Chapter 55: Mairéad's Silver Voice

The back room of the hall was small and had a fire in it and two chairs and a table with a bottle on it that had never been opened. Mairéad sat down in one of the chairs and put her hands in her lap and looked at the fire.

"Sit down," she said. "I am not going to bite you. I have not bitten a wolf in twenty years and I am not going to start with a woman who has her sister's eyes."

I sat down in the other chair and did not take my coat off.

"You are going to lose," Mairéad said. "I have been sitting in my chair since three o'clock this afternoon thinking about it and I have come to the conclusion that I am going to lose, and I am not a woman who comes to that conclusion often." She looked at the fire. "Ahern has the file. He has the margin his father wrote in 1961. He has the ledger out of the safe and the page out of the charter and the print off the lid of the box and the old woman in the room upstairs and the boy's statement and the healer's notebook with my hand in the margin. He has enough to put me out of this territory and he has been waiting three years for a reason to do it. So I am not going to spend tomorrow morning fighting a thing I cannot win."

"Then what are you going to do?"

"I am going to make you an offer." She turned her head and looked at me and her pale green eyes were steady. "Your sister is alive. I have known she was alive since the salvage crew told me in April that there was a woman on the rocks who was not in the water when they got there. I have known for four months and I have done nothing about it, because a claimant who is alive and in the north and building a pack is a claimant who is not in my territory and is not in my way. And now she is coming down that shore road tomorrow morning with a pack at her back and Ahern in this hall and I have run out of time."

"You have run out of time because you spent thirty six years stealing from this village."

"I have run out of time because I spent thirty six years keeping this village alive and the price of it was a great many things I am not going to be forgiven for." Mairéad leaned forward. "Here is the offer. Tomorrow morning I am going to stand up in this hall and I am going to resign the seat. Not forfeit it. Resign it. I am going to say that I am old and that the village needs a younger wolf and that I am going to go to Galway and live with my sister's family and not come back. And I am going to say that the claim of the line of Maeve is a lawful claim and that the seat should go to the claimant, and I am going to say it in front of Ahern and the whole co-op and it will be in the file in Galway before the week is out."

"And in return?"

"In return you are going to take your sister and your guard and your Beta and the old woman and the boy and you are going to leave this village and not come back." Mairéad's voice did not change. "You are going to take the ledger and the page and the notebook and the weight and the print and you are going to put them in the fire. You are going to let the file in Galway say that Mairéad resigned and that the line of Maeve took the seat and that there was no theft and no false bond and no sentence of the headland and no woman in a boathouse. And in return I am going to give you a thing you cannot get any other way."

"What thing?"

"The name of the wolf who ordered the sentence of the headland." Mairéad sat back. "You have been thinking that I ordered it. I did not. I carried it out. There is a difference and the difference is the thing that will hang me or save me. In March, when your sister made her claim, I sent a letter to Galway to the Keeper of the Rolls and I asked for the sentence of the headland to be confirmed, and the confirmation came back signed by the Keeper and countersigned by a member of the Council. And the member of the Council who countersigned it is a man called Kern and he is the man who has been buying the shore from my mother and from me for thirty six years and he is the man who is going to be sitting in the hall in Galway when Ahern writes his judgment."

I sat in the chair and looked at her.

"You are offering me a name," I said.

"I am offering you the name of the man who is above me and above Korkut and above Ahern and above the Council's file. And I am offering it to you in exchange for a fire and a boat and a road out of this village." Mairéad put her hands on the arms of the chair. "And there is a thing you should know before you decide. If you take the offer, your sister gets the seat and the village gets a new Alpha and the old woman gets out of the cottage and the boy gets to keep his father. If you do not take it, then tomorrow morning I am going to stand up in this hall and I am going to fight, and I am going to lose, and Ahern is going to write a judgment that puts me out of this territory and puts the whole of it in the file in Galway. And the file will have my name in it and Korkut's name in it and the name of the salvage crew and the name of your sister and the name of the boy. And Kern will read it and he will close it and he will go on buying shores in other villages and no one will ever know his name."

The fire ticked. I sat in the chair with my hands in my lap and the whole of it in front of me.

"There is a thing you have not said," I said. "You have not said why you are doing this. You could have gone to Galway in the night with the box and the ring and the money and no one would have stopped you. You are sitting in this room at nine o'clock at night offering me a deal you do not need to offer."

Mairéad looked at the fire for a long time.

"Because I am sixty nine years old," she said. "And because I have been the Alpha of this pack since I was forty two and before that I was the daughter of the Alpha and before that I was a girl in this village who was told every day of her life that her mother had saved the pack from a woman who burned herself in her own house. And I have never once been able to say out loud that my mother was a thief and a forger and a killer, and I am not going to say it tomorrow morning in front of the co-op either." She looked at me. "But I am going to say it in this room tonight, to a woman from Dublin, and then I am going to go to my bed and in the morning I am going to resign the seat and go to Galway and live with my sister's family and never come back. And that is the whole of it. That is the thing I have to trade. Not the name of Kern. The thing I have to trade is the only thing I have left, which is that I am tired."

I stood up.

"I am not going to take the offer," I said.

Mairéad looked up at me.

"Not because I do not want the name of Kern," I said. "I want it and I am going to have it and you are going to give it to me tomorrow morning in front of Ahern and the whole co-op. But I am not going to burn the ledger and I am not going to put the print in the fire and I am not going to let the file in Galway say that there was no theft and no false bond and no sentence of the headland." I put my hand on the back of the chair. "My sister was put in a boathouse with a rope round her neck and my aunt was kept in a cottage for thirty six years and your Beta's mother went off a cliff because you lied to her. Those are not things that get put in a fire so that a woman can resign with her dignity. Those are things that get written down and read out loud and put in a file in Galway with every name in it." I looked at her. "And the name of Kern is going to be in that file and it is going to be in your hand and you are going to write it yourself."

Mairéad sat in the chair and looked at me and then she laughed. It was a small dry sound and it was not a happy one.

"You are your grandmother's granddaughter," she said. "Maeve would have said the same thing in the same words and she would have said it with the same face." She got up. "Very well. Tomorrow morning. In the hall. I will write the name and I will sign it and I will say it out loud and then I will go to Galway and I will not come back." She went to the door and stopped. "There is a thing I am going to say to you and then I am going to leave this room and I am not going to say it again. Your sister is coming down that shore road tomorrow with a pack at her back. She is not coming to resign a seat. She is coming to take one. And there is a thing about your sister that you have not found yet and that I have known since March and that will be in this village before the morning is out." She opened the door. "Ask Ahern about the woman from Galway. Ask him why a woman who has been banished from this territory for nine years has been running errands for the Council's enforcer for nine years. And when you have the answer, ask yourself whether you are going to stand beside your sister tomorrow or beside the law."