“Ez-mee?” The woman narrowed her eyes and moved closer to her. “What kind of name is that? And where is this ‘minn-ee-sew-ta’ you speak of?”
Another of the trio, a short, plump blonde, pointed to Esme’s jeans. “That is strange cloth.” She circled like a hungry wolf. “She wears trousers like a man, and her hair is chopped off at the shoulders.” She turned to the tall woman. “What say you, Mechthild? What sort of creature is this?”
“Are you in disguise? Are you trying to pass yourself off as a man?” Mechthild leaned in to inspect Esme’s glasses. “And what is that...thing...on your nose?”
Esme touched the bow of her wire-rims. “You’ve never seen glasses?” This was getting stranger by the minute.
“No, what does it do?”
“Glasses help me to see, of course.”
The third, and youngest, woman held out her hand, demanding. “Let me see it.”
Esme hesitated, then removed her spectacles and handed them over. The young woman looked through them and spat on the ground. “You lie. I can see nothing at all. Everything is fuzzy.”
The one named Mechthild grabbed them and peered through the lenses. “Yes, everything is wavy and distorted. It must have magical powers if it helps you see clearly.” She pocketed them in her apron. “I think you are either a witch or a runaway slave.”
This was getting really freaky. “No, no,” Esme cried, trying to stay calm. “I’m not a slave, and I’m certainly not a witch. I’ve just lost my way. Won’t you please help me?”
The second woman nodded. “I agree, Mechthild. From her looks, I’d say she’s fled from her master and is trying to pass as a man.”
Esme’s stomach did a cartwheel. “Whoa, did you say ‘master’?”
“Yes, the man who owns you,” Mechthild said slowly, emphasizing each word, as if she were speaking to a child.
“I have no master,” Esme protested, still amazed she was conversing in Old Norse. “I am a free woman. Won’t you please just tell me where I am?”
The trio surrounded her, their expressions intent and decidedly unfriendly.
Mechthild got in her face. “You are lying. You’re a runaway slave, and there’s an end to it.” She and the youngest woman each grabbed an arm and began to march her toward the farm.
“Let me go!” Esme struggled, but the women’s grip was powerful. “You have no right to manhandle me this way. I’m no slave. Where are you taking me?” She dragged her feet, but the women continued to haul her towards the tiny cluster of buildings. “I’m lost. Why won’t you help me?”
The second woman, who followed close behind, poked her in the back with her scythe handle. “Be quiet.”
What was going on? Had she been dumped into some kind of grotesque TV reality show? Would some smarmy host with perfectly sculpted hair suddenly leap from the trees and tell her she could win a million bucks if she’d be a slave for a week?
They arrived at the small clearing. The area, about a hundred yards square, held two oblong, one-story wooden houses with thatched roofs. Several sod-roofed outbuildings, animal pens, and a couple of large vegetable gardens completed the scene. The whole place looked absolutely authentic, like the illustrations she’d seen in her father’s books.
Mechthild headed for the house on the left. “We’ll let Egil decide what to do with her.”
As they dragged her inside, Esme wrinkled her nose at the strong stench of smoke. The interior consisted of one large, windowless room with a beamed ceiling supported by carved poles. Behind the poles, and running the length of the building on both sides, were built-in platforms, some covered with sheepskins, blankets and linen-covered pillows. In the center of the room a large iron pot hung from a tripod over the fire, its smoke venting, mostly, through a hole in the roof.
Sitting at a table near the fire, a large man drank noisily from a metal tankard. Big-boned and heavily bearded, it was hard to tell his age. Mid-forties, maybe. He looked at the women with bloodshot eyes.
“What is this, wife?” he asked Mechthild.
“We found this girl hiding in the hayfield. I think she’s a runaway.”
The youngest woman pushed Esme toward the table.
“I was not hiding,” Esme snapped, trying not to stumble.
Egil eyed her up and down. “Where are you from, girl?”
“Why does everyone care where I’m from? I’m from Minnesota. Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of it.”
“No,” Egil replied, “I haven’t.”
