Chapter 64: The Archive and the Fire

The hall did not quiet down. It went the other way. Forty wolves were on their feet and the shouting came from every part of the room at once and Ahern was standing at the table with his hand up and his voice going out over the top of it.

“Sit down,” he said. “Sit down and be quiet or I will clear this hall and hear the whole of it in the church with the door shut.”

The hall sat down. It took a while.

Ahern put his hand flat on the table.

“The boy has read the charter and the boy is right,” he said. “A wolf who is not of this pack may be named a challenger by the Alpha only if there is no claimant of the blood in the territory. There is a claimant of the blood in the territory. There is the boy. There is the woman from Athlone. There is the woman from the north. There is the man Korkut, who is not in this room.” He looked at Mairéad. “The naming of the challenger is void. Take the weight off the table.”

Mairéad did not move for a long moment. Then she picked the weight up and put it in her coat and sat down.

“Then I resign the seat,” she said. “And I do it now, in front of the enforcer and the co-op, and I do it in writing.” She took a paper out of her coat and put it on the table. “I, Mairéad, Alpha of Dún Aonghasa, resign the seat and the rank and the title, and I ask the co-op to hear the claims of the blood and to choose a new Alpha by vote.”

Ahern picked up the paper and read it and put it down.

“The seat is vacant,” he said. “The Beta holds it until a new Alpha is chosen. Declan, come to the table.”

Declan came. He came up the floor past his son and past me and stood at the table with his hands at his sides and his face grey.

“The co-op will hear the claimants,” Ahern said. “The woman Siobhan of the line of Maeve. The woman Eileen of the line of Fionn. The boy Cormac of the line of Fionn. And the man Korkut, who is not in this room and who has not come to make his claim, and a claim that is not made is not heard.” He looked at the hall. “We will begin with the woman Siobhan.”

My sister came to the table. She was forty four years old and she had been in the water in March and she had a scar on her throat and her hair was going grey and she stood at the table with her hands on the wood and she told the whole of it.

She told it plainly and she told it in order and she did not once raise her voice. The fire in 1961 and the cache on the high ground and the false charter and the deed and the rent and the false bond and the claim in March and the hall on the Thursday night and the boathouse and the rope and the water and the salvage crew and the north and Athlone and the package on the table.

When she had finished she put her hand in her pocket and took out the ring that had been in the tin box and held it up.

“This is the ring of Maeve,” she said. “The seal of the seat. It was given to my grandmother in 1921 and it was taken out of the press in 1961 and it has been out of the village since. I have brought it back and I put it on the table with my claim.”

She put the ring on the table.

And then the far end of the hall filled with smoke.

It came in under the door of the back room and along the floor and it was thick and black and it smelled of paraffin, and the whole hall was on its feet at once and the door of the back room was open and the fire was in it.

“The archives,” Arthur shouted. “The parish chest is in the back room.”

I did not think. I went through the smoke with my coat over my mouth and into the back room and the fire was in the corner where the shelves were and it was climbing the wall and the parish chest was under the shelf and the lid was shut and there was a heap of papers on the table burning.

I got the chest out. It was heavy and the handles burned my hands and I dragged it through the door and into the hall and Ronan and Padraig took it off me and put it on the floor.

And then I went back in.

The red ledger was on the table and it was not burning yet and I got it and put it inside my coat. And then I saw the second thing on the table, a bundle of papers tied with string that had been half burned and I got that too and put it inside my coat and went out through the smoke with my eyes streaming and the whole hall shouting.

We put the fire out with buckets and wet coats and the sea carried up in pails from the harbor, and by ten o'clock the back room was a black shell and the hall was full of smoke and water and the whole co-op was standing in it with black faces and their hands burnt.

I sat down on the floor with the red ledger in my lap and the bundle of papers in my hands and I opened the bundle.

It was the parish records. The pages for 1961 and 1975 and 1981, half burned and brittle, and the page for 1975 was the worst of it, and there was a corner of it gone where the fire had got it and the corner had the note on it that said the child was given to a woman called Eileen and there was a name at the top of the page that I could not read.

“What is it?” Ronan said.

“It is the parish record of 1975,” I said. “And the corner is burned off. The corner with the name of the family the boy was given to and the note about the girl and the note about who took her.” I turned the page over. The back was burned too. There was nothing on it.

Ahern came and crouched down beside me and took the page and turned it to the light.

“There is a thing about this page,” he said. “It has been in the chest in this room since 1975 and it has been in the chest for twenty two years and no one has looked at it. And now it has been burned in a fire that started in a room where the chest was.” He looked at me. “That fire was not an accident. Somebody put paraffin on that shelf and put a match to it while the whole co-op was sitting in this hall listening to your sister.”

I stood up. The hall was full of wolves with black faces and the smoke was going out through the open door.

“Who was in the back room?” I said.

“Nobody was in the back room,” Tom said. “The door was shut and the whole co-op was in the hall.”

“Then somebody came in through the back window,” I said. “And somebody knew what was in that chest and somebody wanted that page burned.” I looked at the burned corner of the page. “And there is one thing about it that they did not think of. The fire did not burn the red ledger. And the red ledger has the names of the men who did not come to the vote in 1975 and the names of the wolves who were in the hall in 1961 and the name of the family that took the child. And it is in my hands and it is not burned.”

Mairéad was standing at the back of the hall with her hands at her sides and her face black with smoke and her pale green eyes on the ledger.