Keturah and Lord Death by Martine Leavitt Read Free Book Online Page B

first you must cook. You and your friends.”
    She dragged me along, grinning ferociously, as if she were twice my size and not half of it. “You will do pastries today. I know you can do pastries. And watch the pig, too.”
    As Cook led me into the bowels of her kitchen, I thought that this was how Jonah must have felt in the belly of the great fish. It was dark and hot, and slimy with blood and guts and grease. Smoke and fire filled the room, and the smell of rot and garbage overcame the smell of roasting. Someone shouted and someone else moaned.
    Cook set me to my task, and I worked pastry and turned the spit until my back was a rigid board of pain. In the flames of the fire I thought I saw Death’s fine face, and sometimes I thought I heard his laughter. Cook set tasks for Gretta and Beatrice as well. I told myself the pastry was not a bad price for a lemon, the prize that would foil Death’s plan.
    After what seemed hours, I grabbed Cook as she scuttled by me. “Cook, surely by now I have earned my lemon,” I said.
    “No, not yet,” she said. “Keep going.”
    “How do I know you even have a lemon?” I asked, knowing she was a sly old thing.
    “Oh, I do, I do.”
    “Let’s see it, then,” I said.
    “Oh, I don’t show my precious lemons to just any village girl,” she said.
    So I made pies until I had repented of every sin I had ever committed, including coming for a lemon before I had asked John to do something to stay the plague. I confessed every sin out loud to the roasting pig. Whenever the pastor spoke of death, in the same breath he spoke of hell and fire. If death was anything like Lord Temsland’s kitchen, I had no desire to go there. I wondered if Lord Death ruled the good or the bad, and while I could remember no evil in the darkness of his eyes, I could tell they had seen much suffering. But then, it mattered not whether he was lord of the happy dead or the sad; I wanted no part of either.
    At last Cook came and declared the pastries fine and the pig perfectly done, and I collapsed onto a stool.
    “Now gravy,” she said, putting a buttery finger under my chin.
    “No,” I said resolutely. “I know nothing about gravy.”
    “Can you not cook, then?” she asked. “Shall I tell this to Ben Marshall?”
    “Please, no! I can do pies. Meat pies and fruit pies. Pies. Only pies, but I am better at pies than Padmoh.”
    She studied me, realizing perhaps that she had met a soul as stubborn as her own. “Come,” she said. “With the face of an angel you will serve, then. You can walk and carry a tray, can you not?”
    I stood. “Yes. But before I take another step, I shall have my lemon.”
    “Nay, but only serve, lass, and I shall find you my greenest lemon.”
    “Green! But lemons are yellow.”
    “That is what I meant—yellow.”
    “You don’t have one!” I exclaimed. I grabbed her by the nose. “Confess, old brown tooth, you don’t have any lemons.”
    “No, I don’t, foolish girl,” she said, smacking my hand. “There is not a one to be had in these parts, though I’ve heard one can be bought for its weight in gold in the Great Market. But if you love Lord Temsland and do not wish to disgrace him before the king’s messenger, then you shall serve!”
    “Then I will ask the lord myself for a lemon,” I said stubbornly to Cook.
    “Ask,” she said cheerfully. “And while you are at it, ask for half his holdings, an equally small thing.”
    Gretta, Beatrice, and I were given heavy trays of trenchers to carry into the great hall. We were mournful at first, but when we saw the crowd, and saw that we would have a server’s close view of the messenger, Duke Morland, our hearts were cheered. The duke was dressed in turquoise silk, a man very different from Lord Temsland, who dressed in woolens and furs and had little time for much else but the hunt. Beatrice blushed when she served the messenger, and whispered to me that he smelled like a begonia.
    The duke surveyed the feast