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prologue
The babe wailed again.
“There,
lamb,” Helge whispered as she sponged the last of the cheesy
substance off the enraged little body. Flickering light from the
central meal fire kissed the newborn and danced across the
smoke-blackened beams of the longhouse.
The old
midwife sighed. However difficult the babe’s entry into the world
had been, she was at least a healthy child, perfectly formed with
all her fingers and toes, and a crest of coppery hair plastered to
her damp head.
“Hush you,
now,” Helge coaxed.
The
wrinkled little face puckered and the newborn shrieked as if Loki,
the trickster godling, had just pinched her bottom. Helge wrapped
the child snugly in a catskin blanket, crooning urgent endearments.
“Shut the
brat up,” Torvald said, his voice a broken shadow of its usual
booming timbre. All the souls sheltering in the longhouse went
expectantly silent. As if she sensed menace in the air, the child
subsided into moist hiccups.
“Will you
not hold your daughter?” Helge offered the small bundle to Torvald.
“She’s a fine child, fair and lusty.”
“No, I’ll
not.” Torvald swabbed his eyes. “She’s killed my Gudrid. I’ll have
naught to do with her.” When he looked at the mewling babe, his face
was a mask of loathing. “Put her out.”
Helge
flinched. “But my lord—”
“Don’t
argue with me, woman. Am I not chief over my own house?” Torvald’s
grey eyes blazed with a potent mix of fury and grief. “I said, put
her out.”
Helge’s
shoulders sagged. She couldn’t remember the last time a healthy
child like this one had been exposed. But Torvald was master, so there was nothing for it but to do his bidding.
Still, it
didn’t seem right to consign the babe to Hel empty-handed. It
was bad enough that she’d go unloved and unmourned to that shadowy,
icy place. Even worse, she’d arrive there as a pauper.
Helge laid
her little charge on the bedding next to her dead mother. The body
was still warm, but Helge untied the thin strip of leather from the
woman’s inert neck.
The pendant
was a simple little amber hammer, its only distinctive mark a tiny
purplish orchid trapped forever in the glowing stone. Perhaps Thor
would mark the child for his protection if she met her death wearing
his talisman. It wasn’t much, but it was all Helge could do for the
mite.
She bundled
herself against the cold and left the warmth of the longhouse
bearing her whimpering burden. The stiff hairs in her nostrils froze
with each breath.
The thought of leaving the child for
the wolves made Helge’s chest constrict smartly. She decided to let
the sea take her. It would be clean and quick. There’d be less
chance of hearing the child’s keening death wail on the wind. And
the unhappy little soul would find it harder to trouble those who’d
disowned her with malicious tricks later, as some malevolent ghosts
were known to do.
Snow
crunched under foot as Helge trudged down to the shore where the
fjord was choked with ice. Armed with an ax she picked up as she
passed the woodpile, Helge carried the babe as close to the edge of
the floe as she dared.
“Goodbye,
little elf,” Helge said as she placed the newborn on the smooth,
cold surface. “Thor keep you, for I can not.”
She brought
the sharp ax down with a thwack. The brittle ice shattered in a
jagged line and separated from the main body of the floe. Helge gave
it a nudge with the ax handle.
She watched
with a gathering heaviness in her chest as, bobbing and dipping, the
tiny bundle on the ice sheet floated out with the tide.
***
| "First-time romance
novelist presents a well-researched tale of
ninth-century Viking life. Rika, a young skald (a
Scandinavian bard), and her developmentally disabled
brother are taken as thralls when their adoptive
father is killed in a raid .
Their captor, Bjorn
the Black, takes them to his brother, an overly
ambitious jarl (nobleman). Bjorn claims the siblings
as his spoils and begins to woo Rika, preserving her
maidenhood, but his jealous brother hatches a plan
for Bjorn to free Rika so she can be sent to
Constantinople as a wife for a Muslim merchant.
Rika's life in the
harem and her friendship with her eunuch bodyguard
are fascinating, and Groe brings both Scandinavia
and the exotic eastern city known to the Vikings as
Miklagard to life through her strong characters.
Readers will watch for Groe's next historical
romance."
~ Booklist |
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Book Info:
Leisure
Books
ISBN:
978-0-8439-5710-5
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