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 worth 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.