Keturah and Lord Death

VI

A second meeting, and my attempts to delay.

I ate only a little supper, watching anxiously through the window as the shadows of the forest reached toward the cottage. No, I would not go—I could not go. Not yet, at least. There was still a little time, and Grandmother wished me to come with her to the common fire.

From down in the church the saddest tunes rose and fell like clouds of spring butterflies as we made our way. Most were already at the fire, but if we passed a man, I made sure to touch the charm in my apron pocket. Always it flicked and jerked and never rested. None of the men looked at me, though one or two greeted Grandmother.

“Am I ghost indeed, then, Grandmother?” I asked.

She gripped my hand. “It is fear of fairies. They will soon forget.”

I nodded and held her hand tightly. Knowing that Death’s dark realm lay just beyond the wood made my shabby little village seem bright. The crops in the fields had come up thick and fine, and in a day or so we would have rosy apples in the orchard. I felt affection for everyone I could see: Edwin Highfield cleaning his well, Mother Johnson limping from witch’s shot, and the wagon master’s son secretly holding hands with Mary Teacup there in the orchard. These were the same wattle-and-daub houses I had always known, the same climbing roses that adorned them. Surely I was safe, safe...

No, not safe. Compared with the forest, what was our village? What were our paltry shelters made from the bones of trees, our dingy fires that burned those bones alive, our obscene ash heaps? We hid in our hovels, pretending the forest was not all around us, though it sang while the ax gnawed at its edges. It grew and breathed and cast its long shadows. And yet—was there ever so beautiful a cathedral? Next to the forest, I realized, the chapel looked shrunken and slouched, and I knew I was not safe.

At the fire, boys and girls practiced footraces for the fair in the hopes of prizes of pull taffy. Men debated who might win first prize for the best cow or sheep or pig, defending the chances of others while secretly believing it would be their own that won. Women were making things to show and to sell: knitted things and lace and pretty bo

Everyone fell silent as I approached. Women who spun and knitted ceased their work. Most of the men looked down at their boots or gazed uncomfortably into the fire. Two or three looked at me challengingly. I knew from their looks that I would not be invited to tell a story tonight. Fairy tales were one thing, but another if they were real. I sat behind everyone, where I could feel none of the fire’s heat.

No one told a story that night. The men talked of the harvest and their cattle, and the women of gardens and

children, and Grandmother and I were the first to slip away for home. It seemed to me that Death’s shadow had begun to separate me from my former life.

I was so tired that Grandmother had to slow her step for me on the uphill walk home. I dreaded the errand that still awaited me. Could I find the courage to walk again into the forest? I feared the answer was no.

I pretended to be busy while Grandmother readied for bed, but just when she was about to change into her night-clothes, a knock came. I jumped, but it was only Goody Thompson’s nephew, calling Grandmother away on a midwife’s errand. Grandmother bade me go to bed and assured me it would be quick.

“I will do this one without you, Keturah. You need your sleep. Besides, Goody’s first baby took but an hour, and she scarcely needed me. The second will be quicker still.”

No sooner had she gone than the wind began to roar in the forest and make the candlelight flicker.

I glanced out the window. The trees bowed to the wind. “Death,” they breathed. “Our lord,” they groaned as they bowed and swayed, at times elegantly and slowly, like a dance, and at times with great shaking and reeling, as if the branches wanted to flee from their roots in fear. I had to pay Soor Lily’s price, but I could not bear to go into that forest. I had not found a true love, and Lord Death would know it.

Green leaves blew onto the windowpane and clung to it trembling, and the cow added her lowing to the din. I said a prayer for the little birds in the trees and for our chickens who roosted at the forest’s edge, if they weren’t already blown to Great Town. Somewhere in the village a shutter banged over and over, and beyond that, down at the pier, the boats knocked together. I sat, frozen on my bed, listening to the whistle of a stream of cold forest wind as it blew from a crack near the window. At times it was like the scream of a woman whose loved one is brought home lifeless, and at times like the whimpering of a child whose mother will never again come to him in the night. Again it sounded like the groaning of a man whose bed is empty and cold and whose wife will no longer work at his side. Now it sounded like a knock...

It was a knock indeed, and I realized that I had fallen, still sitting, into a half sleep.

I went to the door, my heart knocking louder than the din of the storm. It was Goody Thompsons nephew again. “Your grandmother bids you come to my aunt’s bed,” he said. His hair had been blown wildly against his face, and he panted as if he had run all the way up the hill. Yes, of course I would come.

I wrapped my shawl around me and followed the lad to Goody’s house, grateful for an excuse to delay my errand.

Before I could enter the cottage, Grandmother came out. Her white hair blew around her face. She did not even try to hold down her skirts. “Go home, lad,” she said to the boy, and he ran off, his jacket flapping in the wind like wings.

“Grandmother, I thought it would be over by now,” I said.

She shook her head. “Goody is having trouble,” Grandmother said.

“What can I do?”

“There is nothing either of us can do,” she said.

“But you called for me.”

“Not I, Keturah. Goody herself begged me to call for you.” She examined my face closely. “Keturah, will you stay? Please.”

“Stay?”

“Will you stay until the birth is over?”

“Yes, of course,” I said.

“No matter how the birth goes?” Her voice sounded small against the roar of the wind.

“Grandmother, why are you asking me this?”

She took my hand in hers. “Keturah, when you were just a bit of a girl, I thought to train you in the midwife’s art in case I died and left you with no means. And so you trundled along with me. At first you cleaned and cared for the littler ones. As you grew older, I taught you what I could.”

“You have taught me well, Grandmother. You are a good midwife.”

“I have lost three since you began coming with me. Before that, I lost none but your own mother. Do you remember the three, Keturah?”

I nodded and held my shawl close. The wind was so violent that the dark itself seemed to reach around me and howl. I said, “There was Melinda Stone, who died of triplets, and Jessica Cooper, who bled out. And June Siddal, whose daughter later cut her face. June’s baby was breech.”

Grandmother patted my hand. “You remember their names. That is good. What else do you remember?”

I thought, trying not to hear the wind or feel it in my skirts. At last I said, “Nothing else, Grandmother.”

“That is because you were not at any of those births, Keturah. Each time, you came into the house, looked about you a moment, and turned and left. The first time, with Melinda, you complained of a bellyache, and I thought nothing of it. The second time, with Jessica Cooper, you said the blood was making you faint. This from a girl who had helped with the hog slaughter since she was three. The last time, when it was June Siddal, you made no excuse, you asked no permission. You just left.”