So the woodcutter took the child to a house where several holy women
lived and, after explaining the brief history of the child as he
knew it, asked for their help. "The wife and I don't have the
learning behind us, the money with us, or the years ahead of us to
raise this child as it ought to be raised," said the woodcutter to
the matron of the house, "so we'd appreciate it if you could find it
a proper home."
"Our small endowment provides us with only a modest living," the
matron said, "but we will care for the child until we can find out
whom it belongs to, or until we can find it a good home." So the
man left the child with them and went on with his wood cutting. The
matron of the house assigned care of the child to one of the newest
of the holy women, who could nurse it.
About this season in the kingdom, the queen gave birth to a son
also. The child, however, was weak and sickly, and failed to
flourish. In just a few weeks it developed a fever and died
suddenly in the night. The queen, in addition to her grief, was
frantic with anxiety, knowing that the king was such a hard man that
if he knew his only son had died, he would hate the queen and
perhaps divorce her. So she sent, with the utmost secrecy, a
trusted servant to find another child to replace the one she had
lost. "Bring me a child with no past," she told her servant, "and I
will give it a future."
Finding such a child was a tiring and frustrating task for the
servant, and he met with humiliation and rejection and insult and
false leads and failure at every turn. But since this story is not
about him, nor about the rewards of perseverance, let us say simply
that eventually he found himself at the door of the holy order of
women we have mentioned above.
"Yes, we do have such a child as you seek," the matron told him.
"We were keeping him until we could find his parents, or until we
could find him a good home. Perhaps your mistress, whoever she is,
will care for him well." The servant assured the matron that this
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