Chapter 84: What My Mother Left

I sat in the cellar under the boathouse with the black book in my hands and the whole co-op standing in the burned shell above me with lamps and the fog coming in through the gap in the wall.

There was a second book under the first. It was smaller and it was bound in brown leather and it had a clasp on it and it had been in the chest in the corner with a bundle of papers tied with string. It had no title on the cover and no name on the first page.

The first page said: “For my daughters. If you are reading this then I am not there to tell you and I am sorry. Your mother, Maeve’s daughter, Siobhan.”

I sat in the cellar with the book in my hands and could not turn the page.

“Whose hand is it?” Declan said.

“It is my mother’s hand.” I turned the page. “It is my mother’s hand and she wrote it for me and for my sister and she left it in this cellar under a boathouse and she did not leave it in the cottage on the hill.”

I read it aloud. The whole co-op heard it because the whole co-op was standing in the shell of the boathouse above me and the cellar was open and my voice carried up through the boards.

“I am the daughter of Maeve and I was sixteen years old when my mother was burned in her own house. I saw who set the fire. It was Eileen the Beta and she set it with four wolves from the north who were in this village for a week before and who went out in a boat the night after. And when the house was burning I took my sister by the hand and I ran down the hill to the healer’s cottage and I told the healer what I had seen and he told me to say nothing and he put my sister in a cottage on the cliff and he told the co-op that Maeve had burned herself and her own child in her own house. And the co-op believed it because the healer said it and because Eileen was standing in the hall in the morning and because there was not a wolf in this village who wanted to look at a thing that had four wolves from the north in it. I was sixteen years old and I said nothing and I have been saying nothing for thirty years.”

I turned the page.

“In 1961 Eileen signed a deed of gift and she gave the shore and the waters to a man called Ahern who was the enforcer of the region and she did it to keep him quiet and she has been paying him rent out of the co-op’s money ever since. The deed was never voted on by the co-op and the co-op never knew and I have the paper in my hand and I am going to put it in this book with the date and the hour. And there is a thing about the deed that no one in this village has ever seen. The deed says the shore and the waters are given to Ahern and his heirs and his successors in the office of enforcer. And it does not say that the gift is conditional and it does not say that the shore returns to the co-op if the pack is taken. It says the shore is his for ever.”

I turned the page.

“And there is a thing I have to write down and I have never said it out loud. In 1975 the co-op voted on the seat and the vote was thirty one to twenty nine and Eileen kept it. Three wolves did not come to that vote and one of them was Fionn the Beta and one of them was Maire and one of them was me. I did not go to the vote because I was frightened and because Eileen had told me that if I went to the vote she would put my daughters out of this village and put my sister out of her cottage on the cliff. I did not go to the vote and I have been carrying it for twenty two years and there is not a night when I do not see the hall and the hands going up and the number thirty one on the book.”

I turned the page.

“In 1979 the Alpha took my daughter out of this village and gave her to a woman from Galway and I did not know until the morning and by the morning she was gone. And there is a thing about that daughter that no one in this village knows and that I am going to write down now because I am her mother and I am the only one who can. The daughter was born in the winter of 1979 and she was born in this village and the woman who took her was called Eileen and she took her to the north and she gave her to a family and the family were called the Flannerys and the daughter is in Killybegs and she is called Mary. And she is the heir of Maeve. Not my sister. Not me. Her.”

The cellar was very quiet. The whole co-op above me was quiet.

“Mary,” Declan said. “Mary Flannery. The woman in Killybegs who took Daniel out of the house on the hill. She is the heir of Maeve.”

“She is the heir of Maeve and she took a boy out of a house in the north in 1978 and she has been hiding him ever since and she is forty one years old and she is a fisherman’s wife in Killybegs and she does not know what she is.” I turned to the last page. “And there is a thing about the heir that my mother wrote on the last page and that I am going to read to the whole co-op.”

I read it.

“If my daughter Mary is alive, tell her that her mother did not give her away. Tell her that the Alpha took her out of this village in the night and that I did not know and that I have been looking for her for eighteen years. Tell her that the seat of this pack is hers and that there is not a wolf in this village who can take it from her. And tell her that her sister Siobhan is the only wolf in this pack who has ever tried to put it right.”

I closed the book and put it on the table and stood up.

“The heir of Maeve is called Mary Flannery and she is in Killybegs and she is a fisherman’s wife and she has a boat and she is on this coast in June,” I said. “And there is a thing about tonight that I am going to say in front of the whole co-op. The fight on that headland is between my sister and the woman who has been Alpha for fourteen years and it is a fight for a seat that does not belong to either of them. The seat belongs to Mary Flannery and she is not on that headland and she has never been in this village and she does not know that a woman with a grey coat is standing on a rock in her name.” I picked up the lamp. “So I am not going up to that headland to watch a fight. I am going up there to stop it.”