Chapter 104: A Council of Enemies

The Star of the Sea went out of Dún Aonghasa at four in the morning with the rain coming off the sea and the whole village standing on the pier with lamps.

Nobody waved. My sister sat in the cabin with her grey coat over her knees and her hands in her lap and did not look back at the shore. Cormac stood at the rail with his shoulders up and the rain running off his hair. Declan stood at the wheel with the man in the hood beside him and the engine going and the light of the harbor behind us going smaller and smaller until it was a smudge in the grey.

We came into Galway Bay at half past seven with the rain gone and the sky the colour of a wet slate and the whole of the city lying along the water.

“There is a thing about the Council,” the man in the hood said. “I have been in and out of that building for a woman in Galway for six years and I know the way it works. It is not a court. It is a room with a long table and nine chairs and nine wolves who have been on the Council since before I was born and who do not like to be told that a village on the west coast has been doing a thing they did not know about.” He turned the wheel. “And there is a thing about the Keeper. His office is on the first floor at the back and it has a door with a brass plate on it and the file is in a press behind his desk and the press has a lock with a key that is on a ring that is on his belt.”

“Then we are not going in through the door,” I said.

“No.” He brought the boat alongside a stone quay with a ladder on it and a row of coal sacks against a wall. “There is a thing about the back of that building. It has a yard with a coal store and a door that goes into the basement and the basement has a stair that goes up to the back of the Keeper's office. And the coal man comes at eight in the morning and he leaves the yard gate open because he is a man who has been delivering coal to that building for thirty years and he does not think anyone is going to rob a Council.”

We went over the wall at twenty past eight.

The yard was wet and there was coal dust on the stones and the door into the basement was open. We went down the steps and along a passage with pipes on the ceiling and up a stair with a stone banister and through a door at the top and we were in a corridor with a carpet on the floor and a window at the end and a door with a brass plate on it that said Keeper of the Rolls.

Declan put his hand on my arm.

“There is a thing about this that I have to say,” he said. “We are in a Council building without a leave and there is not a wolf in Galway who is going to believe that we came here to put a file in front of the Council. They are going to say we came here to steal it.”

“Then we are going to have to be quick,” I said.

The door was not locked.

The Keeper's office was a long room with a window that looked out over the bay and a desk the size of a table and shelves from the floor to the ceiling and a press behind the desk with a brass lock on it. There was a man sitting at the desk.

He was old and he was thin and he had white hair and a narrow face and a pair of spectacles on the end of his nose and he was reading a paper with a cup of tea beside him. He looked up when we came in and he did not stand up.

“You are the woman from Dublin,” he said.

“I am.”

“I have been expecting you since the twenty seventh.” He put the paper down. “My name is Kern and I have been the Keeper of the Rolls of the Council of Alphas for thirty six years and I have been taking money out of the co-op at Dún Aonghasa since 1961.” He took his spectacles off and put them on the desk. “And there is a thing about me that you should know before you say a word. I am not a wolf. I am a man and I have been a man all my life and I have been the Keeper of the Rolls because a Council of wolves needs a man to keep the books and to sign the receipts and to do the things that wolves do not like to do. And I have done them for thirty six years and I have done them well and I have not once been caught.”

Declan was beside me with his hands at his sides.

“You are not going to be caught now either,” he said. “Because you are going to give us the file.”

“I am not going to give you the file.” Kern picked up his tea. “The file is in that press and the press has a lock and the key is on my belt and I am an old man and I am not going to fight three wolves for a key. But there is a thing about the file that you should know before you take it. It is not a file about a stolen pack. It is a file about a village that has been paying a tithe to the Council since 1901 and that has been paying it in a form that the Council has accepted and signed and receipted for thirty six years. And every wolf on the Council has signed a receipt for that tithe and every wolf on the Council has taken his share of it. So if you take that file and put it in front of the Council, you are not putting it in front of nine wolves who are going to be shocked. You are putting it in front of nine wolves who are in it.”

The office was very quiet.

