The Dream Weavers Read online

  ‘It sounds as though the girl is entering into the spirit of it.’ Sandra took a sip from her cup and grimaced; obviously her tea was cold. ‘Talking about ghosts is so dangerous, I always think.’ Her gaze was speculative once more. ‘Such stupid superstitious nonsense,’ she added with fervour. ‘I’m surprised the canon encouraged her.’

  ‘She wanted to light a candle and pray,’ Bea said reproachfully. ‘I think we can trust Mark to have made the right decision about what to do.’

  Sandra looked taken aback. ‘Of course. You’re right.’

  Bea pushed her plate aside and stood up. ‘I am sorry, Sandra, but I must get on. I have a whole lot of things to do this afternoon. It was lovely to run into you. It’s such a peaceful place, isn’t it, this garden?’

  Before the woman could respond Bea turned and hurried away, oblivious to the expression on Sandra’s face as she watched her go.

  ‘Why did we have to leave?’ Felix was still grumbling as Simon unlocked the car.

  ‘Because Bea was uncomfortable talking about ghosts in front of that woman.’ Simon climbed into the driver’s seat. ‘She specifically asked me not to mention that part of her life to anyone else.’

  ‘Well, you should have told us.’

  Simon sighed. ‘I didn’t think the subject was going to come up in public like that.’

  ‘She was a nosy old bat,’ Emma put in. ‘For goodness’ sake, Felix! You dropped Bea right in it.’

  ‘Why? I thought you said it’s her job. Why would she not want anyone to know about it? She’s not embarrassed about it, is she?’

  ‘She might be, in front of her husband’s colleagues.’ Simon pulled out into the traffic. ‘She might well be.’

  ‘That woman did look a bit creepy. Pushing her way into someone else’s conversation like that.’ Felix was finally getting the point. ‘Why don’t you ask Bea and Mark up to the cottage again, Dad? I for one would like to go on with that particular conversation.’

  ‘As long as Mum never finds out,’ Emma chipped in from the back seat. ‘That wouldn’t go down well either.’

  Sandra sat still for a long time after Bea disappeared. One of the girls from the café came and cleared the table with a cheerful greeting. Sandra didn’t hear her. Her instincts had been right. Beatrice Dalloway was a psychic.

  Her mouth had gone dry, her heart was beating unnaturally fast and she could feel a pain in her stomach as the memories came flooding back. The excitement, the ability to inflict terror, the intense thrill of power and control, then at the last, the loss of that control and the utter, blind fear that had swept over her in an overwhelming tide. She had made a lot of money from her psychic readings. She had manipulated her clients, hooking them with her promises of dreams to come, then gradually drawing them in with warnings and cautions and threats until they didn’t know how to escape. She read their body language – cold reading, she had discovered it was called, and she was good at it, too good. It had taken some time but eventually she had begun to suspect she was genuinely in touch with something beyond herself, that she was genuinely able to predict the future, that what she did was real. For a while it was glorious. She advertised in a local paper and more and more people came to see her, then one day she had foreseen a death. A real, hideous death, and she had not known how to deal with it. She had messed up, her customer had run away in tears and had told people, lots of people, what Sandra had said. What was written in the stars could not be altered; not long after that the woman was killed by her abusive partner. The police came and interviewed Sandra. She was terribly afraid they would think she was involved, but in the end she was written off as a crank who had made a lucky guess. That had hurt.

  She turned in the end to the Church for reassurance and help and security. She never looked at the cards or her crystal ball again. She had never told anyone what had happened. She had been lucky. She had escaped. The past was behind her, but her intuition was still there.

  That evening she pulled a file labelled LOCAL GHOSTS from the bottom drawer of the desk in her sitting room and carried it over to the table. It was full of newspaper cuttings. Slowly and methodically she picked her way through them. There it was: LOCAL GHOSTHUNTER EXORCISES POLTERGEIST. She read the article carefully. They did not name the house or give its exact address, but there were four pages packed with lurid details. The nameless exorcist was described as an attractive woman with phenomenal powers. Sandra snorted. It emphasised the fact that the exorcist had demanded anonymity. Well, she would, wouldn’t she, if her husband was a canon at the cathedral. The woman’s face was nowhere clear in the shadowy pictures, but there was enough detail for her to be fairly sure it was Bea. She put the clippings back in the file and sat for a long time, staring into space.

