Chapter 95: Fiadh's Father

I read the first line again.

It said: If you are reading this, you are my daughter and I am not dead.

I sat on the floor of the Dunmore house with the letter in my hands and the fire going and the old man in his chair and I could not read any further.

"Fiadh," Ronan said. "What is it?"

"It is from my father." My voice came out strange. "It says he is not dead."

The old man in the chair lifted his head.

"Your father," he said. "That is a name I have not heard in sixty years."

"You knew him."

"I knew him." The old man put his hands on the arms of the chair. "He came to this house in the winter of the year I turned thirty and he was young and he was frightened and he had a wound in his side that had gone bad. My father took him in and hid him in the loft for a month and my mother sewed up his side and fed him on broth. And when he was well enough to walk he asked my father to keep a letter and my father kept it and I have kept it after him."

"What was his name?"

"His name was Aodh." The old man said it the old way, the way the north says it. "And he was of the founder's blood and he had been in the northern seat and he had run from it in the winter with a wound in his side."

I looked at the letter.

"Read it," the old man said. "I have been keeping it sixty years and I am not going to read it for you."

I unfolded it.

It was four pages and the hand was quick and it leaned to the right and it was the same hand that was on the back of the page in Padraig's book.

It began by saying that he was sorry.

He wrote that he had met my mother in Galway and that he had known what she was from the first week and that he had loved her from the first week, and that they had married in a chapel on the coast with two fishermen as witnesses. He wrote that she had told him everything about the northern seat and the house and the children taken from her, and that he had sworn to her that he would never let it happen again.

And then he wrote about the night they came for him.

He wrote that two wolves of the Council had come to the house in Galway in the winter and had told him that the Council had learned his name and that he was of the founder's blood and that he was to come north with them. He wrote that he had refused and that there had been a fight and that he had put a knife in one of them and run.

He wrote that he had not gone back to my mother because he knew they would follow him and he would not lead them to her.

He wrote that he had been in the north for three years after that and had lived in barns and on boats and had sent word to her twice through a smuggler and had never had an answer.

And then the last page, and the last page was written in a different year, because the ink was different and the hand was slower.

He wrote: I have heard that Siobhan is dead and that there is a child. I have heard that the child was taken north by the Council. I do not know if that is true. If you are reading this and you are the child, then it is not true, and you have grown up, and your mother kept you. Find the house in the north and burn it. Do not come looking for me. I am not worth finding.

And then, at the bottom, in a hand that was almost unreadable: I am sorry I was not there.

I put the letter down.

Ronan was beside me with his hand on my back.

"Fiadh," he said.

"He ran," I said. "He ran and he hid and he never came back and my mother spent twenty two years thinking he was dead." My voice cracked. "And he was alive. He was alive in the north and he knew about me and he told me not to come looking for him."

"Fiadh."

"I have been in nine packs and I have never once had a father and I have spent my whole life thinking he died in Galway before I was old enough to remember him." I put my hands over my face. "And he was alive and he was frightened and he was hiding in barns and he did not come back."

The old man in the chair was quiet.

"There is a thing you should know," he said.

I looked up.

"He came back," the old man said. "Ten years after he left this house. He came back in the summer and he was older and harder and he had a scar on his face and he asked me for the letter. And I told him I had burned it and he nodded and he went away again." The old man looked at me. "He came back because he had heard there was a girl with golden hair in the north and he wanted to know if it was you."

"And?"

"And I told him I had not heard of any such girl and he went away." The old man's old hands closed on the blanket. "He went away and he did not come back and I have been sorry for it every year since."

I sat on the floor.

"Where did he go?"

"He said he was going to the northern seat. He said there was a wolf there who owed him a debt and he was going to collect it." The old man looked at me. "That was forty years ago and I have not heard his name since."

The fire cracked.

"Who was the wolf?" Ronan said.

The old man turned his head.

"He did not tell me the name," he said. "But he told me what the debt was. He said the wolf had been in the northern seat when they came for him and had known what they were going to do and had done nothing. And he said the wolf had been in the house for forty years and had never once been challenged for his seat."

I looked at Ronan.

"Soren," I said.