Keturah and Lord Death

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.

“Nonsense,” John said, “but she shall be if she doesn’t eat that pie immediately.” He helped me to the bench at the table, and Grandmother pushed past Mother By-the-Way and placed the pie before me. Before she had time to cut it, I dug into it with a spoon and ate as fast as I could.

“No ghost eats like that,” Grandmother said happily. She kissed the top of my head and sat across the table from me, beaming with relief and concern.

“Where did you find her?” Gossip asked.

“Where we’d searched a dozen times—near the edge of the forest, behind her own house,” John answered.

“Leave it to young John to find the girl,” said one of the men.

“That’s our John,” agreed another, and others joined in and added their own praises.

John seemed uncomfortable with the praise and excused himself. “I will come again to assure myself that you are well,” he said to me.

“Thank you, sir,” I said, swallowing my mouthful of pie. “I am well enough, I think, but I would be grateful for the chance to speak with you on the other matter as soon as possible.”

He inclined his head in assent and left.

How handsome he had grown to be, I reflected, with his hair the color of harvest-time wheat and his eyes green as bay water. All the villagers loved him and were proud that he could kick a ball farther than any of the other boys, and drag a boulder farther in the harness, too.

When he was gone, the guests whispered together and stared at me with long faces. They were disappointed, of course, having come for a funeral gathering. Some of the men, who’d been good friends with Grandfather when he was alive, had told stories of the forest and of all the people they’d known who had been killed by its treachery. Now, at intervals, one or another would look up at me and shake his head in wonderment, as if I had defied all the wisdom of great age.

Gossip was obviously disappointed when I appeared whole and alive, but when others began to look sidelong at me and whisper of fairies, she cheered up.

Grandmother’s gaggle of friends, who had been there to cluck and clean and comfort, had brought bread and meats to make a funeral meal, even if there was no body to mourn over. Now they grudgingly turned the food into a celebratory meal.

Relatives were there, too, and more came as the news spread of my return—cousins and second cousins and great-aunts and a step-uncle. I wondered where my friends Gretta and Beatrice were. Most of all, I wondered where my true love was, whoever he might be, and if he was among my mourners.

Ben Marshall, a man of marriageable age who had of late made an effort to speak to me at doings, smiled at me. Though I had at times ventured to return his attentions, I had had reservations. He was tall and toothsome, but he had a great love of food, and already one could see signs of future portliness in him.

My deepest reservations had to do, however, with a long Marshall tradition.

Marshalls were known for their prizewinning gardens. Generations ago, a Marshall had decided that he would marry the woman who was chosen Best Cook of the village, regardless of his feelings for her, and vowed that his sons would do the same. His sons obeyed, and theirs, and now it was a long tradition of which they were inordinately proud.

The best gardens and the Best Cook in one household meant that their tables were the envy of Lord Temsland’s lands, but it was well known that Marshall children were nursed on business, not love, and I, I would have love. Still, I encouraged my hopes that I could have both Ben’s garden and his heart for my very own, and that he might be my true love. Perhaps my new reputation as the one who had been stolen by fairies would be overshadowed by my reputation as the one who cooked the best pies in Tide-by-Rood.

Also in the house was Tailor. I thought of what Lord Death had said about him half sorrowing unto death, and my heart went out to him. He was a bonny man, a well-off widower something older than me, close-mouthed and pragmatic. I did not know him, really, but I knew his beautiful children. I knew that Gretta admired him for his famed and perfect stitches, and I determined then and there that Gretta was the one who could cheer his heart and make it live.

There was Choirmaster, too, perhaps the richest bachelor in the village, but God had given him so many gifts in music that there had been none left for his face. Worse, he played only gloomy music and seemed afraid of girls. Still, I had never seen him be unkind, and I wished that Death knew him not so well. I knew that Beatrice admired him; perhaps I could persuade her to comfort his heart.

There was Tobias, Gretta’s brother, but he was a year younger than I, and still a dog boy who cared more about horses than about girls. There was Locky Jones, who was hopelessly cystic in the face, and one of Soor Lily’s great sons, who loved only their mother. And …

“Keturah, are you missing the fairies?” It was Tailor’s little daughter. The crowded room fell suddenly silent.

“There are no fairies in the wood, Naomi,” I said, “only trees and beasts and bugs that bite.”

Everyone whispered among themselves. Naomi said, “Even though you are bug-bitten, Keturah, you are still beautiful.”

I gathered her into my arms. “’Tis a curse, child,” I said, thinking of Lord Death.

“But how did you get lost, Keturah?” she asked, the first one to do so.

“I followed the hart into the wood, Naomi.”

