Chapter 45: The Drowned Safe

The fire had burned down to embers and the rain had stopped and the kitchen was quiet.

Declan did not move from where he was crouched in front of his son. His hands were still on Cormac's knees and his face had gone the colour of the ash in the grate.

"Say that again," he said.

"She told me the woman in the black boots was my mother," Cormac said. "She told me in the hall tonight. She said, Cormac, there is a thing you should know before the co-op meets on Saturday, and she said it in the voice she uses when she is being kind and she is never kind." He wiped his face with the back of his hand. "She said, the woman who was found in the harbor tonight was called Bridget and she was banished from this territory in 1988 and she came back in March. And she said, before she was banished she was your mother and your father sent her away."

Declan stood up. He walked to the window and stood with his back to us and his hands at his sides.

"Cormac," he said. "Your mother was called Deirdre and she died in 1981 when you were six years old and she is in the ground on the hill behind the church and I have taken you to her grave every year on her birthday since you were old enough to walk." He turned round. "The woman in the harbor was called Bridget and she was a schoolteacher and she had red hair and she was banished when you were thirteen. You remember her. You told the woman from Dublin that she taught you your letters and she let you hold the chalk."

"I remember her." Cormac's voice was very small. "And I remember her hair and I remember the chalk and I remember that she went away and I remember that I cried for a week and my father told me she had gone to Dublin and would not be coming back." He looked up. "And tonight the Alpha told me that she was my mother and that my father had sent her away because she was a rogue and that the grave on the hill is a grave with nothing in it."

"That is a lie."

"Then tell me it is a lie."

"It is a lie. Your mother is in the ground on the hill and I put her there myself and I carried the coffin with Tom and Arthur and two men from the north side and I have never in my life told you a thing about her that was not true." Declan came back and knelt down again. "Cormac. Look at me. The Alpha told you that because she wanted you to go to the church tonight and take the ledger, and she knew that if she told you the woman in the harbor was your mother you would do anything she asked. She has been doing this since you were fourteen. She tells you a thing that hurts you and then she tells you what to do about it and you do it because it is the only thing that stops the hurting."

Cormac was crying now, quietly, with his hands over his face.

"Why did she say it?" he said. "Why would she say a thing like that?"

"Because she is a woman who has lost the hall and the cooper and the Beta and the safe in one night and she is going to say anything that will keep a wolf in her hand." I sat down on the arm of the chair. "Cormac. There is a thing I need to ask you and I need you to think before you answer. When she told you the woman in the harbor was your mother, did she tell you anything else? Did she say where your mother was buried, or when she died, or how?"

Cormac took his hands away from his face. He was quiet for a moment.

"She said the grave on the hill was empty," he said. "And she said there was a thing in the hall that would prove it. She said there was a box under the floor of the hall with a record in it and she said if I did what she asked she would show it to me on Saturday." He looked at me. "She said the box had a ring in it and the ring had a name inside the band and the name was not the name of the woman in the ground on the hill."

Declan looked at me across the top of his son's head.

"A box under the floor of the hall," he said. "With a ring in it and a name inside the band."

"The ring in the hall that she has been wearing on her finger for twenty years is a copy," I said. "Cormac has just told us the true ring is in a box under the floor of the hall. And your sister's letter said the true ring has letters inside the band and a date." I stood up. "Declan. In February, when my sister asked you to dive on the safe, she told you there was a thing in it and she told you to leave it. She did not tell you what it was. But she had been in the hall and she had been in the frame and she had seen the copy and she knew the true ring was somewhere else. And she was a woman who kept a record of everything and sent it to Galway and hid copies in boots and under flagstones. If she knew where the true ring was, she wrote it down."

"The letters," Declan said. "She has been sending letters from Athlone since April. To a woman in Galway and to the men in Galway and to Bridget in Dublin." He looked at me. "There is a woman in Athlone who posts her letters. Your guard found her. She will not give a name and she will not say where the letters come from."

"She will not give a name to a guard from Dublin," I said. "But she will give a name to a woman with gold hair who says the word Dún."

I took the phone out of my coat and put it on the table. The battery was nearly dead and there was one number in the memory and my hand was not steady.

"Cormac," I said. "Go up to the shop and get Padraig and bring him here. Do not go by the shore road. Go through the gardens and come in the back way. And do not speak to the men at the gate."

He got up and wiped his face and went out. Declan watched him go and then turned to me.

"The phone," he said.

"The men from Galway gave it to me on the headland and the word is Dún and the number is the one my sister gave them in March." I picked it up. "I am going to telephone it. And if my sister answers, then she is alive and she is in the north and she is running a pack and she will tell me where the box under the floor of the hall is." I looked at the number in the memory. "And if she does not answer, then there is a woman in Athlone who has been posting her letters and she will tell me where the last one came from."

I pressed the number and put the phone to my ear. It rang once and rang twice and rang three times and then there was a click and a woman's voice said, "Who is this?"

It was not my sister.

"Who is this?" the voice said again. It was an older voice, dry and careful, and there was a sound behind it like a kettle or a fire.

"My name is Niamh," I said. "I am Siobhan's sister."

The line was quiet for a long time.

"Say the word," the voice said.

"Dún," I said.

The woman on the other end of the line let out a breath that was almost a sob and then she said, "Thank God. Thank God. I have been waiting since April for a wolf to say that word." She paused. "My name is Margaret and I am in a cottage outside Athlone and your sister stayed with me for three weeks in April. She left a thing with me and she told me that if a woman with gold hair telephoned and said the word Dún I was to give it to her." I heard her move. "Do you have a pen? Because there is a great deal to write down and I am not a young woman and I will forget half of it if you do not write it."

"I have a pen," I said. "Tell me."

"Your sister left a package with me and it is a ring in a box and a letter to a woman called Maeve and a page out of a book with a name on it." Margaret's voice was steady now. "And she told me the ring has a name inside the band that is not the name of the woman in the grave on the hill, and she told me that the woman in the grave on the hill is not the woman anyone in that village thinks she is."

The fire ticked. The rain had stopped. Declan was looking at me across the table.

"Say the name," I said.

"The name inside the band of the ring is Siobhan," Margaret said. "And the date inside the band is 1921. And the page out of the book is a record of a vote and there are two names on it, Maeve and Eileen, and beside the name Eileen there is a note in your sister's hand that says, this vote was never held."