Chapter 22: Mairéad's Table

I put the paper in my coat and I put the flagstone back and I put my hand under Ronan's arm and got him up off the stones.

"Out the seaward gap," I said. "Now. Along the rocks the way I came with Cormac."

He did not argue. He was eighty years old and he had been the healer of this pack for fifty years and he knew what the lights on the shore road meant. We went out through the gap and down onto the rocks and along the water's edge with the tide coming in over our boots, and behind us the torches came into the boathouse and stopped.

Ronan's cottage was a quarter mile up the lane. We went in the back way through the garden and he put the candle in the window and sat down in his chair with his chest going like a bellows.

"The paper," he said. "Let me see it."

I gave it to him. He read it twice and then he folded it and gave it back to me.

"That is Korkut's hand," he said. "I have seen his hand before. He signed a paper for me in 1979 when there was a dispute about a boundary and he wrote the same sloping letters and he signed it Received for the Council." He looked at the fire. "The enforcer of this region has been taking money from this pack for eighteen years. That is what the paper is. It is not a confession. It is a receipt."

"And a receipt is proof."

"A receipt is proof that money changed hands. It is not proof of what the money was for." Ronan rubbed his face. "Niamh. If you take that paper to the Council, Korkut will say he was paid for his time and his travel and his judgment, which is true, because the Council pays its enforcers nothing and expects them to live on the gratitude of the packs. And Mairéad will say the money was the co-op's contribution to the Council's fund and there will be a ledger in Galway that agrees with her."

"Then I need the ledger in the frame in the hall."

"You need the ledger in the frame in the hall." He looked at me. "And there is a thing I have not told you. The Alpha has invited you to dinner."

I turned round. "When?"

"Tomorrow night. She sent word while you were out on the rocks. She sent it by Cormac and Cormac came to my door with it because he did not want to come to the cottage and find you gone." Ronan picked up the poker and stirred the fire. "A dinner at the hall with the Alpha and the enforcer and the Beta. She says it is a courtesy to a bereaved sister before she leaves the village. It is not a courtesy. It is a table."

The next evening I put on my good black coat and I walked up to the hall with my heart in my throat.

The hall was lit with candles and the long table was laid with a white cloth and the good china and a jug of water and no wine, because there was no wine in this village. Mairéad was at the head of the table in a grey dress with her silver hair pinned up and her pale green eyes bright in the candlelight, and Korkut was on her right in his town coat with his hands folded, and Declan was on her left with his auburn hair combed and a shirt that had been ironed, and he did not look at me when I came in.

"Niamh," Mairéad said. "Sit down. You are between the enforcer and the Beta and I am told that is the safest place for a woman in this village."

I sat down. The food was a fish pie and a dish of new potatoes and a bowl of greens, and it was good, and I ate it, because a woman who does not eat at a table is a woman who is frightened.

Korkut talked about Galway. He talked about the cathedral and the salmon and the price of a room in the city, and he asked me about the guards in Dublin and I told him a story about a stolen bicycle that made him laugh, and all the while Mairéad ate her fish pie and watched me over her fork.

Then the plates were cleared and she put her hands flat on the table and said, "Niamh. I am going to say a thing to you and I want you to hear it as a kindness, because that is how it is meant. You are not a good liar."

The candle flames stood still. Declan's hand stopped on the table.

"I have been watching you for a week," Mairéad said. "You came here to bury your sister and you have been asking questions in every kitchen in this village. You have been to the post office and to Tom's wife and to the old man by the water and to the healer's cottage twice in one day. You sat at this table yesterday with the frame behind my head and you did not look at it once, and a woman who does not look at a thing is a woman who is thinking about it." She picked up her water glass. "I do not blame you. If my sister had died in the water I would be asking questions too. But I am going to tell you the truth of this village, and then I am going to make you an offer, and then you are going to go home and sleep and in the morning you are going to get in your car and drive back to Dublin and not come back."

"Mairéad," Declan said.

