Keturah and Lord Death Read online

  “They danced together at village dances; they prayed together at night before they slept, and then slept close. Often, for no reason, Grandfather would bring his wife a flower. Grandmother in her garden would bring the biggest, reddest strawberry for her husband, the darkest and sweetest raspberries, the newest carrots. She made rose-water from dying roses and splashed it on herself for the sake of Grandfather. They drew the girl into their circle of uncommon love and established in her forever a desire to have such a thing for herself someday.

  “After this, the girl longed for a love that could not be ended by death. From the time she was young, she knew that her true love was there, somewhere, living a life that would one day intersect her own. Knowing this made every day full of sweet possibility. Knowing that her true love lived and breathed and went about his day under her same sun made her fears vanish, her sorrows small, and her hopes high. Though she did not yet know his face, the color of his eyes, still she knew him better than anyone else knew him, knew his hopes and dreams, what made him laugh and cry.”

  I paused to look at Lord Death. He was regarding me with an unreadable look, a look of great concentration. Had I not seen this same look across the flames of the common fire when I told fairy tales to the villagers?

  He leaned back as if to pull himself out of the web of my story. With a gesture of his hand he said, “Every girl dreams of such love. Then they marry and quarrel, and the cares of life drive love out.”

  “The girl knew that quarrels would come because their lives were intertwined—how passionately one defends a heart that is vulnerable,” I said.

  “The girl and her true love will get old and ugly.” Was his tone defiant? Or was it that he wished—demanded— that I persuade him?

  “They will, and yet they will see past the scars of time to view the soul that first loved.”

  “Could such a love be?” Lord Death asked, but his voice was not harsh.

  “We will never know, for one day Death came for the girl. She knew that her soul’s heart would love as much as her living heart, and that she would long and ache and mourn for eternity for her true love. She tried to persuade Lord Death, tried to make him see how dark and lonely would be the life of her future love without her. She tried to tell Lord Death how even he would rejoice for the sweetness of that hoped-for love, if only he would let it be.” I was weeping now, for a truer story I had never told. “Death would not be persuaded, for he had found her first, and yet...”

  “And yet?” Lord Death said quietly.

  “The end of the story I cannot tell.”

  “Cannot tell?”

  “Will not tell—until tomorrow. Let me live, sir,” I begged, “and I will tell you the ending tomorrow.”

  The leaves in the trees shushed me. A wind caught some dust and leaves and swirled them into the air. The horse shied and quivered. Lord Death was utterly still. His face went from disbelief to astonishment.

  “Are you saying you will not tell me?”

  “Take me home, and I swear that I will come to you in the wood and tell you the rest of the story. Only let me live another day.”

  The wind blew his hair and his cloak, and even the shadows around him boiled. “You think too highly of love,” he said. “Love is no more than a story spun out of dust and dreams, having no substance. But I would know the end, and I confess I hope you can indeed show me a love that is greater than death. Return to me tomorrow, and you will come with me then.”

  He smiled to himself, and the shadows of the forest clotted around him.

  “And I grant you a further boon—find this love in the day I have given you, and you will live and not come with me at all. Now I will set you upon my horse and return you to your grandmother, but only until the morrow.”

  “You are not angry with me for being more clever than you?”

  “In fact—”

  He stepped toward me, knelt again on one knee, and reached his ungloved hand as if to put his hand under my chin. I raised it away from his touch. He did not lift his hand to touch me, nor did he lower it. I could feel the cold emanating from his fingers, so cold it burned into my throat.

  “—I have decided that when I take you tomorrow, I will indeed make you my bride. What do you say to that, Keturah Reeve?”

  What would it be like, to be Lord Death’s consort? Not to rest in the world where the dead are, now and always without fear, but ever to cross from one world to another, always able to see the life that was left behind. Worse, to serve at his side in his office as the bearer of pain and tears and heartache. To see every day a man weep like a baby himself over his lost little one. To see a new widow stare at her living children with hollow eyes, her heart torn out of her. To stand at the bedside, invisible in the shadows, while great men rocked in their beds with pain. To be the bringer of plague. Ah, ‘twas one thing to die, another to be Goodwife Death.

