“Bitter cold to sport in the grove with one’s lady fair,” said Ragnvald laughing. “But I dare say you cannot choose your own time, you two—with the old man always about you down yonder.”
“Good night,” they both cried. “Beware, Eirik, lest the trolls snatch away your ladylove tonight!”
Eirik stood listening to the beat of their horses’ hoofs as the two rode away into the dusk. Then he turned and went up to the cabin.
There was a good fire burning on the hearth by the door, and a candle stood in an iron clip by Liv’s couch on one of the raised floors. Bothild sat at the mother’s feet swathing the child. On the other side sat Anki and the six older children, eating the food Cecilia had sent; the savoury smell of a boiling pot of meat almost overcame the wonted evil odour of the hut. Comfort and unconcern in the midst of poverty met Eirik as he entered, ducking his head, from the raw autumn evening outside.
He sat for a while talking to Anki, while Bothild tended the child—she dawdled over it till Eirik grew impatient: now she must come, ’twas already black night outside.
They went, he in front and she behind, across the Rundmyr fields, which showed faintly grey in the darkness, and down to the bridle path through the woods. They walked by the side of the river, which rippled and gurgled very softly among the bushes; there was hardly any water in it that autumn.
Now and again Eirik heard that she was hanging behind; then he stopped and waited till she came up. And every time he had to halt and wait like this in the dark under the trees, his evil will seemed to grow more irresistible.
At last, when he had halted thus, she did not come. Eirik held his breath as he went back, treading as noiselessly as he could. He ran against her in the dark; as he took hold of her shoulder he felt she was trembling like one sick of a fever.
“What is it?” His pulses were throbbing so that he could hardly command his voice.
“I can go no farther,” she whispered miserably.
“Then we must rest awhile.” He took her in his arms and drew her to the edge of the road, where there was a little clearing among the trees. “’Tis your own wish!” he muttered threateningly.
Instantly Bothild tore herself away from him. It was a moment before Eirik recovered himself—he heard her flying footfalls on the path ahead, ran after her; then came a dull thud—Eirik nearly stumbled over the prostrate body. He knelt beside her—she had fallen face forward. Eirik took hold of her, put his hand over her mouth, and felt it wet with a scalding stream that came bubbling out. At first he did not know what it was; disgust and rage boiled up in him—was the bitch lying there vomiting! Then with a shock of horror he knew that it was blood.
He turned her on her back, knelt in the mire of the path, and supported her against his chest. It was so dark that he could only just make out the pale round of her face and the dark flood that poured in pulse-beats from her mouth.
“Bothild—what is it—have you hurt yourself so badly?”
He could get no answer, but beneath his hand he felt the girl’s heart throbbing as fast as his own. In vain he begged, time after time: “Can you not answer, Bothild—Bothild, have you hurt yourself?”
At last he had to lay her down. He tore his way through the bushes; stones scattered and gravel crunched under his feet as he floundered in the darkness, searching for a pool in the river-bed where he could fill his hat. The water oozed through the felt crown; he had but a few drops when he found her again, and dashed them over her. And now he could smell the blood; his own clothes were drenched with blood, and he felt sick with horror and disgust. And Bothild lay silent as though she were dead already.
Then he saw there was nothing else to be done—he lifted her up in his arms. He was forced to get her home; but heavy she was, as she hung lifeless in his embrace. That little distance, over stocks and stones in pitch-darkness, was as long as eternity. And he himself was worn out inwardly—with the wild desire that was shattered on this terrible mystery.
After an age, it seemed to him, he reached the manor with his burden. He managed to open the door of the women’s house, found his way to the bed and laid her on it. Then he went out in search of help—Cecilia, where was she?
In the living-room—as he came in he saw his father and the three boatmen were sitting at the table over their porridge. His sister and the serving-maid were hanging up clothes by the hearth.
“Bothild is sick, I think—”
Cecilia turned sharply—saw her brother standing there, just in the firelight, with blood on his face, and hands as though they had been plunged in blood. With a loud groan she dropped the garment she was hanging on the bar, darted past him and out of the door.
