Keturah and Lord Death (6 page)

“Where are you going, Choirmaster?” Beatrice asked.

“Into the forest,” he said sadly.

I laid my hand on his forearm. “Good sir, that way is death.”

“That I well know, Sister Reeve,” he said, and he made to turn himself about and enter the trees. The trees seemed to reach their branches toward him, whispering to him to come, come.

“Sir, what can be so bad?” Beatrice asked with alarm.

“I tried to explain to the young lord,” he said. “But he would not listen. The king loves music, he said. You must have the choir sing, he said, well enough to charm a king. Alas, I cannot make a silk purse from a sow’s ear. I told him my lead soprano has grown whiskers and become a tenor all of a night, but he would not listen to me. He expects beautiful music. Beautiful! Here in Tide-by-Rood! I would lose my post at best—and perhaps a body part as well, depending on how badly the choir sang. Ah, how did I end up here?”

I knew how Choirmaster had ended up here—people in the richer towns could not bear to be quite as sad and somber as Choirmaster could make them.

“Oh!” Beatrice suddenly cried aloud. “Dear Choirmaster,” she said, “I believe I may have a solution to your woes. I mean—I mean, I believe
Keturah
may have a solution to your woes.”

“Indeed?” He took out a great white handkerchief and dabbed his stupendous nose with it.

“She—she has a—a cousin, whose name is Bill. And he sings.”

“Bill? Why have I never heard of him?”

I wondered the same myself, and then I realized what Beatrice was suggesting. As a girl she could not sing in the choir, but as a boy she could.

“He—he rarely sings, sir, for his mother fears making the angels jealous,” I said with an encouraging look from Beatrice.

“Truly?”

“She will send him to you, and you shall have your soprano, and beautiful music,” Beatrice said.

He smiled at her and then me. “Thank you, Keturah.” He frowned. “But if he can’t sing...”

“He can sing the river still, Choirmaster,” I said, and Beatrice blushed pink as a spring rose.

“Tell him to come first thing after chores tomorrow.”

“And if he comes, Choirmaster,” Beatrice said, “will you play a happy song? And will you come to dinner at Keturah s house?”

“If he can sing as you say, anything might be possible,” Choirmaster said. He looked at the burden on his shoulder as if he could not remember where he had been going.

We bade him good day, and he turned back toward the church.

“And how, my pretty Beatrice, how will you possibly become a boy by tomorrow morning?” I asked.

“I shall pray,” she said, “and as a boy, I shall sing until Choirmaster makes happy music, and then you shall love him and he will marry you in gratitude for the choir, and the king shall give you his shoe full of gold and the wish of your heart.”

I did not let her see my smile. I had devised many plans that day, and now I had one more, one that included the happiness of my friends. Though evening was gathering over the forest, my heart was full of hope as we continued home. Lord Death would not have Choirmaster either.

Gretta and Beatrice parted to go to their own homes and talk with their families about the exciting turn of events for Tide-by-Rood, but only after a promise that I would call for them if I had need of anything.

My heart was lighter than my step as I walked the upward path to home, for I felt a strange fatigue in my bones. A breeze out of the forest, cold and scented with bitter pine, reminded me that although work had begun on the village, John Temsland was yet unaware of the grim reason for my plan. And the day was wearing on.

Again I wondered why the eye would roll and roll in the presence of Ben Marshall, and again I suspected that the charm would not tell me once and for true until I had paid Soor Lily’s price.

Though the very scent of the forest breeze made my arms gooseflesh, I knew I would pay the price—not only for the charm, but for the honor of it. I could not bear to see even Soor Lily’s great lump of a baby son go to Lord Death.

By the time I arrived at home, Grandmother was at work with the evening meal and solicited my help as soon as I crossed the threshold.

“Into the garden with you, and fetch me beets and peas, dear.”

I went, and wearily I gathered. I did not look at the forest. I picked the peas closest to the cottage, and thought the whole time how I might help Beatrice become a boy and where I might procure boys’ clothing. I had almost enough beets and peas for the meal when I heard thrashing in the forest just beyond the garden.

