Chapter 119: The Storm and the Safe

The storm came up from the southwest at about ten o'clock and by midnight the sea was running high and the Star of the Sea was taking water over the bow.

There were fourteen of us on her. The nine of the banished and Declan and my sister and Padraig and the man in the hood and me. The man in the hood had his bandaged hands on the wheel and he had not let go of it since we left the quay.

It was a hard crossing. The boat went up and came down and the whole of it was black water and spray and the smell of diesel and salt, and the nine of them sat along the cabin with their coats round them and did not say a word. The woman with the grey plait was sick twice and the man with the wooden leg sat with his back against the mast and his eyes shut. Arthur with the walnut face and the boots from the north sat by the rail with his hands in his sleeves and looked at the sea.

At about two in the morning the man in the hood shouted something I could not hear and pointed.

There was a light off the starboard bow. It was small and it was steady and it was not a boat's light. It was a lamp on a stone wall.

"The cove," he shouted. "The slip is cut into the rock and there is a lamp on the wall and there is a boat at the slip and she is not one of ours."

We came in under the lee of the headland and the water went flat and the whole of it was suddenly quiet. The cove was black and the slip was a grey line in the rock and the lamp was on the wall and there was a boat at the slip with a man on her deck.

Declan was at the bow with a rope in his hands.

"There is a thing about this cove," he said. "It has no road and no track and there is not a wolf in Dún Aonghasa who comes down here. The only thing in it is the slip and the cottage on the top of the cliff and there is not a wolf in that village who has been in the cottage since 1961."

We came alongside and I got onto the slip and the whole of the nine came after me and the man in the hood stayed with the boat.

The boat at the slip was a small dark thing with a town man's paint on her and she was empty. There was a coil of rope on her deck and a lamp and a can and a coat over the rail and the coat was a good town coat.

"He has gone up," Declan said. "There is a path up the cliff."

We went up the path. It was wet and it was narrow and it was cut into the rock and the sea was below us and the wind was coming over the top. We came over the edge and there was the coastguard cottage with its door open and a light in the window.

There was nobody in the cottage.

There was a chair on its side and a lamp on the table and a cup of tea gone cold and a coat on the back of the door. There was a bed in the corner with the blankets pulled back and there was a mark on the floor where a thing had been dragged.

And there was a thing on the table that had not been there when I was last in that room.

It was a safe. It was a small iron safe about the size of a strongbox and it was old and it was rusted at the corners and it had a brass plate on the door and the brass plate had a name cut into it. Ahern.

Declan stood in the middle of the room and looked at it.

"That is not the safe from the harbor," he said. "The safe from the harbor is in the church with Father Byrne. This is a second safe and it has the same name on the door and it is the size of a strongbox and it has been in this cottage all along."

"There is a thing about this cottage," I said. "It has been shut since 1961 and the co-op has been paying for the coal and the paraffin and the food for thirty six years and there has not been a wolf in this village who has been in it. And there is a thing about a cottage that is paid for and not used. It is a place where a thing can be kept."

I put my hand on the safe. The door was not locked. It came open with a sound like a bone going and inside there was a bundle wrapped in oilcloth and tied with tarred twine and a book bound in green leather with a clasp on it.

It was the third charter.

It was smaller than the second charter and it was older and the pages were parchment and the writing was the cramped legal hand of 1798. It was the charter that had been in the old charter house before the second one was written and it had a clause in it that neither of the other two had.

Declan read it over my shoulder.

"Every wolf of this pack who is of the blood of the Alpha shall be known to the co-op by name and by the hand of the healer," he read. "And the child of an Alpha who is born in this village shall be entered in this book on the day of its birth. And a child who is born in this village and is not entered in this book is a child who is not of this pack and the co-op shall not hear of it."

I turned the page. There was a list of names and it went back to 1798 and the last name on the list was Maeve and the date beside it was 1921.

And under it, in a hand I knew, there was another name.

"Siobhan, daughter of Maeve's daughter, born 1953." And under that, in the same hand, "Niamh, daughter of Maeve's daughter, born 1955."

And under that, in a different hand and a different ink, a hand that was old and shaky and that I knew from a hundred letters and a hundred papers and a book in a cellar: "Siobhan, daughter of Siobhan, born 1979."

The cottage was very quiet.

"There is a thing about my mother," I said. "She was in this village on the night of the fire and she was sixteen years old and she saw the whole of it and she said nothing. And there is a thing about a girl of sixteen who sees her mother burned in her own house and says nothing for thirty years. She was not a coward. She was a wolf who was keeping a record." I put my hand on the page. "She wrote the whole of it in a book and she put the book in a safe and she put the safe in a cottage and she paid for the cottage for thirty six years and she told no one. And there is a thing about a woman who does that. She is a woman who has been waiting for a wolf to come and open the safe."

"And the last name," Declan said. "Siobhan, daughter of Siobhan, born 1979."

"My sister's daughter," I said. "The child she gave to Deirdre and who was taken to the north and who was given to a woman who was going to Galway. And there is a thing about that name that has been in this book since 1979 and that no wolf in this village has read." I put the book down on the table. "The whole of it was in the hand of a dead woman and it was in a safe in a cottage and the co-op has been paying for the coal and the paraffin and the food for thirty six years and there is not a wolf in it who has opened a door."

And then, from the cliff path outside, there was a sound.

It was a voice and it was a man's voice and it was coming up from the slip and it was saying a thing I could not make out. I went to the door.

The boat at the slip had a light on her now and there were men on her deck and one of them had a lamp and one of them had a long case. And there was a wolf on the slip.

It was Cormac. He was standing on the slip with his hands behind his back and his coat off and his face white and there was a man behind him with a lamp in one hand and a rope in the other.