The Dream Weavers Page 34

  ‘I don’t want to be safe!’ she snapped back. ‘Don’t you see? I want to know what happens. What it feels like to be a queen. It’s exciting. It’s like being the star of a fantasy movie all of my own. A queen has servants and soldiers and all those people in that great hall were watching me and I knew that if I clapped my hands they would jump!’ For a second she was on the point of telling him about Elisedd making love to her. She stopped herself in time.

  ‘I thought you were scared.’

  ‘At the time, I was pumped, but later when I woke up I was scared. I didn’t know where l was. Or when I was.’

  ‘And you’re still scared, aren’t you.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘So, you don’t want to do it again. Not deliberately.’

  ‘I do, that’s the point. But I want it to be on my terms.’

  ‘Which brings us back to Bea.’ Felix was staring at her reproachfully. ‘She is the only one who can show you what to do and how to control this weird shit you’re involved in. Get real, Em. You’re messing with something really dangerous here.’ He sounded very like their father. ‘You mustn’t try and do it on your own.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be on my own if you were here.’

  ‘What! No! Oh no, Em. No way.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have to do anything except be here revising or whatever. I just don’t want to wake up and find myself somewhere outside miles away. That would be scary. Please, Felix. I looked up sleepwalking and they say not to wake people, just make sure they are safe. That’s all this would be. I’d only be dreaming.’

  The look he gave her was one of extraordinarily mature compassion, combined with sheer frustration. ‘As if you’re going to take any notice of what I say anyway.’

  She smiled sweetly. ‘I knew you’d understand. And you have to swear not to tell Dad.’

  ‘Not unless you’ve been carted off in a straitjacket.’

  ‘I won’t be. You go on. Read or whatever. I’ll be upstairs in my bedroom.’

  She didn’t wait to hear any more arguments.

  Back in the living room, Felix went over to his bag of books, discarded in the corner since the day they arrived and with a sigh began to sort through them. Perhaps it would be a good thing to give them a quick look. As he opened the first book he stared up at the ceiling uncomfortably but there was no sound from upstairs.

  As Bea walked into the cathedral, she found herself shivering. She peered into the shadows. Had Sandra done that to her? Made her nervous and afraid in this most beautiful and serene and safe of places. She had noticed the woman a couple of times now, hovering in the distance, watching, and she had succumbed to the temptation to break her own rules and study Sandra’s aura. It had been as she’d expected, strangely jagged. There was anger there, and fear, and something else, something dark, lurking in the periphery of her energy field. Bea hadn’t probed further but what she had seen disturbed her. She felt a wave of anger again now and dismissed it firmly. She was not going to let Sandra Bedford spoil her life.

  She found the north quire aisle deserted. The organ was playing softly and there were quite a few people sitting in the nave enjoying the music. She sat for a long time in the little chapel allowing her agitation to settle. Slowly the peace of the place settled around her and she saw the familiar figure sitting in his accustomed seat, his head bowed, his cowl pulled low over his head, his hands folded in prayer.

  ‘I ignored your advice,’ she whispered. ‘I’m sorry. Help me keep Emma safe.’

  For a while nothing happened, then at last she saw him stir. Slowly he looked towards her and she thought she heard him sigh from deep within the shadow of his hood. ‘It is too late.’ The words drifted through the silence, barely more than a breath against the distant sound of the music. It was Bach. She recognised it. ‘Come, Sweet Death’, a funeral favourite in their last parish. Her momentary distraction was enough for her to lose him. When she refocused on the altar, he had gone.

  Too late. He said it was too late. Standing up she made her way to the doorway and out across the echoing spaces of the transept, past the St Thomas shrine toward the north door that led out into the Close. Her heart was hammering anxiously, the peaceful moment dispersed. The organ had stopped playing.

  Her phone rang as she reached the house. It was Anna. ‘Hi, Mum. How are you?’

  ‘I’m fine, sweetheart.’ She let herself in through the front door and pushing it shut behind her, stood still in the hall. ‘Any news?’

  ‘I’m sorry Petra and I couldn’t make it home for Easter. But we will be there for Christmas, I promise.’

  ‘Christmas?’ Bea felt a terrible pang of loss. That was months away.

  ‘I know. I’m sorry. I’ll try and get home for a quick break before that, but there is so much work to do. I was talking to Pet on the phone and she’s had an idea. You and Dad need a puppy to replace us.’

  Bea let out a gurgle of laughter. ‘Well. That is a novel idea!’

  ‘A good one?’

  ‘Not at the moment, sweetheart. We’re both frantically busy.’

  ‘And you’re not missing us?’

  ‘Of course we are. But no puppy.’

  She was still laughing as she pulled off her jacket and headed for the stairs. It was lovely that the girls were thinking about them, but it was true. She and Mark were frantically busy. And before she took on anything else, be it supply teaching or puppy walking, she had to help Emma. She paused, her foot on the bottom step. She wasn’t treating Emma as a surrogate daughter, was she? She remembered Sandra accusing her of suffering from empty-nest syndrome and she shook her head. No. Emma was part of a far larger problem. The lost soul who was Eadburh.

