Chapter 37: The Night the Pack Chose

They took Declan up to Ronan's cottage and Ronan put him in the chair by the fire with a blanket and a hot bottle and a cup of something that smelled of whiskey and cloves, and Cormac sat on the floor beside him with his head against his father's knee and did not move for an hour.

By midnight the whole village knew. There is no keeping a thing in Dún Aonghasa. The salvage boat had come in at the pier with the lamp going and the two men from Galway had carried their case up to the shop and Nora had put them in the back room with a pot of tea, and the story had gone up the hill and along the shore road and down to the water in less time than it took to boil a kettle. The Beta had gone into the sea. The Beta had been brought in by a salvage crew. The salvage crew had been paid by the co-op and had been told to wait on the headland for a body.

At one in the morning they came to the cottage.

I heard them on the shore road before I saw them. Forty wolves walking in the dark is a sound like a tide coming in. I went out onto the step and stood there with my coat round me and they came up the path and stopped at the gate, and the ones at the front were Tom and Hannah and the woman from the post office and the man who had been at the boathouse with the petrol can, and behind them were the rest of the families of Dún Aonghasa, and none of them was Mairéad.

Tom put his hand on the gate.

“We have been in the shop all night,” he said. “We have heard the men from Galway and we have heard about the boat and we have heard about the anchor. And we have been talking among ourselves and there is a thing we want to know.”

“Ask it.”

“Are you one of us?”

The wind came up off the water. I looked at the forty faces in the dark.

“I am a wolf and I was born in this village and my mother is in the ground on the hill and my grandmother is in a cache on the high ground,” I said. “But I have not sworn the oath and I have not stood in the hall and I have not been called a member of this co-op since I was nineteen years old. So the answer is no. Not yet.”

Tom looked at Hannah and Hannah looked at the woman from the post office and then Tom said, “Then swear it. Tonight. In front of us. There is no Alpha here and there is no Beta here and the enforcer is in the hall and there is not a wolf in this village who will tell him what we do in this yard.”

“The oath is sworn in the hall,” I said. “In front of the frame and the charter.”

“The oath is sworn in front of the pack,” Hannah said. “The hall is a building. The frame is a piece of wood. The pack is standing in your garden.” She shifted the baby on her hip. “My grandmother swore the oath in a barn in 1919 because the hall was burned and the Alpha was dead and there was not a wolf in this village who said it did not count.”

I stood on the step and looked at them. The wind was cold and the moon was up over the harbor and the whole village was in my garden with their coats on and their faces turned up to me.

“Then say it,” I said. “And say it right, because I am not going to swear to a thing I have not heard.”

Ronan came out of his own cottage at the top of the lane with a candle in his hand. He had put his coat on over his nightshirt and he came down through the crowd and stood at the gate and said, “I am the healer of this pack and I have heard the oath given four times in my life and I will hear it given now. The oath is this. You swear to keep the peace of the pack and the borders of the territory. You swear to answer the call of the Alpha and the cry of a wolf in need. You swear to keep the law of the charter above the word of any wolf, and to bring a thing that is done in the dark into the hall where the co-op can see it. And you swear it on the ground of this territory and on the bones of the wolves who kept it before you.” He looked at me. “That is the whole of it. There is no more.”

I came down off the step and stood at the gate with the whole village around me and the sea behind me and I said the words. I said them slowly and I said them the way Ronan gave them and when I came to the end of them I put my hand on the gatepost and I felt the thing go through me, the pull in my chest, the whole pack of them at once, forty wolves and one healer and a village that had been waiting fifty years for someone to say a thing out loud.

The pack said, “Aye.”

It was not loud. It was forty wolves in a garden in the dark saying one word, and it went through me like the tide coming in.

And then Tom said, “There is a second thing. We have been talking about that too.” He looked at the others and then at me. “The Alpha is going to take the Mary Rose out on Saturday with the enforcer on board and she is going to hand him a box. The men from Galway have told us what is in the box. And we have been asking ourselves what the co-op can do about it, and the answer is, the co-op can vote. But the co-op cannot vote unless there is a thing to vote on, and there is no thing to vote on unless the seat is vacant, and the seat is not vacant.” He looked at me. “Unless you make a claim.”

The garden went quiet.

“The claim has to be made with a weight on the table and a witness,” I said. “And the weight has to be a lawful weight. My sister used the weight of forty one and it was not hers to use and the Alpha will say the claim was void from the start.”

“Then use a different weight,” Hannah said. “Use your mother's.”

“My mother's weight is the weight of forty one and it is in my pocket and it is not lawful.”

“Then make it lawful.” Ronan came through the crowd. “The weight of forty one was given to Maeve in 1921 and surrendered by her daughter in 1961. It was surrendered under duress by a girl of sixteen who had just watched her mother burn. A surrender under duress is not a surrender. The weight is yours. The number is yours. The claim is yours to make and no wolf in this village will say otherwise, because every wolf in this village has just heard you swear the oath and every wolf in this village has just said aye.”

I stood in the garden with the weight in my pocket and forty wolves around me.

“Then I will make the claim,” I said. “On Saturday morning, before the Mary Rose sails. I will put the weight of forty one on the table in the hall in front of the co-op and the enforcer and the Alpha, and I will say the words, and the Alpha will have to answer it or forfeit the seat.” I looked at them. “And there is a thing you should know before you say aye to that. If I make the claim and she answers it, it is on the headland at the full moon, and it is between the two of us and no other wolf, and she has been a wolf for sixty years and I have been a wolf for a week. She will kill me.”

The garden was silent. Then Tom said, “Then do not let her answer it. Make the claim and put the proof on the table at the same time. The deed and the forged charter and the safe and the men from Galway and the weight with the page inside it. Make the claim and lay the proof beside it and ask the co-op to vote on whether the Alpha is fit to answer a claim at all.”

“That is not in the charter,” I said.

“It is in the charter,” Ronan said quietly. “The first part. The part about a wolf who is accused of a crime against the co-op. A wolf who is accused may be suspended from the seat until the co-op has heard the evidence, and the seat is held by the Beta in the meantime.” He looked at me. “I read it to you on the first night and you did not hear it because you were thinking about the ring.”

I stood in the garden with the whole village looking at me.

“Then that is what we do,” I said. “On Saturday morning, in the hall, with the whole co-op and the enforcer and the Alpha and the Beta in the room. We put the proof on the table and we ask for a vote to suspend the Alpha and hear the evidence. And if the vote goes against us, then I make the claim, and I go up to the headland, and whatever happens there happens.”

The pack said, “Aye.”

And then, from the top of the lane, a woman's voice said, low and warm and musical, “How very democratic.”

Mairéad was standing at the top of the lane with her silver hair down and her black coat on and six wolves behind her, and she had been listening for a while, and the smell of her came down the lane like lavender and old paper.

“Swear your oath in a garden,” she said. “Vote in a yard. It will not matter on Saturday, because on Saturday morning the Mary Rose sails at ten and the co-op will be on the pier and the hall will be empty, and there will not be a wolf in this village who is not watching the boat.” She smiled. “You have forgotten the tide, Niamh. The tide is at the turn at nine. The boat goes out on the tide and the hall is locked and the key is in my pocket. So make your claim in an empty hall if you like. Make it to the seagulls.”