But Olav too had leaped up. He sprang over the table and out after his daughter.
And the men had risen and came out into the room.
“Jesus, Mary!” old Tore wailed, “Jesus, Mary—has it come upon her again?”
Inga, the serving-maid, sighed as one who knew: “What else could we look for?—’tis ever thus with the wasting sickness, it will not give up its hold, when it has fastened on a young body. I have thought this the whole time—for Bothild, poor thing, there is no hope of cure.”
“Cecilia will take this sorely to heart,” said one of the men. “Olav too—they love her as their own flesh and blood.”
“Far too red and white,” said Tore; “I was sure of it—no long life was in store for her. Like a stranger she was here—little use was it that Olav had masses sung for her and was a father to her.”
Eirik had sunk on the beggar’s bench by the door. Without knowing it he had hidden his face in his arms. It was as though veil after veil was being drawn from before his eyes. The wasting sickness, they said, she had had these blood vomits before—she had been sick the whole time, and no one had said a word to him of it. The whole time, while he had had such thoughts of her, had played his cruel game with her, she had been a sick child.
Such were his thoughts when someone took him by the shoulder.
“How did it come about—that she was stricken so sorely?” Olav had spoken in a low voice. Eirik looked up. His father seemed already to have forgotten his question. He gazed vacantly before him, in bitter grief. Eirik could not bear to look at him more than an instant.
Now Cecilia came in. The house-folk swarmed about her with their questions. The maid merely shook her head—her face seemed compressed; she would not weep. In haste she took out of her chest a little box and was going out again.
“I will watch with you tonight,” said Olav in a low voice.
His daughter paused and nodded. Olav took her in his arms and held her face against his breast a moment. Then he went out with her.
Eirik was outside the door of the women’s house but dared not go in. He thought of that other evening, when he stood with her between the doors—he had not guessed it was a sick woman.
Inga came out after something. It was ill with Bothild, she replied to Eirik’s question. The smell of blood from his own clothes wellnigh choked him.
He went in and to bed. He had not guessed that she was sick—and now he began to understand what had lain behind her strange manner—till he was afraid and resisted and would not be forced to see it all. Beware lest the troll snatch away your ladylove, they had said—Ragnvald, or was it Gaute?
He had fancied she was not as she should be, pure and undefiled. But he had never dreamed that he who had defiled her was Death.
Cecilia came into the room with red eyes next morning. Nay, Bothild had slept but little, she answered—nay, she had not spoken either, seemed to have no strength for that—she must have lost more blood this time than ever before.
Cecilia took the clothes that her brother had worn the evening before. “I will take charge of these and have them washed clean.”
“’Twill be best for me to take myself away now,” said Eirik doubtfully—“back to Sir Ragnvald—since you have sickness in the house—”
“Is there any need for tha
t?” asked Cecilia in surprise.
Eirik said the same to his father when he met him later in the day. Olav gave a start—looked at Eirik so strangely that the young man felt all his old fear of his father awakening. What if he had guessed—or Bothild had said something to him. Eirik turned red, and was furious with his father for causing him to blush. Olav answered not a word, but went out.
Two days later Eirik was ready for the road.
He wished to set out early in the day; so he had to go and visit Bothild—he must bid her farewell before he left the manor.
She lay with red roses in her cheeks, but when he came near the bed, he saw that her face had sunk in, especially under the eyes. She had been holding a rosary in her hands; now she hid it hastily under the coverlet. Eirik felt a choking pang of grief as he saw it.
The sharp and acrid odour of sweat that had inflamed him sooh, now he knew what it meant; in the wasting sickness they sweat so profusely, for it devours them with the heat within. And that little cough of hers which had vexed him so—
He stood still, resting both hands on the hilt of his sword. He found it impossible to say anything—if he were to ask her forgiveness, there would be no end to it. Rather would he have thrown himself on his knees, laid his head on her sick bosom.
“You must not believe worse things of me than—My intent was not so evil as it must have seemed. With all my faults I am not such as you believe me now.”
