Page 41 of A Tale of Two Vikings

“But there is no need to seduce him, mistress. The man’s eyes follow you where’er you go. He wants you. For the love of Frigg, his staff is at half-mast already, I would wager.”

“Nay, you do not understand. I want to be in control. I want to seduce him. I want to be the one to begin…and end…this affair.”

“A woman after my own heart,” Rona said with a tinkling laugh.

“Can you help me?”

“For a certainty. There are some tricks to this game of bedsport which I have learned over the years. Five, to be precise.”

“Five? There are five specific actual tricks?”

“Five in general. Then under each of those there are many, many variations to the tricks.”

“Are you serious?” Helga asked.

Rona nodded. “Are you serious?”

Helga hesitated, but then nodded back.

“You should listen to Rona,” Bera the Buxom interjected. “Rona helped me woo Bolli the Blacksmith, and he was already pledged to another.”

Woo? I am going to woo Vagn? Oh, sweet Valkyries!

“My husband Ragnor has been walking about with a silly grin on his face ever since Rona told me about the flexing of the woman-muscle,” Sigrud added, rolling her eyes mischievously.

Woman-muscle? What woman-muscle? Do I have a woman-muscle?

“I still don’t have the nerve to try sex on horseback with my man, as you suggested, Rona. But I will. I promise.” It was Eve speaking now…a young maid newly come to Briarstead, who was wed to Sleipnir the Stable Master. If anyone could ride double on a horse, it was Sleipnir.

I can barely stay on a horse in the best of circumstances. I cannot imagine being astride a man who is astride a horse. All that bouncing…and…and stuff.

The three women gazed at her then in silence, waiting for her response to their butting in to what was obviously a private, but very interesting, conversation.

“Go on, Rona, tell us of these amazing five rules of seduction,” Helga said, half teasing. “But remember, all of you, this is a private talk, not to be spoken of outside this circle.”

They all nodded, pulling their stools and chairs closer, all the while continuing their embroidery work.

“First is the Madonna/Harlot Principle,” Rona proclaimed.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Men like a woman who appears all prim and chaste in public, but wild as a seasoned concubine in the bed furs…just for him.”

“Ragnor especially likes for me to wear a gunna with a full-length, open-sided over-apron, with my hair braided into a coronet atop my head,” Sigrud confided with pink cheeks, “but no undergarments at all underneath.”

Talk about more than I wanted to know!

The others hooted with laughter.

“Makes for easy coupling in the halls, or the scullery, or behind the cow byre,” Bera offered, also blushing, “especially if your man is wearing no undergarments, either.”

Definitely too much information!

“Or under the trestle tables in the great hall,” Eve added timidly.

I can’t believe what I am hearing. Do women really do all those things? Just to please a man? “Oh, good gods!”

“If you have trouble with that one, the easiest of them all, then you might as well give up right now.” Rona pursed her lips and wagged a finger in Helga’s face.