Chapter 134: The False Mate's Story

We went down to the gate at dawn.

Elara was standing on the step with her green scarf round her head and her bag at her feet and her face grey with tiredness. She had been riding for three days. I could see it in her boots and in the way she held herself and in the mud on the hem of her coat.

"Luna," she said.

"Elara."

"I have come from the keepers' house." She looked at me. "I went there after the trial. I went because there was a thing I had to see and I have been in it for a week and I have come to tell you what is in it."

"Come inside," I said.

We took her up to the room at the top of the east stair and she sat down by the fire and I got her a cup of tea and she held it in both hands and did not drink it.

"The false mate," she said. "You want to know about the false mate."

"I know about the false mate. There was no false mate. There was a letter and a ritual proxy and a name that was taken off a list of old families."

"There was a proxy." Elara looked at the fire. "But there was a wolf before the proxy. There was a real woman and she was called Elara and she was me."

I sat down opposite her.

"Say that properly," I said.

"Twenty years ago I was a binder's apprentice in the northern seat and there was a wolf in the house of the north who was of the founder's line. She was nineteen and she was called Mairi and she was not kept in the cellar with the children. She was kept in a room at the top of the house and she was recorded and she was bred and she was not allowed out of the wall." Elara's hands were shaking on the cup. "And when I was nineteen I was sent to her room to take her her supper and I sat down on the floor and I talked to her and I went back every night for a year."

The fire cracked.

"And then?" I said.

"And then she had a daughter and the daughter was taken from her at birth and given to a keeper." Elara looked at me. "She was told the child had died. She was told it in the morning and she did not believe it and she screamed for three days and then she stopped screaming and she did not speak again."

"Elara."

"She was my friend." Elara's voice cracked. "She was the only friend I ever had in that house and I was nineteen and I was frightened and I did what I was told and I did not help her."

I sat in the chair by the fire.

"What was the daughter called?" I said.

"She was not called anything. She was given to a keeper and the keeper was Cael and he named her Siobhan." Elara looked up. "Luna. Your mother was born in that house and her mother was called Mairi and I sat on the floor of her room when I was nineteen years old and talked to her about the sea."

The room was very quiet.

"Then the name in the letter," I said. "The mate the Council chose for Ronan. The name was Elara."

"It was my name." Elara put the cup down. "Soren took my name and put it in the letter because he knew that if the truth ever came out I would be the one who was blamed. And when I came to the Blackthorn house in the spring and put my hand on your mate's chest I did not know that the letter had my name in it and I did not know that there was a girl in a room at the top of the house who had been my friend."

I sat in the chair.

"And the proxy," I said. "The ritual proxy. What was that?"

"It was a thing the binder makes." Elara wiped her eyes. "A binder takes a lock of hair and a drop of blood and a name and she makes a thing that will hold a bond until the bond can be given to a living wolf. It is not a mate. It is a place to put a bond until the mate arrives." She looked at me. "There was never a mate for your Ronan. There was a bond and a proxy and a binder who did not know that the letter had her own name in it."

I got up and went to the window.

The square was quiet. The twelve were asleep in a house at the bottom of the hill with two Council guards on the door and the whole of the north had gone home at dawn.

"Elara," I said. "You have been in the keepers' house for a week. What did you see?"

Elara was quiet for a moment.

"There are seven children left in it," she said. "The other twelve walked out with Mairi and the keeper on the door will not open it. And there is a room at the top of the house that nobody goes into and it has a bed and a chair and a window that does not open."

"Mairi's room," I said.

"Mairi's room." Elara looked at me. "Luna. Your grandmother is still in that house."

I turned round.

"She is ninety one years old and she has been in that room for seventy years and she does not speak and she does not know her own name," Elara said. "And I have been sitting on the floor of that room for a week and talking to her about the sea."

The room was silent.

"Then we go and get her," I said.

"Luna. She is ninety one and she has been in that room for seventy years and she will not leave it."

"She will leave it." I picked up my coat. "Get Padraig. Get Oisin. Get the twelve and Mairi and the two Council guards."

"Where are we going?"

"To the house of the north." I turned round. "I have been trying to prove a claim for three months and I have been doing it with a book and a seal and a letter. And my grandmother has been sitting in a room at the top of a house for seventy years and nobody has been to see her."

And down in the corridor, a bell began to ring.