"Poor Ulf! His face looks like a bloody beet."
Both women giggled.
After their return, Ruby strolled through Coppergate with Astrid and the ever-present guard. The craftsmen who plied their trades in the open air in front of their city homes fascinated Ruby, especially the instrument makers who drew sweet, haunting music from the pan pipes they carved so lovingly.
With their long, flowing manes of hair and belted tunics, the Viking artists—wood and leather workers, jewelers, gold and silversmiths, glass blowers and weavers—resembled the hippies of the 1960s. Unlike those gentle flower children, however, when winter winds blew, these swaggering males turned fierce and rode the North Seas a-Viking in their longships. Finding the difference hard to reconcile, Ruby asked Gyda about it.
"You have come to us in a rare peaceable period," Gyda explained. "Just six years ago, when Rognvald captured and became king of Jorvik, the city fair flowed with blood. Every family lost sons, brothers, husbands and fathers." She shook her head sadly before confiding, "Our oldest child Thorvald died in the battle." Gyda's voice cracked as she wept silently.
"Oh, Gyda, how inconsiderate of me! I never knew you had a son. Please forgive me."
When Gyda calmed down, she continued, "The saddest part is the fighting does not end yet. Mark my words, blood will flow again here. The Saxons will ne'er allow us to live here in peace."
"Don't the Vikings have their own lands?"
"Our homelands are small and overpopulated. The Viking leaders there wield their power as viciously as our enemies here."
"Like Thork's father, King Harald?"
"Just like. Hordes of our brethren have broken away from the yoke of tyranny and seek to settle in new lands as farmers and traders—like here in Jorvik—but 'tis ever a struggle to survive, even when we agree to give up our own culture to blend in the new lands."
"Gyda, you may find this hard to believe, but in my country people consider Vikings heathen barbarians who killed for the joy of it. And what is a-Viking anyway, if not raping and plundering other lands?"
"Some are driven so," Gyda admitted. "Overcome by the bloodlust they are, like the berserkers, or by the plunder, but mostly they go to seek better lives for their families. Mayhap they conquer unwilling lands in the process, but survival drives them. Nothing more."
That was one of the more serious conversations she and Gyda engaged in recently. Mostly, they laughed and enjoyed themselves as women gathered in Gyda's home each afternoon to get Ruby's expert help in making the frivolous lingerie.
Today a group of Gyda's friends from nearby homes arrived once again for a "sewing bee." Ruby had shown them once before how to make a pattern, but some had run into problems and wanted hands-on assistance.
She suspected they were more interested in seeing the washboard she'd designed with the blacksmith's help for Gyda, not to mention the hand-carved clothespins a wood-worker in the market area had made to her specifications. Gyda beamed with pride when she looked at her clean laundry hung on the newly strung clothesline between two trees behind the house. She displayed the washboard, when it wasn't being used, on a special, highly visible wall peg, its rolled metal surface polished to a high sheen. And Ruby suspected that Gyda let her laundry hang out longer than necessary to impress her neighbors with her modern gadgets.
The lively, outspoken women in Gyda's solar that afternoon chattered and gossiped as their nimble fingers plied precious needles and rainbow-colored threads.
"Did you hear that Gunvor is with child again?" one woman confided. The others rolled their eyes meaningfully. Tsk-tsk's clicked through the women's teeth as they sympathized with the "poor girl."
"Ten babes and her not yet seeing twenty-five winters!" Gyda exclaimed. " 'Tis dead she will be by her thirtieth year. She near bled to death in the last birthing, I was told."
"Then what will Siegfried do for the care of all those children?" Gyda's next-door-neighbor Freydis, a rotund, jolly woman, clucked.
"Probably wed some young, unknowing bonder's daughter whose father wants one less mouth to feed," another lady snorted with disgust.
Was that sort of like a thirty-eight-year-old man looking for a sweet young bimbo after dumping his wife of twenty years? Oh, hell! Ruby thought. I do not need this!
" 'Tis ever a woman's lot and ever will be. Men lust. Women suffer," Gyda sighed, with a woman's eternal resignation to fate.
