Chapter 95: The Full Moon Trap

Declan stood on the north track with the wind coming off the sea and his son in front of him and the hunter's photograph in my hand.

“I wrote them,” he said again. “I wrote the letters to your sister in Athlone every week since April and I told her to stay where she was and that I would come for her when the vote was taken and I signed them with my own name.”

“Why?” I said.

“Because in April I was a man who had let a boat go north with a woman in it and I could not do a second thing that would put her in the water. So I wrote to her and I told her to stay in Athlone and I told her I would come for her.” He looked at me. “And then you came to this village and the whole of it turned over and I did not go to Athlone and I did not tell you and I kept writing the letters because a man who stops writing a letter is a man who has to say out loud that he is not coming.”

The wind came up over the shoulder of the headland. I stood on the track with the photograph of my sister in my hand and the whole of it in front of me.

“She waited four months,” I said. “She sat in a cottage in Athlone and she waited for a wolf who was never going to come.”

“She waited four months and I wrote to her every week and I told her a lie every week and it is the worst thing I have done in my life and I am not going to stand on this track and ask you to forgive it.” He put his hands at his sides. “I am telling you because Cormac opened a drawer in May and because a hunter has been sitting on this border for three days and because the whole of it is going to come out and I would rather it came out of my mouth.”

Cormac had gone very still.

“Da,” he said.

“I am sorry,” Declan said. “For the drawer and for the letters and for every week I went up to Galway and told you it was the harbor dues.”

“That is not what I am going to say.” Cormac’s voice was thin. “I am going to say that there is a thing about the letters that you have not said and that I saw when I opened the drawer. There were eleven letters in that drawer and they were all tied with string and not one of them had been posted. There was no stamp on any of them and there was no postmark and the string had not been untied since the day you tied it.”

The track was very quiet.

“You did not post them,” I said.

Declan looked at his son.

“I wrote them and I did not post them,” he said. “I wrote them in the office at night and I tied them with string and I put them in the drawer and I told myself I would post them in the morning. And then the morning came and there was a meeting or a boat or a thing and I did not post them and I wrote another one the next week and I tied it with the same string.” He put his hand over his face and took it away. “Eleven letters in a drawer and not one of them was ever in a post box. And there is a thing about that which is worse than a lie. A lie is a thing you tell another wolf. That drawer was a thing I told myself.”

Owen the hunter had been standing at the edge of the track with his cap in his hand and he said, “Then the letters in Athlone are not from this man.”

“No,” Declan said. “They are not from me.”

“Then there is a wolf in this village who has been writing to your sister in Athlone and signing a name she trusted,” Owen said. “And the letters came from Galway every week and the last one came on the twelfth of June and it said, stay in Athlone, the border is watched, I will come for you when the vote is taken.” He put his cap on. “I am not a wolf and I do not know the law and I do not know the families. But I know a thing when I hear one. There is a wolf in this village who has been keeping your sister in a cottage for four months with a promise and a pen and it is the same wolf who told the men in the north where to come and who put a knife in a rope on the pier.”

I put the photograph in my coat.

“There is a thing I have to do and I have to do it now,” I said. “The woman in the grey coat is in that cove and she has been used the way my sister was used and she is the one witness who can put the whole of it in front of Ahern. And there is a wolf in this village who is going to know that I have gone to the cove and who is going to do a thing about it before the moon is up.”

I went down the track toward the cove.

The men on the shore saw us coming and the man on the cabin roof stood up with his rifle across his arm and the two wolves on the slip turned round and the woman in the grey coat turned round and put her hand up.

“Stop there,” she said. “You are on the border and there is a hunter on the boat and he has been paid to be here.”

“I am not a hunter,” I said. “I am the woman who pulled a safe out of a well and read a book in a cellar and I have a photograph of my sister in my coat that was taken four weeks ago in Athlone.” I stopped at the top of the slip. “And you are not my sister.”

The woman in the grey coat did not move for a long moment.

“No,” she said. “I am not.”

“Then say your name.”

“My name is Eileen and I am the daughter of the woman who took the seat in 1961 and I have been in the north for twenty years and I have been a thing that a woman in Galway put in a grey coat.” She looked at the whole of us on the top of the slip. “And there is a thing I have to say and then I am going to sit down on that stone and let the co-op do what it likes with me. I did not come down that shore road to claim the seat. I came down that shore road because a wolf in Galway wrote to me in April and said, there is a claimant in Athlone who is going to make a noise and there is a woman from Dublin who is going to pull a safe out of a well and the two of them will put the whole of it in front of a co-op. And he said, go down that coast and put a grey coat on and stand in her name and make a claim and I will come down with a letter and put the pack under trusteeship and the noise will be buried.” She put her hand down. “I did it because I have been in the north for twenty years and I have nothing and he offered me the shore.”

“Who in Galway?” I said.

“I do not know his name. I have never known his name. He writes letters and signs them with a mark that is a crescent moon and the letters come through an enforcer in Sligo and the money comes through a company in Galway.” She looked at me. “And there is a thing about the letters that I have not told a living soul. The last one came on the twelfth of June and it was not from Galway. It was posted in this village and it had a name on the back of it and the name was a name I have seen in this co-op's books.”

The wind came up off the sea.

“Say the name,” I said.

And then there was a sound behind us on the track and the whole of the co-op came over the shoulder of the headland with lamps and torches and the whole of it was running.

Mairéad was at the front with her silver hair down and her black coat on and eleven wolves behind her and she came down the track at a run and stopped at the top of the slip and said, “She is a rogue and she has crossed the border with a rogue pack and she has the hunters on her boat and she is on the north side of this territory with a wolf who is not of this pack.” She turned round to the whole co-op. “The charter says a wolf who is in the territory without the leave of the Alpha and who consorts with hunters is a rogue. And the penalty for a rogue is the hunt.”

The whole co-op was on the shoulder of the headland with lamps.

“The moon is up at nine,” Mairéad said. “And there is a thing about the hunt that the charter says and that the whole of the co-op is going to hear. A rogue who is hunted is hunted on the headland and the whole pack runs and the wolf who is taken is put out of the territory and the wolf who is not taken is a rogue for the rest of her life.” She looked at me. “Shift and run, Niamh. Shift and run and let the pack see what a woman from Dublin does when the moon is up.”