Keturah and Lord Death

VIII Soor Lily and I concur; Ben brings a squash; the arrival of Tobias with lemons that disappoint; and I cook pies.

Henry quickly spread the word that John Temsland would address his people in the village square, and just as quickly the people began to gather.

The sun was hot, and no breeze blew in from the bay, and soon people were grumbling and miserable. How had half the day gone by, I wondered. I willed time to slow. John led me to the square and climbed to the top of a pile of cobblestones.

“My people,” he said, his arms toward them. “I stand on these stones that should by now be laid over the square. But no one came to the work today. Would you not have the king come and see that our village is everything my father said it was?”

“There is still much left to harvest, young John,” said George Puddington. “We have our own work to do.”

“Will the leavings of the harvest not wait until after the fair, George?” John countered.

George cast a sullen look at me and said nothing.

“We have the bay, and the forest for hunting,” Peter Whitty called. “We are not ashamed of Tide-by-Rood.”

“But why do you object to making it even better?” John said, smiling, cajoling.

“We are tired at the end of the day,” Peter replied. The crowd murmured in agreement.

“Peter, George, all of you—did you stop to think why the great lords have put it in the king’s mind to come to Tide-by-Rood at this time, and on such short notice? They don’t like my father, who advises the king to be merciful and kind to the commoners. He tells the king that his power comes to him because of the people’s love. The great lords want to oppress the people, assert even greater authority, and so they wish to have my father shamed, to take him further out of favor with the king. Perhaps they will take away his lands and a new lord will come, one who would be less kind to you than my father has been.”

The crowd murmured.

“What has she to do with you, John?” Peter asked, pointing at me. “Has she cast fairy dust in your eyes? Or worse?”

“If loyalty to my father is not reason enough, then Keturah Reeve has something to tell you,” John replied. “I adjure you to listen to her.”

Only a few days before, men had looked on me with soft eyes. Now they were reluctant, suspicious, hard.

“She is why we stopped work on the road,” Paul Stoppish called out. “It was her idea first, wasn’t it?”

Others joined in. “Who told you to speak up about the road, Keturah? Was it Death, wishing to see us perish from heat and fatigue?” a voice called out. “Will he send down a stone on the head of an unsuspecting one?” cried another. “Will a hammer break and kill him who wields it?” shouted Patsy Krundle in front.

John held up his hand to silence them. “Listen to her, I tell you.” He reached down and lifted me up onto the stone pile. I was trembling so that I could scarcely focus my vision upon the crowd. I opened my mouth to speak, but I did not know how to begin.

John encouraged me with a kind look.

I cleared my throat and took a breath, and still no words came to mind.

John put his hand on my back and faced the crowd. The sun seemed to have burned the air—it had a smoky, acrid smell to it—but no one moved or murmured.

“The rumors you have heard are true. Keturah has seen Death, and she has learned something that we all should know. Speak, Keturah. Tell them—”

“—that plague comes,” came a voice from the crowd. There was a cry and an intake of breath from the villagers, and all eyes turned to Soor Lily, for it was she who had spoken. Six of her seven sons hovered protectively around her. The seventh, I noticed suddenly, was standing guard by me at the base of the stones.

She walked to the front of the crowd where everyone could see her.

“Plague—in Angleland,” she said. “I can smell it. I’ve known for some time.”

The crowd erupted with shouts and cries.

“Please!” John said.

“You cannot run—there is nowhere to go,” Soor Lily cried.

The crowd became quieter. Though they feared her for a witch, still there was not one in the crowd who had not been helped by her—with the toothache, the bellyache, or the earache, with lumps or festers or ulcers or malaise.

“It is a way off, but not so far it could not find us. We should listen to what she has to say,” Soor Lily said, and she turned to me, waiting for me to speak.

Gretta and Beatrice joined the crowd. I saw Gretta nod at me as if to say, “Speak, friend.”

“Death treads less easily where there is a good road,” I said, and though my voice was cramped, it carried in the quiet. I raised my voice. “Death does not dwell in clean corners and hates nothing more than a sludged well and a mill with no vermin. If you will bring neatness and order, perhaps—perhaps the plague will not come. If we can work together, and the strong help the weak, and if we share the burden, surely …”

But some part of me knew, even as I spoke, that Lord Death, clean as a filed blade as he was, did not always want the souls we so willy-nilly sent to him. I wondered if he had put the thought in my mind, or if mere proximity to him was teaching me.