Her gaze wandered from one person to the other. “Look, a tornado sucked me up and dumped me here, wherever 'here' is. I’m not a runaway slave. I’m lost and need your help. If you could just point me in the direction of the nearest town, I’ll find my way back home.”
Egil rose to his feet. “Who is your owner?”
“I told you, I have no owner.”
He made a sound that was halfway between a snort and a laugh. “Turn around, girl. Let me have a look at you.”
Mechthild took Esme’s glasses out of her pocket and handed them to her husband. “She was wearing this when we found her. She says it helps her see.”
He examined the glasses, then scrutinized Esme, his rheumy eyes wandering over her body. “Her attire is unusual for a woman, but she is pretty and could bring a nice price in Túnsberg.”
“Price?” Esme squawked. “What do you mean, price?”
“She’s not your property, husband,” said Mechthild, taking Esme’s glasses from him. “Her owner will want her returned.”
“What are you talking about?” Esme cried. “You can’t sell me.”
“We don’t know who her owner is, do we?” Egil took a swig from his tankard. “Nor do I care. Ulf and I will take her to market tomorrow, and we’ll divide the money between our two families. If her owner comes looking for her, we’ll say we haven’t seen her and don’t know where she is.” He looked down his nose at the women. “Are we agreed?”
The women nodded obediently.
Esme could hardly believe her ears. “You want to sell me? Who are you people? What is this place? You can’t sell me. People don’t buy and sell other people.” They ignored her like she was furniture.
“Good,” said Egil. “Lock her in the stabbur for the night.” He spoke to the youngest woman. “Dagmar, tell my brother to be ready to travel to Túnsberg in the morning.”
Dagmar and Mechthild grabbed her once more in their strong, farm-hardened hands and dragged her outside over a small rise to a wooden outbuilding. About ten feet square, it was elevated on stone piers and was further rodent-proofed by a two-foot gap between the steps and the wooden door.
“I demand you release me right now.” Esme squirmed and twisted fruitlessly. “I don’t have any money on me, but I promise I’ll pay you if you’ll help me. Name your price. I’ll send it to you as soon as I get home. You can trust me.”
“I think she’s crazy in the head,” said Dagmar. “I wonder who would buy such a woman, don’t you?”
Esme blathered on. "I'm serious! Or, if you can't wait, my father could send you the money now."
“Be quiet, girl,” Mechthild snapped. She turned to Dagmar. “Egil is a man and knows what other men desire. If he thinks she’ll make a good bed slave, then so it shall be.”
“Hah,” laughed Dagmar, “only as long as she keeps her mouth shut, eh?”
“A bed slave? You’ve got to be kidding.” Esme’s voice rose. “You can’t do that. I’m not that kind of girl.”
Mechthild snorted, her head bobbing up and down knowingly. “You’re a woman and that’s all that matters.”
“No! Tell your husband I’d make a lousy bed slave. Tell him I’m a weaver. I’m sure good weavers are in demand.” She stopped as a strange idea popped into her head. "What year is it?"
“I don't know. Now, shut up,” Mechthild barked as they dragged her up the steps. “You have no say in this matter. You’ll be sold as a bed slave and that’s that.”
; Dagmar kicked open the shed door with her foot, and the two women pushed Esme into the gloomy interior.
“Please don’t leave me here,” she pleaded. “I’m so hungry and cold. Could you bring me something to eat? And some water too? Please?”
Mechthild’s eyes were emotionless. “Be still, girl! I’ll bring you some water, but you’ll be fed and clothed by your new owner, not at our expense.”
“My glasses,” Esme cried. “Please give them back to me. I need them.”
Mechthild pulled them from her apron pocket and threw them on the floor. “There. They’re useless to me.”
As Esme stooped to retrieve them, the heavy door closed with a solid thud, completely cutting her off from the outside world. Her heart sank as she heard the metal bolt slide into place.
She flew to the door and banged on it. “Let me out, let me out!” She screamed until her voice faded and her hands ached.
