Chapter 102: The Hunters' Debt

The cliff path was wet and the wind was coming up off the sea and Cormac was standing at the very edge of it with his back to the whole village.

I did not run at him. I came up the path slowly and stopped ten feet behind him and did not say anything for a moment.

“There is a thing about this cliff,” he said, without turning round. “My mother went off it in 1981 and the co-op was told she had a weakness of the heart. And there is a thing about that which I have been thinking about since I was six years old. A wolf who goes off a cliff does not have a weakness of the heart. A wolf who goes off a cliff has a thing in her chest that she cannot carry.” He put his hands in his pockets. “I have been standing here for ten minutes and I have been trying to work out what a thing in the chest feels like.”

“Cormac,” I said. “Come back from the edge.”

“I am not going to jump. I am not a fool and I am not a coward and I have a father down there who has done a great many wrong things and who is going to need a wolf to stand beside him in the hall in the morning.” He turned round. His grey eyes were red. “But there is a thing about my mother that I have to say and I am going to say it to you and not to the co-op. She did not go off this cliff because of a broken bond. She went off it because she had a secret and the secret was that she had been taking children out of this village since 1961 and giving them to a woman in Galway and the woman in Galway had a thing on her. And when the Alpha told her that the whole co-op was going to find out, she went up to the high ground and she stepped off it. And there is a thing about that which is worse than a broken bond. A broken bond is a thing that is done to a wolf. My mother did it to herself.”

The wind came up off the sea. I stood on the cliff path and did not say anything.

“And there is a thing about me,” Cormac said. “I have been a boy in the hand of the Alpha since I was fourteen and I have done what she told me and I have signed a statement and I have stood in a hall and said the whole of it. And there is a thing I have not said and that I am going to say to you now because there is not a wolf in this village I can say it to. In 1994 I was nineteen years old and I went north with my father on a boat and I met a woman in Killybegs and she was older than me and she was kind to me and I thought I was in love with her. And the enforcer came down to Killybegs and he made a bond between us and he broke it and he told me that if I said a word about it the whole co-op would know that the Beta's son had been in the north with a banished woman.” He put his hand up to his throat. “And I have had a broken mark since I was nineteen and I have never said a word about it and I have been in her hand ever since.”

I came across the cliff path and put my hand on his arm.

“Cormac,” I said. “The woman in Killybegs. Was her name Mary?”

He looked at me.

“How do you know that?”

“Because there was a woman in Killybegs called Mary Flannery and she is the heir of Maeve and she is the daughter of my sister and she has been in Killybegs all her life.” I took my hand off his arm. “And there is a thing about that which I have to say to you and I am going to say it badly and I am sorry. The bond Korkut made in 1994 was not a false bond between a boy and a woman in the north. It was a true bond and Korkut broke it with a false marking and he broke it because a true bond between the Beta's son and the heir of Maeve would have put the two of them in a hall together and the whole of it would have come out in 1994.” I put my hand on my chest. “You are the mate of Mary Flannery and the mark on your throat is a true mark that was broken by a false one and it has been there since 1994 and no wolf in this village has ever looked at it.”

Cormac stood on the cliff path with the wind in his hair and his face white.

“Mary,” he said.

“Mary.”

And then, from the shore road below us, there was a sound that was not the wind and not the sea. It was a car and it was coming along the shore road fast and there was a second car behind it and a third.

I went to the edge of the cliff and looked down.

There were three cars on the shore road and they had their lights on and they had stopped at the top of the slip. There were men getting out of them and one of them had a long case and one of them had a lamp and one of them was Owen the hunter.

And there was a woman standing at the top of the slip with a grey coat over her arm and her gold hair going grey at the temples and her hand up.

It was my sister.

I went down the cliff path at a run with Cormac behind me and the whole co-op was on the pier and the three cars were at the top of the slip and the men were standing in a line along the wall with the lamps and the long case and the whole of it was in front of them.

“There is a thing I have to say,” Owen said. “And I am going to say it in front of the whole co-op and then I am going to put my hands behind my head. The men in these cars are the Kelleher men out of Sligo and they have been paid by a woman in Galway to come down this coast tonight and put a wolf on a boat and take her out to the deep water.” He looked at my sister. “And there is a thing about the payment that I have to say. The payment was made in April and it was made to a company in Sligo and it was signed by the Alpha and countersigned by the enforcer and the money came out of the co-op's account. And the wolf who is to be taken out to the deep water is not the woman from Dublin. It is the woman who is standing at the top of this slip with a grey coat over her arm.”

The whole pier was silent.

“Who paid you?” I said.

“The Alpha,” Owen said. “The woman with the silver hair. She came down to the north cove this morning with a paper and a purse and she said, the claimant is coming down this coast tonight and she is to be taken out to the deep water before the sun is up.” He looked at Mairéad. “And there is a thing about the paper that I have to say. The paper is signed by the Alpha and countersigned by the Keeper of the Rolls and it is dated this morning and the sum is five thousand pounds.”

The whole pier turned and looked at Mairéad.

Mairéad was standing at the top of the slip with her silver hair down and her black coat on and her hands at her sides.

“I did not sign a paper this morning,” she said. “I have not been in the north cove since the claim and I have not signed a paper since the vote and I have not paid a hunter since 1996.” She came down the slip. “And there is a thing about that paper that the whole co-op is going to hear. A paper signed by the Alpha and countersigned by the Keeper is a paper that comes from Galway and a paper that comes from Galway is a paper that has been written by my sister and signed with my name. She has been signing my name since 1961 and she has been doing it because she has a thing on me that no wolf in this village knows about.” She stopped in front of Owen. “Show me the paper.”

Owen took it out of his coat and gave it to her. Mairéad turned it to the lamp and looked at it for a long moment.

“That is not my signature,” she said. “That is my sister's hand and she has been practising my signature since we were girls.” She looked up. “And there is a thing about the paper that is worse than a forgery. The paper is dated the twenty eighth of June and the payment is five thousand pounds and the money is to come out of the co-op's account. And the co-op's account was closed on the twenty seventh of June because the bank in Galway was told that the co-op was under trusteeship.” She put the paper down. “There is no money in the co-op's account. There has not been money in it since the twenty seventh and there is not a wolf in this village who has been paid since the twenty seventh and the whole of this coast has been running on a promise since then.”

The whole pier was silent.

“Then there is a thing I have to do,” Mairéad said. “And I am going to do it now in front of the whole co-op and the hunters and the men from Sligo.” She turned round and looked at me. “There is a debt. The hunters have been paid by this pack since 1995 and they have not been paid since the twenty seventh and there is a debt of five thousand pounds on this co-op and a hunter who is not paid is a hunter who takes his payment in another way.” She put her hand out. “So I am going to offer them a payment. Not money. A wolf. The woman from Dublin. She is the one who has been asking questions and she is the one who has been pulling safes out of wells and she is the one the woman in Galway wants.” She looked at the whole co-op. “I am going to give her to them and they are going to take her out to the deep water and the debt is paid and the village is safe and there is not a wolf in Galway who is going to come down this coast again.”