by Sandra Hill
“That is not for me to say.”
Yeah, right.
“Handsome as a god he is now that he has shed half his weight. In just a month! How is that possible?”
Andrea shrugged. As far as she knew, from Cnut, he’d really been gone more than a thousand years, not just four weeks.
But Dyna must have thought she was being skeptical about Cnut’s weight loss because she went over to a wall peg and took a pair of male pants which she spread out wide to an almost grotesque size. Andrea assumed it was an old pair of Cnut’s.
“Wow!” was the only thing Andrea could think to say. Was “wow” even a word in this time period? “I mean, that’s amazing.”
“’Tis not just amazing. It’s nigh impossible to believe. Mayhap our lord was taken captive by one of the gods who wielded magic powers over him to make him change in appearance. The jester god Loki would do just that kind of thing.” She looked to Andrea for corroboration of her theory.
“Uh . . . I don’t know anything about gods and magic.”
“Do you know where the master has been for the past month?”
“No. I just met him recently.”
“Really?” Dyna wasn’t buying it. She, like many of the others, thought they were lovers or something close to that. Especially after last night. “I’ll tell you something else, m’lady. Jarl Sigurdsson is a different man now. He cares. Perchance all that fat was making him selfish.” Dyna clapped a hand over her mouth, belatedly realizing who she was speaking to. “Sorry. Betimes my tongue runs faster than my good sense.”
“It’s all right. I won’t repeat what you’ve said.” But maybe Weight Watchers would be interested in a new slogan. Go on a diet and become a saint. No, not a saint. An angel. They could call it Holy Weight Watchers.
Suddenly, she thought of her sister, who had gone to a Weight Watchers meeting one time when she was sixteen to lose five pounds. She’d come away gaining five pounds. Didn’t matter. Celie had been a perfect size six, but some boy had made a snide remark about her “bootie.” Where are you, Celie? I am so worried about you, and I feel so helpless.
“Even when the master was fat, he was a good lover, I have been told.”
Andrea realized that Dyna had continued talking while her own mind had been wandering.
“But then, all Viking men are skilled in the bed arts. Many a fault do they have, the sweet louts, but bedsport is not one of them.” Dyna paused in straightening some of Cnut’s clothing that hung on wall pegs. “Do you not agree?”
At first, Andrea didn’t understand, but then she said, “Oh, it’s not like that with us. We’re just companions. Travel companions.” And, whoo boy, wasn’t that the truth? As for sweet louts. Andrea wouldn’t go that far, but then Cnut was the only Viking she’d ever met . . . before being slingshotted back in time.
Maybe I should hike on over to Scotland and compare notes with Claire Beauchamp Fraser. Fellow time traveler and all that. But, no, that was a different time period.
Yep, I am losing it here.
“Not for the lack of his wanting, though,” Dyna assured her.
“Huh?”
“You said the master was not your lover.”
“I did?” Of course I did.
“And I said it wasn’t for his lack of wanting to be. I saw him staring at your rump when you left the hall yestereve.”
Men were always staring at women’s behinds, when they weren’t ogling their boobs. It was an inborn testosterone trait. Didn’t mean a thing. But she didn’t have a chance to expound on that to Dyna, who wouldn’t know testosterone from turnip juice, anyhow.
Kugge had returned with the clean chamber pot, and Dyna ruffled his hair, gave him a quick kiss, and told him to go down to their sleep nook and change his tunic. He’d spilled something on it. Andrea could guess what.
Dyna was younger than Andrea had first thought, probably no more than twenty-five, possibly not even that old. Her pale blonde, almost white hair was tucked neatly into two braids that she’d wound into a twist at the back of her head. She wore the same apparel Andrea had seen yesterday on many of the women. A long, open-sided apron over a full-length gown, both of a plain homespun material in two shades of faded green. Bronze rosebud brooches held the shoulder straps on the apron to the bodice.
“Is that a harness you wear on your bosom?”
