Tidelands Page 46

  “Faerie gold,” someone said. “It’d fade to nothing if anyone but her held it.”

  “And who’s the father of her child?” someone else demanded.

  “We should take her to Chichester for the hangman!” someone suggested.

  “Satan’s child.” There was a low hiss from the back of the crowd. “A faerie-born boy.”

  “Her husband always said Rob was none of his begetting,” someone remembered.

  Rob turned a horrified look at his mother.

  “It’s not so!” Alinor cried out. “It’s not so! Not so! Rob is a good boy from a bad father!” She turned to Sir William, gabbling in her distress: “Your lordship, don’t let them speak ill of Rob! You know what a good boy he is.” She turned to Ned. “Take him away,” she implored him. “Get him away.”

  “Enough!” Sir William exclaimed, cutting through the rising shouts that Alinor should be taken to Chichester and hanged. “We’ll swim her,” he ruled, into the sudden avid silence. “In the millpond. If she comes up alive she’s innocent of all charges, and nobody says anything against her again. She repays the money to Mrs. Miller as she says she intended. Agreed? We swim her to see God’s will! Agreed? That’s my judgment, and my ruling! Agreed?”

  “Swim her,” half a dozen voices assented.

  “Quite right,” they said. “Duck her.”

  Alinor, blank with terror, turned unseeing to her brother, Ned, but he was looking down at the ground, shamed before everyone.

  “Ned, take Rob away,” she whispered to him. “Ned!”

  His head came up at the urgent tone in her voice.

  “Take Rob away!”

  Her whisper recalled him from his misery at her shame. “Yes,” he muttered. “Come on, Rob. Let’s get out of here. It’ll all be over in a moment.”

  “They shan’t touch her!” Rob exclaimed, pushing between his mother and the crowd, though the searcher women laid hold of her and would not let him take her.

  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.”

  James could see her rounded belly as they laid her on her back on one blade, the second blade just inches above her face, the golden tumble of her hair falling loose against the green of the weedy wooden paddles. She did not cry out, or scream for help; she had not said a word since she had sent Rob away. He realized she was speechless with terror.

  “Go on,” Sir William said to Mr. Miller. “Get on with it then.”

  The miller turned abruptly. “I’m opening the head sluice,” he said loudly, to warn her of the sudden roar of water, as he turned the great metal key that lifted the gate from the pond to the millrace beneath the wheel.

  The cascade of water pouring into the race forced a little sob from Alinor; but no one but James heard her. Now she could smell the icy water rising fast beneath the wheel, the weedy green smell of the mire, the creeping cold breath from the rush of icy wat
er. She could sense it rising higher and higher beneath her. Soon the millrace would be filled, and then the miller would open the drain to the mire, and take the brake off the wheel, the water would pour through the millrace and out into the mire, and the mill wheel would turn, and take her down into the waters.

  “Ready!” Mr. Miller shouted from inside the mill.

  The miller’s lad took his balancing weight off the wheel and it shifted slightly, dropping Alinor towards the water. There was a little gasp of anticipation from everyone.

  “Go on,” someone said.

  “Turn the wheel!” Sir William shouted to Mr. Miller inside the mill.

  They heard his shouted reply. “I’m turning now!”

  “No!” James said. He stepped towards the blade of the wheel where her bright hair was lifting in the wind. “Alinor!” he shouted at her.

  For the first time that day she turned her head and looked directly at him, but he saw from her agonized face that she was beyond hearing him, beyond seeing him. Strapped to the mill wheel, facing the great terror of her life, she was blind to him and heard neither the cascade of water pouring in, nor the creak of the wheel as it started to turn and lift her up.

  Stunned, James watched her inexorable rise to the top of the wheel and then her descent on the other side. He took two steps to the back of the wheel and met her terrified gaze as she headed towards the flooding water beneath her. Down she went, into the narrow churning millrace, and he saw her hair swirl around her white face as she went down and down and then, horrifically, the wheel creaked and stopped. It turned no more, it was holding her underwater. There was a silence, there was a long moment.

  “God’s will,” someone whispered in awe. “God has stopped the wheel to drown the witch.”

  “No! No! It’s the weight!” Mr. Miller shouted from inside the mill. “It’s her weight on the bottom of the wheel.” He came bounding from the mill as everyone crowded round for a glimpse of her golden hair in the pouring water that rushed past the wheel and out to sea.

  James understood, and flung himself on the back of the wheel, hands gripping and feet slipping, clinging desperately to the blades hauling it round. He could feel the wheel, yielding, and then slowly he felt it turn again, in the constant pouring swirl of the water, and then lift blade by blade. Slowly, the drowning woman came out of the depths.

  He stepped back. Now the wheel was taking up speed. She went over the top of the wheel and past him again and he caught a glimpse of her white face striped with waterweed, water pouring from her clothes, her boots, her open mouth. He heard over the terrible roar of the wheel her retching cough and her gasp for air and then she was plunged under the waters again and she disappeared.

  The wheel, turning faster in the churning water, brought her up on the other side, the miller’s lad shut off the sluice to hold back the water and Mr. Miller, inside the mill, clamped the grinding stone on its bed to hold the wheel with Alinor at the middle of the turn. There was seaweed in her hair, seawater streaming from her open mouth, her eyes black with terror, her gown plastered to her straining belly. Mr. Miller came from the mill, his face dark with anger, pulled a hefty work knife from his boot, and cut the cords that bound her to the blade of the wheel. Like a sack of flour he pulled her towards him, slung her over his shoulders, stepped back from the wheel. The crowd, awestruck, parted to make way for him as he carried her away from the wheel to the mill yard and dropped her, like a sodden sack, facedown on the cobbles.

  Mrs. Wheatley had a stable rug to wrap around her as Alinor heaved and vomited dirty water, and heaved again and again, choking and fighting for her breath.

