fins of the fish. He hobbled to the rock pools and found some wet weed to damp down the flames. It seemed to work, until he realised the smell was different. The dry weed smelt of salt and good earth. The wet weed smelt of things that were rotten.

  Rudi bit his lip to stop himself from crying. Whatever he did, he failed. The other boys made fun of him. They all told him he was useless. Pablo was the worst. Yet again, he had proved them right. He couldn’t even keep a fire going.

  He wished the earth would open and swallow him up.

  Chapter Five

  In the clearing on the Black Mountain, Ana was looking down at the patch of earth where her father had died.

  Ana loved the sound of birdsong. She loved to watch the tiny blue birds dart in and out of the trees, or to see a flock of wild canaries. But, today, it was completely quiet. Not even a kestrel flying high in the sky broke the silence. Perhaps, she wondered, the birds knew what had happened here and were showing their respect.

  At that moment, a glint of sun came out from behind the clouds and turned the ground golden. Ana allowed herself to smile. Nature cared nothing for the lives of women or of men.

  The sky was now an expanse of white with the glow of the sun behind it. There was a strange kind of a haze. From this high up, it was easy to imagine all the other islands surrounding Tenerife. Her father always called them ‘seven stars on a blue sky’.

  With a stab of memory, she remembered her father’s words the night of the attack on their vines. Four men, their faces covered in black hoods, had stolen onto their land with fire in their hands. If their friend Antonio had not been there, they would have lost everything.

  After the danger was over, Antonio had taken her mother and brothers back to the house. Ana had stayed in the vineyard with her father to keep watch in case the attackers came back.

  It had been a cold night in January and her father had wrapped his pale brown blanket around her to keep her warm. All the working men of the island wore this same long woollen shawl with a striped blue pattern around the edges.

  As they’d sat in the darkness, her father had pointed to the night sky and told her it was a very special night. Ana had been angry. She didn’t understand how he could be so calm after what had just happened. They had nearly lost everything.

  ‘Ask me why,’ he’d said.

  When she hadn’t answered, he had laughed.

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you all the same. Because the sky is so clear tonight, you can see the maidens. Look.’

  Despite herself, Ana tilted her head back and stared.

  ‘How many stars can you see?’ he asked.

  ‘Seven,’ she said.

  He nodded. ‘The seven maidens in the sky, like the seven islands. This is our life, Ana. Here on the Lucky Islands. And Tenerife is the luckiest island of them all.’

  Ana balled her hands into fists. ‘After what’s just happened, Papa, how can you think we are lucky? Why aren’t you angry? Why aren’t you—’

  He rested his hand gently on her arm.

  ‘Life is hard for most people, Ana,’ he said. ‘We are as lucky as we deserve to be. We are alive. We still have our vines. They did not win.’

  Standing in the clearing now, remembering her dear father’s voice, she felt tears come to her eyes again.

  Suddenly, Ana felt the ground shake and her legs went from under her. The next thing she knew, she was sprawled in the dirt with her breath knocked out of her.

  Sometimes the earth complained. Every island child knew this, the adults talked of this. There were sometimes tremors on the mountain, though nothing ever changed. But she had never felt anything so strong before.

  Ana pressed both hands flat on the ground. No movement, no sound, nothing. She listened, waited, expecting another shift. Another lurch, a shaking of the earth. But nothing more happened. Everything was calm, everything was still.

  But now she was aware of butterflies in her stomach. She realised she had fallen in the exact place her father had been found. Ana tried not to think about her father’s head snapped back by the force of the bullet. Or his long black hair matted with blood. It was a sight she would never forget for as long as she lived. Instead, she forced herself to look at the red stain on the rock, now turned rust-brown by the fierce Tenerife sun.

  She sat back against the rough surface of the boulder. She closed her eyes, trying to imagine his final moments. Had there been one murderer or more? Was her father aware he was in danger? Were his last moments full of fear or full of love for his family?

  If he had shot himself, how had he done it? The muzzle of his shotgun was long. It would be very difficult to fire. She was about as tall as her father. Ana drew up her knees and pictured him wedging the gun between his boots. She pictured the deep mark on his finger where the twine had marked his skin. She mimed how he might have tied the string around the trigger, winding it round the butt of the gun so it pulled away from him.

  Her eyes shot open. Of course! That was it.

  Standing in the town hall, looking down at the dead body of her father, she’d seen the mistake his murderers had made. At the time, she had not understood. The red mark where the string had cut into his skin was on his right forefinger, but that was wrong.

