Keturah and Lord Death

He smiled at her and then me. “Thank you, Keturah.” He frowned. “But if he can’t sing...”

“He can sing the river still, Choirmaster,” I said, and Beatrice blushed pink as a spring rose.

“Tell him to come first thing after chores tomorrow.”

“And if he comes, Choirmaster,” Beatrice said, “will you play a happy song? And will you come to di

“If he can sing as you say, anything might be possible,” Choirmaster said. He looked at the burden on his shoulder as if he could not remember where he had been going.

We bade him good day, and he turned back toward the church.

“And how, my pretty Beatrice, how will you possibly become a boy by tomorrow morning?” I asked.

“I shall pray,” she said, “and as a boy, I shall sing until Choirmaster makes happy music, and then you shall love him and he will marry you in gratitude for the choir, and the king shall give you his shoe full of gold and the wish of your heart.”

I did not let her see my smile. I had devised many plans that day, and now I had one more, one that included the happiness of my friends. Though evening was gathering over the forest, my heart was full of hope as we continued home. Lord Death would not have Choirmaster either.

Gretta and Beatrice parted to go to their own homes and talk with their families about the exciting turn of events for Tide-by-Rood, but only after a promise that I would call for them if I had need of anything.

My heart was lighter than my step as I walked the upward path to home, for I felt a strange fatigue in my bones. A breeze out of the forest, cold and scented with bitter pine, reminded me that although work had begun on the village, John Temsland was yet unaware of the grim reason for my plan. And the day was wearing on.

Again I wondered why the eye would roll and roll in the presence of Ben Marshall, and again I suspected that the charm would not tell me once and for true until I had paid Soor Lily’s price.

Though the very scent of the forest breeze made my arms gooseflesh, I knew I would pay the price—not only for the charm, but for the honor of it. I could not bear to see even Soor Lily’s great lump of a baby son go to Lord Death.

By the time I arrived at home, Grandmother was at work with the evening meal and solicited my help as soon as I crossed the threshold.

“Into the garden with you, and fetch me beets and peas, dear.”

I went, and wearily I gathered. I did not look at the forest. I picked the peas closest to the cottage, and thought the whole time how I might help Beatrice become a boy and where I might procure boys’ clothing. I had almost enough beets and peas for the meal when I heard thrashing in the forest just beyond the garden.

I was so afraid, I dropped the vegetable basket. Perhaps it was Lord Death building me a marriage house, I thought. Angrily I put the vegetables back in the basket, and then listened again. More thrashing, and so I cautiously approached the forest’s edge and peered into the green gloom.

Now I could hear that the thrashing had the wild sound of an animal. I sighed with relief. Then, above that, was a human sound.

I stepped carefully into the wood, assuring myself with each step that it would be the last, that I would go no closer. Just when I was about to turn back, I came upon a clearing, and in it, a sleek doe, and beside her, a young man in brown wool and green. His head was deeply hooded, and from within his hood he was speaking to the doe. He had not seen me. He had one hand stretched out to the doe, as if to calm her, and in the other he held a knife. I did not know his voice for certain, but it was familiar.

I crept closer.

I could see now that the doe had walked into a snare. Her hind leg was pulled taut and trembling by a rope. Quietly, so I would not startle her, but loud enough for the youth to hear, I said, “The lord of our parish will hang you.”

He half turned toward me and seemed to consider me from within the shadow of his hood. Very slowly he lifted a single finger before his face.

“Do not silence me, stranger,” I said in a voice at once still and stern. “This forest belongs to Lord Temsland, and if you are caught trapping his deer, by the king’s law you can be hanged.”

“This is not my snare,” the youth said quietly. “I only wish to free her.”

Speaking with low, gentle words to the doe, the youth approached her. She had thrashed against the rope so hard that her leg was bleeding.

“Why do you wish to free her when you could eat her instead?”

The youth said nothing for a moment, and then nodded toward the deep of the forest. “Because she is his mate,” he said.

I looked, and there stood the great hart, still and staring, the beast that had eluded the lord’s traps and hunting parties for years, the one I had followed into the forest to meet Lord Death. He seemed to meet my eyes, and for a moment I could not breathe.

In one motion, the youth dived to the stake that held the rope and cut it through with his knife. The doe leapt twenty paces in a bound and was away, the rope still knotted around her foot.

The hart in the shadows cast his round eye upon me and upon the youth for another moment, and then slowly walked after the doe.

The youth stood breathing deeply and put away his knife. I saw that it was a fine knife, but I did not recognize his hands or his stance. He was relaxed now, obviously pleased with himself. He bowed to the retreating back of the hart. “She will worry the knot off” he said, more to himself than to me.

“That is the leader of the herd that razed three haystacks this past winter,” I said.

“The very one,” said the youth.

“Lord Temsland has been hunting him for a long time and would have hunted him today if it were not for a visit from the king’s messenger.” An idea had come to me—an answer to Beatrice’s prayer. “Did you consider that he may have trapped the doe as bait?”

The young man tipped his head.

“If Lord Temsland knew what you have done,” I continued, “you would be hanged by your thumbs for sure. You must do something for me so that I don’t tell.”

I could see enough of the shadows of his face now to guess that he might be smiling, but I could not be sure.

“At your service, lady,” he said. He bowed so low that it might have been mockery.

“I need your clothes,” I said.

He said nothing, but neither did he run away.

“Sir, you will obey if you hold your thumbs dear,” I said. “I need a set of boys’ clothing. Go behind that bush and disrobe.”

For a moment he did not move, and then he bowed slightly. He did not go behind the bush. He removed his boots, then his trousers, replaced his boots, and tossed the trousers at my feet. His face was toward me the whole time, as if he were daring me to watch.

I felt myself flush as I picked up the trousers. “The tunic too,” I said.

In a single motion he removed his hood and tunic. And there stood the young lord John Temsland.

I could not help myself. I gasped. Again he bowed.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” I choked out, so frozen with fear that I could not release my grip on his clothes.

“There need be no begging, Mistress Reeve,” he said, and he smiled gaily.

“But about your thumbs ...”

“If my father discovered my secret, that for some time now I have been foiling his efforts to have the hart, I would lose my thumbs indeed, son or no,” he said. “But it is cold, and I would have my clothes back.”

I looked down at his clothes, still in my hands, and remembered that in this very wood I had met Lord Death.

I curtseyed. “I am sorry, sir,” I said in a choked voice, “but I need them now. But if you would have them back, I will bring them to the interview you promised me.”

I ran, and the evening wind could not cool my flaming face.

I hid the clothes beneath Grandmother’s raspberry canes, and hurried into the house with the vegetables for supper. If Grandmother noted my preoccupation and my alarm at every unexpected sound, she was silent on the matter.