I was so afraid, I dropped the vegetable basket. Perhaps it was Lord Death building me a marriage house, I thought. Angrily I put the vegetables back in the basket, and then listened again. More thrashing, and so I cautiously approached the forest’s edge and peered into the green gloom.

Now I could hear that the thrashing had the wild sound of an animal. I sighed with relief. Then, above that, was a human sound.

I stepped carefully into the wood, assuring myself with each step that it would be the last, that I would go no closer. Just when I was about to turn back, I came upon a clearing, and in it, a sleek doe, and beside her, a young man in brown wool and green. His head was deeply hooded, and from within his hood he was speaking to the doe. He had not seen me. He had one hand stretched out to the doe, as if to calm her, and in the other he held a knife. I did not know his voice for certain, but it was familiar.

I crept closer.

I could see now that the doe had walked into a snare. Her hind leg was pulled taut and trembling by a rope. Quietly, so I would not startle her, but loud enough for the youth to hear, I said, “The lord of our parish will hang you.”

He half turned toward me and seemed to consider me from within the shadow of his hood. Very slowly he lifted a single finger before his face.

“Do not silence me, stranger,” I said in a voice at once still and stern. “This forest belongs to Lord Temsland, and if you are caught trapping his deer, by the king’s law you can be hanged.”

“This is not my snare,” the youth said quietly. “I only wish to free her.”

Speaking with low, gentle words to the doe, the youth approached her. She had thrashed against the rope so hard that her leg was bleeding.

“Why do you wish to free her when you could eat her instead?”

The youth said nothing for a moment, and then nodded toward the deep of the forest. “Because she is his mate,” he said.

I looked, and there stood the great hart, still and staring, the beast that had eluded the lord’s traps and hunting parties for years, the one I had followed into the forest to meet Lord Death. He seemed to meet my eyes, and for a moment I could not breathe.

In one motion, the youth dived to the stake that held the rope and cut it through with his knife. The doe leapt twenty paces in a bound and was away, the rope still knotted around her foot.

The hart in the shadows cast his round eye upon me and upon the youth for another moment, and then slowly walked after the doe.

The youth stood breathing deeply and put away his knife. I saw that it was a fine knife, but I did not recognize his hands or his stance. He was relaxed now, obviously pleased with himself. He bowed to the retreating back of the hart. “She will worry the knot
off”
he said, more to himself than to me.

“That is the leader of the herd that razed three haystacks this past winter,” I said.

“The very one,” said the youth.

“Lord Temsland has been hunting him for a long time and would have hunted him today if it were not for a visit from the king’s messenger.” An idea had come to me—an answer to Beatrice’s prayer. “Did you consider that he may have trapped the doe as bait?”

The young man tipped his head.

“If Lord Temsland knew what you have done,” I continued, “you would be hanged by your thumbs for sure. You must do something for me so that I don’t tell.”

I could see enough of the shadows of his face now to guess that he might be smiling, but I could not be sure.

“At your service, lady,” he said. He bowed so low that it might have been mockery.

“I need your clothes,” I said.

He said nothing, but neither did he run away.

“Sir, you will obey if you hold your thumbs dear,” I said. “I need a set of boys’ clothing. Go behind that bush and disrobe.”

For a moment he did not move, and then he bowed slightly. He did not go behind the bush. He removed his boots, then his trousers, replaced his boots, and tossed the trousers at my feet. His face was toward me the whole time, as if he were daring me to watch.

I felt myself flush as I picked up the trousers. “The tunic too,” I said.

In a single motion he removed his hood and tunic. And there stood the young lord John Temsland.

I could not help myself. I gasped. Again he bowed.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” I choked out, so frozen with fear that I could not release my grip on his clothes.

“There need be no begging, Mistress Reeve,” he said, and he smiled gaily.

“But about your thumbs ...”

