Chapter 140: The Council in the Dark

The hall went up and the whole of it was forty wolves on their feet and the whole of it was the sound of a village that had been quiet for thirty six years and that had just been asked a question.

And then the lamp went out.

It was not the lamp. It was the whole of the hall and the whole of the village and the whole of the shore road and the whole of the harbor. The lights went out from the hall to the church and from the church to the pier and the whole of it was black and the whole of the hall was forty wolves in the dark.

“Nobody move,” Declan said. “The whole of you. Stand where you are.”

The hall was silent.

And then a voice came out of the dark at the back of the hall. It was a man’s voice and it was dry and it was patient and I had not heard it since the corridor of the Council building in Galway.

“There is a thing about a hall in the dark,” Kern said. “It is a hall where a co-op cannot see the wolf beside it and where a co-op cannot see the hand that is going up. And there is a thing about a vote that is taken in the dark. It is not a vote. It is a thing that a wolf in a good coat is going to be able to say afterwards did not happen.”

The whole of the hall was silent.

“Say what you have come to say,” I said.

“There is a thing about the woman from Dublin,” Kern said, “that I have been saying since Friday and that I am going to say now in front of the whole of this co-op. She has been in that village for a month and she has been in a church and a cellar and a hold and a court and a cove. She has a ring and a box and a book and a boot and a list and a file. And there is a thing about a woman who has all of that. She is going to be in a room in Galway on the fourteenth and she is going to win.” He paused. “And there is a thing about a woman who is going to win. She is going to be the Alpha of this pack and she is going to be the wolf who put the whole of this village in a file in Galway. She is going to put the name of every wolf in this hall in a file and she is going to put the name of every wolf who took a boat and a mooring and a word in the ear. And there is a thing about a file like that. It is not a file that a village can live with.”

The whole of the hall stirred.

“Then there is a thing I have to say,” I said. “And I am going to say it in the dark because there is not a lamp in this hall and there is not a wolf in it who is going to be able to say afterwards that he did not hear it. The whole of it is going to be in a file and the whole of it is going to be read out loud on the fourteenth and there is not a wolf in this hall whose name is not going to be in it. But there is a thing about a file that a village is going to have to live with. It is a file that a village has written itself. It is a file that was in a safe and a box and a shawl and a boot and it has been there since 1961 and there is not a wolf in this hall who did not know it was there.” I put my hand on the table. “And there is a thing about a woman in a good coat who comes into a dark hall and offers a deal. She is not offering a deal. She is offering a thing that a village has been offered since 1961. She is offering to keep the file in a drawer.”

The whole of the hall was silent.

“What is the deal?” Tom said.

“There is a thing about a box under a slip,” Kern said. “It has a book and a list and a boot. And there is a thing about a boot. It is the only thing in the whole of it that is going to put a woman in a good coat in a court in Dublin and it is the only thing in the whole of it that is going to put the whole of this village in a file that is going to be read out loud by a newspaper.” He put his hand on the bench. “So the deal is this. Give me the box. Give me the boot. Give me the book and the list and the ring and the whole of it and I will walk out of this hall and the whole of it will be in a fire before the morning and there will not be a wolf in Galway who is going to be able to say it was ever out of the water. And in return there is a thing I am going to give the co-op. I am going to give it a name. The name of the man in Dublin who has been taking money out of this coast since 1961 and who is going to be in that room on the fourteenth. The name of the judge.”

The whole of the hall was silent.

“There is a thing about a name,” I said. “It is a paper and a paper is a thing that a wolf in a good coat can put in front of a co-op and take out again. The box is a thing that came out of the water this morning with a boot in it and it is not a paper.”

Kern was quiet for a moment.

“There is a thing about the whole of it,” he said, “that the woman from Dublin has not said out loud and that I am going to say in the dark in front of the whole of this co-op. She has been in that village for a month and she has been in every room in it and there is not a wolf in this hall who is not going to be in a file because of her. And there is a thing about a village that has been quiet for thirty six years. It is not going to be quiet again. It is going to be a village that is in a newspaper in Dublin and a file in Galway and a court in London and there is not a wolf in this hall who is going to be able to walk down the shore road without a wolf from another territory looking at him.” He put his hand out. “So I am going to ask the co-op a question and I am going to ask it in the dark. Does it want to be a village that is in a file? Or does it want to be a village?”

The whole of the hall was silent.

And then Hannah said, “There is a thing about a village that is in a file. It is a village that has said the whole of it out loud and that is not going to be able to be lied to again. And there is a thing about a village that is not in a file. It is a village that has been quiet for thirty six years and that has had a woman in a chair and a rope in a boathouse and a child in a box under a slip.” She put her hand on the bench. “I have a daughter. She is going to grow up in this village and there is a thing about the village she is going to grow up in. It is going to be a village that is in a file and that is not going to be quiet again.”

The whole of the hall went up.

And then the lights came back on.

The whole of the hall was lit and the whole of it was forty wolves on their feet and Kern was standing at the back of the hall with his spectacles on the end of his nose and his case in his hand and a wolf on either side of him in a good coat and a cap.

“There is a thing about the lights,” Declan said. “They were not put out by a wolf in this hall. They were put out by a wolf at the transformer at the top of the lane. And there is a thing about a wolf at a transformer at the top of the lane. He is not a wolf of this pack.”

The whole of the hall turned round.

And then the green door of the hall opened and Ahern came in with two wolves of the Court behind him and a paper in his hand.

“There is a thing about this evening,” he said, “that the whole of this hall is going to hear and then I am going to put this paper on the table. The Court of Alphas has been in session since this morning and it has heard the whole of the motion and the whole of the warrant and the whole of the list. And it has made a decision and the decision is this. The warrant that was signed in Dublin on the eleventh of July is set aside. The list that was kept by the Keeper of the Rolls is in the file. And the judge who signed the warrant is going to be in a room in Dublin before the week is out.” He put the paper on the table. “And there is a thing about the fourteenth of July. The Court of Alphas has decided that it is not going to sit in Galway. It is going to sit in this hall. In Dún Aonghasa. With the whole of the co-op in it and the whole of the file and the whole of the ring and the whole of the box and the whole of the shore.”

The whole of the hall went up.

And then Kern said, “There is a thing about a court that sits in a hall on a coast. It is a court that is not going to be able to be protected by a wolf on a door.”

The whole of the hall was silent.

And then the door at the back of the hall opened and a woman came in.

She was old and she was thin and she had white hair pinned up and a good dark coat and her face was the face of a woman who had been in a house on a road for thirty six years and she was not in a room in Dublin and she had not been in a room in Dublin since Monday.

Eileen came up the floor.

“There is a thing about the fourteenth of July,” she said, “that the whole of this co-op is going to hear before it votes on anything. I am the woman who set the fire in 1961 and I am the woman who has been in a house on a road since and I am the woman who has been taking children out of this village and paying hunters and signing papers in the name of my sister. And there is a thing about a woman who has done the whole of it. She is not going to be in a court in Dublin. She is going to be in this hall on the fourteenth in front of the whole of the co-op and she is going to say the whole of it out loud.”