Chapter 144: The Challenge at Dawn

Mairéad was standing at the top of the track with her silver hair down and her black coat on and her hands at her sides and the whole of the pack came up the shore road and stopped twenty feet from her.

"There is a thing about a challenge," she said, "that I have been signing since 1983 and that I have not once been on the other side of. It is a paper and a weight and a witness and it is heard on a headland at dawn. And there is a thing about a woman who has signed a challenge in the night and who is standing at the top of a track at three in the morning. She is not a woman who is going to win. She is a woman who is going to be answered." She put her hand in her coat and took out a weight. It was iron and it had a fish on the face and a number on the side of the fish and the number was forty one. "I have carried this since the night I put it on your sister's table. I have carried it in my pocket for four months and there is not a wolf in this village who has seen it since March. And there is a thing about a weight that an Alpha carries in her pocket for four months. It is a weight she has been waiting to put on a table."

She came down the track and put the weight on the wall at the top of the shore road.

"There is the table," she said. "There is the weight. There is the witness." She looked at the woman with black hair. "And there is the claimant."

The whole of the shore road was silent.

"Then there is a thing I have to say," I said, "and I am going to say it before the whole of this pack and then we are going to go up that track. The weight is on the wall and it is the weight of forty one and it was put on my sister's table in March by a woman in a good coat and it was taken off it by a Beta and it has been in a pocket since. And there is a thing about the weight of forty one. It is not a weight that a wolf in a black coat can put on a wall and call a challenge. It is the weight of the line of Maeve and it was in a shawl for thirty six years and it came out of a fire." I put my hand in my coat and took out the ring. "This is the true ring of Maeve. It came out of that fire and it has been in a shawl since 1961 and it is on my finger. And there is a thing about a ring that has been in a fire. It is the seal of the seat and it does not belong to a woman who has been signing papers in the name of a man in Galway."

The whole of the shore road was silent.

And then Mairéad said, "There is a thing about a challenge that is made by a claimant who holds a ring. It is a challenge that a Court of Alphas is going to hear in a hall on the fourteenth and it is not a challenge that is going to be heard on a headland at dawn. So I am going to do the thing that a wolf in a black coat does when she is standing at the top of a track at three in the morning and there is not a wolf in the village who is going to follow her up it." She put her hand out. "I am going to withdraw the challenge. And there is a thing about a challenge that is withdrawn. It is not a challenge that has been answered. It is a challenge that has been left on a wall."

The whole of the shore road was silent.

"Then there is a thing I have to say," I said, "and I am going to say it and it is going to be in a file in Galway before the morning. A challenge that is withdrawn is a challenge that has been left on a wall and a weight that is left on a wall is a weight that a co-op has to answer. And there is a thing about a co-op that has been asked to answer a weight. It does not answer it with a fight. It answers it with a vote. And there was a vote in that hall tonight and it was thirty eight to two and the whole of the co-op chose a wolf." I put my hand on the wall. "So I am not going to answer your challenge on a headland at dawn. I am going to answer it in that hall on the fourteenth with the whole of the file and the whole of the co-op and the whole of the nine."

The whole of the shore road was silent.

Mairéad looked at me.

"There is a thing about the fourteenth," she said, "that I have been trying to say since the pier at Dun Laoghaire and that I am going to say now in front of the whole of this pack. I am not going to be in that room. I am going to be in a room in Dublin with a lawyer and a judge and a woman in a good coat and there is not a wolf in Galway who is going to be able to get me out of it." She put her hand down. "And there is a thing about a woman who is not going to be in a room on the fourteenth. She is going to be on a headland at dawn with a weight on a wall and there is not a thing in the whole of it that a court is going to be able to hear."

She turned round and went up the track.

The whole of the pack stood on the shore road and watched her go and the whole of it was silent.

And then the woman with black hair said, "There is a thing about a challenge that is made and withdrawn and made again. It is a thing that the charter does not allow. A challenge is made once and answered once and there is not a wolf in the west of Ireland who has made the same challenge three times in one night." She put her hand on the wall. "The challenge is void. The weight is on the wall and it is going to be taken to the hall on the fourteenth and it is going to be in the file. And there is a thing about a woman who has made a challenge three times in one night and who has gone up a track alone. She is not going to be on that headland at dawn. She is going to be on the shore road at dawn and there is going to be a wolf on the pier with a paper in her hand."

The whole of the pack turned round.

And then Tom said, "There is a thing about the whole of it that the whole of this road has not said out loud. There is a woman on that track and she has been the Alpha of this village for fourteen years and she has done the whole of it. And there is a thing about a wolf who has done the whole of it and who goes up a track alone at three in the morning. She is going to a place where she thinks no wolf is going to follow her."

The whole of the road was silent.

"Where?" I said.

"The old charter house," Tom said. "The stones on the high ground. It is where her mother went in 1961 and it is where she went on the night of the fire and there is not a wolf in this village who has been up there since the stones were dug."

I went up the track.

The whole of the pack came after me and the whole of the track was dark and the whole of the high ground was black and the wind was coming off the sea and the stones were ahead of us in the dark.

Mairéad was standing in the middle of the ring of stones with her hands at her sides and her face turned up to the sky and the whole of the east was grey and gold along the edge of the water.

"There is a thing about the dawn," she said, without turning round. "It is the only thing in the whole of it that has not lied to me. It comes up on the fourteenth of July and it comes up on the twenty second of March 1961 and it does not care what a wolf has done." She turned round. "I am not going to fight you. There is not going to be a challenge and there is not going to be a headland and there is not going to be a wolf in this village who is going to be able to say I did not answer it. I have answered it. I answered it in a hall tonight with the whole of the co-op in it and they chose you." She put her hand in her coat and took out a paper. "This is the resignation. Not the one I said on the pier. The one I have signed and dated and put in the hand of a wolf of the Court of Alphas."

She gave it to the woman with black hair.

"And there is a thing about the whole of it," she said, "that I have to say before the sun is up and then I am going to sit down on that stone and wait for the guards. The woman in the good coat is my sister and she is going to be in a court in Dublin and I am going to be in a room in Galway and there is not a wolf in this village who is going to be able to say we did not do the whole of it. But there is a thing about the two of us that no wolf in this village has said out loud. We were two girls in a hall in 1961 and we did what our mother told us and there is not a wolf in the world who is going to be able to say we were not frightened."

The whole of the ring of stones was silent.

And then, from the track below, there was a sound that was not a wolf and not the wind. It was a boat's engine and it was coming in to the cove and there was a light on the water.