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.
I realized that my words had fallen into a sudden quiet.
I saw that Goody’s eyes were upon me in fear and crushed hope. “Death is here for me,” she gasped. “You are speaking to him!” The pains overtook her again, and her little son cried out, “Mama!”
I pressed my hands together, but I could not keep them from shaking. “Can you hear her boy’s pitiful cry? Can’t you see she is needed?”
He looked at me sorrowfully. “She knows your secret certainly now. If she lives, they will tell it. It will not go well for you in the village.”
The little boy’s wails were more than I could bear. I stood. “For pity’s sake, take the child to his aunt,” I cried.
“Don’t leave, Keturah!” Goody screamed.
“I won’t,” I said. “I won’t!”
Goody’s husband left as his son’s wail freshened. He glanced pleadingly at me before the door closed on him. Goody screamed again. This time the fight had gone out of her pain, and there was nothing but the raw cries of one who works toward death.
“Please,” I begged.
“It is better,” he said.
“How could this be better?”
He was very still. Then he put his hand under my chin and lifted my face to his. I could not tell if the heat I felt was in my own face or from the burning cold in his fingers. At last he said, “Keturah, for your compassion, you shall have Goody’s life. But you must come to me this night.”
Over Goody’s screams I could scarcely make out his words. “Her life,” I said, “and—and the life of Soor Lily’s baby son—and I will come.”
He frowned and withdrew his hand. “He is no baby but a giant of a man. And he is destined for death. It is too late for him.”
“Nevertheless,” I said. I might have screamed it—I could no longer distinguish between my voice and Goody’s. My lungs gasped for air as did hers.
Lord Death looked at Goody and back at me, then bent his head in assent. “You must keep your appointment with me,” he said.
I nodded slowly.
Soon Grandmother called out, “The baby’s head is coming, Goody, push, push!” and moments later, “A son— and as big as a calf.”
I looked to see Lord Death, whether feeling gratitude or triumph I was not sure, but he was gone.
Goody’s husband returned and cried harder even than his son had been crying, and everyone else, too, sobbed and laughed with joy. Goody had forgotten her pain already. Her eyes were full of her baby. I gazed at him, willing life into him, while Grandmother wrapped him and placed him in Goody’s arms.
I glanced around Goody’s small house. There was little in it but a bed and a pot or two, but she had picked fresh grasses to grace her window. I remembered that once when I visited her, she welcomed me as graciously as a queen might welcome a guest to her palace, and how I had envied her and her straw bed and her husband in it beside her, and her son too. Standing there now in the warmth of her joy and her home, I shivered to think of Lord Death’s hand on my face. I gazed again upon the newborn, for it warmed me to do so, and meant to hold his tiny fingers, but Goody’s husband blocked my hand. He shook his head. Grandmother, busy with Goody, did not notice.
When I opened the door to leave, Goody’s husband came to see me out. “I thank you, Keturah, for my new son. But I bid you, come no more to my house again.”
I could see in his face how much it had cost him to say this.”I will follow your bidding, sir,” I said, and I left.
The sound of the midnight crows scraped against my heart as I made my way to the top of the village and toward the forest.
The oaks that rimmed the forest seemed to beckon with their long arms. “Come,” they whispered, “come.” But I knew that only a little way into the forest were brooding pines and towering elms. Dead brown needles crunched under my feet upon the path. I was afraid to veer off, knowing the tricks of trees.
I thought of turning back. With every step I thought of it. But I knew I could not save my life by running away.
I stopped. There, off the path in a glimmer of moonbeam, was the great hart that had led me once almost to my death.
“And for all these many years Lord Temsland has not found you,” I whispered. He was very still—not afraid of me,
but wary. “No other stag has ever been able to elude the lord,” I said softly, “for he is nothing if not a fine hunter. How... ?”
The hart lived ever in the shadow of the wood. He knew its winding ways, knew where to find its hidden brooks of water. When the forest’s darker night fell upon him, then he rose up and led his herd to succulent herbs and fat nuts and sweet grasses. He lived side by side with death and was not sad.
“So that is why you escape Lord Temsland—Death has bargained with you too,” I said. “But why?”
“Because,” said a voice behind me, “he is so gloriously beautiful. Like you.”
I turned to see Lord Death, and even in the dark I could tell that his eyes were upon me as if he had forever to consider me. I held my breath, waiting for him to seize me and take me away on his horse. But instead he leaned against a tree.
“Sir, we have plans to clean and repair the village, so the plague will not come.” I was like a child who could not wait to tell her news. Me he might have, but he would not have my people. Not yet.
“Have you plans? Did I tell you that would help?” He sounded amused.
“No—but I inferred,” I said.
“It will not be enough if Lord Temsland allows traffic with Great Town,” he said bluntly. “There, the plague has already begun.” He shifted to fit the curves of the tree he leaned against. “So—the end of the story, Keturah. Did the girl find her true love? Tell me the end of the story as you promised you would.”
I had not thought about the ending of the story at all, so much had I been thinking of my own ending. I cast my mind about for a way to begin.
“Once there was a girl—”
“Ah, the saddest of endings.”
“—who discovered Death’s secret.” Fear must be a fine storyteller, for I had no idea where these words had come from.
Keturah and Lord Death Page 7
