Keturah and Lord Death

I went to the door, my heart knocking louder than the din of the storm. It was Goody Thompson’s 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.