Chapter 69: The Boat That Sailed Twice

It was Arthur who found it.

He was sitting at the end of the long table with the co-op's book of manifests open in front of him and his spectacles on the end of his nose, and he had been quiet for so long that the whole hall had forgotten he was there.

"The Mary Rose," he said.

The hall turned round.

"The manifest for March," Arthur said. "Every boat in this co-op keeps a manifest and every manifest comes to the cooper and every cooper writes it in the book. It has been the rule since 1890 and it has never been broken." He turned the page. "The Mary Rose sailed on the twelfth of March and she came back on the thirteenth of March. And then she sailed again on the thirteenth of March and she came back on the fourteenth. And the second sailing has no catch on it and no crew on it and no reason that my father would have accepted. And the man who wrote it in the book was not the skipper of the Mary Rose. It is in my own hand and I do not remember writing it."

"You wrote it," Mairéad said. "You wrote it because I came to your workshop on the fourteenth of March and I told you to write it and I stood over you while you did it."

"And what was the Mary Rose doing on the thirteenth of March?" I said.

Mairéad looked at the table.

"She was taking a body out to the deep water," she said.

The hall went quiet. And then my sister said, from the far end of the table, "Whose body?"

Mairéad did not answer. She looked at my sister and her pale green eyes were very tired and she said, "There was a woman in this village called Bridget and she was a schoolteacher and she was banished in 1988 and she came back in March. She came back because your sister wrote to her and asked her to come and dig on the high ground. And on the twelfth of March your sister made her claim and lost it and I put her in the boathouse. And on the thirteenth of March Bridget came to the hall and she said, Alpha, I have done what you asked and I have brought you the ring and the book and the page, and I want to go home to Dublin, and I want the ban lifted. And I said, the ban is not going to be lifted. And she said, then I am going to the co-op and I am going to tell them what you have done." Mairéad put her hand flat on the table. "And I did not kill her. I want that written down. I did not put a hand on her. She was in the hall and she was shouting and she turned round and she went down on the floor and she did not get up. And Ronan came and he said it was her heart."

Ronan was on his feet.

"It was her heart," he said. "I was called to the hall on the thirteenth of March and there was a woman on the floor and she was dead and it was her heart and I said so and I wrote it in the book. And the Alpha said, she is a banished wolf and no one in this village is going to ask questions, and I said, she has a family in Dublin, and the Alpha said, then the family will be told she died at sea."

"And the body in the water in April," I said. "The body on the rocks. The body the coroner saw."

Mairéad looked at me.

"There was no body in April," she said. "There was a body in March and it was Bridget and I put her on the Mary Rose on the thirteenth of March and she went out to the deep water and she went over the side with a weight on her feet. And in April the salvage crew came to me and said there was a woman on the rocks at the cove who was wet and hurt and alive. And I said, take her north. And they took her north. And in May the coroner came and I told him there had been a drowning and he wrote it down and the whole village believed it." She looked at my sister. "There was never a body in April. The body was in March and it was Bridget and I have been carrying it since. Your sister was on the rocks and she was alive and I let her go north because a claimant who is alive and in the north is a claimant who is out of my territory. And then I told this village she was dead and I put the weight on her table and I made a story out of a woman's heart and I have been telling it for four months."

My sister stood up.

"Then Bridget is dead," she said. "Bridget is dead and she died in that hall and she died because she came back to this village because I wrote to her." She put her hand over her mouth. "I wrote to her. I brought her back. And she is in the deep water with a weight on her feet and her family in Dublin has been told she died at sea."

The hall was very quiet.

"The men from Galway," I said. "The salvage crew. They said the woman in the harbor tonight was called Bridget and she was in the water an hour and she had been dead before she went in. They said the woman on the rocks in April was wet and hurt and alive and they took her north." I looked at Mairéad. "So there were two women. Bridget in March and another woman in April. And the woman in April went north and came back down that shore road this morning and she is standing in this hall and her name is Eileen. And the woman in the harbor tonight has red hair and a mark on her throat and she is dead."

Mairéad looked at me.

"The woman in the harbor tonight is called Bridget," she said. "And there were two of them. There was a Bridget in this village in March who came back to dig on the high ground and who died in this hall of her heart. And there was a Bridget who came back to this village in the spring nine years ago and who was banished in 1988 and who went to Dublin and who has been in Dublin ever since and who came back to this village in the spring because a woman wrote to her." She looked at my sister. "You wrote to a Bridget in Dublin in February. Which Bridget did you write to?"