Keturah and Lord Death (11 page)

Grandmother was in the garden when we arrived home, and looking so well that it cheered my heart and gave me renewed strength. I started on squash pie.

Just as I was finishing, someone knocked at the door. Gretta rose to answer it. When she opened the door, there stood Ben Marshall with another baby-sized squash in his arms. With a wooden spoon in one hand and a whisk in the other, I beamed at him. Behind him was Padmoh, and in her arms were several bunches of lettuce.

“Come in, Ben,” Grandmother said, “and you, Padmoh. We are just about to feast upon a pie Keturah made from your delicious squash, Ben. Sit, sit, both of you. How fortunate we are that you grow such big squashes, Ben, for then you have much to share.”

“I’ve brought another. Keturah, you are dusted all over with flour. You look so ... pretty.”

Oh, handsome Ben, I thought. Good, solid Ben—but would I always have to be covered in flour and sugar to be beautiful to him? It made me more tired to think of it. Still, he was very handsome.

“I thought what a generous thing it was of Ben to bring squashes to the poor,” Padmoh said, “so I offered to carry lettuces. And besides, Mother Marshall bade me come.”

Ben looked at her as if she were a stray cat that had followed him home. Grandmother served them portions of the pie I had made, and Ben set right to eating.

“I am practicing for the cooking contest tomorrow,” I said, dearly wishing there would be a tomorrow.

Padmoh sat down, too, and gingerly took a taste.

“It’s delicious,” Ben said after a mouthful.

“There is a certain aftertaste,” Padmoh said delicately, “but it is quite good.”

Grandmother turned the talk to the beautification of the village, and Ben and even Padmoh and my friends talked about the wonders of it.

“Mistress Smith and some other women went to Hermit Gregor’s house,” Ben said. “They scrubbed and tossed and folded and washed and swept and gardened until he wept and promised to be a better man.”

Everyone laughed.

Padmoh said genteelly, “Widow Harker, who beds her cow in her house for want of a shed, came home today to find a sweet, clean shed for her cow.”

Ben noticed I was quiet and said, “With pie like this,

Keturah, you could win Best Cook at fair time.”

“I am glad you like it,” I said.

Padmoh scowled at him and then at me. “It is hard to tell such a thing from pies,” she said. “Besides, didn’t he say that very thing to me the other day. Fickle Ben.”

“But I do believe this pie makes Keturah a fraction better,” Ben said.

Gretta and Beatrice smiled, and Padmoh stabbed violently at the pie with her fork. I felt sorry that she was unhappy, but I was relieved that Ben had loosened his tongue in favor of my chances.

Just then there was a weak knock at the door, and I opened it to see Tobias standing with lemons in his hands.

I threw my arms around him, then took the lemons. “Why, they are beautiful, Tobias! So plump, so fresh. Did they cost very much?”

Slowly he held out the second set of coins John Temsland had given him. “Not a penny, Keturah, and yet they were very dear.”

Only then did I notice that he was most pale, whiter than the gray dust around his mouth and eyes.

“How did you get them, then?”

“It is a strange tale I have to tell, Keturah.”

“Sit, and tell it,” I said. He sat down slowly, feeling for the chair as if he were blind. Gretta put her hand on her brother’s shoulder.

“I looked and looked, Keturah,” he began. “No one had lemons. At last I thought to go to the road that heads to Great Town, only to the crossroads, in hopes of seeing a merchant who might tell me where to find them. And sure enough, Keturah, I met there a man who had many wondrous wares in his cart. I told him my errand, that the best cook of Tide-by-Rood needed lemons. Lemons, says he, why I have lemons here, all the way from Spain. I would have them, sir, I said. But when I held out the coins Lord Temsland gave me, he shook his head. Not enough, said he. Take it, sir, I said, and tell what I can do to make up the difference. Whatever it is, I said, I will do it. He snatched the coins, and said that if I would serve him for one round year, I should have paid the price in full.

“But I need the lemons now, for Keturah Reeve must cook a dish for the king, I said. Very well, said he, then I must get a year’s work out of you in a single month. No, sir, I said, the lemons must be delivered now. Then you have no bargain, said he. Give me back my coins, I said. No, I shall not—good day, he said.

“Mistress Keturah, you know I am not good at wrestling, but I knew you and the young lord and the queen must have lemons. So I tackled him. He was a tall man, and much fatter than me, but it was for the lemons, you see. He beat me soundly, and then picked up his donkey prod with which to finish the fight. I thought I was going to lose my life, as well as the coins, for which I was most sorry on account of your needing lemons.

“The merchant raised the prod, and as he was about to bring it down upon my head, he stopped cold and stared into nothingness. Pale he went, gray as the underbelly of a fish. He shook his head once, and nodded once, as if he were having a conversation with a ghost. I shivered in fear to see his countenance, so full of terror it was. The prod dropped, forgotten.

“At last he turned his eyes to me. Blank with horror, they were, but utterly resigned. Death has come for me, he said. I have cheated him many times, and now he comes to collect his debt. He gives me one last chance, before I go with him, to atone for the suffering I have brought to others through my cheating ways. Lad, the merchant says to me, there are coins sewn into my coat. They are all yours if you will forgive me.

