“What exactly is it that you fear, Dyna?”
“I fear having sex with the lout and becoming pregnant, giving over all control to my man, like I did last time. I fear being a first wife. The more danico, multiple wives, is accepted practice amongst our people.”
“How about multiple husbands? Is that accepted?”
“No. But who would want more than one? Not me!”
Andrea laughed.
“Too many times I have seen what happens to first wives when their husbands take on second or third wives, or numerous concubines. She becomes little more than a servant to those who follow her into the bed furs. I fear Kugge having no birthright when other sons may come. I fear so many things, and yet . . . and yet . . .”
“And yet you want Thorkel?”
“Desperately.”
“Well, there is one thing I can help you with.”
“There is?” Dyna questioned dubiously.
“Where I come from there are methods of birth control, ways of having sex without conception.”
“Oh, you mean the man pulling out before peaking?” Dyna asked. “Pfff! The man always promises he will, but in the heat of passion, he rarely does, and then the woman is, once again, waddling around with a big stomach.”
Andrea laughed. “Actually, that’s not what I meant. Where I live, there are ways women can control their own destinies. There are devices they can use, or insist that their partners use, to prevent conception. I have none of those here, but there is a rhythm method of birth control that some people use. It’s not perfect, but it works most of the time if it’s followed scrupulously.”
“Rhythm method. Like having sex in a certain rhythm? Pfff! That sounds like something a man would say when in high enthusiasm.” Once again, Dyna was regarding her with skepticism.
Once again, Andrea laughed. “No. Rhythm based on a woman’s menstrual cycle. It’s called natural family planning. A way in which couples can avoid pregnancy by abstaining from sex on the days of a woman’s ovulation cycle when she’s most likely to conceive.”
“Huh? I thought a woman could catch a man’s seed any day of the month, even if she is bleeding.”
“Not really.”
“What is oh-view . . . oh-view, whatever you said?”
“Ovulation,” Andrea said and explained it in basic terms. “Like I said, the method isn’t perfect, but it is at least something that can be tried. And, really, there are only eight days or so of the month when the woman is fertile. Five or so days before ovulation, the day of ovulation, and up to two days afterward. Keep in mind that the male sperm . . . um, seed . . . can live for a couple days inside a woman’s body and connect with a woman’s egg before it dies off.”
Dyna was frowning with puzzlement. “Explain this to me. In detail. Slowly.”
Andrea did, or as much as she was able to remember from her high school health class where teenagers were given a belated introduction to sex education.
“Explain it again.”
Andrea did.
“And again.”
Andrea did.
Then Dyna smiled. “I could see this working for me, as an unmarried woman. I can rebuff a man’s advances . . . Thorkel’s advances . . . whenever I want, but a married woman would have more trouble doing that.”
That wasn’t so, but Andrea wasn’t about to get involved in a discussion of female liberation and the right to choose if and when to have sex, even when married.
Besides, wasn’t it ironic that Andrea, who was trying to teach others about contraception, was depending on a man’s word that he was sterile as a birth control precaution? It was all about trust, and she was placing her trust in a Viking vampire angel who’d managed to land them in a time-travel debacle. Oh boy! When she said it like that, it didn’t sound so good.
By the end of the day, six other women came to Andrea, asking her to explain the method to them. And Girda laughed. “M’lady, you are going to have more than a few men raging at you for interfering with their bed rights.”
“Bed rights, be damned,” Andrea muttered under her breath.
But Girda heard her and laughed some more. “So ye can say when ye’ve been bedded right and good already.”
“Hmpfh!” was the best Andrea could come up with.
That night, the female skald, Luta, amused the women in the great hall after dinner—though only a few of the men appreciated her work, especially her male counterpart Brian—when she told a particularly funny saga. She called it, “A Woman’s Woe.”
Didst ever know a man
Who named his manly part?
Like pets they are to the lackwits,
With names like Sword or Blade or Dart,