Chapter 108: The Secret in the Ring

We went out the back of the hotel at four in the morning through a yard with bins in it and a gate that opened onto a lane, and we did not go to the quay. We went to the church.

It was a small grey church on a side street behind the cathedral and the door was open because a priest was in it doing the thing priests do at four in the morning when there is a funeral at nine. He was an old man with white hair and a face like a boot and he did not ask a question. He let us sit in the back pew and he went back to his altar and the candles and did not look at us again.

Declan sat down and put his head back against the wood.

“There is a thing about the men in the street,” he said. “They are not from Galway and they are not from Sligo and they are not the Kelleher men. I have seen one of them before. He was on the boat in the fog. He is the man who took the ring off the deck and carried it up to the hall.”

“Then they are hers,” I said. “And there is a thing about a woman in a room with a wolf on the door who is sending men to a hotel in Galway at four in the morning. She is not in a room. She has never been in a room. Callum put a wolf on her door and she put a man on the street and the man on the street is the one she has been using since April.” I put my hand in my coat. “And there is a thing about her that I have been carrying since the boathouse and that I have not said out loud.”

I took out the ring.

It was the true ring of Maeve. I had taken it off my finger in the Council chamber and put it in my coat and I had not looked at it since.

“The ring has letters inside the band,” I said. “S. 1921. And there is a thing about a ring with letters inside the band that no one has asked. Letters inside a band are cut into the metal by a jeweller with a tool. And a jeweller who is cutting letters into a band is a jeweller who has the ring in his shop and who can do a second thing while he has it.” I turned it over in the candlelight. “The band is wide and it is heavier on one side than the other. I have been wearing it for a week and I have felt it.”

Declan took it and turned it over and put it to his ear and shook it and there was nothing. He put his thumbnail into the seam at the side of the crescent moon and worked it and the face of the ring came off.

It was not a stone. It was a disc of silver the size of a sixpence and it had been screwed onto the face of the band and under it there was a hollow the size of a thumbnail. And in the hollow there was a piece of paper folded small and brown at the edges.

I took it out and unfolded it on the pew.

It was a square of paper about two inches across and it was covered on both sides in a hand I knew. It was my sister's hand, small and neat and pressing hard, and the paper had been folded so many times that the creases had gone soft.

“Read it,” Declan said.

I read it.

“I am Siobhan, daughter of Maeve’s daughter, and I am the Alpha of Dún Aonghasa and I am writing this in the winter of 1996 in the room above the hall and there is a wolf on the stairs and I do not know whether I am going to come out of this house. I have put the ring in the press behind the frame and I have put this paper inside the ring because the ring is the one thing in this village that the Alpha cannot destroy. She can burn a book and she can drown a safe and she can put a woman in a boathouse. She cannot burn a ring that is on her own finger. So I am writing this and I am putting it in the ring and I am going to give the ring to the next wolf of my blood who comes into this village and I am going to ask that wolf to do the thing I could not do.

“There is a pack. Not this one. The pack I have been building since I was nineteen years old and that I have been building out of wolves this territory has thrown out. There are eleven of them and they are in the north and in the south and in the islands and they are not a pack of claimants and they are not a pack of rogues. They are a pack of wolves who were banished from this village for a thing they did not do and who have been waiting for a wolf to come and tell them that the ban is lifted. Their names are on the back of this paper.

“And there is a thing about this village that I have to write down and that I have never said out loud. I am not the Alpha of Dún Aonghasa. I have never been the Alpha of Dún Aonghasa. I made a claim in March because a claim makes a noise and a noise brings a wolf from Dublin and there is a wolf in Dublin who is my sister and who does not know what she is. I made a claim so that she would come. I made a claim so that she would come and pull the safe out of the well and read the book in the cellar and put the whole of it in front of a Council. And I have been sitting in Athlone since April waiting for her to do it and she has done it and I am not going to be in that chamber on the fourteenth because I am a claimant who was declared by the Council and a claimant who has been declared is a claimant who is dead.

“So there is a thing I am asking of the wolf who reads this. Not the seat. The seat is a thing for a Council and a vote and a hall. I am asking for the pack. The eleven wolves on the back of this paper. Find them. Tell them the ban is lifted. Tell them there is a village on the west coast that is going to be a village again and that there is a place in it for every one of them. And tell them that the wolf who is asking is a wolf who could not do it herself and who is sorry.

