The Dream Weavers

by Barbara Erskine

  As the woman left them to themselves, they stood by the door of the church, helplessly staring round. ‘I’ve found something about this church.’ Simon was staring at the phone in his hand. ‘It was an ancient ecclesiastical centre, a clas, founded by a saint in the sixth century, and is traditionally the burial place of the kings whose seat was at Mathrafal,’ he looked up triumphantly.

  ‘So, is this the place where she saw Elisedd in her dream,’ Bea murmured. ‘He was an abbot here. Although she said there was a river nearby.’

  ‘There seems to be a stream down here.’ Simon wandered off the path a little way. ‘And the river can’t be far. Oh Bea. What are we going to do? Where is she?’

  ‘Simon, we’ve so nearly found her and we know she’s safe.’ She tried to reassure him. ‘She’s being sensible and her detective work seems to be pretty good. Why don’t you ring that number?’

  Ten minutes later they were parked in the driveway of the B & B. The owner appeared at the door. ‘I was bit surprised she was on her own, I must admit; she seemed so young, but she was very composed and we get so many walkers up here, I didn’t think it suspicious.’ She seemed anxious. ‘I asked her to have supper with us as she was on her own and she chatted quite normally. She told us her brother was doing his exams and she was on a trip to research some material for her degree.’

  Simon snorted. ‘Degree! She’s seventeen!’

  ‘I didn’t ask her age.’ The woman stood her ground. ‘She talked about her research and my husband got some local history books out for her to look at. She was going up to the church today to see the burial ground. It’s huge, with some lovely old trees, and there’s an ancient cross which is now inside the church.’

  ‘Did she say where she was going after she had been there?’

  ‘Mathrafal. It’s only up the road. We told her there was nothing to see.’

  ‘We’ve already checked there,’ Simon said despondently.

  ‘Is there any chance she said she was coming back here tonight?’ Bea put in.

  ‘I’m afraid not. She didn’t say where she was going after that. I hope you find her.’ Her last words echoed those of her neighbour.

  ‘At least she’s safe, we know where she is and we know what she’s doing,’ Bea said as they climbed back into the car. She’s being sensible and staying in proper accommodation. You’d better ring Val again, Simon. She’ll be going out of her mind back in London.’

  ‘And she’ll come rushing up here or tell the police.’

  ‘Then you must reassure her. See if you can persuade her to stay with Felix. After all, he needs her too.’ She engaged gear and headed back down the gravel drive. ‘Now, I’m driving back to the church. I’m going to have a go at connecting with her. See if I can learn anything that way. I have tried, but ironically I’ve trained her too well. She’s protecting herself, but you never know, in the church she might have let her guard down a bit. It’s worth a try. Why don’t you go into the pub and get us both a drink and a sandwich and I’ll join you there.’

  The girl was open, easy prey. Sandra smiled as she sat with the cards before her on the table.

  ‘Emma? Can you see me? I’ve come to find you. Where are you?’

  Closing her eyes, Sandra emptied her mind, allowing the scene to appear. It was wild country, with a track winding through desolate hills down towards a shallow river valley and there was a church there, more than a church, a community of buildings, stone-built, roofed with thatch, a broad river nearby. She noted the cross on the roof of the church, the busy community of men and women coming and going about their work, a monk wandering between them on his way to church or into one of the other buildings. There were old yew trees in the churchyard, signs that it was an ancient holy site.

  The girl was moving forward, but she was still frightened, not sure of her welcome, creeping closer under cover of the trees.

  Sandra probed gently. ‘Who are you looking for?’

  The girl was startled, looking round. ‘Elisedd. I’m looking for Elisedd. Bea? Is that you?’

  So, she was accustomed to Beatrice being there beside her in her head.

  ‘Of course.’ Sandra smiled. ‘I want to help you, Emma.’

  ‘You don’t sound like Bea.’ The girl was raising a boundary wall. She was suspicious and she had been well taught.

  ‘I’m your friend, Emma. I can take you to Elisedd.’

  ‘Why are you calling me Emma?’ Now she was bristling with indignation.