  “No, sir, though I thank you. But as I said before, I will not be your bride.”

  Another wind gusted in the trees. The branches thrashed overhead, and a flock of black birds rose as one from the trees and flew away. The horse whinnied and shook his silver harness.

  “I have decided,” Lord Death said icily.

  “No, sir,” I said again, for I was feeling strong now. “I will not marry you. I will live and breathe and dance and tell my children stories. I will marry for love.”

  A moment more, I thought, and I would stand on my own legs again. I sounded brave and sure, but I confess my heart was sick and afraid, and emptier than my stomach. Plague. Plague. The wind moaned and the trees bowed low.

  “There is no refusing, Keturah,” he said.

  His horse pawed the ground.

  “Sir, then I must obey you, but I need not love you,” I said. “And think of eternity with a wife who does not love you.”

  He lifted me as if I weighed no more than a baby, and set me on his horse.

  The horse was swift, and there could be no escape. Lord Death did not speak to me, nor I to him, but my heart raged: No! I will not have you! Though you drag me into your wormy realms I will not have you.

  When at last we came to the edge of the wood, where I could see my grandmother weeping through the window of our cottage, he set me down. “Tomorrow night,” he said, “when the shadow of the forest touches your cottage.”

  “I will find my true love, sir, and I will rob you of my soul. And all the souls you would reap in the plague, too.”

  “Keturah,” he said, tilting his head, and he turned his horse and galloped away.

  II

  In which I am welcomed home

  with reservations and theories, and in which

  I consider bachelors.

  Lord Death had deposited me close to the edge of the forest. I could see our cottage clearing through the trees, and Tide-by-Rood beyond.

  I wobbled on my legs a moment, but I was afraid to take a step toward the cottage, thinking I might fall and never get up again. I looked longingly at Tide-by-Rood through the edging of trees.

  Tide-by-Rood was the poorest village in the poorest corner of the kingdom, yet this moment I doubted there was a dearer sight in all creation. The village square at the bottom of the hill was a muddy morass, as it usually was, except in winter when the mud froze and in summer when it dried hard as a brick kiln. The cottages were in need of patching, and none more than my own. The thatch on every roof was thin and bore nests for mice and birds. The mill was an eyesore, and more than one goodwife had seen rats as she waited for her grain to be ground into flour. The boats that bobbed in the bay were tattered and gray as flotsam.

  “Grandmother!” I called. When no answer came I took a step, and fall I did. It took all my powers to push myself to a sitting position. “Grandmother!” I called again. “It’s me, Keturah!”

  Then came the sound of crashing through the trees. I thought it might be the great hart, and then I knew it was no wild beast but a horse. Lord Death had changed his mind, I guessed, and had ret
urned for me.

  But the horse was a golden mare, and the rider was none other than John Temsland, son of Lord Temsland, master of the lands of Tide-by-Rood.

  He dismounted, took my face in his hands, and then proffered me his waterskin.

  “By all saints,” he said as I drank, “we’ve been searching for you for three days. We thought you were dead.”

  I wiped my mouth and chin. “I shall quickly be dead if I am left here, sir, for I cannot walk.”

  Gently he lifted me, and carried me. Once out of the forest, he set me upon my legs and held me around my shoulders.

  “It is most kind of you, sir,” I said, flustered to think that the first time the handsome young lord saw me should be after I had been lost in the forest. And then I remembered my last words to Lord Death. “Sir, I must speak with you about an urgent matter.”

  “First you must rest from your ordeal, Mistress Reeve, and restore the color to those comely cheeks,” he said kindly.

  A compliment so significant as that could not be borne by legs as weak as mine, and they folded under me once again. Young John caught me and carried me into the cottage.