“If my father discovered my secret, that for some time now I have been foiling his efforts to have the hart, I would lose my thumbs indeed, son or no,” he said. “But it is cold, and I would have my clothes back.”

I looked down at his clothes, still in my hands, and remembered that in this very wood I had met Lord Death.

I curtseyed. “I am sorry, sir,” I said in a choked voice, “but I need them now. But if you would have them back, I will bring them to the interview you promised me.”

I ran, and the evening wind could not cool my flaming face.

I hid the clothes beneath Grandmother’s raspberry canes, and hurried into the house with the vegetables for supper. If Grandmother noted my preoccupation and my alarm at every unexpected sound, she was silent on the matter.

VI

A second meeting, and my attempts to delay.

I ate only a little supper, watching anxiously through the window as the shadows of the forest reached toward the cottage. No, I would not go—I could not go. Not yet, at least. There was still a little time, and Grandmother wished me to come with her to the common fire.

From down in the church the saddest tunes rose and fell like clouds of spring butterflies as we made our way. Most were already at the fire, but if we passed a man, I made sure to touch the charm in my apron pocket. Always it flicked and jerked and never rested. None of the men looked at me, though one or two greeted Grandmother.

“Am I ghost indeed, then, Grandmother?” I asked.

She gripped my hand. “It is fear of fairies. They will soon forget.”

I nodded and held her hand tightly. Knowing that Death’s dark realm lay just beyond the wood made my shabby little village seem bright. The crops in the fields had come up thick and fine, and in a day or so we would have rosy apples in the orchard. I felt affection for everyone I could see: Edwin Highfield cleaning his well, Mother Johnson limping from witch’s shot, and the wagon master’s son secretly holding hands with Mary Teacup there in the orchard. These were the same wattle-and-daub houses I had always known, the same climbing roses that adorned them. Surely I was safe, safe...

No, not safe. Compared with the forest, what was our village? What were our paltry shelters made from the bones of trees, our dingy fires that burned those bones alive, our obscene ash heaps? We hid in our hovels, pretending the forest was not all around us, though it sang while the ax gnawed at its edges. It grew and breathed and cast its long shadows. And yet—was there ever so beautiful a cathedral? Next to the forest, I realized, the chapel looked shrunken and slouched, and I knew I was not safe.

At the fire, boys and girls practiced footraces for the fair in the hopes of prizes of pull taffy. Men debated who might win first prize for the best cow or sheep or pig, defending the chances of others while secretly believing it would be their own that won. Women were making things to show and to sell: knitted things and lace and pretty bonnets and hose.

Everyone fell silent as I approached. Women who spun and knitted ceased their work. Most of the men looked down at their boots or gazed uncomfortably into the fire. Two or three looked at me challengingly. I knew from their looks that I would not be invited to tell a story tonight. Fairy tales were one thing, but another if they were real. I sat behind everyone, where I could feel none of the fire’s heat.

No one told a story that night. The men talked of the harvest and their cattle, and the women of gardens and

children, and Grandmother and I were the first to slip away for home. It seemed to me that Death’s shadow had begun to separate me from my former life.

I was so tired that Grandmother had to slow her step for me on the uphill walk home. I dreaded the errand that still awaited me. Could I find the courage to walk again into the forest? I feared the answer was no.

I pretended to be busy while Grandmother readied for bed, but just when she was about to change into her night-clothes, a knock came. I jumped, but it was only Goody Thompson’s nephew, calling Grandmother away on a midwife’s errand. Grandmother bade me go to bed and assured me it would be quick.

“I will do this one without you, Keturah. You need your sleep. Besides, Goody’s first baby took but an hour, and she scarcely needed me. The second will be quicker still.”

No sooner had she gone than the wind began to roar in the forest and make the candlelight flicker.

I glanced out the window. The trees bowed to the wind. “Death,” they breathed. “Our lord,” they groaned as they bowed and swayed, at times elegantly and slowly, like a dance, and at times with great shaking and reeling, as if the branches wanted to flee from their roots in fear. I had to pay Soor Lily’s price, but I could not bear to go into that forest. I had not found a true love, and Lord Death would know it.

