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.
‘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