Chapter 65: The Ash of the Charter

We took the red ledger and the burned pages up to Ronan's cottage and put them on the table and the whole co-op came with us. Forty wolves in a cottage built for one old man, standing along the walls and sitting on the floor and crowding the doorway, and Ahern at the table with the lamp and the ledger open in front of him.

The red ledger was Arthur's father's book. It went back to 1949 and it had the minutes of every co-op meeting in it, and it was not burned and it was not damaged and the pages turned clean.

Ahern read it from 1961 and he read it aloud.

"The meeting of the fourteenth of March 1961. Present: the Alpha, Maeve. The Beta, Eileen. The healer, Ronan the elder. The cooper, Arthur the elder. Nine wolves of the co-op. The Alpha Maeve reported that the shore and the waters had been leased to a company in Galway and that the lease had been signed without a vote of the co-op. The Beta Eileen said the lease was lawful and the Alpha said it was not and called for a vote to set it aside. The vote was taken. Eleven for the Alpha and nine against. The lease was set aside." He turned the page. "The meeting of the twenty second of March 1961. The hall was burned in the night and the Alpha Maeve is dead. The Beta Eileen has taken the seat. No vote was held."

The cottage was very quiet.

"Eleven for and nine against," Arthur said from the corner. "My father wrote it and I held the candle. The co-op voted to set the lease aside eleven days before the fire. And then the Alpha was dead and the lease was signed by the woman who took the seat and there was no vote and there has never been a vote since."

Ahern turned to 1975 and read that too. The meeting of the fourth of February 1975. The vote on the seat. Thirty one to twenty nine. And at the bottom of the page, in Arthur's father's small careful hand, a note.

"Three wolves did not come to this meeting and the vote was lost by two. The three are Maire, the healer's daughter. Fionn the Beta. And Deirdre the wife of the Beta. I record this because I am the cooper and I keep the record and I have been told not to write it. I am writing it."

Declan was standing at the back of the cottage and his face did not change.

"My father did not come to the vote," he said. "He was one of the three."

"He was one of the three and he lost the Beta's seat for it and he went out in a boat in the spring and did not come back," Ahern said. "And there is a thing in this book that is worse than that. The meeting of the nineteenth of April 1975. Present: the Alpha, Eileen. The Beta, Fionn. The healer, Ronan the elder. The cooper, Arthur the elder. Nine wolves of the co-op." He turned the page. "The Alpha Eileen reported that the wife of the Beta had been delivered of a child in the night and that the child was a girl and that the child had been given to a woman who was going to Galway and that the mother was not to be told. The Beta Fionn objected and the Alpha Eileen overruled him. No vote was held."

"He did not know," Declan said. "My father did not know that his daughter had been taken."

"He knew within the day and he was overruled and there was no vote and he went out in a boat in the spring." Ahern turned the page. "And there is a thing in this book about the girl that no one has looked at. The note says the child was given to a woman called Eileen who was going to Galway and who was to bring her up as her own. And there is a second note under it in a different hand that says the child was given a name and the name was Eileen."

The cottage went quiet.

"The child was given the name of the woman who took her," Ronan said. "And the woman who took her was called Eileen. And the child has been called Eileen ever since. And the woman who took her is not in this village and has not been in this village since 1959 and the child has been calling herself by the name of a wolf who has been dead for twenty years."

"Then the woman in the north is not the daughter of Eileen," I said. "She is the daughter of Deirdre and Fionn and she was given to a woman called Eileen who was going to Galway and who named her after herself. And there is a thing that follows from that and it is the thing that has been in front of us since the first night." I put my hand on the ledger. "The woman in the north is not the blood of Maeve. She is the blood of Fionn. And she has been telling this village for twenty years that she is the true heir of Maeve and that her mother was the Alpha and that she was robbed. And her mother was never the Alpha. Her mother was Eileen, who took the seat by force in 1961 after the co-op had voted to set aside her lease, and who ruled until 1983, and who signed the deed and the false charter and the false bond and the rent, and who was never voted into the seat by this co-op in her life."

Mairéad was at the door. She had come up with the rest of them and she was standing in the doorway with her black coat and her silver hair and her face black with smoke, and she looked at the red ledger and she did not say anything for a long time.

"My mother was never Alpha," she said.

"Your mother was never Alpha. The co-op voted to set aside her lease eleven days before the fire and she burned the Alpha in her own house and took the seat and there was no vote and there has never been a vote since." I stood up. "And you have been the Alpha of this pack for fourteen years on a title that your mother stole and that you have never once had confirmed by the co-op. And every wolf in this village has been told for thirty six years that the line of Maeve was a line of thieves and that the line of Eileen was the line that saved the pack."

Mairéad came into the cottage. She came up to the table and put her hand on the red ledger and looked at the page.

"I did not know," she said. "I have been told since I was a girl that my mother saved this pack from a woman who burned herself in her own house and I have never once looked at the cooper's book." She looked up at Arthur. "Why did you not tell me?"

"Because your mother told me not to and because I was a coward and because there is a page in this book that my father wrote in 1961 and that I have been reading to myself every year since and that I have never once had the courage to read out loud in this village." Arthur's old voice was steady. "Until tonight."

Ahern closed the ledger.

"Then there is one thing more and it is the thing that decides the morning," he said. "The woman Eileen who is in this village tonight and who came down from the north with a pack at her back is not the blood of Maeve and she is not the daughter of the woman who took the seat. She is the daughter of Deirdre and Fionn and she was given to a woman who was going to Galway and she is a banished wolf who has taken a life. And under the bloodline clause she cannot be heard."

The cottage was quiet.

And then Ronan said, "There is a thing I have to say and I am going to say it now and I am not going to say it kindly to myself. The false charter. The one in the hall with the clause about the land and the strike through it and the note in the margin. I wrote it. Mairéad's mother asked me to copy the charter in 1961 and I copied it and I left out the bloodline clause and I wrote the margin note in a hand that looked like the enforcer's and I have been the healer of this pack for fifty years on a lie that I made with my own hands."