Free The Son Avenger by Sigrid Undset Page A

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, thatshe 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