Chapter 56: The Night in the Boathouse

I found Declan on the pier at ten o'clock with his hands in his pockets and his back to the village, and I told him the whole of it and he did not say a word until I had finished.

"Ask Ahern about the woman from Galway," he said.

"Ask Ahern about the woman from Galway." I stood beside him at the end of the pier. "And there is a thing I have not told you. In the church on the first morning, when Padraig came back from Athlone, he told me the woman who posts the letters is a wolf with a broken mark who wears a scarf to hide it. And the woman who posts the letters is not my sister. My sister is in the north. The woman in Athlone is a wolf who has been posting letters for her." I looked at him. "And there is a second thing. The black boots in my sister's cottage were worn down on the outside heel and the woman who wore them walked with a roll to the right foot. The woman in the harbor had red hair and a mark on her neck and she was dead before she went into the water. And the woman who came to this coast nine years ago and was banished and who has been running errands for the enforcer for nine years is called Bridget. And Bridget is dead." I turned to him. "So who is the woman from Galway?"

Declan looked at the water for a long moment.

"There is a thing I have not told you," he said. "In the hall this afternoon, when Cormac signed the statement and Mairéad came in and told him the truth about his mother. I stood by the wall and I did not say a word and I have been standing by that wall for twenty years. And while she was talking I had a thing in my head that I have not been able to put down. She said, your mother stepped off that cliff because I told her her husband had a true bond with another woman. And I thought, if my mother was told that in 1981, then there was a woman in this village in 1981 who was the other woman. And my father was dead by then and my mother was alone and there was a woman in this village who was the other woman and she is still in this village and she is the woman with the grey plait."

"Maire," I said.

"Maire. She was the third vote that did not come in 1975 and she told you on the shore that the Alpha always knows. And she has been in this village her whole life and she is the only wolf in it who was in the hall in 1961 apart from the old woman and Ronan and Arthur." He looked at me. "And she is the woman who has been carrying a vote that did not come for twenty two years and who told you to come to her and not to the hall."

The wind came up off the water. The boats knocked against the wall.

"Then we go and ask her," I said.

We went up the shore road to the house with the grey plait. It was the last cottage before the church and there was a light in the window and when I knocked the door opened at once, as if she had been standing behind it.

Maire was a tall thin woman with grey hair in a plait and a face like a kind horse, and she looked at me and then at Declan and then she stood aside and let us in.

"I have been waiting for you since the funeral," she said.

The cottage was small and neat and there was a fire in the grate and a chair by it and a table with a cloth on it and a photograph on the table in a frame. I picked up the photograph. It was a woman in a dark dress standing in front of the church with a baby in her arms, and the woman was young and she had grey eyes.

"That is my daughter," Maire said. "She is in Galway and she has been in Galway since 1981 and she has not been back to this village since and she is not going to come back." She sat down in the chair by the fire. "Ask me the question."

"Are you the woman from Galway?"

"I am the woman who posts the letters from Athlone and I am the woman who has been carrying the vote that did not come and I am the woman who was in the hall in 1961." Maire folded her hands. "And I am the woman who was the other woman in 1981. I was the other woman and Deirdre went off that cliff because the Alpha told her about me and she believed it and she was a gentle woman who could not live with a false bond and a false husband." She looked at Declan. "I am sorry. I have been sorry for sixteen years and I have never been able to say it to you."

Declan did not move. He stood in the middle of the room with his hands at his sides and his face grey.

"You were in the hall in 1961," I said. "You were one of the nine wolves in the hall on the night of the fire. What did you see?"

"I saw Eileen go into the house after Maeve and I saw the door shut and I saw the fire in the window. And I was seventeen years old and I was in the hall with eight other wolves and not one of us went up that hill." Maire's hands were very still in her lap. "I have been carrying it for thirty six years. That is the vote that did not come. Not the vote in 1975. The vote in 1961 that was never called. Nine wolves in a hall and not one of us went up the hill."

