The Dream Weavers

by Barbara Erskine

  Val gave a snort of disgust. ‘I will find someone in London. And I’m taking Emma back today.’

  Simon frowned. ‘I don’t think you’re fit to drive anywhere today, Val. You can’t do that journey twice in one day. At least stay the night and take her tomorrow. Then we will all have the chance to talk this over first. Calmly,’ he added as he saw Val draw breath.

  To his surprise, she subsided. She took another sip of coffee. ‘I’m not sleeping here.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure you will be able to find somewhere in a B & B. Or you can go to a hotel in Hereford.’

  ‘Leaving Emma here to disappear again?’

  ‘I’m not keeping her here against her wishes, Val. You can take her with you. If she’ll go.’

  Abruptly Val pushed back her chair and stood up. Simon stayed where he was as she disappeared into the sitting room and he heard her steps as she climbed the stairs.

  It was five minutes before she reappeared. She had washed her face and combed her hair. ‘She’s fast asleep,’ she said.

  ‘Let’s leave her then. At least for a bit. Felix must have told you how stressed the poor girl has been. Please, Val, let’s have something to eat together and talk quietly. If we take the time to discuss this situation, however oddly it strikes you, perhaps we can sort out a solution between us.’

  ‘Are you going to suggest we invite the charismatic Bea to join us?’

  The remark was deliberately waspish. Simon flinched but didn’t rise to the bait. ‘I don’t think so. She has done her best and she is there if Emma needs her.’

  In the forest, Bea was sitting on the fallen log, deep in thought. Her attention had moved from Nesta to Emma and Eadburh, and now she was thinking about Sandra. Why hadn’t she realised what a serious player Sandra was? Nesta had warned her and she had ignored the warning. It was obvious now. The woman was transparent, her motivation clear, her malice tangible in an aura that she had dragged after her through incarnation after incarnation. She was an observer, her self-appointed job was to incite others to violence and to mockery, to get enjoyment from watching others’ pain. In life after life she had been dismissed and ignored, a watcher not an instigator, but somewhere along the way she had learned lessons and now she had become dangerous.

  Bea closed her eyes, trying to set her thoughts in order, trying to summon the strength she needed. But the need for sleep was powerful. Sitting above her in the tree canopy the robin cocked its head to one side, bright-eyed, then seeing no sign of crumbs, it flew away. In the convent, the soul that would one day emerge as Sandra Bedford had brought the abbess a pot of new tapers, bowed deeply, and left, closing the door behind her. Bea dozed once more.

  The lamp in the corner of Eadburh’s chamber was burning low and the room was almost dark. The building was silent. There were no shuffling steps outside in the long corridor, no noises from the cloister below her window, no creak of the wind on the shutters. She had heard the great bell in the tower strike three times to signal lauds. The nuns would be in church. She rose stiffly from her bed and pulling her heavy fur-lined cloak around her shoulders went over to the table. It was perhaps the benefit of being abbess she most appreciated in winter, the fact that her chamber was situated over the warming room, while the sisters had to freeze in their cells at night, waiting for the rare moments when they could go into the room down there to thaw their cold hands and feet. She groped on her table for a taper and held it to the wicks in the beeswax of the bronze lamp on the prayer desk. The walls of the chamber were visible now.

  The knock at her door was barely audible. She frowned. No one would normally dare to interrupt her sleep. She had made it clear she did not attend lauds. The abbey ran smoothly under her guidance. It was wealthy, well organised and a place she could feel safe. The system was efficient and her household officers and servants well trained. A disturbance in the early hours of the morning was unheard of.

  Clutching her cloak more closely round her shoulders, she moved across to the door and pulled it open. One of the sisters who helped run the guest house was standing there with a candle in her hand, a tall figure barely visible behind her in the shadows.

  ‘Mother Abbess,’ she stammered. ‘I’m sorry, but your visitor insisted.’

  ‘How dare you!’ Eadburh shivered as the icy draught blew down the long passage, making the woman’s candle flicker. Behind her the flames on her lamp flared and smoked.