“What? Huh?” Andrea glanced down and realized that Dyna referred to her bra. A plain white one edged in lace. “No, this is a bra, or brassiere. A type of undergarment worn where I come from.”
“Is it like a chastity belt for the breasts? Bloody hell, is that not just like a man to fashion another device to ensure his woman’s purity? While he goes off, waving his dangly part like a bloody elephant. I saw one of those at Birka when I was a girling, belonged to a trader from one of the eastern lands.”
Andrea laughed. “Women wear bras to support their breasts so they won’t sag.”
Dyna narrowed her eyes with skepticism. “Seems to me you don’t have much to sag.”
That was true, and she did often go braless. “It also keeps the nipples from showing through thin shirts. And women with big breasts don’t jiggle so much.”
“That I understand. The menfolks do go barmy over a set of teats that bounce.” Dyna glanced pointedly at her own well-rounded assets and rolled her eyes. “Ulf the Archer wed his second wife, Helga, the homeliest woman in the world, just because she has a big bosom. Lest you think I am being unkind, just know that you will recognize Helga by the mole on her chin the size of a grape with stiff black hairs sprouting from it like cat whiskers. And”—she grinned conspiratorially at Andrea—“I know for a fact she shaves the mustache on her upper lip.”
Andrea couldn’t help but smile. She liked Dyna. “Do you have other children?” she asked as she pulled her T-shirt over her head, then put the plaid shirt over it. She’d put her jeans and boots on before Dyna and her son came in.
“No. Just Kugge. He is more than enough for me to handle.”
“Do you have a husband?”
“I did, but he died two winters ago of the lung fever.” She put a hand to one of the rosebud brooches at her shoulders.
“I’m so sorry. Do you have family?”
“No.”
“It must be hard raising a child alone in these times . . . I mean, in a place like this.”
“No harder than anywhere else. Until the famine, of course.”
“Have you considered remarrying?”
“The last time I married for necessity. I was breeding with a child that I lost in the first months anyhow. My husband, Jomar, was not a nice man, especially when under the alehead madness. Next time, if there ever is one, it will be for better reasons. Passion is nice, but more than that I want a man of worth who would accept Kugge as his own, who would be faithful to me, mayhap even loving.”
“That doesn’t sound too much to ask. Is there no one who meets those criteria?”
Dyna blushed. “There is one man, but he is hopeless. He swives every comely wench he sees. Has so many notches on his lance, he should fear it splintering apart during battle.”
Andrea knew a few like that herself, including Pete the Perv. She should tell Dyna about Pete. Maybe her guy wouldn’t seem so bad then. Maybe later.
She went over to the washstand and poured some water from the pitcher into the bowl. Cupping handfuls of water, she splashed her face and washed her hands. Looking about, she saw nothing that resembled a toothbrush; so, she just gargled and spit into a basin Dyna held out toward her and then placed on the floor. “Do you think you could get me a small container of salt later? Just a small amount that I could use to clean my teeth?”
“For a certainty. And you could use these as well.” Dyna pointed to several twigs whose ends had been shredded. “They are good for teeth cleaning.”
And, in fact, except for no toothpaste, they worked just fine.
Andrea noticed that Dyna had nice teeth, and come to think on it, m
any of the Vikings she’d seen did as well.
“I guess I should go down to the kitchen to help Girda. Has breakfast been served yet?”
“The men who left at dawn ate a cold meal, but we usually do not break fast here until mid-morning, and then again in the evening.”
Dyna stayed behind to brush out the bed furs when Andrea left the room to go downstairs. Finn was supervising the further cleaning of the great hall, where three huge hearths that ran down the center of the room blazed with fires that provided much-needed warmth. The arrangement of the room was actually ingenious, for the times. Wide benches lined two walls of the room, on opposing sides. Trestle tables were pulled up to them at meals, but at night they became sleeping benches with bedding that had been hidden in niches built into the walls. There were also some sleeping closets for folks of the upper classes, in addition to two other bedchambers upstairs. Bigger than the average longhouses of the Vikings she’d seen in schoolbooks, but smaller and more primitive than any castle she’d ever heard of.