Green leaves blew onto the windowpane and clung to it trembling, and the cow added her lowing to the din. I said a prayer for the little birds in the trees and for our chickens who roosted at the forest’s edge, if they weren’t already blown to Great Town. Somewhere in the village a shutter banged over and over, and beyond that, down at the pier, the boats knocked together. I sat, frozen on my bed, listening to the whistle of a stream of cold forest wind as it blew from a crack near the window. At times it was like the scream of a woman whose loved one is brought home lifeless, and at times like the whimpering of a child whose mother will never again come to him in the night. Again it sounded like the groaning of a man whose bed is empty and cold and whose wife will no longer work at his side. Now it sounded like a knock...

It was a knock indeed, and I realized that I had fallen, still sitting, into a half sleep.

I went to the door, my heart knocking louder than the din of the storm. It was Goody Thompsons nephew again. “Your grandmother bids you come to my aunt’s bed,” he said. His hair had been blown wildly against his face, and he panted as if he had run all the way up the hill. Yes, of course I would come.

I wrapped my shawl around me and followed the lad to Goody’s house, grateful for an excuse to delay my errand.

Before I could enter the cottage, Grandmother came out. Her white hair blew around her face. She did not even try to hold down her skirts. “Go home, lad,” she said to the boy, and he ran off, his jacket flapping in the wind like wings.

“Grandmother, I thought it would be over by now,” I said.

She shook her head. “Goody is having trouble,” Grandmother said.

“What can I do?”

“There is nothing either of us can do,
^”
she said.

“But you called for me.”

“Not I, Keturah. Goody herself begged me to call for you.” She examined my face closely. “Keturah, will you stay? Please.”

“Stay?”

“Will you stay until the birth is over?”

“Yes, of course,” I said.

“No matter how the birth goes?” Her voice sounded small against the roar of the wind.

“Grandmother, why are you asking me this?”

She took my hand in hers. “Keturah, when you were just a bit of a girl, I thought to train you in the midwife’s art in case I died and left you with no means. And so you trundled along with me. At first you cleaned and cared for the littler ones. As you grew older, I taught you what I could.”

“You have taught me well, Grandmother. You are a good midwife.”

“I have lost three since you began coming with me. Before that, I lost none but your own mother. Do you remember the three, Keturah?”

I nodded and held my shawl close. The wind was so violent that the dark itself seemed to reach around me and howl. I said, “There was Melinda Stone, who died of triplets, and Jessica Cooper, who bled out. And June Siddal, whose daughter later cut her face. June’s baby was breech.”

Grandmother patted my hand. “You remember their names. That is good. What else do you remember?”

I thought, trying not to hear the wind or feel it in my skirts. At last I said, “Nothing else, Grandmother.”

“That is because you were not at any of those births, Keturah. Each time, you came into the house, looked about you a moment, and turned and left. The first time, with Melinda, you complained of a bellyache, and I thought nothing of it. The second time, with Jessica Cooper, you said the blood was making you faint. This from a girl who had helped with the hog slaughter since she was three. The last time, when it was June Siddal, you made no excuse, you asked no permission. You just left.”

She stopped and placed her strong hands on my shoulders. “Keturah, I thought I was the only one who knew that you could see their deaths coming. But Goody Thompson knows too, somehow. I can do nothing more for her, though I pretend to busy myself. But she knows. She will be watching to see if you stay or leave. She is terrified to see what you will do. To see your death coming and to fear it—that is much worse than the dying. That is why I ask you to stay, no matter what.”

I nodded slowly. “I will, Grandmother.”

She hurried into the house, and I followed close behind.

But even as Grandmother spoke to me, I remembered something else from those birthings—that I had seen Lord Death before.

