She stopped and placed her strong hands on my shoulders. “Keturah, I thought I was the only one who knew that you could see their deaths coming. But Goody Thompson knows too, somehow. I can do nothing more for her, though I pretend to busy myself. But she knows. She will be watching to see if you stay or leave. She is terrified to see what you will do. To see your death coming and to fear it—that is much worse than the dying. That is why I ask you to stay, no matter what.”
I nodded slowly. “I will, Grandmother.”
She hurried into the house, and I followed close behind.
But even as Grandmother spoke to me, I remembered something else from those birthings—that I had seen Lord Death before.
I had seen him that day when Grandmother fetched me to help Melinda’s baby get born. There he was in the dimly lit room, comely and somber, yet comfortable, patient, as if he were a part of the family—a distant rich cousin, perhaps, or a well-traveled uncle. His face on the night of June’s death, I remembered now, had been sad, and later so had our faces. The mother died, and the infant with her, and the poor woman’s eldest daughter took a knife and cut her face so that she would never marry and have a baby.
I had seen him last year at St. Ivan’s Feast, when the men had drunk too much ale and began to wrestle. There he had been a shadow among the men, tall, and with a lordly bearing. When I looked more closely, he was gone. The next day a man had been killed, and the blacksmith’s son was gone. Poor Jenny Danson, for it was her father who had been killed, and her secret love who ran away.
I had seen Lord Death among us many times since I was a young girl, I realized now. Though I had not known who he was, as a child I feared him and hid my face in Grandmother’s skirts if she would let me. As I got older, I came to believe that he had nothing to do with me.
He had been in the shadows, silent and pale. He hadn’t looked at me or spoken to me, seemingly unaware that I could see him. Though I was young, I knew that I should not bring attention to his presence. I did not ask his name or point him out to anyone. I would see him standing, waiting patiently, respectfully. Though he was always there, I chose to ignore him, and I lived most days as if he were not often before me.
As I entered the Thompson house, I thought my fear screamed out, but instead it was Goody herself.
Her eyes fastened upon me the moment I opened the door, as did the eyes of Goody’s mother and her sister, and of her husband holding their toddling child. Grandmother knew, and all these knew. The wind flung back the door, and I hastened to close it.
Once well inside, I looked at Goody with all the calm I could muster. I was aware of the low fire, and that Grandmother had cleaned the cottage and chased out the chickens, as was her wont, and that Lord Death stood in the shadows, his back to Goody.
“Will you stay then, Keturah?” Goody panted weakly.
Lord Death turned in a fluid, graceful motion and looked at me. In the forest he was tall and fine and strong, but here in a cottage he was royal and commanding, and his terrible beauty made the humble cottage shine with nobility.
Above the crackle of the settling fire, in a voice that only I could hear, and yet a voice that was piercing to my heart, he said, “Yes, Keturah, will you stay?”
“I will stay,” I said to Goody. I sat in the willow rocker in the farthest corner of the cottage. I resolved that here I would sit, and I would not remove myself until the babe was born or the woman gone.
Goody’s face crumpled into glad tears. “God bless you, Keturah,” she said. Then the pains overtook her again.
Lord Death approached me, and as he did I could feel the heat of the fire less. I stopped rocking. His gleaming black boots reflected the dying coals of the fire.
“You are yet more beautiful by firelight,” he said.
“It is only that I am not half-dead this time. Death is uglifying,” I said pointedly.
“You were supposed to come,” he said icily. “Did you not fear to incur my anger?”
“Why should I fear you now?” I said to him in a low voice, and yet fear filled my throat and my words quavered. The others, who had crowded around Goody’s bed, could not hear me over the woman’s moans. “I am not lost in your wood today.”
“Yet now you see that you are safe nowhere,” he said.
I said nothing.
After a time he said, “I did not know until now that you have always been able to see me, since you were a little child.”
It angered me that he knew, and then I felt a certain relief, the kind that comes when a secret has been shared.
“Were you afraid, Keturah? When you were so young?”
“I thought you were a wealthy relative who never spoke, a high-born uncle, at first. Then came a day when I knew that to see you would mean someone would soon weep.”
Goody Thompson thrashed in her bed and cried out. Grandmother commanded her in a sure and calming voice, and only I could detect the note of fear in it. Goody was drenched in sweat. Her lips were stretched white over her teeth. Her sister and her mother prayed aloud, and the tears rolled down Master Thompson’s cheeks.
“How can you let her die?” I whispered.
He ran his hand through his hair. “Keturah, I would have you know I take no pleasure in this. At least not this part of it.”
Goody cried out again, and her boy in his father’s arms began to sob. I was cold in spite of my wrap, but my heart was colder. “Then stop it,” I said.
I realized that my words had fallen into a sudden quiet.
I saw that Goody’s eyes were upon me in fear and crushed hope. “Death is here for me,” she gasped. “You are speaking to him!” The pains overtook her again, and her little son cried out, “Mama!”
I pressed my hands together, but I could not keep them from shaking. “Can you hear her boy’s pitiful cry? Can’t you see she is needed?”
He looked at me sorrowfully. “She knows your secret certainly now. If she lives, they will tell it. It will not go well for you in the village.”
The little boy’s wails were more than I could bear. I stood. “For pity’s sake, take the child to his aunt,” I cried.
“Don’t leave, Keturah!” Goody screamed.
“I won’t,” I said. “I won’t!”
Goody’s husband left as his son’s wail freshened. He glanced pleadingly at me before the door closed on him. Goody screamed again. This time the fight had gone out of her pain, and there was nothing but the raw cries of one who works toward death.
“Please,” I begged.
“It is better,” he said.
“How could this be better?”
He was very still. Then he put his hand under my chin and lifted my face to his. I could not tell if the heat I felt was in my own face or from the burning cold in his fingers. At last he said, “Keturah, for your compassion, you shall have Goody’s life. But you must come to me this night.”
Over Goody’s screams I could scarcely make out his words. “Her life,” I said, “and—and the life of Soor Lily’s baby son—and I will come.”
He frowned and withdrew his hand. “He is no baby but a giant of a man. And he is destined for death. It is too late for him.”
“Nevertheless,” I said. I might have screamed it—I could no longer distinguish between my voice and Goody’s. My lungs gasped for air as did hers.
Lord Death looked at Goody and back at me, then bent his head in assent. “You must keep your appointment with me,” he said.