Keturah and Lord Death (8 page)

I turned and waited for Henry to catch up with me. “Henry,” I said.

“Yes, Keturah?”

“Henry, you have become a man almost,” I said.

He smiled and puffed out his chest.

Could I love him? He was not handsome, but neither was he uncomely. He loved a good hunt and was not much for the fields. Still, it seemed he had become John Temsland’s man, and whoever married him might have something more than a little peasant cottage.

“I have been a man for some time,” he said proudly. “Why are you squinting at me?”

“Henry, could you love me?”

His mouth opened and shut with a snap. He took off his cap, ran his fingers through his hair, and put his cap back on. “Well, now, Keturah,” he said uncomfortably, “ ‘tis well known I have loved you since we played hide and seek as little ones together.”

“But grown-up love, Henry? If I could summon up a love for you, could you return it?”

“Well... yes, I suppose I could,” he stammered.

With great hope I touched the charm, but it was looking around, back and forth, up and down, more quickly than ever. I sighed. “Never mind, Henry. All is as it should be. A few days ago I didn’t need my one true love. Now I do, but you are not it. Nor will you ever be.”

I began walking again. Behind me, after a silence, Henry laughed a great laugh. “And pity the man who is,” he said, throwing his arm around my shoulder. “Keturah, you have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, and I don’t know which I like more.”

He led me to the manor and into John Temsland’s chamber.

“Mistress Keturah Reeve,” Henry said by way of introduction. After a bow to me, he left.

I stood just inside the entranceway of the chamber where John Temsland was looking through a window at his father’s lands and people.

“I am sorry, sir, but I do not have your clothes,” I began. It was best to tell him that first, I thought, before I spoke of the more important thing.

He seemed not to hear. He did not move or look at me when he said quietly, “The gossip is that when you leave a birthing, the mother dies.”

I answered nothing.

“When you stay and attend, the mother lives, even if she should have died,” he said.

“Who tells you this?” I asked.

“It is the talk of the whole village,
^”
John said. “Goody Thompson says she saw you conversing with an invisible being—an angel, say some; Death, says she. Some say that is why the fairies stole you into the wood and why they brought you back alive.”

“Sir...

“John.”

“John, sir, if you are angry with me for the loss of your clothes, I can repay you in time. I will work in the kitchen—”

“You are welcome to the clothes, Keturah,
^”
he said, “though why you needed them I cannot imagine. All I ask is that you keep our secret about the hart.”

“I will, sir—John.”

“Keturah, I credit you with the grand idea of improving the village—building a road and freeing the mill of rats. Everyone credits you with the idea. And therein lies the problem.”

“Problem?”

“Yesterday, when they thought you had only been stolen by fairies, they found you alarming, shall we say. They fear the fairies and their wild-wood magic, and they were nervous of one who had supposedly communed with them.”

“I have seen no fairies, nor their enchanted halls,” I said.

John turned away from the window and smiled kindly. “I believe you,” he said. “But now this new tale—that is another thing altogether. No one has seen a fairy—’tis like there is no such thing. But all have seen Death’s handiwork, and they all hate him, down to a man. Now they fear you with a fear that begets hatred, Keturah. The air around you, they think, is infected with death. They despise you because you remind them of their own mortality. The sight of you bodes their own end.”

I looked at my feet.

“That leads me to the problem, Keturah. You see, because it was your idea to build the road, they will no longer do it. They—they believe that you are on Death’s errand.”

I looked up at him in alarm. “But it is just the opposite!” I cried.

He studied me a few moments and then gestured to a chair. “Sit, Keturah. You are trembling.”

Gratefully, I sat down. “Sir, I would tell you my story, but you would not believe me.”

“My name is John, and I will believe you, Keturah.” His eyes were full upon me. Every bit of him seemed willing to listen.

“But you don’t know me. How will you believe the tale I am about to tell?”

“I’ve known you for almost your whole life. I’ve listened to you tell stories around the common fire, and watched how even as a young girl you captivated your listeners.”

“But—but you were never there.”

“Ah, but I was. Hiding nearby, in the shadows where no one could see,” he said.