“And there is one thing more and then I am going to put the ring back in the press and go down the stairs. The wolf who comes after me is not going to be the wolf who takes the seat. She is going to be the wolf who puts it back together. And she is going to do it with a man who has been standing in doors with his hands on the frame for twenty years and who is going to have to learn to stand in the middle of a room. Tell him I am sorry for the rejection. Tell him it was not his fault and it was not hers and it was a thing done to the both of them by a woman with a pen. Tell him he is a good man and that he has been a good man all along and that the only thing wrong with him was that he was told he was not.

“S.”

I sat in the back pew of a church in Galway with the paper in my hands and the candles going and the old priest at his altar and did not say anything for a long time.

Declan had his hand over his mouth.

“She wrote it in the winter of 1996,” he said. “She was in the hall with the Alpha on the stairs and she wrote it and she put it in the ring and she went down the stairs.”

“And she went down the stairs and she made a claim in March and she was put in a boathouse and she is asleep in a cabin on the Star of the Sea at this moment and she is going to be in that chamber on the fourteenth.” I turned the paper over. “And there is a thing on the back of it that I have to read and that I am not going to read alone.”

The back of the paper was a list of names. There were eleven of them and they were in my sister's hand and they had places beside them. A name with Killybegs beside it. A name with Donegal. A name with an island. A name with Sligo. A name with a town in the south.

And at the bottom, in a different ink, in a hand that was thin and elegant and sloping to the right, there was a line.

“Received and read. E. April 1997.”

Declan looked at me.

“She has read it,” he said. “The woman in Galway has read it. She has had the ring and she has taken the paper out and she has read it and she has put it back and she has put the ring back in the press and she has said nothing.” He put his hand on the pew. “She knows there are eleven wolves in the north and the south and the islands and she has known since April and she has done nothing about them. Which means she has done something about them.”

I stood up in the church.

“Then there is a thing we have to do before the fourteenth,” I said. “We have to find the eleven wolves and we have to tell them the ban is lifted and we have to do it before a woman in a room in Galway gets to them first.” I put the paper in my coat. “And there is a thing about a pack of eleven wolves who have been banished from this village for a thing they did not do. They are not going to believe a woman from Dublin. They are going to believe a wolf of the line of Maeve with the true ring in her hand and a paper in her sister's writing. And there is only one wolf of the line of Maeve who has the ring and the paper and who is not a claimant who has been declared by the Council.”

Declan looked at me.

“You are going to go north,” he said.

“I am going to go north and south and to the islands and I am going to do it in twelve days.” I put my coat on. “And you are going to Galway. You are going to be in that chamber on the fourteenth with Ahern and Callum and my sister and the whole of the file. And there is a thing about the two of us going two ways that I have to say before we go out of this church. The bond is going to be a thing we cannot see and cannot touch and cannot use for twelve days and there is not a wolf in this city who is going to be able to tell me whether you are alive or dead.” I put my hand on his chest. “So I am going to say the thing now and then I am going to go. I am yours. I have chosen it and I am going to keep choosing it and there is not a woman in Galway or a Council or a moon that is going to change it.”

Declan put his hand over mine.

“Then I am going to say the same thing,” he said. “And there is a thing about the twelve days that I have to say and then we are going to go out of this church and get on a boat. The men in the street are going to be looking for a woman with gold hair and a man with auburn hair and a ring on her finger. They are not going to be looking for a woman with gold hair and no ring and a coat that is too big for her and a hat that is not hers.” He took the ring out of my hand and put it back together and put it in his own pocket. “I am going to Galway. You are going north. And there is a thing about the north that I have been keeping since the pier. There is a man in Donegal who was in this village in 1961 and who was one of the four wolves who set the fire and who has been in the north ever since. His name is on the back of that paper. And he is the first name on the list.”

The old priest had stopped at his altar and was looking at us down the length of the church.

“There is a thing about the two of you,” he said, “that I have been listening to for the last half hour and that I am going to say before you go out of my church. You have been talking about a pack and a ring and a village and a woman in Galway and I do not know what any of it means and I am not going to ask. But there is a thing I do know. I have been the priest of this parish for forty years and I have married a great many wolves and I have buried a great many more and I have never once seen a pair who said the thing you have just said to each other in the back of a church at four in the morning without a ring on their hands.” He came down the aisle. “So I am going to ask you the one question I am allowed to ask. Do you want me to do it properly?”