“We worked,” Alys burst into speech. “Everyone saw us. We both worked. Like dogs. Here at the mill, everyone saw us working here, and we spun, and I worked the ferry. And my father gave me . . . and my uncle lent us . . .”

“I never thought it’d be enough,” Mr. Stoney contributed. “I thought you must’ve borrowed from someone.”

“No!” Alinor said proudly, and then thought she should have said yes.

“I helped Alys,” Richard interrupted, and received a savage look from his mother.

“You had no business to,” she said sharply.

“And even so,” Mr. Stoney said, “you only had your wages.”

“His inheritance?” Alinor said. Her hands were shaking, the faerie gold sparkled.

“What inheritance? He’s got no inheritance,” Mr. Stoney said.

Alys looked at her mother, her eyes huge in her pale face and silently shook her head. There was no inheritance.

“Mrs. Reekie, say it isn’t so!” Mr. Miller said to her quietly. “I’ve known you for years. Say it isn’t so.”

“Of course it isn’t so!” Alinor repeated. Even to her own ears her voice sounded weak, the denial unconvincing. She stretched her hands towards Mr. Miller’s reassuring bulk, as if to give him the faerie gold.

“No, I don’t want it!” he said, stepping back and whipping his hands behind his back. “I don’t want it in my house.”

“Let me throw it out the door then!” Alinor turned to the kitchen, and the open door to the yard. But Mrs. Miller suddenly barred the way.

“Not so fast,” she said. “You’ll have to answer for this. No dashing out. You hold that, till you prove it isn’t yours!”

“And where’s my dowry?” Jane demanded.

Alinor tried to laugh, her hands sticky with faerie coins. “Mrs. Miller, I’ve been your neighbor for all my life. My mother delivered you—”

“And everyone said she was a witch.”

“No, they didn’t.”

“She did charming. She was a cunning woman. She could find things. She could take things,” Mrs. Miller reminded her. “She could cast . . .”

“But I don’t. You know I don’t.”

“Your hands are full of faerie gold! Where’s it come from?”

“I didn’t take your money!” Alinor exclaimed. “I didn’t change it into this!”

“Lay ahold of her!” Mrs. Miller said urgently, as if Alinor’s raised voice changed everything. “She’s cursing us. And you”—she ordered her husband—“you get the other church warden or the minister. She’ll have to be charged.”

“Back to the church?”

“Are you arguing with me?” Mrs. Miller shouted at him. “A witch in our house with her hands full of faerie gold, and you’re standing there arguing with me?”

Mr. Miller cast one incredulous look at Alinor and went out of the parlor into the kitchen, and pulled on his winter cape. He threw open the door to the yard and everyone heard the sound of a horse. “Sir William,” Mr. Miller said with evident relief. “His lordship’s coming. He’s a magistrate. He can decide what’s to be done.”