I remembered him as a young lad, always on the edge of village activities. He played football with the boys, but was not allowed to join in the festivities of the winning team afterward. He helped in the fields, but went to the manor after the planting and harvest instead of joining our feasts. When the other boys played, John learned to read and do sums. While the other boys fished, John learned archery and hunting. He must always have been lonely, it occurred to me now, and I could well imagine him listening to our stories but never coming into the circle.

“You should have come and warmed yourself. We would have made you welcome,” I said.

He bent his head thoughtfully. “Keturah, you see for yourself how difficult it can be to be accepted into a circle of people who consider you to be different.”

“Yes,” I said.

He waited silently while I tried to gather my thoughts. I would be telling a story more far-fetched than any I had told before, and yet it would be true.

“I followed the hart into the wood that day I was lost,” I began. “How many tales had I spun of the hart, and here he was before my eyes, as if my words had summoned him. Like the truth in a story, he eluded me until he nearly destroyed me, and then when there was no going back, he left me in the dark of the wood.

“The fairies that I never saw nor heard must have laughed me to scorn. I wandered and wandered, and the bugs bit and the underbrush tripped my feet and the night winds froze me. Then Death himself came to collect me.

“I used the only means I could think of to postpone the inevitable—I told him a story. A love story. And I agreed to tell him the rest of the story the next night, if only he would let me live another day.

“And so he did. I told him that the love story was true, that it was my story.”

I stopped. John hunkered down beside my chair. His eyes were on the same level as mine, and they mirrored the images in my mind. I thought I had never seen such a beautiful young man. My hand crept to my apron pocket, and then stopped. It was absurd—I was a commoner, and he a lord’s son. I forced my thoughts back to my errand.

“While we were talking, he offered to let another die in my place. He said it would scarcely matter whom I chose. Many will die of the plague, he said, and when I pleaded with him to tell me how to stop it, he said, ‘It is not in your power—your manored lord has allowed his lands to fall to dire ruin.’

“So you see, sir, John, why I spoke up after the king’s messenger left. I saw the king’s visit as an opportunity to waylay the plague. We must have the road, and the rats in the mill must go. And there must be no traffic with Great Town.”

After a long moment, John nodded. I could see that his horror at the threat of plague was equal to my own.

“You must speak to the villagers, tell them about the coming plague, Keturah,” John said after some thought. “Perhaps then they will resume work on the road.”

“Do you think they will believe me?”

“Oh, they will believe you,” he said with conviction. “Haven’t they always believed your fairy tales? Didn’t all your stories of the great hart produce a real hart, Keturah? They will believe you.”

I stood up. “Then I must try.”

VIII

Soor Lily and I concur; Ben brings a squash;
the arrival of Tobias with lemons that disappoint;
and I cook pies.

Henry quickly spread the word that John Temsland would address his people in the village square, and just as quickly the people began to gather.

The sun was hot, and no breeze blew in from the bay, and soon people were grumbling and miserable. How had half the day gone by, I wondered. I willed time to slow. John led me to the square and climbed to the top of a pile of cobblestones.

“My people,” he said, his arms toward them. “I stand on these stones that should by now be laid over the square. But no one came to the work today. Would you not have the king come and see that our village is everything my father said it was?”

“There is still much left to harvest, young John,” said George Puddington. “We have our own work to do.”

“Will the leavings of the harvest not wait until after the fair, George?” John countered.

George cast a sullen look at me and said nothing.

“We have the bay, and the forest for hunting,” Peter Whitty called. “We are not ashamed of Tide-by-Rood.”

“But why do you object to making it even better?” John said, smiling, cajoling.

“We are tired at the end of the day,” Peter replied. The crowd murmured in agreement.

“Peter, George, all of you—did you stop to think why the great lords have put it in the king’s mind to come to Tide-by-Rood at this time, and on such short notice? They don’t like my father, who advises the king to be merciful and kind to the commoners. He tells the king that his power comes to him because of the people’s love. The great lords want to oppress the people, assert even greater authority, and so they wish to have my father shamed, to take him further out of favor with the king. Perhaps they will take away his lands and a new lord will come, one who would be less kind to you than my father has been.”

The crowd murmured.