“And no one must go to Great Town,” I added.

As I spoke, the eyes of the men got larger, as if their ears were not big enough to hear what I was saying and their eyes had to help.

“I believe her,” said Henry Bean’s father, Caleb.

“And I,” said Gretta’s father, Will.

“We must work on the road all night,” said Beatrice’s father, James.

A few wives were wheedling their husbands into submission. Mothers hugged their children close and hurried them back to home.

John jumped down and the men gathered, and before I could get entirely away, work on the road had begun.

I headed for home, for I was weary, weary. I had not gone far when I was stopped short by something splattering at my feet—a rotten apple. I was too tired even to look for the culprit. I stepped over it, and another landed nearby. This time I stopped and looked behind me. John Temsland was coming toward me, and in each hand was the ear of an attached boy. They squirmed and came with their ears.

“These boys have somewhat to say,” John said cheerfully.

“Sorry,” squeaked one boy.

“Sorry,” said the other.

John let them go, and they ran away, rubbing their ears. “I will have a man watch over your house,” he said.

“I am not afraid,” I said. Not of them, I added in my thoughts. Against the one I truly feared, no one could guard.

I bent my head in respect and continued on my way.

“You are a brave woman, Keturah Reeve,” he called after me.

I scarcely heard him, for the sun was on its descent, and my mind reeled for a new story.

When I arrived home, Grandmother placed dinner before me with a loving pat. After, I washed the wooden platters and the horn mugs, and placed them neatly on the shelf under the cooking table next to Grandmother’s steel and flint. While devising every possible story, I made sure all the wooden spoons were face down to keep out the devil, as Grandmother had instructed me since I was a baby. I was sweeping the floor, and had almost grasped an idea for the story I must tell Lord Death, when who should come but Ben Marshall.

“I thought you were very brave today,” Ben said timidly. “I brought you this.” He handed me a purple squash.

I thanked him and cradled the squash in one arm like a baby. With the other hand I reached into my apron pocket and discovered to my dismay that the eye had not stopped and was rolling up and down and side to side as before.

“I never believed that you were stolen by the fairies,” he said quietly.

“No, Ben, it was not true,” I said. I had paid the price—why didn’t it stop? The squash was evidence that he was smitten with me.

He cleared his throat. “There is much talk. Mother has heard it. But all the talk in the village can’t stop you from winning Best Cook at the fair. Isn’t that so, Keturah?”

I squinted at him, forcing my eyes to think him the most beautiful of men. I willed myself to love him. Love him! I commanded my heart. But the eye continued to roll.

Grandmother came in from the garden and seemed delighted to see I had a visitor. “What news, Ben?”

“Good day, Grandmother Reeve. I—I just came to tell you that the poor parish priest’s cow died of the bloat,” Ben said.

“Perhaps he should have sprinkled his cow with stolen holy water like Farmer Dan,” Grandmother said, chuckling.

“I heard Dan tell the priest his flock had grown so fat, it was hard to repent,” Ben answered. It was clear he was trying to charm her. “The priest said his flock might become so holy they would refuse to mate. That put the fear into him.” Grandmother laughed and Ben blushed at his own joke.

It was a good joke, I thought as they continued to talk. Grandmother thought it funny. Why didn’t I? I had tried to laugh, but it came out more like a hiccup. Surely the eye was only waiting to see if I would win Best Cook.

“Ben,” I said, interrupting a lengthy speech on the fine art of growing asparagus, “would you come tomorrow to try my pies?” If only there would be a tomorrow.

He smiled. “Of course, Keturah. It is good that you are practicing your cooking for the fair.”

“Ben, what if I don’t win Best Cook?” I said.

“You must win, Keturah,” Ben said. “I am bound by tradition.”

“Yes,” his mother said, startling us both by appearing in the doorway. “Tradition.”

“Constance,” said Grandmother. “Won’t you come in?”

“I will not,” she said. “And Ben is needed at home.”

“Constance, surely you don’t believe the … the talk,” Grandmother said stiffly.

“We don’t want your fairies in our garden,” Constance said shortly. “They eat holes in the chard and make webs between the beanstalks.”

“Mother!” Ben said.

“Mother Marshall, I assure you I have had no dealings with fairies,” I said.

