Behind her, Bertrada splashed in the bucket, humming tunelessly.
“I want to wash my clothes at the stream.” Gisela picked up her soiled clothing and bundled it under one arm. She peeked over her shoulder to find Bertrada, skin pink and splotchy, scrubbing herself briskly with the drying cloth. “Come and find me when you’re finished.”
“Wait for me, you shouldn’t go by yourself.” Bertrada scrubbed faster.
“No one shall harm me. All know I belong to him. Besides, you’re only a few minutes behind me.”
Gisela lifted the flap and stepped out into the sunshine. She scanned the campsite, searching for Thorvald, wanting his reaction to her now that she’d washed and changed. Aye, call her vain but she wanted his admiration.
She spotted him, resting on his haunches, leaning back against the wheel of the cart that had carried her and Bertrada. She raised her chin and waited to catch his gaze.
When she did, in an instant pleasure and admiration filled his eyes. A flush of well being warmed her. She’d succeeded. He saw her as an attractive woman. Then an icy veil drifted over his eyes, turning them into shards of green ice.
He rose to his feet and moved to block her way. “Where are you going?”
“To the stream. To wash my clothes.” She faltered at the expression on his face. Austere. Forbidding.
She moved to step around him but he grabbed her wrist to stop her. His nostrils flared as he inhaled the scent of her rose balm and his eyes melted and came to life, longing and desire battling with anger and misery.
Anger won out. Again his eyes hardened as he scoured her up and down with his gaze. Fist tight on her arm, he remained silent.
“You are angry. Why? I only did what you asked of me. I washed and put on clean clothing.”
“Because you mock me with it.”
“How is that? You wanted to see me clean and I have done so. I only did what any slave would do and that is obey her master.”
“Now you call me your master.”
“Because I am yours still. You have no need to sell me.”
He narrowed his eyes. “A different tune you sing now. Perhaps you realize I am not the fiend you think me to be.”
“Your longing for me shows in your eyes. I am yours. You have no need to sell me,” she repeated. Then wondered why she said that when he tightened his grip on her wrist. The blood in her arm began to pound. He frightened her. At this moment, with her arm gripped in his hand, she very much doubted her decision to show him her beauty. Untamed danger churned within him and it could very well be her undoing.
He recoiled. “Aye,” he replied bleakly. “I do need to sell you.”
He loosened his grip and she pulled her arm free.
Humiliation burned her cheeks. Her ploy had not worked. He still meant to sell her. She cradled her bundle of clothes and turned to walk away but had not taken a single step before he spun her around, to hold her in front of him, fingers pressing into her flesh. His face burned with an unnamed emotion and his mouth settled in a firm line, so firm the muscles in his jaw twitched. Gisela dropped her bundle.
“Let me go.” Gisela squeezed shut her eyes against the fearsome visage, fully expecting to be beaten. Somehow by following his instructions, she’d angered him, and she had no idea why. Seconds ticked by and, when nothing happened, she opened her eyes to see his mouth descend on hers.
He kisses me?
Stubble grazed her cheek, the scent of patchouli filled her nose. The chill in her skin dissipated the instant his lips touched hers. They are soft, she thought in amazement, and tried to pull away. His grip loosened and he moved his hands down her arms to pull her closer to him, before brushing his lips across hers again. A quiver skittered across her shoulders and she tried again to pull away.
“No,” she whispered and dared to look him full in the eyes. Emerald rimmed black discs, they pulsed with an emotion she couldn’t understand.
With a growl, he wrapped his arms around her, trapping her and kissed her again, this time with enough force her lips burned. She opened her mouth to protest and in a heartbeat his tongue teased hers, probing and stroking. Her breasts where they pressed against his chest tingled and her woman’s place grew hot and thick, throbbing with a primal rhythm that weakened her knees. Her eyelids sagged and she wilted against him.
He lifted her chin with his fingers and his lips snared hers again. This time she opened her mouth gladly, her tongue sparring against his with an unnamed urgency.
