Chapter 33: A Wolf's Memory

The hall was full. Every adult wolf in Dún Aonghasa was in it, standing along the walls and sitting on the benches and crowding the doorway, and the whole of it smelled of wet wool and fear and the soap they all used on a Sunday. Mairéad was at the head of the long table with her hands folded and Korkut on her right in his town coat and Declan on her left with his auburn hair combed and his face like a closed door.

I stood at the back by the door and did not sit down.

"This is not a meeting of the co-op," Mairéad said, when the room had gone quiet. "There is no vote on the table and there is no claim to be heard. This is a gathering of the families because a woman came into this village a week ago and has been asking questions that have unsettled the whole community, and because the enforcer of this region has come from Galway to see that the co-op is kept in order." She looked down the hall at me. "I have invited her here today so that she can say what she has to say in front of all of us and we can put the matter to rest."

The hall turned and looked at me. Forty faces, and most of them were frightened and some of them were sorry and one or two of them were something else entirely.

I did not move from the door.

"The matter will not be put to rest today," I said. "But I am not going to stand in this hall and make a speech. I am going to ask the Beta a question and then I am going to ask the cooper a question, and then I am going to ask the Alpha a question, and then the co-op can decide what it wants to do."

Declan's eyes came up. His face did not change.

"Declan," I said. "The night my sister was taken down to the boathouse. You carried her down the road and you put her on the floor and you went out to the rocks to bring her in and the tide had her. Before that, in the days before the claim, you went down to the harbor office and you were in the water in the harbor. What were you doing in the water?"

The hall stirred. Declan looked at me for a long moment and then he looked at Mairéad and then he looked back at me.

"I was diving," he said.

"On what?"

"On the safe." He put his hands flat on the table. "There is a safe in the hall that the Alpha keeps her papers in. In February your sister came to me and told me there was a safe in the harbor and it had gone down with the old net store in 1979 and no one had ever raised it. She said she had a reason to want it up and she asked me to dive on it and I did." He looked at the table. "I went down four times in February and the fourth time I found it. It was under the wall of the pier in nine feet of water and it was full of mud and I could not lift it on my own and I told your sister and she said, leave it. Do not raise it. If you raise it she will see it and she will know what it is. And I said, what is it, and she said, it is the safe that was in the hall before the new one and it went into the harbor in 1979 on the night my mother died."

The hall was very quiet.

"Your mother died in 1979," I said to Declan.

"My mother died in 1979," Declan said. "She was the healer's assistant and she was in the hall on the night the old safe went into the water and she came home and she was never right after it and she died in the autumn of that year. I was a boy. I was told she had a weakness of the heart."

"Was there a weakness of the heart?"

"I do not know. There was no post mortem in this village in 1979." He looked at me. "But I know this. When your sister told me about the safe I went down and found it and I put my hand on it and the mud came off it and there was a name cut into the door. It was not the Alpha's name and it was not the co-op's name. It was the name of the man who was the enforcer of this region before Korkut and it was the name of the man who signed the deed in 1961."

"Korkut signed the deed in 1961 as a clerk," I said. "He was not the enforcer then. The enforcer then was a man called Ahern."

"The safe has Ahern on the door." Declan looked at Korkut. Korkut did not move. "And I did not raise it because your sister told me not to and because I was frightened of what was in it and because I have been frightened of everything in this village since I was nine years old."

I looked at Mairéad. Her hands were folded on the table and her pale green eyes were on me and there was a small line between her brows that had not been there before.

"The safe is still in the harbor," I said. "It has been in the harbor since 1979 with the name of the enforcer of this region cut into the door and it has never been raised because a woman in this village told a boy to leave it. And that woman is dead. And the safe is under the wall of the pier at nine feet in the mud, and it has been there for eighteen years, and nobody in this village has touched it."

I turned to Arthur, who was sitting on the bench by the door with the red ledger on his knees and his old hands folded on top of it.

"Arthur," I said. "You were the cooper in 1979. What went into the harbor on the night of the safe?"

Arthur stood up. He was ninety one and his voice was thin and it carried.

"The old safe in the hall was opened in the winter of 1979," he said. "I was not in the hall that night and I do not know what was in it. But the next morning the Alpha sent for me and said the safe had been taken out of the hall and put into the harbor because it was old and rusted and she wanted a new one. And I said, why would you put a safe in the harbor, and she said, because it is full of nothing and it is not worth the cart. And I said, then give it to me and I will break it up for the iron. And she said no."

"Why would she say no?" I said.

"Because a man who breaks up a safe opens it first." Arthur looked at Mairéad. "I have been the cooper of this co-op for sixty years and I have seen a great many things go into the harbor. Nets and anchors and a man's boots. But I have never seen a woman put a safe in the water unless she wanted it to stay shut."

The hall was loud now. The families were talking to each other and one of the men by the wall said something I did not catch and another one laughed. Mairéad stood up.

"That is enough," she said. Her voice was not loud but the hall went quiet the way a hall goes quiet when the Alpha speaks. "The cooper is an old man and he is confusing the year. The safe went into the water because it was rusted and the new one was bought with the co-op's money and I have the receipt for it in the frame behind me. There is no mystery in a safe. There is no mystery in a drowned safe and there is no mystery in a drowned woman, and I am not going to stand in this hall and be questioned by a stranger about a thing that happened before half the wolves in this room were born."

"Then let us raise the safe," I said.

The hall went still.

"It is nine feet down under the wall of the pier and it has been there for eighteen years and it will take four men and a boat and an hour of the co-op's time. If it is full of nothing, then the Alpha is right and I am wrong and I will take her offer and be on the road to Dublin by dark." I looked at Mairéad. "And if it is full of something, then the co-op will have the thing that was in it and the co-op can decide what to do."

Mairéad looked at me. Her pale green eyes were very bright and her hands were flat on the table and I could smell the fear come off her, sharp and sour and cold, and it was the first time in a week that I had smelled it on her.

"The tide is at the turn at six," she said. "There is no time before Saturday."

"Then we raise it on Saturday morning," I said. "Before the Mary Rose sails. In front of the whole co-op. And whatever is in it goes on the table in this hall at noon on Saturday with the co-op watching."

Declan's head came up. Korkut turned his glass a quarter turn on the cloth.

And then a voice from the back of the hall, thin and old and very steady, said, "I will dive on it. I dove on it in February and I know where it lies and I will dive on it again on Saturday morning with the co-op on the pier."

It was Declan. He had stood up and his hands were at his sides and his grey eyes were on Mairéad.

"For my mother," he said. "And for the woman I carried down a road and put in the water. If the safe is full of nothing then I will take the ban and leave this village and never come back, and the Alpha can keep her seat and her boat and her enforcer. And if it is full of something, then I will stand in this hall beside the woman from Dublin and I will say what I have done and what I have seen, and I will take whatever the co-op gives me."