Chapter 93: A Wolf's Law and Mine

I went up to the room above the hall at ten in the morning with the second charter and the red ledger and the green book and the weight, and I sat down at the table and I did not get up for six hours.

The whole of it was in front of me. The charter from 1901 with the bloodline clause and the conspiracy clause and the clause about the vote. The cooper's book with the minutes of every meeting since 1949. My mother's book. The book of the woman who took children out of this village. The letters of Ahern the elder. The deed of gift. The weight of forty one with the page inside it.

I read the whole of it the way I used to read a case file in Dublin. Not for the story. For the small thing that did not fit the shape of the other things. For the date that did not match and the name that was in the wrong column and the page that had been written by a hand that was not the hand of the page before it.

At noon Ahern came up and sat down across from me and put his notebook on the table.

“There is a thing about the vote that I have been thinking about since it was taken,” he said. “Thirty four in favour and eleven against and three wolves not in the room. And there is a thing about the three wolves who were not in the room. One of them is Tom’s brother and one of them is the woman from the north pier and one of them is a man called Leo who is seventy odd and who does not sleep.” He looked at me. “Leo was at the wake. Leo was on the shore road. Leo was at the slip when the body came in. And Leo was not in that hall this morning. And there is a thing about a wolf who is in every other place in this village and who is not in the hall on the morning of a vote.”

“He is frightened,” I said. “He is seventy odd and he has lived in this village all his life and he has seen a woman put a rope round another woman’s neck and he has seen the whole of it read out loud in a hall. A man like that does not put his hand up. He goes home and he bolts the door.”

“Or he goes up to the headland,” Ahern said. “There is a thing about the border that I have not told you. I put a wolf on the border at dawn and he came back at nine and he said there was a boat in the cove on the north side and there were men on it and one of them had a long case on his shoulder. And the men on the boat were not the Kelleher men. They were the men from Sligo that the Kelleher men do not work with.” He put his hand flat on the table. “The hunters are on this coast. They have been on this coast since dawn and they are in the cove on the north side and there is a wolf in this village who told them where to come.”

I put the charter down.

“Then there is a thing I have to find in this book before the hunters come up that shore road,” I said. “And it is not the hunters. It is the thing that will let me put Mairéad out of this territory without a fight and without a vote and without a thing that the Keeper can tear up in Galway.” I turned the pages to the conspiracy clause. “A wolf of this pack who conspires with a wolf of another pack to take the seat or the territory is a traitor and the co-op shall try the wolf and the penalty is banishment. And if the wolf who conspires is the Alpha, the co-op shall set aside the seat and try the Alpha and the penalty is banishment and the seat shall pass to the next of the blood.” I looked at him. “Mairéad conspired with Kern and with Korkut and with the hunters and with the men from Sligo. The whole of it is in the file and the whole of it is in the papers and the whole of it is on the table. So why has no wolf in this village tried her for conspiracy?”

“Because a trial for conspiracy needs a witness,” Ahern said. “And the witnesses are dead or in the north or in Galway.”

“There is a witness,” I said. “There is a witness who has been standing in this hall for two days and who has been in the north for twenty years and who has been a thing that Eileen put in a hall and who is not my sister.” I closed the book. “The woman in the grey coat. She came down that shore road with a pack at her back and she made a claim in a name that was not hers and she stood on that headland and she was going to fight. And she did it because Eileen told her to and because Eileen has been running her for twenty years. And a wolf who has been run for twenty years and who has been put in a hall in a name that is not hers is a wolf who knows where the whole of it is buried.”

Ahern looked at me.

“Where is she?”

“She was on that headland last night and she went down the north track with her pack when Mairéad said there was not going to be a fight.” I stood up. “She is in the cove on the north side with the hunters and the men from Sligo and the whole of the north.”

I went down the stairs and out of the hall and along the shore road to the harbor office and Declan was at the desk with his back to the door and his hands flat on the wood.

“There is a thing I have to say,” I said. “And then I am going to the north cove and I am going to find the woman in the grey coat and I am going to bring her back to this village and she is going to stand in that hall and she is going to tell the co-op where Eileen has been keeping the whole of it for twenty years. And I need a wolf with me who knows the north side and who knows the hunters and who can hold a line while I talk.”

Declan turned round. His face was grey and his eyes were tired and he had not shaved.

“I am not going to ask you to forgive me,” he said.

“I am not going to forgive you. Not today. There is a thing about a man who stands on a headland and tells the whole co-op that he is not going to do it any more and then walks away from his son and the village and the whole of it. I have been turning it over since the moon went down and I have not got to the bottom of it and I am not going to pretend that I have.” I put my hand on the desk. “But there is a thing about the morning that is bigger than the both of us. The hunters are in the north cove and there is a wolf in this village who told them where to come and there is a woman in a grey coat who knows where the whole of it is buried. And I cannot go up that track alone.”

Declan looked at me for a long moment.

“Then I am going to get my coat,” he said.