"And the woman from Galway," I said. "The woman who runs the errands for the enforcer. The woman who has been banished for nine years and who came back in March and who was in the car on the night of the claim and who is not Bridget and who is not my sister and who is not you." I put the photograph down. "Who is she?"

Maire looked at the fire.

"Her name is Eileen," she said. "She is the daughter of the woman who burned Maeve in her own house. She is Mairéad's sister. And she has been the woman from Galway since 1961, and she has been running the errands for the Council's enforcer since before Korkut, and she is the one who told her mother to sign the deed, and she is the one who has been coming to this village in the dark for thirty six years to keep her sister in the chair."

The fire ticked. Declan made a sound.

"Mairéad has a sister," he said.

"Mairéad has a sister and the sister is the one who made the false bonds and the sister is the one who signed the sentence of the headland in Korkut's name and the sister is the one who is coming down that shore road tomorrow morning with a pack at her back." Maire looked at me. "The woman in the north is not your sister. The woman in the north is Eileen, and she has been building a pack of banished wolves for nine years, and she is coming to this village tomorrow to take the seat that her mother took in 1961 and that her sister has been sitting in since 1983. And your sister is in Athlone with Margaret in a cottage and she has been there since April and she has been posting letters and she has been waiting for you to find her."

I stood in the cottage with the photograph in my hand and the whole of it came apart.

"Then the phone," I said. "The number the men from Galway gave me. The word Dún. It was not my sister's number. It was Margaret's number and the word was Margaret's word."

"The word was Margaret's word and the number was Margaret's number and your sister has been in that cottage since April and she sent the ring and the page and the print with Margaret because she could not come herself." Maire stood up. "And there is one thing more and then I am going to go to my bed and in the morning I am going to stand in that hall and say what I have just said. The woman in the north is coming tomorrow with a pack and a claim and a story. And if she gets into that hall before your sister does, then the co-op will hear a claimant who has been banished and who has a pack at her back and who has been running errands for the Council for nine years, and the co-op will believe her. Because a claimant with a pack is a claimant with an army and a village that has been lied to for thirty six years will believe the first wolf who tells it a story it can understand."

I was at the door.

"Where is my sister?" I said. "In Athlone. In the cottage with Margaret. Where is the cottage?"

"On the road out of Athlone to the north, past the second bridge, with a white gate and a shed with a red roof." Maire put her hand on my arm. "You cannot go tonight. The bus does not run and the road is forty miles and the woman in the north is on that road already. You have until nine o'clock in the morning and no more."

Declan was already at the door.

"The Cormorant is at the pier," he said. "She is not fast and she is not warm and she will take the sea and I can have her round the point and into Galway Bay by four in the morning and there is a man in Galway who will lend me a car."

I looked at him.

"You are going to Galway," I said. "In the dark. In the Cormorant. With a broken propeller shaft and a storm coming up from the southwest."

"I am going to Galway in the dark in the Cormorant with a broken propeller shaft and a storm coming up from the southwest." He put his hand out. "And you are coming with me. Because your sister is not going to get into a car with a man she has never met and a boat she does not know. She is going to get into a car with her sister."

I took his hand.

And then I stopped in the doorway and looked back at Maire.

"There is a thing I have to ask you," I said. "The woman in the north is Eileen. She has a pack and a claim and a story. And there is a thing about her that no one in this village has said out loud. Is she a wolf?"

Maire looked at me.

"She is a wolf," she said. "And there is a thing about her that is worse than that. She was born in 1942 and she was the firstborn of Eileen and she was the child who was going to be Alpha and her mother sent her to Galway in 1959 because she had done a thing in this village that could not be forgiven." Maire's face was very still. "She killed a wolf. She was seventeen years old and she killed a wolf in this village with her hands and her mother sent her to Galway to keep her out of the co-op's reach. And she has been in Galway for thirty eight years and she has been the woman from Galway for thirty six of them."