  So, Beatrice Dalloway had a dangerous secret. Her instinct that the woman was trying to hide something from her was right. Not only that, she could tell when someone else was being shadowed by something evil as clearly as she had known it for herself – and Beatrice was being overshadowed by something very evil indeed.

  19

  ‘Should I wish to consign someone to the place of demons forever after watching them die in agony,’ Eadburh whispered, ‘would you be able to teach me the charms I need?’

  Bea shivered. Though Eadburh was whispering, the meaning of what she said was perfectly clear. She crept closer.

  Eadburh had grown to rely on Nesta more and more over the last two years and, as far as such a thing were possible, they had become friends. Nesta and Hilde were still the only people in the Wessex court who Eadburh fully trusted. Bea saw a flicker of doubt in the woman’s clear grey eyes. ‘What you ask is very wrong.’

  ‘What these men did was very wrong.’ Eadburh clenched her teeth. ‘Both are murderers. I have discovered the name of one, and the other is for the future to reveal. I have someone who will take the potion to them.’

  ‘And it is not for anyone at this court?’

  ‘No.’ Eadburh’s eyes were burning with hate. ‘No one here, and no one will ever know where the death blows came from.’

  ‘Then why do you need poison? Why not send your “someone” to do the deed honourably with a sword in the open? Poison is a secret remedy.’ Nesta stood her ground.

  ‘That is for me to know. I am avenging great wrongs, and I am the only one who knows the name of the man who committed one of them.’ She had seen it in a bowl of spring water under the light of the full moon, the face of the murderer of Alfrida’s intended husband, swimming and flickering as he turned towards her, his helmet framing a strong broad brow and flint-dark eyes. She had recognised him immediately. He worked for her mother.

  ‘The man’s name?’

  ‘If I tell you, then there will be two of us here who know.’

  ‘I do not kill strangers. If I have to answer before the gods of my people and the God of yours, I must know why I did what I did and to whom I gave the death blow.’

  Eadburh considered this, then nodded. ‘Very well. His name is Grimbert. He came to my father’s court as a murderer seeking sanctuary and my father gave it to him. He has worked to climb in their esteem and is now my mother’s chancellor and, I sometimes think, her lover, though that is not his crime. The man he has killed by foul murder was a king, little more than a boy, by treaty about to become the husband of my sister. The murder has gone unavenged and uninvestigated, and that cannot be allowed to be the verdict of history. He had the young king’s escort slaughtered with him and their bodies thrown in a rubbish pit on the side of the hill near my father’s palace, and then killed with his own hands the men who had helped him do the deed. Now he sits at my mother’s table, preening and enjoying her favours, knowing he has her in his power because he holds her secrets. The other killer murdered a prince; a prince who was my friend. When I know his name, I will tell my messenger to act.’ She tightened her lips. She had said all she was prepared to say.

  ‘And to hold secrets does indeed give people power,’ Nesta said t
houghtfully. ‘So you now have power over me. And I over you.’

  Eadburh reached into the scrip hanging from her girdle. Her hand, when she withdrew it, clasped two fine gold belt chains, a tiny gold distaff to hang from one of the chains and some small exquisitely enamelled trinkets. She held them out to Nesta, who took them without enthusiasm.

  ‘So we are friends.’ There was no warmth in Eadburh’s statement.

  ‘Indeed we are.’ Nesta nodded slowly. She sighed. ‘Come to my garden tomorrow and I will guide you to the ingredients you need and give you the charm to be said over them, but you must make the spell yourself and you must wait for the waning moon.’ She turned away and walked slowly across the garden, her gown trailing against the beds of lavender and rosemary, releasing their scents into the night air.

  Bea shrank back into the darkness. Eadburh had stopped and was looking round sharply, as though suspecting that there was someone there, watching. She must never guess that this conversation had been overheard. For a second Bea felt a wave of real terror grip her. The shot of adrenaline in her stomach shocked her out of her trance, bringing her back to the present and the attic room and the realisation that downstairs someone was knocking at the front door.

