Chapter 152: The Choice the Council Made

The key was on the table and the whole of the hall was silent and the whole of the nine were looking at it.

"There is a thing about a key," the woman with black hair said. "It is a small thing and it opens a press and it has been on the belt of a man in a good coat for thirty six years. And there is a thing about a key that has been on a belt for thirty six years. It is a key that a man has not been able to put down and it is a key that he has just put on a table in front of a pack."

Kern stood at the table with his hands at his sides.

"There is a thing about the whole of it," he said, "that I have been trying to say since the shop in Galway. I am not a wolf and I have never been a wolf and I have been the Keeper of the Rolls of the Council of Alphas for thirty six years. I have kept the file and signed the receipts and taken the tenth and I have been a man who has been in a room with a paper and a pen while a village on a coast has been doing a thing that no wolf in Galway was supposed to know about." He put his hand on the table. "And there is a thing about a man like that. He has read the whole of it. He has read it twice and he has known since 1961 that the deed was a crime and that the title was defective and that the whole of the Council was in it."

The whole of the hall was silent.

"Say the rest of it," I said.

"The rest of it is a thing that the whole of this pack is going to hear and that no wolf in Galway has ever heard," Kern said. "The Council of Alphas is not nine wolves who have been lied to. It is nine wolves who have known since 1961 and who have been taking the tenth out of this pack and out of every pack on this coast and who have signed the receipts and put them in a file." He put his hand on the key. "And there is a thing about a file that has the name of every wolf on the Council in it. It is a file that a Council is going to want to burn. And there is a thing about a Council that wants to burn a file. It sends a man in a good coat with a paper and a case and two men behind him. And there is a thing about the whole of it that I have to say before any wolf in this hall says another word. I am not the man who has been sent. I am the man who has been keeping the file. And there is a thing about a man who has been keeping a file for thirty six years and who has been in a room in Galway since Friday and who has been released into his own recognisance. He has been released because the Council wanted him out of a room and into a car and down this coast before the fourteenth."

The whole of the hall was silent.

"Then there is a thing I have to say," the woman with black hair said, "and it is the thing that the whole of this morning has been about and that no wolf in this hall has said out loud. The Court of Alphas has been in this building since Friday and it has read the whole of the file and it has heard the whole of the motion and the whole of the warrant. And there is a thing about a court that has read a file that has the name of every wolf on the Council in it. It is a court that has been sitting on a thing that is going to put nine wolves out of a chair." She put her hand flat on the table. "So I am going to say the thing that a court says when it has been sitting on a file like that. The Court of Alphas is not the Council. It is nine wolves from nine territories and it has been in that room since Friday and there is not one of us who has not read the whole of it and who has not known what it was going to do to the Council."

The whole of the hall was silent.

"And what is it going to do?" I said.

"It is going to put the whole of it in a file and it is going to put the file in the hands of a wolf who is not in Galway and not in Dublin and not in this hall," the woman with black hair said. "And there is a thing about a file that is in the hands of a wolf like that. It is a file that is going to be read by a newspaper in Dublin and by a court in London and by every pack in the west of Ireland. And there is a thing about a Council that has been in a file like that. It is a Council that is not going to be a Council by the end of the year."

The whole of the hall went up.

And then, from the gallery, a voice said, "There is a thing about the whole of it that the whole of this hall is going to hear and that I have been trying to say since the first night in the shop."

The whole of the hall turned round.

It was Callum. He was the old wolf from the Council who had sat at the far end of the table with a face like a walnut and he had come down from Galway on the evening bus and he had been in the gallery since six o'clock in the morning and no wolf had seen him come in.

He came down the steps with his stick and his white hair and his face was grey.

"There is a thing about the Council of Alphas," he said, "that I have been on for forty years and that I have never once said out loud in a hall. It is nine wolves who have been taking the tenth out of every pack on this coast since 1901 and who have signed the receipts and put them in a file. And there is a thing about a Council that has done that for a hundred years. It is not a Council. It is a thing that a man in a good coat has been running from an office in Galway." He put his hand on the table. "And there is a thing about the whole of it that I have to say before the morning. I have been on that Council for forty years and I have signed the receipts and I have taken the tenth and I have known the whole of it since 1961 and I have not said a word. And there is a thing about a wolf who has been on a Council for forty years and who has not said a word. He is not a wolf who is going to be in a chair by the end of the year."

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 the whole of it is going to be in a file in Galway before the morning. The whole of it has been in a file and a court and a hall and the whole of it has come down to a key on a table and a man in a good coat and a Council that has been taking the tenth for a hundred years. And there is a thing about a pack that has been in a hall since six o'clock this morning. It has shifted and it has said the whole of it and it has put a ring on a finger. And there is a thing about a pack that has done that. It is not a co-op any more. It is a thing that a Council is going to have to look at and there is not a wolf in Galway who is going to be able to say it is not."

The whole of the hall went up.

And then the green door of the hall opened and a man came in with a lamp in his hand and a paper in the other and his cap under his arm.

It was the sergeant from Galway.

"There is a thing about this evening," he said, "that the whole of this hall is going to hear before it does another thing. I have been on the telephone to Dublin since seven o'clock and I have been on it to a man in the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions and to a man in the guards at the Phoenix Park. And there is a thing about a judge of the High Court who has been named in a statement in a barracks in Galway. He has been in a room in Dublin since this afternoon and there is a warrant for him and there is a warrant for a man in Galway and there is a warrant for a woman in a good coat and there is a warrant for a man called Kern who is standing in this hall." He put the paper on the table. "And there is a thing about a warrant that is signed in Dublin on the fourteenth of July and that is put on a table in a hall in Dún Aonghasa on the same night. It is a warrant that a pack is going to be able to read out loud."

The whole of the hall went up.

And then Kern said a thing that no wolf in that hall had expected.

"There is a thing about the whole of it," he said, "that I have not said and that I am going to say now before the sergeant puts a hand on my arm. The file in that press is not the only file. There is a second file and it is in a bank in Galway and it has the name of every wolf who has taken the tenth since 1901 and it has the name of every wolf on the Council of Alphas and it has the name of a man in Dublin who has been in the whole of it since 1961." He put his hand out. "And there is a thing about the whole of it that I have been carrying since Friday. The second file is not in a bank. It is in the hands of a wolf who is not in Galway and not in Dublin and not in this hall and who has been waiting forty years for a wolf to come and ask him for it."