Rescued By The Viking

‘Tell someone to come for me, when you reach the shore,’ Gisela told her. ‘Find someone to help me!’ she called to the rest of the children, watching the girl slither across the mud to join them. They nodded in unison, pointing at her, then nodded again, the bedraggled group chattering in subdued voices as they made their way back along the planks.

As the wind whipped away their high-pitched voices, a gust of vulnerability, insidious and threatening, enveloped her. In this windswept barren landscape, she was completely alone, up to her thighs in mud, unable to move. Her buckets of brine sat on the wooden plank, mocking her. How long would it take for the children to send someone out? Would they even come? The salt-pan master had no care for her, he knew there was something peculiar about her, despite her rattling out the same story that her and her father and sister had all told on this journey. They were Anglo-Saxons heading north to live with relatives as the Normans had dispossessed them of all they had owned in the south. Maybe her mangled use of the English language had finally given her away.

She tried to bend forward, lying down flat on the mud, scrabbling with her hands to try to reach a clump of reeds, to try to pull herself out. The mud seeped through her gown, cold and wet against her stomach and breasts. She tugged on the grass, slowly, gradually, hoping for the smallest movement around her feet and legs, a sign that the mud was giving up its hold on her. Nothing.

To her right, the river slopped and gurgled, an ominous sound; the water spilled over the lower walls of the salt pans, starting to fill the shallow ponds. The tide was coming in quickly now. With a sickening dread, Gisela eyed the water gushing towards her. Sinking in the mud was not her only worry. Now, drowning seemed like a more likely option. Screwing her eyes up, she sought and found the figures on the shore, pale ghosts in the twilight. The children had surely reached the adults by now and were telling them to come and fetch her. Aye, that was it. As she straightened up, the thought comforted her and she kept her eyes pinned on the bleached lines of the planks, heading back to shore, squinting in the half-light for any sign of help, watching for someone, anyone, to come out to rescue her.

But then, to her utter dismay, the cluster of people by the boiling houses walked away. Not one face turned towards her! Nay, they were heading towards the Danes, newly arrived on the shore. Arms raised in welcome towards the visitors, the shouts and calls of greeting echoed out across the mudflats. Distracted by the Danes’ arrival, they had forgotten, or had not even been told about her, stuck yards out from shore in the mud. No one was coming. Panic swirled in her chest, a great flood of terror that she would die out here, her breath choked off by the incoming tide, until the air in her lungs expelled in a scream of sheer desperation. She screamed and screamed, her voice shrill and clear, waving her arms violently towards the shore, for her life depended upon it.

Chapter Two

As the Danes jumped from the longships, calf-length leather boots splashing through the shallows, the Saxon townspeople crowded on to the strip of shingle, slapping the tall seafaring warriors on the back, shaking their hands. Smiling widely, the men accepted flagons of mead from the dark-eyed Saxon maidens, hefted steaming meat pies from passing wooden trays, eating with real appreciation. Ragnar ran an eye along the bows of the longships, making sure all vessels were drawn up high enough against the incoming tide. The six boats had carried more than two hundred men across the North Sea; Harald’s larger fleet would bring double that number in the next few days, swelling their ranks to a sizeable army to help the Saxons throw off the Norman yoke.

‘Torvald has found us an inn for the night.’ Eirik walked over to him, handing back his empty tankard to one of the Saxon maids. ‘The men can sleep in the ships, but I, for one, wouldn’t mind a comfortable mattress, as I’m sure you would.’

‘Age getting the better of you, Eirik?’ Ragnar grinned.

Eirik laughed. ‘Perhaps. I have the choice so I may as well be comfortable.’ His gaze fell on a nearby Saxon maid, her face blushing with attention as she moved deftly around the crowd with a tray of ale tankards. ‘This town is as good as any for us to spend the night.’ His mouth twisted with a rueful grin as he pushed strands of dark hair from his eyes.

‘Too bad you’re married,’ Ragnar said. The corner of his mouth quirked upwards.

‘Aye,’ Eirik said wistfully. ‘But you’re not. Sure you won’t take what’s on offer?’ He jabbed Ragnar in the ribs.

His short hair, thick golden strands, riffled in the sharpening breeze. ‘No, Eirik.’ Guilt crashed over him, black, coruscating. A flock of geese flew low over the mudflats, necks stretched out, honking wildly, and he followed their path in silence, his body gripped with regret.

‘It’s a shame.’ Eirik folded huge leather-bound arms across his chest. He looked out across the water.