He is master over me truly.
The thought should have angered her. It didn’t. Instead, she touched his hair, clean and soft, and wound her fingers into it to hold herself upright.
It seemed she stood at a magic portal, one that claimed her body and scattered her thoughts in a hundred directions, one that made her wonder at the power of a single kiss.
And left her wanting more from the man she vowed to hate.
She moaned and shoved her hands against his chest, twisting her head back and forth in an effort to break the contact.
“A minute ago you weren’t so eager to leave my embrace,” he said before letting her go.
Gisela staggered back a step, wiping her mouth with both hands before she dared look up at him.
A corner of his mouth lifted. “Enough?”
Yet below his waist his tunic bulged, betraying he’d not had enough. Betraying his desire for her, a desire he could easily slake and no one to defend her against him but herself.
She mustered her strength and slapped him, hard. Hard enough that it turned his head and left a red imprint of her hand glowing on his cheek.
His eyes narrowed. “Many would beat you for that.”
“You won’t strike me for you don’t wish to mark me. A slave marked by the fist of another loses value, isn’t that so?” She taunted him, taking satisfaction in the dull flush crossing his cheeks to swallow the imprint of her hand.
He stared at her, chest heaving and eyes narrowed. “I cannot wait to be rid of you. Do not test me further,” he said.
“I despise you, don’t you know that? What possible worse fate could befall me other than what I face already?”
He stood silent for a moment and she felt herself shrivel under his continued scrutiny.
“Why don’t you wait and see.” He turned on his heel and stalked off.
His chill voice and the threat it carried frightened her. A wave of nausea rolled through her and she sucked in a huge breath to beat it back. She couldn’t show her fear. Nay. She must show strength and so she remained standing, even though her knees threatened to buckle.
When he disappeared from sight and Gisela was certain he wouldn’t come back for her, she sank to her knees and clasped her arms around her middle, ignoring the curious onlookers who had witnessed the entire incident. Uncivilized brutes, the lot of them.
This time, hate pressed away the nausea and kept it away. She would find her way home, she and Bertrada, away from these northerners who had no care for human life.
Now more than ever, she was glad she’d taken the time to make herself presentable. To see the treasure he was about to lose would surely gall him.
* * *
Thorvald pounded his fist against the slats of the cart. Of all the foolish things, he’d kissed her. A thrall. One he meant to sell on the morrow. Instead, he’d pulled her close and fallen prey to her sweet scent, her silky skin, her satin lips. Once he’d started, he’d needed to discover more, had plundered her mouth as if there he could find the treasures he sought.
Nay, kissing her had not been his intent at all. Kissing implied caring, affection, love even. None of which he felt for her. He’d been weak, had let his physical desires breach his guard.
Gisela meant nothing to him, he assured himself. Tomorrow he would sell her for the gold he needed to clear his name. Then he need never face her nor her impudence again.
Chapter Ten
Upturned faces surrounded Gisela. Faces of men jostling for posit
ion close to the crude wooden platform on which she stood in the center of Hedeby’s slave market. Tanned faces, wrinkled faces, bearded faces, smooth faces, shouting in strange tongues she didn’t understand.
Leering faces, jeering faces, avaricious faces, all with the same intent in their eyes—to own her.
“Heathens,” she whispered. Thorvald had put the wrist manacles on her again this morning and they clanked as she lifted an elbow to her nose to hide the stench of unwashed bodies and rotting garbage. The painful scrape of iron against raw flesh strengthened her resolve. I will bow down to no one.
Especially not to the man with cool green eyes standing head and shoulders above the crowd and who surveyed the boisterous scene with a calculating air before leaning down to speak into Arni’s ear. It must have been a jest, for Arni broke into laughter. How could Thorvald jest at a time like this? she wondered. Because he could, came the morose thought. He kept his freedom while she exchanged one master for another.
His name rolled through her mind. Thorvald Stronghawk.
