The Dream Weavers

by Barbara Erskine

  Sandra had been sitting at home beside the open window that looked out onto her small untidy garden. The bridge over the river had puzzled her. That sudden split-second memory of herself there in a strange world, part of the mob, filled with anger and vicious enjoyment, watching a woman dressed as a nun and a boy in ragged trousers and a loose woollen shirt, being pelted with rocks, shouted at, threatened with death, was visceral, a moment of intense enjoyment. The woman had been a queen. She had seen her before. She had been at her court and seen her kill her husband. Then she had seen her with her lover. And now she was watching the woman face retribution.

  It was then, feeling herself watched in turn, she had swung round to find herself face to face with Beatrice. And then everything was gone. In a flash. The river, the bridge, the people on the bridge all stationary, frozen in time, then vanished, switched off, a glimpse into another world visible for a split second, then extinguished.

  On the table in front of her was her pack of Tarot cards. She had a list of names in her hand and had been gazing thoughtfully at them, waiting for one name to jump out at her.

  Beatrice. Emma. Eadburh.

  Eadburh. Princess of Mercia. Queen of Wessex. How did she even know that name? But somehow she was part of this.

  Beatrice was a genuine opponent. A challenge. Someone to fight, to defeat; to grind beneath her heel. This Eadburh was dangerous, greedy for energy, a soul prowling the darker corners of the universe in search of unfulfilled desires. And Emma. It was Emma who was truly interesting. Ostensibly a victim in need of rescue and reassurance, there was something ambivalent about Emma. Emma was all over the place and completely inconsistent. She had two sides to her, two distinct personalities. One was a schoolgirl on the verge of adulthood, and the other was a scheming, vicious woman.

  Eadburh.

  Cutting the pack, Sandra lifted the top card and, leaning back in her chair, turned it to face her. She smiled. So, Emma could wait; she would think some more about the conundrum that was Emma and her alter ego, Eadburh. The card was clear. Beatrice was her immediate concern. An enemy worthy of her complete attention. An enemy who needed to be dealt with now.

  She returned the card to the pack, cut once again and began to deal out the top three.

  She looked at the line of cards in front of her.

  A powerful woman; false hope; the end of a journey.

  She gathered the cards back into the pack and wrapped them up thoughtfully.

  The woman on the bridge was Eadburh, she realised. Perhaps it was better to assume that she was her main opponent. She shivered as she felt the air around her growing cold and suddenly she could no longer visualise the river. Everything around her had blurred. Someone was spying on her, interfering with her sight. She stood up and pushed the cards into the drawer of the table. She was an old hand at this. She knew what she had to do. Surround herself with protection and then from a position of strength attack with every ounce of power she possessed. First she should put running water between herself and her enemy until she was ready to strike. Was that what the bridge had signified? She had been standing on another bridge over another river. She didn’t know where that one had been, but there was a river, here in town.

  Leaning over the stone balustrade she stood looking down into the Wye, staring at the water as it flowed beneath her then slowly she began to walk across, putting the great sweep of the river between herself and the cathedral with its Close. Immediately she felt better. Safer. To launch an attack on Beatrice she would have to cross back, hurl a curse then retreat across the water again. She was good at curses. She’d had a stock of them once and she could remember every one.

  She stood still for a while, running through the options. She should have thought of grabbing something when she visited Beatrice’s house, a link, but she had felt too intimidated by the surroundings, the large house, the railings, the elegant front door, its position so near the cathedral, the power of the Church echoing off every brick. Still, this was good practice for her. Making her mind up, she recrossed the bridge, walking quickly and, picturing Beatrice standing in front of her open door, she closed her eyes and sent a vicious thought form in her direction, a thought form to match the occasion, a thought form that fitted the era of Offa and Ethelbert. It was a flaming spear, dipped in poison, humming with evil. Her message on its way, she stood waiting, as if expecting to hear the woman scream. Then, satisfied it would find its mark, she turned and hastened back across the water towards the safety of the far bank.

  On her windy hillside, Nesta smiled. Just this once she would interfere. She would deflect the curse. Beatrice was open. Vulnerable. She had to be warned.

