The Dream Weavers Page 13

  She made her way back to Chris. ‘Is everything put away and neat?’ She knew that was important to the landlady in Chris’s soul.

  Her friend nodded. Growing bored with the view she had gone back inside to do a bit of surreptitious tidying. She had even remade the bed and twitched the covers straight. Everything had been tucked into the rightful places in the cupboards and she had looked round the living room, obviously itching to pick up the scattered papers and straighten the cushions on the armchairs by the fire, but managing to resist the urge.

  Locking up behind them, the two women made their way down the path and back to the car.

  ‘No ghosts now?’ Chris looked across at Bea as they climbed in.

  ‘No ghosts now,’ Bea confirmed. ‘The cottage feels at peace.’

  ‘Well, let’s hope Simon doesn’t stir anything else up,’ was Chris’s crisp comment as she backed the car round to drive back down the hill.

  ‘Can you really read it?’ Kate was standing watching as Simon made himself comfortable at the table and switched on the Anglepoise. He had brought his notebook, and a pencil – no ink of any kind must come near this sort of treasure – and they had agreed that it made sense if he were to take photos of the pages that referred to the kingdom of Mercia so that he could pore over them at home. But in the meantime he would allow himself this one day with the actual thing.

  ‘I’ll leave you alone then,’ Kate whispered when she realised he wasn’t listening. Already he was there, deep in the text.

  In this same year of Our Lord 757, Ethelbald, King of Mercia, was murdered at Repton … Offa seized the kingdom of Mercia … Offa, the son of Thingfrith, the son of Eanwulf, the son of Osmod, the son of Eawa, the son of Pybba, and so on back to the last, or in fact the first, name on the list, the son of Woden.

  That was so cool. To be descended from the gods. He loved this stuff and knew a lot of it by heart from the printed versions of the main surviving chronicles. The births and deaths of the successive kings of the kingdoms of what was to become England, and their bishops and the kings of the Franks and the popes: the men – and they were nearly all men – who mattered, the battles between them and the laconically reported appearances, as first rare and then more and more frequently, of ‘the heathen’, the Vikings, who were to ravage and conquer so much of the country over the next centuries.

  This was pretty much a faithful copy of other versions of the chronicle, and as far as he could see contained nothing particularly new. The beautiful script was neat and careful, the occasional red capital letter at the head of a page, exquisite. He could imagine the monk who had copied it sitting in his candlelit cell working tirelessly day in, day out, copying out his version, only the later parts varying from the original as history became actual reportage. He turned the page and skimmed down the lines of script. The copyist had changed here, the new scribe not quite so neat. There were several places where mistakes had been made and scraped off, leaving the vellum rough, and once or twice an empty leaf had been left in between the others presumably to be filled in later. Perhaps by now the author was sitting in a scriptorium, other men around him, all working intently at their tasks. Simon leaned closer, screwing up his eyes, cursing the fact that he didn’t have a magnifying glass. Were the pages actually empty or had they been erased? He stood up abruptly and went to the door.

  Kate and Phil were downstairs in the kitchen. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen a magnifying glass here. You could try my aunt’s desk in the library,’ Kate said in answer to his request.

  He followed her directions along the main hall, letting himself into the large book-lined room. So, this was the library Jane had mentioned. It was shadowy, the shutters closed, and very cold. He looked round, shivering, at hundreds, probably thousands of books, innumerable treasures spanning centuries lining the walls, library steps, a small table, several carved chairs and more books, everywhere he looked. How on earth had she managed to filter out the few she thought the most valuable? He walked over to the large roll-top desk which sat by the window and, pulling open one of the shutters to give himself some light, he gazed down at the dusty papers and pens lying on the blotter in front of him. There were cubbyholes filled with old ink bottles, seals, little boxes of rusty paperclips, papers, envelopes, what looked like old bills, but no magnifying glass. No. All this felt too much like spying. He would rather get hold of one in Hereford next time he was there, and that would give him an excuse to come back. Leaving the desk untouched, he pushed the shutters closed as he had found them and went back to the door. There was something about this room he didn’t like.

