Keturah and Lord Death (15 page)

“Come with us, closer to the king,” Beatrice said, taking my hand. She was still dressed as a boy from singing in the choir. We pushed through the people to the front of the gathering.

There was a call of trumpets, and the musicians ceased to play and the people listened.

“I thank the people of Tide-by-Rood and Marshall for welcoming me to their beautiful lands,” said the king.

The people cheered and whistled and threw their hats into the air.

“I have promised a shoe full of gold to the one who most delighted me at the fair. In the end, Lord Temsland had his choice, and his lady hers. I have my choice, and my queen hers. And so we will divide the gold four ways.

“First, Lord Temsland’s choice. To the lead soprano of the choir, a quarter of a shoe of gold. Come forward, soprano.”

Beatrice as Bill glanced nervously at us and then stepped forward.

I could not hear what she said, but Gretta and Choirmaster gasped when she did not bow but instead curtseyed. The king, however, only laughed, and Bill was invited to remove his cap and let his long braids fall. The crowd murmured and one could hear stifled laughter. At first Lord Temsland seemed somewhat flustered, but his wife’s gentle amusement calmed him, and he was further calmed to see that the king was not disturbed by the disguise.

“Well, the bishop of Great Town has women in his choir,” the king said. Turning then to Lord Temsland, he added, “And if you wish to be in style, you must not put your women in disguise.”

“Your Majesty,” Beatrice said, “if I may, it was my own deception. I beg your forgiveness.”

Gently the king said, “How can I give you that? It would be like offering forgiveness to an angel. But I can give you this.” He handed her a small velvet purse that jangled with gold. “And what would you have for your wish granted?” he asked.

“Your Majesty, only that I might share your gift with someone,” she said.

“And who would that be?”

Beatrice fetched Choirmaster by the hand and led him before the king. “Your Majesty, here is the man who makes me sing, for his music is the music of angels. And—and we are to be married.”

The crowd murmured, oohed, and tittered with surprise.

Choirmaster dabbed his nose with a sparkling white handkerchief.

“I assume this match is also according to your wishes, Choirmaster?” the king said.

“Your Majesty, it is,” he said, bowing deeply before the king. He did not let go of Beatrice’s hand.

“You must write an Easter mass for me next year,” the king said, “for which I will pay you in gold.”

“It has always been my deepest desire,” Choirmaster said, smiling—the broadest smile I had ever seen upon him.

The couple backed away, and the king called, “Now the Tailor.” Tailor came forward and I saw that he was wearing not even one item of orange clothing.

“You have done as fine a work as any of the royal tailors. You are Lady Temsland’s choice,” said the king. “Besides your gold, what is the reward that you would wish for?”

“To marry the woman who sewed most of the finery you speak of, Your Majesty,” he said.

“Ah. And who would that be?”

Tailor gestured to Gretta, who came forward boldly and curtseyed.

“Is this your wish, young maid?” the king asked.

“Your Majesty,” she said, “here is an imperfect man, the only one in the world perfect enough for me.”

“Then it will be. And each year you will both come to my palace and sew my daughter a new Easter gown. For that I will pay you in gold.”

“It has been my greatest wish,” said Tailor, bowing with great dignity.

The villagers cheered, for there was nothing they liked more than weddings. The king raised his hand for silence.

“Keturah Reeve,” he called. “Come forward.”

I came forward and curtseyed.

“The queen has chosen your pie as the most wondrous thing of the fair,” said the king. “You too will have a quarter of the shoe of gold.”

He held it up to drop it into my hand, but I curtseyed again. “Please, I would ask that my share be divided among the poor of the village, Your Majesty,” I said, for I knew that tomorrow I would not need money, that tomorrow I would not be what I was today.

The king turned and said a few words to Lord Temsland and John, and I turned to join the crowd.

“Wait, Keturah Reeve,” said the king. “The gold will be distributed as you requested. But there is the matter of your wish granted.”

I returned to my place before him.

John Temsland, beside the king, smiled and nodded at me, encouraging me. There he stood, so young and beautiful and strong, and he loved me. His mother and father, too, smiled gently, even lovingly, upon me.

I could ask now to be made a lady, and John would marry me. Oh, the good I could do for my people as the future Lady Temsland!

I realized that the crowd had been waiting for my answer. I waited too—waited for the words that would come to me as they always did around the common fire, waited for the words that would begin this new story of me... The villagers seemed puzzled by my silence, as if they all knew precisely what they would ask for me if it were up to them to choose. No one appeared more puzzled than John.

I knew I must speak, and I must speak now.