  At the snap of Nesta’s fingers the spear veered then turned and sped back whence it had come.

  ‘Make up your mind, woman!’ a furious voice shouted as a car slammed on its brakes in front of her. Her heart thudding with fright, Sandra stepped out of its way onto the pavement and clung to the parapet, her head spinning. Something was terribly wrong. Her ears were drumming and she could feel herself bathed in sweat.

  ‘Are you all right, my love?’ A woman passer-by stopped beside her. ‘He had no business shouting like that.’

  ‘I’m fine.’ Sandra managed a smile. ‘My fault. I wasn’t looking.’

  And she wasn’t expecting the spear to be hurled right back. Beatrice had been ready for her; she was obviously going to be more of a challenge than she had expected. And her riposte had been far from churchy. Which was worrying. Sandra had never done anything quite like this before; and certainly never had a reply to any threats she had made, in kind. This had all the hallmarks of a practitioner of skill and strength.

  *

  Smiling, Nesta watched Sandra with satisfaction. The woman was like a child playing with toys. No doubt Beatrice could have dealt with the curse, but a curse was something she understood and it had been a reflex action to intercept elfshot in any form and hurl it back.

  In central Pavia, the woman who had started the riot had staggered back from the parapet of the bridge clutching her side. She screamed as blood seeped out between her fingers. Around her, the crowd swarmed closer, their attention shifting from their original victim, their bloodlust roused. As they closed round her, suddenly the mob halted in its tracks, thwarted. The woman who had screamed had disappeared.

  It was several minutes before Sandra felt strong enough to move on. The traffic lights had changed. Her would-be rescuer had walked on towards Hereford Cathedral, leaving her alone beside the swiftly running water.

  Bea had gone to sit in the garden at home. She had not expected to see Nesta there. Behind the woman she could see the wild hillside and beyond it the forest.

  ‘It was I who told Elisedd to go to the kingdom of the Franks,’ Nesta said, the wind catching her words and whipping them away like so many dead leaves. ‘I told him if he loved her he should follow her, and he paid with his manhood.’

  ‘Did he survive? Did either of them ever return to Britain?’ Bea reached out towards her and felt with her own fingers the cold wind that tore at the woman’s cloak.

  Nesta said nothing for a while then she smiled, ignoring Bea’s question. ‘The enemy you have made in your own time grows more daring. She thinks she can throw flaming spears at you to frighten you away.’

  ‘Flaming spears!’ Bea repeated the words in astonishment.

  ‘She has read books and studies cards with pictures that tell her what to do and she flails in the halls of the elves like a trapped moth.’

  ‘Sandra?’ Bea whispered.

  ‘You need to swat her away.’

  ‘Swat!’ Bea echoed, unable to prevent herself from repeating Nesta’s words like an echo.

  ‘She travels through time, trailing previous lives behind her, always the same person, incapable of redemption.’ Nesta folded her arms. ‘But in this story it was she who pushed Eadburh back towards her destiny. The sisters of Wyrd were working through her.’

  Fleeing back to the
hostelry, Eadburh threw herself on the abbess’s mercy. The woman told her she could no longer stay but, good Christian that she was, she did not turn her out in rags. She told the sobbing woman who knelt before her to leave the hostelry, leave Lombardy and follow the long route back over the mountains and across the empire and across the northern sea to Britannia where in expiation of her sins she should go to a shrine somewhere in one of those cold distant kingdoms and remain there, an enclosed anchorite, until she died.

  Eadburh froze with horror at the abbess’s words, visions of her sister rising up before her eyes, but by the time she had packed her belongings into a bundle and once more gathered up her scrip and staff to join a party of pilgrims on the return journey from Rome on the Via Francigena, she was more optimistic. She had her slave, Theo, with her still, and she had Ava and where else was there for her to go?

  She had much to fear, going once more into the heart of Charlemagne’s territories, but if she managed it and headed across the sea to the northern parts of Britannia, far away from Wessex, she would surely find shelter and solace there. She could look for her sister Ethelfled in Northumbria, and if she was still alive find succour there. Of one thing she was certain, she would not join Alfrida in Crowland Abbey in the bleak, lonely fens where as far as she knew her happy, carefree sister was immured by her own choice, forever, giving her life to God. No way was Eadburh going to obey that part of the abbess’s injunction. Ever.