It’s only what I deserve, thought Ragnar, after what had happened to Gyda. His younger sister was worsening by the day, a thin pale effigy of the maid she once had been, shrinking before his eyes, before his parents’ eyes. Her silent presence haunted his days, as she brushed past him like a ghost, or perched, mute, at the end of the table. She hadn’t spoken a word since she’d been brought back from this godforsaken land.

‘What I could never understand, though,’ Eirik continued, ‘was why Gyda decided to travel to England with Magnus in the first place? On a raiding mission, of all things.’

Because I told her to do it, thought Ragnar. By Thor, I encouraged her! I could see how much in love with Magnus she was and could see how against that love our parents were. I told her to go, that I would explain everything to our parents: Gyda and Magnus would marry in England and return to Denmark as husband and wife. All would be well. But then, suddenly, it wasn’t.

Raised voices nearby yanked Ragnar’s attention from his memories. He was thankful. He had no wish to dwell on his sister’s plight any longer than was necessary. His eyes traced the shadows, hunting out the sound of an argument. Beneath the overhanging thatch of a building, a woman tugged at a man’s tunic sleeve, a large bulky man, his flabby red-flushed face slack from alcohol. She was pointing desperately, gesticulating with her fist out to the mudflats, her voice a shrill cackle, pitched with urgency. Not many people were around now; the crowd by the longships had drifted away, eager to show their Danish visitors the delights of the town, funnelling eagerly up the narrow streets that led from the shore. Only Eirik and Ragnar and a few of their men remained on the shingle.

Lifting one meaty fist, the man clouted the woman around the ear, shoving her backwards. ‘You have no right to speak to me like this. Get away! I told you, I’ll fetch her when the tide comes in.’

Hunching over, her hand cupping her throbbing ear, the woman replied sullenly, ‘The tide is coming in, you senseless oaf! The maid’s up to her knees in it already. You need to do something, otherwise she’ll drown.’

Staggering back against the uneven cob wall of the building, the man lifted his tankard and took a huge gulp. The ale trickled down his chin. ‘Let the girl drown, then! What do I care?’

‘She rescued little May, did the children not tell you? That’s why she’s in the mud. She stepped off the planks to save her.’

Anger flaring in his gullet, Ragnar covered the shingle in three long-legged strides. To see a man hit a woman like that filled his mouth with sour distaste. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked the woman, touching her elbow with concern. Clutching her ear, she stared up at Ragnar in astonishment, then nodded slowly.

As Eirik came up beside him, the drunk man raised his head, regarding the tall Danes with a churlish, guarded look. ‘’Tis our business.’ He cleared his throat noisily. ‘Go into town with the rest of your men.’

Sensing an ally, the woman lifted her eyes to Ragnar, plucking nervously at his tunic sleeve. ‘The maid is stuck in the mud!’ Her cheeks were pinched, crusted with salt. ‘And the tide is coming in so fast, she will surely drown!’ Guided by her pointing finger, Ragnar scanned the bluish-brown marshes, the clumps of stiff grass, his gaze snagged by the deep grooves cut into the thick brown ooze. The setting sun flashed against something, a brooch, or a ring, he knew not what, and his eyes honed in on that spot. And then he saw. The silhouette of a figure calling plaintively through the twilight. The foaming edge of tide swilled around her knees, floating out the hem of her dress. The woman was correct: time was not on her side.

‘Fetch a long rope from one of the ships,’ he ordered one of their men who had followed Eirik and him across the beach.

‘You’re not going out for her, are you?’ Eirik frowned. ‘Let these people rescue their own, I say. We should not involve ourselves in the business of the town.’

‘Then what in Odin’s name are we doing here?’ Ragnar lifted brindled eyebrows, burnished arcs of copper below his flaxen hair. ‘We’re supposed to be helping them throw off the Norman yoke, yet we can’t rescue a Saxon maid from the mud? She is going to die out there, unless we do something. Do you want that on your conscience?’

‘Nay, of course not.’ Eirik grimaced, his expression rueful, as if ashamed of the way his thoughts had run. Despite his superior rank to Ragnar, they were friends first and foremost, having grown up together on neighbouring estates in Ribe.

‘Besides, you’re not going out there.’ A muscle quirked beneath Ragnar’s high cheekbone and he smiled. ‘The King of Denmark’s son, wading through the mudflats? Your father would never let me hear the end of it.’

