The Black Mountain by Kate Mosse

Author:Kate Mosse [Mosse, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Published: 2021-12-22T17:00:00+00:00

Wednesday, 5 May 1706

The day of the eruption

Chapter Fourteen

Ana was being held prisoner on the first floor of the town hall.

She had been brought here from the town square hours ago. They had searched her and locked her in, but she was unharmed. They seemed to have forgotten about her. She had counted the hours by the tolling of the church bell. Now it was dark, though thin shafts of moonlight shone through the wooden shutters.

She could hear the Black Mountain rumbling in the distance.

To start with, Ana had paced up and down, the boards creaking beneath her feet. She was putting the pieces of the puzzle together in her mind. She was angry, then scared. She was thirsty and she was hungry. Now she was simply tired.

She hated to think of her mother and brothers in their little white house, not knowing what was happening to her. She hoped widow Silva had gone to sit with them. Ana remembered the blood on Antonio’s face and hoped he was all right. The soldiers hadn’t hurt her, but she feared they would be less kind to him. Was he also being held in the town hall? Or had they taken him to the prison at the port?

Ana heard the bells strike for ten o’clock.

At least, in these long hours alone, she’d had time to work out both how and why her father had been murdered. The ‘how’ was simple. She guessed he had been knocked out first. After that, it would have been easy for two men to stage his death to look like suicide. She did not think the mayor himself would have done this, but she was certain now it was on his orders.

The ‘why’ was harder, but she thought she had worked it out too. It wasn’t because of his warnings about the Black Mountain. Rather, it was because, during his visits to the crater to look at the changes, her father had seen something he should not have seen. That made most sense. The attack on their vines, the rumours about their money troubles, his murder – all came because he had been on the mountain at the wrong moment.

From so high up, her father would have been able to see what was happening in the town. But also what was happening out at sea. His eye glass and his leather bag had been found with his body. For the name her father had hidden in his letter was not the name of a person, but of a ship. A ship that had gone down off the north-west coast of Tenerife in January.

Last January, when the worst of the winter storms came blowing in off the Atlantic, La Blanca had gone down not far from the port. Every man on board had drowned. The treasure had gone down with the ship.

The White Ship – La Blanca – had been one of Spain’s most important ships, carrying silver and pearls, silk and spices. The ship had five masts with billowing white sails.

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