The Dream Weavers Read online

  ‘So, you’re telling me I can’t go and pray in the chapel any more.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of it. I’m only saying be careful. And perhaps choose somewhere less public for your meetings with Simon and his family. The café in the middle of the cathedral is not the place to discuss demonic possession.’

  ‘I would have thought it was absolutely the place!’

  ‘Bea, please.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Her anger subsided as she saw the utter weariness in his face. ‘I’m putting you in an intolerable position, aren’t I?’

  ‘Nothing about my wife is ever intolerable. Tricky, perhaps.’

  ‘I will avoid her. I promise.’

  ‘I think you may find that very hard, given that we live on the premises.’ He levered himself to his feet. ‘Darling, do you think it’s possible you are too invested in this family? Especially in Emma. I know how much you miss Anna and Petra, do you think you are perhaps becoming a little bit over-protective?’

  ‘How can it be over-protective to want to help her?’ Bea stared at him, aghast. ‘If Meryn was here, I would send her to him, but he isn’t. I’m the only one there for her.’

  She stood up and walked over to the window and stood staring out. ‘Yes, I miss Petra and Anna, you know I do, but neither of them have inherited this ability so it was something we didn’t have to deal with. Perhaps it’s more that I can see myself in her, Mark. I remember what it feels like to have all these frightening experiences and know that other people don’t understand what’s happening. I was lucky. My grandmother was there for me, but Emma has no one. Simon can’t cope with her, and it doesn’t sound as if her mother would be sympathetic.’

  ‘Was she all right when they went home?’ Mark asked after a pause.

  ‘Yes, she’d recovered her composure. She was excited if anything. Couldn’t wait to tell Simon and Felix what happened.’

  ‘And will you be seeing her again?’

  ‘Of course. If that’s what she wants.’

  Mark came over and put his arm around her shoulders. He sighed. ‘Can we talk about this some more later? I’ve got to go out again. I’ve got to do some parish visiting.’

  ‘Plans for Tenebrae?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘I bet Sandra wouldn’t approve of that. Candles and ritual and darkness and meditation. All very suspect activities.’

  ‘Well, luckily it’s not her parish.’ He bent and kissed her on the top of her head.

  She stood there without moving for a long time after he had gone. He was right. It was strange that she and Emma seemed to share this ability, but the link was so much stronger than Mark could ever understand. Emma had dreamt Eadburh’s dream. The clinging shadow had attached itself to the girl who reminded her of her earlier self and was using her to remember Elisedd and somehow re-enact the intensity of their lost love.

  A beam of sunlight strayed through the window, crept across the rug near her feet, then disappeared. From outside she heard the bronze note of the cathedral clock chime the hour.

  It was at night that Eadburh thought about her lost baby. The ache of emptiness, the longing for the little boy who had never drawn breath, brought tears in the darkness, but in her dreams he was confused with another child, the son of her long-lost prince. She had convinced herself that it too had been a boy, a boy who would have loved her had Cynefryth not killed him.

  Nesta had concocted the potions that had destroyed him, but she did not blame the woman. The sisters of Wyrd had killed both children, as they had caused her to miscarry two other children by her husband. All that was left to her now was her little girl, Eathswith, the little girl she knew she could never fully love because she looked at her mother with Beorhtric’s eyes.

  No one at court mentioned what Eadburh had seen. Now that Hilde had gone, there was no one but Nesta in whom she felt she could confide, and Nesta had set off on one of her plant-collecting trips into the forest. As always, Eadburh wondered how many people had known, had kept her husband’s secret, had laughed behind their hands at her confidence.

  When her husband returned to the palace with his warrior band, life went on as before, but now she watched him and she realised that he had always had favourites. Her father had enjoyed women; her mother seemed to accept it and dismiss them as a part of life, like flies to be swatted away if they grew too persistent, though belatedly she realised that her mother’s way of dealing with the situation was to take lovers herself. If Offa knew or suspected what was going on, he would, she was fairly sure, have been reluctant to cross his wife. Cynefryth was the strongest personality in the court. Eadburh gave a grim smile as she sat spinning by the fire, listening to a scop who had ridden into Corfe from far-off Canterbury. Lovers were one thing; lovers prepared to murder the man promised to her sister could not be tolerated. She wondered if her mother guessed what had really happened to Grimbert. If she did, would she ever suspect who had done it and from whom that person had learnt her skills? She doubted it very much.

  If Beorhtric had ever had mistresses, she did not care. She had assumed he had, to assuage his lust while she was absent from his bed, but matters had changed. This was different. These favourites she was not prepared to tolerate. She watched and waited.

  He came back to her side at last when he returned to the court with his war band, and the shocking news he brought with him put all other matters out of her head. Her eldest sister’s husband, the King of Northumbria, had been murdered by a group of his own nobles.

  ‘And Ethelfled?’ she cried. ‘My sister? What of her?’

  Beorhtric gave a shrug. ‘I was given no news of her.’

  Eadburh stamped her foot. ‘You must send to ask my father! I have to know if she still lives.’

  ‘We will hear in good time,’ Beorhtric said with a sigh. Nevertheless, he sent messengers into Mercia to consult Offa and another to ride north and seek out news of the Queen of Northumbria.