Turning, she scanned the small, windowless room. It was so dark, she could barely see, but it appeared the walls were lined with large bags, probably of threshed grain. Stacked in two rows, they filled most of the empty space, leaving her only a narrow strip of wooden floor. Here and there, sunlight pierced the gaps in the wall, softening the shed’s otherwise murky interior.
She leaned against the door. Now what? Nothing in her entire life had prepared her for this kind of craziness. Had she completely flipped or what? She tried to put it all together.
A tornado had carried her off and apparently dumped her in a living museum populated by Viking re-enactors. Because of the mountains she’d seen, the museum had to be located somewhere near the Rockies, probably in Colorado or Wyoming. So far, so good.
But if these people were re-enactors, why wouldn’t they help her? And why did they persist in speaking Norse when it was clear she wasn’t one of them? That’s the other thing. How could she speak Norse when the only foreign language she knew was a smattering of high school French and a little modern Norwegian?
Something very odd was going on.
She pulled her cell phone out of her jeans’ pocket. If she called 911, she wouldn’t be able to give the police an exact location, but they could home in on the phone’s built-in GPS. If she had service, that is.
She flipped it open. Damn! The screen showed a rotating satellite dish and the message ‘not in service area.’ She waved the phone around trying to get a signal. No dice. Giving up, she punched the ‘end’ button to power off.
Great, now what?
Tired and depressed, she sat down on the wooden planks and peered through a narrow chink between the logs. She watched as Mechthild and the others scurried about, doing their chores. The farmstead certainly looked authentic, right down to the pig sty and the manure pile. There were no TV antennae, no satellite dishes, no cars, no bicycles, no power lines. There was no hint of modern civilization anywhere. If this was a living museum, then how did they communicate with the outside world? Maybe they signed up for month-long stints with the understanding there’d be no contact with home or loved ones, like a re-enactor boot camp.
She settled back against the wall and closed her eyes. Take a deep breath, Esme. Yes, this was scary, but she’d be all right. She'd get away from these weirdoes and find real help tomorrow. She'd be home before she knew it.
But what if there was no help?
She’d never been the bravest person in the world, not by a long shot, but she’d not accept her fate like a scared little lamb. No way. She was made of hardy Norwegian stock, and she’d tough it out. She’d survive whatever weirdness was going on here.
That is, if she didn’t freeze to death or die from starvation first. She shivered. It would be a very long, cold night, and her stomach rumbled like a landslide. She was tired, thirsty and homesick. She pictured her father and Mr. Darcy at home in Asgard. Poor Daddy! At this very moment, he was probably mourning her death and making funeral arrangements.
Wrapping her arms around her knees, she tried to banish the one thought her mind couldn’t handle.
What if she never saw him again?
CHAPTER 4
Esme had no fight left in her. So much for giving myself pep talks!
After a miserable, sleepless night in the grain shed, and an even more miserable all-day ride to the slave market in Túnsberg, she was so tired, she could barely function. Hours of sitting, trussed up like a turkey, on a hard, unforgiving saddle in front of Egil had made her legs and backside numb. Worse, though they’d given her some water during her awful night in the shed, she’d had nothing to eat in over twenty-four hours. Now her blood sugar level was so low, she’d probably faint as soon as she set foot on the ground.
At least one thing had become clear. Her captors were not re-enactors, their farmstead was no living museum, and she was not in Colorado or Wyoming. In fact she was pretty sure she wasn’t in any part of the United States of America or the modern world, for that matter.
All day long she’d seen nothing but forest, fjord, and a scattering of small farm settlements, all inhabited by people just like Egil, Mechthild and the others. Esme had seen absolutely no sign of modern civilization anywhere. Even the roads were just overgrown dirt paths.
You've traveled through time. She’d fought the thought all day because, if she were to believe it, she’d be certifiably nuts. It was too fantastic and mind-boggling to comprehend, but the evidence was hard to deny. It appeared she’d been transported to medieval Norway through some sort of miraculous blast to the past. But why was she here? And, more importantly, how could she get home?