The sick girl lay looking at him with great dark eyes.
“You must tell me, Bothild—can you forgive me?”
“Yes,” was all she answered. Eirik waited yet a little while.
Then he went right up to the bed, took her hand—it was cold and clammy.
“Fare you well, then.” He ventured so far as to stroke her cheek—but her face was hot as fire. “God give you health again—that you may be well when we next meet.”
“Farewell, Eirik. God be with you.”
His father and sister went with him no farther than to the barn. Alone he had to ride from home. And he could not shake off his heaviness—he felt like one who rode away an outlaw and accursed.
4 September 8.
5
BOTHILD lay abed through the autumn. It was up and down with her.
Olav watched his young daughter moving about, silent and serious, divided between her sick sister and all the household work of the great manor. She was brave and loyal, Cecilia. Her father saw that her heart was oppressed with sorrow and anxiety; she was often not far from tears, but she would not give up—capable and diligent, she performed the work they had shared between them.
Then Olav said that Cecilia must sleep at night. He himself would watch by the sick girl.
The cough and the fever left Bothild little sleep—on her worst nights Olav sat by her bedside. For the first time in his life Olav found himself regretting that he had no practice in such things as pass the time—he knew no games, he could not sing, nor tell tales. And to speak to his foster-daughter of death and of heaven was not in his power.
He had not felt the silence as a burden when he watched over his wife. Between him and Ingunn there had been a life—of childish games and youthful joys and sorrow and shame, and love stronger than death; the silence between them had been a living one, with a murmur like that of the sea. But this child was both known and unknown to her foster-father; all he had seen of her was that she had grown up in his house, grown fair and winsome so that it was a delight to look upon her; he had taken such care of her as he could—and now she was dying as a young tree withers and dies.
She had let him feel, more plainly than the other children, that she needed his protection; that made it all the more bitter for him now to know that she must die. Though he knew it would have been even worse, had it been his own daughter that lay here.
So he sat in the log chair between the hearth and the bed, nodding and dozing, got up and supported the sick girl when the fits of coughing came, drew the bedspread up to her chin lest she should take cold, bathed in perspiration as she was, held the dipper to her lips as she drank, and then went back to his seat.
He was tired, and he was heavy at heart—and yet he felt that this sorrow dwelt in his soul as a stranger in an empty house—only an echo and a shadow of the sorrow he had borne for his mate. That had been so much worse, and yet it had been a thousand times better when she was parted from him, like the tearing asunder of living bonds of flesh and blood—than now, when he sat waiting for the frail and slender bond between him and this stranger’s child to be dissolved.
She had spat blood more than once—not so much as that evening when she fell sick on the way home from Rundmyr. But it was easy to see that she was going downhill, and rapidly.
One morning at the beginning of Advent she had another severe fit of coughing and brought up blood. As the day went on, Olav saw that she was now very weak. She fell asleep at evening; her father stayed up. And when Bothild woke again about midnight, and he had settled her so that she lay comfortably, he said what he thought he must say:
“When daylight comes, my Bothild, ’twill be best I fetch a priest to you.”
“Oh, no, oh, no—” she clutched the man’s arm with both hands in an agony of supplication; “oh, no, say not so! Foster-father, do you think I am going to die?”
No other thought had ever crossed Olav’s mind but that the child herself must have known this long ago.
“Child, child,” he said, hushing her, “why should you not die? You are young and good—why need you fear death? God’s holy angels will meet you and lead you before God’s high seat, to join the blessed virgins to whom it is given to follow the Lamb of God eternally—”
But the tears welled forth under Bothild’s sunken eyelids. “I am not ready to die, foster-father—all I long for is to live on here in this world. I am afraid to die!”
“Afraid you must not be. ’Tis better to dwell in heaven and follow Mary as the least of her handmaids than if you possessed the whole round ball of earth and had command of all that is in it.”
“You say that because you are a righteous man and a good Christian,” said Bothild, weeping.
