Chapter 29: My Sister's Handwriting

I sat in the church archives with the green charter open in front of me and the line through the clause about the vote, and I read the margin note again and again.

Struck out by order of the Alpha, 1961, and confirmed by the Council. No vote required for a gift of land to the Council or its officers.

"Father," I said. "The ink in the margin is the same as the ink in the line. But the line is drawn through the whole paragraph and the note is written beside it. A man who strikes out a clause in a charter does not write the reason beside it. He writes the reason in his own record and he signs it there. He does not deface a parish charter."

Father Byrne looked at the page. "Then who wrote the note?"

I turned the book round so the candle fell on it properly and put my finger on the margin.

"The line through the clause is dark and thin and it was drawn by a steady hand. The note in the margin is dark and thin and it is in the same hand." I moved my finger down. "But look at the bottom of the page. There is a date and a signature. The date is 1961 and the signature is Korkut, and the signature is in a different ink and it is smaller than the note and the letters are not the same shape."

Father Byrne leaned in. "The note and the line were written by one hand and the signature was written by another."

"The signature was written by Korkut. The note was written by someone who wanted the signature to look like it belonged to the note." I sat back. "And there is a thing I have not told you. I have seen the enforcer's hand. It is thin and elegant and it slopes to the right. It is the hand that wrote the note on the paper in the boathouse and it is the hand that wrote the receipt my sister found. And this margin note is a very good copy of it, but it is not the same hand."

Father Byrne got up and went to the sacristy and came back with a letter in his hand.

"This is a letter from the Council that came to me in 1994 about a marriage," he said. "It is signed by the enforcer. Compare the hand."

I put the letter beside the charter. The signature on the letter was thin and elegant and sloped to the right. The note in the margin of the charter was thin and elegant and sloped to the right. And they were not the same hand, and I could see it now that the two were side by side. The slope was the same and the thinness was the same, but the loops were different. The letter's loops were round and the margin note's loops were narrow, and the letter's signature had a long flat tail on the last letter and the margin note did not.

"Someone copied his hand and did it well and got the tail wrong," I said. "And the person who copied it was someone who had seen his signature a great many times and had practised it."

Father Byrne sat down on the stool and put his hand over his mouth.

"Niamh," he said. "If the note is a forgery, then the clause was struck out by someone who is not the Council, and the deed of gift has nothing behind it, and the shore is still the co-op's." He looked at me. "And the person who struck out the clause and forged the enforcer's name has been sitting in the hall of this village for thirty six years and has been telling the co-op that the Council confirmed it."

"Mairéad's mother struck out the clause in 1961," I said. "She forged the enforcer's signature on the parish charter and she gave the shore to Korkut as a gift, and she has been paying him rent out of the co-op's money for thirty five years so that he would not ask any questions about a deed that was never lawful in the first place." I closed the book. "And Korkut has been taking the rent and signing the receipts and never once checking the charter in the hall or the charter in this room, because a man who is being paid does not check."

The candle on the table guttered. Father Byrne was looking at the wall.

"There is a thing I have not told you either," he said. "Your sister came to me in February and she sat where you are sitting and she asked me to open this box. I told her I could not open a box that was sealed and left in my care. And she said, Father, I am not asking you to open it, I am asking you to know what is in it. And she took out this charter and she showed me the clause about the land and she showed me the line and the note and she said, Father, look at the hand and look at the signature and tell me if they are the same. And I looked and I said they are not the same, and she said, thank you, and she put the book back in the box and she went out." He looked at me. "I did not know what she meant. I thought it was a question about penmanship."

"It was a question about a forger," I said. "And my sister found the answer and then she made a claim on the seat, and she did it before she had the proof in her hand, because she was afraid that if she waited the Alpha would find out what she had and take it from her." I put the charter in the box and put the deed and the notebook in with it and put the lid on. "Father, I need you to keep this box in this room and I need you to tell no one it is here. Not the Alpha. Not the enforcer. Not even Declan."

"Declan is the Beta."

"Declan is the Beta and his wolf is loyal to the seat and the Alpha can hear what he is thinking. I am not going to put the one piece of proof that can save this village into the head of a man who cannot lie to her." I stood up. "And there is a second thing. On Saturday morning I am going to bring you a document signed by Declan and by Cormac and by Ronan and by me. I want you to put it in the parish records with the deeds and I want you to write the date and the hour on the back of it in your own hand and sign it. Whatever happens on Saturday night, that document will be in this room, and the Alpha does not have a key to this room."

Father Byrne looked at me for a long moment. Then he stood up and took the box and put it back on the bottom shelf and put the other boxes in front of it.

"I have been the priest of this parish for twenty two years," he said. "I have buried three of the Alpha's claimants and I have said the mass for two of them and I have never once asked a question. I am not proud of it. My bishop would not be proud of it." He turned round. "Bring me the document on Saturday morning and I will put it in the records and I will sign it. And Niamh. There is one thing more you should know before you go, and it is a thing I have never said out loud in this village. In 1975, when the co-op found out what Eileen had done to Roisin, there was a vote in the hall. I was a young curate then and I was in the room because the parish always sends a man to the hall for a vote. And I counted the hands with the healer and I wrote the number in the parish book. It was thirty one to twenty nine. And the reason it was thirty one to twenty nine was that three wolves who had promised the healer they would vote against Eileen did not come to the hall. They were not sick. They were not away. They were in their houses with their doors bolted and they did not come."

"Do you know their names?"

"I know their names. They are all dead now except one." Father Byrne looked at me. "And the one who is alive is the woman with the grey plait who told you on the shore that the Alpha always knows. Her name is Maire and she was the third vote that did not come, and she has been carrying it for twenty two years, and if you want a wolf in this village who will stand up in the hall on Sunday and say what she did, she is the one."

I went out of the church into the grey morning and stood on the steps with the harbor in front of me and the whole village waking up.

And then I saw the figure coming up the road from the shore. It was Cormac, and he was running, and he had a thing in his hand that caught the light, and when he got to the steps he stopped and put it into my hand and said, "She has taken the ring out of the safe. Bridget told me. She has taken the ring and she has put it in the box with the Council's seal and the box is going on the Mary Rose on Saturday night, and the Alpha is going to give it to the enforcer on the boat in front of the whole co-op."

I looked down at what he had put in my hand. It was a fishing weight, old and rusty at the edges, with a fish stamped on it and a number on the side of the fish.

The number was forty one.