“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, many 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.