The Dream Weavers

by Barbara Erskine

  Bea turned towards them. ‘She’s gone to find Elise,’ she said, ‘the man she should have married, the man she has been looking for for over a thousand years.’

  ‘She. You mean the voice,’ Felix put in. ‘It. That woman, has possessed her and they’re looking for this man together.’

  ‘And you think this is Offa’s daughter, Eadburh, don’t you.’ Simon looked at her hard.

  She bit her lip. ‘She is certainly hanging around.’ Bea closed her eyes, conscious that she should be protecting them all with every means known to her. Not just the bubble she had demonstrated to Emma and which the girl had clearly forgotten or ignored, but with incense and prayers and incantations, and yes, with Mark. She needed Mark. ‘I am going to set guards on this house and garden and then—’

  ‘Stop it!’ Simon lurched to his feet, pushing the chair out across the flagstones on the terrace. ‘No more of this stupidity! If you hadn’t encouraged her with all this crap, this wouldn’t have happened!’

  ‘Dad.’ Felix looked up at him pleadingly. ‘Bea is the only one who can help with all this.’

  ‘Well, she hasn’t helped so far, has she? She’s made it worse!’

  To Bea’s horror she saw there were tears in his eyes. She took a deep breath and ploughed on. ‘Emma is dreaming about someone whose misery and loneliness has been written into the memory of time itself. I think she’s getting flashbacks and nightmares and yes, beautiful dreams that are not her own and I have a sense of where she’s gone.’ She clutched the note to her chest. ‘She had had a vision of a church tower, spotlit by the sun and this morning she remembered seeing it. Was that in her dreams or in reality? I don’t know but I think Emma has gone to find that little church because she and Elisedd dreamed they would one day marry there. It’s still there. It isn’t far away. One can see it from the top of the ridge.’

  ‘You mean you can scent her there, like a bloodhound. Is that another of your amazing gifts?’ Simon was bristling with hostility.

  Bea had lost his confidence and she couldn’t blame him for that. She should have sensed what was going to happen. ‘I’m going to go and look. I’ll ring you if I spot something.’

  She didn’t wait for a reply. She knew where she was going. Eadburh and her prince had looked down on the tower of a little chapel as it emerged into the sunlight from the mist and he had promised one day to marry her there. Eadburh had remembered that moment. Remembered it and treasured it for the rest of her life.

  She took the car.

  The clas was now an isolated country church some three miles by car from the cottage, but probably far less via the footpath Emma would have followed, straight down towards the valley. She and Mark had been there together once a long time ago. It was a very special place and somehow she knew it fitted into this story. It still clearly displayed its Saxon origins in its low rounded doorway and heavy stone vaulted roof and above all in the ancient round tower. Pulling up onto the grass verge she climbed out of the car and stood looking up the path between the ancient yews. Had Hilde called there too? In her dream of Eadburh’s hapless messenger, the yews were already ancient. It was an early stop on the obvious route into the Welsh hinterland.

  There was a torn notice in the porch saying the church was open and that there was a service once a month; the door was an enormous lump of solid oak, bound by huge elaborate hinges that seemed as old as the tree from which the door had been hewn. She pushed it cautiously and peered in.

  Emma was sitting in the front pew. She turned at the sound of the heavy latch. ‘I knew you would come.’

  ‘Are you OK?’ Bea walked up the aisle and sat down beside her. The church was ice-cold and smelled of ancient hymn books and stone.

  She nodded. ‘I thought he might come to meet me here. He promised me that one day we would be married here.’

  ‘Elise?’

  Emma nodded and Bea saw the tears leaking down her cheeks. ‘What’s happening to me?’

  ‘You let him in, sweetheart.’

  ‘I didn’t want to be protected against him.’

  ‘I know. But I’ve got you now. You’re safe.’ The child’s aura was thin and ragged, a pale shimmering veil, the colour of dust.

  29

  ‘Simon said he was taking her back to London. That I mustn’t contact them again. I messed up so badly, Mark.’