“She followed the hart, she followed the hart,” the others whispered.

One of the older men nodded knowingly. He spoke to me. “I have heard that the deer and the forest beasts are of the kingdom of the fairies. Don’t all the tales tell it? Speak true now, Keturah. Did you see the fairy king?”

With my mouth full of meat pie again, I said, “Not a fairy king, sir, nor a common fairy neither.”

“And yet the hart lured you.”

“Forgive me, sir, but he did not lure. It was my own curiosity that made me follow him.”

The man shrugged his shoulders as if to say he did not believe me, and it was clear from the way all eyes turned away that they did not believe me either, preferring the stories I had told of the hart around the common fire. “Well,” the man said, “there’s something devilish and sly about the beast, and it is not just for the sake of winter hay that I say he must be hunted down.”

These words brought me no happiness. The great hart loomed in my memory—tall and proud and fearless. I thought his beauty something I would be willing to sacrifice a haystack for, though lack of hay meant a hungry winter for both people and stock alike. The men’s talk became louder, and soon a group was dispatched to the manor to solicit Lord Temsland about the matter.

I could taste the three days’ staleness in the meat pie, suddenly. The crust was gritty between my teeth, the meat greasy and gristly. I winced to swallow and put down my spoon.

Just then, Gretta and Beatrice burst into the cottage and threw their arms about me. “We could not summon an appetite to eat at your funeral, but when we heard you had been found …,” Beatrice said.

“Thank goodness and mercy that young Sir John did not give up,” said Gretta.

I hugged one and then the other: Beatrice, with the voice and face of an angel, who saw the good in everyone and everything and met life with good cheer, and Gretta, whose hair was always perfectly coifed, whose clothes were perfectly clean and pressed, and whose loyalty and love were perfectly constant. They kissed me, each on either side of my face.

“Eat, eat,” said Gretta, sitting beside me.

“How beautifully pale you are,” said Beatrice, sitting on the other side of me.

While my friends and I talked, the villagers continued to whisper, and one by one they departed. Grandmother gathered the leftovers to take to Hermit Gregor, who lived poor. When all had gone, Beatrice said, “Undoubtedly they will hereafter cross themselves every time they see you.”

“I care not a bit what the villagers say,” I replied. “Not a speck, not a whit, not a jot, not a tittle. My only care is to wed my true love.”

Gretta and Beatrice looked at each other a moment.

“But you don’t have a true love,” Beatrice said with a puzzled expression.

“Of course I do,” I said. “I just don’t know yet who he is.”

Again they exchanged glances.

“You don’t even like anyone very much,” Gretta said.

“I like everyone,” I said vehemently. “More than I ever have in my life.”

I looked down the slope to the village huts nestled like a clutch of gray eggs by the bay.

“Well, yes, but not, perhaps, in a romantic sort of way,” Beatrice said.

“We mean you don’t love any men,” Gretta said in her even, matter-of-fact voice.

“You know very well that I adore all men,” I said. “I have always thought them to be the dearest of things.”

Beatrice sighed. “In the most general sense—” she began.

“—but not in the specific sense,” Gretta finished.

I opened my mouth to contradict them and found that I could not. I grasped their hands. “Well, that must end. I must find a specific man and fall madly in love with him and have him love me back. By tomorrow nightfall. And you must help me.”

Beatrice cleared her throat. “Of course we will help you, dear,” she said.

“You were indeed stolen by fairies, weren’t you?” Gretta said. “And the fairy king will come for you if you do not find your true love.”

I sighed. “’Twas Lord Death I bargained with,” I said. Beatrice put her fingertips on her lips. Gretta’s hands went limp. How real that made it, saying it thus to my beloved friends.

“Of course,” Gretta murmured, as if she suddenly understood everything. She held my eyes with her own. “How else could you have come alive out of the wood?” She turned her gaze toward the forest. “Never have I seen a fairy, but death is as real to me as the scar on my knee. What exactly is the bargain, Keturah?”

“I told him a story and then refused to tell the end. Let me live one day, I said, and I will tell you the end of the story on the morrow. ’Tis a story of love, a love that is greater than death, I told him, and I revealed that I myself would have such a love. He told me that if I could find a love like that before I returned to tell the end of the tale, he would free me of the bond.”

I could not bear the hopeless look in Beatrice’s eyes, nor the grim one in Gretta’s.

Gretta stood tall and put her hands on her hips and looked out over the village. “Now, I wouldn’t marry a single one of them,” she said. “There’s not a perfect one among them. But … Tailor comes very close.”

“Tailor? Not at all, Gretta. He would be perfect for you,” I said.