“Then there is a thing I have to say,” I said. “And I am going to say it before I take that key off your belt. There is a thing about a file that has nine names in it and that is kept in a press in a room in Galway. It is not a file that nine wolves are going to read. It is a file that nine wolves are going to bury. And there is a thing about a file that is going to be buried. It is the only thing in the world that can hang the nine wolves who are going to bury it.”

Kern looked at me over the top of his cup.

“You are not going to take the file to the Council,” he said. “You are going to take it to the church.”

“I am going to take it to the church and to the bank and to the newspaper in Dublin and to the guards in Dublin and to the Council of Alphas in London.” I put my hand on the desk. “And there is a thing about a file that has been copied and put in six places. It is a file that cannot be buried.”

Kern put his cup down.

“You are a clever woman,” he said. “And you are too late.”

The door of the office opened behind us and there was a man in the doorway in a good coat with a broad face and a small scar on his chin.

It was Ahern. He had come up from the coast in the night and he was standing in the door of the Keeper's office in Galway with his case in his hand and his face grey.

“There is a thing I have to say,” he said, “and I am going to say it in front of the Keeper and the whole of you. The Council is in session. It has been in session since six o'clock this morning and it has been called by Kern and it has been called to hear a motion that the pack of Dún Aonghasa is under trusteeship and that the woman from Dublin is a rogue and that the woman Siobhan is a claimant who has been declared by the Council and that the whole of it is to be settled before noon.” He put his case on the desk. “And there is a thing about that motion that I have to say. It was written by Kern and it was put to the Council by Kern and there is not a wolf on the Council who has read the file. They have read the motion and they have signed it and they have gone to their breakfast and they are going to come back at ten o'clock and vote on it.”

“Then we have an hour and a half,” I said.

“You have an hour and a half and there is a thing about the Council that you should know before you go into that room.” Ahern looked at me. “There are nine wolves on it and eight of them have taken money out of this coast and one of them has not. His name is Callum and he is old and he is from the north and he has been on the Council for forty years and he has never taken a penny from anyone. And there is a thing about Callum that Kern does not know. He was in the north in 1961 and he was in the house on the hill in Killybegs and he knows what happened to the children who were taken out of this village.”

The rain had stopped. The window of the Keeper's office looked out over Galway Bay and the whole of it was grey and quiet.

“Then there is a thing I have to do,” I said. “And I am going to do it now. I am going to go into that room and I am going to put the whole of it in front of nine wolves and I am going to ask for the one thing that a Council cannot refuse. I am going to ask for a hearing.”

Kern stood up behind his desk.

“A hearing is for a pack that has a claim,” he said. “And there is not a claim.”

“There is a claim,” my sister said from the door. She had come up the stairs behind us with her grey coat over her arm and her gold hair flat to her head and her face was white and her voice was steady. “There is a claim and it has been in front of the Council since March and it was answered by a sentence of the headland that was signed in the name of an enforcer who was not in this village and countersigned by a Keeper who has been taking money out of this pack since 1961. And there is a thing about a claim that has been answered by a forger. It has not been answered.”

She came into the office and put a paper on the desk.

“That is the claim,” she said. “And it is signed by me and it is witnessed by the healer of Dún Aonghasa and the cooper of Dún Aonghasa and the woman from Dublin. And there is a thing about it that the Council is going to hear before noon. It is a claim that has been made twice and answered once by a forgery. And a claim that has been answered by a forgery is a claim that is still open.”

The office was very quiet.

And then, from the corridor outside, there was the sound of a door opening and a man's voice saying, “The Council is in session. The Keeper is to bring the file and the motion and the whole of it to the chamber.”

Kern picked up his spectacles and put them on.

“There is a thing about this morning that I have to say to the whole of you,” he said. “And then I am going to do the one thing I have been able to do since 1961. I am going to take the file and the motion and the whole of it into that chamber and I am going to put it on the table and I am going to let the Council hear a wolf from Dublin who has been in a village for a week.” He looked at me. “Because a Keeper who has taken money for thirty six years and who is standing in his own office with three wolves in front of him and a file in a press has one thing left in the world and it is not the money. It is the file.”