  They were sitting side by side in the snug. She had waited all afternoon for a phone call from Chris saying that Simon was demanding his money back, that he was suing her friend for having a haunted cottage; or from Simon himself, accusing her of some sort of child abuse. Her phone, lying there on the coffee table in front of them, had remained stubbornly silent.

  ‘You should have called me.’

  ‘I know you don’t want to be interrupted when you’re at work.’

  ‘And you think this isn’t part of my work?’ Mark put his arm round her shoulders and pulled her gently against him. ‘Was Emma OK, as far as you know?’

  ‘Physically, yes. She was all over the place mentally. Will you go up there, please, Mark. He trusts you.’

  When Mark rang him, Simon’s phone went to voicemail.

  Mark sighed. ‘OK. I’ll go up to the cottage.’

  ‘I’ll come with you—’

  ‘No! I want you to stay here, and I want you to keep out of trouble.’ He looked at her sternly. ‘Please, darling. Don’t go chasing Eadburh through the stratosphere. I need to know you’re safe.’

  She nodded slowly.

  Mark stood up and was pulling on his jacket when there was a knock at the front door. Bea looked up, ragged. ‘Not Sandra, please. I can’t cope with her as well.’

  It was Simon, with Emma and Felix behind him. Mark led them into the snug without a word.

  ‘I’m sorry. I was unfair,’ Simon said awkwardly. ‘I tried to pack up to take the kids back to London but they wouldn’t go.’

  For a moment they all stood there in an uncomfortable circle then Emma flung herself into Bea’s arms, sobbing.

  ‘We had a family conference,’ Felix announced as his father appeared to be incapable of further speech, ‘and Em and I decided we didn’t want to go to London. We think you two are probably her only hope. So there.’ He glared at his father, then sat down on the armchair by the window, his hands folded neatly between his knees.

  Mark looked at Simon. ‘Is that what you think?’

  ‘I don’t care what Dad thinks!’ Emma shouted through her tears. ‘He doesn’t understand.’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ Simon said at last. ‘But Emma seems to think Bea can help.’ He looked from Mark to Emma and back. ‘I don’t know what else to do.’

  Bea noticed he didn’t look at her. ‘I’m willing to help in every way I can,’ she put in quietly.

  ‘And she can help,’ Felix put in from his chair by the window. ‘None of this is her fault, Dad. The voice came to you. It was your book that escalated things; the manuscript we’ve been reading, the whole Anglo-Saxon thing has stirred it up and Bea’s the only person who has a clue what’s happening and how to deal with it. To blame her is ludicrous!’

  It was nearly midnight when Bea slowly climbed the attic stairs to her room and went in, closing the door behind her. Simon and Felix had gone back to the cottage, leaving Emma behind. Mark had retreated to his study while Emma helped Bea peel potatoes. It had seemed a soothing, unthreatening way of defusing the day’s events. The bangers and mash had gone down well, and Emma had retired to bed early without argument. Only when Mark too was asleep did Bea feel she could take the time to confront and attempt to unravel the day’s events.

  She stood for a while in the dark, staring out of the window across the dark oasis of the garden towards the loom of the city lights beyond the wall. Finally, she turned and lit a candle, then put the match to some charcoal under a gentle cleansing incense. The energies in the room were uneasy, a remnant of earlier experiences, not quite there but not completely gone either.

  She sat and
waited several minutes until she felt centred and calm then she looked deep into the heart of the candle flame and began to circle herself with light and the armour of prayer. Only when that was complete did she turn her full attention to Eadburh.

  ‘Right,’ she said softly. ‘I’m ready for you. I want to hear the whole story. Go on, lady. Let’s hear what happened next.’

