Keturah and Lord Death

“Thank you, Keturah,” Tailor said, “for helping with Lady Temsland’ s gown.”

“Gown?”

Gretta laid some stitchery on the solid table. “The gown you have been working on, Keturah,” she said encouragingly. Then to Tailor she said, “She wishes that you would wait no longer to see her stitches.”

“Of course,” said Tailor. He picked up the gown and turned it so that he could see the seams Gretta had sewn on the skirt. At first his look was stern, as if he were summoning the strength to tell me to begin again. But as he examined the stitches, looking more and more closely, his expression softened and then became one of admiration.

“This is very good work, Keturah,” he said at last.

I blushed to hear him praise me for work I had not done, but he took my blushes for modesty.

“You need not be shy about these seams, Keturah,” he said. “I see only five stitches that are not perfection.”

“Five!” burst out Gretta.

He nodded to her briefly, then turned his eyes upon me again as if he were wondering how my art had escaped his notice so far.

“Five bad stitches? Where? You must be mistaken,” Gretta spluttered.

“Here,” he said. “And here, and these two, and this one.”

Gretta and I both peered at the stitches he pointed out. Then she straightened and said very stiffly, “They are not as exact as the others.”

“Why, sir,” I said, “the hand that sewed these stitches has not made five wrong ones since it was as many years old,” I said.

“But he is right, Keturah,” Gretta said with injured pride. “They are not perfect.” She looked meaningfully at my apron pocket where the charm lay.

Gretta looked so fierce that I touched the charm in my pocket. Yes—yes, I admired him, but... no, I did not love him. The eye twitched and quivered as rapidly as ever.

I shook my head slightly at Gretta. She sighed and then regarded Tailor as if it were all his fault. “Master Tailor, you have beautiful children. But why, Master Tailor,” Gretta asked, “do your children run in rags when all the other children have new clothes?”

“They shall have new clothes when they learn to sew them themselves,” he said. “I will teach them, but I will not sew for them.”

Gretta scowled at him, but he seemed not to notice. “So you will only let them wear clothes given to them by other people?” she asked brusquely.

“Just so,” Tailor said.

The eye flickered wildly in my hand until I could not stand to hold it anymore, and I took my hand out of my apron pocket. Behind us, Beatrice sighed.

“Good day, Tailor,” Gretta said.

“Good day, Gretta,” Tailor said mildly. “And thank you again, Keturah.”

“Insufferable man,” Gretta murmured as we walked out. “To let his children dress so. Of course you could not fall in love with such a man, Keturah.”

“Gretta, it is not his fault that I ca

“It is just as well,” she said. “I do not think I could bear to look at his orange hose when I came to visit you.”

“Come, then,” Beatrice said. “We are to church.”

“No, no, I am so tired,” I complained.

“Then the sooner you take a good look at Choirmaster with the charm, the sooner you can go home to rest,” she said. I was so unused to Beatrice being firm that I resisted no more.

We entered the little chapel. Choirmaster was bent over his music, making notes. When he looked up, his sad expression softened a bit.

“Keturah!” he said, glad to see me. He was almost smiling—I scarcely recognized him with that hint of a smile. “Your cousin Bill is everything you promised. Thank you for sending him to me. Our choir will be fit for a king after all.”

Beatrice, turning pink, made a small gesture toward my apron pocket while Choirmaster extolled the virtues of my cousin’s voice and noted, becoming sad again, how remarkable it was that, though in the same family, I had not been given the smallest portion of this gift.

All this he said while I steeled myself and reached into my apron pocket. The eye was looking so fast and hard that it nearly jumped out of my grasp.

I shook my head a little at Beatrice, and she turned a sour eye to Choirmaster, as if he had failed her in the gravest of ways.

“Choirmaster,” she said, “Bill tells me that he believes he knows the reason you are so sad all the time. It is because you are lonely. It is because you are in want of a wife.”

I gasped a little, surprised that my timid friend would speak so boldly, and Gretta hid a smile.

“So he is as perceptive as he is talented,” Choirmaster replied. “He has guessed my secret. I am lonely indeed, but there must be no marriage for me.”

“But why?” Beatrice asked.

“If I waste my love on women there will be none left for music. Mother taught me that.”

“But you are a grown man,” she said.

“I hear her voice,” Choirmaster said, “even over the music. I hear it. Remember, son, she would say. Remember that music alone will get you to heaven.”

His eyes searched the empty air above him, perhaps looking for her ghost. He rubbed his knuckles as if they smarted. “She taught me every day to give up the things of the world. All of it was wickedness, she told me. Music, she said, was the language of heaven. I must give myself to music.”

“Is she nearby, Choirmaster? I thought you came from a far distance.”

“Oh, yes, she is nearby, though not in a place you can reach by foot or by carriage. But she is nearby. I can feel it. She would whip my fingers, Mother would, every time I made a mistake in my music. It was a dainty golden whip she used. I feel it, I feel it every time I wish to love another.”

Beatrice said gently, “Come, it ca

“My mother wanted to be God’s bride, but her father would not have it. He feared what God would do to him when He discovered what kind of a wife he’d raised his daughter to be. So he married my mother to an organ builder who drank too much. She raised me on music. Before I could say ‘Mama,’ I could play a sonata. Every waking moment I practiced. I gave her little whip the name Tooth, for it bit.”

“For this I am sorry,” I said. Beatrice made small sympathy sounds, and Gretta covered her mouth.

“Are you sorry, Beatrice?” Choirmaster asked with much feeling.

“Choirmaster, your music reminds me of every sad thought I ever had,” she said. “Your music would wrench the heart of the devil himself. Perhaps if you made your music . . . happier, you would hear your mother’s voice less, and someone could comfort your heart.”

“There can be no comfort for me but from my music,” he said dolefully. And he sat down at the organ to play so sad a tune that I had to hurry away.

Gretta and Beatrice soon caught up with me.

“Well, you tried,” Gretta said.

“It must be Ben,” I said. “The eye only waits to see if I can make a pie tasty enough to win Best Cook. I’m sure of it.”

Beatrice patted my arm. “Rest. Later we will think about pies.”

I shook my head, and though my whole body was weary, I did not slow my pace.

“There is no time. Tomorrow is the fair, and if there is any possibility I will live to see it, today I must make pies.”

Grandmother was in the garden when we arrived home, and looking so well that it cheered my heart and gave me renewed strength. I started on squash pie.

Just as I was finishing, someone knocked at the door. Gretta rose to answer it. When she opened the door, there stood Ben Marshall with another baby-sized squash in his arms. With a wooden spoon in one hand and a whisk in the other, I beamed at him. Behind him was Padmoh, and in her arms were several bunches of lettuce.

“Come in, Ben,” Grandmother said, “and you, Padmoh. We are just about to feast upon a pie Keturah made from your delicious squash, Ben. Sit, sit, both of you. How fortunate we are that you grow such big squashes, Ben, for then you have much to share.”