“What has she to do with you, John?” Peter asked, pointing at me. “Has she cast fairy dust in your eyes? Or worse?”

“If loyalty to my father is not reason enough, then Keturah Reeve has something to tell you,” John replied. “I adjure you to listen to her.”

Only a few days before, men had looked on me with soft eyes. Now they were reluctant, suspicious, hard.

“She is why we stopped work on the road,” Paul Stoppish called out. “It was her idea first, wasn’t it?”

Others joined in. “Who told you to speak up about the road, Keturah? Was it Death, wishing to see us perish from heat and fatigue?” a voice called out. “Will he send down a stone on the head of an unsuspecting one?” cried another. “Will a hammer break and kill him who wields it?” shouted Patsy Krundle in front.

John held up his hand to silence them. “Listen to her, I tell you.” He reached down and lifted me up onto the stone pile. I was trembling so that I could scarcely focus my vision upon the crowd. I opened my mouth to speak, but I did not know how to begin.

John encouraged me with a kind look.

I cleared my throat and took a breath, and still no words came to mind.

John put his hand on my back and faced the crowd. The sun seemed to have burned the air—it had a smoky, acrid smell to it—but no one moved or murmured.

“The rumors you have heard are true. Keturah has seen Death, and she has learned something that we all should know. Speak, Keturah. Tell them—”

“—that plague comes,” came a voice from the crowd. There was a cry and an intake of breath from the villagers, and all eyes turned to Soor Lily, for it was she who had spoken. Six of her seven sons hovered protectively around her. The seventh, I noticed suddenly, was standing guard by me at the base of the stones.

She walked to the front of the crowd where everyone could see her.

“Plague—in Angleland,” she said. “I can smell it. I’ve known for some time.”

The crowd erupted with shouts and cries.

“Please!” John said.

“You cannot run—there is nowhere to go,” Soor Lily cried.

The crowd became quieter. Though they feared her for a witch, still there was not one in the crowd who had not been helped by her—with the toothache, the bellyache, or the earache, with lumps or festers or ulcers or malaise.

“It is a way off, but not so far it could not find us. We should listen to what she has to say,” Soor Lily said, and she turned to me, waiting for me to speak.

Gretta and Beatrice joined the crowd. I saw Gretta nod at me as if to say, “Speak, friend.”

“Death treads less easily where there is a good road,” I said, and though my voice was cramped, it carried in the quiet. I raised my voice. “Death does not dwell in clean corners and hates nothing more than a sludged well and a mill with no vermin. If you will bring neatness and order, perhaps—perhaps the plague will not come. If we can work together, and the strong help the weak, and if we share the burden, surely...”

But some part of me knew, even as I spoke, that Lord Death, clean as a filed blade as he was, did not always want the souls we so willy-nilly sent to him. I wondered if he had put the thought in my mind, or if mere proximity to him was teaching me.

“And no one must go to Great Town,” I added.

As I spoke, the eyes of the men got larger, as if their ears were not big enough to hear what I was saying and their eyes had to help.

“I believe her,” said Henry Bean’s father, Caleb.

“And I,” said Gretta’s father, Will.

“We must work on the road all night,” said Beatrice’s father, James.

A few wives were wheedling their husbands into submission. Mothers hugged their children close and hurried them back to home.

John jumped down and the men gathered, and before I could get entirely away, work on the road had begun.

I headed for home, for I was weary, weary. I had not gone far when I was stopped short by something splattering at my feet—a rotten apple. I was too tired even to look for the culprit. I stepped over it, and another landed nearby. This time I stopped and looked behind me. John Temsland was coming toward me, and in each hand was the ear of an attached boy. They squirmed and came with their ears.

“These boys have somewhat to say,” John said cheerfully.

“Sorry,” squeaked one boy.

“Sorry,” said the other.

John let them go, and they ran away, rubbing their ears. “I will have a man watch over your house,” he said.

“I am not afraid,” I said. Not of
them,
I added in my thoughts. Against the one I truly feared, no one could guard.

I bent my head in respect and continued on my way.

“You are a brave woman, Keturah Reeve,” he called after me.