Gretta looked at me with a shrewd eye, and back to the bustling village. “When I find a man who will let me increase him in perfections, I will marry,” she said. “And Tailor seems not to be a man who will be bossed. He must be perfect for you instead.”

“No, Gretta, no. Tailor I could never love. Besides, everyone knows your stitches are the only ones Tailor could bear to look at all his life.”

“He has never seen my stitches. He mourns his wife still too greatly to notice such things. No, I have decided, Keturah. I shall never marry. You shall marry Tailor, and I shall be the best spinster and needlewoman in the village, and I shall live to keep my figure and my heart, and I shall grow old and never live to regret unruly children.”

“There is Choirmaster,” Beatrice said.

“Choirmaster! For Keturah?” Gretta exclaimed. “But I thought you liked—” She stopped; then, looking meaningfully at Beatrice, she said, “Ah, yes, Choirmaster—a most eligible bachelor.”

“He is intelligent,” Beatrice said.

“But gloomy,” Gretta replied.

“We could cheer him up,” Beatrice said bravely. “He is a devout man.”

Gretta answered, “But what about his nostrils?”

“Keturah shall have to try not to look up them.”

“But that is impossible!”

“Shush, Gretta,” Beatrice said, smiling. “He is an elegant man. And if one can’t help but look up his nostrils, at least he keeps his nostrils clean. I’ve noticed he has a fresh handkerchief every day.”

“You know I have always thought well of Ben Marshall,” I said slowly.

“Ben Marshall is not bonny enough for you, Keturah,” Gretta said.

“You say that about every lad,” Beatrice said with a sigh. “Of course he’s a handsome lad, Keturah, and well off, too. But there is the tradition—he must marry a Best Cook.”

Gretta leaned across the table on her elbows. “He will never love a wife as dearly as he loves his pumpkins and his squashes,” she said.

Beatrice said encouragingly, “He is a frugal man, I think.”

“Aye, another strike against him,” Gretta said, thumping the table and straightening up.

Beatrice frowned at Gretta and then smoothed her frown into forgiveness. Beatrice generously forgave Gretta many times a day.

“Padmoh wants him,” Gretta added. “And while she is better suited to him, she is a scold and would make his life a torment.”

Padmoh Smith was likely the best cook in the village. She ate eggs every day and sported her girth as proof of it. She had already won Best Cook two years in a row, but Ben Marshall had not yet proposed. Still, Padmoh could make a loaf that would cause a hungry man to weep with desire, and a stew that would make even a fed man beg. Grandmother said that although she was as plain as a fencepost, when a man ate her pie he began to think she was beautiful.

Grandmother also said Beatrice was pretty, though not beautiful, but when she sang, men began to forget that she was not beautiful. Demonstrate talent, said Grandmother often to me, and you will still be loved by a husband when beauty has faded.

But when it had come time for me to demonstrate talent, I did not demonstrate. I could bake a pie and I could tell a story, but neither would win me a husband, Grandmother told me sadly. I might make a fair midwife in time, she said, but it would be my beauty that would get me a husband.

In my mind, any beauty I possessed had not done me good but only caused me grief. Gretta and Beatrice said the other village girls claimed that their sweethearts had been led away by me. That was nonsense. I had no interest in any of their sweethearts, and if the boys spoke to me or stood about me, I was as silent as I could be. I found that I could be very silent. Besides, what need of beauty for a poor peasant girl, living in her own wattle-and-daub with her own peasant husband and her little peasant baby?

I sighed. “A love greater than death,” I murmured, and then, just then, I did not know what that meant.

“Well, one thing is certain—we go a-manhunting,” Gretta said.

It felt good to have my friends in my confidence, though I confess not my full confidence. I could not bear to tell them what Lord Death had said about the plague.

“I won’t let Death have you,” said Gretta with great calmness, yet beneath the calmness was a vibrating anger.

I put one hand on her cheek and held Beatrice’s hand with my other. “How many die every day under that same heaven which one day cannot be swayed?”

“I will fight him,” Beatrice said tearfully—Beatrice, who escorted bugs out of her house with all gentleness. Her pretense of good cheer and bravery had vanished, and I squeezed her hand.

I shook my head. “Beatrice, this is not a man you fight. This is a man before whom you curtsey.”

“No,” she said. “I hate him.”

“Now, now,” I said softly. I kissed her hair. Why did it pain me to hear her say this? “It will not be tonight. Go home and rest.”

When I went to kiss Gretta, she drew away. “If all else fails, you must fight him, Keturah,” she said. “I shall be forever angry with you if you don’t.”