Chapter 113: The Healer's Last Word

They took the man in the burnt coat up the quay and the fire brigade put the last of the fire out and the whole of it was smoke and wet stones and the smell of paraffin.

And then a boy came running along the quay with his cap in his hand and his face white and he said, “There is a wolf asking for the woman from Dublin. He is in the room at the back of the court and he came down from the west coast on the morning tide and he is old and he is not well.”

Ronan.

I went up the stairs with my sister behind me and Declan behind her and Cormac behind him, and the room at the back of the court was small and had a window and a bed in it and a chair and there was an old man in the bed with white hair and a face like a wrinkled apple and his brown eyes were open.

“There is a thing about a healer,” he said, when he saw me. “He knows when a wolf is not going to get up again. I have known since Friday and I have been on a bus and a boat since Saturday and I have been telling myself that a healer who is dying is a healer who has one more thing to do.” He put his hand out. “Sit down. The whole of you. There is not much time and there is a thing I have been carrying since March and it is not a thing for a paper.”

I sat down on the edge of the bed and took his hand and his hand was warm and dry and very old.

“The night of the claim,” he said. “I was in the hall. I was called to the hall at eleven o'clock and there was a woman on the floor by the fire and there was blood on the blanket and the Alpha was at the table with a book and a pen and the Beta was on his knees beside her. And I did what a healer does. I put my hand on her and I felt the whole of it and I told the Alpha that the woman would not live the night.” He stopped and got his breath. “And she said a thing that I have not been able to forget. She said, then she will not have to be taken out to the rocks. And I said, Alpha, she is a wolf of this pack. And she said, she is a claimant and she is a wolf who has been taken and held and the charter says a wolf who is taken and held is a wolf who has made a claim that has not been answered. And I said, then answer it. And she said, I have answered it. And I did not understand what she meant until the morning.”

My sister had gone very still.

“She had answered it,” Ronan said. “Not on the headland. In the hall. With a weight and two wolves and a woman on the floor. And there is a thing about an answer that is not a fight. It is not an answer and the charter says it is not an answer and there is not a wolf in that village who knew it until a woman from Dublin read it out loud in a church.” He looked at me. “And there is a thing about the night of the claim that I have not told a living soul and that I am going to tell you now because I am the only wolf who was in that room and because I am not going to be in the next one. When I went out of that hall to get my bag, the woman on the floor opened her eyes and she said a thing to me. She said, Ronan, tell my sister that the healer has the ring. And I said, what ring. And she said, the ring of Maeve. And she said it twice and then she was not awake any more and I have been carrying it since March and I did not know what it meant until you found the tin box in the press.”

“She was not awake,” I said. “She could not have said it.”

“She said it twice,” Ronan said. “And there is a thing about a wolf who is dying. She hears things a wolf who is well does not hear. And there is a thing about your sister that I have been turning over since March. She was a claimant who was taken and held and she knew the law and she knew what was going to happen to her and she did not run. And a wolf who does not run is a wolf who has a reason.”

I sat on the edge of the bed with Ronan's hand in mine.

“There is a thing about the fourteenth,” Ronan said. “The Court of Alphas is going to hear the claim this afternoon and the whole of it is going to be read out loud and the whole of it is going to be in a file. And there is a thing about a file that is read out loud. It is a good thing and it is a true thing and it is not enough.” He turned his head on the pillow. “The wolf who is going to be in that chair is not going to be made by a court. She is going to be made by a village. And a village that has been lied to for thirty six years is a village that is going to have to be told the truth by a wolf it trusts and not by a court in Galway.” He looked at me. “So I am going to say the thing I have been wanting to say since the first night and then I am going to ask you for a thing. You are not a wolf of that village and you have been in it for a month and there is not a wolf in it who has not been lied to by a woman with a silver voice. And there is not a wolf in it who has not looked at you and seen a woman from Dublin who pulled a safe out of a well. That is not the thing they are going to follow. They are going to follow the wolf who stood in a garden in the rain and said, I am not going to be a woman from Dublin any more and they said aye.”

“Ronan,” I said. “What is the thing you are asking me for?”

“I am asking you to be in that village on the fourteenth,” he said. “Not in the court. In the hall. With the whole of the file read out loud and the whole of the co-op in the room and a vote. And I am asking you to let the court in Galway do the thing a court does and let the village do the thing a village does.” He put his other hand over mine. “And there is a thing I have to say and then I am going to sleep. I have been the healer of that pack for fifty years and I have written a false charter and I have kept a secret for thirty six years and I have been a coward. And there is a thing about a coward who does one brave thing at the end of his life. It does not pay for the rest of it. But it is the thing he has.”

He closed his eyes.

“There is a thing in my bag,” he said. “It is a book. It is the book of the healer of Dún Aonghasa and it goes back to 1901 and there is not a wolf in Galway who has seen it. It has the whole of it in it. Every birth and every death and every first shift since 1901 and the whole of what happened in 1961 in my grandfather's hand.” He opened his eyes. “Take it. Put it in the case with the rest of it and put the case in front of the court this afternoon. And then go home.”

He died at half past one.

It was quiet and it was quick and it was the way a wolf who has been a healer for fifty years dies, which is to say he put his hand on mine and then he did not.

My sister sat down on the floor beside the bed and put her head against the wall and did not say anything. Cormac went out of the room and stood in the corridor with his back to the door. Declan put his hand on my shoulder and left it there.

And I sat on the edge of the bed with the old man's hand in mine and the whole of the morning going round in my head.

“There is a thing about the fourteenth,” I said, at last. “He was right. The court can set aside a seat and it can declare an Alpha and it can put the whole of it in a file. It cannot put a village back together.” I put Ronan's hand down on the blanket and stood up. “And there is a thing about the thing he said about the hold. There is a thing in the basement of this building that has been there since 1961 and a woman in a room in Galway has been trying to get it out since Friday and she could not because the key is in the pocket of a man with a wolf on the door.” I turned round. “Declan. The key to the hold. Who has it?”

Declan looked at me.

“The Keeper of the Rolls,” he said. “And the Keeper of the Rolls is Kern and Kern is on the floor below with a wolf on the door and a pen and a paper and a file that he has been keeping for thirty six years.” He put his hand down. “And there is a thing about Kern that I have been thinking about since the office. He gave us the file. He put it on the table in the chamber and he let the whole of it be read out loud and he did not have to. And a man who gives up a file he has been keeping for thirty six years is a man who has one thing left in the world.”

“The hold,” I said.

“The hold,” Declan said. “And whatever is in it.”