“Your Majesty,” I said. He was a dear lad, John Temsland, so handsome, with hair the color of ripe wheat and eyes clear as a baby’s, who loved me...

“Speak, Keturah,” John said.

I felt the evening sunshine upon me—but what was the joy of sunshine if there were no night? Wasn’t the sunset the sweetest time of day? Could I ask for only day and never dark?

And what of my friends? Could I ask for them ever to be at my side? Already I felt them moving past me, faster and faster, while I stayed still. And oh, the peace in that stillness.

What of riches and gold? What of lands and honors? But when I thought of these things there was a silence inside me—a hollowness. It fit ill, like the wrong ending to a good story.

Everyone was happy—old and young, rich and poor, male and female. But I could not touch their happiness, could not hold it. It was a dream and not real. What was real was the sense that in this life I had never quite been satisfied, had never long been at peace, had never loved or been fully loved as I longed to be. I could not name what was in me then, but I knew that the cure was not anywhere around me—not in Grandmother’s and my friends’ smiling faces, not in our shining little village, nor yet in any of the booths of the fair.

No, all I could think to ask for was my one true love, and this not even a king could give me. It was in that moment that everything became clear. “Your Majesty, I ask”—there was an audible intake of breath from the crowd—”I ask that the great hart and his mate no longer be hunted.”

The king looked at me, astonished, and then at John. I did not look at John. I would not. I could not. Behind me the people were murmuring among themselves.

“Very well,” the king said at last. “It is a strange thing you have asked, but you shall have it. Lord Temsland, John, do you swear?”

“We swear,” John said after a brief silence, and in his voice was an accusation, and great pain.

“It is done,” said Lord Temsland, and surely there was a hint of relief in his voice.

The king motioned for me to come closer and, when I did, said quietly so that few else could hear, “It is an unusual request, Keturah, from an unusual subject. Tell me what you say of this. As I traveled past Great Town, I saw villages emptied, fields unharvested, the grain stalks bent and rotting. I saw people hiding in holes like animals, and cattle dead by the roadside, and everywhere the smell of plague. But here, in Tide-by-Rood and Marshall, is health and marrow and wholesomeness. It is my understanding that it is because of you that this is so.”

“No, Your Majesty, but because of one greater than I, and, forgive me,
greater even
than you.”

He studied me then, a long moment, and nodded solemnly. “Tell him—tell him I have learned something. And thank him—or I suppose I shall myself one day.”

The music began again at a nod from the king, and the villagers dispersed to their fairing. And I—I guessed that the shadows of the forest were beginning to touch my cottage, and I walked toward it.

Gretta and Beatrice saw me leaving and broke away from their men and the friends and family who had gathered to congratulate them. Gretta grabbed my shoulders.

“Keturah!” she said. “Where are you going?”

“Home. I am tired.”

Beatrice leaned her head against my shoulder. “Please don’t leave, Keturah. You are so pale, you frighten me.”

“Do not fret,” I said, stroking Beatrice’s hair. “Not today.”

“Keturah,” Gretta said, “promise us that you won’t go into the forest.”

“You have weddings to plan,” I said. “Come, I will not be gone so long.”

Then their families and lovers came laughing to steal them away, not understanding why Gretta had begun to weep, and I continued on.

XIV

A conclusion of sorts.

I entered the cottage as the last rays of sunshine fell on swirling dust motes. I straightened Grandmother’s bed, put away the bowls that had been left on the table, and went to Grandmother’s chest and unwrapped my cornstalk doll. Gently I cradled her in my arms, remembering now that she had never had a name. After a time I put her carefully away, then walked through the garden to the forest.

How thin the air felt at the forest’s edge, how ghostly the trees that guarded their realm. I looked around me. The whole world seemed as delicate as a dandelion seed, and as fleeting. Though the sun had not set, the moon had risen, and the village had never looked so beautiful. How sad to know that the figment village of my imagination would not vanish when I ended, to understand that it was not I who had invented the moon the first time I realized how lovely it was. To admit that it was not my breath that made the winds blow. It was not only my own life I mourned. Wouldn’t all life end with mine? Reason told me it was not so, but my heart, my heart knew that when I closed my eyes I invented the night sky and the stars too. Wasn’t the whole dome of the sky the same shape as the inside of my skull? Didn’t I create the sun and the day when I raised my eyelids every morning?

No. As if I had suddenly grown up, my heart was schooled. My friends, my village, and Angleland would all go on. They had already left me behind.

I turned away from the village and stepped into the forest.