Her face must have shown her desire for escape, for when he caught her gaze, he quirked an eyebrow and gestured with his chin to the palisade ringing the slave market. She shuddered. The sharpened poles looked like the teeth of a giant beast set to devour the sky.
And her.
She shuddered again and looked away, to the edge of the crowd, imagining herself there, free to walk away if she could.
“Look up,” snarled a voice beside her. “I want to show your face before I start.”
Startled, Gisela turned to find a swarthy skinned man wearing a fur trimmed hat beside her. So lost in her dreams of escape, she’d not noticed the auctioneer climb up to join her on the platform. The auction was about to start and her life as a free woman would be lost forever. Her heart thudded then seemed to swell in her chest, so much so that it became difficult for her to draw breath.
He waved his arms and the crowd fell silent.
“Today we start with a rare prize!” The auctioneer grabbed her chin and turned her face to and fro. “This Frisian maid is young, beautiful and untouched.”
Gisela clenched her teeth, determined not to gag at the stink of the man’s rotting teeth.
He fingered her tunic. “Is this your work?” he asked her beneath the buzz of the crowd. She nodded.
After yesterday’s kiss, she’d tottered to the stream and managed to wash her own clothing. Although still damp when she put them on this morning, she put up with the clamminess because she wanted nothing from him, no remembrance of him. Regretfully, she’d even torn off the thin linen shift, reminding herself that if she wanted nothing from him, then she truly would take nothing. Reminding herself too, after today she need never see Thorvald again.
It must be so, for this morning he had removed his Thor’s hammer token from her neck. “You’ll not need my protection anymore,” he’d said. “Someone else will become your master.” Gladly, she wanted to shout but instead held her silence. Odd, but she felt bare without its weight and she’d rubbed her hand across her chest to stifle the sensation.
The auctioneer lifted her hem. “See what unparalleled talent has been produced at her hands. Have you seen any finer weaving or needlework?”
“Does she still have teeth?” someone shouted.
“Oho, do you need help chewing your food?” came a mocking response from farther back in the crowd. “What matters the teeth with a face as fair as that.”
“You talk of teeth? Look at this lustrous hair,” the auctioneer continued, running his grimy fingers through her curls. “As soft as the clouds in the sky.”
Gisela began to rue the fact she’d washed last night after all. She didn’t want to be pretty, didn’t want to taunt Thorvald with her beauty. Nay, at this moment she wanted to shrivel into a hag no one wanted.
“What am I bid for this pearl?”
“Two pieces of gold.”
“Three!”
The sun broke through and the sudden heat made her flush. Too, the sun’s appearance seemed to spur the crowd, for bids now came fast and furious.
“Three and two silver coins!”
“Three gold coins and three milk cows!”
“Four gold coins!”
The bids increased and she grew warmer still, until perspiration trickled down her forehead, and into her eyes. She tried in vain to wipe them but the manacles on her wrists stopped her.
“Six gold coins and my wife!” Shouts of laughter rang out at the absurd bid. The scene reminded Gisela more of a festival than a slave market, especially when the man’s wife drew a wooden spoon from the sack at her waist and began to beat on her husband with it, which drew an appreciative roar from the crowd.
With attention diverted from her briefly, she searched for Bertrada and soon spotted her familiar scarf in the throng behind the platform, awaiting their turn to be sold. Bertrada nodded at her, encouragement for her young charge spilling from her warm brown eyes, fingers busy as always with her string of beads.
Gisela tried to smile at the dear face raised to hers, tried to put on a brave air, tried to forget the raucous scene around her.
She didn’t succeed. Bertrada’s image shimmered and wavered as Gisela’s eyes filled with tears and crumbling, she sank to her knees. She’d failed in her vow to protect Bertrada and failed in her vow to return home. The only thing she hadn’t failed in was her determination not to give in to Thorvald.