  It was a relief to be seated again at the table upstairs. Leaning forward, his phone in his hand to photograph the text, he turned another page, and there it was, the extract Jane must have been thinking of when she said there was a section all about Offa’s family. Reaching for his notebook, he picked up his pencil and copied down the words, transcribing them into modern English as he read.

  784 Offa the king defeated the men of Powys and took the lands of Pengwern and began to build his great ditch between Mercia and the tribes of the west. In the following year Egbert, son of Eahmund fled from Wessex, then to exile in the court of King Charlemagne.

  787 The son of Offa, Ecgfrith was consecrated king by Archbishop Hygeberht of Lichfield while his father still lived. At his consecration was the king’s wife Cynefryth and his daughters, Ethelfled, Alfrida and Eadburh. In that same year the heathen raided the coast of Wessex.

  The next two pages were blank.

  His heart thudding with excitement, Simon picked up his phone and took careful photos of each page, the empty leaves as well as those covered in writing. In one place a whole page had been cut out, leaving the smallest ragged traces that it had ever been there.

  He read on. The story progressed haphazardly. Again this was stuff he knew. And then it stopped. Abruptly, halfway down a page. He screwed up his eyes. There was more, but the writing had been erased. He turned over two pages. The next entry was for the year 806.

  And also in this same year, on 4 June, the sign of the holy cross appeared on the moon one Wednesday at dawn; and again this year on 30 August, a marvellous ring appeared around the sun.

  He continued photographing every page, concentrating hard, making sure nothing was omitted. There was no time to read it all, but he could do that later once the pictures were safely on his laptop. He turned to the last page. The entry was scribbled. No neat lines pricked here. It was the final entry and it was for the year 1055.

  King Gruffydd is harrying Herefordshire. He has laid waste to Leominster and the convent of the nuns there. We fear he may turn next towards us. Only by the Grace of God can we be saved. We pray for our own Blessed Saint Cuthbert whose festival we celebrate in two days’ time, to be with us here and protect this holy——

  And that was it. A dash as though the scribe had stopped mid-sentence, a blot of ink and then – nothing.

  He shivered. Had King Gruffydd arrived? He would have to see if he could check from other sources. In his imagination he pictured the scribe throwing down his quill pen and the little knife he used to sharpen his pens and erase his mistakes, pushing away his inkhorn and standing up, moving away from his writing slope and, for whatever reason, never coming back. From his name, Gruffydd was Welsh. Obviously he was Welsh. And what had happened in those missing years? He bent closer. Why go to the trouble of scraping them away, why not just cut them out?

  He looked down at his scribbled notes. Most of the chronicle was as he remembered from the general translation in his own much-thumbed Everyman edition, which was up at the cottage. But there were extra bits, bits he didn’t recognise, bits that referred only to Mercia. This was definitely a local version. He ran through a list of possibilities in his head. Priories which would have had a scriptorium. Leominster, perhaps – although the final entry seemed to contradict that. Or St Guthlac’s in Hereford. Or perhaps Hereford minster– the earliest version of which prob
ably dated, if he remembered right, from the mid seventh century. Most copies of the chronicle that still existed had been saved during the Reformation by local antiquarians and scholars when the monasteries and their precious scriptoria and libraries had been so cruelly and viciously dismantled. This house was easily Tudor, probably earlier. Perhaps this book had languished here, lost, but safe since the sixteenth century. Simon reined in his imagination sternly. The experts would find out. Guesswork had no place in serious history. And yet …

  ‘Will studying the book help with your work?’ Kate was alone in the kitchen when later that evening he put his head round the door to say goodbye.

