Chapter 27: A Confession at Low Tide

I sat down in the chair by the stove and looked at Cormac.

"Tell me again," I said. "From the beginning. The Thursday night. Not the part where you carried the blanket. The part before that."

Cormac looked at his father. Declan did not move. Then Cormac put his hands on his knees and looked at the floor and said, "I was in the hall. The Alpha called me in at midnight and my father was there and your sister was on the floor by the fire. And the Alpha said, Cormac, go down to the boathouse and put a blanket on the floor and wait for your father. And I went down and Bridget was there."

"Was the door open?"

"The seaward door was open and she was standing in it with the bag in her hand and she had a lantern on the floor. And she said, the Alpha says you are to do exactly as I tell you. And I said, where is my father, and she said, he is coming with the woman. And then my father came in with your sister and put her on the blanket and stood in the door with his hands on the frame." Cormac's voice was steady and his face was pale. "And Bridget said, the Alpha says the woman is to be taken out to the rocks at the turn of the tide. And my father turned round and said, the woman is not going anywhere, and Bridget said it again in the pack voice and my father's hands came off the frame and his whole body went still."

Declan was looking at the wall.

"Go on," I said.

"And then my father said, I will take her out to the rocks myself, and Bridget said, the Alpha says the boy is to do it, and my father said, the boy is twelve years old, and Bridget said, the boy is twelve years old and he is not strong enough to be a danger to anyone." Cormac stopped. "And I said, I will do it, and my father said my name and I did not listen, and Bridget gave me the rope."

"He gave you the rope," Declan said. It was the first thing he had said since I came in and his voice was a flat hard thing. "Bridget gave you the rope and I stood in that door and I did not stop her. Say the rest of it. Say it in front of the woman from Dublin."

Cormac looked at his hands.

"I put the rope round her neck," he said. "She was not moving and she was not awake and I put the rope round her neck and Bridget said, now the other end to the cleat, and I did it. And then my father said, cut it, and I said, what, and my father said, cut it now, and he said it in a voice I had never heard from him and Bridget said, no, and my father said, the tide is at the turn, cut it, and I cut it." Cormac raised his head and his grey eyes were wet. "I cut the rope. It was the only thing I did that night that I chose myself."

The stove ticked. The harbor water knocked against the wall outside.

"Then it was not Bridget who told him to cut the rope," I said, slowly. "It was you."

"I told him to cut it and I told him to do it now and I have been telling myself for a month that it was the only thing I could do." Declan turned round. His face was grey and his hands were at his sides and he did not look away from me. "I stood in that door and I let a woman put a rope round your sister's neck and I let my own son do it and the only thing I did was tell him to cut the rope before it was tight. And then I went out to the rocks with my son and we put her in the water and the tide took her, and she was breathing when she went in." His voice did not change. "That is the thing I have been carrying. Not that I carried her down the road. That I stood in the door and let it happen and did not fight the voice."

"You could not fight the voice," Cormac said. "She used the pack voice on you. You told me. You said it was not a thing you could choose."

"Your father is the Beta of this pack," Declan said quietly. "The Beta is the one wolf in the territory who is supposed to be able to stand against the Alpha. That is what the rank is for. That is what the charter says. And when she used the voice on me in that door I went still like a dog on a lead, and I have been going over it every night for a month and I cannot tell you whether I went still because I had to or because I wanted to." He looked at me. "That is my confession. Not the rope. The stillness."

I got up and went to the window. The harbor was black and the tide was out and the mud was shining and the twenty boats were sitting on their keels in the dark.

"Declan," I said. "In the hall, before I came in tonight, the Alpha told me that Bridget was in the boathouse and that you were there and that she had been sitting in her chair since four o'clock. She told me Bridget emptied the locker and gave her the ring and burned the papers. She told me all of it with the chair pushed out and the tea poured and the whole village ready to swear she never left the hall." I turned round. "She is telling a story that she wants me to believe, and it is a story in which Bridget is the villain and the Alpha is a woman who paid for a box of old papers and the ring is in her safe and there is nothing anyone can do about it. And you have just told me a story in which you stood in a door and let it happen."

"Niamh," Cormac said.

"Be quiet, Cormac." I looked at Declan. "There is a thing in your story that does not fit the shape of the other story. Bridget put the rope round my sister's neck and she told a twelve year old boy to take the other end to the cleat. And then you told him to cut it. Why?"