"Be quiet, Declan." She did not look at him. "The truth is this. Your sister made a claim she could not win, and she lost, and she went into the water. That is a hard thing and it is a true thing and there is no more to it than that. The village has a story about it because villages always have stories, and the story has got out of hand, and the enforcer has had to come from Galway to see that the co-op is kept in order. If you stay, the story gets bigger. If you go, the story dies and the village goes back to its boats and its catch and its full moons." She put the glass down. "That is the truth. Now here is the offer. Tomorrow morning I will put a sum of money in your hand that will pay for your sister's affairs and a year of your rent in Dublin. I will have the Mary Rose scrubbed and repainted and renamed and I will put a plaque to your sister on the wall of this hall. And you will leave this village and you will not come back, and in return I will not ask the enforcer to declare you a rogue."

Korkut had not moved. His hands were folded on the table and his face was the face of a retired schoolmaster listening to a pupil recite.

I looked at Mairéad across the candles. "And if I do not take the offer?"

"Then you will stay in this village and you will be a wolf in my territory and you will do as you are told, and I will find a use for you." She smiled. "You are not the first wolf to come back to this coast with a grievance and a charter number, Niamh. I have been doing this for twenty seven years. I have buried three claimants and I have banished four and I have made two of them into wolves who would die for me, and the two who would die for me are worth more to this pack than the four who left. So think carefully about which of those you would like to be."

"Three claimants," I said.

"Three."

"Who were the other two?"

Mairéad's smile did not change, but something went out of her eyes. "That is not a question for a dinner table."

"You said you had buried three. One of them was my sister. Who were the other two?"

"One was a man from the north who came in 1974 and made a claim on the ground that his grandmother had been Alpha before Maeve. He lost and he went into the sea. The other was a woman from this village in 1981 who made a claim and lost and went into the sea." Mairéad picked up her fork and set it down again. "Both of them were answered properly, in front of the co-op, on the headland, at the full moon. Both of them are in the ground on the hill behind the church and their names are on the stones and you may go and look at them in the morning if you do not believe me."

There was a silence at the table. Declan had gone very still. Korkut turned his glass a quarter turn on the cloth.

"Mairéad," Korkut said. "I think that is enough for one evening. The woman has heard the offer and she will think about it and we will speak again in the morning."

"Of course," Mairéad said. She stood up. "Declan will walk you down to the cottage. It is dark and the shore road is rough."

We went out of the hall into the night. The moon was not up and the village was dark and the sea was a sound on the left and Declan walked beside me with his hands in his pockets and did not speak until we were past the shop.

"She was testing you," he said.

"She was telling me she has done this before."

"She was telling you she has done it three times and two of them are in the ground." He stopped. "Niamh. The woman in 1981. I was a young man then. I remember it. Her name was Aisling and she was a fisherman's daughter from the north side of the village and she made a claim on the ground that Mairéad had stolen her father's boat. It was not a claim on the seat at all. It was a claim about a boat. And Mairéad answered it as a claim on the seat and took her up to the headland and killed her."

"Was it answered properly?"

"It was answered in front of the co-op and there were witnesses and the co-op accepted it." He began walking again. "But I have thought about it for sixteen years. A claim about a boat is a matter for the co-op's meeting. It is not a claim on the seat. And Mairéad answered it as a claim on the seat because a claim on the seat can be answered in a fight, and a claim about a boat has to be settled in a hall with a vote." He stopped at the gate of the cottage. "Do you see what I am telling you? She has been doing it for twenty seven years. She takes every grievance and she makes it a claim on the seat, and then she answers it on the headland, and there is no vote and no ledger and no hall. And the co-op lets her do it because the co-op has been told that is how it has always been done."

I put my hand on the gate. "Then the way to beat her is not to make a claim on the seat."

"What?"

"The clause in the charter. If the challenger is taken and held, the challenge is not answered and the seat is vacant. She took my sister and held her for three days. That is not a claim on the seat. That is a breach of the charter and it goes to the co-op, and a breach of the charter is settled in a hall with a vote." I looked at him. "I do not have to challenge her, Declan. I have to put her on trial."

Declan looked at me for a long moment. The wind came up off the water and moved his hair.

"If you do that," he said, "she will not answer you on the headland. She will answer you in the dark, and she will not do it herself, and it will not be a fight." He opened the gate for me. "Go in and bolt the door. And Niamh. Do not go into the garden tonight."

"Why not?"

"Because there was a man in the garden of the hall while we were at dinner," he said. "I smelled him from the window. He was standing in the dark by the wall with his hands in his pockets and he was listening to every word." He looked at me. "And I do not know who he was, and he was not from this village."