  The royal court was at Winchester again, the great wooden hall with its soaring beams and carved dragons rearing to meet one another over the doorway, built in the ruins of the Roman city. The Wessex people did not like the ruins; they lived in fear of ghosts. But the place was a centre with a great stone-built minster and it was here that Beorhtric had chosen to spend the summer. When no word came from the north, Eadburh commanded her own scribe to write to her sister and sent copies of the letter by two separate messengers and, while she waited for news, Eadburh spent her time hunting in the forest, flying her hawks and wondering, ever wondering, why she had not heard from Hilde. Beorhtric had not once mentioned his wife’s lost baby, nor did he come to her bed. She was left in peace to worry about her sister’s fate and to dream her dreams of lost love.

  Bea followed her as she wandered in the gardens and the orchards; she saw her ride away on her milk-white mare and she watched as she dismounted and handed the animal to a groom. Bea walked slowly after her through the trees, somehow drifting in her wake on silent feet.

  ‘Why do you still follow me?’

  Bea shrank back as Eadburh swung round, her eyes blazing. Bea had not seen her so close before. Her face was hard, framed in her headrail, strings of garnets set in gold hanging from the brooches that held her gown in place on her shoulders, her fists clenched. The woman was near enough for her to feel the heat coming off her body, to smell the musky scent of amber on her skin and to see her reach for the small knife that hung at her belt and pull it from its leather sheath. Her gown was soft, light, crimson silk. Bea stepped back, reaching with one hand for her cross and with the other instinctively warding the woman off, pushing her away, but her fingers brushed through air without contacting anything solid. Her heart was thudding with fright. The woman’s body shimmered and faded as if it was a mirage.

  At that moment someone else appeared. A man, solid-looking and heavily built, with a leather jerkin. Bea could smell his sweat as he approached and bowed to the shadowy figure, his heavy features tense. ‘Come quickly, oh queen,�
�� he called. ‘The king has royal messengers with him in the hall. The king your father is dead.’

  The word reverberated through the distances. ‘Dead! Dead, dead …’

  Bea heard Eadburh repeat the word as she turned to run after him. As she disappeared from sight, the scene faded into wisps of smoke and darkness closed in.

  Bea clutched at a cushion and hugged it tightly, burying her face in it. The room was dark but faint light leaked through the door from the kitchen. There was no one there. She was in the quiet snug with its comfy sofa and the two old armchairs that had belonged to her father, the pictures and the coffee table, all were familiar and reassuring. Her gaze went to the picture of Jesus surrounded by children. Her husband was a clergyman, she had to expect some signs of his calling in the room and it was a beautiful oil painting they had found in a trawl through one of the antique shops in Leominster. Over the fireplace there was a large mirror. A house-warming gift from Mark’s uncle. Climbing to her feet, she went over and stared at herself. How on earth did she appear to Eadburh? She was dressed in navy linen trousers with a loose turquoise sweater, decorated with a string of lapis beads, her cross tucked out of sight below the neckline. Her hair was tousled. She gave a weak smile at the word, but it was the perfect word. Tousled. She saw her face lighten as she smiled, the pain and fright lifting a little. She had not wanted that vision; she had had no touchstone at hand to take her into the past. It was a dream, a genuine dream. She had drifted off to sleep as the room grew dark, and that was dangerous. She could not let this happen again. She walked over to the window that looked out to the side of the house with its narrow strip of garden, aware suddenly that anyone out there in the dark could be looking in. She reached up to draw the curtains. Sitting down again she reached for a book and leaned back against the cushions. Somehow she had to distract herself.

  Within seconds the book had slipped from her hand and she was asleep once more.

  24

  ‘I will attend the meeting with your ealdormen and thanes as usual.’ Eadburh stood up as the men made to withdraw to the council chamber. She saw them glance at one another uneasily but no one argued, least of all Beorhtric himself.

  It was as if, with her father gone and her brother now on the throne of Mercia, Eadburh felt the need to re-emphasise her position of power as queen. Her health restored, she had taken her place once more at her husband’s side, dictating letters, signing charters, giving orders. She knew she was more deeply resented than ever for her failure to carry a son to term and she didn’t care. She was queen and she would make sure that every man and woman in the country knew it. Her encounter with her husband’s lover was never mentioned, but she knew him. He was one of the handsome young attendants who flocked to attend the king. Beorhtric lavished gifts on them, gave them jewellery and rich clothes, and sat with them often in the hall in the evenings, to hear the latest music and the poetry and laugh immoderately at the bawdy jokes and antics of the tumblers, and above all to get drunk.

  She watched and she waited. She noticed now how Beorhtric could not keep his hands off the young men, how he slapped their backs, and how he embraced and slobbered over some of them. The disapproving glances of the priests, should any be present in the hall, did not escape her, and she saw the way one or two of them turned in her direction as if to see whether she condoned her husband’s behaviour.