  Slowly Bea became aware of the trickle of water from the fountain. The garden was very quiet. So, Eadburh had not died in misery and rags in Pavia. The people who had reported that news back to Asser so long after the event had succumbed to wishful thinking. The former queen had set off once more on the long walk home.

  And Emma? Once more she tried to reach out, to find her, but there was nothing but a wall of silence.

  She sat still, thinking hard. What had happened next to Eadburh? Had she made it back to Britannia or had she fallen somewhere unknown and unnoticed by the wayside? Whatever had happened to her, she had not in the end drawn enough attention for her demise to be mentioned in the chronicles. If she had been captured and murdered or executed there would have been a record. Asser in his malicious account of her life could not have resisted mentioning that.

  With a sigh, she leant back on the bench and sat with unfocused eyes, waiting for the past to open up to her again.

  ‘Bea!’ Mark’s voice from the kitchen brought her back to reality with a jolt.

  ‘Do you want some tea?’ He was filling the kettle. ‘You’ll never guess who I was speaking to just now. Jane Luxton came over. She was wondering if the budget could stretch a few million to buy the Coedmawr Chronicle for the cathedral library.’ One look at her face told him something was wrong. ‘What’s happened?’

  She told him about Emma. ‘It was her first exam. The school got in touch with them and told them she never arrived.’

  ‘Oh no.’ He pulled out a chair and sat down at the table. ‘That poor child. She must be so distressed and confused. To skip her exams is terrible. I take it this is wretched Eadburh again?’

  ‘I would guess so. Simon thinks Emma will try to come here. I promised him I would ring at once if I hear anything. He’s waiting at the cottage in case she turns up there.’

  ‘Is she still looking for Elisedd?’

  Bea sat down opposite him. ‘It seems that Elisedd was murdered by Charlemagne. But Em is lost in a world of dreams and ghosts. I don’t know what she’s thinking.’

  ‘What’s Eadburh thinking?’

  Bea gave an exhausted smile. ‘Last time I looked she was heading back to Britannia, once more afraid for her life. She didn’t die at Pavia as the chronicle said, but who knows what happened to her on the way back.’ She sighed. ‘I don’t suppose the cathedral can afford to buy the chronicle?’

  He laughed wryly. ‘As if! I told Jane the only option might be crowdfunding. She told me the people who own it have just had their baby, by the way. A little boy.’ He leaned forward on his elbows. ‘That’s not somewhere Emma might go, is it? Coedmawr?’

  Bea shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. Whenever she rushed off somewhere, it was to find Elise. She has this vision of a handsome, lusty prince.’

  ‘And where would this handsome lusty prince be when he wasn’t on Offa’s Ridge?’

  She never got to answer the question.

  ‘I’ve had a text from Emma!’ Simon’s voice was taut with anxiety as she picked up the phone. ‘She’s on her way to North Wales. She wants you and me to meet her tomorrow at Eliseg’s Pillar.’

  44

  Simon had checked the history of the pillar. ‘I don’t think it was the seat of the kings,’ he said to Bea as they drove north. ‘I’ve seen so many pictures of it. It was originally a stone cross, placed on a Bronze Age burial mound. Not a palace. If the palace was anywhere, it was on top of the hill nearby. Castell Dinas Bran.’

  They had left his car in the Close and Bea was driving as he sat beside her, his phone in his hand. His eyes kept flicking towards it.

  ‘I’m sure she’ll ring,’ she said at last.

  ‘It’s still switched off. I don’t know what she was thinking. To walk out on the day of her first exam.’

  ‘Maybe she was more stressed about them than we suspected and this has nothing to do with Eadburh.’

  ‘That’s what the headmistress said. Not about Eadburh – we haven’t mentioned any of that to her obviously – but about exams. She knew Emma hadn’t done enough revision.’ She heard him sigh. ‘The head said we mustn’t worry too much. She can always resit. It happens a lot, apparently. The strain is too much for some kids. When they realise the world doesn’t fall apart because they haven’t turned up, they relax a bit.’