  Sandra followed Bea into the kitchen and watched as she plugged in the kettle. She sat down at the kitchen table.

  Bea lifted the biscuit tin down from its shelf and pulled off the lid. She put it down in front of her guest. ‘I’m not sure when Mark will be back, if you’ve come to see him.’ She could hear the hostility in her own voice.

  ‘No, dear, it was you I wanted a word with.’ Sandra reached for a piece of home-made shortbread. Bea stared at it, unsure where it had come from. Made by some kind person no doubt for one of the finance meetings, where they were trying to raise millions of pounds for the cathedral fabric fund. She pushed a plate towards Sandra and then as an afterthought took one for herself.

  ‘Such a nice family you were talking to in the Chapter House garden. It was so reassuring to see that they were taking an interest in the cathedral.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Bea turned away to replace the biscuit tin on its shelf.

  ‘How long have you known them?’

  ‘Not long. I thought I told you about them. Simon is staying in a holiday cottage belonging to a friend of ours.’ Bea sat down opposite her, braced for the inquisition.

  ‘I am worried by something that boy said.’

  ‘Oh?’ Bea took a deep breath, trying to control her anger. Silently she began to count to ten.

  ‘He mentioned ghosts.’ Sandra raised her eyes from her biscuit and looked Bea directly in the eye.

  ‘It was a door banging in the cottage, Sandra. Christine had asked me to go with her to deliver some extra blankets and so forth. It’s a tiny place and Simon wasn’t expecting his children to join him for the holidays. Chris wasn’t sure he had everything he needed. Felix must have heard us joking about the creaks and groans of the timbers in an old place like that.’ She saw the woman’s expression veer from relief to disappointment, then doubt. ‘You surely didn’t think he was talking about a real ghost?’

  ‘But you said the dear canon went up there to pray.’

  ‘They asked him to bless the cottage.’

  ‘Because the girl thought she had seen the ghost of St Ethelbert.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Bea took a deep breath. ‘Teenagers, Sandra. They are very susceptible. Some are over-imaginative, like poor Emma, and some are just a pain, like Felix. I think, and fervently hope that, having had Mark’s reassurance, both of them will settle down now to enjoy the countryside. I promise you there is nothing for you to concern yourself about.’

  Sandra took a sip of her tea. ‘People who talk about ghosts have such a lot to answer for. As if any such thing could exist.’ Her voice hardened. ‘I’m amazed the canon would have anything to do with it.’

  ‘It’s part of his pastoral duty to reassure people and pray with them, Sandra.’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Sandra heaved a deep sigh. She looked up sharply. ‘So, you didn’t have to go to a meeting this afternoon after all?’

  Oh heavens, what had she said to this bloody woman? Bea couldn’t remember. She had been far too distracted. She forced her most charming smile. ‘I had a conference call on the phone earlier and in about half an hour – she looked at her wristwatch – I have to go to see someone in the town. It’s never-ending, isn’t it? I know you understand how busy we all are.’

  Sandra nodded. ‘Are your children coming home for Easter? They are both at university, aren’t they?’

  She knew they were. Bea distinctly remembered telling her. She stood up, deliberately ignoring the question. ‘It was good of you to call round, Sandra. I appreciate you feeling you had to clear up the truth behind Felix’s remark. I do hope I’ve set your mind at rest.’

  Sandra remained seated for several seconds then she drained her cup and set it down. As she walked towards the door, Bea found it very hard not to wish that she could command some Anglo-Saxon binding charm to silence nosy neighbours.

  The two women met secretly in the herb-wife’s small stone-built hut. Much like the workshops Nesta had created at every palace they visited with the king’s entourage, it was meticulously neat, with shelves of glass bottles, pottery containers, pouches of herbs and boxes labelled with intricate runes. There was a table in the centre and drying herbs hung from hooks in the rafters above their heads. Outside the night was falling and a huge full moon was rising above the hills, throwing a warm buttery light across the fields and forests, and in through the door of the hut.

