Keturah and Lord Death

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.