The Dream Weavers

by Barbara Erskine

  Nesta nodded. ‘She is here.’

  Bea felt herself gripped with panic. There was a buzzing in her ears. ‘Wake up!’ she muttered. ‘Wake up, wake up, wake up! This is a dream. I am not there. I am here. At home. I do not want this!’ She squeezed her eyes shut in her dream then opened them again. She was still there, hovering near the beech hedge in a sunny garden, half hidden from the two women, but still close enough to hear them talking.

  ‘Make her go away!’ Eadburh’s voice had risen hysterically.

  Nesta dropped her stitching into the basket at her feet and stepped towards the hedge.

  ‘No, no, no!’ Bea tried to retreat. She couldn’t move. Nesta took several steps towards her and raised her hand and Bea felt the power from it like a bolt of electricity. She was paralysed. She couldn’t breathe.

  Bea woke with a start, her heart pounding, no longer in the sunny garden but back at home in the dark snug in the quiet Cathedral Close.

  Staggering to her feet, she turned on the table lamp and glanced up at the picture of Jesus. He was looking particularly serene. ‘I’m going to need your help with this one,’ she whispered.

  25

  In the cottage on Offa’s Ridge, Emma woke suddenly and lay staring up towards the darkened ceiling. Her heart was beating hard and her face was wet with tears. She listened, expecting to hear her father or Felix snoring, but there was nothing, only an almost tangible silence as though somewhere someone else was listening as intently as she was.

  Their mother had rung last night, and it had been agreed that, instead of going back to London just before Easter, they could, if they both promised to revise hard, spend the rest of the holidays up here with their dad. Val would pick them up a couple of days before they were due back at school. Her alacrity at getting rid of them for a few more days had been laughable really, but her poor mother didn’t have much of a life. Emma’s thoughts strayed to her parents’ relationship. Dad was either at home but working all hours of day and night and completely abstracted, or away doing research in some remote library or other, or on one of these writing breaks, while her mother was neither one thing nor the other. She couldn’t go off and forge a new life for herself, but she couldn’t really be happy with such a fogey either. Their marriage was rubbish really, Emma conceded to herself. Why were they still together? She pondered this for a while. She had always assumed they loved each other and presumably at some level they still did. She would have to discuss it with Felix. Not that he would be any use. He never saw anything unless it was pointed out to him, preferably on a screen.

  She sat up, her arms wrapped round her knees. This holiday had certainly been different. They had both been dreading it, wondering if they could possibly get out of it, but their mother had insisted. They would get some fresh air, she had pointed out. Well, they were getting that all right. She shivered as a draught stirred the curtains in the little bedroom. What with an ancient manuscript in a lost manor house, secret ciphers hidden in vellum pages, ghosts and people who actually lived in a cathedral, this was up there with the adventure stories she used to love so much when she was a child. And on top of that she had found someone who could help her with her night terrors and her weird visions. She hadn’t mentioned it to Bea, but she had once tried to explain to their family doctor what happened. The man had heard her out, but then he had said that he would have to refer her to a child psychiatrist who might want to do tests to see if she had some form of epilepsy. She had backed off immediately, telling him she’d made it all up. It was obvious from his expression that she’d just confirmed what he’d thought all along. She had made him promise not to say anything to her mother – and reminded him about patient confidentiality, but she wasn’t convinced he took any notice. She was probably in his eyes a child with an over-active imagination and no rights at all.

  Tomorrow – no, today: she reached for her phone and found it was 2.33 a.m. – she would be meeting Bea again. They’d arranged to hook up at a coffee shop near the cathedral; not the one haunted by that dreadful spying woman, but one somewhere out in the town. Then Dad and Felix would head off to do their own blokey thing for the rest of the day while she and Bea returned to Marden Church. She shivered again. She was the one who had insisted that they go back, but now, in the darkness of her bedroom, she wasn’t at all sure she wanted a second chance to meet St Ethelbert, king and martyr.

