Chapter 47: The Healer's Second Notebook

Ronan came down to the cottage at four in the morning with a canvas bag over his shoulder and his nightshirt under his coat, and he came in the back way through the garden because the men at the gate were still there.

"Padraig is at the shop and he has been to the hall," he said. "There is a window on the sea side that does not catch and he got in through it and he has the cup and he has taken it up to Nora and she is wrapping it in a tea towel and putting it in a box with a lid on it. The bus to Athlone goes at seven and Nora's nephew is driving it and he will take the box to Margaret and bring the package back on the evening bus."

"Then we have the cup and the rubbing and the ring," I said. "What have you got in the bag?"

Ronan put the bag on the table and took out a notebook. It was not the big brown book of the charter. It was a small notebook with a black cover and a rubber band round it and it was worn soft at the corners.

"The second notebook," he said. "I told you about it on the first night and I have been carrying it around for a week and I have not had the courage to open it in front of you. It is the notebook I kept in the hall in March when your sister was on the floor and I was called to attend her. I wrote down everything she said and everything I did and everything I saw and I have not read it since the night I wrote it." He put it on the table. "You should read it. I am going to sit in that chair and look at the fire and you are going to read it and then we are going to talk about what is in it."

I sat down and opened the notebook.

The first pages were the healer's notes of a woman with a head wound and a broken wrist and two broken ribs and a hand that had been crushed. There were drawings of the wounds and there were notes on the dressings and the hours and the doses, and Ronan's hand was small and careful and professional.

And then on the fourth page the notes stopped being a healer's notes.

"She is awake and she is talking," Ronan had written. "She said, Ronan, is the door shut, and I said it is, and she said, there is a thing I have to say and I cannot say it to the co-op and I cannot say it to Declan and I can only say it to you because you have been in this village since before my mother was born and you know what the old law is. She said, I did not lose the fight. There was no fight. She said, the Alpha came to me in the hall at ten o'clock on the Thursday with two wolves and they held me down and the Alpha took a weight off the table and hit me with it and I fell and I do not remember the rest. She said, they carried me up to the headland at midnight and the Alpha made a show of a fight and there was no fight and then they carried me down again and put me in the boathouse. And I said, why did no wolf see it, and she said, because the whole co-op was on the shore road watching a boat that was on fire."

I stopped. The fire ticked. Ronan was looking at the grate.

"The boathouse was burned the morning after the claim," I said. "And I have been assuming the fire was set to destroy the locker. It was not. The fire was set to draw the co-op out of their houses and down to the shore so that the hall was empty and the headland was empty and no wolf saw a woman carried up a hill."

"Keep reading," Ronan said.

I turned the page.

"There is a thing about the ring," Ronan had written. "She said, the Alpha is wearing a ring that is a copy and the true ring is in the press behind the frame in the hall. She said, I have seen it and I have seen the box it is in and there is a print in the dust on the lid of the box that does not belong to me. She said, I have taken a rubbing of the print and I have sent it to a woman in Athlone with the ring and the page and a letter for my sister. And I said, why would you send it out of the territory, and she said, because the Alpha can hear what is in the head of every wolf in this village and the only thing she cannot hear is a letter in a post box in Athlone. And then she said a thing that made my blood cold. She said, Ronan, I am going to make a claim on the seat and I am going to lose it, and the losing is the point. She said, the losing is the point because a claim that is answered is a claim that is closed and a claim that is closed is a claim the co-op will not look at again. And I said, then why make it, and she said, because I am not making it for me."

I turned the page. The writing was getting worse and the ink was blotted.

"She said, I am making it for the woman who is going to come after me. She said, my sister is in Dublin and she is a guard and she is the only wolf in this family who was never told what she is and she will come here when I am dead and she will ask questions. And she said, if I make a claim and I lose and I die, then my sister comes to a village where a claim has been made and answered and she will find out that it was not answered and she will take it to the co-op and the co-op will have to look at it. She said, I am not going to win the seat. I am going to give my sister a reason to come back."

I sat with the notebook open on the table.

"The whole thing was for me," I said.

"The whole thing was for you," Ronan said. "She made a claim she knew she would lose because a claim that was made and answered and lost was the one thing that would bring you back to this village and give you a lawful reason to stay. She knew she could not fight the Alpha and win. She knew the only wolf who could was a wolf who had been away from this village and who was not in the Alpha's head." He looked at me. "She wrote a letter to a woman in Athlone in April and she went north and she has been building a pack out of banished wolves, and she did all of it so that when you came back you would not be alone."

I turned to the last page. There was one line on it and it was not in Ronan's careful hand. It was in my sister's hand, shaky and pressed hard into the paper.

"Tell her the mate bond is false. Tell her the Alpha made it with a false mark and a false scent and it is not a real bond and it can be broken. Tell her Declan is not her mate and I am sorry."

The kitchen was very quiet. Ronan was looking at me.

"What is that?" I said.

"I do not know. She wrote it on the last page on the Thursday night before I left the hall. She said, Ronan, if I do not come out of this, give this to my sister. And I put the notebook in my coat and I went home and I have not looked at it since." He came and sat down across from me. "Niamh. I am the healer of this pack and I have been for fifty years and I am telling you that what she wrote is not possible. A mate bond is not a thing that can be made. It comes from the old place and it cannot be counterfeited and a false mark is a thing from the stories they tell children."

"Then why did she write it?"

"Because she believed it." Ronan looked at the notebook. "Because in December the Alpha came to her and told her that the bond between her and the Beta was a false bond and that she had made it with a false mark, and your sister believed her. And that is why she rejected him. Not because she wanted to protect him from the Alpha's plan. Because she believed the Alpha had made a false bond and that the thing she felt for Declan was a lie."

I sat in the kitchen with the notebook in my hands and the fire going down and the whole of the last year turned over.

"Ronan," I said. "Can a bond be false?"

Ronan did not answer at once. He got up and put a sod on the fire and stood with his back to me.

"There is a thing in the old stories," he said. "It is not in the charter and it is not in the books. It is a thing the old wolves told when I was a boy. They said that a wolf who is strong enough and cruel enough can take a scent from one wolf and put it on another and make two wolves believe they are bonded. It is called a false marking. It takes a great deal of power and it does not last and it leaves a mark that is wrong. And the wolves who had it done to them were never right after."

"Then Mairéad did it," I said. "She took a scent and she put it on Declan and she made my sister believe she was bonded to a wolf she was not bonded to, and my sister rejected him and it broke a thing in him and it broke a thing in her, and the Alpha has been using the both of them ever since."

Ronan turned round. His old face was very grim.

"If that is true," he said, "then the bond between you and Declan is the true one. The one the Alpha could not counterfeit. And that is the thing she has been afraid of since the day you walked into the harbor office."