  ‘It was I who dared.’ The man stepped forward. ‘I have travelled hundreds of miles to see the lady abbess. You may leave, Sister.’ He turned to the nun with a little bow. ‘And you will make no mention to anyone of my visit. Your abbess and I have important matters to discuss in private.’

  The sister bowed her head obediently and turned away. She moved silently out of sight around the corner and the shadows followed her, leaving the man standing in the darkness of the passage.

  Eadburh was staring at his face, unable to see it clearly in the light of the lamps, but remembering the voice so well. Her heart performed a frightened, incredulous leap in her chest. ‘You?’

  He stepped inside the room and closed the door silently behind him. ‘Me.’ He put his arms around her and pulled her close. As she raised her lips to his, she managed only one word. ‘Elise.’

  ‘Are you all right, my dear?’ The voice at her shoulder made Bea jump. Her awakening was so sudden and so outrageous she couldn’t at first work out where she was.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you, only you’ve been sitting there a while and what with it getting dark I thought I would check.’

  Bea stared round, bewildered. The stone walls of one of Charlemagne’s newest and best-endowed convents with its state-of-the-art buildings and fabulous frescoes in the latest Byzantine style, lit by bronze tripod lamps and beeswax candles, had vanished and she found herself sitting in a lonely clearing in the forest. The only similarity was the encircling darkness.

  They had met again, Eadburh and Elisedd. He had taken her into his arms. And then, as they were about to kiss, the scene had disappeared and they had vanished into the shadows.

  She looked up at the old man, confused. ‘I must have fallen asleep.’ She scrambled to her feet.

  ‘But you’re all right?’ The elderly man at her side was genuinely concerned. There was an equally elderly golden retriever at his side and both looked worried as they surveyed her. Rain was beginning to fall; she could hear it patter on the leaf litter around her feet. ‘I’m sure it’s safe out here,’ he went on, but it’s lonely in the dark.’ He gave such a sweet smile her heart warmed to him. Somehow she dragged her attention back to the present. ‘That’s kind of you. I must have been more tired than I realised. I’ve got a car nearby.’

  He stood back. ‘Then I’ll leave you to it. I’m sorry to have disturbed you.’ With a click of his fingers to the dog, he walked off down the ride. She stared after him then, with a little shiver, she turned back the way she had come. Nesta had vanished into the trees long since and Eadburh and Elisedd? She found she was smiling. So, he had found her. Was it true? Was there to be a happy ending after all to the story? If that old man hadn’t woken her, she might have discovered the answer to that question. She might have witnessed their reunion.

  Hers was the only car left in the car park. She made her way across to it and climbed in, instinctively locking the doors against the night before she inserted the key in the ignition. It was late and she felt exposed and vulnerable and very alone and she needed to go home. To Mark. To her study in the attic. To the story.

  Picking up the note on the kitchen table, Bea read it with a rueful smile. Back soon. Love you, M xxx

  Walking over to the sink she picked an empty glass off the draining board and filled it from the tap. Sipping slowly she looked out of the window at the garden. It was dark out there but it had stopped raining. With a sigh of exhaustion she opened the back door. Sitting down on the bench, huddled in her coat, she closed her eyes and listened for a while to the gent
le trickle of the little fountain.

  The abbess’s lodgings were impressive. She had her own sleeping cell above the warming room, but there were other offices from where she ran the abbey with the help of her officials and it was there that she kept Ava, who had grown into a magnificent animal. Her long dark golden fur glossy from brushing, she stood level with her mistress’s hips. No one dared to query the abbess having a dog; on the contrary, many abbeys kept hunting animals and many a particular favourite managed to make its way into an abbot’s quarters. The first time she saw the guest, the dog Ava had growled and snarled at him and from then on she was banished from Eadburh’s presence and left in the care of the guest house almoner, who liked dogs.

