“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?”