The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag

The rest of it had been shot away by poachers.

As I had known it would be, everything in the wood was wet. I gave a shiver at the clammy coldness, steeled myself, and waded into the vegetation. Before I had gone half a dozen steps into the ferns and bracken, I was thoroughly soaked to the knees.

Something snapped in the underbrush. I froze as a dark form swooped on silent wings across my path: an owl, perhaps, mistaking the heavy morning mist for its twilight hunting time. Although it had startled me, its very presence was comforting: It meant that no one else was with me in the wood.

I pushed on, trying to follow the faint paths, any one of which, I knew, would lead me to the clearing at the very center.

Between two ancient, gnarled trees, the way was barred with what seemed to be a mossy gate, its gray wood twisted with rot. I was halfway over the crumbling barrier before I realized that I was once again at the steps of the old gallows. How many doomed souls had climbed these very stairs before being turned off the platform overhead? With a gulp, I looked up at the remnants of the structure, which now was open to the sky.

A leathery hand seized my wrist like a band of hot iron.

'What you up to, then? What you doin' snoopin' round this place?'

It was Mad Meg.

She shoved her sooty face so close to mine I could see the sandy bristles on the end of her chin. The witch in the wood, I thought, for one panicky moment, before I regained my senses.

'Oh, hullo, Meg,' I said, as calmly as I could, trying to tame my pounding heart. 'I'm glad I found you. You gave me quite a fright.'

My voice was shakier than I had hoped.

'Frights as lives in Gibbet Wood,' Meg said darkly. 'Frights as lives here an' not elsewhere.'

'Exactly,' I agreed, not having the faintest idea what she was on about. 'I'm glad you're here with me. Now I shan't be afraid.'

'No Devil now,' Meg said, rubbing her hands together. 'Devil's dead and jolly good.'

I remembered how frightened she had been at Rupert's performance of Jack and the Beanstalk. To Meg, Rupert was the Devil, who had killed Robin Ingleby, shrunk him to a wooden doll, and put him on the stage. Better to approach this indirectly.

'Did you have a nice rest at the vicarage, Meg?' I asked.

She spat on the trunk of an oak as if she were spitting in a rival witch's eye.

'Her turned me out,' she said. 'Took old Meg's bracelet and turned her out, so she did. 'Dirty, dirty.''

'Mrs. Richardson?' I asked. 'The vicar's wife? She turned you out?'

Meg grinned a horrid grin and set off through the trees at a near-gallop. I followed at her heels, through underbrush and ferns, deadfall, and the snags of thorns. Five minutes later and breathless, we were back where we had begun, at the foot of the rotted gallows.

'See there,' she said, pointing. 'That's where 'e took 'im.'

'Took who, Meg?'

Robin Ingleby, she meant. I was sure of it.

'The Devil took Robin right here?' I asked.

'Turned 'im into wood, 'e did,' she confided, looking over her shoulder. 'Wood to wood.'

'Did you actually see him? The Devil, I mean.'

This was something that hadn't occurred to me before.

Was there a chance that Meg had seen someone in the wood with Robin? She lived, after all, in a shack among the trees, and it seemed unlikely that much happened within the bounds of Gibbet Wood that escaped her scrutiny.

'Meg saw,' she said knowingly.

'What did he look like?'

'Meg saw. Old Meg sees plenty.'

'Can you draw?' I asked, with sudden inspiration. I pulled my notebook from my pocket and handed her a stubby pencil.

'Here,' I said, flipping to a blank page, 'draw me the Devil. Draw him in Gibbet Wood. Draw the Devil taking Robin.'

Meg gave something that I can describe only as a wet snicker. And then she squatted down, flattened the open notebook against her knee, and began to draw.

I think I was expecting something childish--nothing more than scrawled stick figures--but in Meg's sooty fingers, the pencil sprang to life. On the page, the glade in Gibbet Wood slowly appeared: a tree here, a tree there; now the rotted wood of the gallows, instantly recognizable. She had started at the margins and was working in towards the center of the page.

From time to time she clucked over her work, turning the pencil over and erasing a line. She was quite good, I have to give her that. Her sketch was probably better than I might have done myself.

And then she drew Robin.