  “So she’s not a witch.” Sir William climbed down from the mill platform to stand over the retching woman. He addressed his tenants in his most magisterial tones. “She survived the ordeal. As to the theft: I rule that she borrowed Mrs. Miller’s savings, planning to return them, leaving her tokens as a promise. This she will do and I will guarantee it. Mrs. Reekie is proven innocent of witchcraft. We have tested her with a fair ordeal and she is no witch.”

  “Amen,” they said, as devout as before they had been frightened.

  “What about the baby?” Mrs. Miller demanded. “She’s certainly a whore.”

  “Church court,” Sir William ruled swiftly. “Next Sunday.”

  The sound of a cart distracted everyone. It was the Stoney cart with Alys on the box, her brother, Rob, beside her, Ned in the back. Alys drove the cart into the yard, to where her mother was lying, bundled on the cobbles, wrapped in the horse rug, streaming with water, surrounded by neighbors who would not touch her. Alys passed the reins to Rob, jumped down from the box, and stormed past Sir William as if he was a nobody. She knelt at her mother’s side and raised her up. Alinor could not stand, but Mr. Miller took one arm and Alys took the other. Nobody else moved. Together, they dragged her, still choking and retching up green water, across to the waiting cart where Ned reached out for her, and loaded her, like a beached fish, into the back, lying her on her side so she could spew out water.

  “Mrs. Reekie is cleared of witchcraft,” Sir William declared loudly. “She is innocent.”

  Alys looked at him and at James with her blue eyes blazing with rage. “Agreed,” she said through her teeth, and then she clicked to the horse and they went out of the yard.

  As James rode back to the Priory in the early winter dusk he could see a narrow bar of firelight through the closed shutters of Ferry-house, and he stopped his horse, tied the reins to the gate, and tapped on the kitchen door. Alys answered it, a horn lantern in her hand.

  “You,” she said shortly.

  “How is your mother?”

  “She has stopped vomiting water but, of course, she could drown later, when it flows into her dreams. She might die of poisoning from the foul water, or she may miscarry her baby and bleed to death.”

  “Alys, I am so sorry that . . .”

  The look of hatred that she shot at him would have silenced any man. He said nothing, then: “Please give her my good wishes for her recovery. I will come tomorrow and—”

  “You will not. You will give me a purse of gold for her,” she said quietly. “She is going to leave here. I am going with her. We are going to London and we’re going to set up a carting business. You are going to buy us a storehouse with a place to live. I’ve taken the cart and the horse from my husband’s family. We’ll leave tomorrow at dawn, and we’ll set up a business and keep ourselves.”

  He was astounded by the authority of the young woman. “You’re leaving your husband?”

  “That’s between him and me. I don’t have to explain to you. We’ll never come back. You’ll never see her again.”

  “You know that the child is mine.”

  She shook her head. “You lost any rights when you let them strap your child’s mother on the mill wheel and put her under the water.”

  “I have to tell her—”

  “Nothing. You have nothing to tell her. You watched your lover accused of whoring and you let them swim her for a witch. You have nothing to do but to give me the money I demand, or I will tell the world that you are the man who forced her. I will name you as a rapist and you will be shamed as she has been shamed. I will name you as a papist spy and I will see you burned to death in front of Chichester Cathedral.”

  “It was better that she be swum for a witch than hanged for a thief!”

  “It was me that should have been hanged for a thief!” she flared at him. “I owe her my life, just as you owe her your honor. She kept my secret and yours, and it has nearly killed her.”

  He took a breath as he thought of the secrets that she had kept for him.

  “For love of us,” Alys said through her teeth. “Because she loves you and me so much she faced her worst fear for us, and she nearly died for us. I will repay her with my love. And you will pay too. You will pay for the child that she carries for love of you, you will pay for your betrayal, and you will pay for our silence. That’s wo
rth a purse of gold. And you will go now, and bring it here at once.”

  “I must see her again,” he said desperately.

  The girl was like a Fury. “I would gouge your eyes out of your head and blind you for life rather than you saw her again,” she promised. “Go and get the money. Leave it on the doorstep, and go.”

  “I don’t have that sort of money.”

  “Steal it,” she spat at him. “It’s what I did.”

  It was a cold dawn on the harbor, the tide coming in fast over snowy reeds and icy puddles, the seagulls crying white against the gray light. The barn owl, quartering the hedge line along the harbor, was bright against the dark hedge and then invisible against the frozen bank. A few flakes of snow filtered from the pewter clouds as Alys helped her mother to the seat of the wagon and climbed up beside her.

  Alinor was shuddering with cold, and she constantly coughed into the hem of her cloak. Tenderly Alys took up the reins, putting her other arm around Alinor, who rested her head on her daughter’s shoulder. Alys clicked to the horse to start up the road to London.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  A few years ago I realized that, though I still loved my fictionalized biographies of well-known and lesser-known women, I wanted to write a different sort of historical fiction: actually a series of books tracing the rise of a family from obscurity to prosperity. I reread the Forsyte Saga and discovered that my favorite scenes were the few and rather minor moments when the principal character went back to explore his ancestral home. As a reader, I wanted to know more about the story before the saga; as a writer, I understood that I wanted to write a historical fiction series of many generations of an ordinary family.

  So many of us are exploring our family histories these days because we want to know who our ancestors were and what they did. Some of us take that very deep, exploring epigenetics. Some of us want to trace our connections with peoples and landscapes that are now strange to us. Some of us find remarkable echoes of our own modern lives in the historical past, as if we have inherited gifts or skills or preferences. Most families are like my family: with the earliest documents showing a family as humble and poor and, by little ordinary acts of courage and years of perseverance, largely unrecorded, rising and prospering—and sometimes, of course, declining.