‘Then go with Thor’s blessing,’ Eirik replied, as their man returned with the unwieldy coil of rope slung around his neck and torso. ‘Let’s hope she’s alive by the time you reach her.’

* * *

Gisela’s throat was dry, scraped raw by her continued shouting. Exhaustion made her head swim, her thoughts dancing about with chaotic abandon. Crossing her arms over her chest, hugging herself, she wished for the hundredth time that she had worn her cloak that day and not just her thin gowns and chemise. She was cold, shivering uncontrollably now, the icy mud gripping her legs and thighs like an iron fist. Treacherous sea water swirled around her, embracing the tops of her legs, curling lovingly around her freezing limbs. As the tide lapped higher and higher, a panicked fear took hold, silencing her screams. For what was the point of calling out? No one was coming for her now. The shore was visible in the limpid twilight, snagged by lingering sunlight, but it was empty, deserted. Everyone had gone.

Unable to settle on one spot for any length of time, her vision scurried across the silvery mud. Twinkles of light shimmered out from the huddle of cottages that formed the town. A weakness suffused her muscles, draining the last of her strength; her stomach was empty save for the small bowl of gruel she had eaten with her father and sister that morning. Her brain jumped and twitched with hunger and fatigue; the temptation to lower herself into the swirling brown water, to sink her hips into it, threatened to overwhelm her.

How would her father cope without her? Her sister? Poor Marie, she had been through so much already. Her beauty had been the bane of her life, her angelic looks catching men’s interested gazes wherever they went. Tears welled in Gisela’s chest, spilling hotly down her cheeks, blurring her sight. She would no longer be there to protect her. Pressing trembling palms to her face, she wept at the sheer hopelessness of her situation, the sea water creeping to her waist, soaking the coarse fabric of her gown. She had never been prone to self-pity, but at this moment in time, as the tears dripped down through her fingers, she truly believed that she was going to die.

The slim outline of the maid’s wavering figure became gradually more distinct as Ragnar strode along the narrow wooden planks, the rope tied around his waist for safety playing out behind him, back to his men on the shore. Shiny tussocks of grass perched on top of the carved mudflats; seabirds wheeled around his head, flapping and croaking at his presence as he passed by. Halfway across the mudflats, the incoming tide lapped his calf-length boots, frothing around his ankles. He cursed. The leather would take an age to dry out.

Jerking his head up, he suddenly realised the maid’s screaming had ceased. Had she even seen him? For if she saw him, it would give her hope. But the girl stood with her hands over her face, the brown churning current of the river at her back. A coarse linen scarf wrapped tightly around her neck and head, secured with a fearsome-looking silver brooch, the silver that had flashed in the dying sun, attracting his attention before.

‘Hey!’ he called out in Saxon. ‘Hey! You there, I’m coming for you!’ He was expecting her hands to fall away from her face, for her to look up and see him. But she remained as she was, face covered with her hands, as if she hadn’t heard him. Which, of course, she might not have, given the noise that the seabirds were making. The maid’s garments were shabby, ripped in places, loose threads dancing in the shimmering light. Layer upon layer of earth-coloured cloth enveloped her, garments that every low-born Saxon seemed to wear.

Ragnar sighed. Any one of their men could have come out for her. But he knew what had driven him out here: the same thing that made him ride headlong into battle, always at the front of the pack, swinging his axe with violent dexterity around his head; the cursed restlessness of his soul, the tortured guilt over what had happened to his sister. His mind and body never settled, beset with a constant, driving energy.

When he finally reached her, the water was up to his knees. Still she did not look up. Had she not heard him approach? Legs braced apart, Ragnar stood on the plank, the maid a couple of feet away, her gown floating around her, swirling in the vicious tide. ‘Give me your hand!’ he shouted at her.

* * *

The voice stabbed in her chest. A harsh, guttural order, in Saxon, which she struggled to understand. Her hands dropped from her cheeks, midnight-blue eyes rounding in shock. A huge man stood in front of her, his hand stretched out across the churning water. The dying sunlight caught the ends of his hair, firing them to a molten bronze. A golden halo, springing out around his head. Like an angel, she thought stupidly, her mind befuddled. Had an angel come to rescue her? The heady scent of leather and woodsmoke rose from him, mingling with the strong salt-laden smell of the sea. Was he an illusion, a figment of her exhausted brain dreamt up by her desperate plight?