  ‘What should I call you?’

  ‘Eadburh.’ She pronounced it Edba. ‘I’ve come to look for him. I’ve travelled so very far to find him.’

  ‘Then let’s go in together.’ Without even realising she had done it, Sandra held out her hand over the cards.

  Emma flinched. ‘Don’t touch me!’

  ‘I won’t touch you.’ Sandra withdrew her hand. ‘Is Elisedd in the church?’

  ‘Elisedd is dead!’

  Sandra felt a prickle of fear. ‘What makes you think he’s dead?’

  Emma whirled round. ‘Because I killed him! Because I have brought him nothing but misery! Because I have spent a hundred lifetimes looking for him to beg his forgiveness. His death was my fault and mine alone. I need you to go. You’re not Bea. Why are you interfering? Why are you spying on me? You are not wanted here.’ Her eyes were boring into Sandra’s skull. The transition had happened. Emma had gone. The eyes were blue. Eadburh’s eyes.

  In Hereford Sandra groaned with frustration after her initial shout of triumph. She sighed. Then she drew back, turning sharply away. She shuffled the cards together in front of her. When she opened her eyes again, Eadburh was still there. She was dressed in a long gown, with a mantle of black wool, a white scarf around her hair, a carved wooden cross hanging on a cord around her neck. A nun.

  A nun with a knife in her hand and vicious fury on her face. She was no longer a girl of seventeen, she was a woman in her fifties, strong, experienced, tired of life and very angry.

  45

  Bea was seated towards the back of St Tysilio’s church in Meifod, beside a pillar in the darkest corner she could find. She was watching Eadburh as she boarded a small trading vessel anchored off the fishing port of Wissant. Still accompanied by the boy Theo and by her great dog, she was with a band of pilgrims, most of whom had made the long arduous journey to Rome and were now returning home, following the ancient pilgrim route, the Iter Francorum, so named, her companions had told her, by an ancient bishop called Wilibald who had written about his own journey a hundred years before. She had joined them at a pilgrim hostel in the town of Besançon. No one had recognised her, no one had bothered her unduly and now, so many exhausting miles later, she was within sight of the sea. She had decided that after they made landfall she would continue to travel with the group as far as their destination, which was Canterbury. Once there, she would work out where to go next. She had no wish to go back to Wessex or to Mercia. She had thought often about Wessex on her long journey west, and about her little daughter, but the child would be much older now, no doubt having been fed innumerable lies about her mother, and perhaps resigned to a life in God’s house. The risk of being recognised if she went in search of her daughter was too great. The remaining choices were stark; she had already discounted journeying to find her sister Alfrida at Crowland in the far away Fens, or travelling north in the hope that Ethelfled was still alive. If she was, she too would no doubt be an abbess, probably in some remote abbey on a rugged coast facing across a hostile sea. Perhaps some of her travelling companions were planning to go further once they had visited the shrine of St Augustine and she could go with them. Life on the road as a pilgrim was not unpleasant. Thieves and footpads tended to leave them alone, knowing they would be unlikely to be wealthy, on foot as they were, and for the most part dressed in near rags. They were cordial to one another and she had even forged a cautious friendship with one or two other women in the party.

  There was one choice left.
To make her way in disguise across the kingdom of Mercia, avoiding the court, avoiding anyone who might have a remote memory of King Offa’s daughter, travelling on towards the western stars that still called her incessantly. To Powys. To the land Elisedd had loved so much, to see if she could find his ghost.

  Bea watched their journey across the choppy sea, their landfall beneath the white cliffs and the last leg of their journey towards the cathedral, disjointed scenes from Eadburh’s dreams. She saw her walk with her friend, Freda, up the aisle of the cathedral, followed by Theo and Ava, still there in her wake, and give thanks before the shrine of St Augustine at the end of the journey for God’s protection and deliverance before she and Freda hugged and kissed goodbye. How strange, Bea found herself thinking. She had seen Eadburh show so few signs of emotion or genuine fondness for any other human being. Elisedd had been the one exception. It was as though her passion for him had sucked her dry. And yet in the last months she had grown fond of Cwen, and Theo and now of Freda, and more than all of them she loved her dog.