“No? Then is it true that it is worse than fairies, that you have had dealings with him?”

“Mother, please. Go—I will follow shortly,” Ben said.

His mother gave me a sour look and turned to leave. When she was down the path, Ben said, “Keturah, I am bound by the Marshall tradition to marry the Best Cook, but I am also freed by it. Win Best Cook, and no one, including Mother, can nay-say it.”

He smiled a wide smile and followed his mother down the path. Though it was the handsomest of smiles, the eye continued to roll and my heart was unmoved.

Never mind. I would train my heart to love Ben and his baby-sized purple squashes. And when I won Best Cook, the eye must be still.

“Goodbye, Ben,” I called after him. “Thank you for the beautiful squash.”

For the rest of the day and on into the night, I listened to the ringing of hammers and the shouts of men as they worked on the road, and I practiced pies. Gretta and Beatrice came, and I plied them with pie. They assured me that my pies were the best in the village, but I knew they would have to be wondrous to win Best Cook. I made the pies I had dreamed of: one of fish, and one of venison; a strawberry pie, and a peach, and a plum; and one of potatoes and mushrooms and cheese—and all with a crust that almost blew away when it was cut.

That evening, as I prepared to take samplings of my pies to Cook, I watched the sun set in a green sky and plotted the story that would save my life. Gretta stitched by the fire, and Beatrice practiced her arpeggios and chatted with Grandmother.

A laurel-leaf willow tree that grew at the very edge of the forest, and had been growing beyond its bounds for some time, brushed up against the window as the evening breeze came on. One slim bough tapped with the wind.

Knowing that it was a harmless tree did not lift my heart at all. All day long our cottage seemed to hunch away from the shadow of the forest, and now that shadow encroached boldly upon it, almost touching it. Would that Grandfather were still alive and still able to take his ax to the trees that stole slowly into our little plot of land.

Then a face appeared at the window, and my heart pounded hugely in my chest, like the thump of a great empty drum, until I realized it was our cow, Bridie. She always huddled close to the house as night fell.

A knock at the door startled Bridie away.

“Who could that be?” Grandmother asked.

At the door, to my relief, was Tobias, and in his hands a small burlap bag. He was flushed and dirty, and behind him his horse was lathered.

“My lemons!” I exclaimed. “Did you get my lemons, Tobias?”

“I did,” he said. “The most beautifulest round lemons you ever saw.”

I tore the little burlap sack out of his hands. “Round? But Cook said they were ovals. Like eggs laid by the sun, she said.” Gently I eased the fruit from the sack onto the table.

Tobias grinned. I stared. Behind me everyone gathered and craned their necks to see.

“Ah,” said Gretta, “you have done it now, Tobias.”

“Yes,” Tobias said proudly.

“Tobias,” Gretta said, pinching her brother by the ear, “what color is the sun?”

“Why, it is yellow, Gretta,” said he, wincing.

“Tobias, what color is a dandelion?” she asked, tugging on Tobias’s ear.

“As yellow as the sun, Gretta,” Tobias said, grimacing.

I had not breathed one breath since I saw the fruit.

“Keturah,” Beatrice said finally, “why are your yellow lemons so … orange?”

“It is because they are oranges, and not lemons,” Gretta said, yanking Tobias’s ear. I stayed her hand.

Tobias began backing away. “But—but the man said they were lemons, or as good as. Sweeter, he said.”

“Go back, Tobias,” Gretta said. “Go back and get lemons. Yellow—yellow!—lemons!” She chased him out of the kitchen and threw two of the oranges at him.

I ran after him. “Tobias!” I called. “Tobias! Stop!”

He stopped, panting, and regarded me cautiously, as if I might try to pelt him with fruit.

“Have them!” I said. “Surely after your long journey you at least deserve to eat some.”

He gazed longingly at the oranges. “I was tempted many times,” he said, “but I didn’t want to eat even one of your … lemons.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “How was I to know, Keturah? Have I ever seen a lemon before? Or an orange, for that matter?”

“Come, Tobias, come in. Rest yourself,” I said. “Come, I have been cooking pie.”

He followed me into the house dejectedly, and Grandmother served him. Gretta scowled at him, and Beatrice sniffed often and refused to look at him.

“When I am done, I shall go again to seek out lemons for you,” he said.

“Never mind, Tobias—only if you can.”

