Tidelands Read online

  “Egg money! There was more than forty pounds in there!” Mrs. Miller exclaimed.

  “My dowry!” Jane reminded everyone.

  Alinor shrugged, as contemptuous as a lady of court. “I don’t know. I never saw what was inside the purse. I never held the purse. I don’t know the weight or how much you had saved. I only ever saw it in your hand as you gave me money to buy your lace. I never even touched it, did I?”

  Alinor’s disdain was more than Mrs. Miller could bear. “I don’t doubt you changed the money into faerie gold without touching it! Without taking the purse from its hiding place!” she shouted. “I don’t doubt it for a moment! I don’t doubt you never touched it; but did it all at midnight from the mire, where you’re always alone, walking in moonlight, on paths that no one else follows, talking to yourself.”

  Alinor swayed back a little from the venom in the woman’s voice.

  “She didn’t take it!” Alys suddenly spoke up, cutting through the rising noise, stepping forward, pulling away from her new husband. “I know she did not!”

  Alinor raised her head and met her daughter’s eyes. “Alys, you say nothing,” she ordered. She looked past her to Richard’s strained face. “Take her away,” she said quietly. “It’s her wedding day. She shouldn’t be here. Take her home. Take her to her new home.”

  He nodded, his young face shocked, and tried to guide Alys to the door, but she resisted him.

  “I won’t go,” she told him.

  “Then stay silent,” Richard said. “As your mother tells you.”

  Alys turned to her mother. “Ma,” she said desperately. “You know. . . .”

  “Yes, I know.” Alinor nodded. “I know. Just go, Alys.”

  “Plotting!” Mrs. Miller exclaimed. “So there’s two of them!”

  With relief, James saw Ned enter the kitchen and look around, bewildered. Rob came in behind him. “What’s all this?” Ned asked. “What’s going on?”

  “Mrs. Reekie has been accused of stealing Mrs. Miller’s savings by witchcraft and leaving faerie gold in its place,” James said.

  Ned walked up to the table, brushing through the crowd. “Lord, you people,” he said scornfully. “Can’t you even go to a wedding feast without stopping for a quarrel?” He went to his sister’s side and she turned to him, her hands filled with the coins, and at once he checked, frozen at the sight of them. “What’s this?” he said in a quite different voice. “What’re you doing with your coins, Alinor?”

  “Are these her coins? Her own coins? D’you know them?” Mrs. Miller demanded, her voice sharp with excitement.

  “Do you recognize them?” Mr. Miller asked.

  “Yes,” Ned said simply. “I’d think so. But one looks the same as another to me. I take no interest in them. Alinor—what’s happening?”

  Rob came to his mother’s side and she tried to smile reassuringly, her hands filled with the damning evidence.

  Everyone turned to James. Nobody had any doubts about the accusation now. Ned had given absolute confirmation of his sister’s guilt.

  “Mrs. Reekie, how did your coins get into Mrs. Miller’s purse?” James asked quietly.

  Mutely, Alinor shook her head. Ned took his hat off his head and she tipped the coins into it. Two of them were such light scraps of silver that they stuck to her sweating palms and she brushed them off. There was a little gasp of horror as if she were peeling faerie gold from her own skin. Ned put his hat down on the table before James as if it were evidence, and he did not want to touch it.

  “I don’t know,” Alinor said steadily. “I have no idea.”

  “I think we should wait for Sir William’s coming,” James said.

  Alys shot him a desperate look. “You’re sitting there, you decide,” she said. “This is a mistake, obviously. Let my mother go home. Let’s all go on to the wedding.”

  “Hush, Alys,” Alinor whispered to her.

  “My mother is innocent of anything, sir,” Rob said awkwardly. “Please clear her name.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Mrs. Wheatley said under her breath. “These poor children.”

  “It’s her own faerie gold,” Mrs. Miller said flatly. “As her brother says. Transformed from my good coin. Like alchemy. Gold to dross. What could this be but enchantment? She must be a witch.”

  “Prick her,” someone said from the back of the room and at once everyone spoke.

  “And search her for marks.”

  “Strip her.”

  “Get the women to look . . .”

  “Devil’s teats . . .”

  “Test her with a Bible!”

  “Moles on her skin . . .”

  “The devil leaves his marks.”

  Alinor was as white as her collar, frozen into stillness.

  “Sir,” Rob said urgently to his tutor, “they’ve no right. Don’t let them get hold of her. Don’t let them . . .”

  James tried to assert himself over the rising noise. “I am still taking evidence here,” he claimed. “And I will take a decision.”

  “In writing,” Mr. Miller supported him. “Decision in writing.”

  “Swim her!” someone said, and there was immediate agreement. “Swim her.”

  “That’s the only way!”

  “Search her, and then swim her.”

  For the first time Alinor looked towards James. Her eyes were black with terror. “I can’t,” she said flatly. “That, I can’t.”

  “She’s very afraid of water.” Ned spoke rapidly to James. “Very afraid. She’s afraid even on my ferry. She can’t be swum.”

  “Stop this!” Alys demanded, her voice high with panic. “Stop this!”

  “Sir?” Rob’s young face was anguished. “Mr. Summer?”

  James rose to his feet. “This is not the time or the place,” he ruled. “I am going to order her arrest—”

  “She’s already arrested!” someone shouted from the back. “We want her tested!”

  “Tested now!”

  “In water!”

  The crowd surged forward and Ned and Rob found they were pushing against grasping hands and a mass of bodies. Ned tried to get his arms around Alinor and pull her towards him, Rob faced out towards the people, who were crowding more and more closely. He slapped their hands away from his mother, trying to get between her and them, but they were coming from every side of the room and he could not block them all. Richard Stoney had hold of Alys, dragging her back from her mother, pulling her away, following his own mother and father, who were leaving, thrusting their way through the crowd, out to the yard to the wedding cart, fearful of what was happening.

  “Stop this!” James shouted, but his authority was melting away in the crowd’s rising heat. “I order you to stand still!”

  Ned got Alinor around the waist and was pulling her away from the crowd in the kitchen, taking her into the house, towards the parlor door. Alinor, with people pulling at her gown, dragging at her apron, snatching off her cap so her hair tumbled down around her frightened white face, was fighting to go with him, pushing as hard as she could to stay in his arms and make their way towards the parlor. James, seeing what they were doing, came out from behind the table and opened the parlor door, got hold of Ned’s jacket, and hauled him backwards, the three of them head-to-head when he felt Ned suddenly flinch and recoil: “You’ve a belly on you!”

  Alinor, white as skimmed milk, her jacket ripped from her shoulders, her cap lost, her apron pulled aside so everyone could see the swell of her pregnancy, looked her brother in the face amid all the noise and said: “Yes, God forgive me.”

  “A belly?”

  “Not now,” James said quickly, but it was too late: someone in the forefront of the crowd had overheard.

  “The witch’s whelping,” someone exclaimed.

  “No!” Mrs. Wheatley exclaimed. She pushed through the crowd to Alinor’s side. One glance at her blanched face and her curving body confirmed her guilt. “Oh! Alinor! God forgive you. What’ve you done?”