Gisela frowned as she peered more closely. Nay, not an angel. The man towered over her, spreading his long legs wide against the surging rush of tide. Clad in a sleeveless leather tunic, criss-crossed with leather straps, fearsomely riveted, he looked more like a barbarian, scowling darkly at her failure to move, or to even stretch her hand out towards him. Secured by an ornately wrought brooch, a length of woollen cloth wrapped around his broad shoulders served as a cloak; woollen braies encased his powerful legs. Honed thigh muscles flexed beneath the cloth. The sun’s low angle threw his face into relief, like a carved statue, the craggy angles of his square jaw and the shadowed hollow of his cheeks beneath sharply delineated cheekbones.

Her heart plummeted foolishly. She was not often given to fanciful notions, but her imagination, dulled with fatigue, had certainly excelled on this occasion. Her fear of drowning, of near death, had forced her mind to evoke this image of perfect masculinity. She folded her arms, mouth set in a mutinous line, challenging the vision to disappear. An apparition dreamed up by her mad, unfocused brain through fear and lack of food. The man did not exist. If she stared at him long enough, he would surely vanish. Gisela tipped her head to one side, waiting.

‘What is wrong with you?’ the man roared again in Saxon, his generous mouth twisting in frustration. ‘Do you understand me? Give me your hand!’ The water caressed the hemline of his woollen shirt, hanging beneath his shorter tunic. Frowning, she struggled to work out his identity; he wore no surcoat to denote his coat of arms like any Saxon or a Norman knight. With that mass of golden hair around his head, he appeared before her like a Norse god of old. Laughter bubbled up in her chest. What would her confused mind come up with next?

Something gripped her shoulder, shaking her violently. Then a hand pushed against her cheek, fingers calloused and warm, one thumb digging into her chin. She reared back at the contact, but the fingers held tight, pulling her forward. Bright green eyes loomed into the centre of her vision.

‘Look at me,’ the man said, his harsh voice clipping the Saxon vowels. ‘You have to help me, otherwise you are going to drown. Do you realise that? Put your arms around my neck and I will pull you out of here.’ As he reached over, his hands dug intimately beneath her armpits, gripping her flesh through the layers of clothing. Gisela flinched, a jolt of heat racing through her; his thumbs brushing against her breasts.

But this isn’t happening, she told herself dully, as a small squeak of protest fell from her lips at his cursory manhandling. Bending double, the man reached out from his place of security on the plank, the white wood palely visible beneath the water, and pulled and pulled, dragging her slowly, inexorably, from the mud. ‘Put your arms around my neck!’ he demanded again, growling against her ear. Stung to compliance by the harsh command, Gisela lifted her slim arms, linking her fingers at the back of his neck. His skin was warm; the fronds of his hair tickled her hand. She frowned, her muddled mind trying desperately to make sense of the situation. Was he truly pulling her out of this godforsaken mud?

Air sucked around her frozen limbs as the mud released its cruel snare upon her legs. Her feet, caked in heavy mud, dangled uselessly as arms of thick-roped muscle lifted her, shoving her slender frame against a hard, masculine body, chest to chest. The man thrust one arm beneath her hips, swinging her legs up high. Her soaked gown clung to her thighs, to the soft flare of her hips.

Warmth surged through her, a delicious puddle of sensation that broke through her vague, dream-like state of semi-consciousness. His nearness was brutal, a curt slap on the jaw, buffeting her sensitive core, wrenching her body to a state of full, throbbing alertness. Breath squeezed in her lungs; it was as if his cursory touch ripped the clothes from her body and exposed her nakedness for all to see. She felt stripped bare, vulnerable, her breasts bouncing treacherously against his solid chest, her arms flailing away from his neck, not wanting to hold on to him for support.

‘Put your arms back around my neck, or we shall both be in the water!’ He began to carry her back to shore, jolting her light weight deliberately so that she was forced to hold on to his neck, his shoulders. Twisting her face up to the rigid features that loomed above her in the semi-darkness, she released one hand to brush her fingers across his jaw, a fleeting butterfly touch, in wonderment.

‘Êtes-vous vrai?’ she asked in French, using her mother tongue without thinking. Are you real?

* * *

Ragnar’s step faltered in surprise; he almost lost his footing on the plank. The maid’s speech was soft, musical; her lilting French accent tunnelling into him. It was not often he heard the language out loud, but he understood it, for his mother had spoken in her native tongue to him from birth, but only when they were alone, for his father did not approve. His father hated any reminder of how he had abducted his wife from France, all those years ago, despite their happy marriage now. Ragnar peered down into the pale glimmer of the maid’s face. What, in Thor’s name, was she doing here?

