Chapter 29: Maeve's Suspicion

Oisin sat in the kitchen for an hour and told me about my mother.

He had known her before I was born, he said, when she was a young healer working the northern coast and he was a young smuggler running tobacco and letters between the islands. She had patched him up twice and saved his hand once, and when she left the north she had given him an address in Galway and told him that if she ever stopped writing he was to go and find her daughter.

"She stopped writing in the spring," he said. "Five years ago. I looked for you then and I could not find you. You were not on any roll and you were not in any pack and nobody had heard of you." He turned his cup round on the table. "Then a woman I know at the end of the pier sent word that a healer with golden hair had come to the Blackthorn house, and I came south on the morning tide."

"You came because my mother asked you to."

"I came because I owe her." He looked at me. "And because she told me, the last time I saw her, that if the Council ever came asking about a child, I was to lie. I have been lying to the Council for twenty two years, Fiadh. It is nice to finally meet the reason."

I was still sitting with that when Maeve found me.

It was late afternoon and I was in the sickroom with the door open, and she came in and shut it behind her and stood with her back to it, and I knew from the way she stood that this was not going to be a conversation about supper.

"He is not steady," she said. "I was in that room this morning. He could not lift his own arm."

"I know."

"You told the pack he was steady."

"I told you why."

"You told me a reason." Maeve came away from the door. "I have been in this pack for nine years and I have run this house since before you could find your way to the kitchen, and I know every wolf in it, and I do not know you. You came here on a debt contract with a case of tins and a smile, and in three weeks you have been in the Alpha's room at midnight, you have been on the cliff with him in the moonlight, you have had him on the kitchen floor with his head in your lap, and now you are lying to the pack on his behalf." She stopped in front of me. "What are you doing to him?"

I put down the pestle.

"Say that again," I said.

"You heard me. There is a false bond on that man and now there is a healer in his house who has never shifted and cannot be found on any roll and who smells of herbs and old magic, and he cannot keep his eyes off you, and he is getting worse every day." Maeve's voice had not risen. It was flat and cold and steady. "So I am asking you plainly, as the Beta of this pack. Are you the cure, or are you the other thing?"

I stood up.

"I have been in this house for three weeks," I said, "and in that time I have found a false bond, stopped a poisoned tea, cleaned a silver wound that has been open since June, and carried your Alpha up his own stairs. I have not asked for a single thing from this pack except a bed and a shelf for my tins. And you stand in my sickroom and ask me if I am the other thing."

"I am asking because I have to." Maeve's jaw was tight. "Because if the pack finds out that the Alpha has a true mate and the mate is a rogue with no name, they will not thank you, Fiadh. They will turn on you. And they will turn on him for choosing you." She took a breath. "I am not your enemy. I am the only wolf in this house who is telling you the truth about how a pack works."

I looked at her for a long moment.

"You are not telling me the truth about how a pack works," I said. "You are telling me how you want it to work. Twelve and nine, Maeve. You counted them yourself."

Her face changed.

"Careful," she said.

"No. You came in here and you asked me if I was the other thing. So let me ask you one. The night the Alpha was cut on the ridge in June, you were the one who found him. You were the one who brought him home. Did you see the man who cut him?"

Maeve went very still.

"No," she said.

"Did you see anything at all?"

"I saw the Alpha on the ground with blood on his shoulder and I got him up and I walked him home." Her voice had gone quiet. "And I have wondered every day since whether I should have gone after the man who did it, and I did not, because the Alpha was bleeding and I had to choose. Is that what you wanted to hear?"

I did not answer. I did not know what to answer.

Maeve turned and opened the door. Then she stopped with her hand on the frame.

"You are not one of us," she said, without turning round. "I have known it since the first night. It is not your fault and it is not a crime and I am not saying it to be cruel. But you are not one of us, and when this is over, whatever happens on the twenty eighth, the pack will remember that the Alpha's cure came from outside and that she was never one of them." She looked back at me. "If you love him, healer, think about that. Because I have watched this pack for nine years, and I know what it does to a wolf who is not one of them."

She went out and shut the door.

I stood in the sickroom for a long time with my hands flat on the shelf.

At dusk the wind got up. It came in off the Atlantic hard enough to make the house creak and the rain came with it, and by seven o'clock the harbour was white and the boats were dancing at their moorings and the sea was coming over the harbour wall in sheets.

Nessa came running down the corridor at eight with her hair wet and her eyes wide.

"Healer," she said. "The Alpha has gone down to the boathouse. He said he wanted to check the moorings before the storm got worse and Colm went with him but Colm has come back and the Alpha has not and the tide is coming in."

I was already reaching for my coat.

The boathouse sat at the end of the slip with the water already up to the bottom step, and the wind took the door out of my hands and slammed it behind me, and inside it was dark and cold and it smelled of tar and rope and the sea.

"Ronan!"

"I am here." His voice came from the back, from behind the upturned hull of a rowing boat. "I am all right. I came down to check the moorings and the tide came in faster than I thought."

I got round the boat. He was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall and his bad arm held against his chest, and he was soaked to the skin and shaking, and the water was already over the floor of the boathouse and rising.

"The door has jammed," he said. "The wind took it and it has jammed on the step. You will not get it open from the inside."

I went back and put my shoulder to it. It did not move.

I stood there in the dark with the sea coming in and the wind screaming outside and the man I loved sitting on the floor in the water behind me, and I said a word I am not proud of.

Then I went back to him and sat down beside him in the cold water.

"Right then," I said. "We wait for the tide to turn."

He turned his head and looked at me in the dark.

"There is something I have to tell you," he said, "and I would rather say it now, while the water is only at our knees."