Chapter 118: Maeve's Last Card

The chamber went up and stayed up.

Ilsa struck the table four times and the herald struck the floor and neither of them could stop it, and in the end Ilsa stood up out of her chair and shouted into the noise and the noise died.

"The witness will say her name," she said.

The woman stood in the middle of the floor between the two keeper's wolves.

"My name is Aileen," she said. "I am a healer and I have been a healer in Galway for thirty years and I was in the room next to Siobhan's when she died."

"You will tell this Council what you heard," Ilsa said.

"I heard a quarrel," Aileen said. "It was the winter and the walls were thin and there was a woman in the next room who had been ill for a year and there was a young one with her who was her daughter. And the young one was shouting about a book and a debt and a trust and the old woman was saying no and the young one was saying, I have waited long enough."

The chamber was silent.

"And then?" Ilsa said.

"And then there was a noise and then there was nothing." Aileen looked at me. "I went in the morning and the old woman was dead and the young one had gone and the room had been gone through."

The chamber went up.

I stood at the table with my hands flat on it.

"That is a lie," I said.

"The witness will be silent until she is asked," Ilsa said.

"Elder. My mother died of an illness that lasted a year. I was in that room when she died and I held her hand and I closed her eyes and I paid for the burial out of my own purse." My voice was not steady. "And if this woman was in the room next to it she would know that."

Aileen looked at me.

"I know what I heard," she said.

"You know what you were paid to say." I turned round. "Maeve. How much did Eamon give you for this?"

Maeve stood at the back of the chamber with her hands folded.

"I have not been paid anything," she said. "I have brought a witness before this Council and the Council will decide what to do with her."

"The witness is a liar and you know it." I came round the table. "My mother was a healer with a case of tins and a rented room and a debt that was not a debt. She spent her whole life hiding me from the keepers and she died in a bed with me holding her hand. And you are standing in this chamber and telling the north that I killed her."

Maeve looked at me.

"I am telling the north what a witness has said," she said. "It is for the Council to decide."

And then Padraig stood up.

He stood up out of the chair at the side of the chamber with his stick in his hand and his white beard flat against his chest.

"Elder," he said. "I am Padraig, healer of the Blackthorn Pack, and I was in Galway in the winter that Siobhan died."

The chamber turned round.

"I was not in the room next to hers," Padraig said. "I was in the street outside with the smuggler Oisin and we were watching the door because we had been told the keepers were coming. And there was a healer in the room next door and her name was not Aileen."

"What was her name?" Ilsa said.

"Her name was Maire and she was sixty years old and she died four years ago and she was my cousin." Padraig looked at the woman in the middle of the floor. "And this wolf is not her."

The chamber went up.

"And there is a thing I can say about the night Siobhan died," Padraig said. "I was in the room the next morning. I saw the body and I saw the room and there was nothing gone through and there was no blood and there was a cup of tea on the table with the leaves still in it. She died of an illness that lasted a year and her daughter was with her when she went."

The chamber went completely silent.

"Elder," Ilsa said. "The witness will be taken into custody and held for questioning."

Two guards came forward and took Aileen by the arms.

And Maeve turned and walked out of the chamber.

"Stop her," Ilsa said.

Two more guards went after her.

They came back a minute later.

"The Beta has gone out through the north gate," one of them said. "There was a horse waiting for her."

Ilsa sat down in her chair.

"The Council will continue," she said. "The keeper Eamon is not in his seat and the Beta of the Blackthorn Pack has left this building. The trial of the elder Soren will proceed in his absence and the ledger on that table will be read into the record."

I stood in the middle of the floor with my hands at my sides.

"Elder," I said. "There is a thing in that ledger that is worse than the bindings."

"Say it."

I opened the ledger at the last page.

"Eight years ago there is a note about the Alpha of the Blackthorn Pack," I said. "It says he has taken a mate and she is not of the founder's blood and she is not of interest. It says the Council may wish to consider him for a binding in the future." I looked up. "His mate was called Bríd. She was a Gamma and she died eight years ago in the north in the snow bringing a family out. And the family she went north to bring out was on the keepers' list."

The chamber went up.

Ronan stood in the middle of the floor.

"She went north because there was a family on the list," he said. "And she died because she went."

The chamber was silent.

And down in the square, a horn sounded.

It was not a Council horn. It was lower and it was longer and it came from the north road.

And then there was another one from the east.

The doors of the chamber opened and a guard came in at a run.

"Elder," he said. "There are wolves on the north road. Forty of them at least and they are carrying Ravenscar colours."

Ilsa stood up.

"Close the gates," she said.

"The gates are already closed," the guard said. "And there is a boat on the water with a flag on it and the flag is the Beta's."