  ‘I’m not sure whether there is any new information. As Phil suggested, I have taken pictures of the pages that refer to Mercia and I will read them more carefully when I have them on my computer screen at home.’ He paused. She was peeling potatoes, rhythmically dropping them one by one into a bowl on the table. ‘I can’t thank you enough for letting me see this treasure. The feeling of actually touching something so very special is beyond words. I felt as though I was in the same room as the guy writing that document, a thousand years ago. I could picture him, with his pen and inks. Almost hear the silence; perhaps the echo of plainsong around him as he worked.’

  She nodded. ‘I sometimes feel that here, in this house. When Phil is out, like now. The echoes of the past come back. He’s too practical to feel it, which is probably just as well, as someone needs to be hands-on here, but there is something very special about an old building.’ She shivered. ‘My great aunt left me the house. For her last few years she was in a home and it was rented out to various people. They didn’t always look after it very well, but at least they didn’t steal anything. Those books were still there and her jewellery was still in the drawer in her bedroom.’ She smiled. ‘Nothing all that valuable, sadly, but still I was amazed no one had taken it. Some time before she died, I gather there was a bit of an incident with one couple. They said the house was haunted and made a huge fuss about it. They seem to have left very suddenly, but I never heard any more about it. It was empty at the time she died, and I’ve never sensed a ghost here, but there are all sorts of legends about the place.’

  ‘Do you know when it was built?’

  She shook her head. ‘I expect there are records in the library. We do have a bit of Offa’s Dyke in the garden. Do you want to see?’ She put down her knife and dried her hands on a dishcloth. ‘More hands-on history.’

  He followed her out and across the back lawn towards the shrubbery.

  ‘Wales’s answer to Hadrian’s Wall,’ he said ruefully as they stood together looking down into the brambles.

  She laughed. ‘This is one of the lesser known bits. I’ll show you on the map.’

  Back in the kitchen, they pored over a much folded and refolded Ordnance Survey map. The house was circled in red. ‘Otherwise we can’t find it ourselves! It’s here. See. There are other bits of the dyke marked on the map. We’ve traced its route through the fields here, but they were ploughed up during the war and it’s mostly been lost.’ Kate stared down at the map in silence. ‘It’s sad, isn’t it. But there is still a bit of it left.’ She sighed. ‘Jane phoned, by the way, to say she is bringing someone over to look through the books. I hate the idea of selling anything, but if we are going to save the house we need the money, and I suspect it would be better for them to be somewhere safe, away from the damp and spiders.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘If you would like to come back and have another look before the guy comes, you would be welcome.’ A twinge of pain crossed her face and he saw her hand go to the bump under her shirt.

  ‘When is it due?’

  ‘Not long now. Have you got children?’

  He nodded. ‘That’s why I need a retreat to do my writing. The patter of tiny feet all over the house can be a tad distracting. But in a big place like this it will be wonderful. Exactly what it needs.’

  He smiled to himself as he climbed into his car. Tiny feet indeed! Two teenagers and a wife who heartily detested the Anglo-Saxons and everything to do with them.

  The house was empty when Chris dropped Bea off outside the cathedral gates in Broad Street. She couldn’t remember where Mark had said he was going that afternoon, but she remembered him saying it was his turn to take evensong so he wouldn’t be back until after the service. She shivered. She wished he was there. Solid dependable Mark. He would keep her safe. Stop her being tempted by something she knew she must resist.

  Wandering through into the sitting room she stopped in front of the piano, lifted the lid and played a note. She was missing the girls more than she could say. The sound of Anna’s music had filled the house, as had their voices, their arguments. Their laughter. Their noisy presence was everywhere when they were at home. If they were there, she wouldn’t need to go upstairs. She struck the key again. Middle C sounded gently round the room and faded to silence.

  Heather’s voice floated into her mind.

  You mustn’t do this again, Bea. You know that, don’t you.

  Of course she mustn’t. It would be insane. She could not risk being seen, really seen, by those ice-blue eyes from the past. She felt again the sudden frisson of fear, a tiptoe of cold across her back and, for a second, she seemed to hear her teacher, Meryn’s, voice at the back of her head.

  Possession and obsession, Bea. Remember the two most dangerous parts of this job. Don’t let either touch you. Protect yourself. Close the doors against the past. Never be tempted to go through them. Never go back.