In a little while I could no longer hear the familiar sounds of the village—the laughter of children, the squawks of geese, the lowing of cattle. All I could hear was the shushing of the green sea of leaves, silencing me.

I thought I understood the forest from the days when I was lost in it. Oh, proud trees, so tall and hard, I thought. You would not bend to make me feel less small. You would stand still and watch me die.

The forest was rampant, pathless, and full of shadows. The forest was death, and yet as I walked I began to see the secret life beneath every leaf. I heard eyes blinking, heard small hearts beating. I put one hand upon a tree. Even in the cool shadows, it was warm. I stood still, and as I stood I saw birds flit from branch to branch, squirrels run from their holes, and a rabbit lope around a tree. A butterfly lit on a bush, and a graceful doe stepped briefly into my vision in the deep of the forest. The wood leapt and swayed.

Then I saw the hart standing still as a tree trunk nearby in the shadows. He looked at me. Silently he turned, and just as silently I followed.

I followed the hart until I thought I had lost him. Then I found him, then lost him again. Soon I knew I was lost in the wood, and I sat against a tree. I daydreamed that my whole life until then was a story I had made up and now had forgotten, all but the end. It was a lovely gown I had tried on for a time, a gown whose color I could not now recall. It was a delicious meal that had not filled me.

The sound of a horse brought me to my feet. When I saw the black stallion approaching, I put my hand in my apron pocket. The eye was still as death, but I did not need the charm to understand the magic that was in my own heart.

Lord Death came close to me. I could feel no heat from him, hear no breath in his lungs. He was utterly still beside me, but there was a strange comfort in that stillness. It was as if he had eternity to stand beside me, and forever to listen. There was no time or motion to disturb us.

“And so there was no love for you?” he asked gently.

“Tell me what it is like to die,” I answered.

He dismounted from his horse, looking at me strangely the whole while. “You experience something similar every day,” he said softly. “It is as familiar to you as bread and butter.”

“Yes,” I said. “It is like every night when I fall asleep.”

“No. It is like every morning when you wake up.” He searched my face, touched it gently with fingers so cold they burned along my jaw, my temple, my lips, burned me to the very core. “But to know that is never enough. Keturah, I have abdicated my claim upon your soul. Come, I must take you home. Do you not know you have defeated me? That you have tricked my heart into loving you? Do what you will, marry whom you will, go where you will. You shall live to be a great age, and you shall not see me again until life has pressed its hand so heavily upon you that you wish to see it lift.” He stepped away from me and offered me his hand to lift me to the saddle.

I realized that I held my life in my own arms, then. I cradled it, felt its warm weight and the breath of it. But I had come too far. I saw that the forest was more beautiful than the village even with its bright paint, that the forest’s silence rang more lovely than Beatrice’s singing.

I felt my life grow heavier in my arms until I could not hold it anymore.

I stood very tall. “Sir, here is my wish: that you take me to wife.”

The breeze stilled, the birds stopped their song, and the trees seemed to bend and listen.

“You have determined you would marry for love,” he said.

“I love you,” I replied.

The trees breathed around us, sighing and singing and whispering. “Can I believe what you say?” Lord Death asked.

“I will tell you the end of the story,” I said. “The very end, the truest end there ever was. Once there was a girl—”

“And such a girl,” he murmured.

“—who, long before she was lost in the wood, loved Lord Death. Last year it snowed until June. She did not care, for love of him.

“When the hungry deer and their cold babies came wandering into the town that blackthorn winter, she did not begrudge them her tulips, which they ate stem, stalk, and bud. She did not begrudge them all the yellow of her stolen spring. The hope of yellow must be nothing to the taste of it, she thought.

“In fall, she knew it was Death who sweetened the apples. He made her see the sun in a blue sky and hear the trees in a spring wind. He made her see how much she loved her friends, for all their trouble, and how much her grandmother loved her, and oh, he made her love the breath in her lungs.

“She knew she had never been truly alive until she met him, and never so happy and content with her lot until she was touched by the sorrow of him.”

He lifted his hand as if he would take mine, and then he did not. “Keturah ...” He dropped his arm.

“You, my lord, are the ending of all true stories.”

I moved to touch him.

“I will not let you go with him,” said a voice behind me.

“John!” I cried.

He burst from the bushes, vibrant life shaking the very air around him. His face was pale, his jaw set.

“I thought it was a fairy prince after all you were running away to, Keturah. I never thought—but it does not matter.” John faced Lord Death. “Let her stay, sir. If you love her, you will let her stay, for I will make her a manored lady.”

“John.” I held up my hand. “John, stay back.”

