Chapter 106: The Night on the Cliff

The Council chamber emptied at four in the afternoon and the whole of it had gone the way I had not expected.

Callum had heard the whole of it. He had heard the file read out and the note in the hand of Ahern the elder and the ledger of the rent and the record of the children who had been taken out of Dún Aonghasa since 1961. He had heard Mairéad stand at the end of the table and say the whole of it in her own voice and not once look away from the wolves in front of her. And at the end of it he had put his hand flat on the file and said a thing that no wolf in that room had expected.

"The pack of Dún Aonghasa is not under trusteeship," he said. "The claim of the line of Maeve is open and it is going to be heard in this chamber on the fourteenth of July and every wolf in that village is going to be in Galway for it. And until the fourteenth the pack is going to be in the charge of the woman from Dublin and the Beta of Dún Aonghasa and there is not a wolf on this Council who is going to say a word against it."

The old woman at the far end of the table had started to say something and Callum had put his hand up and she had stopped.

"The Keeper of the Rolls is suspended," Callum said. "The enforcer of this region is suspended and he is going to be in this building under a wolf on the door until the fourteenth. And there is a thing about the woman in Galway that I am going to say and then I am going to go to my dinner. She is not a wolf of this Council and she has never been a wolf of this Council and she is going to be in a room in this building by the evening with a wolf on the door and a pen and a paper and she is going to write down every child she has taken out of that village since 1961 and every wolf who has paid her."

He had stood up and gone out and the whole chamber had emptied.

We came out of the building at half past four and the whole of Galway was grey and quiet and the rain had come on again.

Declan was at the bottom of the steps with his coat over his arm and his auburn hair flat to his head and his face grey.

"There is a thing I have to say," he said, "and I have been sitting on it since the office. You said a thing in the chamber about a false Luna and a village that was quiet and I have been turning it over since. The Alpha wanted a village that was quiet. And there is a thing about a village that is quiet. It is a village where the Beta does not ask a question either." He put his coat on. "I have been the Beta of that pack for twenty years and I have signed every paper she put in front of me and I have looked at the boats and the catch and the moorings and I have never once looked at a book. And when my father went out in a boat in 1975 I was twenty three years old and I told myself that a man who keeps his head down keeps his family alive. And I have been keeping my head down ever since."

The rain came down on the steps.

"Cormac told me a thing on the headland," I said. "He said we are both of us wolves who do the wrong thing for the right reason and then tell ourselves the reason makes it right. And he was right and I have been thinking about it since." I turned round and looked at him. "You knew my sister was alive. You let me bury her. And I have been carrying that since the pier and I am going to carry it for a long time. But there is a thing about it that I have not said out loud and that I am going to say now. You let me bury her and you went to that office every day and sat in the chair and did the work and kept the village going. And you did that for four months while a woman in Galway wrote letters and a woman in the chair signed papers and the whole of it was coming down on your head."

"I did the work because it was the only thing I could do that was not a lie," Declan said. "Every hour in that office was an hour I was not in a hall signing a paper."

"I know."

"And there is a thing about the not telling that I have to say and then I am going to be quiet." He put his hands at his sides. "I did not tell you because I was frightened of losing you. Not because I was protecting you. I have been telling myself the other thing for four months and it is not true. I was a man with a broken mark and a dead woman on his conscience and a boy in the hand of the Alpha and then a woman with gold hair came into my office and pulled the ground out from under me and I was frightened of losing the only thing I had ever wanted." He looked at me. "That is the whole of it. It is not a good reason. It is the reason."

The rain came down. The whole of Galway was grey and quiet and there was a gull on the wall of the building with its head down against the weather.

"Declan," I said. "There is a thing about the bond that I have been getting wrong since the first night and that I am going to say now. It tells me what you are feeling. It does not tell me what you are. And I have been standing beside you and feeling the bond and telling myself that a true bond is a true man and that whatever else is a lie the thing between us is not." I put my hand on my chest. "The thing between us is true. It has been true since the first night and it was true in April and it is true now. But it does not make you a good man and it does not make me a good woman. It makes us two wolves who are tied together and who have to decide every day what to do about it."

Declan looked at me.

"Then I am going to decide," he said. "Every day. And I am going to start today."

He put his hand out and I took it and the spark came up through my palm and up my arm and the bond in my chest opened like a door.

We did not go back to the boat that night. The Star of the Sea was at the quay and the man in the hood was on her deck and my sister was asleep in the cabin with a blanket over her and Cormac was on the bench beside her. And Declan and I walked up through Galway in the rain to a small hotel on a side street with a green door and a woman behind the desk who did not ask a question.

The room was at the top of the stairs and it had a window that looked out over the roofs and a bed with a patchwork quilt on it and a fire that had been laid but not lit. I lit it. Declan stood at the window with his back to me and his coat over his arm and did not say anything for a while.