She gave a wave to Finn and continued on to the kitchen, where the heat hit her with welcome warmth. Obviously, the fires had been going for some time. A number of workers were already baking the circles of manchet bread, which had to be baked every day because they had no leavening and therefore went stone-hard stale rapidly. The flat bread circles had holes in the center, and as the bread cooled, they were stored on upright poles.
Girda wasn’t about. One of the helpers said she was in the storage room. While she waited for Girda to return, Andrea checked out the huge cauldrons on swinging cranes in the two hearths. One held the porridge or gruel that would be served this morning. She tasted it with a long spoon, and it wasn’t too bad. A bit of salt and honey had been added to make it more palatable, but it was still bland. If nothing else, it would be filling. The other kettle was a different case all together. It held the pottage, a stew that was added to over days with whatever vegetables or grains were available so the pot was always full. It might have originally had meat in it, but by now was just about ten gallons of grayish green sludge. God only knew how old it was. Andrea wouldn’t even taste it for fear of food poisoning or stomach issues.
She decided to seek out Girda and perhaps come up with a plan where she could help her during the hopefully short time she was here. She walked through the scullery, where a half dozen women were busy doing laundry. Every peg on the wall and a length of rope across the room held wet apparel. Still more boiled in lye water or was being rinsed in another kettle of cold water. This was work far better done outside, but there was no choice in the winter, she supposed. All of the dirty pots and dishes had been washed and put in a special kitchen closet the day before under the cook’s command.
“Look at this,” Girda said when she saw Andrea enter the storage room. The woman reached into a barrel and brought out a handful of flour. It was dotted with little black specks. Weevils. “I’m trying to decide what ta do with this. With people starving down the village, we can’t afford ta waste it.”
“The insects probably won’t hurt anyone, but isn’t there any way to remove them? I don’t suppose you have a sieve.”
“A sieve?”
“Strainer.”
“Not that I can think of. We use loose woven cloth ta strain the honey, but that wouldn’t work with flour.”
“How about we put a white cloth on one of the tables and spread the flour over it, several cups full at a time. Let some of the children with small hands pick out the insects. It wouldn’t be a perfect solution, but we might get it fairly clean.”
Girda shrugged. “Ye can try, gods willing.”
“There’s something I want to say, and please don’t take offense. That pottage in the kitchen is probably rancid.”
Girda bristled, but then she nodded. “The kettle probably hasn’t been emptied since I went ta see my sister. And it was already cooking fer at least three days before that. We’ll put it in the slop bucket fer the dogs. They won’t mind.”
“Can I make another suggestion?”
Girda frowned. Andrea was obviously pushing it. “Can I stop you? Could a herd of Valkyries stop you?”
“Of course. You’re in charge here. I’m just a pastry chef, and I don’t see much chance for making sweet desserts here at this time.” She blinked her eyes with innocence, trying her best to be self-deprecating. “Will you let me try to make one of my favorite soups for the evening meal? Beef turnip soup with rivels.”
“What are rivels?”
“Little dough balls. They’re similar to noodles.”
“Noo . . . what?” Girda asked. Then waved a hand dismissively as if it didn’t matter what they were. “If you can make turnips appeal ta these Viking clods, give it a try.”
“Good. And I won’t even need any of the good parts of that cow over there. Just the long bones of the flank. They make good marrow bones. Even the deer bones would do.”
Without hesitation, Girda took an axe off a long table and hacked off the cow’s leg up to its rump, and it did the same thing with one of the deer, handing the two bloody stumps at her.
Andrea almost dropped the two limbs, they were so heavy. “I didn’t mean right now,” Andrea tried to say, but Girda was already off, giving orders to two young men to bring one of the barrels of weevily flour up to the kitchen and told a woman wearing a yellow apron to find a clean, white bed linen. The yellow apron was a bright spot in an otherwise dreary setting.
