‘How did you know who …?’
The mountainous man lumbers away until the rocks hide him once more.
Stefán turns back to the pool. He cannot drink another drop anyway; his thirst is queerly sated. His once parched lips are soft and moist. When he steps away from the pool he hears the same rustling, like clothing brushing against the rock. He stands motionless, waiting. Now there is only thunder.
‘Let’s be on our way,’ he says to his dead son.
CHAPTER NINE
1785
The rain pelts down. Stefán can almost hear the clouds grumbling as they sweep past his view as he stands at his front door shaking off the wet. He removes his shoes, turns off the long hall to the kitchen and there tosses more turf on the fire until it spits flames. Coffee first, and then he inhales a bowl of fish, its sweet taste made bitter by his loneliness.
The pounding of the rain ceases, leaving in its absence the quiet that he hates. In the sleeping room he removes a stack of papers from his wife’s trunk and returns to the kitchen’s fire where he prefers to sit these days.
He reads the pages again, though he knows them by heart. The curled edges of the paper fold in on each other. The reading is tortuous and comforting.
Entry, Late June 1783
People arrive each day having fled areas just north of us, almost mad from what they have lost; they are humbled by their new poverty. Those of us by the coast and the low country miraculously survive, but the fear that our land will finally succumb to the screams of the volcano seeps into our bones.
Entry, 20th July
We are jubilant these last few days. Finally, we feel safe from the lava’s course. Our livestock is well. Our hay is dry. My sulphur stores are safe. We celebrate as if it is Christmas. Other survivors are welcome to the farm to dance and sing and share the food we managed to save through my wife’s clever management.
Entry, 27th July
The gaiety that surrounded us last week is eroded. A tenant came rushing through the farmstead shouting that the livestock has turned colour, their snouts and hooves are a queer sickly yellow.
I am certain that a poison falls from the sky. Some toxic mist permeates the hay and the grasslands. Vegetation withers and burns. I walk across my pastures to find the grass so brittle it turns to powder under my feet.
Entry, early October
The monster still erupts. Our daughters are terribly sick.
Entry, end October
The flesh falls from our horses. The sheep are swollen with tumours. Their skin rots. One lamb was born with the claws of a predatory bird instead of cloven hooves. To see such sights – my daughters are terrified.
By some miracle Glossi is still healthy. He never fails even though he eats much contaminated hay. Amongst the diseased and deformed animals, many men wonder that Glossi is the freak.
Entry, February 1784
Laki stands quiet. She has exhausted the beast within her.
Entry, July 1784
It has been a full twelve months since the first eruption, the plains of the Skaftá remain so hot that they cannot be crossed, steam and smoke still rise from it.
The disaster is only beginning.
Entry, 1785
I do not know why I am still alive.
There is no food, no water that is not poisoned.
My wife is dead. My daughters are dead. Everyone on my farmstead and those on my other holdings – they are all dead.
Their bodies became bloated, the insides of their mouths and their gums swelled and cracked. Little Mara’s tongue festered and fell off. Everyone was plagued with complete hair loss.
The whole country, what is left of it, is on its knees. Copenhagen threatens to evacuate the island.
And yet, I live. Glossi, still lives.
Stefán folds the papers and holds them to his chest, and then in one swift movement he tosses them into the fire.
For the second time this year he is suddenly light-headed. He moves away from the fire, first thinking the heat has made him dizzy, but then he remembers the last time, when he became drowsy … the way he feels now.
He crawls to bed and within seconds the heaviness leaves him powerless and he sleeps. He is given the death he craves – for fourteen days and nights.
When he wakes he takes two drops from the phial, eats, and packs his things. He can wait no longer. With a forced calm he folds his clothes, rolls his stockings and wipes his shoes.
Stefán rides Glossi to the coast where he will seek the giant by the rocks near the pool. His heart is as empty as his home, his spirit hollow. His rage foments a decision. He will either take his place in the mounds of the dead, or he will find a good reason to stay alive.
LONDON
1783
CHAPTER TEN
‘All the world is in Limehouse,’ Averil Lawless announces.
Tall, in the way a London plane reaches to the heavens surpassing others, the woman in the towering hat cuts a striking figure through the streets and narrow alleys that bustle with all of humanity.
Found in this maritime community, this gateway to the world, in the eastern end of London are the sailors, the ropemen, the coal heavers, the lumpers, the lightermen, the sugar bakers, the shipwrights, and those on their miserable journey to the place of their execution. Dotted amongst the sailmakers, the chandlers, the potters, the merchants, the watermen and the oyster-sellers stand a smattering of rich landowners, who would rather throw themselves into the bubbling stew of the river than live too far from the source of their wealth.
The Japanese sailor and the Malay pass side by side with the Scandinavian and the Russian. There is little difficulty in finding the Persian, the Egyptian, or even the South Sea Islander. They all rub shoulders with the pirates, the bawdy women, thugs, smugglers, the hard-working labourers and the
