Hulda asked Helje, “Has Ivor arrived back yet?”
“Nei, not yet.” Did his gaze avoid hers? “But I do not doubt he will be back soon enough. And then…”
And then it would all come out. How Freya had stood between Ivor’s boats and the rich prize of the settlement at Murtray.
She had wanted to make explanations to her faðir first. Not that there were any explanations that could truly satisfy him.
“I was thinking,” Helje said, “if we claim we have an interest there—a holding or a part in one—then surely the others will understand why we defended it.”
“You think so?” She sought his eyes. Helje had never been a friend to her like his brother. But during the voyage, they had come to a steady liking.
He shrugged. “Who can tell? It is a rich prize to have a share in such a holding.”
It would be indeed, but what was he saying to her? That he would consider going back?
Going back.
“I also heard,” he went on, “back in the settlement, that your faðir has cast you out.”
“Who told you that?”
“No one told. Word gets around.”
The servants, no doubt.
She turned her gaze away from him and narrowed it onFreya. “It is true. He will not have me there because I am carrying a child, one of which I refuse to rid myself.”
That did surprise him. She heard his gasp, swiftly muffled. So, Garik had not speculated to his brother.
“I see. But—” Helje’s wits were anything but slow. “Not the chief there!”
“What makes you guess that?”
“It wasn’t one of us. And—I saw the way he looked at you. The way you looked at him. What will you do?”
“Stay here for now. Keep my child.”
“Ja, you are a strong woman. I do not know another who stands on her two feet like you and is willing to fight. But it is not easy with a small child. How to leave it behind when you want to go viking?”
“I do not know.”
“Does he know, this chief back in Scotland?”
Hulda shook her head. “I did not realize before I left, to tell him.”
“Well, it is a perilous course you set.”
It was, and by the end of the day Hulda decided to call together the members of the crew left on the shore and make her announcement.
“I need to tell you all, I am carrying a child. Since my faðir does not want me to shame him, he has asked me to leave his house.”
They met her news with sharp stares, as if it had never occurred to most of them that she was a woman.
She did not name the father of her child. If that got out, so be it. Since she saw them with their heads together and whispering after, she figured it might.
Had they been older men, experienced and less biddable, they might not have accepted it so readily. These men did accept it, shrugged it off, and continued to treat her thereafter much the same as always.
And yet things were not the same. Though she was grateful to Frode for a roof, she did not like living with him. The sea beckoned to her, and the far distances.