"Well," Ruby volunteered, "why don't you women do something about it? It's just as much your responsibility."
All the women turned on Ruby, wide-eyed, open-mouthed and very, very interested. Even Gyda.
Oops! Had she blundered again? Perhaps this was a subject she shouldn't have broached. But, heck, women needed to stick together, to share information, to bond for their own self-interest.
The women still gaped at her, expecting her to elaborate.
"Haven't you ever heard of birth control, of taking precautions so you won't have any more children, if that is what you choose to do?"
Freydis pooh-poohed her suggestion with a wave of the hand. "You speak of those useless powders that promise to prevent conception but never do. Just a waste of coins!" The others nodded in agreement.
"Actually, there are powders in my country that do work," Ruby said, knowing they wouldn't understand birth control pills. "Haven't you heard of condoms or sponges or douches?" Of course they hadn't. How silly of her to ask!
"Condoms? What are they?" Gyda asked. "Do you truly say women have methods to prevent having babes?"
"Yes, they do."
Ruby had the rapt attention of every woman in the room.
"Condoms are thin sheaths that fit over a man's male part—so thin the pleasurable sensations aren't diminished, but so water-tight the male sperm, or fluid, cannot enter the woman's vagina and join with her egg."
A storm of questions followed then, and Ruby gave the standard high school health class lecture on menstruation and reproduction.
"But these condoms," one young woman asked, "where might they be purchased? And of what fabric are they made?"
"I'm not sure," Ruby admitted, "although I do think they are already being made in the Orient at this time. I think the early ones were made of a soft leather that was rinsed and used over and over, but the ones I've seen are thin, transparent membranes, disposed of after every use." Ruby racked her brain to remember more about a subject on which she was not particularly knowledgeable.
"And the women can make love and not get pregnant?" an amazed Gyda asked.
Ruby smiled and nodded.
"What is a membrane?" another asked. "Is it like the thinnest silk?"
"No, because that isn't water-tight. It's more like the thin skin over some women's breasts, or the skin of an animal that's been scraped and scraped until it's almost transparent and used for window coverings." Ruby tried to think of a better explanation. "I know, it resembles the intestines of animals when they're thoroughly cleaned out."
Now the women understood.
"Does this birth control not anger the men in your country?" Freydis asked.
"No-o-o, I don't think so. If a man loves a woman, he wants to protect her, to keep her from having a child when it's dangerous for her health, or when there are too many for them to feed or she's past the prime childbearing years."
After the women left, Gyda looked at Ruby oddly. "Who are you?" Gyda asked with a puzzled frown. " 'Tis strange you know so much that we do not, even though our men trade 'round the world."
"I come from the future, Gyda," Ruby tried to explain once again.
"Nay, that I cannot accept. You must come from some strange land we have not yet discovered. That must be it."
The next morning, after her jogging routine with Byrnhil, the king's mistress demanded that Ruby return to the palace with her for-a private conversation. Ruby soon learned that the Viking grapevine worked almost as fast as those in modern America. Word had spread already of Ruby's birth control lecture.
At least twenty women crowded Byrnhil's solar demanding that she repeat the words she'd spoken yesterday. When she finished, they asked even more questions than Gyda's friends.
"I will tell Sigtrygg to search for some of those condoms when next his ships travel to the Orient," Byrnhil declared confidently.
"Do women in your country care naught that those strange objects are inside them?" one young maid asked shyly.
"Humph! No stranger than some male parts I have seen!" Byrnhil joked. And that led to a discussion of lovemaking, sexual prowess and good lovers these women had known. Ruby blushed at some of the graphic descriptions the Viking women gave.
Sensing Ruby's embarrassment, Byrnhil asked, "Do women care naught for lovemaking in your country? 'Tis said the Saxon women consider it a distasteful duty."
"Oh, women enjoy lovemaking almost as much as men," Ruby laughed, "especially since we've learned so much these past few decades about woman's anatomy and what brings her pleasure. Females in my country expect to have orgasms, as well as men. In fact, many have discovered multiple orgasms."
The stunned silence that greeted those words stopped Ruby short. Oh, my God! Had she really said all that?