  The guest house was on the far side of the compound run by two lay brothers and three lay sisters who answered to her chamberlain. When Eadburh announced to him that her visitor would be lodged in the room next to hers, eyebrows were raised. ‘He brings messages from my cousin, the King of Mercia. He is an envoy and emissary from his father the King of Powys. It is only right that he have access to me at all times.’

  It was after the bell had rung for lauds that he came to her each night, unpinning her veil, lifting the gold chain of her cross over her head and dropping it on her prayer desk, before pulling the gown from her shoulders. The silk shift slid easily from her body, still slim and youthful, and he took her into his arms and then into bed.

  He had laughed when he saw the shift. ‘So, my lady abbess dresses like an empress under her habit, where no one can see; she does not espouse the rules of the Order and wear rough clothing next to her skin.’

  She smiled. ‘I wear black.’

  ‘Because it suits you.’ He stroked her bare shoulder.

  ‘I want to come back with you,’ she whispered. ‘Back to your hills to see the dragons you promised me when we were young. I want to see the shrine of the hares.’

  He buried his face between her breasts. ‘We will live our dream, I promise. We will walk the hills together and watch the sun set in the mists.’

  Pushing him away at last she sat up, suddenly businesslike. ‘We will leave as soon as the weather improves.’ She was looking past him towards the windows. Behind the shutters the snow was falling heavily. ‘I will give orders for my dowry to be loaded into wagons and we will leave as soon as the roads are passable.’

  ‘Will the great Emperor Charles allow it?’

  She frowned. ‘It is none of the emperor’s business. I will take only what is rightfully mine.’

  ‘And does that include the emperor’s dog?’

  She smiled. ‘He gave Ava to me when she was a tiny puppy; she loves me and she will grow to tolerate you, my prince. If I love you, she will love you too. And we need her. There will be wolves and bears on the roads and footpads and wild boar in the forests. Ava is the best of guards.’

  ‘Then she will be our entourage. You forget,although I am still my father’s son, and a prince of royal blood, I gave up the royal estate when I became a monk. I didn’t bring an escort. I travelled alone as a pilgrim. I didn’t know if I would be able to find you.’ He had told her how he had thought her gone forever and she had told him how, long ago, her father had claimed her prince had died. She did not mention the baby that had never existed save in the lonely longing of her dreams. Why taunt him with more stories of what might have been?

  He had dreamed of her often, he told her, murmuring his story, his lips on her hair, and sometimes in his dream he had seen her as a girl of eighteen again, but as she looked at him he had seen the gaze of someone else’s eyes and he had been filled with fear. He smiled as he pulled her close.

  It was the story told by a strange woman of the forest who had come to see him one day, seeking his blessing, and telling him that his Eadburh might still be alive, that had led him to dream again of the golden girl he had loved and lost and led him to leave his own monastery in Meifod and follow her trail to find her here at last in the verdant fields and forests of the empire.

  ‘So, you followed your dream.’ She smiled, bending over him to kiss him again. Her hair, scented with rosemary and lavender, slipped from its heavy coils, veiling his face. They had both forgotten their vows to God; their only promises now were for one another. He knew she was bewitching him all over again. He surrendered willingly.

  It was proving easy to make plans. As soon as spring unlocked the roads and tracks they would set out for a convent some miles away on a visit to the abbess there, then on towards the next religious house, and the next, heading always southwest towards the coast and the distant shores of Albion. Their needs would be few. She guessed she might have to abandon her dowry lest word of her imminent departure reach the emperor. She would say the wagons were loaded with gifts for the other houses of the order on her progress. It didn’t matter to her what she had to leave behind. She would be with Elise. The icy months of January and February passed and March arrived in a blast of rain and wind that at last unlocked the ice. The lovers watched as the snow banks began to melt and the days grew imperceptibly longer.

  Eadburh could barely contain her excitement as she sat in the chapel, hearing the services as each day passed, living only for the evenings when her visitor could make his way secretly into her chamber and they could lie in one another’s arms.