  But if she was completely in control, there would be no danger. The doors were closed. She wasn’t planning to go through them. She was interested, yes, curious as to how the story would progress, yes. But obsessed? No. Obsession would be too dangerous.

  ‘I have arranged your marriage.’ Offa never spoke to any of his daughters with affection in his voice. He had summoned Eadburh to his private office, behind the great hall at Tamworth. Outside, the autumn winds were racing through the trees in the great forest beyond the palisade, she could hear the roar in their branches but here it was strangely still, the king and queen seated side by side by the brazier that warmed the room, in unaccustomed alliance as they confronted their rebellious daughter. At her father’s words, Eadburh had clenched her fists, hanging at her sides hidden in the folds of her gown. She shivered, her head high, and waited.

  ‘I have decided to give you the highest honour. You will be married to King Beorhtric of Wessex. We will ride back to Sutton to celebrate Christ’s Mass in the minster at Hereford and meet him to seal the agreements, then the marriage blessing will take place. The marriage will confirm our alliance and ensure peace between our kingdoms and his friendship and support for your father.’

  Eadburh opened her mouth to object, to argue, to ask what kind of man it was she was to go to, but her mother was staring into the fire and refused to meet her eye, and already her father had reached for another scroll, his attention focused elsewhere. ‘Oh,’ he looked up again. ‘You should know. The King of Powys’s youngest son, Elisedd. He met with an accident and died.’

  She gasped. ‘No!’

  But already he had looked away again, calling to his scribe, reaching for another document. There was to be no further explanation, no argument, no further discussion for her.

  She stared at her father, her eyes wide with shock, unable to assimilate what he had said. Then she turned to her mother, but Cynefryth was still staring into the fire.

  Her shoulders slumped and she turned away, refusing to give way to tears. That was why Elisedd had never answered her letter. He was dead. She found she had stopped breathing as she dashed the unshed tears from her eyes. Was this not, after all, what she had wanted: to marry, to be away from her father’s court and all the memories of what had happened, her dreams of a baby that never was, a tiny soul out there in the darkness crying for a mother who had never held him, she always thought of him as a boy, never had the
chance to love him, never wanted to acknowledge he had ever existed. Her dreams that one day Elisedd would come back for her, whisk her away from Mercia into his distant mountains where they could have a dozen more children, had shattered like a piece of glass dropped on a tiled floor.

  She shivered. So, she was to marry a king, not a mere prince; and she, the youngest, was to be married before either of her sisters. Taking a deep breath, she straightened her back and raised her chin. Elisedd was gone. Dead. With an effort she put the thought behind her. Dreams were for children. She would never see him again. Had it been an accident or had her father had him murdered? She would never know, but she would find out. One day she would discover what had happened to him. But for now, this marriage must be triumph enough.

  The royal household set off down the old Roman road south before the snows came. She was not part of the discussions between the two kingdoms; she remained loftily aloof. Marriage to a king was the summit of a royal daughter’s ambition. Her sisters were insanely jealous that she should have been chosen as the first of their father’s daughters to marry. She pretended she was pleased. She had never set eyes on King Beorhtric. Nor did she wish to.’

  She did not see Bea hovering at the periphery of her vision watching from a different world.

  15

  Transferring the photographs to his laptop, Simon examined the pages of the chronicle, zooming in on each page and studying the text with meticulous care. The first scribe had made very few mistakes and his initial letters were beautifully executed, his writing exquisite. His successors were not so careful. More and more mistakes crept in over the years, most scraped away and rewritten on the rough surface. In a few places trouble had been taken to polish the vellum smooth again before the corrections were inserted, but some of the later mistakes were merely crossed out and the new word written in over the top; as though the scribe was careless or in a hurry. Simon sat back, wondering about this last man. Was there no one to oversee his work? A senior monk perhaps, or the abbot himself? And what had happened to stop him working so abruptly and irrevocably?