“Of course he will,” Gretta said. “And not just for Keturah, but for John Temsland and the queen.”

Tobias nodded, determined.

“You must not go to Great Town, Tobias,” I said, “for fear of the plague.”

Beatrice patted his hand. She had already forgiven him for orange lemons.

When Tobias left, I realized with a start that the forest shadows touched the cottage.

No. I could not make myself go. Not yet. Didn’t I have to take samples of my pies to Cook for her opinion? Surely he could wait. Surely he had forgotten about me, busy as he must be, escorting popes and peasants and emperors to their doom.

I put a large piece of each pie on a tray, went out into the evening, and fastened my eye upon the cookhouse where Cook slept in a tiny side room. Cook must taste my pies now and tell me which one would win me the prize. She would be angry with me for waking her, for she was always early abed, but wake she must, for Ben Marshall must love me, and must marry me, Best Cook of the fair.

True, I did not see in him my one true love as yet, and the charm’s eye did not stop for him, but that could change at any moment. I felt a pang of regret that Padmoh, who wanted him too, should have to fail in her objective if I succeeded. But I consoled myself that her interest was the man’s garden and not the man himself.

I was halfway between my home and the cookhouse when a mist of cloud began to creep across the early-risen moon. It darkened the ground enough that I did not see a small depression, and I stumbled. Immediately I was steadied by some force I could not see, and then, as if the coming night clotted into a visible personage, I perceived that Lord Death was beside me.

We walked together in silence for a time, and then I said humbly, “Sir, I was going to come, truly.”

“And you shall come,” he answered, “but I thought to remind you.”

His lips seemed very close to my ear, but I did not look at him.

His cloak billowed out behind him and brought the full night. He made no effort to touch me, but I felt beside me a man. I looked up at his face, severe and handsome, and saw sorrow stretched along the lines of it.

“I believe I will not stay with you tonight, Lord Death,” I said softly. Could he hear the doubt in my voice?

He made a small bow and was silent.

“What does it feel like to die, sir?” I asked. “It hurts—I know only that.”

We walked for some time in silence. At last he said, “It is life that hurts you, not death.”

I shivered to think of the green-black night in the forest, and said, “My lord, why do you trouble me by walking with me in the dark? It is cruel.”

“I think to protect you from them,” he said.

And then, without turning my head, I saw the black shadows of men against the blue-black night. They were watching me, and still, and silent.

“It is gallant of you, sir,” I said softly, “but I am more wishing of their company than yours. And it is your company, after all, that makes them fear me and hate me.”

He said nothing. I was almost there …

I ran the final steps to Cook’s house and pounded on her door. “Cook!” I cried. I pounded again. “Cook!”

I could hear her cursing within, and then she swung the door open. She was dressed in her nightclothes and wore a woolen nightcap on her head.

“What is it? What? Has the moon fallen out the sky?”

“Cook, you must taste my pies!” I said. I glanced behind me to see nothing but moon-washed dark, and slipped into her kitchen.

She stood speechless, perhaps for the first time in her life. I picked up a piece of pie and shoved it at her. “Eat,” I said, “and tell me if I will win Best Cook.”

She took the pie and said, “You are mad, but they say mad cooks make the best sauce.”

Cook chewed and tasted each pie once, twice, thrice. At last she spoke.

“Keturah, you make the best pies I have ever tasted, but every woman in the village can make pies of this variety. If you want to win Best Cook, you will need to make a new kind of pie, one that will make every woman clamor for your recipe.”

“Tobias says he will find me lemons.”

“Do so, and Ben Marshall will be yours. If you want him.” She peered at me and wiped her mouth with her apron. “Are you sure you want him?”

“And why should I not?”

“Because he wants a cook, not a true love, and you want a true love.”

I drew in my breath. “How—how did you know?”

“John Temsland told me so.”

I stared at her in her nightgown and apron. “John Temsland spoke of me to you?”

“He did.” She gazed at me sideways with her eye that still had some short vision in it. “He mentioned you more than once.”

I was helpless to think of a reply, and attributed my lack to fatigue. “I must go home,” I said at last.

“Wait.”

She woke her son, insisting that he accompany me home. The poor man grudgingly complied, and was so sleepy he saw neither my more powerful escort nor the men who watched me in the shadows.

Within sight of the cottage, Cook’s son turned back, crossing himself as he did so.