The Curse of the Beta のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 91 - チャプター 100

They brought the priest to the pack house and put him at the kitchen table with the book in front of him and a pen and a bottle of ink, and the whole of the Council sat round him and the whole of the pack stood in the yard and would not go home.He wrote for three hours.He wrote the cliff and the rope and the three men on it. He wrote the cup and the ring and the page torn out of a book. He wrote the ship and the wreck and the sailor's log. He wrote the well and the wall and the mark and the blood of a boy of nine. He wrote the silver and the Gamma and the chain of keys and the fire in the schoolyard. He wrote the man in the good grey coat and the man in the chair and the thing that had been coming out of the north for a hundred years.And when he had finished the writing he put the pen down and sat back and said, "There is a thing I have to say that is not in the book."Callum said, "Say it.""I falsified the record," the priest said. "I have been keeping two books for forty years.

The green emptied slowly. The Council went back to its tent and Rook went back to his ship and the fourth chair was put in the byre with a man on the door and the whole of the village stood in little groups in the road and on the shingle and talked about a name at the bottom of a column on a wall.I went up to the pack house to sleep and got as far as the yard gate.The Gamma's widow was standing in the gate with her black shawl round her shoulders and her grey hair and her small hard face."Regent," she said."I am not the Regent.""You are the man who was the Regent and who forfeited the rank and who is going out to that island at the low tide with the heir and the Council and a man in a good grey coat." She did not move out of the gate. "There is a thing the pack has been saying since the byre and I am going to say it to your face. The book is the record and the book has been in your hands and the priest's hands and the Council's hands since the fire. The page was cut out and hidde

We went up to the cliff with the whole of the village behind us and the light in the Council tent was out and the tent was empty.The fire was out. The chairs were over and the clerk's book was on the ground with the pages blowing and there was a lantern on its side and the oil had run out of it into the grass. The three Alphas were standing at the edge of the cliff with their hands tied and their mouths stopped with cloth and the guards were gone.Callum was not there.Thomas came up the headland with his coat off and his silver hair wild."He has taken the guards and the clerk and gone down the shore," he said. "I saw them from the harbour. There is a boat and it is going out to the ship that came in with Rook's flag and it is not Rook's ship."I looked out at the water. There was a ship on the water with a light in it and there was a small boat going out to it with six men at the oars."Rook's flag," I said."Rook took the pack of the north out at dusk," Thomas said. "He said he wa

We went back to the shore in the boat with the whole of Vaughan's crew standing at the rail and not one of them lifting a hand.Thomas rowed. Nobody spoke. The harbour came up out of the dark and the whole of the pack was on the pier with lanterns and the three Alphas were on the shingle with their hands untied and their faces grey.We got onto the pier and Clara went up the shore and Thomas caught her arm."Not yet," he said.She turned round."The boat is at the stern of the ship," Thomas said. "I put it there myself this afternoon before the Council came up the cliff. It has a sail and a false name on it and a barrel of water and a bag of bread and a chart of the coast from here to Oban. I can have you on it in an hour and out past the point before the moon sets."Clara said, "I am not leaving.""I know you are not leaving." Thomas let go of her arm. "I am telling you the boat is there. That is all I am telling you. There is a boat at the stern of that ship with a sail and a false

We went down to the shore.The boat was at the pier with a man in it in a dark coat and a paper in his hand, and the whole of the pack was on the shingle and the three Alphas were on the pier and Clara was at the head of the shore with the stone wolf beside her and Nina behind her.The man in the boat came up onto the pier."I am looking for the Alpha of Cragmoor," he said."I am the Alpha of Cragmoor," Clara said.The man looked at her and then at his paper and then at her again."The paper is made out to the Alpha of Cragmoor and it is a debt," he said. "It is forty years old and it has been owing since the year of the great storm and it is a debt on the pack and the island and the water round it. It was taken out by the old Alpha in the year before he died and it has been in the bank at Leith for forty years and it has come due this year and the bank has sent me to collect it.""Who holds the debt?""The paper does not say. The paper says the debt is owed to the bearer and the bear