  Our cottage was bursting with people, all weeping and speaking in low tones.

  John set me down but kept his arm round me to steady me.

  The weeping and murmuring stopped.

  “I’m home,” I said, and my eyes lit upon a meat pie sitting atop the cupboard.

  Everyone became very still, turning only their heads to look at me. All at once a woman screamed, a man cursed, and the rest drew in breath as one. Grandmother cried my name and ran toward me, arms outstretched, but Mother By-the-Way blocked her.

  “Don’t touch her,” she said. “She is a ghost.”

  Grandmother put her hands on her bosom. “Are you a ghost, Keturah?”

  How beautiful she looked to me, and yet my gaze fell upon the meat pie again.

  “Nonsense,” John said, “but she shall be if she doesn’t eat that pie immediately.” He helped me to the bench at the table, and Grandmother pushed past Mother By-the-Way and placed the pie before me. Before she had time to cut it, I dug into it with a spoon and ate as fast as I could.

  “No ghost eats like that,” Grandmother said happily. She kissed the top of my head and sat across the table from me, beaming with relief and concern.

  “Where did you find her?” Gossip asked.

  “Where we’d searched a dozen times—near the edge of the forest, behind her own house,” John answered.

  “Leave it to young John to find the girl,” said one of the men.

  “That’s our John,” agreed another, and others joined in and added their own praises.

  John seemed uncomfortable with the praise and excused himself. “I will come again to assure myself that you are well,” he said to me.

  “Thank you, sir,” I said, swallowing my mouthful of pie. “I am well enough, I think, but I would be grateful for the chance to speak with you on the other matter as soon as possible.”

  He inclined his head in assent and left.

  How handsome he had grown to be, I reflected, with his hair the color of harvest-time wheat and his eyes green as bay water. All the villagers loved him and were proud that he could kick a ball farther than any of the other boys, and drag a boulder farther in the harness, too.

  When he was gone, the guests whispered together and stared at me with long faces. They were disappointed, of course, having come for a funeral gathering. Some of the men, who’d been good friends with Grandfather when he was alive, had told stories of the forest and of all the people they’d known who had been killed by its treachery. Now, at intervals, one or another would look up at me and shake his head in wonderment, as if I had defied all the wisdom of great age.

  Gossip was obviously disappointed when I appeared whole and alive, but when others began to look sidelong at me and whisper of fairies, she cheered up.

  Grandmother’s gaggle of friends, who had been there to cluck and clean and comfort, had brought bread and meats to make a funeral meal, even if there was no body to mourn over. Now they grudgingly turned the food into a celebratory meal.

  Relatives were there, too, and more came as the news spread of my return—cousins and second cousins and great-aunts and a step-uncle. I wondered where my friends Gretta and Beatrice were. Most of all, I wondered where my true love was, whoever he might be, and if he was among my mourners.

  Ben Marshall, a man of marriageable age who had of late made an effort to speak to me at doings, smiled at me. Though I had at times ventured to return his attentions, I had had reservations. He was tall and toothsome, but he had a great love of food, and already one could see signs of future portliness in him.

  My deepest reservations had to do, however, with a long Marshall tradition.

  Marshalls were known for their prizewinning gardens. Generations ago, a Marshall had decided that he would marry the woman who was chosen Best Cook of the village, regardless of his feelings for her, and vowed that his sons would do the same. His sons obeyed, and theirs, and now it was a long tradition of which they were inordinately proud.

  The best gardens and the Best Cook in one household meant that their tables were the envy of Lord Temsland’ s lands, but it was well known that Marshall children were nursed on business, not love, and I, I would have love. Still,

  I encouraged my hopes that I could have both Ben’s garden and his heart for my very own, and that he might be my true love. Perhaps my new reputation as the one who had been stolen by fairies would be overshadowed by my reputation as the one who cooked the best pies in Tide-by-Rood.

