The astrologer, having been rewarded generously for his services, and assured that all due precautions should be taken, he departed, murmuring to himself, "Fate is fate, and it cannot be averted."
The Lady Gytha's whole existence was now absorbed in that of her child. He was scarcely ever out of her reach and sight, she watched over him with more than maternal care, if that were possible, and he continued to blossom out, with the promise of becoming everything she could wish—her support, her comfort, and the pride of her after-life. But these prospects of the future were overshadowed by a cloud—an anxious foreboding of what might happen on the fourth day of the third moon of his second year, which the stars marked with a doubtful and perhaps fatal prognostic. Could he but pass that dangerous point of life, the lowering cloud would dissolve into thin air, and for the future might be anticipated the glad sunshine of existence.
The fatal day came nearer and nearer. He had passed his second birthday, and the mother had meditated often and often on the means whereby he should be delivered from the threatening evil. It was plainly revealed to her that the danger arose from water, and she reasoned that if she could place him out of the neighbourhood of river, pools, or springs, the evil might be turned aside and the augury baffled. When thinking the matter over, there suddenly rose up before her mind's eye the steep slopes of Ottenberg, the Cleveland hill, about which she had often clambered and gambolled when a child, and it struck her that if she could convey young Oswy to the summit, he would be removed so far away from any running or standing stream, or pool of water, that there could be no possibility of the fulfilment of the prediction, and she resolved upon taking him thither.
Accordingly she proceeded to her father's house at its base, and on the summer's night preceding the fateful day, clomb the side of the hill with her child in her arms. She arrived at the summit as the sun was rising from the sea on the eastern horizon, and lighting up the glorious panorama visible from that elevated position. She partook of some refreshment which she had brought with her, and, although she felt no fatigue in making the ascent, owing to her anxiety, now that she had reached what she deemed a place of security, nature began to give way, and a sense of exhaustion to oppress her. She sat there, with her child clasped in her arms, as the sun rose higher in the heavens, and darted forth its heated rays upon her unsheltered head. Under its influence she began to feel drowsy, but battled with the feeling, determined not to lose her hold of the child until the day had passed. At length, however, she unconsciously and insensibly succumbed, and fell asleep, sinking on the turf and relaxing her grasp. The young Oswy disengaged himself, and wandered away, plucking the wild flowers, and looking with infant delight at the gulls winging their flight over the sea.
An hour or two elapsed, and the Lady Gytha awoke. At first she could scarcely understand where she was, but in a few minutes she came to full consciousness, and was startled to find that her child was not with her. She sprang up, called him by name, but elicited no response, and she feared he had fallen down the side of the hill. With beating heart she sought around, and on turning a projecting shoulder of the hill was agonised to perceive the object of her search lying with his face in a stream of water that was issuing from a fissure, and, on taking him up, found life to be extinct. The pen fails in attempting to depict her frantic grief, but it may be briefly stated, that she carried down the lifeless body, conveyed it to her home, and laid it beside its father in the little timber church. For her there was no further earthly joy, and fixing her thoughts on the only source of consolation, she founded a small religious house in the Vale of Mowbray, where she spent the few remaining years of her life in religious meditation and devotional exercises. She was buried beside her beloved child in the little church, around which a village grew up, which was called, in remembrance of the burial-place of Oswy and his mother—Osmotherley.
According to the legend, the spring at the summit of the hill gushed forth miraculously, in order that the decree of Fate should not be frustrated.
"On the proud steep of Ottenberg still may be found
The spring which rose his sad doom to complete;
And on its verge the villagers sit round,
In wonder recording the fiat of Fate."