  Her father was left-handed in everything except for writing. In lessons, when he was a boy, the priest had tied his left hand behind his back to force him to use his right hand. He was beaten when he made a mistake. The hard lesson had worked. Her father signed documents with his right hand. When he had reported the attack on the vines at the town hall, he had used his right hand to write his name – Tomas Perez. But he used his left hand for everything else – chopping wood, tending the vines, for shooting.

  Her father would never have fired his shotgun with his right hand, but the men who’d killed him hadn’t known that. They had tied the string onto the wrong finger.

  Chapter Six

  Ana scrambled to her feet.

  She had been away from home for too long, but she had to speak to her father’s closest friend, Antonio. He lived further up the mountain. He would advise her what she should do.

  Antonio was a hermit, choosing to spend his days alone in a shack on the slopes of the Black Mountain. He kept a nanny goat for milk and hardly ever came down into the town. His clothes were different from most islanders’. He wore breeches and a doublet. His hair and beard were grey, but no one knew how old he was.

  Rumours surrounded him like an autumn mist. Some said he was mad, others that he was a wealthy landowner who had lost a fortune. Some said he was an outsider from another of the Canary Islands or, even, from the mainland. Others claimed he had been shipwrecked on the north coast of Tenerife and was in hiding. They said he was a pirate, that he was a sailor, that he was a spy for the king of Spain. Antonio denied nothing, said nothing, just continued with his quiet business.

  All Ana knew was that Antonio was her father’s most trusted friend. Like her father, he stood firm against the few rich men who controlled the town. The mayor and the priest were brothers and part of a wealthy wine-making family from Spain. A third brother lived on the mainland and bought and sold wine. The only sister was married to a man with a fleet of ships and plenty of money. None of them had any respect for island ways.

  When the mayor had tried to force her father to sell their land to him, it was Antonio who had helped the Perez family stand against them. And when men came in the night with burning torches to destroy their vines, it had been Antonio who raised the alarm.

  Ana ran back along the path and was about to start the climb to Antonio’s shack, when a voice stopped her in her tracks.

  ‘Ana!’

  Her name echoed across the mountainside.

  ‘Ana!’

  She turned. On the slope behind her, she could see one of the twins waving his arms. She thought it was Pablo. Though the twins were the same to look at, their characters were quite different. Pablo was loud, always shouting. Carlos was quiet, always listening.

  Ana mimed to show she couldn’t hear.

  ‘You have to come! Mama wants you.’

  She still couldn’t make out what he was saying, but from his hand signals she realised what he wanted. She was needed at home. Her visit to Antonio would have to wait until tomorrow.

  With a sigh, Ana turned and walked down to join her brother.

  Tuesday, 4 May 1706

  The day before

  Chapter Seven

  The following morning, Ana was awake before daylight. She had hardly slept.

  It had been a long evening. Her mother had been very upset when Ana got back – it seemed visitors had come to the house – so Ana didn’t mention where she’d been, nor how she’d felt the ground shake.

  By the time Ana had made a simple supper of cheese and bread – and persuaded her mother to drink a little wine to help her sleep – it was dark. Pablo and Carlos were restless. They argued over their father’s eye glass until Ana took it away from both of them. To calm them down, she read aloud from the Bible – their favourite story was Jonah and the Whale – until the oil lamp burnt low.

  When, at last, the twins were in bed, Ana found she could not sleep. Her head was spinning with everything that had happened during the day. As she lay there, waiting for the dawn, she could hear the rumbling of the Black Mountain in the distance.

  ‘I will be back as soon as I can,’ Ana said, hooking her father’s leather bag over her shoulder. ‘Leave Mama to rest. If anyone comes, don’t let them in.’

  ‘But there’s nothing to do inside,’ Carlos said.

  Ana gave a short laugh. ‘The table needs polishing, the tiles need washing, the—’

  ‘That’s girls’ work,’ Pablo said.

  Ana turned on him. ‘What did you say?’

  Pablo turned red. Carlos, always the more timid of the two of them, looked at his boots.

  ‘Other boys don’t have to do housework,’ Pablo said.

  ‘Other boys work in the fields,’ she said sharply. ‘Would you prefer that?’

  Pablo shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t mind.’

  Ana knew he was not telling the truth. Their father had wanted his sons to fall in love with making wine, in the same way that she had. Ana enjoyed every part of the process – the pruning of the vines, watching the first grapes come, the harvesting and the long, long days and nights of turning grapes into wine. She loved writing the labels to be placed on each oak cask. But her brothers showed no interest at all.

  ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘I will speak to our foreman and arrange for you to start tomorrow.’

  Behind her back, she felt the twins exchange wild glances.

  ‘Of course,’ she added, ‘it will mean no more visiting the port in the afternoons. You will have no time. But if that’s what you wish . . .’