  The pilgrimage to Canterbury accomplished, she joined another group of travellers heading west, who were happy to give her a lift on the back of their ox-cart until she found herself at last in Wareham, the final resting place of her murdered husband, Beorhtric.

  For a whole day she hesitated outside the abbey, overwhelmed with unexpected remorse, then at last, wrapping her face in her veil, she went to kneel before his tomb. He had been generous to her in his way and allowed her to become his queen. She had not intended to kill him. Once more a man had died because of her. Once more she needed to do penance for his soul. Spending two days in prayer beside his stone-built catafalque, she walked at last with downcast eyes out of the abbey and resumed her journey with Theo and Ava, north now, through a landscape she still carried in her head from the days she had progressed around the kingdom of Wessex as its queen, heading towards Mercia.

  It was on the road to Hereford that she found herself with a band of men and women, many of them blind, heading towards the shrine of St Ethelbert. Healing springs had sprung up, she learned, in the places where his head had rested on its way to his tomb. This time her prayers were heartfelt. She knelt and prayed with the others for the miracle of sight, that in exchange for the punishment she had exacted on the martyr’s murderer she might be permitted to see again the man she loved.

  That night one of their number let out a cry of joy as he found suddenly that he could see, and that same night as she lay in the dark, an anonymous, penitent, guest in the hostel at St Guthlac’s Priory, she fell asleep at last and dreamed of Elisedd.

  Elisedd, maimed and delirious, had lain for a long time between life and death in a priory, deep in the heart of the mountains and forests of the Ardennes. He was brought back to life and hope by the ministrations of the almoner and his medical knowledge, and of the prior with his deep compassion. Emperor Charlemagne, it appeared, had after all spared his life if not his manhood, aware perhaps in some part of himself that it would have been hard for any human man to resist the wiles of Eadburh, the witch Queen of Wessex.

  Elisedd blamed himself for what had happened. If he had stayed at home she would not have been tempted away from her vows, she would have been still abbess of a rich and beautiful monastic estate and she would have been content if not happy without him. He vowed to spend the rest of his life in penance for his weakness in giving in to his lust, and for his inability to save her. What had become of her he didn’t know, but he doubted she still lived.

  He heard once from a gossiping lay brother a rumour that she had survived the first winter that had almost killed him and that she had been seen far away in the kingdom of Lombardy somewhere south of a great range of snow-capped mountains; she had been in great distress and poverty, he was told, but after weeks of intense hope the prior’s enquiries confirmed that she had died there at last of starvation and despair. And so the legend of Eadburh’s fate was reinforced as it moved from mouth to mouth and telling to telling.

  He spent the following winter in prayer for her soul and in studying the books that Charlemagne had donated to the monastic library. When spring came, Elisedd set off to return to his own land in Powys where, he vowed, he would retire to his clas at Meifod and spend the rest of his life in prayer.

  Opening her front door, Sandra found Heather standing on the step.

  ‘You can’t keep away, can you,’ she said nastily. ‘What do you want now?’

  Heather pushed past her. She walked straight through into the living room and stood looking down at the table, strewn with Tarot cards. There was a book on Anglo-Saxon magic lying open beside them and she spun round. ‘You have to stop this!’

  ‘What I do is none of your business, Heather. None at all.’

  ‘It is when it is my friends you’re hurting.’

  ‘Friends!’ Sandra’s voice shot up an octave. ‘Not the kind of friends I would like to have. But, if you must know, I’m trying to help them. To do that I had to find out who or what was possessing them.’

  Heather stared at her. She was fervently wishing she hadn’t come. ‘And did you find out?’ she hazarded cautiously.

  ‘Oh yes.’ Sandra clenched her teeth. ‘It’s a woman called Eadburh. She’s some kind of uber-powerful witch.’

