“But you knew that your mother was with child too? Conceived at the same time? How’s that possible?”

Alys looked despairingly towards her white-faced mother. “It’s nothing to do with us, Richard. And the money—”

“You hush,” Alinor said firmly to her daughter. She was calm now, as if the needle scratch had bled away all shame. She nodded to Richard. “Take her away,” she said. “I told you before. Take her to your home. I don’t want her here.”

“Ma! I have to tell them—”

“Never,” Alinor said firmly. “You have nothing to say that can help me. Just go.”

“We don’t have to do what you say!” Mr. Stoney blustered.

“For pity’s sake, take her away,” Alinor said simply to him, and Richard nodded and half dragged and half lifted Alys towards the wagon. His father and mother followed, torn between their desire to join their neighbors in the trial of a witch, and the horror that the witch was now related to their family.

They were climbing in the wagon and setting the horses going when someone spoke up from the back of the crowd: “Swim her!”

“I didn’t do it with witchcraft, I did it as an exchange,” Alinor said rapidly to Sir William. “It was a loan. That’s why I left everything that I have, to show that I would pay it back. As a token that it was me and I would repay.”

“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!”