Chapter 66: The Healer's Confession

The cottage went so quiet that I could hear the fire and the sea and the breathing of forty wolves packed along the walls.

Ronan stood at the head of the table with his old hands flat on the red ledger and his face the colour of the ash in the grate.

"I wrote the false charter," he said. "Not all of it. The first part of it is the true charter copied out by a clerk in 1901 and I did not write that. But the middle of it I wrote, and the clause about the land in the form that a co-op cannot use I wrote, and the strike through it I drew, and the note in the margin in the hand that looks like the enforcer's I wrote with a pen I had practised with for a week." He looked up. "I was twenty nine years old. Eileen came to this cottage in the summer of 1961 and she put the true charter on this table and she said, Ronan, the village needs a book that the co-op can read and that the Council will accept, and I said, the true book is the book, and she said, the true book has a clause in it that will put me out of the seat before the year is out and there are wolves in this village who will use it. And I said, then let them use it, and she said, if you do not write the book I will put your mother out of this village and your sister with her and I will do it before the month is out."

The fire ticked.

"My mother was old and my sister was sick," Ronan said. "And I sat at this table with the true charter in front of me and a pen in my hand and I wrote the book that has been in the frame in the hall for thirty six years." He looked at Mairéad. "And then your mother died in 1983 and you took the seat and you came to this cottage and you said, Ronan, the book in the hall is the book and I am going to keep it in the frame and I am going to swear on it and no one is going to read the middle of it. And I said, yes, Alpha, and I have been saying yes, Alpha, for fourteen years."

Mairéad did not move.

"You knew," she said. "Every year. Every meeting. Every vote. You knew the book in the frame was a forgery and you stood in this hall and you swore on it with the rest of us."

"I knew and I swore and I have been the healer of this pack for fifty years on a lie that I made with my own hands." Ronan's voice did not change. "And there is a thing I have to say before the co-op and I am going to say it now. I am not fit to be the healer of this pack. I have not been fit for thirty six years. And when this is over I am going to give up the cottage and the garden and the rank and I am going to go and live with my sister's family in Sligo and I am not going to come back."

The co-op stirred. Arthur got up off his chair and came to the table and put his hand on Ronan's shoulder.

"You wrote a false book because a woman threatened your mother," he said. "I wrote the true minutes in a red ledger and hid them under a bench and did not read them out loud for thirty six years. There is not a wolf in this cottage who has not done a thing in this village that they are ashamed of and there is not a wolf in this cottage who is going to put a stone in your hand."

"Arthur is right," Hannah said from the corner. "You brought every wolf in this village into the world and you sat with every one of them when they died and you were the only wolf in this village who would come to my house when my daughter was taken." She shifted the baby. "I am not going to stand in this cottage and watch you be put out."

Ronan did not lift his head.

"I am not asking to be forgiven," he said. "I am telling the co-op what I did so that it is written down and read out loud and put in the file in Galway with the rest of it. And then I am going to do the one thing I have been able to do since 1961 and that I should have done in 1961." He reached into his coat and took out a key. "The press in the hall has a second lock and there is a box in it that is not the tin box and that is not the green book. It is a box of papers that Eileen gave me in 1961 and that I have been keeping in this cottage since the day she gave it to me and that I have never once opened."

He put the key on the table.

"What is in the box?" Ahern said.

"I do not know. I have never opened it. It is sealed with wax and the wax has her seal on it and I have been afraid of it for thirty six years." Ronan looked at the key. "But there is a thing I do know. Eileen said to me, Ronan, keep this box and if I ever come back to this village and I am not in the seat, give it to the enforcer of the region. And she said, if I am in the seat and I am dying, burn it." He pushed the key across the table. "She is not in the seat and she is not dying and I am eighty years old and I am not going to burn a thing for that woman."

Ahern picked up the key.

"Where is the box?"

"It is in the press in the hall behind the frame. The press has a second lock and the second lock is that key and the box is at the back of the press behind the green book and the tin box and the bundle of papers." Ronan sat down slowly in his chair. "And there is a thing about the box that I have not told you. It is not a box of papers. It is a box of letters. And the letters are in the hand of the enforcer Ahern who signed the deed in 1961 and there is a bundle of them and they are tied with string and there is a date on the top one and the date is 1959."

The cottage went quiet.

"My father's letters," Ahern said. "In a box in a press in this hall since 1961."

"Your father's letters to Eileen," Ronan said. "And there is a thing I have been afraid of for thirty six years and it is the thing I am going to say now. Your father did not sign the deed in 1961 because he was a thief. He signed it because Eileen had a thing on him and the thing was in those letters and she kept them and she kept him for thirty six years with them." He looked at Ahern. "And there is a thing I have never been able to work out. Your father wrote the note in the file in 1961 that says the title is defective and that the Council is to be notified if a claim is ever made by the line of Maeve. He wrote that note in the same month that he signed the deed. And a man who is being blackmailed does not write a note that will hang him. He writes a note that will save him."