“May I have the lemons, sir? asks I. He nodded once. Then I forgive you, I said. And he crumpled and dropped dead.

“His eyes were still open in death, and they seemed to look at me with gratitude. I waited beside him a long time, until it rained into his open eyes and the mule bawled for hunger. And I came home.”

Tobias stared at the table, his lips parted as if he had not the strength to clamp his jaws together.

I raised the lemons to my nose. Did they not smell of the sun? My pie would bring sunshine and cloud to the palate. My pie would win Best Cook at the fair. My pie would win me Ben Marshall—

Tobias began to weep. “Keturah—he died of the plague.”

XI

J
bestow my first kiss.

My lemons had brought plague. I had brought plague to my beloved Tide-by-Rood. Had Lord Death not warned us about Great Town?
Plague.
The word stopped up my ears and filled my mouth and throat so sufficatingly I could not speak for a moment.

Tobias put his face in his hands. “I am sick, Keturah,” he said.

Gretta threw her arms around him, and I stroked his hair. “Do not be afraid,
^”
I said.

Tobias raised his face to me. His tears had mixed with the dust from the journey, making gray, chalky lines down his cheeks.

“You must tell no one what you know, and I will go to Lord Death,” I said, and now I was crying too.

“It is too late to keep it secret,” Gretta said. “Padmoh has already flown to spread the news.”

“What are you going to do, Keturah?” Ben said to me, and there was fear and accusation in his voice. “Is it true that you have brought death into our midst?”

Down in the village I could hear shouts and screams.

“They will think you have brought the plague, Keturah,” Beatrice said, her hands clasped as if in prayer.

“But I have, my friend,
^”
I said. “They will be right.”

Gretta went to the window. “They are coming!” she said.

Grandmother came to me in her nightdress. “You must go into the wood and hide, Keturah,” she said, and her voice was chillingly calm. “I will pretend you are here and not let them in. I will forestall them as long as I can.”

“I will go into the forest, though not to hide,” I said.

Just then I heard a clattering of hooves on the cobbles outside, and a great pounding at the door.

“Ben, you must protect Grandmother,” I said.

“I? How can I protect her from a mob?” said Ben helplessly.

Again there was pounding, and the door flew open. In the doorway stood John Temsland and Henry and a number of young men.

“We will disperse the mob,” John said. He dismounted. “Take my horse and flee, Keturah. Run away. Go to my father at the king’s court. I will find you there.”

“No, I go to the forest. Protect Grandmother. Be silent about where I am, and trust me.”

I took Tobias’s hand and ran out the back door and into the forest. We ran together until we could no longer hear the cries of the villagers. “Now we must wait,” I said. “He will come. He always comes.”

And truly it was not long before Lord Death on his horse emerged from the trees, his cloak billowing behind him like great black wings. He rode slowly and surely. His face was beautiful and terrible with resolve.

In the light of day he seemed appalling. How dare he ride in the sunlight without apology, without shame? He and his great horse were together a massive shadow that drained the light out of the day. The horse’s feet drew down the clouds in their wake, so that it seemed he walked in fog. The trees greedily sucked up the sunlight and left none but deep green shadows to drift down to the forest floor.

“Oh, Lord of Heaven,” Tobias whispered beside me. “I can see him now, too.”

The freckles on his face stood out in bold relief. There was no time to comfort him.

Lord Death looked down at me from a great height, and his expression was dark with bitter power. The clouds that now covered the sun made the whole world gray, and even the leaves seemed of doubtful color. Tobias crossed himself and began to rock.

Lord Death dismounted and bowed to me, a stately bow, and I returned it with the deepest of curtseys. He did not flinch from my gaze, nor I from his. My eyes asked him, asked him why, why, why.

At last he said, “It would have been enough, the changes you have made in the village, but—”

“It’s my fault—my lemons. I brought the plague,” I said.

“I warned you to stay away from Great Town,” he said, turning a withering look upon Tobias. Tobias whimpered. A wind arose. Black clouds banked higher and higher upon one another, as if the whole earth were burning and the sky were choking with dark smoke.

“Why?” I asked. “Why would you destroy our people, the innocents?”

“Are they so innocent, Keturah?” he asked. “Those who gather against you and would burn you alive even now if they could find you?” His voice made the ground beneath me shake.

“Do you think I don’t know that the plague does not pick and choose? What of the children, the little children? What of them?” I asked. My voice sounded small and lost, as if drowned in a great wind. But he heard me.

“If untimely death came only to those who deserved that fate, Keturah, where would choice be? No one would do good for its own sake, but only to avoid an early demise. No one would speak out against evil because of his own courageous soul, but only to live another day. The right to choose is man’s great gift, but one thing is not his to choose—the time and means of death.”

To this I had no answer.

I knew what I must do.

I raised my palms to him. “Forgive me,” I said. I did not recognize my own voice, it was so choked and piteous.

There was a crack of lightning in the distance, and again thunder, only closer now. The gray clouds above us began to roil and blacken, but there was no smell of rain. The air was dry as old bones.

