The Spider Speaks

At the Dog, James Device was locked in an upstairs bedroom. He did not care. He was fed and he had somewhere to sleep out of the April rain.

Jem sat on the window seat in the bare room with its straw pallet bed. He wasn’t used to being alone unless he was poaching in the forest, and in the forest you never were alone. There were other creatures looking for food too. Jem was friend to the otter and the badger, the fox and the rabbit, and if he had to trap a rabbit or snatch fish from the otter, that did not make them any less his companions. He knew the trees too, and leaned against them with his troubles and sometimes his happiness. He had not been happy for a long time.

He felt in his pocket. There was the spider.

She was a big spider, about the size of the palm of his hand. He looked at her. He liked her beady eyes and bristled legs. He stroked her black body. She carried a sac of eggs.

‘James Device,’ said the spider, ‘tonight you must make full confession of the crimes of your grand-dam, your mother and your sisters.’

‘But not little Jennet.’

‘But Alice Nutter.’

‘And then I will be free forever, won’t I?’

The spider waved two of her legs. Jem thought she was waving for freedom.

‘I will find thee a nook that will serve as support for a web and I will hang a bat nearby as a feast for you. You may eat him alive and use his leather wings for flight of your own. A spider that is not a fly yet can fly.’ He laughed at his own wit.

‘James Device,’ said the spider, ‘run away.’

‘Run away? But what about my reward?’

‘I have given you my advice,’ said the spider.

‘You told me to confess! You told me you would protect me! You told me I should be greater than Alice Nutter.’

‘Eight legs could not carry you fast enough away,’ said the spider.