Keturah and Lord Death

“We will disperse the mob,” John said. He dismounted. “Take my horse and flee, Keturah. Run away. Go to my father at the king’s court. I will find you there.”

“No, I go to the forest. Protect Grandmother. Be silent about where I am, and trust me.”

I took Tobias’s hand and ran out the back door and into the forest. We ran together until we could no longer hear the cries of the villagers. “Now we must wait,” I said. “He will come. He always comes.”

And truly it was not long before Lord Death on his horse emerged from the trees, his cloak billowing behind him like great black wings. He rode slowly and surely. His face was beautiful and terrible with resolve.

In the light of day he seemed appalling. How dare he ride in the sunlight without apology, without shame? He and his great horse were together a massive shadow that drained the light out of the day. The horse’s feet drew down the clouds in their wake, so that it seemed he walked in fog. The trees greedily sucked up the sunlight and left none but deep green shadows to drift down to the forest floor.

“Oh, Lord of Heaven,” Tobias whispered beside me. “I can see him now, too.”

The freckles on his face stood out in bold relief. There was no time to comfort him.

Lord Death looked down at me from a great height, and his expression was dark with bitter power. The clouds that now covered the sun made the whole world gray, and even the leaves seemed of doubtful color. Tobias crossed himself and began to rock.

Lord Death dismounted and bowed to me, a stately bow, and I returned it with the deepest of curtseys. He did not flinch from my gaze, nor I from his. My eyes asked him, asked him why, why, why.

At last he said, “It would have been enough, the changes you have made in the village, but—”

“It’s my fault—my lemons. I brought the plague,” I said.

“I warned you to stay away from Great Town,” he said, turning a withering look upon Tobias. Tobias whimpered. A wind arose. Black clouds banked higher and higher upon one another, as if the whole earth were burning and the sky were choking with dark smoke.

“Why?” I asked. “Why would you destroy our people, the i

“Are they so i

“Do you think I don’t know that the plague does not pick and choose? What of the children, the little children? What of them?” I asked. My voice sounded small and lost, as if drowned in a great wind. But he heard me.

“If untimely death came only to those who deserved that fate, Keturah, where would choice be? No one would do good for its own sake, but only to avoid an early demise. No one would speak out against evil because of his own courageous soul, but only to live another day. The right to choose is man’s great gift, but one thing is not his to choose—the time and means of death.”

To this I had no answer.

I knew what I must do.

I raised my palms to him. “Forgive me,” I said. I did not recognize my own voice, it was so choked and piteous.

There was a crack of lightning in the distance, and again thunder, only closer now. The gray clouds above us began to roil and blacken, but there was no smell of rain. The air was dry as old bones.

“Do not ask, Keturah!” he commanded quietly, but in his voice was the hint of a plea.

“Forgive me, my lord,” I said, “but I must ask.”

“It is too late,” he said. “Goody Thompson and her husband and her two babies are already sick with it. And others ... It is too late.”

“No, sire, no. I know that nothing is too late for you. I ask—I ask—”

“Keturah!” His cry echoed against the clouds as if his voice and the thunder were one sound.

“My lord, I ask—”

“Do you dare, Keturah?” The sky around us was near as dark as night, and lightning snaked silently overhead. Tobias fell to his knees beside me, then fainted utterly away. The thunder and the wind roared around me.

“His life! His life and”—I raised my hands higher— “and all of Tide-by-Rood! And the king, and—and you must make my friends happy, though I die. I do ask. You ca

I did not look up. I saw his boots before me. And then, though the wind thrashed in the grass and rocked the forest, though the black sky railed and lightning flashed, all near us became silent. In the silence, his voice spoke into my heart.

“Keturah, don’t you know your soul is mine? Not a man on this earth, no king, no wise man, is greater than I. Every one of them humbles himself before me one day. Yet you, Keturah, a peasant girl, bargain with me, rob me, and ask greater and greater favors of me—all the while saying you will marry for love! What do you say to this?”

The wind in my face made it hard to breathe. “What if, this time, I gave you something,” I said. “Something precious.”

Dark shadows leapt around him. “There is nothing you could give me,” he said, with great dignity.

I stepped closer to him.

I traveled a hundred miles in that single step. In a stride, my village was so far away I could scarcely remember it. It would be a journey of a thousand days to return.

There was no breath in him, no flush of blood, no taint of sweat or tears. Next to him, I felt the grossness of my own body, how more I was like the earth than I was like him. He was air and wind and cloud and bird; I was dust and worm.

I was suddenly aware that he might not want what I could give him, but I had nothing else so precious.

Another step.

“Keturah,” he said. I felt him lift his hand as if to touch my hair, and something in his eyes was warm, though he exuded cold.

And as his lips parted to speak again, I pressed my lips gently against his.

Had I truly thought I would not die when I kissed him? But I did. For a moment the breath and life went out of me, and there was no time and no tomorrow, but only my lips against his. I stepped away quickly, back into my life, panting for breath.

His lordly demeanor had vanished, and his countenance held nothing but astonishment and—and something else I could not name.

“I have kissed you,” I said, breathless.

The shadows around his face lightened.

“Now—now you are at my command,” I said triumphantly, trembling. “You must obey my every wish,” I said, in a voice a little more subdued.

He shook his head slightly.

“But—but I have kissed you,” I said, blushing and uncertain. “Please, it is not for me that I ask.”

“Do not dare,” he said sadly.

“So you must help me, Lord Death. Is one kiss not enough? Then here...”

I kissed him again.

“And here…”

This time I felt his arms reach round me, and he enfolded me to himself and kissed me in return. In the first moment, I could not believe he was death—he was a man, and no more. In the next, I was afraid and I pushed at him. It was futile—his strength was more than that of a hundred men. And so he kissed me until my blood ran so cold it burned.

He stopped suddenly, and stepped away so violently I almost fell. My lips were numb with cold, and my throat ached with cold, and my stomach was icy and empty.

“Here is danger!” he said sternly.

I raised my face to him. “Sir, I know you can do anything ...” His eyes were not the clouded, vacant eyes of one dead. Instead they were clear—I thought I could see the endless night sky in his eyes, and the stars too. Unspeakable sorrow was there, and matchless beauty.

“And why can I not deny you, Keturah?” His voice was insistent. I could not answer but with the truth.

“Because you love me!”

The silence into which we spoke vanished, and the wind roared in my ears again.

“It is true,” he said, his voice both quiet and piercing.

A deafening crack of lightning, a roll of thunder so loud I felt it in my throat, and rain began to pour out of the sky.