I scarcely heard him, for the sun was on its descent, and my mind reeled for a new story.

When I arrived home, Grandmother placed dinner before me with a loving pat. After, I washed the wooden platters and the horn mugs, and placed them neatly on the shelf under the cooking table next to Grandmother’s steel and flint. While devising every possible story, I made sure all the wooden spoons were face down to keep out the devil, as Grandmother had instructed me since I was a baby. I was sweeping the floor, and had almost grasped an idea for the story I must tell Lord Death, when who should come but Ben Marshall.

“I thought you were very brave today,” Ben said timidly. “I brought you this.” He handed me a purple squash.

I thanked him and cradled the squash in one arm like a baby. With the other hand I reached into my apron pocket and discovered to my dismay that the eye had not stopped and was rolling up and down and side to side as before.

“I never believed that you were stolen by the fairies,” he said quietly.

“No, Ben, it was not true,” I said. I had paid the price— why didn’t it stop? The squash was evidence that he was smitten with me.

He cleared his throat. “There is much talk. Mother has heard it. But all the talk in the village can’t stop you from winning Best Cook at the fair. Isn’t that so, Keturah?”

I squinted at him, forcing my eyes to think him the most beautiful of men. I willed myself to love him.
Love him!
I commanded my heart. But the eye continued to roll.

Grandmother came in from the garden and seemed delighted to see I had a visitor. “What news, Ben?”

“Good day, Grandmother Reeve. I—I just came to tell you that the poor parish priest’s cow died of the bloat,” Ben said.

“Perhaps he should have sprinkled his cow with stolen holy water like Farmer Dan,” Grandmother said, chuckling.

“I heard Dan tell the priest his flock had grown so fat, it was hard to repent,” Ben answered. It was clear he was trying to charm her. “The priest said his flock might become so holy they would refuse to mate. That put the fear into him.” Grandmother laughed and Ben blushed at his own joke.

It was a good joke, I thought as they continued to talk. Grandmother thought it funny. Why didn’t I? I had tried to laugh, but it came out more like a hiccup. Surely the eye was only waiting to see if I would win Best Cook.

“Ben,” I said, interrupting a lengthy speech on the fine art of growing asparagus, “would you come tomorrow to try my pies?” If only there would be a tomorrow.

He smiled. “Of course, Keturah. It is good that you are practicing your cooking for the fair.”

“Ben, what if I don’t win Best Cook?” I said.

“You must win, Keturah,” Ben said. “I am bound by tradition.”

“Yes,” his mother said, startling us both by appearing in the doorway. “Tradition.”

“Constance,” said Grandmother. “Won’t you come in?”

“I will not,” she said. “And Ben is needed at home.”

“Constance, surely you don’t believe the ... the talk,”

Grandmother said stiffly.

“We don’t want your fairies in our garden,” Constance said shortly. “They eat holes in the chard and make webs between the beanstalks.”

“Mother!” Ben said.

“Mother Marshall, I assure you I have had no dealings with fairies,” I said.

“No? Then is it true that it is worse than fairies, that you have had dealings with
him?”

“Mother, please. Go—I will follow shortly,” Ben said.

His mother gave me a sour look and turned to leave. When she was down the path, Ben said, “Keturah, I am bound by the Marshall tradition to marry the Best Cook, but I am also freed by it. Win Best Cook, and no one, including Mother, can nay-say it.”

He smiled a wide smile and followed his mother down the path. Though it was the handsomest of smiles, the eye continued to roll and my heart was unmoved.

Never mind. I would train my heart to love Ben and his baby-sized purple squashes. And when I won Best Cook, the eye must be still.

“Goodbye, Ben,” I called after him. “Thank you for the beautiful squash.”

For the rest of the day and on into the night, I listened to the ringing of hammers and the shouts of men as they worked on the road, and I practiced pies. Gretta and Beatrice came, and I plied them with pie. They assured me that my pies were the best in the village, but I knew they would have to be wondrous to win Best Cook. I made the pies I had dreamed of: one offish, and one of venison; a strawberry pie, and a peach, and a plum; and one of potatoes and mushrooms and cheese—and all with a crust that almost blew away when it was cut.