Tidelands

“Do you deny this?” James prompted Alinor, but she was not looking at him. She was looking across the room at Alys’s white face, seeing that Richard Stoney was holding her away. Alinor barely heard James; she was gazing at her daughter, her beloved daughter. She was thinking what she might have to do to keep Alys safe.

“You have to answer me,” James prompted her.

She turned her head and looked at him indifferently. “Yes, I did see her in the reflection,” she confirmed. “But I didn’t do anything about it. I’m not a thief. I don’t care where she keeps her egg money.”

“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 . . .”