Keturah and Lord Death

Another wind gusted in the trees. The branches thrashed overhead, and a flock of black birds rose as one from the trees and flew away. The horse whinnied and shook his silver harness.

“I have decided,” Lord Death said icily.

“No, sir,” I said again, for I was feeling strong now. “I will not marry you. I will live and breathe and dance and tell my children stories. I will marry for love.”

A moment more, I thought, and I would stand on my own legs again. I sounded brave and sure, but I confess my heart was sick and afraid, and emptier than my stomach. Plague. Plague. The wind moaned and the trees bowed low.

“There is no refusing, Keturah,” he said.

His horse pawed the ground.

“Sir, then I must obey you, but I need not love you,” I said. “And think of eternity with a wife who does not love you.”

He lifted me as if I weighed no more than a baby, and set me on his horse.

The horse was swift, and there could be no escape. Lord Death did not speak to me, nor I to him, but my heart raged: No! I will not have you! Though you drag me into your wormy realms I will not have you.

When at last we came to the edge of the wood, where I could see my grandmother weeping through the window of our cottage, he set me down. “Tomorrow night,” he said, “when the shadow of the forest touches your cottage.”

“I will find my true love, sir, and I will rob you of my soul. And all the souls you would reap in the plague, too.”

“Keturah,” he said, tilting his head, and he turned his horse and galloped away. 

II

 In which I am welcomed home

with reservations and theories, and in which

I consider bachelors.

Lord Death had deposited me close to the edge of the forest. I could see our cottage clearing through the trees, and Tide-by-Rood beyond.

I wobbled on my legs a moment, but I was afraid to take a step toward the cottage, thinking I might fall and never get up again. I looked longingly at Tide-by-Rood through the edging of trees.

Tide-by-Rood was the poorest village in the poorest corner of the kingdom, yet this moment I doubted there was a dearer sight in all creation. The village square at the bottom of the hill was a muddy morass, as it usually was, except in winter when the mud froze and in summer when it dried hard as a brick kiln. The cottages were in need of patching, and none more than my own. The thatch on every roof was thin and bore nests for mice and birds. The mill was an eyesore, and more than one goodwife had seen rats as she waited for her grain to be ground into flour. The boats that bobbed in the bay were tattered and gray as flotsam.

“Grandmother!” I called. When no answer came I took a step, and fall I did. It took all my powers to push myself to a sitting position. “Grandmother!” I called again. “It’s me, Keturah!”

Then came the sound of crashing through the trees. I thought it might be the great hart, and then I knew it was no wild beast but a horse. Lord Death had changed his mind, I guessed, and had returned for me.

But the horse was a golden mare, and the rider was none other than John Temsland, son of Lord Temsland, master of the lands of Tide-by-Rood.

He dismounted, took my face in his hands, and then proffered me his waterskin.

“By all saints,” he said as I drank, “we’ve been searching for you for three days. We thought you were dead.”

I wiped my mouth and chin. “I shall quickly be dead if I am left here, sir, for I cannot walk.”

Gently he lifted me, and carried me. Once out of the forest, he set me upon my legs and held me around my shoulders.

“It is most kind of you, sir,” I said, flustered to think that the first time the handsome young lord saw me should be after I had been lost in the forest. And then I remembered my last words to Lord Death. “Sir, I must speak with you about an urgent matter.”

“First you must rest from your ordeal, Mistress Reeve, and restore the color to those comely cheeks,” he said kindly.

A compliment so significant as that could not be borne by legs as weak as mine, and they folded under me once again. Young John caught me and carried me into the cottage.

Our cottage was bursting with people, all weeping and speaking in low tones.

John set me down but kept his arm round me to steady me.

The weeping and murmuring stopped.

“I’m home,” I said, and my eyes lit upon a meat pie sitting atop the cupboard.

Everyone became very still, turning only their heads to look at me. All at once a woman screamed, a man cursed, and the rest drew in breath as one. Grandmother cried my name and ran toward me, arms outstretched, but Mother By-the-Way blocked her.

“Don’t touch her,” she said. “She is a ghost.”

Grandmother put her hands on her bosom. “Are you a ghost, Keturah?”

How beautiful she looked to me, and yet my gaze fell upon the meat pie again.