  They planned to leave in the third week of Lent in order to reach a neighbouring convent in time for Holy Week. Eadburh allowed the younger sisters to pack a travelling trunk and she realised they would have to take an escort of lay brothers from the farm. The abbess making an official visit with her honoured guest could do no less. No matter. They would send the men home when they reached their first destination. She let it be known that after Easter her guest would go on alone towards his distant home. There was no hint that she planned to go with him.

  Weeks after the first thaw and only days before they planned to leave they were lying in one another’s arms after making gentle, lingering love, whispering sleepy plans for their future as the firelight died and the room grew dark when the sound of loud persistent knocking echoed through the convent buildings.

  They lay there, listening, frozen with horror at the sound of shouting, the clash of swords, the splintering of doors, and then the hurried tramp of feet through the stone passages of the buildings. There was nowhere to hide. Within minutes the abbess’s door burst inwards and the room filled with men. Ignoring her, they dragged Elisedd from her bed.

  He flailed out wildly, looking round desperately for something to use as a weapon. His fist closed around a candlestick, but it was struck from his hand and as he was hauled away down the passage and out of her sight she screamed his name once.

  ‘By the order of the emperor!’ their commander sneered as Eadburh was dragged from the sheets and held, half-naked and sobbing with fear, to stand before him. ‘One of the servants here reported to the sisters her suspicions that you had a lover and they made sure the emperor came to hear of it. He has had you watched. You have betrayed your vows, and shamed your name and that of this convent, and you have dishonoured God. The emperor commands that your lover pay for his sacrilege with his life. As for you, my orders are that you be thrown into the fields. You came here as a queen. You will die naked in the snow. Should you survive the winter blast, you can live as a penniless beggar, grovelling in the backstreets of some lonely city. Do not go crying to the emperor. He will not allow you into his presence. His orders were clear. “She is to be thrown out like the whore she is!”’

  She glimpsed the shocked faces of the nuns, brought from their prayers by the commotion and the cold triumphant face of one of her servants, a face strangely familiar, as she was dragged from her chamber, her shift torn from her shoulders, her feet bare, scrabbling wildly on the stone flags as she was pulled helplessly through the long passages and out across the courtyard. There was no sign of Elisedd or of the armed men who had wrestled him away, no sounds of shouting. As her own screams died away, she heard for a brief moment the ang
uished howl of a dog, swiftly cut short, then the convent fell eerily silent. The men who had seized her hauled her towards the entrance to be pushed out into the slush of the thawing fields.

  Behind her, the gates were slammed and she heard the bolts drawn across. As she lay face down in the snow where they had thrown her there was no sound now except for the wail of the icy wind across the plains and her own broken-hearted sobs.

  ‘Bea? Wake up, sweetheart.’

  The arms into which she snuggled were Mark’s. She turned back to see the figure of Eadburh lying in the mud, wearing nothing but her torn shift, her legs and feet bare, her arms scrabbling in the snow at the field’s edge, then darkness closed in over the scene and she was sitting on the bench in the garden with Mark beside her.

  ‘Don’t cry. It was a dream.’

  ‘Someone betrayed her. They told Charlemagne that she had a lover and he was furious, or jealous or both, and poor Elisedd was murdered and she was thrown out of the convent to die a beggar.’ Bea clung to him. Mark was wearing his cassock, she realised, with his silver pectoral cross on its black cord around his neck. He must have come straight from church. ‘What time is it?’ she snuffled.

  ‘After midnight. I’ve been at the hospice.’

  She pulled away from him and looked up at his face. ‘Oh, Mark. Was it your friend?’

  He nodded. ‘He died a couple of hours ago.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘He was at peace with the world and ready to move on to the next where he would be out of his pain. A brave man.’ He eased her out of his arms and stood up. ‘Are you all right now?’ He held out his hand.

  She nodded. ‘It was a very bad dream.’ This was not the time to pour out the horrors of Eadburh’s story. Stiffly she stood up. The garden was cold and very dark as they went back into the kitchen and closed the door on the night and on the anguish of Eadburh lying broken in the melting snow. Bea took a couple of tumblers out of the cupboard and poured him a small shot of whisky, then one for herself.