“—I have decided that when I take you tomorrow, I will indeed make you my bride. What do you say to that, Keturah Reeve?”
What would it be like, to be Lord Death’s consort? Not to rest in the world where the dead are, now and always without fear, but ever to cross from one world to another, always able to see the life that was left behind. Worse, to serve at his side in his office as the bearer of pain and tears and heartache. To see every day a man weep like a baby himself over his lost little one. To see a new widow stare at her living children with hollow eyes, her heart torn out of her. To stand at the bedside, invisible in the shadows, while great men rocked in their beds with pain. To be the bringer of plague. Ah, ‘twas one thing to die, another to be Goodwife Death.
“No, sir, though I thank you. But as I said before, I will not be your bride.”
Another wind gusted in the trees. The branches thrashed overhead, and a flock of black birds rose as one from the trees and flew away. The horse whinnied and shook his silver harness.
“I have decided,” Lord Death said icily.
“No, sir,” I said again, for I was feeling strong now. “I will not marry you. I will live and breathe and dance and tell my children stories. I will marry for love.”
A moment more, I thought, and I would stand on my own legs again. I sounded brave and sure, but I confess my heart was sick and afraid, and emptier than my stomach. Plague. Plague. The wind moaned and the trees bowed low.
“There is no refusing, Keturah,” he said.
His horse pawed the ground.
“Sir, then I must obey you, but I need not love you,” I said. “And think of eternity with a wife who does not love you.”
He lifted me as if I weighed no more than a baby, and set me on his horse.
The horse was swift, and there could be no escape. Lord Death did not speak to me, nor I to him, but my heart raged: No! I will not have you! Though you drag me into your wormy realms I will not have you.
When at last we came to the edge of the wood, where I could see my grandmother weeping through the window of our cottage, he set me down. “Tomorrow night,” he said, “when the shadow of the forest touches your cottage.”
“I will find my true love, sir, and I will rob you of my soul. And all the souls you would reap in the plague, too.”
“Keturah,” he said, tilting his head, and he turned his horse and galloped away.
II
In which I am welcomed home
with reservations and theories, and in which
I consider bachelors.
Lord Death had deposited me close to the edge of the forest. I could see our cottage clearing through the trees, and Tide-by-Rood beyond.
I wobbled on my legs a moment, but I was afraid to take a step toward the cottage, thinking I might fall and never get up again. I looked longingly at Tide-by-Rood through the edging of trees.
Tide-by-Rood was the poorest village in the poorest corner of the kingdom, yet this moment I doubted there was a dearer sight in all creation. The village square at the bottom of the hill was a muddy morass, as it usually was, except in winter when the mud froze and in summer when it dried hard as a brick kiln. The cottages were in need of patching, and none more than my own. The thatch on every roof was thin and bore nests for mice and birds. The mill was an eyesore, and more than one goodwife had seen rats as she waited for her grain to be ground into flour. The boats that bobbed in the bay were tattered and gray as flotsam.
“Grandmother!” I called. When no answer came I took a step, and fall I did. It took all my powers to push myself to a sitting position. “Grandmother!” I called again. “It’s me, Keturah!”
Then came the sound of crashing through the trees. I thought it might be the great hart, and then I knew it was no wild beast but a horse. Lord Death had changed his mind, I guessed, and had returned for me.
But the horse was a golden mare, and the rider was none other than John Temsland, son of Lord Temsland, master of the lands of Tide-by-Rood.
He dismounted, took my face in his hands, and then proffered me his waterskin.
“By all saints,” he said as I drank, “we’ve been searching for you for three days. We thought you were dead.”
I wiped my mouth and chin. “I shall quickly be dead if I am left here, sir, for I cannot walk.”
Gently he lifted me, and carried me. Once out of the forest, he set me upon my legs and held me around my shoulders.
“It is most kind of you, sir,” I said, flustered to think that the first time the handsome young lord saw me should be after I had been lost in the forest. And then I remembered my last words to Lord Death. “Sir, I must speak with you about an urgent matter.”
“First you must rest from your ordeal, Mistress Reeve, and restore the color to those comely cheeks,” he said kindly.
A compliment so significant as that could not be borne by legs as weak as mine, and they folded under me once again. Young John caught me and carried me into the cottage.
Our cottage was bursting with people, all weeping and speaking in low tones.
John set me down but kept his arm round me to steady me.
The weeping and murmuring stopped.
“I’m home,” I said, and my eyes lit upon a meat pie sitting atop the cupboard.
Everyone became very still, turning only their heads to look at me. All at once a woman screamed, a man cursed, and the rest drew in breath as one. Grandmother cried my name and ran toward me, arms outstretched, but Mother By-the-Way blocked her.
“Don’t touch her,” she said. “She is a ghost.”
Grandmother put her hands on her bosom. “Are you a ghost, Keturah?”
How beautiful she looked to me, and yet my gaze fell upon the meat pie again.
“Nonsense,” John said, “but she shall be if she doesn’t eat that pie immediately.” He helped me to the bench at the table, and Grandmother pushed past Mother By-the-Way and placed the pie before me. Before she had time to cut it, I dug into it with a spoon and ate as fast as I could.
“No ghost eats like that,” Grandmother said happily. She kissed the top of my head and sat across the table from me, beaming with relief and concern.
“Where did you find her?” Gossip asked.
“Where we’d searched a dozen times—near the edge of the forest, behind her own house,” John answered.
“Leave it to young John to find the girl,” said one of the men.
“That’s our John,” agreed another, and others joined in and added their own praises.
John seemed uncomfortable with the praise and excused himself. “I will come again to assure myself that you are well,” he said to me.
“Thank you, sir,” I said, swallowing my mouthful of pie. “I am well enough, I think, but I would be grateful for the chance to speak with you on the other matter as soon as possible.”
He inclined his head in assent and left.
How handsome he had grown to be, I reflected, with his hair the color of harvest-time wheat and his eyes green as bay water. All the villagers loved him and were proud that he could kick a ball farther than any of the other boys, and drag a boulder farther in the harness, too.
When he was gone, the guests whispered together and stared at me with long faces. They were disappointed, of course, having come for a funeral gathering. Some of the men, who’d been good friends with Grandfather when he was alive, had told stories of the forest and of all the people they’d known who had been killed by its treachery. Now, at intervals, one or another would look up at me and shake his head in wonderment, as if I had defied all the wisdom of great age.