Chapter 105: What the Alpha Wanted

The Council chamber was on the second floor at the front of the building and it had a long table down the middle and nine chairs behind it and a gallery at the back with three rows of benches.

Eight of the nine chairs were filled.

They were old men and one old woman and they had the look of wolves who had been sitting in those chairs since before I was born. The oldest of them was a small thin man with white hair and a face like a walnut and he sat at the far end of the table in a chair with a higher back than the others. That was Callum. He did not look at me when I came in and he did not look at Kern.

The ninth chair was empty.

Kern came in behind us with the file under his arm and the motion in his hand and he put both of them on the table and stood at the end of it and said, “There is a thing about this morning that the Council has to hear before the motion is put. There is a woman from Dublin in this building and she has a claim in her hand and a file in her arms and a witness beside her and she has asked for a hearing.”

The old woman at the far end of the table said, “A hearing is for a pack with a claim.”

“The pack has a claim,” Kern said. “It has had one 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 me.”

The whole chamber went quiet.

“Kern,” the old woman said. “You have been the Keeper of this Council for thirty six years. Are you standing in front of the whole of us and saying that you countersigned a sentence that was a forgery?”

“I am saying that I countersigned a sentence and that the enforcer whose name is on it was not in the village and that the wolf who signed it was the Alpha and that the Alpha has told the whole co-op this morning that she signed it because her sister told her to.” Kern put his hand flat on the file. “And I am saying that I have been taking money out of that pack since 1961 and that every wolf in this room has taken his share of it and that the whole of it is in this file and that the file is going to be read out loud in this chamber before the motion is put.”

The chamber went up. The whole of it, eight wolves on their feet at once and one of them shouting a thing I could not hear and another one striking the table with the flat of his hand.

Callum did not move.

He sat at the far end of the table with his hands folded in front of him and he waited until the noise had gone down and then he said, “Kern. Bring the file here.”

Kern took the file down the table and put it in front of Callum and Callum opened it and read the first page and then the second page and then he turned to the middle and read the note in the hand of Ahern the elder that said the title was defective and that the Council was to be notified if a claim was ever made by the line of Maeve.

He read it twice. Then he closed the file and looked at the whole Council.

“There is a thing about this note,” he said, “that no wolf in this room has read in thirty six years and that I have read this morning. It says the Council is to hear the claim itself and not the enforcer of the region. And there is a thing about that which is worse than a note in a file. It says the pack was taken by force and the title is defective. And it was written by the man who signed the deed in the same month that he signed it.” He put his hand flat on the file. “A man who signs a deed and writes a note that says the deed is a crime is a man who is trying to leave a trap for the wolf who is making him sign. And the trap has been in this file for thirty six years and there is not a wolf in this room who has opened the file.”

The chamber was silent.

“Then there is a thing I have to say,” I said. “And I am going to say it in front of the whole Council and then I am going to ask for the one thing that a Council cannot refuse. There is a thing about the Alpha of Dún Aonghasa that no wolf in this room has said out loud. She has been the Alpha for fourteen years on a title that her mother took by force and that she has never had confirmed by the co-op and that has been signed and receipted by every wolf in this room for thirty six years. And there is a thing about the money that she has been paying out of the co-op and into this building. It has not been a tithe. It has been a rent. And the rent was for the shore.”

The old woman at the far end of the table looked up.

“The shore,” she said.

“The shore and the headland and the waters of Dún Aonghasa. They were given to Ahern the elder in 1961 by a woman who had burned the Alpha in her own house and there was never a vote of the co-op and the deed says the shore is his for ever.” I put my hand on the file. “And there is a thing about that deed that the whole Council is going to hear. The lease was closed in 1979 by Ahern the elder and the note in the ledger says the shore reverts to the co-op on the death of the Alpha or on the surrender of the seat. The Alpha in 1979 was Eileen and she died in 1983. So the shore has belonged to the co-op since 1983 and there has been no lease and no rent and no owner since then.” I looked at the whole Council. “And this pack has been paying rent on a lease that ended fourteen years ago to a man in this building who has been signing the receipts and taking his tenth and never once looking at the ledger.”

The chamber was very quiet.

Callum put his hand on the file and looked at Kern.

“Is that true?” he said.

“It is true,” Kern said. “I have not looked at the ledger since 1979 and the rent has been coming in every year and I have been taking my tenth and I have not asked a question.” He put his spectacles on the table. “And there is a thing about that which I have to say in front of the whole Council and then I am going to sit down. I did not take the tenth because I wanted the money. I took the tenth because a Keeper who takes a tenth is a Keeper who has a reason to keep the file closed and a file that is kept closed is a file that keeps a Council out of a village that has been doing a thing a Council would not like.” He looked at the whole of them. “There is a thing about Dún Aonghasa that no wolf in this room has known since 1961. The village has been taking children out of it and giving them to a woman in Galway and the woman in Galway has been bringing them up to be claimants. And the woman in Galway is called Eileen and she is the daughter of the woman who took the seat in 1961 and she has been running that village from a house in Galway for thirty six years and the whole of it has been paid for out of this building.”

The whole chamber went up again and this time Callum stood up.

“Sit down,” he said. “The whole of you. Sit down and be quiet and let the woman from Dublin finish what she has to say because there is a thing about this morning that I have been waiting forty years to hear and I am not going to hear it in a room full of shouting.”

The chamber sat down.

“What did the Alpha want?” Callum said. “Not the woman in Galway. The woman in the chair. What did she want?”

I stood at the end of the long table with the whole Council in front of me.

“She wanted the village,” I said. “She wanted the boats and the co-op and the shore and the whole of it. And there is a thing about what she wanted that I have been turning over since the boathouse and that I am going to say now. She did not want the money and she did not want the shore. She wanted a village that was quiet. And a village that is quiet is a village that does not ask a question and does not read a book and does not look at a deed. And a village like that is a village that can be sold on a boat in the summer and no wolf in it will know what they are looking at.” I put my hand on the file. “She wanted a false Luna. A wolf in the chair who signs the papers and says this was ordered and keeps the co-op quiet while the woman in Galway takes the shore. And there is a thing about that which is worse than the theft. She has been doing it for fourteen years and there is not a wolf in that village who has not been a part of it.”

The chamber was silent.

And then Callum said, “There is a thing about this morning that I am going to say and then I am going to put it to the Council. The claim of the line of Maeve is open and it has been open since 1961. The pack of Dún Aonghasa has been taken by force and the title is defective and the whole of it is in this file. And there is a thing about a claim that is open and a title that is defective. It is a thing that a Council can hear and it is a thing that a Council can settle. And it is going to be heard in this chamber this morning and it is going to be settled before noon.”

He sat down.

And then the door at the back of the chamber opened and a man came in with a paper in his hand and said, “There is a woman at the door. She says she is the Alpha of Dún Aonghasa and she has come to make her claim in person.”

The whole Council turned round.

And then Mairéad came into the chamber with her silver hair pinned up and her black coat on and a wolf on either side of her.