  Bea held her breath as she crept closer. She was there with them in the moonlight, but she was aware that she cast no shadow against the wall as she tiptoed towards the door and peered in.

  ‘This is for you to take outside under the moon as it rises on the first night of its waning. We use no fire for this; it is a woman’s charm. You have gathered the worts I specified with your own hand?’

  Eadburh nodded. She had a cloth bag with her and she put it on the table. ‘Don’t open it here,’ Nesta ordered peremptorily. ‘This is between you and the angels of death. I have here a powder I have made to add to your mixture and two hollow pins. Do not touch them with your hands.’ She had the tiny silver objects wrapped in leaves. ‘Dedicate them outside to the work you plan, then throw the leaves into the river. Dip the pins into the potion you make, as I told you, seal them with beeswax and wrap them again first in new leaves, then in this piece of parchment. Then only your messenger will ever touch them again.’ She looked up at Eadburh, and held her gaze. ‘I will whisper what he is to do. The words should not be spoken out loud.’

  Bea leant forward, but she couldn’t hear anything now but the gentle ripple of water from the river nearby and the rustle of leaves in the night. She saw Eadburh pick up a basket and tiptoe out of the hut, Nesta staying behind, tidying away the scraps of leaf and parchment, throwing a box of something onto the embers of her fire. The moon was rising higher now, the light stronger, turning cold, the scarcely visible bite from its side showing more clearly now as it lifted clear of the hills. Eadburh had disappeared between the willows that lined the riverbank, one moment there in the moonlight, the next vanished. Bea did not dare go after her. She stayed where she was, watching Nesta as she put away the last of her bottles.

  The woman turned round slowly and with a shiver Bea felt her gaze. ‘I see you watching,’ she said softly. ‘You who stand at the door so silently in the light of the silver moon, but I sense you mean no harm and will keep our secrets.’ There was a long pause. Bea stared at her, transfixed. ‘That was why I showed you the way into the realm of the Wyrd sisters with a pebble to guide you. You heard my call and you answered it. You are stronger than I expected. But you must beware. The queen did not see you this time and I shall not tell her, for she will not be so understanding if she knows you were there, be you ghost or spirit or witch from a distant land. Beware. What happened here is done an
d written in the chronicles of time. It cannot now be undone.’

  *

  ‘What happened next?’ Simon and Emma were peering over Felix’s shoulder as he fiddled with the adjustments. The page on the screen flipped sideways. ‘Look, see here?’ He moved the cursor arrow as a pointer. ‘Someone has written lots of extra stuff down the side of this page. I don’t think it’s been rubbed out like the previous section, but it’s faded a lot. It’s written in a different ink.’

  Simon bit his lip, trying to curb his impatience. Part of the deal was listening to his son’s detailed description of the methods he was using to decipher this stuff. All Simon wanted to know was the contents of the text.

  ‘That red bit—’ Emma was leaning forward, her finger dabbing at the screen.

  ‘Don’t touch!’ Felix let out a shout.

  ‘Sorry, but I thought it might be blood. Maybe that’s the moment the Vikings broke in.’

  ‘Or the Welsh.’ Felix didn’t look up. ‘Didn’t Dad say they were Welsh? The Vikings were an awfully long way away unless they sailed up the River Wye in their great boats with prows carved like dragons.’ He leaned forward a little, fiddled with the onscreen tools as he tried to enhance the blob his sister had pointed to.

  ‘If it was blood it would be brown,’ Simon put in. ‘I don’t think it’s that – maybe another ink that was on the desk and got knocked over.’

  ‘By the invaders.’

  Felix was obviously taken with his father’s theory about the untidy ending on the last page of the manuscript. ‘The Vikings did sail up both the Wye and the Severn,’ Simon said absent-mindedly. ‘The chronicles were initially distributed throughout the land sometime in the tenth century, after King Alfred came up with the idea. They covered very early history, going back to the fabled ancestors of the royal line of Wessex, long before the Vikings made their first raids on Britain. Then slowly they bring events up to date and that’s where they shift to being more of a journal with the history as it happens. But the raid in 1055 was the Welsh again, I was right; I looked it up to check. Right, now let’s concentrate on what this says about the murder of Ethelbert.