Tidelands

Everyone jostled out into the harsh winter sunshine of the yard. The tide was on the ebb and seagulls were crying over the mire. The millpond gates were bumping closed, pushed together by the deep water in the millpond. There was a trickle of water, overflowing the top of the gates.

“Mrs. Reekie, these good women will have to examine you, you know that,” Sir William ruled.

Alinor bowed her head to her landlord.

“Mrs. Wheatley, would you choose three women to take Mrs. Reekie into the house privately, and examine her closely for witch’s marks, ask her to name the father of her child, and when she expects to be confined.”

Mrs. Wheatley, her lips compressed, looked around the crowd of neighbors, old friends, and some old enemies. Mrs. Stoney flinched back against their wagon. Blandly, Mrs. Wheatley ignored her. “Mrs. Jaden, Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Huntley,” she said, naming her cousin, her friend, and a woman who worked as a midwife in the south of the island. Sir William waved them towards the house, and the four women went back inside with Alinor walking slowly between them.

“I won’t have her in my house!” Mrs. Miller said furiously. “You should do it in the yard. Strip her naked out here!”

“You will oblige me, Mrs. Miller, I am sure,” said his lordship. “We’re not complete heathens.” He turned aside and spoke quietly with James. Alys tried to edge closer to hear, but Richard Stoney held her tightly. He held to her as if he would save her from drowning, as his mother and his father stood at a little distance, looking at the white face of the daughter-in-law they had never thought good enough.

Mrs. Stoney turned to her husband, put her mouth to his ear. “The dowry,” she said quietly. “I have it in my pocket. Should we—”

“Be still,” he whispered. “We’ll look at it when we get home and this is all over. They’re wed, it’s the dowry she brought. You saw it, it was good coin. Leave it be for now.”

She nodded and waited in silence like all the other neighbors. After a quarter of an hour the searcher women came out of the house again, Alinor walking with them, her cap off, her golden hair tumbled as if they had run their fingers through it, hunting for signs. There was a thin raw scratch on the side of Alinor’s neck, and a trickle of blood from her ear to her white collar, which was torn. Rob exclaimed: “Ma!” and she gave him a weary glance. “It’s nothing,” she tried to reassure him. “Nothing.”

Mrs. Wheatley walked up to her employer and stood before him.

“Have you examined Mrs. Reekie?” he asked her.

“We have.”

“Is she with child?”

“Yes, sir. She believes that she will be brought to bed in the month of May.”

There was a muttered exclamation from the Stoneys. Richard looked at Alys as if he would ask her something, but met such a glare from her blue eyes that he said nothing.

“So the child was conceived . . . ?”

“In August or September, sir.”

“Did she name the father of her child?”

James cleared his throat as if to speak; but Mrs. Wheatley continued with her report. “No, sir, she is incorrigible. When we begged her, for the sake of God and for her own good reputation, to give his name she said nothing.”

Sir William nodded. “Is it her missing husband’s child?” he suggested.

Mrs. Wheatley was quick. “Nobody has seen Zachary the fisherman for over a year, sir. But, of course, he could have come back and visited her secretly.”

“Is that what happened?” Sir William asked Alinor, giving her a way out from the accusation of whoring. “Think before you speak, Mrs. Reekie. Think very carefully. Is that what happened?”

“No,” she said shortly.

His lordship looked at her for a moment. “Are you sure?”

Alys whispered “Ma!”

Alinor looked towards her. “No,” she said again.

Sir William returned his attention to the searcher women. “Did you scratch her for a witch?”

“We did,” Mrs. Wheatley said. “With the darning needle that we found in the sewing case in the parlor.” She turned politely to Mrs. Miller. “We left it on the table if you want to throw it away.”

Mrs. Miller gave an exaggerated shudder. “You take it away. It’ll be cursed.”

“And did she bleed?” Sir William pursued his inquiry.

“She bled like a mortal woman and she felt the pain. Not very much, but red blood, like any woman.” She pointed to the scratch on Alinor’s neck. Alinor stood like a statue, her eyes on the ground.

“And did you examine her for witch’s marks?”

“We did,” Mrs. Smith answered. “She has no extra teats that we could see; but she has a mole in the shape of a moon, very uncommon and very suspicious, on her ribs.”

“In the shape of a moon?”

“A new moon. A sickle moon. A witch’s moon.”