"A Big Hand for the Little Lady" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friesner Esther M)

As they awaited their turn at the mead casks, one woman turned to another and said, "Beowulf this and Beowulf that; I think the men have finally gone loony as a pack of lemmings. I don't remember anyone named Beowulf the Geat coming to visit, do you?"

"Why, of course I do, Gytha dear," Maethild purred. "Hrothgar himself sent me to warm the hero's bed after he slew Grendel."

"You?" Gytha's eyebrows rose.

"If you don't believe me, you can come see the lovely mail shirt he gave me as a morning gift before he and all his men went back home again," Maethild said sweetly.

Gytha's skepticism went up a notch. "What on earth could you do with a mail shirt?"

"Oh… give it to a hero's son." Maethild set her jug aside, folded her hands coyly over her belly, and looked modest. "If my brother's song and the monsters arm aren't enough to make you remember the mighty Beowulf, maybe when I bear the hero's babe it'll jog your memory."

"Bear a hero's babe? You?" Gytha scrutinized Maethild closely.

"Mmmm." Maethild smiled and cast her eyes sidelong to where Wulfstan sat drinking with his fellows. She was well aware that she and Hengest both owed the young warrior a deep debt for having showed them the way to remain under Hrothgar's roof despite her rash behavior in the matter of Grendel's dismemberment. Gratitude was a more stimulating emotion than Maethild had ever suspected. Now that she didn't have to marry the man, he looked very attractive indeed. If, as her brother said, the world wasn't yet ready for a woman like her, perhaps it would be ready in her daughter's day, or her daughters' daughters'.

First things first.

"A hero," Gytha muttered. "A hero that not one single, solitary, sober person in all Hrothgar's holdings remembers. And you say you'll bear this once-upon-a-maybe hero's babe? Hmph! I'll believe that when I see it."

"You will, Gytha," Maethild said softly, taking up her jug and sashaying over to Wulfstan's table. "You will."