‘It has ceased to produce,’ she says. ‘Its magic bled out. This tree is a sore testimonial to what was, and I would not look at it any more. It was one of the last magic things I knew of, and it is dead. The disease came and leached its magic away. It is empty now. Magic is a delicate thing, you see, that disperses or dies when challenged; far weaker than man’s labour, or his sicknesses, which it is nowadays set against. Nobody understands its delicacy. They think it some great overpowering thing, but it is more like some small creature of the woods, always scurrying away, broken by attacks of the heart and fear when stirred.

‘Besides, it draws Gaels, who fill it full of rats and crows, and removing it, I hope, would remove them, and I will not listen to Concessa on the subject any more. She stoves my head in two with her talk of it. She thinks it is a source of the sickness.’

Hacquelebacq looks at the tree and does see a little hollow, but at the angle he is at, he can see nothing of its insides. It is too shaded, but he will not come closer.

‘Why do they put crows and rats in it?’ he asks. ‘It is just a tree.’

‘To scare us, and they believe those animals spread the sickness.’

‘Do they?’ Hacquelebacq says.

He glances back at the badger; it is pestering its noose again.

‘I do not know,’ she says. ‘Everything carries it, perhaps. The words we speak carry it, if a certain inflection is given to them when pronounced. Perhaps when two minds meet over a shared idea, it spreads its asphyxiation between their lungs. My sister made love to a man with it. She did not like him, and she does not have it, and her unborn child kicks away in her belly, with much vigour, so it does not have it either, but that man is long dead. I can only conclude, then, that it is a disease of the brain, a type of weakness you succumb to if your will is of a certain bent.’

This woman makes him uneasy, she is so sure of herself.

‘Do you believe in faeries?’ he asks. ‘You must not, to be cutting down such a thing.’

She looks at him, leans more heavily on her axe. Her gaze is tired.

‘No, they do not exist,’ she says. ‘Do you have dark designs inside you, Monsieur Hacquelebacq, ones that send you running about from place to place?’

He is stunned. Something in the way she stands makes her look like she is a part of the crooked tree, an offshoot of it, some sapling it planted beside itself before death. He wishes there were some breeze. The heat is making him unfocussed. It is not possible she could know anything of his past.