“In my realm, John Temsland, she would have the powers of a queen,” Lord Death said.

John took a step toward him. His hands fisted up, then opened, then fisted again, as if they did not know how to fight such a foe. “I heard that you have a pirate heart, but I did not know until now how black it is,” he said, his voice low and shaking.

“I love her,” Lord Death said, and his endless eyes turned to me.

“If you love her, why would you take her to your dark dwelling? To your hell?”

Lord Death looked at John now, and there was pity in his eyes. “There is no hell, John Temsland. Each man, when he dies, sees the landscape of his own soul.”

“I am not afraid of hell or of you!” John cried, taking another step closer.

And truly, Lord Death, in that moment, seemed to be nothing to fear, a dark and beautiful man only. The lightning went out of his eyes, and one shoulder shrugged. “Of course you are afraid of me,” he said. “I can take the two things you value most—your life and your love.”

John took another stride toward him, and I could hear the rage in that one step. He drew his hunting knife from its sheath. The wind lifted dust from the forest floor, filling my eyes with tears.

Lord Death raised one eyebrow. He drew his cloak aside a little, and the gloam multiplied out its folds. Night shied and whinnied.

“John,” I said, my voice shaking, “will you kill Death?”

“No,” John said to me, though his eyes remained upon Lord Death, “but if he takes you, I will follow.” He turned his hunting knife backward, to point at his own heart.

I put my hand out to steady him, just as he had steadied the hart’s mate that day in the woods that seemed so long ago. I felt my hand tremble, and with all the effort of my will I stilled it. “Don’t you see, John, I must go with him.”

The knife did not waver.

“John, I will try to tell you—” I kept my voice as even as I could, to calm him. “Doesn’t Lord Death own my every breath? Doesn’t thinking of him make me glad of a single day? John, I—I love him.”

“How can you love Death?”

How could I explain that many times in my life Lord Death had walked with me, that he was inevitably a part of my life, my intimate, bargain or no, and that he had always been and must always be my companion, my soul-and-heart love. He had steadied me before—how many times? How many times had I thought I had escaped him, when truly it was that he had not yet claimed me? How often had I felt the power in his arms, power enough to change the course of a river, to bring down a mountain, to spin or stop the world?

At last I said, “His voice is cold at first, John. It seems unfeeling. But if you listen without fear, you find that when he speaks, the most ordinary words become poetry. When he stands close to you, your life becomes a song, a praise. When he touches you, your smallest talents become gold; the most ordinary loves break your heart with their beauty.”

John turned his eyes away from Lord Death then, and looked at me as if he had never known me. He blinked his eyes as if he were awakening from a bad dream. The knife point touched his heart.

“Stop him!” I commanded Lord Death.

“I cannot stop him. If he wants to follow you, he will. But—”

And then, though we did not hear him, we saw the hart step from the trees and into our small clearing.

He was so close we could see ourselves reflected in his great round eye. The muscles in his chest quivered to be so close to humans. John looked at him, his mouth agape. None of us moved for fear that he would bolt. It seemed that he looked at John as much as John looked at him.

“He makes you want to live,” Lord Death said quietly to John.

John looked hatefully at Lord Death for the briefest of moments, and then at the knife he held in his hand.

Surely all the angels of heaven smiled when John’s eye was drawn again to the hart. The hart took a step closer to him, and then slowly lowered his stately head to the ground as if he were bowing. When his head was completely lowered, he began to nibble at mushrooms.

John reached to touch the stag’s antlers. His face forgot Lord Death, forgot me as well, and soon his right hand forgot to hold the knife and dropped it to the forest floor. Then Lord Death touched him, and John fell unconscious into his arms. Together we laid John comfortably on the ground. Lord Death nodded to the hart, who turned and stepped silently into the trees.

“He sleeps only,” Lord Death said to me. “His father will find him soon, for the hart will lead him here. They will find you, too, and take you home.”

“They will find my body,” I said, “for I will go with you.”

“You have no dower,” he said. “Live, Keturah. Go home.”

“But I do have a dower,” I said plainly. “This is my dower, Lord Death: the crown of flowers I will never wear at my wedding.” I could not stop the tears that filled my eyes.

He knelt on one knee before me.

“The little house I would have had of my own, to furnish and clean. That, too, is part of my dower.”

“I will give you the world for your footstool,” he said.

“And most precious of all, I give you the baby I will never hold in my arms.”

Then he folded me in his arms and wept with me. At last I laid down my sadness, laid it on the forest floor, never to have it again. Together we mounted his tall black horse and rode into the endless forest.