  Except that wasn’t what had happened to Emma. They both thought it although neither voiced their fears.

  It took them almost two hours to drive to Llangollen. The Pillar of Eliseg turned out to be a short walk along the main road from the beautiful ruins of the Abbey of Valle Crucis. It stood on the edge of a field, a broken stone shaft on top of a steep mound. The carved inscription had long ago worn away, and the family tree of the kings of Powys had only been rescued by a transcription copied down in the seventeenth century. The mound itself had, it was thought, been the resting place of families who might have been their ancestors going back as far as the Bronze Age. They stood side by side in front of the notice board. ‘It was once a great Celtic cross,’ Simon murmured. ‘The cross from which the valley and the abbey take their name.’

  There was no sign of Emma, and her phone was still switched off.

  The Cadw ticket office for the abbey was open. Simon went in. He showed them Emma’s photo on his phone.

  ‘She was here. Yesterday. Asking about the history of the cross, looking for the palace of the kings of Powys,’ he said as he climbed back into the car. ‘The man in there was very helpful. Luckily he was a history buff. He said after the Romans left at the beginning of the fifth century, the kings of Powys probably lived in Castell Dinas Bran, the Iron Age fort on the hill up there.’ He pointed vaguely behind them, ‘But at the date Emma is looking for, the main seat of the kings was at a place called Mathrafal, which is near Meifod, about twenty miles from here. She had a rucksack with her and was wearing boots. He got the impression she was hiking.’

  ‘She was going to walk there?’ Bea had reached into the back of her car for the road atlas lying on the back seat.

  ‘He gave her some leaflets.’ Simon reached for his phone. ‘She’s still not picking up. She must know we’d be frantic.’

  ‘Perhaps she doesn’t want to be found. Not yet.’ Bea sighed. ‘She doesn’t know the full story. That Elisedd died far away. Perhaps in her mind they are still young and in love. Oh, poor Emma! You’d better ring Val and let her know what we’re doing.’

  Simon studied the OS map in his hands. His informant had inked a red cross on the place for him. ‘He reckoned it’s about fort
y minutes’ drive from here. He said there are actually two castles there, of different dates, both hard to find.’

  They found the first castle on a tump in a field. It was a beautiful site, surrounded by ancient trees on a bend of the River Vyrnwy. There was no sign of Emma there and no one to ask. Simon had found the castle on his phone. ‘This is the wrong date. After our period.’ He sat down on a fallen tree. ‘Who are we kidding? She could be anywhere. Why didn’t she wait for us by the pillar? She asked us to go there!’

  ‘Your expert from Cadw said there was a second castle round here, Simon.’ Bea put her hand on his shoulder. ‘Let’s go and find the other one. We can’t give up yet.’

  The Mathrafal Castle they wanted, the seat of the ancient kings of Powys, had originated as another Iron Age fort, this one in the centre of a wood only minutes away from the first, but it too was deserted. Without any idea of where to go next, they retreated to the nearest village. Meifod was only a mile away and it was there, outside the church, that at last they met someone who had seen Emma. The woman had greeted them with a smile as they made their way towards the church door. She was middle-aged, wearing a tweed skirt and waterproof jacket, a pair of secateurs in her hand, gardening gloves tucked under her arm.

  ‘It was early this morning,’ she said as Simon showed her the photo. ‘She told me she had walked all the way from Llangollen yesterday. She spent the night at a B & B on the outskirts of the village. She said she came here because it was the burial place of the ancient kings.’ She looked from Simon to Bea anxiously. ‘It never occurred to me there was anything wrong. She seemed fine: confident, a bit intense perhaps, but not unhappy.’

  ‘Where is she now?’ Simon’s mouth had gone dry.

  ‘I don’t know. She asked me if I knew where the burial place was. To be honest, I don’t know much about it. She went into the church to look for a guidebook, and I went home. She had gone when I came back after lunch. Look,’ she felt in her pocket for a notebook, ‘I’ll give you the number of the B & B where she was staying. It belongs to a friend of mine. It might be worth you speaking to her. Your daughter might have told her where she was headed. I’m so sorry I can’t help any more. I hope you find her.’