"I think I better go home now," Ruby murmured weakly.
But no way would she be permitted to escape so easily. The set look on Byrnhil's face told Ruby loud and clear that she'd opened a can of worms the size of a snake pit.
"What is an orgasm?" Byrnhil demanded to know.
When she described that as briefly and succinctly as she could, Byrnhil asked, "And multiple orgasms?" Ruby's explanation drew surprised gasps from some women and snorts of disbelief from others.
"I knew that," Byrnhil claimed arrogantly. "I just did not know your words." Then she bragged, "Always I come at least three times."
Holy cow! No wonder Byrnhil held the fierce Sigtrygg in her spell.
Two days later the same group of neighbor ladies showed up at Gyda's door with flushed cheeks and a conspiratorial manner. When they were seated in Gyda's sewing chamber, Freydis stood up as spokeswoman. "We have something to show you."
Was it another pattern for underwear? Some of these buxom Viking women insisted there should be a way to design a push-up bra that fit them without making them look like the masthead of a ship.
Freydis pulled an object out of her bag and shoved it into Ruby's hands. The wrinkled, grayish-colored stuff looked like the pig's intestines used for sausage casings she'd seen on her grandfather's farm as a child.
"What is it?" Ruby asked, raising questioning eyes to Freydis.
"A condom," Freydis said proudly. I made it myself."
Ruby tried not to smile as she examined the ugly object more closely. Freydis had sewn the end of the clean casing with tiny stitches to hold the sperm inside.
Before Ruby had time to react, the other women brought forth their creations. One woman had embroidered Norse symbols in red and gold thread down the length of hers. Another had used a pig's bladder and made it so long and big the husband would have to be immense to fill it. She looked sheepishly at Ruby and said, "My Gorm is fair like a tree trunk when the lust comes, but mayhap I did make it a mite too big." The women hooted teasingly at her words.
When Ruby finally had time to register what the women showed her, she started to laugh. She couldn't help herself. She laughed so hard the tears came and her side hurt, but still she couldn't stop. Finally, Gyda clapped her hard across the back and forced her to drink a cup of water. Wiping the tears from her face, Ruby looked at the curious women, who couldn't understand her reaction.
"Homemade condoms just won't work," Ruby said gently. "They're bound to leak or break. I'm sorry if I led you to believe you could make them yourselves."
"Well, I see them not as useless," Freydis argued. "Aught is better than naught. I will check each of mine to make sure they are perfect, unbroken. The finest, tightest stitches I will use." The other women concurred, ignoring Ruby's criticisms.
"You know, you could follow the rhythm method," she offered. "It's not perfect, but I think it would be more effective than your homemade condoms."
She explained the rhythm method to them, telling them how to keep a calendar and which days of the months they were most fertile. They listened attentively, but one woman summed up most of their feelings when she said, "Think you a husband in the mood will turn away when his wife says 'tis the wrong time?" Only one young lady disagreed: "Some husbands would. If the wife's life was in danger, some would wait."
Ruby resolved after that to keep her mouth shut, not to volunteer any more information. What she didn't need was to call attention to herself, and that's just what she'd been doing by creating a stir with her lingerie and birth control. No more!
Thork and Olaf had been gone the past week. They had sold most of the goods carried on Thork's ships, a percentage of which belonged to Olaf, and had stored the rest on Dar's estate where they'd been the past week. The Althing would be held in three short weeks. Thork was making a concerted effort to take care of business before he left Jorvik—and her—for a long, long time. She might not ever see him again.
Ruby could not think beyond the present. Her future fluttered dark and shadowy in front of her. Not only was she terrified of her "trial" at the Althing, but the prospect of being alone in the Viking land, without Thork, traumatized her with its uncertainties.
She tried to keep the fearful images at bay with busy work, but she and Gyda both froze with surprise in the midst of drying mushrooms two days later to see Thork and Olaf and a strangely familiar gray-haired man come stomping into the house.
A gamut of emotions rippled through Ruby as she faced her husband, who was not her husband—mostly just plain happiness to see him again. Her spirits were out of sync, however, with the tense drama being played out on Thork's stormy face.