“So folk believe me to be,” replied Olav, greatly agitated. “Daughter, my dear one, I am not so; God knows what I am. And yet, Bothild—I could tell you such things of God’s mercy, of His patience with our sins and of the love that our Lord shows us in His five holy wounds, in His bloody stripes and blows—Years have now gone by since I myself turned aside from that path, and my own path is overgrown with weeds and wild bushes—Could I but tell you what I myself once saw and learned—it is the worse for me that I dared not live in the way I know to be right—foster-daughter, I know that you ought to be glad to die now, ere you have acquired a greater share of guilt in our Lord’s death and wounds—”
Bothild looked at her foster-father in terrified wonder. But then she began to weep again. “Sins I may have to answer for, though I be young—”
“You will tell them tomorrow to Sira Eyvind and then you may rest with an easy mind—”
Olav seated himself on the side of the bed, holding Bothild’s hand in his; she was weeping quietly and miserably.
“The Christmas feast is better kept in heaven,” he said softly.
“You may fetch him, then,” she whispered at last, utterly broken, and then she wept again.
Next day Olav fetched the priest. Bothild was shriven, and when it was done she sent for her foster-father and sister and the whole household, begged their forgiveness if she had offended them, wittingly or unwittingly. Then Sira Eyvind gave her extreme unction and the bread of parting.
After the priest had ridden away, Olav went in and sat by the dying girl.
“Now, my Bothild, you will soon be gathered to your father. And then you must beg my friend Asger to forgive me for not keeping my word to him so well as I ought—the word I gave him on the day when I received you at his hands and promised to be to you as a father. Do you remember that da
y?—you sat outside the door of the room where your father lay, it was raining and snowing; you were blue with cold. A good, obedient child you have always been, foster-daughter—God grant you may not have cause to complain too bitterly of me when you come before the judgment-seat.”
“Toward me you were ever the most loving father.” She paused awhile, then whispered as though she feared to broach this other subject: “Would you were never harder toward any other—”
“What mean you?” asked her father rather coldly.
“Eirik,” said Bothild very softly. “Toward him meseems you were often hard.”
“I trow not,” replied Olav, dismissing the matter. “I know not that I have been stricter with Eirik than there was need.”
Bothild was silent for some moments. Then she summoned up courage:
“There is Cecilia too, Father. I would wish that you do not give her to Jörund Kolbeinsson, if this be too grievously against her will.”
“Is it so?” Olav asked reluctantly after a moment.
“She liked Aslak better,” whispered her sister.
To that Olav made no answer.
“I had not thought to force Cecilia,” he said at last. “I will not marry her to a man she is loath to take. But I cannot promise therefore to give her to any man on whom her fancy may light, if I have reason to count him no good match for her.”
Olav’s tone was such that the sick girl dared say no more of the subject.
It vexed Olav that his foster-daughter had spoken of these things. Eirik’s departure from Hestviken had been too like a flight for Olav not to wonder at it. And there was one thing and another that he had seen—his suspicions were dawning. Only Olav would not admit them. No, such a thing one ought not to believe of any man, nor of Eirik either: that he could engage in clandestine commerce with a young maid who was under his own father’s protection, his foster-sister. It was true that foster-brothers and sisters—but that of himself and Ingunn was another matter; they had been called an affianced pair from childhood; that it grew to love between them, that they even forgot themselves in each other’s arms—that was bound to come when there was none to take care of them and lead them aright, as inevitably as that two young saplings growing side by side should blend their twigs and leaves into one crown of foliage. Neither Eirik nor Bothild had ever been told of such plans in their case. It was true that he had thought of it at times: if it turned out that Eirik came home, and that Cecilia would not inherit Hestviken after him—then he might marry her, who was scarcely less dear to him than his own daughter, to Eirik. It might be a sort of consolation that the new race would be her children. But these had been but the vaguest thoughts, he had spoken of them to none; so far as he recalled he had only given Bothild’s youth and poverty as his reasons when he let Ragnvald of Galaby know that he not be at the trouble of sending his suitors for her.
The Son Avenger Page 6