  She was tempted to get up and go downstairs. Her mother often walked about the house in the middle of the night and she always said a ‘nice cup of tea’ would relax her and send her back to bed sleepy. That sounded illogical to Emma – everyone knew that tea was a stimulant and full of caffeine, but there you are. Her gaze drifted towards the door. She could make some tea then take it outside to sit on the terrace looking up at those amazing stars, and have a ciggy. Felix, snoring on his camp bed, would never wake up and it would be beautiful out there.

  But the voice was out there.

  She lay back on her pillow and pulled the duvet up to her chin. Perhaps she would try and go back to sleep instead. After all, there were plenty of nights left now before they had to go home. She began to count. Before she had reached number five she was asleep. And the dream returned.

  The dean would want her to be certain. Sandra studied the rota with care. It was fortuitous that she had a couple of days off now, before Easter week when the cathedral would be busy, as it meant she could turn her attention fully to the problem of Beatrice Dalloway. She had seldom taken such an instinctive dislike to anyone or felt such an overwhelming suspicion, but she was after all, uniquely qualified to deal with the delusions of a ghost hunter and she was beginning to feel sure that she had been sent by God to investigate the situation and rescue the dear canon from his wife and her accomplices. In the unlikely event it turned out she was wrong, then she would quietly back off and leave Bea alone.

  It had been complete luck that she had seen Bea that morning, emerging from the alleyway in Church Street. And there she was, yet again joining the Armstrong family in a coffee shop. Not the cathedral café, she noted. Presumably she had decided that was too public a place to discuss her nefarious deeds. Sandra didn’t dare go in after them. Somehow she had to hang around long enough to follow them and see where they were going.

  They were there for only about twenty minutes, then all four emerged into the narrow street and stood talking. Sandra moved closer. The narrow pedestrianised area was crowded. It was easy to blend in, and there were lots of little shops with interesting windows where she could hover amongst the crowds.

  A group of students jostled past, enabling Sandra to move close enough to hear Bea’s next words: ‘… we’ll start at Marden, then we’ll probably come back here. We’ll see how it goes. Don’t worry. I’ll drop her back this afternoon.’ Then Bea and the girl set off in the direction of the cathedral while Simon and his son headed towards High Town. For a moment Sandra was left standing there. If either couple had looked back, they would have seen her, but they didn’t. She was smiling. So, they were still on the track of the martyr king. Turning away herself, she set off to collect her car.

  Sandra pulled her car off onto the grass at the edge of the road and climbed out. She set off along the lane, passing empty barns and stock pens, on past the old vicarage and through weathered wrought-iron gates into the churchyard. The area immediately around the church was tarmacked, with newly mown grass bordering the graveyard itself. There was nowhere to hide. Although she hadn’t seen any other vehicles in the vicinity, she took the precaution of climbing the bank on the edge of the path until she was among the ancient graves, where clumps of trees gave her shelter and she could creep nearer to the church. There was a car there, round the back, parked facing the river. Cautiously she moved closer. The car was empty and she realised she didn’t know what kind of car Beatrice drove, but there was a good chance this was it. As anxious as she was to get inside the church, she could see no way of reaching the door without crossing the open expanse of the
car park. She crouched there for several minutes, waiting and watching. The door was shut and all was silent. Taking a deep breath, she launched herself at last out of the bushes and across the tarmac at a run, opening the outer door as quietly as she could, then slipping silently inside the porch. She paused there in the darkness to get her breath back. There was an inner door and that too was shut. She listened, her ear pressed against the wood, then very gently she began to push it open.

  26

  Emma and Bea had walked slowly round the church before making their way into St Ethelbert’s Room at the back and switching on the light. Bea felt Emma reaching for her hand and she grasped it reassuringly. She could feel nothing in this bleak, empty room. There was no sense that St Ethelbert, or anyone else, had left a shadow here. ‘There is supposed to have been a ray of blinding light coming up from where he fell,’ Emma whispered. ‘I looked it up on the internet. And then the spring sprang from the ground.’ She reached out to the pile of colourful leaflets someone had left on top of the wooden well cover. ‘There he is.’ She pointed at the picture. ‘He’s got very fetching boots.’ She gave a small giggle.