"What in the name of Loki have you been up to now?" Thork demanded of Ruby, without any greeting.
His riveting gaze accused her coldly, so different from the last time she'd seen him outside Olaf's barn, where they'd shared a sweet kiss. Under his steady scrutiny, Ruby's confidence faltered uneasily.
"Less than a sennight I have been gone and already you create a furor!"
"Me?" Ruby's blood ran cold. Her mind worked overtime to understand his accusation. She had a sneaking suspicion about what prompted Thork's irritation, but hoped it wasn't true. "I don't know what you're talking about," she fabricated.
"Sigtrygg sent an urgent message demanding I return to Jorvik at once—to remove the troublesome wench from his city afore she created a rebellion among the woman. Could he perchance refer to you?" Thork asked smoothly.
Fear rose biliously to her throat, but Ruby opted for a brave front.
"Really! What could one woman do? He's just on the down side of one of his mood swings." Ruby's heart sank at the sure knowledge the king had heard about her birth control lectures. Oh, boy!
Ruby peered up at Thork through lowered lashes, trying to gauge just how upset he was. Thork stood in an angry, widespread stance, glowering down at her with hands on his hips. As if she were a naughty child! Should she warn him ahead of time what to expect from the king? Nah! she decided. Let him find out for himself.
"Thork, do you not introduce me?" the gray-haired gentleman asked petulantly.
Thork turned away reluctantly, not having got the needed answers from her. Before he did, he shot her a loaded look that said he would deal with her later. "Ruby, this is my grandfather Dar," Thork said grudgingly.
"Ah! The wench who claims to be your wife from the future." The old codger chuckled with relish.
"Who told you that?" Thork scoffed, taking the ale Gyda offered him and quaffing it down, then wiping his mouth with the back of a dusty sleeve. His day-old beard and his rumpled, dirty clothing bespoke the urgency of Sigtrygg's recall, Ruby realized with new foreboding.
"Word travels fast, even to our remote area." Dar winked conspiratorially at Ruby.
Rub
y blinked dazedly over the fast pace of all the innuendos flying over her head. Ruby should have known the man was related to Thork. Dar was about the same height, though his shoulders stooped slightly with age and his build was not so muscular. His face mirrored a craggy, older version of Thork's, both arrogant and handsome as hell.
"Aud and her ladies ask that I bring back samples of the strange garments they hear so much about," Dar told Ruby. Amusement flickered in his rheumy eyes. "By the blood of Christ, I know not why women need waste good cloth to cover a bare arse, nor the tit that is better left uncovered to suckle the babe or succor the man."
Thork's eyes twinkled with reluctant amusement at his grandfather's vulgar words, probably because he knew how much they irritated Ruby.
"Have you no tongue in your head, thrall?" the wretched old man continued. " 'Tis certain I was told you do nothing but spout words the day long." He chortled heartily at his own words. Thork's tight expression relaxed into a faint smile at Ruby's expense.
Ruby bristled with indignation over Dar's words. She'd had it up to here with rude, crude, arrogant Vikings. Holding her arms stiffly at her sides, afraid she might slap the old fart, Ruby confronted Dar with barely suppressed fury. "The day I choose to lash you with my tongue, old man, you will know it. But even I, thrall that I am, know how to show some manners. Mayhap," she said, emphasizing the archaic word, "I could teach you some proper etiquette—if you are not too ignorant to learn."
Thork rolled his eyes, biting his bottom lip to stifle an outright laugh. Gyda made the sign of the cross. Olaf glared at her in outrage. But Dar smiled from ear to ear and put his hands on both her shoulders, squeezing hard. "Well met, wench, you will suit. Yea, methinks you will suit very well." Then he turned to Thork, who eyed him suspiciously, and snapped, "Do we dawdle here all day, boy? I thought you were summoned to Sigtrygg's castle."
Thork grumbled something incoherent about old men and sucking eggs. Dar ignored him pointedly and, before leaving, commanded Ruby, "Have some of those garments ready for my departure tomorrow. My wife, Aud, is about the same size as Gyda, do you not think so, Thork?"