Chapter 51: The Council of Alphas' Man

Mairéad stood in the doorway with her silver hair down and her black coat on and behind her there were four wolves on the cliff path and one of them was Tom.

"Step away from the old woman," she said.

I did not move. I had the old woman's hand in mine and the fire behind me and Declan was on my left and Cormac was on his knees on the flagstones with his hands over his face.

"You have come a long way for a woman who is not going to be the Alpha on Sunday," I said.

Mairéad came into the cottage. She looked at the old woman in the chair and she looked at Declan and she looked at Cormac on the floor and something went across her face that was not anger and was not fear and was very close to weariness.

"Aunt," she said. "You have been talking."

"I have been talking to my sister's daughter," the old woman said. "And I have told her what I saw in 1961 and I have told her what I heard on the Thursday night and I am going to say it in front of the co-op on Saturday if I am still alive to say it."

"You are not going to be alive to say it." Mairéad turned to the four wolves behind her. "Take her. Gently. She is old and she is not to be hurt. Put her in the boat and take her round to the hall and put her in the room above the hall and put a wolf on the door."

The four wolves came into the cottage and Tom would not look at me and the other three took the old woman by the arms and lifted her out of the chair. She did not resist. She looked at me as they carried her past and her blue eyes were steady and she said, "Do not let her have the vote."

And then she was gone up the cliff path with two wolves on either side of her and Cormac got up off the floor and went to the door and stood in it and watched them go and did not say anything.

"Declan," Mairéad said. "You are going to come with me. You are going to come down to the hall and you are going to sit in the chair in the hall and you are going to do what I tell you, because if you do not, then the thing I have been keeping back for twenty years is going to come out in front of the whole co-op and your son is going to be the one who pays for it."

Declan looked at her.

"What thing?" he said.

"The thing about your mother." Mairéad put her hands in her pockets. "The grave on the hill. The woman in it. The child she bore in 1975." She looked at Cormac. "You have been telling your son that his mother is in the ground on the hill and that I lied to him about the woman in the harbor. And you have been telling him the truth, as far as you know it. But there is a thing about that grave that you do not know and that I have known since 1981 and that I have been keeping for you." She smiled. "Do you want me to say it in front of the boy, or do you want to come down to the hall and hear it in private?"

Declan did not move. The mind-link between us was wide open and the fear in him was so strong that I could taste it in the back of my throat.

"Say it here," he said.

"Very well." Mairéad looked at Cormac. "The woman in the grave on the hill is called Deirdre and she was your father's wife and she died in 1981 when you were six years old. That is true. What your father has not told you is that she did not die of a fever. She died because she went up to the high ground in the winter of 1981 and she stood at the edge of the cliff and she stepped off it, and the reason she stepped off it is that she had a bond with your father that was broken, and she could not live with the hole in her chest, and she left a boy of six and a man of twenty nine behind her and a village that has been told for sixteen years that she had a weakness of the heart."

Cormac looked at his father.

"Da," he said.

"Your mother fell," Declan said. His voice was a wreck. "She fell in the winter and she was found on the rocks and there was no note and no reason and I have never known why and I have told you she had a weakness of the heart because I did not know how to tell a boy of six that his mother had gone up to the high ground and stepped off it."

"You did not know why," Mairéad said. "I knew why. She came to me in the December before she died and she sat in that chair and she said, Alpha, I have a broken bond and I cannot live with it and I said, Deirdre, there is no broken bond in this village and she said, there is and it is mine and it is the Beta's and it is a false bond that was put on us in 1975 by a woman who wanted a Beta she could control." She looked at Declan. "Your mother and father were bonded by a false marking, Declan. Your father knew it and your mother knew it and neither of them could say it, and when your father went out in the boat in 1975 he went out because he could not live with a counterfeit bond and a stolen rank. And your mother lived another six years with the same thing in her chest and then she went up to the high ground."

Declan's face had gone the colour of the wall.

"You made the false bond," he said. "Your mother made it and you made the one between me and Siobhan and you have been making them for fifty years."

"I have been keeping this village together for fifty years." Mairéad's voice did not rise. "A village of wolves who cannot be told the truth about their own bonds is a village that does what it is told. Your father did what he was told. Your mother did what she was told. You have done what you were told for twenty years and the boy has done what he was told for eight and the whole of it has been a chain of false bonds and false marks and a woman in a chair who signs the papers." She looked at me. "And now there is a woman with gold hair who has been in this village for a week and who has taken the chain apart. So I am going to make you an offer, Niamh, and it is the last one I am going to make. Take the old woman and take your guard and take the boat and go north. Leave the ledger and the ring and the notebook and the page and the weight with me and I will let you and the Beta and the boy leave this territory alive and I will not follow you."

"No," I said.

"Then there is a thing you should know before you say no again." Mairéad took a piece of paper out of her coat and held it up. "This came to me by the morning bus from Galway. It is from the Council of Alphas and it is signed by the Keeper of the Rolls and it says that the regional enforcer Korkut has been recalled to Galway and that a new man has been appointed in his place and that the new man is arriving in this territory on Saturday morning to judge the pack."

Declan took the paper out of her hand and read it. His face did not change.

"The new man is called Ahern," he said.

"Ahern," Mairéad said. "The son of the man who signed the deed in 1961. The man whose name is on the brass plate of the safe we pulled out of the well." She put the paper back in her coat. "He is coming on Saturday morning and he is coming to judge a pack that has a rogue in it and a body in the harbor and a Beta who has been diving in the mud for a thing that does not exist. And when he has judged it, the co-op will vote on the deed of gift and the deed will be signed and the shore will be his." She looked at me. "You have until Saturday morning to decide whether you want to be in this village when he arrives."