Keturah and Lord Death

“You should have come and warmed yourself. We would have made you welcome,” I said.

He bent his head thoughtfully. “Keturah, you see for yourself how difficult it can be to be accepted into a circle of people who consider you to be different.”

“Yes,” I said.

He waited silently while I tried to gather my thoughts. I would be telling a story more far-fetched than any I had told before, and yet it would be true.

“I followed the hart into the wood that day I was lost,” I began. “How many tales had I spun of the hart, and here he was before my eyes, as if my words had summoned him. Like the truth in a story, he eluded me until he nearly destroyed me, and then when there was no going back, he left me in the dark of the wood.

“The fairies that I never saw nor heard must have laughed me to scorn. I wandered and wandered, and the bugs bit and the underbrush tripped my feet and the night winds froze me. Then Death himself came to collect me.

“I used the only means I could think of to postpone the inevitable—I told him a story. A love story. And I agreed to tell him the rest of the story the next night, if only he would let me live another day.

“And so he did. I told him that the love story was true, that it was my story.”

I stopped. John hunkered down beside my chair. His eyes were on the same level as mine, and they mirrored the images in my mind. I thought I had never seen such a beautiful young man. My hand crept to my apron pocket, and then stopped. It was absurd—I was a commoner, and he a lord’s son. I forced my thoughts back to my errand.

“While we were talking, he offered to let another die in my place. He said it would scarcely matter whom I chose. Many will die of the plague, he said, and when I pleaded with him to tell me how to stop it, he said, ‘It is not in your power—your manored lord has allowed his lands to fall to dire ruin.’

“So you see, sir, John, why I spoke up after the king’s messenger left. I saw the king’s visit as an opportunity to waylay the plague. We must have the road, and the rats in the mill must go. And there must be no traffic with Great Town.”

After a long moment, John nodded. I could see that his horror at the threat of plague was equal to my own.

“You must speak to the villagers, tell them about the coming plague, Keturah,” John said after some thought. “Perhaps then they will resume work on the road.”

“Do you think they will believe me?”

“Oh, they will believe you,” he said with conviction. “Haven’t they always believed your fairy tales? Didn’t all your stories of the great hart produce a real hart, Keturah? They will believe you.”

I stood up. “Then I must try.”

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 ca

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...”