"Because the tide was at the turn and the water was coming in and I could not move my hands and I could move my mouth." Declan's jaw was tight. "It was the only thing I could think of. If he cut the rope the boat would not go out. If the boat did not go out there was no taking her to the rocks and no putting her in the water and the tide would turn back and the night would end and she would still be on the floor of the boathouse."

"And then he did cut it, and the boat did not go out, and she was still on the floor of the boathouse, and you went out to the rocks with your son anyway." I walked back to the chair and stood over him. "Why? If the rope was cut and the boat was not going out, why did you go out to the rocks? Why did you not put her in the boat and take her round the point to Galway and put her in a hospital?"

Declan looked at me. His grey eyes were very tired and the fear came off him so strongly that I could taste it in the back of my throat.

"Because there is a thing I have not told you," he said.

"I know. I can smell it on you. Say it."

"Bridget did not put the rope round your sister's neck." He said it quietly. "I did."

The office was very quiet. Cormac's breath went out of him in a rush and he said, "Da," and Declan did not look at him.

"I put the rope round her neck and I put the other end on the cleat and I told my son to cut it," Declan said. "And Bridget stood in the door and watched me do it and she did not say a word, because she had not told me to do it. She had told me to take the woman out to the rocks at the turn of the tide, and I could not do that, and I could not let her go, and there was nothing else in the boathouse to use." He put his hand over his face and took it away. "I have been telling the story the other way for a month because it is easier to be a man who stood in a door than a man who tied the rope. But you asked me a direct question and I have lied to you twice already and I am not going to lie to you a third time."

I sat down slowly in the chair. The bond in my chest was a hard knot and the man across from me was a man who had put a rope round my sister's neck and told his son to cut it, and the bond did not care, and I hated it.

"You tied the rope to hold her," I said. "Not to hang her. You tied her to the cleat and you told your son to cut the line and let the boat go, and you thought if the boat went out into the tide it would drift and the rope would hold her above the water."

"I do not know what I thought. I thought she would not go under." He looked at his hands. "It was the wrong thing. There was a hundred feet of rope in that boathouse and I could have tied her to the wall and I did not think of it. I thought of the boat. I thought of the tide. And then it was done and she was in the water and my son had cut the line and there was nothing left to do but go out and bring her in."

"Then you went out to the rocks to bring her in."

"I went out to the rocks to bring her in, and she was gone. The tide had her. I stood on those rocks for an hour and I could not find her, and the next morning I told the Alpha she was in the water and the Alpha said, good, and that is when I understood that I had not done a wrong thing in the dark. I had done exactly what she wanted." He looked up. "And there is one thing more, and it is the thing that will hang me if you take it to the co-op. When the coroner came and said it was a drowning, I did not correct him. I stood in the hall and let him say it and I said nothing. I have been the Beta of this pack for twenty years and I let a lie be told about a woman I carried down a road and I did not say a word."

The harbor water knocked against the wall. Cormac was crying quietly in the chair.

I got up and went to the door and opened it and stood in the cold air with my back to them.

"Declan," I said. "You are going to write it down. All of it. Every word you have said to me tonight, with the date and the time and the name of the woman in the car and the name of the man in the town coat and the number of the boat and the hour of the tide. You are going to write it in your own hand and you are going to sign it and Cormac is going to sign it as a witness and Ronan is going to sign it as the healer and I am going to sign it as the one who took it down." I turned round. "And then we are going to take it up to the church on Saturday morning and put it in the parish records with the land deeds, because the church is the one building in this village the Alpha does not have a key to and Father Byrne is the one man in Dún Aonghasa who has never been afraid of her."

Declan was looking at me. The fear on him had gone.

"And on Sunday," I said, "I am going to stand up in that hall and read it out loud. Not a claim on the seat. Not a challenge on the headland. A confession by the Beta of this pack, sworn in front of the healer and the priest, that the Alpha of this village ordered a woman held and had her put into the water. And then I am going to ask the co-op for a vote."

Cormac wiped his face. "Will they believe it?"

I looked at the harbor and the boats and the dark village and the light in the hall on the hill.

"They will believe it," I said, "because they have been waiting fifty years for one of us to say it out loud. And because on Saturday night the Alpha is going to take the Mary Rose out past the headland with the whole co-op watching her, and there is a thing on that boat she wants them to see, and I am going to find out what it is before she gets the chance."