‘Je suis,’ he replied, confirming her question.

‘Dieu merci,’ she gasped out in relief. Thank God. Her light-boned frame sagged against him, ropes of unconsciousness binding her into oblivion.

Chapter Three

‘Who is she?’ Eirik demanded as Ragnar laid the maid down carefully. Her face was grey, pallid. She was so still. Kneeling beside her, his big knees grinding into the shingle, he seized her wrist, pushing up the fraying cuff, searching for a pulse. Against his fingers her blood bumped reassuringly; relief flooded over him. He rose to his feet, his eyes assessing her calmly. Her over-gown was loose, a plaited belt gathering the shabby, patched material at her waist. Dark brown in colour, stained with white streaks of drying salt, clagged with mud at the hem. No decoration around the plain circular neck, the centre slit opening. Her garments denoted her status: a peasant, living hand to mouth on whatever coin she could earn. Foolish of him to be so concerned; the maid was quite clearly a nobody, nothing to him certainly. And yet her plight plucked at his soul. She seemed so alone, and vulnerable, with no one rushing to protect or claim her.

‘I’ve no idea.’ Reaching down, Ragnar yanked the rucked hem of her longer underdress over her shapely shins, woefully caked in layers of grey, cracking mud. He was not about to reveal the traitorous words the maid had spoken to him out on the marsh; he would keep that knowledge to himself until he found out her reasons for being in Bertune. Why here, of all places? In a part of the country where Normans were truly hated. A place where the Saxons had begged the Danes for their help in overthrowing them. But this solitary maid, whey-faced and slender? Whoever she was, she was no threat to him, or to anyone else. Had she any idea of the danger she was in?

The woman who had originally alerted them to the maid’s plight lurked by the cottage wall that backed on to the beach. Ragnar turned to her. ‘Who is she?’

‘She works out at the salt pans with us,’ the woman replied, a wary look half-closing her red-streaked eyes. ‘And a hard worker she is, too. But she’s only been with us a day or so. Needs coin for the ferry, I think. Doesn’t talk much.’

‘Where does she live, then?’ Eirik said, his tone faintly peevish. ‘We can’t leave her lying here.’

‘Eirik, why not go and join the rest of the men in the town?’ Ragnar suggested, hearing the growing frustration in his friend’s voice. ‘I’ll deal with this.’

‘Are you sure?’ Eirik’s boots crunched heavily across the shingle as he came towards Ragnar. ‘I could do with a drink.’ He touched his leather-bound toe to the maid’s right flank, lifting her body in a desultory manner, a sneering twist to his mouth. ‘Surprising that such a little thing should cause so much trouble, don’t you think?’ he said disparagingly, removing his foot so abruptly that the slim body rolled back on to the beach. The maid’s arm fell out to one side; her palm, delicate pink lines creasing the soft underside, scraped against the jagged stones. Ragnar’s fists curled tight; he resisted the urge to shove his friend away. Hell’s teeth, treat the woman like a human being, he thought, not an animal!

‘Go.’ Ragnar pinned a wide grin on his face that he hoped was convincing. He pushed at Eirik’s shoulder, a friendly gesture. ‘I can take her home.’

‘After one look at you, she’ll run anyway.’ Eirik laughed, starting to walk up the beach. ‘You’re enough to scare the hell out of any woman. Don’t waste too much time on her. I expect to see you in the inn before full dark!’ He lifted his arm in farewell, the strengthening breeze ruffling his dark hair. Then he disappeared down an alleyway between the gable ends of two cottages, the shadowed twilight swallowing up his tall figure.

The maid was shivering now; a blue caste tinged her face. Unpinning his cloak, Ragnar dropped to his knees, the shingle poking through his braies into his muscled shins. His sword hilt jabbed upwards as the tip of the leather scabbard hit the beach; he shoved it to one side so that the weapon rested against his hip. He frowned, drawing thick coppery brows together. Was Eirik right? Despite Ragnar’s vicious reputation on the battlefield, his skill with an axe and sword, he had no wish to scare any woman, let alone this delicate effigy lying on the stones. She lay so still, like one of those statues in the new church in Ribe, her cheek as smooth as marble, unblemished. Hulking over her slight figure, he felt like a cumbersome idiot, awkward and unwieldy, his body too big to tend to a woman so slight. He spread his cloak over her chest, then, sliding his hands beneath her, he raised her carefully so he could tuck the woollen cloth around her back.