To Hulda’s surprise, Garik hugged her when they parted. “Will you tell your faðir?”
“Tell him what?” asked Helje, who stood by.
“About our defense of the Scots settlement,” Hulda said quickly. “Ja, sure. I will have to tell him.”
Her gaze met Garik’s for an instant. “Better perhaps to tell your móðir,” he suggested. “Móðirs are often more sympathetic.”
Good advice, as Hulda decided when she got home, especially as she found Faðir away at a council meeting.
She thew herself on Móðir’s mercy and told her all. Well, nearly all, since there was no real way to explain what she felt for Quarrie.
It did not help to see, as she spoke, the growing horror in Móðir’s eyes.
“Ach, Hulda! What have you done? That was most unwise.”
“Mayhap so. But Móðir, surely you understand that a woman cannot always choose to whom she loses her heart.”
“Her heart!” Móðir had been seated beside the fire when Hulda began her accounting. Now she got to her feet and turned away. “We are surely talking about something far more vulgar. You were tempted. By, of all things, one ofthem.”
“Nei, it was not that way.”
Móðir stormed on. “I thought when you went off with a boat full of young men, it would be one of them to seduce you. I mean, one woman among so many. Bad enough for you to come home with a Norse babe in your belly.” She whirled and eyed Hulda starkly. “Butthat?”
Hulda’s throat went dry and her heart began to pound. She had hoped, ja, for some understanding. It seemed she would not receive it.
“My babe will be a babe like to any other.” Indeed, despite her best efforts during the voyage home, she’d already begun picturing the child. Male or female, she did not care. Would it have its faðir’s eyes? His hair? Ach, by Freya’s heart, his smile? Wee freckles on its skin?
A maternal sort of woman or not, she already loved this child near as much as its faðir, if only because it was his.
Móðir, completely out of character, raged on. “Is it not enough we have lost your bróðir? The son of whom your faðir was so proud. Left with a dottir. And now you bring us disgrace.”
Disgrace. “Móðir.” Hulda tried to calm herself by drawing a breath. “This happens all the time. It is not such a disgrace to come up with a babe outside an official joining.”
“Not some…some Scots mongrel! Your faðir will never stand for it. Thanks be to Freya he is not here now.” Móðir glared at Hulda, her eyes wild. “There is only one thing to be done.”
Hulda, who had also sprung to her feet and now stood trembling, lifted her chin. “What is that?”
“You must go and see old Roskva. At once. At once! Before your faðir finds out.”
“Roskva?”
“She will know how to get rid of it. She has—has ways, Hulda.”
Hulda believed it. Old Roskva was a witch, a powerful woman among the members of the community. An aged hag of whom Hulda had been terrified when she was young. Perhaps she was terrified of her still.
“I am not about to let her touch me.”
“Unfortunate, ja, but you must.”
“She will kill my child.”Quarrie’s child.
“Ja. You are very early, so it will not be too bad. Best to take care of it now.”
“I am not letting her kill my child.” She would, with everything in her, protect this babe. Just as she would have protected its faðir.
“Then what?” Móðir challenged her. “You will not be able to go viking again with a babe at your breast, and no one will agree to look after it for you. If you think your faðir will have it here—”
Cold settled over Hulda, a deep chill that penetrated to the bone.
