One son folded his arms tightly, seemingly angry that he must be looked at. One, the baby whom Lord Death had allowed to live, looked frightened and bit his fingernails. One was pigeon-toed. Another picked at his ears, and still another breathed through his mouth, allowing spittle to collect at the corners of his lips. The other two hid behind their five brothers so I could barely see them.
Soor Lily put her mouth close to my ear. “Hold the charm now, sweetums,” she said. “Look at my darlings. That is the price I ask for foxglove—to look. Is that not the smallest of fees? Only look.”
For a moment I thought of grabbing the foxglove and running, but I knew I would never be able to run through that wall of men.
I gritted my teeth and held the charm while I looked. I felt the tiny jerking movements as my eyes passed from one man to the other. The men shrank from my gaze.
“Yes, that’s it, pretty Keturah. Look, look,” Soor Lily whispered. “Wouldn’t you be the perfect one to whom I could teach my magic arts? Aren’t you the very daughter I should have had? And don’t I keep smelling plague in the air? What if the road is not enough? If only you could love one of my sons, perhaps one of them might live...”
I studied the face of each one, and still the charm, blessedly, looked and looked and did not cease in its looking. At last I said, utterly relieved, “I have looked, and I will not love any of them, Soor Lily.”
Soor Lily put her long white hand on her bosom and made a sound like a wounded bird. “Not even one?” she whimpered.
“Not even a little,” I said.
She looked at them sorrowfully. “It is hard to believe, but it must be true,” she said. “Run and play now, sons.”
They vanished so quickly and silently that it was as if they had never been there.
“Goodbye,” she said to me.
“Not yet, Soor Lily. I have somewhat to say to you.”
She cowered a little. “Of course,” she said meekly.
“You are no wise woman,” I said.
She shook her head regretfully. “Not wise, not wise at all,” she murmured.
“I paid your price, didn’t I?” Panic rose in my voice. “Did I not pay? Did I not save your son alive?”
“Yes, yes! He is whole again, my baby,” she said. Her shoulders rounded and her head hung.
“But your love charm is not working. It slows down for Ben, but it does not stop. You tricked me,” I said with all the indignation I could muster.
With the other half of my anger, I took the eye out of my pocket and placed it on the table. She gazed at it, appalled, as if it were a severed hand.
In desperation, I spoke my heart. “Oh, woman, what shall
I do?” I pleaded. “Perhaps it was the wrong eye, and it is the other eye that is necessary. You do have powers, don’t you?”
As if it caused her the greatest distress to say so, she said, “Yes. Oh, lass, that I do.”
I clutched her arm, which was as hard as a man’s. “I must marry today—don’t you see? I must marry my true love today... or—or go to him.”
She nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I thought as much.” Slowly she placed a long, pale finger on the eye. “There could be only one reason why it keeps looking,” she said sadly. “Only one reason.”
“Yes,” I declared. “You bungled the ingredients. You cheated me.”
“Bungled, cheated,” she repeated, as if she were considering the possibility. Then she shook her head slowly. “No. No bungling nor no cheating, lass,” she said. “Only one reason.”
“What, then?” I begged. “Tell me, what is the reason?”
“Keturah, you already love another. It looks for the true love you already have.”
I opened my mouth to laugh or rage, I did not know which—but no sound came. She looked into my open mouth curiously, as if she could read in my throat the words that would not come.
Finally I said, “No. I do not love another. That is the problem, Soor Lily.”
“Yes,” she said gently, calmly. “You already love. True love. So sorry. A tragedy.”
“Why should I lie to you? I do not love!”
“True love.” She began to blubber. “So sad, so sad...”
“Stop it!” I insisted.
Immediately she stopped. Her sad face vanished and she beamed at me, happy to be pleasing me. She placed the eye gingerly back into my apron pocket and took me by the arm. “Goodbye, sweetums,” she said, guiding me toward the door. “Goodbye, good luck, God bless,” she murmured, as she pressed me out the door. “So pretty... Goodbye.”
I stumbled back to the road, half-blind with fear and confusion and anger.
Already love!
I stood upon the cobbled road, unsure what to do, where to go.
No, I finally determined. I would go back. I had seen Soor Lily’s handiwork, and I knew it had great power. She must try again.
I turned to go back to her house, but just off the road stood one of her great sons.
“Goodbye,” he said.
I thought to walk around him, but I saw that all seven of her sons were guarding the way.
“Goodbye,” another said. “Goodbye,” said each in turn.
I walked back to Tide-by-Rood and to home.
X
Of Tailor and Choirmaster and what I decide; of good lemons and bad news.
Gretta and Beatrice had let themselves in and had done all my chores. Now they were stitching, and their faces were filled with worry. Grandmother was sleeping still.
“I have been to see Soor Lily,” I said quietly, and I began steeping foxglove tea.
“The charm is not working, is it?” Gretta said flatly.
“She says it is because I am in love already.”
“It must be Ben.”
“It must be, but the eye does not stop for Ben—it only slows.”
“It is waiting for your pie,” Beatrice said hopefully.
“Perhaps,” I said. I sat on the edge of Grandmother’s bed with the foxglove tea and stroked her hair until she woke with a smile.
While I helped her sip the tea, Gretta and Beatrice whispered together. Before Grandmother had finished the tea, the color had come back to her face and I had persuaded her to have breakfast.
“You were right, Keturah,” she said. “Death is not as near as I had thought, perhaps.”
After she had eaten, she took up her spindle and assured me that she might feel well enough to make supper also.
“If you are well enough, Grandmother Reeve,” Gretta said, “might we borrow Keturah for a time?”
“Of course, dears, run and play. Ah, youth is so carefree and innocent.”
My friends escorted me outside and pounced upon me immediately. “You have not looked at every man while you held the charm,” Gretta said accusingly. “Have you?”
“Indeed I have,” I said. “At the hunt, at the gatherings, among the work crew...”
“Tailor?” Gretta demanded.
“Tailor—no ...”
“Choirmaster?” Beatrice asked.
“Choirmaster—no ...”
“Just as we thought,” Gretta said, her hands on her hips.
“But they are for you!” I said. “Gretta, confess that you love Tailor yourself.”
“It is true that I admire him, Keturah. He is kind to his children, and he mends Hermit Gregor’s trousers for free. But a man who does good of his own free will is a man who cannot be bossed—and that, Keturah, can be a dangerous thing. Besides, I saw dirt in the corners of his house.”
“Not everyone, perhaps, can be as perfect as you, Gretta,” I said.
“Sister, friend,” she said sternly to me, “we show ourselves in everything we do. Dirty floors, dirty soul; unmade bed, unkempt soul. Perfection in cleanliness demonstrates perfection of being. Every perfect stitch is a glory to God. Now that man, he lives in—”