Chapter 100: Ronan's Doubt

The trial of the claim was held in three days and it was held in the hall of the Blackthorn house with the doors open.

The whole of the coast came. There were wolves from the boats and wolves from the farms and wolves from the three packs up the coast that nobody had heard from in years. There were Ravenscar wolves at the back, in their own colours, and there were highland wolves on the wall outside, and there were nine of the Blackthorn nine who had signed Maeve's paper, sitting together on the left-hand benches.

Ilsa sat at the top of the hall with the four elders behind her.

Maeve stood at the side of the hall with her hands folded.

And in the middle of the floor there was a wolf I had never seen before.

Her name was Ailsa and she was sixty or so and she was a Council clerk of the old school, with a grey bun and a plain coat and a satchel of papers at her feet.

"I have been a clerk in the northern seat for forty years," she said. "I have kept the bloodline records and I have kept the founder's file and I have come to say what I know."

"Say it," Ilsa said.

Ailsa opened her satchel and took out a paper.

"There is a record in the northern seat that has never been shown to a Council," she said. "It is the original record of the founder's line and it is not the copy that was in the room under the chamber. It says that in the year of the great sickness a child was born to the founder's line and the Ravenscar line and the child did not die in infancy as the copy says. The child was taken north and given to a keeper and the keeper's name was Cael's father."

The hall went up.

Ilsa struck the table.

"Go on," she said.

"The child was raised in the keepers' house and was never recorded and was given a name that was not a founder's name." Ailsa looked up. "And there is a line under it that says the child's mother was a wolf of the founder's blood called Mairead who was in the Council's custody at the time."

The hall was silent.

"Then the founder's line is not Fiadh's," Maeve said. "It is the child's. And Fiadh is a wolf from Galway with a mother who was a healer and a debt and no proof of anything."

"That is not what the record says," Ailsa said. "The record says the child was taken north and raised in the keepers' house and given a name. And it says the child had a daughter. And the daughter had a daughter."

The hall went quiet.

"Then who is Fiadh?" Ilsa said.

Ailsa looked at me.

"She is the fourth," she said. "The record has four generations in it and she is the last of them."

I stood in the middle of the hall.

"Then my mother," I said. "Siobhan. Which one was she?"

"Your mother was the third," Ailsa said. "She was born in the keepers' house and she was raised there and she ran from it in her twenty first year. The record says she ran south and changed her name and was never found."

The hall went up again.

I did not hear it.

I stood in the middle of the floor of the Blackthorn hall and I thought about a woman in a rented room in Galway with a case of tins beside the bed and a debt on her name that she did not owe. I thought about a woman who had been born in the keepers' house and raised in it and had run from it and had spent the rest of her life running.

She had never told me. She had told me in a letter, at the end, in a hand that was almost unreadable, and she had written, find the cave and find the stone and make them answer for it.

She had known all of it. She had known who she was and where she came from and what they had done to her mother, and she had taken it to Galway and hidden it in a rented room and died with it.

"Fiadh," Ronan said.

I turned round.

He was standing behind me and his face was not the face he had worn in the bothy or on the cliff. It was grey and it was closed and his hands were at his sides.

"Ronan," I said.

"You knew," he said.

"I did not know."

"You had the letter. You had the notebook. You had the Dunmore record and the keeper's word and you have been sitting on all of it for a week." His voice was flat. "And you did not tell me that your mother was born in the keepers' house."

"I did not know that until just now."

"You knew she was of the founder's blood. You knew the line went back further than the record said." He looked at me. "You did not tell me."

I felt it through the bond. It was a small thing, a pulling back, a shutting of a door that had been open since the bothy.

"Ronan," I said.

"I need a minute," he said, and walked out of the hall.

The hall was full of noise behind me and the elders were striking the table and Maeve was standing at the side with her hands folded and a look on her face I could not read.

I went after him.

I got to the door of the hall and the yard was empty and the gate was open and the path down to the harbour was grey in the morning light.

He was not on the path.

He was sitting on the wall at the top of the cliff with his back to me and his elbows on his knees.

"Ronan."

"Fiadh."

"You pulled away." I came and stood beside the wall. "I felt it. You pulled away through the bond and it felt like a door shutting."

He did not turn round.

"I have been lied to for a year," he said. "By Lorcan and by the Council and by Maeve and by my own body. And I thought you were the one thing that was not a lie."

"I am not a lie."

"You are the fourth of a line that has been kept by the wolves who put a false bond on my chest." He turned round. "And you did not tell me."

"I did not know."

"Then you should have told me what you did know." His voice was quiet. "A week, Fiadh. You had a week and a letter in your coat and a notebook in your bag and you did not say a word to me about any of it."

I stood at the top of the cliff with the wind in my hair.

"You are right," I said. "I should have told you. I should have told you the night I read the letter and I did not because I was frightened and because I did not know what it meant and because I have spent my whole life keeping things to myself and it is a hard habit to break." I looked at him. "But I am not the Council and I am not the keepers and I did not put a false bond on your chest."

Ronan looked at me.

"I know," he said.

"Do you?"

"I know it in my head." He put his hands on his knees. "But there is a thing in my chest that does not know it and it has been pulling since the hall and I cannot stop it."

I stood at the top of the cliff and looked at him.

"Then we will have to work out how to stop it," I said. "Because there is a reading in three days and a Council and a pack and a whole coast, and I cannot do it with a door shut between us."

Down on the harbour road, a rider was coming up from the south with a paper in his hand.