Tidelands Read online

  “I’ve not been robbed,” she said furiously. “Not robbed. I would rather have been robbed than this . . . I’ve been bewitched.”

  There was a hiss of superstitious fear from everyone in the little parlor.

  “What?” Mr. Miller asked.

  “What?” Mrs. Wheatley echoed. “Here, Mrs. Miller, sit down. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  Mrs. Wheatley helped Mrs. Miller into a chair. Alinor came forward and felt her forehead for the flush of fever, and caught a sideways glance from Alys. The bride was as white as if she had seen a ghost. Her lips parted, she turned as if to speak to her mother but she said nothing.

  Alinor felt herself grow terribly cold. Her hand dropped from Mrs. Miller’s forehead. “What’s happened?” she said quietly. “What’s happened, Mrs. Miller?”

  “Ma . . .” Alys whispered.

  Without saying another word, Mrs. Miller snatched the purse from her husband’s hand and opened the neck of the purse. “See this? Look what’s in here! Look at it. I’ll show you!” She gestured towards Alinor, who unthinkingly cupped her hands and Mrs. Miller poured out the contents of the purse. The coins were hot from their hiding place, and strangely light. Alinor held two handfuls of faerie gold, the shaved and chipped coins that she liked to collect, the lost currency of the old ones, the ancient coins of the Saxon shore. Inside the purse they had chinked like coins, weighed like coins, but here, spilled into Alinor’s hands, they were clearly counterfeit. With her hands filled with her own collection of coins, Alinor looked across at the blank horror of her daughter’s face, and knew at once what she had done.

  “Faerie gold,” Mrs. Miller said fearfully. “In my house. Changeling treasure. I had a purse here of good gold and silver, Jane’s dowry. I rarely touch it. I keep it safe in my chim—in my hiding place. And some witch has exchanged my savings for faerie gold. So that I wouldn’t know anything was missing! If I took it out and weighed it in my hands I would think all was well. I’ve been enchanted, and I didn’t even know. Some witch has taken it all. All my money!”

  “If I said once, I’ve said a hundred times: it was a stupid hiding place,” Mr. Miller started.

  “What about the chest?” She turned on him. “The chest under the bed?”

  He blanched and spun on his heel and tore from the room. They could hear his heavy feet pounding up the stair to the bedroom, the creak of the bedroom door, the two swift steps across the wooden floor, and then the noise of the chest being dragged out from under the bed.

  Alinor, her hands filled with faerie gold, stood as still as everyone else and listened.

  “God save us, God spare us,” Mrs. Miller whispered into the silent room. “That’s all that we have in the world. We’ll be ruined if that’s bewitched too.”

  They could hear him fumbling with the keys and then the creak of the lid. They could hear his sigh of relief and the chink of coins being stirred. Then they heard him slam down the lid, lock up, and come slowly down the stairs, putting the keys in his waistcoat pocket.

  “Thank God it’s there,” he said, gray-faced in the doorway. “The tide-mill money is safe. It’s your savings that have gone. Jane’s dowry. How much was there?”

  Even in the grip of terrible loss Mrs. Miller was not going to tell her husband how much she had put away over the years. “Pounds, I had,” Mrs. Miller said viciously. “More than forty pounds. How am I going to get it back from a witch?”

  “Could be a passing thief,” Mrs. Wheatley ventured. “Someone from the yard?”

  “What thief leaves handfuls of faerie gold? Nobody has come in here; nobody knows where I hide my money. It’s a witch. It’s got to be a witch. She’s magicked away my savings and left me hers in exchange. This is witch money. This is witch work.”

  The room was silent. The silence thickened, curdled. Slowly, as slowly as a thought dawning, everyone turned to Alinor. Everyone looked at Alinor, who had worked for Mrs. Miller ever since she was a girl, who was known as a cunning woman with skills not of this world. Alinor, who needed gold for her daughter’s dowry, her son’s apprenticeship, who was said by her own husband to whore for faerie lords. Slowly, everyone looked at Alinor, where she stood, her face very pale, her hands filled with faerie gold.

  “You saw me take the purse from the chimney on the day you went to the market for me and bought my lace collar,” Mrs. Miller said.

  Alinor remembered turning her head away and seeing the reflection of Mrs. Miller fetching her purse in the shiny silver trencher.

  She swallowed. “That was months ago,” she said. “In the autumn. Last year.”

  “But you knew of her hiding place?” Mrs. Wheatley asked.

  Alinor turned to her friend. “Yes. So did many, I should think.”

  “But you knew, Alinor?”

  “And you needed money,” Mrs. Stoney pointed out. “I never thought you would get the dowry together.”

  “We worked,” Alys burst into speech. “Everyone saw us. We both worked. Like dogs. Here at the mill, everyone saw us working here, and we spun, and I worked the ferry. And my father gave me . . . and my uncle lent us . . .”

  “I never thought it’d be enough,” Mr. Stoney contributed. “I thought you must’ve borrowed from someone.”

  “No!” Alinor said proudly, and then thought she should have said yes.

  “I helped Alys,” Richard interrupted, and received a savage look from his mother.

  “You had no business to,” she said sharply.

  “And even so,” Mr. Stoney said, “you only had your wages.”

  “His inheritance?” Alinor said. Her hands were shaking, the faerie gold sparkled.

  “What inheritance? He’s got no inheritance,” Mr. Stoney said.

  Alys looked at her mother, her eyes huge in her pale face and silently shook her head. There was no inheritance.

  “Mrs. Reekie, say it isn’t so!” Mr. Miller said to her quietly. “I’ve known you for years. Say it isn’t so.”

  “Of course it isn’t so!” Alinor repeated. Even to her own ears her voice sounded weak, the denial unconvincing. She stretched her hands towards Mr. Miller’s reassuring bulk, as if to give him the faerie gold.

  “No, I don’t want it!” he said, stepping back and whipping his hands behind his back. “I don’t want it in my house.”

  “Let me throw it out the door then!” Alinor turned to the kitchen, and the open door to the yard. But Mrs. Miller suddenly barred the way.

  “Not so fast,” she said. “You’ll have to answer for this. No dashing out. You hold that, till you prove it isn’t yours!”

  “And where’s my dowry?” Jane demanded.

  Alinor tried to laugh, her hands sticky with faerie coins. “Mrs. Miller, I’ve been your neighbor for all my life. My mother delivered you—”

  “And everyone said she was a witch.”

  “No, they didn’t.”

  “She did charming. She was a cunning woman. She could find things. She could take things,” Mrs. Miller reminded her. “She could cast . . .”

  “But I don’t. You know I don’t.”

  “Your hands are full of faerie gold! Where’s it come from?”

  “I didn’t take your money!” Alinor exclaimed. “I didn’t change it into this!”

  “Lay ahold of her!” Mrs. Miller said urgently, as if Alinor’s raised voice changed everything. “She’s cursing us. And you”—she ordered her husband—“you get the other church warden or the minister. She’ll have to be charged.”

  “Back to the church?”

  “Are you arguing with me?” Mrs. Miller shouted at him. “A witch in our house with her hands full of faerie gold, and you’re standing there arguing with me?”

  Mr. Miller cast one incredulous look at Alinor and went out of the parlor into the kitchen, and pulled on his winter cape. He threw open the door to the yard and everyone heard the sound of a horse. “Sir William,” Mr. Miller said with evident relief. “His lordship’s coming. He’s