  The king’s latest lover was dead. The royal hall was in uproar, the candles burned low and smoking, the high, elaborately carved rafters shadowed, echoing with whispers, the king’s warriors aroused from their sleep on the benches round the walls. The queen wasn’t there; she was in the nursery, bent over the sleeping figure of her little daughter, her face expressionless in the dusky chamber as the sound of shouting from the hall reached her across the courtyards and through the tapestry-hung walls. She was aware of the uneasy glances of child’s nurses as they huddled round the fire. No one approached her. They were all afraid of her.

  Beorhtric did not come to her bed for several weeks, preferring to drink himself insensible with the men of his personal guard and amusing himself, so she had heard, with yet another favourite. When he came at last, pushing through the heavy curtains to their bed, Eadburh lay still, her eyes closed and gritted her teeth, waiting. He did not touch her. He threw himself down beside her, fully dressed, and lay there without moving, his eyes open in the darkness. ‘It was you,’ he said softly at last. ‘You killed them.’

  ‘How am I supposed to have done that?’

  ‘You have devils and demons to serve you and do your bidding. Everyone knows it; everyone whispers that you are a sorceress. Everyone is afraid of you.’

  He could not see her smile in the blackness of the bed hangings.

  ‘Perhaps I am a sorceress. Or perhaps I am merely a wife who has been publicly insulted by the man who is supposed to honour her, the man who flouts the teaching of the Church.’

  ‘Whatever you are, Wigfrith and the rest of my advisers have told me to be rid of you. Your father and your brother have gone to whatever hell is reserved for Offa and his family, and you will join him there if you do not leave my court.’ His voice had grown louder until he was shouting. ‘I will give you two choices. You may return to Mercia and beg its new king to protect you, or you may enter a convent and dedicate what is left of your worthless evil life to asking God’s forgiveness for your crimes.’ He sat up and swung his legs to the ground, standing up and turning to bend over her. ‘Your choice, my queen. The third option is death.’

  Flinging back the curtains, he grabbed his cloak and strode across the chamber to the door. The women who had been standing round the fire, listening in horror to every word, shrank back as he passed. As he disappeared into the night, they all turned as one to stare at the royal bed, exposed by the open curtains. After a moment, one of the queen’s ladies tiptoed towards it and gently pulled them closed.

  Eadburh sat up, drawing her bed gown around her. Her initial shock at his words had receded and she was thinking hard. Wigfrith, the senior royal thane at court and her husband’s praefectus, had always been her enemy. He would never wish her anything other than death, but maybe this was her chance to escape from the life she had begun to think of as a prison. If she went back to Mercia she would find the new king. Coenwulf was a distant cousin, a strong ruler by all accounts, but unlikely to look favourably on Offa’s daughter, especially if she had been banished from her husband’s kingdom. He would still want to count Wessex an ally and friend. She had no desire whatsoever to enter a convent like her sister. Such a fate was unthinkable. But if she made it clear she was passing through, not planning to settle, then surely she would be safe. From Mercia she could travel on. To Powys.

  Her thoughts, as so often when she was restless and unhappy, had flown back to Elisedd. Hilde had disappeared on her mission to find him; her next messenger had returned but with no information about Hilde or about the royal family of Powys.

  No one seemed able to answer her question as to whether the youngest son lived or died. Surely, if he was dead someone somewhere would have known it. Someone would have told her. Someone would have demanded retribution.

  But supposing her father had lied? Supposing he had told her Elisedd was dead to fool her, to force her to give up all hopes of the man she loved so passionately. Murder was second nature to him and to Cynefryth. One or other of them could have arranged to have him killed as easily as slaughtering an animal, but supposing her father had held back, worried about the construction of his precious dyke and the alliance it relied on. Supposing all this time Elisedd had been alive.

  Alive. Was it possible? In her dreams he was too vivid and loving and real to be dead. And in her dreams he still loved her. In her dreams he was still here, waiting for her somewhere in the misty hills of his home.

  She smiled to herself and lay back against the pillows, hugging the thought to her. That was what she would do. She would go to Powys and she would find him. But before she left she would have her revenge.