Andrea stared at the two limbs in her arms then and placed them on the aged, much-cleaved butcher block where Girda had stuck the axe. There was nothing else Andrea could do but lift the axe high and chop the bones into sizes that would fit into the cauldron. It wasn’t easy, and it took several tries each to sever the bones so the marrow would be exposed, but finally she had six sizable chunks, which she carried back to the kitchen.
Without asking for permission, Andrea brought a bucket of clean water over to the table and dunked each of the meat pieces thoroughly to make sure they were clean. She didn’t care if they took offense at her actions. Who knew what dirty hands had touched this meat already? Then she took the bucket outside and dumped the contents in the snow. It must have stormed during the night and was still flurrying now.
She placed the bones on one of the tables until she had a clean pot to cook them in. In fact, it would be even better if she roasted them a bit first. So she placed them in the embers of the fire. It took only a few minutes for them to brown on one side. Stooping down on her haunches, she turned them with a long fork. Within ten minutes she had nicely charred meat, which she shoved to the cold side of the hearth.
Girda and several of the others were watching her intently, but said nothing. They probably expected her to burn her fingers or set herself afire.
Two boys were carrying the heavy pottage kettle outside for the slop bucket. It would probably have to be soaked in boiling water for hours to loosen the crud on the bottom. “Do you have another clean pot?” she asked Girda, who was now supervising the laying of a white sheet over the other table, where four children were anxiously awaiting the fun of putting their hands in flour.
“No, no, no!” Andrea said quickly, and saw Girda frown at her appearing to override her authority. “You children must wash your hands and dry them completely before handling the flour.”
“I wuz gonna say that,” Girda said, giving her a warning look. “There’s another kettle in the cupboard.” She motioned with her head toward the massive floor-to-ceiling closet that took up almost all of one wall. It held all the kitchen and dining utensils for the entire place.
The boys who’d taken the pot outside returned, shaking snow off their hair and stomping the frozen particles off their boots. The snow must be coming down harder now. Would snow impede their time travel back to the future? She sure hoped not.
Again, without asking for permission, Andrea took another bucket off the water bench and poured its contents into the kettle along with the meat. She would ad
d more water later. The pot had to hold at least ten gallons, which made sense for as many servings as would be needed. At sixteen cups per gallon, that should be enough for everyone who wanted a taste. Even with only one bucket of water, she was barely able to lift the heavy pot onto a crane to get the soup started. When she was done, and more water was added, she would be unable to handle it herself. She would worry about that later.
“I’m going back to the storeroom for my other ingredients,” she told Girda. “Can I get you anything?”
“Not right now. Will there be enough of that”—she pointed toward the kettle Andrea had just set on the hearth fire—“ta feed some of the villagers when they come ta the door this afternoon?”
“There should be.”
“Good. Most of ’em will bring their own bowls.”
“Perhaps we could put chunks of that day-old bread at the bottom of each bowl first,” Andrea suggested.
“It’s hard as slate.”
“The hot liquid will soften it.” She hoped.
On that conciliatory note, Andrea made her way back to the storage room, where she grabbed a large basket and began to fill it with turnips, which would be a good substitute for potatoes; the few onions and leeks and carrots that were left; a small cloth bag of barley; and a dozen eggs. There was also plenty of parsley and even a little wild celery.
When she returned to the kitchen, Andrea placed her basket near the hearth. Girda took note of what she’d brought up but didn’t comment. Andrea tossed the barley into the pot, but she wouldn’t add anything else for several hours. She wanted to give the bones a chance to infuse the water with all their goodness. She supposed she could mix the rivels, though she wouldn’t add them until the very end.
She went to the cupboard again and found a large pottery bowl. Back at the table, she cracked twelve eggs into it and began to beat them with a wooden fork, the only utensil she could find for a whisk substitute.
“You know, Girda,” she remarked, “the people here don’t seem to be that bad off, considering the famine. They’re not gaunt or starving, or anything, like I would expect.”