“There will be more to the story, I am certain.”
“My móðir and my faðir want me to get rid of the child.” She had to fight back her emotions. “His child.”
“I see.”
Hulda glanced around. “I cannot stay here.” She did not want to. “There is no room.”
“We will make room. It is warm. You will help with work onFreya. Your child, ja, will be born with skill in his fingers.”
“Or hers.”
She could not stay here. Not for the whole winter. Mayhap, though, a little while.
“Frode, it is kind of you.”
“Is it?”
“I can pay my way.”
“I do not want pay. I had a dottir once.”
“Did you?” She had not known he had even a wife, though since he had a son…
“She died. But if my dottir had come home to me with a brat in her belly, I would not have thrown her out. Do you know why?”
“Why?”
“That child would still be partly mine.”
Hulda found she had tears in her eyes.
“Now eat and drink something, else you will be in far more trouble than you need to be. If you want to keep that babe, you will take care of yourself.”
She wanted to keep the babe. Resolute, she choked down her bread and ale.
Chapter Fifty-Three
When members ofthe crew began to arrive the next morning, being young men and easily bored once back upon their home shore, Frode told Hulda she would have to be truthful with them.
“It is not a thing that can be hid, girl.”
“It is, for a time.”
“And how will they feel if they suppose you do not trust them enough to say?”
“Garik knows.”
“Tell the others, then.”
Hulda dragged her feet on it. She still did not feel well and had spent an uneasy night in the corner of the hut, listening to the old man and his son snore in tandem.
She could not face her crew, from whom she wanted respect. She had commanded them for the season, acting as a man would, and did not want their image of her to change.
As it must, if she began bursting with child. Quarrie’s child.
The men decided to help Frode dragFreyaup on the shore, and then most lingered to help with repairs. She was their boat and they felt possessive.
Many of them had sore heads, having spent much time in the ale hall, talking up their exploits.