  She was, she had to admit, still traumatised by the vicious fury of the woman who had confronted her, knife in hand. She shuddered. It had taken all her resolve to throw a protective shield between her and the virago who had turned on her when she held out her hand to Emma, silly little Emma. She glared at Heather, who was staring down at the Tarot cards with a look of extreme disgust.

  ‘Please stop doing this,’ Heather repeated firmly. ‘It’s dangerous.’

  ‘No chance. It’s not dangerous; it’s interesting. I’m not stopping. No one believed me when I warned them what was happening. They probably “prayed” for me,’ her voice assumed a note of sarcasm as she uttered the word, ‘which obviously had no effect whatsoever. I am going my own way now and I realise that is the real me. I was good at what I did. I can make a difference, whereas you, what are you?’ She couldn’t contain the bile. ‘A goody-goody who sits in the cathedral and asks God to make something exciting happen because it sure as hell has never happened up to now, and when God listens and sends you a full-on case of possession to watch, all you do is whimper and come to me and beg me to stop. Well, I’m not going to. I want to see what happens. I watched this girl Emma change into a vicious murdering woman and when she does it again, I want to be there to see it happen.’

  ‘Sandra! Emma is not a murderer. She’s a child!’

  ‘That’s the point. She’s not a child. Not when she’s possessed. You don’t understand how this works.’

  ‘All right. You tell me.’ Heather was clutching her coat around her as though her life depended on it. She didn’t even recognise this woman any more.

  ‘It works when people like you interfere. She will kill you and she will kill Beatrice.’

  ‘No. That’s not true.’

  ‘How do you know? Do you know anything at all about it?’

  Heather hesitated. She wanted very badly to turn and run out of the house. She wasn’t even sure why she had come. She took a deep breath. ‘No. I don’t. You had better explain it to me.’

  ‘I’m not going to explain anything. But I will show you how powerful I am. Every bit as powerful as the witch woman in the past who thinks she can defeat me. You came to me for help, and you are going to get help. But not in the way you ever dreamed!’

  Heather turned and began to walk towards the door. ‘I pity you, Sandra. And I shall pray for you. And I shall ask Mark and the dean – everyone – to pray for you.’

  Sandra stood where she was, watching as Heather, summoning every ounce of courage she could, walked down the passage and out onto the street.

  With a satisfied smile, Sandra sat down again. She was deep in thought. Finally, she shuffled through her Tarot pack until she found th
e card she wanted. Temperance. A good manager. Normally placid and likeable. But reversed. She reached out to turn the card upside down. Failure to understand. Conflict of interest. Discord.

  ‘So, Heather. I have added you to my list. You are going to regret trying to thwart me,’ she murmured.

  She didn’t notice at first the card that fell, face up, on the carpet at her feet. The High Priestess. When she did, she stared at it thoughtfully and pushed it back into the pack.

  From the shadows Nesta, ever watchful, smiled. Time for her to step forward and put an end to this woman’s nonsense.

  ‘Bea?’ Simon whispered. He was standing next to her in the nave of the church dedicated to Elisedd’s sixth-century ancestor, St Tysilio. ‘Are you asleep?’

  She gave him a weary smile. ‘I was in the past. Here. Eadburh headed back here in the end.’

  ‘So she found him.’

  ‘I don’t know. If she found him, why is she still calling his name?’

  They were silent for a while, then he sighed. ‘I’ve ordered food. We should go back to the pub and eat something.’

  Bea reached for her mobile. Still nothing from Emma. She nodded. She was sick with fear but they had to eat. ‘Afterwards, I will come back to the church.’

  In her dream, Bea was still in the church at Meifod, but it was not the church they had explored, it was a tiny stone building with rounded doorways and a small tower surmounted by a beaten metal cross, on the far side of a broad cloister garden. Beyond that lay the yard farmed by the other buildings of the community. Eadburh was there, confronting the abbot, who was listening ashen-faced as she shouted her demands. ‘He’s here. I know he’s here.’ She turned and shouted up into the vault of the roof. ‘Elise! Where are you?’ She swung back to face him. ‘I know he’s here. I have prayed and my prayers were answered. My love is here. Why are you are hiding him from me?’