  Her women sat around her, some openly enjoying the entertainment, some turning aside to occupy themselves with their spindles or their embroidery. She knew how much they still disliked her. She missed Hilde so much. She had sent several messengers to enquire after her and scour western Mercia and even the easternmost parts of Powys, but they returned with no news other than that Hilde had left Offa’s court some weeks after arriving there. Anyone who knew or cared presumed she had returned to Wessex. They also brought news that Cynefryth had retired from her son’s court to take up position as abbess at Cookham, one of the abbeys in her own gift, from where she would have oversight of the church in Bedford where Offa was buried. Eadburh’s brother now ruled unopposed, but, one of the messengers said, it was thought he was ill. He had not appeared in the hall while the messenger was there. There was no word either of Ethelfled’s fate, nor of Alfrida far away in the kingdom of East Anglia. She didn’t care. There was no more she could do and she had no love for her mother or her brother. She had no love left in her heart for anyone save her handsome Welsh prince, ever bright in her memory. She thought of him every day, she dreamt about him, she ached for him in every bone of her body and, in her dreams, he was still alive.

  And her daughter? She saw the little girl every day and she tried to care about her, but the small face looked back at her with indifference. The child loved her nurses and her playmates and shrank from Eadburh when she took her on her knee, perhaps sensing the coldness there, a coldness that was emphasised when Eadburh saw in the child’s eyes and features a mirror image of her father.

  Her dreams of Elisedd slowly became more and more real to her. When she woke in her empty bed she could feel his arms around her, hear his voice, smell the wild heather sweetness of his hair across her face, and in her dreams she was young again, young and free and happy, with a strong healthy body, unweakened by childbirth and sorrow. Surely he could not be dead, not when his spirit came to her so often and so passionately.

  There was still no word from Hilde. Perhaps she was dead. She felt a flash of anger that the woman had failed in the second, so important, part of her mission and suddenly she knew what she must do. She summoned her husband’s most trusted messenger, a man known for his discretion. ‘You will go to King Cadell of Powys, saying I wish to set up diplomatic talks between him and my brother and my husband. As a start, I wish to find out what happened to his son, the Prince Elisedd who headed the delegation to my father some eight years ago.’ Eight years. Was it so long since she had seen him, felt him touch her, felt the warmth of his body, his lips on hers. ‘This matter is of the utmost delicacy and secrecy. There are to be no letters, only your private talk with King Cadell himself, and you will bring his response back to me in person and to me alone. These are the king’s orders.’ That last was an afterthought. ‘No word must escape. I and I alone will take your reply direct to the king.’

  She paused, her mind shying away, as it always did, from the memory of her father’s words. You should know. The King of Powys’s son, Elisedd. He met with an accident and died.

  But in her dreams, Elisedd wasn’t dead.

  The substance of her dreams became more real every day. Supposing her father had lied and Elisedd was trying in her dreams to tell her so. If he had been murdered, there would have been war. No king would allow his son to be killed without redress.

  As the man bowed and left the queen’s bower she looked over her shoulder into the body of the chamber. Was she there, the woman who watched her from the shadows? The woman who spied on her, heard her words, perhaps witnessed her very dreams. The woman who might betray her. Before all else, she had to be disposed of.

  ‘I need spells to rid me of a demon.’ Nesta, back from her plant-collecting in the forest, was sitting with her outside in the autumn sunlight. ‘She haunts me day and night.’

  Nesta looked up, her fingers busy with some careful stitching. She had established herb gardens in four of the royal palaces now, at Cheddar, at Corfe, at Wareham and at Winchester. At Eadburh’s command, the woman reluctantly followed her each time the court moved across the kingdom, bringing with her boxes and bottles and pots and carefully wrapped seedlings. Everywhere she went she collected herbs and recipes for medicines, talking to the local wise women, scouring the hills and the heaths, the forests and fields for different ingredients, always learning, always consulting the ancient gods and the leechbooks and the books of the apothecaries and the monks, always listening to her own instincts and above all to the plants themselves. Her eyes darted towards the queen and then away again. Eadburh had grown harder and more bitter as the months
progressed since her latest miscarriage. Nesta had hoped this child would go to term – there was every sign that all was well – but then it happened, the result of shock and fury had torn the child’s frail life force asunder. She could guess the effect on Eadburh of walking in on her husband and his latest friend. She must have known this was his way, but even so, whatever had happened in the king’s chamber had unseated not just the child, but Eadburh’s mind.

  ‘Well?’ Eadburh’s voice would brook no argument.

  Nesta had seen the woman who followed the queen. She had invited her into their lives. She could not pretend she did not know to whom the queen was referring.

  ‘Where does she come from? What is she?’

  Nesta put down her stitching and stood up. ‘She does not mean you harm.’

  ‘So, you can see her?’

  ‘I have watched over you for a long time, lady, and if I thought her a danger, I would have warned you. She is part of the strange pattern of Wyrd. She is a restless soul, come from another time.’

  ‘I want her gone. She is a spy.’

  ‘She only wants—’

  ‘I don’t care what she wants! I want her gone. You will banish her. You will bind her with charms and you will send her to the deepest vaults of Hell.’

  ‘And you do not think to ask the bishop to perform such a ceremony for you?’

  ‘No. I am asking you.’ Eadburh froze. ‘Is she here now? I can’t always see her, but I feel her gaze on me.’