"There is a thing about tonight," he said. "The fourteenth of July is two weeks away. And there is a woman in a room in this city with a pen and a paper and a wolf on the door and there is a file in a press in that building with every name in it. And there is a village on the west coast with a woman from Dublin in the charge of it and a co-op that is split down the middle and eleven wolves who walked out of the hall." He turned round. "Two weeks is not a long time."

"No."

"And there is a thing about the two weeks that I have been thinking about since the chamber." He came away from the window. "The whole of it is going to be read out loud on the fourteenth and the whole of it is going to be in a file and there is not a wolf in Galway who is going to be able to put it back in a press. But there is a thing about a file that is read out loud. It does not put a village back together. It only tells the truth about how it was taken apart."

I sat down on the edge of the bed.

"Then we put it back together," I said. "After the fourteenth. Not with a file. With a co-op and a vote and a hall and a wolf in the chair who has not taken a penny."

Declan came across the room and knelt down in front of me and put his hands on my knees.

"There is a thing I have to ask you," he said. "And it is not about the pack and it is not about the file and it is not about the vote. You told me on the rope walk that you were not going to promise me a thing you could not think about until it was over and I told you to ask me again on Sunday. And there has been a Sunday and a Monday and a Tuesday and a Wednesday and a Thursday and a Friday and there has been a headland and a cliff and a Council chamber." He looked at me. "It is not Sunday. It is a Friday in a hotel in Galway and there is a fire and a window and a woman with gold hair in front of me. And I am asking you."

I put my hand on the back of his neck and pulled him up and kissed him.

It was not the kiss on the pier and it was not the kiss on the shore road. It was the two of us in a small room at the top of a stairs in Galway with the rain on the window and the fire going and the whole of the last two weeks coming down to this. He made a sound against my mouth and his hands came up and one of them went into my hair and the other flat on my back and I went with him and the bond in my chest went from a rope to a fire.

We got the coat off and the shirt off and the rest of it and the bed was narrow and the quilt was rough and the fire was throwing shadows on the ceiling. I put my hand flat on his chest and felt his heart going and he put his mouth on the mark under my jaw and the whole of me went quiet and warm. The world outside the room went away. There was the rain and the fire and the smell of his skin and the way he said my name once, quietly, against my throat, and the way his hand moved down my side and stayed there.

Afterward we lay in the narrow bed with the quilt over us and the fire going down and the rain on the window and I put my head on his chest and listened to his heart.

"There is a thing about the mark," he said into the dark. "It has been growing since the asking. It is dark now. It is as dark as mine."

"I know."

"And there is a thing about the fourteenth," he said. "It is a full moon. I looked at the almanac in the harbor office before we left. The fourteenth of July is a full moon and the Council is going to hear the claim on the night of a full moon and the whole of that village is going to be in Galway and there is not a wolf in it who is going to be on the headland." He turned his head on the pillow. "That is not a thing that has ever happened in Dún Aonghasa."

I lay in the dark with the rain on the window and the fire going down and the whole of it in front of me.

"Then there is a thing about the fourteenth that we have to think about," I said. "A full moon is a night when the pack runs. And there is not going to be a pack on the headland and there is not going to be a run and there is going to be a co-op in a chamber in Galway with the whole of it read out loud. And there is a thing about a wolf who does not run on a full moon." I lifted my head. "The pull comes on you whether you are on a headland or in a chamber or in a hotel in Galway. And there is going to be forty wolves in that building on the fourteenth and not one of them is going to be able to shift."

Declan sat up.

"The Council chamber is in a city," he said. "There is not a wolf in Galway who shifts in a city on a full moon and there is not a wolf on the Council who has not done the thing that a wolf does when the pull comes and there is nowhere to run. They have a room. It is in the basement of that building and it has a stone floor and a door with a lock on it and it is called the hold." He looked at me. "And there is a thing about the hold that I have not told you and that I have been thinking about since the chamber. It is not for the Council. It is for the wolves who are brought in from the villages. And it has a lock on the outside and a wolf on the door and there is not a thing in it but a stone floor and a drain."

The rain came down on the window.

"Then there is a thing about the fourteenth that we have to find out before we go into that chamber," I said. "Who holds the key to the hold?"

And then there was a knock at the door of the room and a woman's voice said, "It is Maire. I have come up from the coast on the evening bus and I have a thing to give you that I could not give you in the chamber."

I got up and put my coat on and opened the door.

Maire was standing on the landing with her grey plait down her back and her coat wet from the rain and a paper in her hand.

"This came to my cottage this morning," she said. "It is from the woman in Galway and it is addressed to me and it says, if the woman from Dublin is in Galway on the fourteenth then there is a thing in the hold in the basement of that building that she is going to want to see." She put the paper in my hand. "And there is a thing about it that I have to say and then I am going to go down and get a cup of tea. The letter is in her hand and it is signed with her name and it was posted from Galway yesterday and there is a thing about a woman who is in a room in Galway with a wolf on the door and who is posting letters."