  ‘It’s sad they don’t make more of this place,’ Bea said thoughtfully. ‘I believe they do an annual pilgrimage from here to the cathedral, but it would be nice if there was something for the pilgrims who come at other times. Perhaps we’ve caught it on a bad day, but a few flowers and perhaps a candle might be nice.’ She paused for a few seconds, allowing the silence of the room to surround them. Outside in the church they heard a squeak from the door hinge.

  ‘Someone else is coming,’ Emma whispered.

  ‘That’s fine. We needn’t talk to anyone if you don’t want to.’ Bea sighed. ‘Do you sense there is anything actually in here, Emma?’

  The girl shook her head.

  ‘Where did you see your ghost?’

  ‘Just outside this door. In the back of the church.’

  ‘Shall we go and see?’

  Emma nodded. They turned off the light and went back into the nave. There was no sign of anyone else there. Emma slipped into the back pew. ‘It was here,’ she whispered.

  ‘Close your eyes and allow yourself to listen and feel,’ Bea said. ‘Wait quietly and see what happens. Don’t be afraid. I’m here, right beside you.’

  ‘Nothing.’ It was a full five minutes later. ‘Just a sort of warm feeling as if someone had put the heating on.’

  Bea smiled. ‘I surrounded us with light. A protective bubble. And I prayed.’

  ‘And that made me feel warm?’

  ‘And safe, hopefully.’

  But they weren’t safe. Not entirely. She could feel something there, an uneasy restlessness that was not there when they first came in, a sense that someone was there with them, listening. Emma had closed her eyes again, a small half smile on her face; Bea took the opportunity to look round slowly, scanning the pews, the corners behind them. At first the church seemed empty but there were places people could hide. The kitchen area, the stairs up to the gallery, the gallery itself, the columns, even the pulpit. Her eyes went back to the pulpit. Was that something on the steps? A piece of fabric with a buckle trailing from behind the stone? A raincoat belt?

  She narrowed her eyes.

  ‘Come on,’ she whispered. ‘Let’s go and sit outside for a bit. It’s chilly in here.’

  There was a bench outside, looking out towards the river, and they sat there, side by side, near the door out of the wind. ‘I didn’t feel the king was there,’ Bea said, ‘but it may be that there is a thought form in the church. It would be strange if there wasn’t when so many people have been thinking about him there for over a thousand years.’ What she had sensed had not been a thought form, it had been a live person, and she had a strong suspicion she knew who it might be. Shelving her sudden irritation she turned back to Emma. ‘So, you felt the warmth of my protection. The important thing is to be able to do that for yourself,’ she said when they were settled. ‘All you need is the ability to visualise. Picture yourself inside something safe. Traditionally people use a bubble, because that’s transparent, so you can see out, and it’s movable, it can stretch infinitely, enlarging your safe, space, even enclosing the people with you if you need to, and depending on the way you see it, it’s beautiful. A portable sanctuary into which no evil thing can stray. Try it.’

  The church door stayed shut.

  Emma was frowning, concentrating hard.

  Bea watched her, her heart going out to the girl. She remembered teaching this to her daughter, Anna, when she admitted she was being bullied in school. In theory it shouldn’t help at all, but somehow it did. It gave that feeling of safety and strength which sometimes was all that was needed to hide one’s vulnerability and deflect the bullies’ worst instincts.

  ‘Don’t try too hard,’ she whispered. ‘Just let it be there. Enjoy it. It’s your space. Instantly there, instantly gone when you don’t need it, like an umbrella.’

  Emma giggled. ‘I love the idea.’

  ‘Go on practising. All the time. Use it when you’re shopping if the crowds get too much. Use it at the dentist if you’re scared. Use it at school if any difficult situations arise and above all use it if you feel there is something unseen threatening you.’

  ‘The king wasn’t threatening.’

