Lanzarote

J.H Wallace

Description

In the religious prison of 1730s Lanzarote, Milago is a victim of her desires. Outcast, pregnant, she suffers the cruelties of her lover's family when a volcano ravages the island and their lives. Driven by love for her son and by her own wild sensuality, Milagro is caught in a spiral as cruel as the fiery death delivered by the volcano's lava.

Sujets

• Historical fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Aurora Polruan Books
• Date de parution: 01 avril 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783013685
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Amid the repressive religious environment of Lanzarote in the early 1700s, Milagro, young, beautiful and naive, is the target of every man who sees her, including her wealthy stepfather. But when she lets herself be seduced by the handsome outland fisherman, Felipe, she learns how cruel life can be. Fleeing her mother s oppressive home to bear Felipe s child, she endures a life of hardship and exile. Then this life, too, is torn apart. Volcanic eruptions ravage Lanzarote, destroying families, livestock, homes and the land itself. Driven by fear, need and her own volatile nature, desperate to protect her young son, Milagro is caught in a vortex as destructive as the scorching streams of lava that have ravaged the island.
This intense story of the dark underside of human nature confronted with the devastating effect of natural disaster paints a compelling picture that is very relevant in today s world.
LANZAROTE
J.H. WALLACE
Aurora Polruan Books
Copyright the Estate of J.H Wallace 2014
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
The Estate of J.H. Wallace asserts the right of J.H. Wallace to be identified as author of this Work in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Published by Aurora Polruan Books 2014
ISBN: 978-1-78301-368-5
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The estate of J.H. Wallace would like to thank Nicholas Fry, Justin Higham and Alexandra Sellers for their many hours of work in bringing this project to fruition, and all the members of the family for the donations which have made it possible.
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for Dennis goodbye to all that
Background note
Lanzarote has always been an active volcanic island. From 1730 to 1736, there were multiple eruptions more or less continuously from the thirty or so volcanoes which developed on the island during this period. These eruptions covered most of the arable land with lava and forced the majority of the surviving population to flee to other islands. Many returned when the eruptions ceased.
The original inhabitants of the Canary Islands were the Guanches, who are believed to originate from North Africa. They were physically different from the later Spanish invaders and they had their own language and customs. Their numbers were drastically reduced over the centuries by Spanish conquest and marauding pirates from North Africa in search of slaves, but traces of a pre-Hispanic heritage can still be seen in the islands today.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter I - The Amateur Vulcanologist
Chapter II - Milagro
Chapter III - Her Life
Chapter IV - The Eruption
Chapter V - Survival
Chapter VI - 1756 - The Ruined Island
Chapter VII - Flight
Chapter VIII - Disaster
Chapter IX - El Moro
Chapter X - 1756 - Diego s Story
Chapter XI - 1741 - Return
Chapter XII - Revenge
Chapter XIII - Degradation
Chapter XIV - 1756 - Truth
Chapter XV - Closure
About the author
Prologue
September 1 st , 1730, a day like so many other days in Lanzarote, dry, windy, rainless. Night had fallen now on the cornfields of Timanfaya and the corn rippled in the bright moonlight. A faint cooling breeze blew across the overheated land, but that was not what was stirring the corn. The ground itself was in motion, bulging upwards and subsiding again as if some living thing were trying to escape, some wild beast imprisoned underground.
A crack appeared in the dry soil. Foul-smelling smoke billowed out, and suddenly the earth gave way. It had been no wild beast confined underground but a deadly brew of magma and poisonous gases-Lanzarote s evil soul, one might say-which had been searching for a weak point in the earth s crust for a long time. Now it had found one, and a great column of fire shot up in the middle of the fields with an appalling noise, louder than a thousand claps of thunder.
The villagers in the nearest houses stumbled shocked and horrified from their beds, staring in disbelief as their cornfields flared and blazed. The fire spread so rapidly that it seemed like only seconds before whole fields were consumed. There was nothing they could do; water was so scarce in the summertime that there would not have been enough to dowse even a small corner of one field. In the centre of the blackened stubble a monstrous mound was growing under the fiery column, growing higher and higher as the stunned peasants watched. From its peak, red streams began to flow, spreading in all directions, red-hot and smoking, setting fire to everything that was not already ablaze.
