Read Online The Son Avenger by Sigrid Undset - Free Book Online Page B

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.