Chapter 31: The Boat That Didn't Sail

The Mary Rose was out in the middle of the harbor with her sails coming down and a man on the deck coiling rope, and the dark boat was tied alongside her and Korkut was stepping from one deck to the other with a wooden box in his hands.

I went down the pier at a run. Tom was at the foot of it with a coil of rope over his shoulder and he saw me coming and his red face went redder and he put himself in front of me.

"Declan is at the hall," he said. "The Alpha sent for him an hour ago and she sent for the rest of us too. There is a meeting in the hall at noon and the whole co-op is called."

"Who told Korkut to put that box on the Mary Rose?"

"The Alpha did. She came down at eight with the box and she gave it to the enforcer and she said, it goes on the boat for Saturday." Tom shifted the rope. "Niamh. Do not go out there. The enforcer is not a man to be crossed on a pier."

I went round him. I went down the steps to the water and got into the first boat at the wall, a small rowboat with one oar in it, and I rowed out to the Mary Rose with the wind coming across the harbor and the water slapping the side. By the time I got there Korkut had the box on the deck of the Mary Rose and Cormac was standing at the mast with his hands at his sides and his face white.

"Niamh," Korkut said. He was in his town coat and his shoes were wet and he looked at me with his patient dry eyes. "This is not a good morning for a boat trip."

"What is in the box?"

"That is the Alpha's business and not mine and not yours." He put his hand on the lid of the box. It was a wooden box about the size of a shoebox with a brass clasp and a seal on the clasp, and the seal was wax and it was red and it had the mark of the Council on it. "I am the enforcer of this region and I am here to see that this co-op is kept in order. The box goes on the boat. The boat goes out on Saturday. That is all that concerns you."

"There is a ring in that box."

Korkut's face did not change. "There is a great deal in this village that people say is in boxes. Go home, Miss Niamh. Go home and take the Alpha's offer and be on the road to Dublin by dark and I will not have to write your name in my book."

I looked past him at Cormac. "Cormac. Is your boat sailing today?"

"No," Cormac said.

"Then why are you on the Mary Rose?"

"Because she told me to be." He said it quietly and his hands did not move from his sides. "She called me at six this morning and she said, the enforcer is coming down to the Mary Rose at eight and you will be on the deck to take his box and stow it in the locker. And I said, the locker is empty, and she said, it will not be empty by Saturday, and then she said it in the pack voice and I came down and I stood on the deck and I took the box."

Korkut looked at Cormac and then at me. "The boy is confused. He has had a difficult week."

"The boy is not confused. The boy is doing exactly what he has been told to do by a woman who has been using him since he was fourteen and who has been using the pack voice on him since before he was old enough to know what it was." I looked at Korkut. "And you know it. You have been in this village for three days and you have been in the hall with her every night and you have seen her do it. You are not a fool and you are not a stranger to this. You are a man who has been taking money from her for eighteen years and you are here to make sure that whatever happens on Saturday happens the way she wants it."

The harbor was quiet. The wind came across the water and moved Korkut's grey hair. He looked at me for a long moment and then he took his hand off the box.

"Miss Niamh," he said. "I am going to say a thing to you that I have never said to a wolf in this territory in thirty years. You are right. I have taken money from this pack for eighteen years and I have known for a great deal longer than that what the Alpha's mother did in 1961 and what the Alpha has done since. And I have told myself that it was not my business and that the Council pays me nothing and that a man has to live." He looked at the box. "And then a woman from Dublin came to this village and started asking questions and I found that I had a great deal of trouble sleeping."

"Then open the box."

"I cannot open the box. It is sealed with the Council's seal and I am the one who put it there." He put his hand on the lid again. "But I can tell you what is in it, because I know, because the Alpha told me herself on the first night I came. There is no ring in this box. There is a deed of gift. It is a deed that gives the moorings and the boats and the hall of this co-op to the Council of Alphas as a gift, in perpetuity, and it is signed by the Alpha and it is dated Saturday. And on Saturday night, in front of the whole co-op, she is going to hand me this box and I am going to take it back to Galway and register it, and this village will belong to the Council and to me as its officer, and there will not be a wolf in Dún Aonghasa who can do a thing about it."

I stood in the boat with the wind and the water and the whole thing came together in my head like a key in a lock. The shore and the headland and the waters since 1961. The tithe paid out of the co-op's money for thirty five years. My sister's note at the bottom of the page. This year there is no money left. She has borrowed against the boats. She has borrowed against the hall. And in March she is going to pay him with something else.

The ring was not in the box. The ring was never going to be in the box. The box was the payment.

"Where is the ring?" I said.

Korkut looked at me. "The ring is in the hall. In the frame. Where it has been since March. She is not going to give the co-op the ring because the ring is the one thing in this village that can prove the line of Maeve is not finished, and as long as she has it in her hand and no one else has it in theirs, she has a story and the co-op has nothing." He stepped off the Mary Rose onto the dark boat. "The meeting is at noon. The whole co-op is called. I will be there and I will sit at the table and I will say nothing. What happens after that is not my business. It is yours."

The dark boat's engine turned over and Korkut went back across the harbor to the pier and I sat down on the deck of the Mary Rose with my hands on my knees and Cormac sat down across from me.

"Cormac," I said. "I need you to do a thing and it is a thing you are not going to want to do."

"I will do it."

"You have not heard it yet."

"I will do it anyway." He looked at me. "I have been doing what I was told for eight years and it has put a woman in the water and it has burned a boathouse and it has made me into a thing I do not want to look at in the morning. Whatever it is, I will do it."

I looked at the harbor and the pier and the village and the green door of the co-op hall on the hill.

"The meeting is at noon," I said. "She will stand up in that hall and she will tell the co-op that I am a rogue who has been asking questions and that the enforcer has come to see that the pack is kept in order. She will tell them that a claim was made and answered and that the matter is closed. And then she will tell them that she has made a gift of the co-op to the Council as a protection against the very thing she is accusing me of. And the co-op will vote on it because she will ask for a vote, and she will ask for a vote because a vote makes a theft look lawful." I looked at him. "But the vote is at noon and the ring is in the frame and she does not have a key to the church and she does not have the parish charter and she does not have the weight with the page inside it, because I have them. So this is what you are going to do. You are going to the hall at noon and you are going to stand in the middle of the floor and you are going to tell the co-op that the Alpha ordered you to burn the boathouse and that she ordered you to help put my sister in the water. You are going to say it before she says a word. And you are going to say it in front of Korkut and the whole co-op and your father."

Cormac's face was white. "She will kill me."

"She will not touch you because you will be standing in the middle of the hall with the whole co-op around you and a wolf who harms a witness in front of the co-op loses the seat by the charter's own law." I took his hand. "And you will not be alone. I will be beside you with the weight and the page and the parish charter, and Ronan will be beside you, and your father will be in that hall and whatever he is, he is not a man who will stand by and watch his son be hurt."

Cormac looked at me for a long moment. The wind came across the harbor and the Mary Rose moved under us.

"I will do it," he said. "But not for the co-op. And not for your sister. For the woman on the floor of the boathouse with the rope round her neck and the boy who cut the line." He stood up. "What are you going to do?"

"I am going to the hall now," I said, "and I am going to get into the frame before the meeting and take the ring out of it. And there is a woman in this village who has been carrying a vote that did not come for twenty two years, and I am going to ask her to come to the hall and stand up and say what she did."