Men and women ran to and fro, beating vainly at the burning edges of their fields. All too soon, they realised that not only were their fields lost, but they were going to lose their houses to the blazing red torrents as well. Hardly anyone had the wits to do anything sensible. They were like frightened animals before a bush fire and only a few thought to grab some belongings before their homes began to blaze and crumble in their turn.
The forces of nature were relentless, the islanders livelihood gone in what seemed like an instant-crops, houses, personal possessions, livestock, everything. They fled. The earth shuddered violently under their feet and the scarlet torrents of lava moved fast. Those who stopped to help any stragglers or who delayed too long to seize a few of their possessions died horribly in the burning tide. Some of those who were speedier on their feet died also, overcome by the fumes and smoke or struck down by the hail of red-hot rocks which followed the initial explosion.
The unexpectedness of the disaster, its awful wholesale destruction, made it only too clear to the doomed villagers that God was punishing them. What terrible sins they had committed they could not tell, but they prayed as they ran- Oh God, let me live, I repent, I repent, spare me, spare me -panic-stricken pleas for a mercy which was not forthcoming.
There had been signs, of course, there had been physical signs, but who was there in barren, impoverished, backward Lanzarote to read such signs? The cauldron of impending disaster had simmered and smouldered for years, belching out foul-smelling clouds and trickles of lava from time to time, but those who lived in the west of the island had become accustomed to these demonstrations of lurking malevolence, to feeling the earth tremble beneath their feet. Babies and puppies would wake in the night and whimper during the stronger tremors, but everyone else would turn over and go back to sleep. Till tonight.
Don Andres tolled the bell in the little church in Yaiza, the nearest village to the initial eruption. A forlorn gesture: it was hardly likely that any of his flock could have slept through the noise of the explosions. He asked God every day of the year to send rain to fill their cisterns before they dried up completely; he asked Him to protect the crops from too much sun and wind; he asked Him also to keep the pirates away as long as possible-but it had not entered the priest s head (and God had not mentioned it to him any more than He had to his parishioners) that a much greater catastrophe was at hand than all these, one which would change the island for ever.
*
The church bell tolled in Arrecife, too, and Milagro woke out of a fitful doze. She had not been sleeping well; her husband-or the man she liked to call her husband-Felipe was away fishing and she was five months pregnant. Her fourth pregnancy, though she was only nineteen, but that was how life was. The baby in her stomach, sensing something untoward even in its cocooned isolation, kicked feebly, and through the glassless window of the small stone hut Milagro could see an unusual, ominous red glow in the sky. A fire, but a really big one. What was there that big which could burn like that?
Pepito, her four-year-old, her only surviving child (life was harsh in Lanzarote), howled with fright; she picked him up to comfort him and went outside. In the streets, men and women surged aimlessly around, hysterical with fear, and the ground beneath her feet quivered as she walked. Pepito had stopped crying and was staring in amazement at the fire in the sky.
Milagro began to make her way down to the port; she felt, though she could not tell why, that they might be safer near the water. Many townspeople were flocking towards the church and she almost fell over a woman kneeling in the street, skirts trailing heedlessly in the dust, swaying on the trembling ground and gabbling prayers, crossing herself over and over like a windmill. Milagro joined the desperate throng but she could hear Don Miguel s habitual thunderings about mortal sin and hell-fire before she got anywhere near the doorway. The priest, standing on the church steps, glared balefully at Milagro.
This is God s punishment for the sins of such as you.
The girl did not reply. She was used to such castigations, but she hesitated all the same. Even black Caterina from the brothel, who had never been known to go near the church, was one of those jamming the doorway, fighting