Chapter 61: The Betrayal at the Headland

I went to Ahern first. He was in the room above the hall with the old woman and a lamp and his case open on the floor, and he read the bloodline clause twice and then he read the letter and then he sat back on his heels and said, "This is the second book. The one your sister found in February."

"It is the second book and it has been in the press behind the frame since 1901 and it was never struck out and the clause about the land is in it in the form a co-op can use and the clause about the bloodline is in it and the clause about the banished wolf is in it." I put the ring on the table. "And this is the true ring of Maeve with the name inside the band. And this is the tin box with the print on the lid that is not the Alpha's print."

Ahern looked at the ring and then at the tin box and then at me.

"Whose print is it?"

"Her sister's." I sat down on the floor beside him. "Eileen. She was born in this village in 1942 and she was sent to Galway in 1959 and she was banished in 1988 and she has been in the north ever since building a pack out of wolves this territory has thrown out. She is left handed and the print on the lid is a left handed print and she has been in this hall before and she has been in that press before." I looked at him. "And there is a thing I have to tell you that I have only just found out and I am telling you because if I do not tell you now you will find it out in the morning and you will think I have been keeping it from you. Eileen is not Mairéad's sister. She is Mairéad's cousin and she is the daughter of Deirdre and Fionn and she is Declan's sister and she was born in 1975 and taken out of this village in the same year and given to a woman called Eileen who was going to Galway."

Ahern was very still.

"Then the woman coming down that shore road in the morning is the blood of the Beta," he said. "And the blood of Fionn. And she is a claimant."

"She is not a claimant. She is a banished wolf who has taken a life and the bloodline clause says a banished wolf shall not be heard until the ban is lifted and a wolf who has taken a life outside the law shall not be heard at all." I put my hand flat on the book. "But she is also a wolf who has a pack at her back and a record that my sister gave her in the north and a story that the co-op will believe if it hears it before it hears mine."

Ahern looked at the lamp for a long moment.

"There is a thing I have to do before the morning," he said. "I have to write down what you have told me and I have to read the second book and I have to put the name of Eileen in the file with the print on the lid and the ring and the bloodline. And then I have to decide whether the woman who comes down that shore road tomorrow morning is a claimant or a rogue. And I cannot decide that in this room. I have to see her."

"Then you will see her at nine o'clock."

"I will see her before nine." Ahern stood up. "I am going up to the headland at four in the morning to meet her on the border and hear what she has to say before she comes into this village. And you are coming with me."

We went up the track at four with a lamp and the wind coming off the sea and the sky not yet grey. Ahern had his case and his notebook and I had the green book in my coat and the ring on my finger and the whole of the morning in my chest. Ronan came behind us because he would not be left in his cottage and Declan came because the Beta of a territory does not let an enforcer go to a border alone.

We stopped at the ring of stones at the top of the headland and Ahern put his lamp on the flat rock and said, "We wait."

We waited an hour. The sky went from black to grey and the sea went from black to silver and the gulls came up off the cliffs, and at half past five a figure came up the track from the north side with a lamp in her hand and two wolves behind her.

She was tall and she was grey haired and she had the grey eyes of Declan and the set of his jaw and she walked up the track like a woman who had walked it a thousand times. She stopped on the far side of the ring and put her lamp down on a stone and said, "Ahern. You are early."

"I am early because I was told you were coming." Ahern did not move from the flat rock. "I am the enforcer of this region and I am here to hear what you have to say before you go into that village. Say it."

She said it. She stood in the ring of stones in the grey light and she said it well. She said that the pack had been stolen in 1961 by a woman who had burned the Alpha in her own house and forged the enforcer's signature on a deed and taken money from the co-op for thirty six years. She said that the woman who had sat in the chair since 1983 had kept a claimant in a boathouse and put her in the water and that the claimant had been taken off the rocks by a salvage crew and had come north to her and had given her the record of the shifts. She said that the seat was vacant and that she was the blood of Maeve through the line of the child who had been taken out of this village in 1975 and that she had a pack at her back and a claim in her hand and that she was going to walk into that hall at nine o'clock and put it on the table.

Ahern heard the whole of it and wrote nothing down.

"Where is the claimant?" he said. "The woman who was put in the water. Where is Siobhan?"

"She is in Athlone," Eileen said. "She is in a cottage on the road out of Athlone with a woman called Margaret and she has been there since April and she is coming down that shore road this morning with her sister."

Ahern looked at me.

"That is a lie," I said. "My sister is in Athlone and she has been there since April and she is coming down that shore road this morning and she is coming with me. But this woman has not been to Athlone and she has not seen my sister and she does not know where the cottage is. She has been in the north for twenty years and she has been building a pack out of wolves this territory has thrown out and she has been waiting for a wolf of the line of Maeve to come to her and my sister came in April and gave her the record and then left and went to Athlone because she did not trust her." I stepped forward. "And there is a thing about this woman that she has not told you. She was born in this village in 1975 and she is the daughter of Deirdre and Fionn and she is the sister of the Beta and she was taken out of this village in the same year and given to a woman who was going to Galway. She is not the blood of Maeve. She is the blood of Fionn. And she killed a wolf in this village in 1959 and she was banished in 1988 and the bloodline clause says she cannot be heard."

Eileen looked at me. Her grey eyes were steady and her face did not change.

"The bloodline clause is not in the charter in the hall," she said.

"It is in the second book," I said. "The one that was in the press behind the frame since 1901. The one my sister found in February. The one that is in my coat."

And then something hit me from behind.

It was not a wolf. It was a man, and he came out of the stones at the back of the ring with a length of pipe in his hand, and he hit me across the shoulder and I went down on the grass and the green book went out of my coat and skidded across the stones.

The man was the broad faced man from the salvage crew and behind him there were two more and one of them had a rope.

"Take the book," Eileen said. "And take the ring off her finger."

Declan shifted. He went from a man to a wolf in the time it took me to get my hand on the grass, and the grey brown wolf went across the ring and took the broad man by the arm and put him down, and the two men behind him went back against the stones. Ahern had his case in his hand and was shouting a thing I could not hear.

I got up. I got the book off the stones and I put it inside my coat and I ran for the track.

And then Eileen was in front of me.

She had shifted too. She was a big grey wolf with a long muzzle and her eyes were the grey eyes of Declan and she stood on the track with her head down and her shoulders up and she was between me and the way down.

I shifted. It was the fifth time and it came fast and hard and I was on four legs on the headland with the wind and the sea and the stones and a wolf in front of me who had been a wolf for forty years.

She came at me. I had never fought anything in my life. I had been a guard in Dublin and I had been in a scuffle on a stairs once and I had never fought a wolf. And she came at me low and fast and she took me off my feet and rolled me on the grass and her teeth were at my throat and I got my forelegs up and pushed and she came off and I got up and she came again.

And then there was a grey brown wolf beside me with his shoulder against mine and his teeth bared and his head down, and Declan stood between his sister and his mate on the headland in the grey light with the sea behind him.