Tidelands

James grabbed his arm. “Better this, than she’s accused of theft,” he said urgently. “This will be over in a moment. But if they get her to Chichester they’ll hang her for theft on the gallows.”

“Sir, she can’t bear it! The pond is deep water. She can’t bear it! You know—”

“Yes, I can,” Alinor interrupted him. Her face was white as whey, her eyes huge with fear in her ashen face. “But you go, Rob. I can’t stand for you to see this.”

Already people were running to the mill to get ropes to truss her up, shuffling their feet and hesitating, not knowing how to lay hold of her, frightened of touching her, but pushed forwards by more people behind them. Sir William watched them, scowling, and nodded to Ned. “Take the lad away,” he said. “That’s an order. He shouldn’t see.”

Ned took Rob by the shoulder and forced him through the yard gate, towards the ferry, bobbing on the ebbing tide. “We’ll just wait here, beside the ferry,” Ned said, his voice gruff. “Then we’ll go back and get her when it’s over.”

“How can she be with child?” Rob whispered to his uncle.

Ned shook his head. “Shamed,” was all he said shortly.

“But how can she?”

Ned wrapped the boy in his arms and pushed the young face against the rough weave of his jacket. “Pray,” he advised him. “And don’t ask me, I can’t bear it. My own sister! Under my roof!”

James watched the two leave. “How can we stop this?” he demanded urgently.

“We can’t,” said Sir William. “Let them do it. Get it over with.”

Alinor did not look at either man as the crowd encircled her, tied her hands behind her back and her legs together with coil after coil of rope around her long skirts. Then they herded her towards the mill, supporting her hobbled walk, half carrying her. She went unresisting, her face so greenish-white that she looked half-drowned already. Mrs. Wheatley was trailing behind, shaking her head, Mrs. Miller angrily leading the way.

They got to the millpond bank and looked in the green weedy depths. The pond was full, the tide gates closed, holding back the water from the mire where the sea was draining away. The gates rubbed against each other with the squeak of damp wood, pressed by the deep mass of water. The pond was limpid, like a deep bowl set beside the muddy harbor. The old walls were slippery and green, the water gates trailing seaweed like hair. But there were no steps to get into the pond and it was too wide for a rope to pull her from one side to another. Nobody wanted to go near the edge: the water was menacing in itself, in its dark depths, deathly cold in winter.

“We need more rope!” someone said.

“Just throw her in from the bank as she is, tied,” came the suggestion. “See if she can get out on her own?”

“The mill wheel.” Mrs. Miller was inspired by spite. “Strap her on the mill wheel.”

Incredulously, her husband looked at her. “On my wheel?” he demanded.

“Two turns!” someone said from the back of the crowd. “Strap her on and turn it twice in the millrace. That’s a fair test.”

“My wheel?” Mr. Miller said again. He looked at Sir William, horrified.

“It turns fast?” his lordship asked quietly. “You can dunk her and bring her out again?”

“It can turn fast if it’s not milling,” the man said. “If the stone’s not engaged, it will go as fast as the water pours in.”

“Two turns,” his lordship ruled, raising his voice over the murmurs of excitement. “And if she comes up alive, she’s no witch. She repays the money, and she’s released. Agreed?”

“Aye. Fair enough, yes. Agreed,” the people called out, excited at the prospect of a witch trial, looking from the slight woman to the huge wheel, which stood motionless, the bottom blades deep in the millrace, the upper blades white with frost in the freezing air.

Alinor’s knees were buckling beneath her, she swayed on her feet, fainting with fear. She had lost her voice. She barely knew where she was. James could not look at her, as two of the searcher women took her bound arms at the elbows and half led and half dragged her away from the bank of the millpond, to the platform at the side of the wheel. The women tightened her hands behind her back, and twisted the rope around and around her breasts and her swelling belly.

“Better than hanging,” Sir William reminded James, as they stepped on the platform beside the wheel.

“She’s terrified of water,” James whispered.

“Still better than hanging.”

The men had to lift her, as limp as a new corpse, up to the mill wheel.

“Put her on the blades of the wheel,” Mrs. Miller suggested at the forefront of the crowd. “Tie her on so she don’t slip off.”

Wordlessly, Mr. Miller gestured to the mill lad to hold the wheel steady by stepping on it with both feet, holding the green blades, and leaning back as a counterweight, as they lifted Alinor by her shoulders and legs and laid her on one of the blades of the wheel. They took another rope and lashed her on.

“Make sure she’s tied tight,” Sir William ordered. Aside to James he said: “We don’t want her falling off and getting trapped under the wheel.”