To that end, she couldn’t let him see her browbeaten. Nay, she would show him her strength, her pride, her resolve, show him she was worth more than a sack of gold.
Accompanied by the ever present clink of her chains, she staggered to her feet and held her head high, ignoring the tears trickling one by one down her cheeks.
What would befall her and Bertrada now?
* * *
Thorvald listened to the bidding, chest swelling with satisfaction as the gold pieces offered grew higher.
“Nine pieces!”
“Ten pieces!”
“Fourteen pieces.” This from a white robed, hawk nosed Arab trader pressed against the platform. He held up a red silk pouch and shook it so the dull clink of its contents could be heard.
The crowd quieted suddenly at the outrageous sum. The amount of fourteen gold pieces for a slave, a mere woman, wouldn’t easily be matched.
“Fourteen? For such a prize? Do I not hear fifteen?” The auctioneer cajoled, holding out his hands. But no answering shout sounded and after a moment, the man shrugged and clapped his hands. “Done! To the Arab goes the Frisian slave.”
The Arab nodded, and pitched the red sack to the swarthy auctioneer, who caught it, staggering back a step or two with the weight of it. A wave of disappointed mutterings swirled the compound with the realization the entertainment had come so swiftly to a close.
Thorvald welcomed the quick conclusion to Gisela’s sale. The sum pleased him, the amount ample enough to both clear his name and purchase land. Too, yesterday’s kiss had affected him more than he expected and the sooner that temptation disappeared, the better. He ignored the twinge of regret at the thought of her at the hands of another man and aye, the nip of guilt that she perhaps would be mistreated. She no longer concerned him, he told himself. He’d planned on selling her from the very minute he captured her. The deed was done; she belonged to another and he had a handsome payment for it.
“Truly a fine reward.” Arni swiped his hand along his bearded jaw. “Good fortune smiles on you.”
“Aye.” Thorvald grinned. “With that bit of business done, we have the rest of the day to prepare for the journey home. Soon enough we’ll be on our way.”
Arni returned his grin. “I’ll wait for you here. I’m sure you’ll need help carrying that load.”
Thorvald laughed, then elbowed his way through the noisy crowd to the Arab and nodded to the man. “I wish you luck with her, she’ll not easily be tamed.”
“The wildest mares can be tamed with a gentle hand when the
time comes. Besides, I intend to sell her in Constantinople. She’ll grace a harem soon enough. It’s a comfortable life for a woman and she will come to accept it.”
“Enough of the niceties,” interrupted the auctioneer, “let us settle matters. Although your business may be concluded, I still have slaves to sell.” He gestured to the dispirited group lined up behind the platform before counting out the coins. He replaced them in the red silk sack then reached in and took one out. “My fee.” He passed the bulging sack to Thorvald.
“I thank you.” Without a glance to Gisela, Thorvald moved away from the platform. She and her defiant nature were no longer his concern. Satisfaction curved his lips, relief lightened his feet, and thirteen gold coins weighed down his pocket. Now he could pay his restitution and regain his good name. Then he’d sail farther north up the fjords until he found a parcel of land he could claim as his own.
“I’ll give you fifteen gold coins for her.”
Thorvald’s head reeled as, behind him, a hated voice slithered through the air like the serpent from whence it came. Slowly, as if swimming through honey, he turned back to search for the man who had spoken. He’d recognized the voice, but surely he was wrong.
But he wasn’t.
Bile rose, almost choking him, when he spied the man who had haunted his dreams, nay, his nightmares, for the past years.
Karl Wormtongue.
Here.
Trying to purchase Gisela from the Arab slave trader.
Chapter Eleven
Disbelief mingled with rage bubbled through Thorvald. What a blow from the fates to find his half-brother here in Hedeby.
He fought the pounding in his ears. He would not lose Gisela to the very man who had accused him, Thorvald, of a crime he hadn’t committed. Wormtongue did not deserve the beautiful thrall, would destroy her as surely as he’d destroyed Thorvald.
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