Chapter 61: Nessa's Secret

The page was old and soft at the folds and the writing on it was a clerk's neat hand, and at the bottom of it, in the small neat hand that was not a clerk's, there was the line.

This matter is to be held.

I read it twice before I could make sense of the words.

It was a record of a hearing. It was dated twenty two years ago and it was a hearing before three elders of the Council on a matter concerning a child of the founder's blood, and the child was named as the daughter of Siobhan, healer, of no fixed pack. The hearing had been called to decide whether the child should be taken into Council custody for the protection of the bloodline.

The elders had decided that it should.

The taking had been ordered for the fourteenth day of that month. And on the fourteenth day, in a note added at the bottom in the same small neat hand, it said that the mother and the child had not been found and the matter was to be held.

I sat on the floorboards of the mill loft with the page in my hands.

"They were coming for me," I said. "Twenty two years ago. They had a hearing and they decided to take me and they were coming on the fourteenth and my mother ran."

"She ran two days before," Padraig said. "She came to my cottage on the twelfth. She had been walking for two days with you on her back."

"And the matter was held." I looked at the page. "For twenty two years. And now they have decided to stop holding it."

Elara sat down on the floor with her back against the wall.

"There is more," she said. "The room under the elders' chamber is not a room. It is a cell. There is a stone stair down to it and there are shelves of papers and there is a door at the back of it that is bolted on the outside."

Ronan's head came up.

"A cell," he said.

"A cell. And I asked the clerk who let me in what it was for and she said it was for the binders' tools and the old papers." Elara looked at me. "Fiadh. It is not for tools. There are iron rings in the wall."

The loft was very quiet.

"Where is the box?" I said.

"In my pack," Ronan said.

"Keep it there. Do not let it out of your hands until we are in that chamber." I folded the page and put it inside my coat. "Tomorrow at noon we walk into the Council house and we put the page and the ledger and the box on the table and we tell them what was done to you in April and what was decided about me twenty two years ago. And if they will not listen to us then they will have to listen to the founder wolf."

Nessa lifted her head.

"The founder wolf," she said. "Healer. Is it true? Are you the gold wolf?"

"It is true."

Nessa put her hand over her mouth.

"I have known you for a month," she said. "I have watched you grind willow bark and swear at the stove and sew up Colm's side. And you are the gold wolf out of the old stories." She laughed, and it was a wet laugh. "My grandmother would have died."

I got up and went to the ladder.

"Nessa," I said. "Come down with me. I want a word."

We went down the ladder and out onto the mill floor where the wheel was and the river went under the boards, and I sat down on the step with her.

"You have been telling Lorcan things since the spring," I said. "That is a hard thing and it has cost you and it has cost the pack. But you told me tonight. You came up that ladder and you told me the whole of it before I asked and you did not lie about it and you did not make it smaller than it was."

Nessa looked at her hands.

"I should have told you a month ago."

"You should have. But you have told me now and I am going to tell you something." I turned to face her. "I have been a rogue for ten years and I have been in nine packs and I have never once had a wolf in any of them who would stand by me. Not one. And you came into a Council town with a Beta who is against us and a pack that is divided and you found us in a mill in the dark and you told me the truth." I put my hand on her shoulder. "That is worth something. It is worth a great deal. And when this is over I am going to want a wolf in the Blackthorn house who tells me the truth, and I would like it to be you."

Nessa's eyes went wide.

"You want me to stay," she said.

"I want you to stay."

She put her face in her hands and cried again, and I sat on the step with my arm round her and the river going under the boards and let her.

When she had finished she sat up and wiped her face and looked at me.

"There is one more thing," she said. "And it is not about Lorcan."

"Tell me."

"Maeve's paper. The one with nine names on it." Nessa reached into her sleeve and took out a folded sheet. "I stole it off the table when she went to speak to the elders this afternoon. I thought if I had it she could not read it out."

I unfolded it.

There were nine names on it and they were in Maeve's writing, and at the bottom of the page there was a tenth line, a line that had been added later in a different hand.

The line said: and the Beta herself, if the Alpha does not return.

I sat on the step of the mill and looked at the paper.

"Nessa," I said. "Where is the Council chamber?"

"At the top of the Council house. There is a stair and a door and a table and a row of chairs where the elders sit."

"And the door?"

"There is one door. It is oak and it has a bolt on the outside."

I folded the paper and put it in my coat.

"Then tomorrow," I said, "we are going to need to get in through the door before they bolt it."

Nessa was quiet for a moment.

"Healer," she said. "There is a thing about the Council house that nobody has told you. The elders' chamber is at the top of the building. And the man who sits at the head of the table tomorrow is coming down from the north tonight in a car with a driver and two outriders."

I looked at her.

"Who?"

Nessa looked at me.

"His name is Soren," she said. "And he is the oldest wolf on the Council and nobody has challenged him in forty years."