Keturah and Lord Death

Gretta and Tailor moved to be near the king’s court, where they bought a big house with a great door that Tailor painted blue. Gretta quickly forgot which were her children and which were Tailor’s. Living to an extraordinary age, she mourned them all equally as she buried her husband and, one by one, her children. In this suffering she found the best sort of perfection—the kind that never demands it of others.

Ben married Padmoh after all, and while it cannot be said that they were happy together, it can be said that they both lived comfortably and fatly, and died just the way they wanted—of food. Every one of their four sons broke with Marshall tradition and married for love.

As for young John Temsland, he grew to be a great and beloved lord, and the king held him up to others as an example. John married the king’s niece and loved her sweetly, and it is said he denied her nothing save her ongoing wish to hunt in the Temsland forest. That he was so adamant about this was a source of curiosity to her all their days, as was his wont to dream of a night and call out the name Keturah. But there were no other puzzles to him, and they were happy, as were their people.

As for Grandmother, when the fair was over, and when she came to know what I had done, she went into the garden and picked a large ripe strawberry, and then walked into the forest a long way.

“Oliver Howard Reeve,” she called, standing there in the cool of the forest. “Oliver Howard Reeve!” she demanded again.

And soon, because I asked, Lord Death allowed her husband to come to her.

“Sybil,” he said gently from the bending willows.

“You have all left me behind,” Grandmother said, with the slightest hint of a sob in her voice.

“Ah,” he said, “but someone has to be last.”

And so they talked together of all the big and small things of life, and soon Grandmother’s complaint became a thing of laughter, and she gave him the bright red strawberry and he gave her a lily-of-the-valley, and he took her hand and brought her through the woods to the meadows and the mountains. And oh, how we rejoiced over mountains together.

As for the hart—he lives to this day, as does the story of Keturah and Lord Death as it is told around the common fires of the great city of Tide-by-Rood.

THE END 

Acknowledgments

Some books come quietly—they are intimately the writer’s own, and even the editor need only touch it lightly before it is ready to be shared with readers.

Some, like this one, come with much help from others, and thanks are necessary. I wrote the first few pages of this book in a desperate attempt to fulfill a page quota while in my MFA program. My advisor at the time, Brock Cole, said, “There’s a book in there. You should write it.” When a writer of Mr. Cole’s stature says you should do something, you are wise to comply. I’m glad I did.

I wish to thank M. T. Anderson and Jane Resh Thomas, who nursed along subsequent pages and encouraged me to see it through to the end.

I am very grateful to my typist and dear friend Valerie Battrum, without whom this book would still be sitting on my desk, a stack of hand-scribbled pages. She is always among my first and most valued readers. I am indebted also to Stephen Roxburgh, Katya Rice, and my daughter Sarah for their editorial expertise.

Thanks go to the Canada Council for the Arts and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts for their timely financial assistance.

Finally, I express my love to my youngest sister, Lorraine, who died many years ago of cystic fibrosis at the age of eleven. Now, as a mother and grandmother, I realize what a long journey dying must be for a child to make alone. I wish I could have walked with her a little way. This book is my way of doing so. 

Discussion Guide

1.In the front pages, the author quotes from Emily Dickinson’s poem “The Chariot,” which personifies death. What are some other poems, books, paintings, movies, or other media that have attempted to represent death in some way? How do you think Leavitt’s death character conforms to or departs from these other interpretations?

2.Did the prologue impact your reading of the book? If so, in what way?

3.Keturah, the reader might notice, is told in layers of story: the story Keturah is telling that begins in the prologue and ends in the coda, the smaller stories she tells Lord Death that keep her alive day after day, the stories she told around the fire that come to life in the book, even the story the author is telling. I was asking questions about the nature of story. More specifically, how does death play a part in the story of a life? Is it the true ending of all stories? Do we construct stories to understand death? Or do we model stories, with beginnings, middles and ends, because life has a beginning, middle and end? Is eternity a story we have told ourselves? Or are stories the business of eternity?