  ‘And that’s fine too. You’re safe in your bubble and you can still speak and see and feel as much as you want to, but when you’re dealing with people from a different plane of existence, it’s best to be safe. They’re not always what they seem. We have lost the belief and the vocabulary in our present age to deal with these things, but they are as real now for some people as they were in medieval times.’

  They both heard the latch on the church door click open.

  Emma froze. Bea saw her eyes widen with terror and she put her finger to her lips and shook her head in reassurance. Standing up she took a few steps away from the bench. From there she could see the porch door open only a crack then hastily close again. ‘Come on. We must go and find your dad,’ she said loudly.

  ‘You mean she followed us?’ Emma was indignant as they climbed back into the car.

  ‘If it’s who I think it is.’ It was hard to believe, and if it was Sandra, where was her car?

  The empty Micra parked on the verge at the end of the lane answered that question.

  ‘Is that hers?’ Emma turned to peer at it as they drove past.

  ‘I don’t know what kind of car she has,’ Bea negotiated the next bend and drove on, suppressing her indignation. What was Sandra’s agenda exactly? Spying on her round the cathedral was one thing, but to go to the trouble of following them seemed beyond rational. She glanced across at Emma. ‘Home?’

  ‘It’s funny, isn’t it, but I do think of the cottage as home.’

  ‘And you have extra revision to do.’ Bea grinned cheerfully. She was not going to let Emma see how rattled she was by the thought that they were being followed. ‘Practise your bubble. Everyone has their own energy field. See if you can see them.’

  ‘You mean like an aura?’

  Bea was concentrating on the narrow lane, slowing to cross the busy A49. ‘Yes, the aura. You will find auras vary hugely. Different colours, configurations, constantly changing. With some people they are large, extending out a long way, and well defined, with others they are small and indistinct. You can learn a lot about how people feel about themselves and others, see how they interact with one another, you can see how people are feeling, their health, their mood. We all sense each other’s auras instinctively unless we are singularly insensitive. Most people feel them – their personal space – but you can train yourself to see them clearly.’

  ‘I bet Felix will laugh.’

  ‘You don’t tell Felix what you are doing. You keep it to yourself,’ Bea said sternly. ‘You don’t tell anyone, especially school friends. The word aura reduces the vast majority of people to paroxysms of mirth. Save yourself the hassle. And anything you t
hink you see by looking at someone’s aura is private to them. You’re in a privileged position, like a doctor or a priest, but you are not a doctor or a priest so you do nothing with the information you may or may not deduce, is that clear? You do not tell them what you have seen, and you do not tell anyone else.’

  She had never tried to see Sandra’s aura. No, that wasn’t quite true. She hadn’t been able to avoid sensing the woman’s strange avid darkness, but now her reluctance to probe must change. The woman had violated her privacy again and again, so perhaps it was time to return the compliment. There was something more than nosiness in this obsession of hers and Bea had to find out what it was for all their sakes.

  ‘What if you see someone has got cancer?’

  ‘You’re not a doctor, Emma, or a radiologist. Remember that. You are not in a position to diagnose illness. If someone tells you – really tells you – they’re not feeling well, encourage them to see a doctor. That’s all you can do. And,’ she changed the focus of the subject abruptly, ‘when you’re confident you can do it, remember you can include someone else in your bubble to keep them safe, as I did in church.’

  Emma leaned back in her seat and beamed. ‘I’m going to enjoy this. The best lessons ever.’

  The lane widened by a field gate and Bea pulled in and put on the handbrake. ‘I’m sorry, I know this is exciting, but you will find it’s not nearly as easy as it sounds. This all needs practice. The important bit for now is for you to work on your own “aura” and learn to strengthen it, turn it into a shield. You know when you’re talking to someone and you feel they won’t “let you in”? That’s someone who does it naturally. They have put up barriers. You need to learn to do that. And at night you do it before you go to sleep.’

  ‘To ward off nightmares?’

  Bea nodded.

  ‘I had the weirdest dream last night.’