I had seen him that day when Grandmother fetched me to help Melinda’s baby get born. There he was in the dimly lit room, comely and somber, yet comfortable, patient, as if he were a part of the family—a distant rich cousin, perhaps, or a well-traveled uncle. His face on the night of June’s death, I remembered now, had been sad, and later so had our faces. The mother died, and the infant with her, and the poor woman’s eldest daughter took a knife and cut her face so that she would never marry and have a baby.

I had seen him last year at St. Ivan’s Feast, when the men had drunk too much ale and began to wrestle. There he had been a shadow among the men, tall, and with a lordly bearing. When I looked more closely, he was gone. The next day a man had been killed, and the blacksmith’s son was gone. Poor Jenny Danson, for it was her father who had been killed, and her secret love who ran away.

I had seen Lord Death among us many times since I was a young girl, I realized now. Though I had not known who he was, as a child I feared him and hid my face in Grandmother’s skirts if she would let me. As I got older, I came to believe that he had nothing to do with me.

He had been in the shadows, silent and pale. He hadn’t looked at me or spoken to me, seemingly unaware that I could see him. Though I was young, I knew that I should not bring attention to his presence. I did not ask his name or point him out to anyone. I would see him standing, waiting patiently, respectfully. Though he was always there, I chose to ignore him, and I lived most days as if he were not often before me.

As I entered the Thompson house, I thought my fear screamed out, but instead it was Goody herself.

Her eyes fastened upon me the moment I opened the door, as did the eyes of Goody’s mother and her sister, and of her husband holding their toddling child. Grandmother knew, and all these knew. The wind flung back the door, and I hastened to close it.

Once well inside, I looked at Goody with all the calm I could muster. I was aware of the low fire, and that Grandmother had cleaned the cottage and chased out the chickens, as was her wont, and that Lord Death stood in the shadows, his back to Goody.

“Will you stay then, Keturah?” Goody panted weakly.

Lord Death turned in a fluid, graceful motion and looked at me. In the forest he was tall and fine and strong, but here in a cottage he was royal and commanding, and his terrible beauty made the humble cottage shine with nobility.

Above the crackle of the settling fire, in a voice that only I could hear, and yet a voice that was piercing to my heart, he said, “Yes, Keturah, will you stay?”

“I will stay,” I said to Goody. I sat in the willow rocker in the farthest corner of the cottage. I resolved that here I would sit, and I would not remove myself until the babe was born or the woman gone.

Goody’s face crumpled into glad tears. “God bless you, Keturah,” she said. Then the pains overtook her again.

Lord Death approached me, and as he did I could feel the heat of the fire less. I stopped rocking. His gleaming black boots reflected the dying coals of the fire.

“You are yet more beautiful by firelight,” he said.

“It is only that I am not half-dead this time. Death is uglifying,” I said pointedly.

“You were supposed to come,” he said icily. “Did you not fear to incur my anger?”

“Why should I fear you now?” I said to him in a low voice, and yet fear filled my throat and my words quavered. The others, who had crowded around Goody’s bed, could not hear me over the woman’s moans. “I am not lost in your wood today.”

“Yet now you see that you are safe nowhere,” he said.

I said nothing.

After a time he said, “I did not know until now that you have always been able to see me, since you were a little child.”

It angered me that he knew, and then I felt a certain relief, the kind that comes when a secret has been shared.

“Were you afraid, Keturah? When you were so young?”

“I thought you were a wealthy relative who never spoke, a high-born uncle, at first. Then came a day when I knew that to see you would mean someone would soon weep.”

Goody Thompson thrashed in her bed and cried out. Grandmother commanded her in a sure and calming voice, and only I could detect the note of fear in it. Goody was drenched in sweat. Her lips were stretched white over her teeth. Her sister and her mother prayed aloud, and the tears rolled down Master Thompson’s cheeks.

“How can you let her die?” I whispered.

He ran his hand through his hair. “Keturah, I would have you know I take no pleasure in this. At least not this part of it.”

Goody cried out again, and her boy in his father’s arms began to sob. I was cold in spite of my wrap, but my heart was colder. “Then stop it,” I said.