Chapter 101: The Healer Accused

The rider came up the harbour road with a paper in his hand and he came straight to the top of the cliff.

"Luna," he said. "I have come from the northern seat. There is a warrant with the Council's seal on it and it was issued this morning and it names you."

I took the paper.

It was short. It said that the healer known as Fiadh had claimed the founder's bloodline without proof and had used the claim to obtain the Luna's seat of the Blackthorn Pack, and that the Council required her to be confined to the Blackthorn house until a trial of the charge could be held.

"The trial is set for tomorrow," the rider said. "At noon. In the hall."

I looked at the seal on the paper.

"Who issued this?"

"The elder Soren."

"Soren is not on the Council. Soren ran north two weeks ago and there has been no word of him since."

The rider looked uncomfortable.

"The warrant came from the northern seat," he said. "It has the seal on it and the seal is the seal of the Council. I am a messenger and I do not ask questions."

I folded the paper.

Ronan had come up beside me.

"Give it to me," he said.

I gave it to him.

He read it twice with his jaw set.

"This is Soren," he said. "He has come out of whatever hole he has been hiding in and he has written a warrant and put a seal on it and the seal has been accepted by somebody in that seat."

"Rannoch," I said. "Rannoch is the keeper of the seal and Rannoch has been sitting in a room for a week with a paper in front of him trying to work out which way the wind is blowing."

Ronan looked at the rider.

"You will take a message back to the northern seat," he said. "You will tell whoever gave you this paper that the Luna of the Blackthorn Pack will answer the charge in this house tomorrow at noon and that she will answer it in front of the whole of the coast."

The rider went.

We went back down to the hall.

The hall was still full. The elders were still at the top of it and the pack was still on the benches and the Ravenscar wolves were still at the back and the whole of it was looking at me as I came through the door.

Ilsa held up the paper.

"The Council has issued a warrant," she said. "The healer will be confined to this house until tomorrow at noon, when she will answer the charge of bloodline fraud in this hall in front of the whole of the coast."

The hall went up.

And this time it did not come down.

I stood in the middle of it and listened to forty wolves shout. I heard one of the nine say the word impostor. I heard a woman at the back say, she has been in this house two months and there has been nothing but trouble since. I heard Colm's brother say something that I could not hear but that made the wolf next to him turn round.

"Silence," Ilsa said.

The hall did not go silent.

"Silence," she said again, and struck the table, and this time it went quiet.

"The healer will be confined to this house," Ilsa said. "She will not leave it and she will not speak to the pack until the trial. Elder Rannoch will stay in this house and keep the seal and I will stay and keep the record." She looked at me. "Healer. You will go to your room and you will stay there."

I looked at her.

"I have been in this house for two months," I said. "I have sewn up eleven wolves in one night. I have carried the Alpha up his own stairs and I have broken a false bond in a Council chamber. And now I am to be confined to my room like a wolf who has done something wrong."

"The charge is not that you have done something wrong," Ilsa said. "The charge is that you have not proved something right." She looked at me with her old eyes. "It is not fair and it is not kind and it is the law. Go to your room."

I went.

Ronan came with me up the stairs and stood outside the door.

"I will be in the corridor," he said.

"You do not have to stand in the corridor. You have a pack to hold together."

"The pack can hold itself for one night." He looked at me. "Fiadh. There is a thing I said on the cliff and I have been thinking about it all the way down and I want to say the other half of it."

"What?"

"I pulled away because I was frightened. Not because I thought you had lied." He put his hand on the door frame. "I have been lied to by every wolf in this coast and I have been frightened since the spring and when Ailsa said your mother was born in that house I felt the door shut and I could not stop it." He looked at me. "That is not your fault and I am sorry for it and I am going to sit in this corridor until you open the door in the morning."

I looked at him.

"Ronan."

"Go to bed, Fiadh."

I went to bed.

I did not sleep.

I lay on the bed in my room with the stone in my pocket and the letter in my coat and the notebook on the table, and at some point in the night I got up and lit the lamp and opened the notebook at the page with the crest on it.

The house of the founder and three names under it, and the third name was Ravenscar.

And under that, in my mother's hand, the line that said the founder's line and the Ravenscar line have been joined twice.

I turned the page.

There was a thing on the back of it that I had not read. It was a list of names and there were four of them and they were in my mother's hand and the last one was mine.

And under my name, in the same hand, there was a line.

It said: if the Council comes for her, the proof is in the keepers' house and the keepers' house is not in the north.

The door of my room opened and Padraig came in with a lamp in his hand.

"Healer," he said. "You need to see this."

"What is it?"

He put a paper on the table.

It was a copy of the warrant and it had a name at the bottom that was not Soren's and not Rannoch's.

It was Maeve's.