Chapter 141: The Pack That Chose

The whole of the hall was silent and Eileen stood in the middle of it with her white hair pinned up and her good dark coat and her hands at her sides.

"There is a thing about this hall," she said, "that I have not been in since 1961. It has a long table and a frame on the wall and a chair at the head of it and there is not a wolf in it who was here on the night I came up that hill with a can in my hand." She put her hand on the back of a bench. "And there is a thing about a woman who comes back to a hall after thirty six years. She does not come back to be forgiven and she does not come back to be tried. She comes back to say the whole of it out loud in the room where it happened."

The whole of the hall was silent.

"Say it," I said.

"I set the fire," Eileen said. "I was nineteen years old and I was in the hall on the night of the twenty second of March 1961 and I was in the house on the high ground with four wolves from the north and a can of paraffin and I set it and I stood at the door and watched it burn." She put her hand down. "And there is a thing about a girl of nineteen who sets a fire. She does it because a woman in a good coat has told her that the shore is going to be sold and that the Alpha is going to bring the Council down on the whole of it and that a fire is a thing that will settle it. And there is a thing about the woman in the good coat. She was my mother and she was standing at the bottom of the hill with a lamp in her hand and she did not go up."

The whole of the hall was silent.

"And the children," Tom said.

"The children were mine," Eileen said. "Not the taking of them. The taking of them was my mother and then it was my sister and then it was me. There were fourteen of them between 1961 and 1994 and there is a list in a box under a slip at the north cove with every name on it and there is a boot in it that came off a child in 1979 and there is not a wolf in this hall who is going to be able to say I did not know." She put her hand on the bench. "And there is a thing about the whole of it that I have to say before the co-op votes on anything. The child whose boot is in that box was not taken to the north and was not given to a family and was not brought up to be a claimant. He died in the house on the hill in Killybegs in the winter of 1979 and he is buried in the garden and I have been the only wolf in the world who knew it for eighteen years."

The whole of the hall went up.

And then Cormac was on his feet.

"Say the name," he said.

Eileen looked at him.

"I do not know the name," she said. "He was three years old and he was taken out of this village in the summer of 1979 and he was in the house on the hill for four months and he was sick and there was not a doctor in that house and he died in the winter and I buried him in the garden." She put her hand out. "And there is a thing about a boy of three who dies in a house on a hill. He was not the first and he was not the last and there is a thing about the whole of it that I have never said out loud. I have been in a house on a road for thirty six years and I have been taking children out of this village and there is not one of them who has been in a family and brought up to be a claimant. They have been in the house on the hill and they have been in the north and there is not a wolf in Galway who knows what happened to them and there is not a wolf in this hall who is going to be able to say I did not know."

The whole of the hall was silent.

And then Mairéad stood up out of the chair at the head of the table.

"There is a thing about this hall," she said, "that I have been in since 1983 and that I am going to say before the co-op votes. The woman in the good coat is my sister and she has been in a house on a road for thirty six years and she has been taking children and paying hunters and signing papers in my name and I have been signing papers in hers. And there is a thing about two sisters who have been doing the whole of it for thirty six years. They are not two wolves. They are one thing and the whole of it is in this hall tonight and there is not a wolf in it who is going to be able to say which of us did what." She put her hand on the table. "So I am going to do the thing that a wolf in that chair does when the whole of it is in front of a co-op. I am going to resign the seat and I am going to ask the co-op to vote on the wolf who is going to hold it until the heir is ready."

The whole of the hall went up.

And then the woman with black hair came down the floor with the eight of the Court behind her and a paper in her hand.

"There is a thing about a vote," she said. "It is a thing that a co-op does in a hall with a long table and a lamp. And there is a thing about a co-op that has been in a hall for thirty six years and that has been told what to do by a woman in a chair. It is a co-op that is going to have to be asked a question and it is going to have to answer it out loud." She put the paper on the table. "The Court of Alphas is not going to put a name on that paper. The co-op is going to put a name on it. And there is a thing about a co-op that puts a name on a paper. It is a co-op that is going to have to live with it."

The whole of the hall was silent.

"Then there is a thing I have to say," I said, "and I am going to say it and then I am going to sit down on that bench and not say another word until the vote. The whole of it has been in a file and a court and a cove and a box and a shawl and a hall. And there is a thing about a woman from Dublin who came to a village to bury a sister. She found a pack and she found a file and she found a whole lot of wolves who had been quiet for thirty six years. And there is a thing about a woman who finds a thing like that. She is not going to be able to put it down." I put my hand on the table. "So I am going to ask the co-op for the thing I have been asking for since the garden. Not a vote on a claim and not a vote on a challenge. A vote on a wolf. On me. And there is a thing about a wolf who is standing in a hall in front of forty wolves and asking for a vote. She is not asking to be the Alpha. She is asking to be the wolf who is going to hold the seat until the heir is ready and who is going to be in that room on the fourteenth with the whole of the file and the whole of the co-op."

The whole of the hall was silent.

And then Tom stood up.

"There is a thing about this village," he said, "that I have been in all my life and that I have never once been able to say out loud. It is a village that has been quiet for thirty six years and that has been quiet because every wolf in it was frightened. And there is a thing about a woman from Dublin who has been in it for a month and who has not been frightened. She has been in a church and a cellar and a cove and a court and she has been in a hall in the dark with a man in a good coat and she has not once said a thing that was not the truth." He put his hand up. "I am going to vote for the woman from Dublin."

The whole of the hall went up.

And then Hannah put her hand up and then Arthur and then the woman with the grey plait and the fireman and Nora and the woman from the post office and the eleven and the twenty and the nine. The hands went up one by one and the whole of it took a long time and there was not a wolf in the hall who did not look at the wolf beside him before he put his hand up.

When it was done the woman with black hair counted. She counted twice. Then she put the paper down.

"Thirty eight in favour," she said. "Two against. Four wolves are not in this hall." She looked up. "The seat is set aside and the wolf Niamh is the Alpha of Dún Aonghasa until the heir is ready and the fourteenth of July is done."

The whole of the hall went up.

And then, from the back of the hall, a wolf said, "There is a thing about a vote that is taken in a hall with the whole of the co-op in it and a woman in a good coat standing at the back of it. It is a vote that a lawyer in Dublin is going to say was taken under duress."

The whole of the hall turned round.

And Eileen said, "There is a thing about a vote that is taken with a woman in a good coat in the room. It is a vote that is going to be in a court in Dublin and it is going to be argued about for a year. So I am going to do the thing that a woman in a good coat does when she has been in a hall for an hour and has said the whole of it. I am going to walk out of that door and I am going to go back to Galway and I am going to be in a room with a lawyer before the morning."

She turned round and went out through the green door.

And the whole of the hall was silent.

And then Declan said, "There is a thing about the fourteenth that no wolf in this hall has said out loud. The woman in the good coat is going to be in a room in Galway with a lawyer and she is going to be in that room on the fourteenth and there is not a wolf in Galway who is going to be able to get her out of it."

The whole of the hall was silent.

"There is a thing about a room in Galway," I said, "that the whole of this hall is going to hear. She is not going to be in a room in Galway on the fourteenth. She is going to be in this hall. And there is a thing about a woman who walks out of a hall in Dún Aonghasa at nine o'clock at night and says she is going to Galway. She is going to be on the shore road and there is a thing about the shore road. It is a road that goes to the pier and the pier has a wall and the wall has a wolf on it." I picked up my coat. "Declan. Cormac. Go down to the pier and put a wolf on the wall and a wolf on the road and do not let her get on a boat."