She’d tried to wrap her mind around it, but there was no other explanation. She guessed she was in the eleventh or twelfth century since Túnsberg only became a trading town after Kaupang was abandoned in the 900’s. The town, a well-known Viking trade center, looked like the drawings she’d seen in her father’s books. ‘Town’ was actually a generous description. It wasn’t much more than a village. Its sod- and thatch-roofed wooden buildings housed a couple hundred inhabitants at most.
Despite its size, however, the place bustled with activity. Horses whinnied, carts rattled, dogs barked, and people talked or shouted over the noise. The narrow, rutted lanes were dusty, and the pungent odors of smoke and horse manure hung in the air like a grimy curtain. The town bore no resemblance whatsoever to the sparkling clean communities of modern Norway.
She looked around. Maybe, if she was lucky, she could make a run for it and disappear into the crowd.
She sighed. If only she had the energy.
"This is it," Egil said, stopping outside a non-descript building with no windows.
"This is what?" she asked.
"The slave market, of course." He helped her dismount. “You had best keep your mouth closed and your thoughts to yourself,” he said, glaring ferociously. “If you make a fuss or try to escape, we'll stop you.” He angled his head toward his brother. “He’s very good with a knife, and he'll use it on you if he has to. Do you understand?”
Ulf withdrew a short dagger from his waistband and, grinning, turned it over and over in his fat hand.
She’d never been threatened with a knife before, but all she could do was nod wearily. Was everyone in the Middle Ages cold-hearted and mean?
“Could you at least free my hands?”
“No. Now come along quietly,” Egil growled.
They led her through the building into a courtyard filled with men, prospective buyers she guessed. Egil propelled her onto a low platform crowded with other bound females. “Stay here and behave,” he said. “Ulf and I must speak with the man in charge.”
None of the women said a word. They just stared at her with vacant expressions like they were on heavy-duty tranquilizers. She surveyed the courtyard and located the exits, but every door was guarded. Even if she had the strength to try, escape didn’t seem likely.
Shrinking into the gaggle of women, she hunched her shoulders and tried to look inconspicuous. Maybe if she were the last one on the block, no one
would want her.
Her stomach grumbled loudly as she watched Egil and Ulf confer with a short, swarthy man carrying a metal staff. Dressed in red pantaloons and sporting a pointed black beard, he appeared more Arabic than Scandinavian.
The conversation concluded, he stepped onto the platform. “Gentlemen,” he called to the buyers in strongly accented Norse, “it is time to start the bidding. Gather around so you may see the excellent collection of females we have today.”
The crowd quieted and moved toward the platform.
The auctioneer motioned for a light-haired woman near the front to step forward. “We’ll begin with this fine young specimen, captured on the Frisian coast. She is approximately twenty years of age and will make a fine bed slave.” Using his staff, he prodded her to turn around so the men could see her backside. “She’ll make a pliant partner for one lucky man among you.”
His audience chortled appreciatively. Was this for real?
He tapped her again to turn her around. “We’ll start the bidding at thirty Saxon pennigar, a pittance for this lovely creature. Do I have a bid of thirty Saxon coins?”
A man in the front raised his hand, setting off a lively bidding war between three onlookers. The auctioneer shouted ‘sold’ with a final sale price of fifty-five Saxon coins. Esme didn’t know how much that was, but the Arab beamed with satisfaction.
She studied her fellow captives. Powerless in this male-dominated world, they stood silently, their faces impassive masks. She could only imagine what they were thinking and feeling beneath the veneer of resignation. Would she accept her fate so easily?
She shuddered as she examined the bidders’ leering faces. These guys were no more than serial sex offenders. They weren’t looking for cooks, seamstresses or nannies for their kids. They wanted bed mates, women they could use and abuse, and then sell to the next guy. Soon she’d belong to one of these hairy degenerates. The whole thing was beyond disgusting.
As the hours went by, her extreme hunger began to take its toll, and she found herself staring into space, eyes unfocused. People spoke, even shouted, but the voices blended into an unintelligible jumble. She needed food badly.
Vanquishing A Viking Page 3