  Beorhtric made no immediate move to carry out his threats, though he avoided her presence whenever he could. She was aware that she was being watched, that the court seethed with rumour and dislike and that the Witan were to a man against her, but no one dared to make a move. Not yet. So, ostensibly, neither did she. She was planning her journey with meticulous care. She had considerable wealth as queen and she was intent on making sure every penny of it went with her: money, jewels, furnishings, her daughter’s small entourage of nurses and attendants, horses and mules. She felt sure Wigfrith guessed what she was up to. His intense, thoughtful gaze followed her whenever she was in the mead hall near him and she smiled to herself, sometimes catching his eye with deliberate hostility. She didn’t care. Even Wigfrith must from time to time have felt a shiver of fear as that cold hard stare rested on his face.

  It was not until a new young man arrived in court that matters came to a head. Worr was the son of one of the king’s most senior ealdormen. The queen was performing her ceremonial role at a major feast, carrying the great auroch’s horn with its decorated gold rim to the high table, presenting the drink to the king and then to Wigfrith, who met her gaze with defiant challenge, and then to Beorhtric’s most senior guests in order of precedence. When she came to Worr, who sat beside the king in the seat of honour, closer even than the visiting dignitaries, she came to a halt, fixing him with her ice-cold gaze, then moved on without presenting the horn for him to sip. There was a sharp intake of breath from the watching crowd in the hall behind her.

  Next day she was told that the king had commanded her removal from his court and from his kingdom. She was to leave before the next full moon.

  The flagons of mead were carefully separated. One held poison for Worr, the other held a potion that would render the king impotent for the rest of his life. Both were strong and had been sweetened with extra honey and special magical charms to make them irresistible. Eadburh’s household was packed and ready to leave. As was her right, she was taking her dowry and her morning gift with her, to be loaded onto the sumpter horses and ox carts that would take her belongings along the winding dusty roads into Mercia and then on into the Kingdom of Powys. These were enormous riches by any standards. No king or prince was going to turn her away.

  The litter was waiting for her with the outriders already assembled when she gave the order for the manner in which the drinks were to be presented to the king, who had not emerged to see her off. ‘A farewell gift,’ she said, smiling, to the serf who took the tray, complete with two jewelled golden goblets. She was careful to instruct him that the king’s was the larger and more splendid. The smaller, with its lethal dose, the one destined for his lover, was to be offered second. The serf was instructed to wait until the dust from her leaving had settled in the distance before he took her farewell gift to her husband’s chamber. And with that she turned to climb into her litter. Behind her came a second litter with her daughter and the child’s nurse, followed by her daughter’s a
ttendants and then the long train of wagons and pack animals strung out around the courtyard, with the escort, grudgingly lent by Beorhtric to see her safe across the border, drawn up outside the gates.

  She had calculated that the king’s potion would, before its more permanent incapacitating effects took hold, make him sleepy. He wouldn’t notice when his lover, after drinking, slipped from the world. That shock would come later. She would like to have made the young man suffer agonies in his moment of death but it would be expedient to be well on her way before the unexplained death of yet another favourite was discovered.

  As she turned to give one last backward glance at the king’s hall, she smiled. Then she gave the order for the procession to start.

  It was as the lead horse began to move off that she saw the tall figure of Wigfrith stride out of the doorway. There was a drawn sword in his hand.

  ‘Stop!’ he bellowed. ‘Murder! The king has been murdered by that woman!’

  Her shock was genuine; she wanted the boy to die, not her husband. His punishment was to have been far more subtle, more long-lasting.

  She countermanded his order, shouting at the captain of the escort, insisting the cavalcade move off, but it was no use. Wigfrith’s barked commands were obeyed. Eadburh’s litter was surrounded by the armed guard. She could do nothing but wait.

  The serf who served the wine was sentenced to death. He had obeyed her instructions, he screamed, as the guard set on him, he had positioned himself outside the king’s chamber, waiting for the dust to settle, but the king had seen him and, sniffing the delicious mulled wine, had snatched the nearest goblet and quaffed half of it before handing it on to his lover.