  Ana took her shawl from the hook on the back of the door and started to leave.

  ‘Wait!’ Pablo called.

  Ana kept her face stern. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I was . . .’ He pulled a face. ‘When we have finished in the kitchen, what should we do next?’

  Ana smiled. ‘After all the chores are done, you may go down to the port and buy fish for our supper. Go to widow Silva. Her fish is always fresh.’

  Carlos threw his arms around her waist.

  ‘Thank you!’

  Ana kissed the top of Carlos’s head and put her hand on Pablo’s shoulder.

  ‘So long as you both remember there are no boys’ tasks and girls’ tasks in this house any more, just things that need to be done. Do you understand?’

  The twins nodded.

  Ana smiled. ‘Now, will you pass me my hat?’

  Carlos looked at the hook. ‘It’s not there.’

  She frowned. ‘It must be. I always put it there.’

  ‘See for yourself,’ Pablo said.

  Ana realised she must have left it in the clearing yesterday afternoon. No matter, she could fetch it after seeing Antonio. His sense of decency would not be offended by her hair being uncovered.

  ‘I will be home by early afternoon,’ she said. ‘Don’t get into trouble.’

  Although her grief for her father felt like a stone on her chest – always there, stealing her breath from her – Ana felt her spirits lift as she set off back up the mountain.

  She walked through their vineyards, nodding to the labourers working on the vines. During the night, she’d wondered if the men who had visited the house yesterday had come for money. Ana would not be able to bear it if they had to sell the family land, but the fact was they’d have trouble paying their bills at the end of the next quarter. They needed this year’s yield of grapes to be good.

  She tried to put everything from her mind as she began to climb the mountain. Higher and higher, keeping a steady pace, her boots pounding the dry earth. The slope got steeper. The surface was a mixture of gravel and stone and Ana’s boots kept slipping, but she kept going.

  She had lived her whole life in this landscape. Ana knew the changing colours of the seasons. She knew the smells and the sounds as well as she knew her own face in the mirror. But today there seemed to be mounds where before the land had been flat, strange hollow dips where before it had been level. Nothing looked quite the same.

  The sky was a wide expanse of white and there was an odd glow as if a sea fog had settled over the summit. The air was humid for the time of day, though there was no sign of a storm. Grey clouds were covering the highest peaks of the Black Mountain. They looked almost like steam from boiling water.

  Ana frowned. If her father had been here, she could have asked him what it meant. As a farmer, he was always alert to any change in the weather. She would have asked him too about the tremor she had felt yesterday.

  ‘It is just the earth letting us know who is in charge,’ he’d have said, as he always did, and Ana would have been reassured. ‘The earth is reminding us to take good care of her.’

  Chapter Eight

  Like Ana, widow Silva had not slept.

  At dawn, she gave up and came to her usual place by the fishing racks. Her thoughts were buzzing in her head like wasps in a jar. She feared there was a link between the changes on the mountain and the death of Ana’s father, Tomas Perez. She didn’t want to admit it, but she was scared.

  Some time later, she was drinking a third cup of bitter, black coffee when she saw the tall, thin figure of Antonio coming down the sloping street to the port.

  ‘Thank God,’ she said.

  She pulled herself to her feet, sending her cup flying to the ground. The hot coffee hissed and spat on the fire. She took no notice, just walked as quickly as her old legs would carry her across the sand to meet him.

  ‘Something is happening,’ she said when he drew level.

  Antonio nodded. ‘All the signs are there, yes.’

  The two old friends turned and looked over the spire of the church of Saint Ana, to the Black Mountain beyond. Clouds of dark grey smoke could be seen hovering above the crater.

  ‘Is that how it began before?’

  Again, he nodded. ‘First, the tremors, then white clouds of ash, then grey clouds, then the sky turned red. Black ash and lava burst up from three craters. A river of fire, killing everything and turning the land to rock.’

  The old woman looked at him. ‘Tomas Perez saw what was coming?’

  ‘He was worried about several things. But he saw the changes on the mountain before I did.’

  She tilted her head. ‘And now he’s dead.’

  ‘Now he’s dead.’ Antonio held her gaze. ‘They do not want anything to threaten their wealth.’

  For a moment, the two old people stood in silence. Antonio did not want to tell her more, for fear of putting her in danger. He had no doubt his friend, Tomas Perez, had been killed to stop him talking.

  ‘How long do you think?’ widow Silva asked.

  Antonio let his arms drop by his side. ‘Nothing is certain. The Black Mountain has complained before, but then settled back to sleep.’

  She looked at him with her fading eyes. ‘But if it does not?’

  ‘Two days, perhaps three at the most,’ he said.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8