Chapter 54: The Truth About Siobhan

Ahern sent for me at six in the evening and I went up to the hall with Cormac's statement in my coat and the notebook and the ledger and the page.

He was sitting at the long table with a lamp in front of him and his case open and papers spread across the wood, and there was a second chair pulled out.

"Sit down," he said. "I have been in this village all day and I have heard nine wolves and I have read the co-op's records from 1961 to this year and I have been up to the room above this hall and sat with the old woman for an hour." He put his pen down. "And I am going to tell you a thing now that is going to be worse than anything you have heard this week."

I sat down.

"You have been telling this village that your sister was murdered," Ahern said. "She was not murdered. She was executed."

The lamp flickered. I did not move.

"There is a thing in the old law that is not in the charter in the hall and not in the parish charter and not in the green charter you pulled out of the well. It is in the rolls of the Council in Galway and it has been in them since 1601 and it is called the sentence of the headland. When a wolf makes a claim on a seat and the claim is answered and the wolf who made it is taken alive, the Alpha has the right to put the wolf to death without a further fight, because a claimant who is taken alive is a claimant who can be taken up again by another pack and brought back to this territory with an army at her back. The sentence is carried out by the Alpha or by the Alpha's hand and it is recorded in the rolls and it is not murder. It is law."

I sat in the chair with my hands in my lap.

"You are telling me that what she did to my sister was lawful."

"I am telling you it is lawful in the rolls of the Council and that there is a page in the file in Galway with your sister's name on it and a date in March and a note that says the sentence of the headland was carried out." Ahern put his hand on the papers. "I found it this afternoon. It was signed by Korkut. It is the reason he was recalled to Galway instead of being dismissed, because a man who signs a sentence of the headland and then lets the woman be taken off the rocks by a salvage crew has made the Council look like a fool, and the Council does not dismiss men who make it look like a fool. It sends them home and it sends a new man to clean up the mess."

"Then there is no case."

"There is a case and it is not the case you think you have." Ahern leaned forward. "The sentence of the headland can only be carried out if the claim was answered. If the claim was not answered, the sentence is unlawful and the Alpha who carried it out has committed a crime that the Council can try. And your sister's claim was not answered. There was no fight on the headland. She was beaten in this hall and carried up the hill and put on a rock so that the co-op would see what looked like a fight, and the whole of it was a show for a sentence that was never lawful because the claim was never answered." He tapped the paper. "That is the case. Not murder. A false claim of a lawful sentence. And it is a worse charge than murder, because a murder is one wolf killing one wolf, and this is a woman who made a show of the law to take a seat that was never hers and then used the law to put a claimant in the water."

I sat in the chair and the whole of it went through me like the cold coming in off the sea.

"She told me on the first night," I said. "In this hall at dinner. She said, I have buried three claimants and banished four and made two of them into wolves who would die for me. And I thought she was boasting. She was not boasting. She was telling me what the law allowed her to do and she was waiting to see whether I would understand it."

"She was telling you that she has used the sentence of the headland three times and that the Council has signed it three times and that the file in Galway has three names in it." Ahern closed his case. "And there is a fourth thing. The sentence can only be carried out on a wolf who has made a claim and lost. Your sister made a claim and lost and she was taken alive and put in the water and taken off the rocks by a salvage crew and she is in the north and she is alive. A sentence that is carried out and then not carried out is not a sentence. It is a thing that has been left half done and the Council does not like a thing that has been left half done."

"Then my sister is still a claimant," I said. "She is alive and she is in the north and she is running a pack and the sentence against her is not finished and the seat is not confirmed because the claim was not answered."

"Your sister is a claimant and she is alive and she is coming to this coast on Saturday morning and I have been told she is coming with a pack of banished wolves at her back." Ahern looked at me. "And that is the thing that is going to decide this village. Not the ledger and not the print and not the old woman in the room above this hall. Your sister. Because a claimant who comes back from a sentence of the headland with a pack at her back is a claimant who has done a thing the Council has never seen before, and the Council will have to decide whether it is a rebellion or a claim, and there is not a wolf in Galway who will want to be the one who decided it."

I got up. I went to the window and looked out at the pier and the harbor and the boats.

"There is a thing I have to ask you," I said. "And I want a straight answer. Are you here to judge this pack or to make sure the Council is not embarrassed?"

Ahern was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "I am here to do the thing my father did not have the courage to do in 1961. He signed a deed and wrote in the margin that the title was defective and then he took the money and went home. I have been the enforcer of this region for three years and I have read that margin every month since I took the post and I have been waiting for a claim from the line of Maeve so that I could act on it." He looked at me. "Your sister's claim came in March and I did not act on it because Korkut signed the notification and put it in the file and I did not see it until a woman from Dublin started asking questions in a village on the coast. So do not ask me whether I am here to judge this pack. Ask me whether I am here to judge it fairly. And the answer is that I am going to hear every wolf in it and read every page that is put in front of me and then I am going to write a judgment that my father would have been ashamed to read."

He stood up and closed his case.

"Nine o'clock tomorrow morning," he said. "In this hall. The whole co-op. The old woman and the healer and the cooper and the Beta and the boy and the woman from Dublin and the Alpha. And if your sister comes down that shore road with a pack at her back, then she comes into this hall and she makes her claim in front of me and the co-op and the Council, and I will hear it."

He went out. The green door shut behind him.

I stood in the empty hall with the frame on the wall and the copy of the charter in it and the lamp on the table and the whole of it in front of me.

And then the door opened again and Mairéad came in with her silver hair down and her black coat on and stood at the end of the table and said, "I have an offer for you and it is the last one I am going to make. Come into the back room and sit down and let me say it."