“Do not ask, Keturah!” he commanded quietly, but in his voice was the hint of a plea.

“Forgive me, my lord,” I said, “but I must ask.”

“It is too late,” he said. “Goody Thompson and her husband and her two babies are already sick with it. And others ... It is too late.”

“No, sire, no. I know that nothing is too late for you. I ask—I ask—”

“Keturah!” His cry echoed against the clouds as if his voice and the thunder were one sound.

“My lord, I ask—”

“Do you dare, Keturah?” The sky around us was near as dark as night, and lightning snaked silently overhead. Tobias fell to his knees beside me, then fainted utterly away. The thunder and the wind roared around me.

“His life! His life and”—I raised my hands higher— “and all of Tide-by-Rood! And the king, and—and you must make my friends happy, though I die. I do ask. You cannot deny me!”

I did not look up. I saw his boots before me. And then, though the wind thrashed in the grass and rocked the forest, though the black sky railed and lightning flashed, all near us became silent. In the silence, his voice spoke into my heart.

“Keturah, don’t you know your soul is mine? Not a man on this earth, no king, no wise man, is
greater
than I. Every one of them humbles himself before me one day. Yet you, Keturah, a peasant girl, bargain with me, rob me, and ask
greater
and
greater
favors of me—all the while saying you will marry for love! What do you say to this?”

The wind in my face made it hard to breathe. “What if, this time, I gave you something,” I said. “Something precious.”

Dark shadows leapt around him. “There is nothing you could give me,” he said, with great dignity.

I stepped closer to him.

I traveled a hundred miles in that single step. In a stride, my village was so far away I could scarcely remember it. It would be a journey of a thousand days to return.

There was no breath in him, no flush of blood, no taint of sweat or tears. Next to him, I felt the grossness of my own body, how more I was like the earth than I was like him. He was air and wind and cloud and bird; I was dust and worm.

I was suddenly aware that he might not want what I could give him, but I had nothing else so precious.

Another step.

“Keturah,” he said. I felt him lift his hand as if to touch my hair, and something in his eyes was warm, though he exuded cold.

And as his lips parted to speak again, I pressed my lips gently against his.

Had I truly thought I would not die when I kissed him? But I did. For a moment the breath and life went out of me, and there was no time and no tomorrow, but only my lips against his. I stepped away quickly, back into my life, panting for breath.

His lordly demeanor had vanished, and his countenance held nothing but astonishment and—and something else I could not name.

“I have kissed you,” I said, breathless.

The shadows around his face lightened.

“Now—now you are at my command,” I said triumphantly, trembling. “You must obey my every wish,” I said, in a voice a little more subdued.

He shook his head slightly.

“But—but I have kissed you,” I said, blushing and uncertain. “Please, it is not for me that I ask.”

“Do not dare,” he said sadly.

“So you must help me, Lord Death. Is one kiss not enough? Then here...”

I kissed him again.

“And here…”

This time I felt his arms reach round me, and he enfolded me to himself and kissed me in return. In the first moment, I could not believe he was death—he was a man, and no more. In the next, I was afraid and I pushed at him. It was futile—his strength was more than that of a hundred men. And so he kissed me until my blood ran so cold it burned.

He stopped suddenly, and stepped away so violently I almost fell. My lips were numb with cold, and my throat ached with cold, and my stomach was icy and empty.

“Here is danger!” he said sternly.

I raised my face to him. “Sir, I know you can do anything ...” His eyes were not the clouded, vacant eyes of one dead. Instead they were clear—I thought I could see the endless night sky in his eyes, and the stars too. Unspeakable sorrow was there, and matchless beauty.

“And why can I not deny you, Keturah?” His voice was insistent. I could not answer but with the truth.

“Because you love me!”

The silence into which we spoke vanished, and the wind roared in my ears again.

“It is true,” he said, his voice both quiet and piercing.

A deafening crack of lightning, a roll of thunder so loud I felt it in my throat, and rain began to pour out of the sky.

“Your beloved village is safe,” Lord Death said, and I heard his voice clearly over the storm. “You have until the end of the fair, and then I will send the hart for you.”

I wondered if he had spoken not aloud but into the airless places of my secret mind.

The rain woke Tobias. He stared at me with eyes too wide open and did not move and did not look about.

Lord Death mounted his horse and in the next moment was gone, and I knelt beside Tobias.

“Is he...
?”
Tobias asked.

“He is gone.” I stroked his hair. “The plague is taken from us.”

He lay crying for a little time, and I could not tell the rain from the tears on his face. Then, slowly, he sat up. The rain had already begun to spend itself, and the sun began to glint through the clouds.

He stood, testing each limb as if sensing the life within. He swayed on his feet a moment and then smiled. “I will live,” he whispered. “I feel it, I feel it sure. You did it, Keturah!” he said. “I owe you my life.”

I put my hand over his mouth.

“Not I, Tobias. Not I. Lord Death gave it to you, as he

does every day. Never forget
this.”
But...

“Never forget.”

Tobias smiled. “All I know is, I am alive, and I feel well, Keturah. There is no sickness in me at all.”

“Come,” I said, “let us go see to the others.”