  Also in the house was Tailor. I thought of what Lord Death had said about him half sorrowing unto death, and my heart went out to him. He was a bonny man, a well-off widower something older than me, close-mouthed and pragmatic. I did not know him, really, but I knew his beautiful children. I knew that Gretta admired him for his famed and perfect stitches, and I determined then and there that Gretta was the one who could cheer his heart and make it live.

  There was Choirmaster, too, perhaps the richest bachelor in the village, but God had given him so many gifts in music that there had been none left for his face. Worse, he played only gloomy music and seemed afraid of girls. Still, I had never seen him be unkind, and I wished that Death knew him not so well. I knew that Beatrice admired him; perhaps I could persuade her to comfort his heart.

  There was Tobias, Gretta’s brother, but he was a year younger than I, and still a dog boy who cared more about horses than about girls. There was Locky Jones, who was hopelessly cystic in the face, and one of Soor Lily’s great sons, who loved only their mother. And...

  “Keturah, are you missing the fairies?” It was Tailor’s little daughter. The crowded room fell suddenly silent.

  “There are no fairies in the wood, Naomi,” I said, “only trees and beasts and bugs that bite.”

  Everyone whispered among themselves. Naomi said, “Even though you are bug-bitten, Keturah, you are still beautiful.”

  I gathered her into my arms.” ‘Tis a curse, child,” I said, thinking of Lord Death.

  “But how did you get lost, Keturah?” she asked, the first one to do so.

  “I followed the hart into the wood, Naomi.”

  “She followed the hart, she followed the hart,” the others whispered.

  One of the older men nodded knowingly. He spoke to me. “I have heard that the deer and the forest beasts are of the kingdom of the fairies. Don’t all the tales tell it? Speak true now, Keturah. Did you see the fairy king?”

  With my mouth full of meat pie again, I said, “Not a fairy king, sir, nor a common fairy neither.”

  “And yet the hart lured you.”

  “Forgive me, sir, but he did not lure. It was my own curiosity that made me follow him.”

  The man shrugged his shoulders as if to say he did not believe me, and it was clear from the way all eyes turned away that they did not believe me either, preferring the stori
es I had told of the hart around the common fire. “Well,” the man said, “there’s something devilish and sly about the beast, and it is not just for the sake of winter hay that I say he must be hunted down.”

  These words brought me no happiness. The great hart loomed in my memory—tall and proud and fearless. I thought his beauty something I would be willing to sacrifice a haystack for, though lack of hay meant a hungry winter for both people and stock alike. The men’s talk became louder, and soon a group was dispatched to the manor to solicit Lord Temsland about the matter.

  I could taste the three days’ staleness in the meat pie, suddenly. The crust was gritty between my teeth, the meat greasy and gristly. I winced to swallow and put down my spoon.

  Just then, Gretta and Beatrice burst into the cottage and threw their arms about me. “We could not summon an appetite to eat at your funeral, but when we heard you had been found...,” Beatrice said.

  “Thank goodness and mercy that young Sir John did not give up,” said Gretta.

  I hugged one and then the other: Beatrice, with the voice and face of an angel, who saw the good in everyone and everything and met life with good cheer, and Gretta, whose hair was always perfectly coifed, whose clothes were perfectly clean and pressed, and whose loyalty and love were perfectly constant. They kissed me, each on either side of my face.

  “Eat, eat,” said Gretta, sitting beside me.

  “How beautifully pale you are,” said Beatrice, sitting on the other side of me.

  While my friends and I talked, the villagers continued to whisper, and one by one they departed. Grandmother gathered the leftovers to take to Hermit Gregor, who lived poor. When all had gone, Beatrice said, “Undoubtedly they will hereafter cross themselves every time they see you.”

  “I care not a bit what the villagers say,” I replied. “Not a speck, not a whit, not a jot, not a tittle. My only care is to wed my true love.”

  Gretta and Beatrice looked at each other a moment.

  “But you don’t have a true love,” Beatrice said with a puzzled expression.