Sandra Hill - [Vikings I 01] Read Free Page A

hips, then jerked alert. Slim! Dear Lord, she hadn’t been this thin since before her first pregnancy. Not that she was ever fat, but this kind of body tone came with youth, not childbirth and thirty-eight years of easy living.
    Ruby discreetly lifted the edge of her T-shirt, peeled away the loose waistband of her jeans and peeked at her skin just above her navel. Hallelujah! No more stretch marks! Her wish had come true. She was twenty years younger.
    Smiling widely, Ruby looked back over her shoulder…then gasped. Three Viking-style dragonships rode at anchor on the sunny horizon of what appeared to be the confluence of two huge rivers. Hundreds of other ships stretched along the shore or headed in or out of a wider river which mustlead to the sea. She hadn’t seen anything so spectacular since the Tall Ships event held on the Hudson River in New York years ago. They were magnificent.
    A loud thud caused her to turn forward. Their boat had hit the dock and was being tied ashore. Hundreds of people swarmed on the wharf, all dressed in strange clothing.
    Some of the men wore short tunics that barely reached their knees and left their arms bare, while others wore plain, collarless, long-sleeved shirts down to their hips over tight pants. Belts, ranging from leather thongs to ornate gold chains, cinched in their waists. Short swords and scabbarded knives clanged at their sides.
    Long, pinafore-type tunics, mostly open-sided, covered the women’s pleated, linen chemises which trailed on the ground in the back. Ornate brooches, with dangling keys or scissors or small knives, fastened the tunics together at the shoulders.
    Ruby noticed an inordinate amount of blond hair sparkling in the afternoon sunlight, from almost-white to fire-red and all the colors in-between. The older women knotted their hair at the back of the neck and covered it with scarves or cloth headdresses, while others braided their long tresses or let them lay loose down their backs. The men’s hair hung shoulder-length and longer, often in braids, too, framing faces that ranged from clean-shaven to heavily bearded and mustached.
    Finely wrought, heavy wrist and arm bracelets of solid gold or silver, studded with jewels, adorned the better-dressed men and women. Some appeared to be museum-quality pieces. Wow!
    Fascinated, Ruby asked Rhoda, who still eyed her suspiciously, “ Where are we?”
    “Jorvik.”
    “Jorvik? Where’s that?”
    “To Saxons, it be Eoforwic , but the heathen Vikings call it Jorvik. Be you a Saxon?”
    Puzzled, Ruby said, “Huh?” Then she mulled Rhoda’s words. Jorvik? Something clicked in her mind. Hadn’t she read recently about an archaeological dig there, something involving Vikings? Suddenly, remembrance jolted her.
    “Oh, my God! You mean York, like in England? And those boats out there—are those Viking ships?”
    Rhoda just stared at her, open-mouthed. Then a crazy thought entered her mind. At first, she dismissed it, but then asked tentatively, “What year is this?”
    Now Rhoda really did look at her as if she’d escaped from a looney bin. “Nine hundred ’n twenty-five. You bin locked up fer a long time ur sumpin? A dungeon, mebbe? Ur a nunnery, I wager? Them nuns do be barmy sum times. I heared onct ’bout a girl who liked men too much and her mother put her in a convent an’ she went stark ravin’ mad jus’ cuz no man touched her in a year.”
    Good Lord! Rhoda didn’t need her tabloids, after all. Even in these primitive times she found sources for the sensational gossip she loved.
    Ruby started to laugh hysterically, just corroborating Rhoda’s mental-illness assumption about her. What a dream this was turning out to be! Why couldn’t she dream about cowboys or knights in shining armor? Why conjure up Vikings in a pre-Medieval England? Well, what else did she expect, the way her life was going?
    She couldn’t wait to get back and tell Jack his “Mind Over Matter” tapes really did work. Wait. She