  Picking up her touchstone she managed to still her anxious thoughts at last as she sat, waiting. Emma was part of her job.

  ‘Where are you?’ she murmured. ‘Emma?’

  She could sense Felix watching, feel his anxiety as he kept looking up towards the beams in the ceiling above him. Upstairs. Emma was upstairs in her bedroom. But when Bea looked there was no one there. ‘Where are you?’ she murmured again.

  Emma was standing on a hillside, looking west towards the setting sun, as the shadows lengthened across the valley at her feet. She was a young queen and he was somewhere out there, the man she loved. Her father had been lying when he told her that Elisedd was dead. She could feel him, sense him yearning as she was for their renewed embrace, dreaming of that time they had lain in one another’s arms in the hafod on the hillside. Messengers had left the palaces of Wessex again and again to look for him and brought no news. Her prayers had received no answers. Dreaming another, older, Eadburh’s dream, Emma looked down at herself and saw she was wearing her red silk dress. She was a girl again, the daughter of Offa, still the young maiden she had been when she first met Elise; her leather sandals were studded with gold that glittered momentarily as the sun finally slid below the rim of the hills. She was beautiful, her hair flaxen, tearing out of its braids in the wind and she was free. With a joyous smile she stepped forward onto the track that led down the hillside towards the drovers’ road through the valley. He would meet her, she was sure of it. Somewhere out there he knew she was coming.

  In the distance she heard the lonely call of a curlew as night drew in across the land.

  ‘Emma?’

  Bea heard her own voice echoing through the landscape.

  ‘Emma? Come back!’

  But she wasn’t Emma any more. She saw the girl throw a quick look back over her shoulder then she turned away and ran on, down the hill, her hair flying behind her, the silk of her dress blown against the body of a slim, young woman, Eadburh, a much younger Eadburh, who had taken over the body of a teenage girl.

  ‘You can’t call her back.’ Nesta was there beside her, watching. ‘Why do you not trust me?’

  Bea felt her knuckles whiten as she clutched the stone in her hand. ‘Because you scared me. You were in that terrible place.’

  ‘Y
ou came where you were not wanted. You must wait for me to come to you.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Then leave it to the sisters of Wyrd to allow things to fall as they may. You can trust them.’

  ‘You talk of the Wyrd sisters in spite of the fact that Wessex and Mercia were long ago Christianised.’

  Nesta smiled. ‘I believe in one God and all gods, in fates and spirits and angels, as did so many of my countrymen and women. Why limit oneself to one when there are so many out there to guide and lead and, of course, mislead.’ She smiled. ‘It is up to us to make our own way through the maze. You do the same.’ She put her head to one side. ‘You live with a priest and yet you believe in following the paths through the other worlds.’

  Bea gave a wry smile. ‘But I can’t follow Emma.’

  ‘She has gone her own way. It is up to her which way she follows the enigma that is life. You have given her guidance. We must hope that is enough.’

  ‘Tell me one thing. How come she sees Eadburh as a girl her own age and I see Eadburh as a grown woman?’

  ‘Because a grown woman can dream she is a girl. Emma has left herself open and our queen has borrowed her body.’

  Bea shivered. ‘That in our world is called possession.’

  ‘It happens. It is to be hoped the child will be strong enough to retrieve her own soul.’

  ‘And your plants? Do you believe plants have a soul? Did you take them back into your world?’

  ‘They are of my world. That was where they should die, to fall back into the soil of my time and live again in the cycle of all things.’

  She supposed it was obvious when she thought about it. ‘So, what of Eadburh in the court of Charlemagne? The Eadburh I see. Is she real? Does she have a soul? Who am I watching when I see her?’

  Nesta smiled. ‘You are watching a woman who was flattered that the king called her to his side, and she flirted with him and played with his affections, or she thought she did, but she had met her match.’

  ‘So, what happened?’

  There was no answer.

  ‘Nesta?’ Bea looked round but the woman had gone. The attic room was empty, her candle guttering as the flame burned low.

  ‘Em?’ Felix knocked on her door. ‘Em, are you there?’

  The cottage had suddenly felt very empty. He had grown used to hearing Emma move around in her room over the last days. The old beams creaked at every movement when people were upstairs, but he hadn’t heard anything at all for a while now, he realised. She must be asleep.

  He pushed open the door. She wasn’t there.

  ‘Shit!’

  But he had been there, in the living room downstairs, for hours. She couldn’t have come down without him seeing her. Unless he had been asleep. He frowned with frustration, turning to run back down the stairs. The front door was still bolted on the inside. He went through the kitchen to the back door. That too was locked.

  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  He looked round wildly. She couldn’t have climbed out through the window, surely. He raced back upstairs, but the windows were too small. There was no way she could have fitted, and if she had even tried, he would have heard her.

  He retraced his steps downstairs and unbolting the front door went out to stare down the steps towards the lane. All was quiet. The sheep in the fields on the far side of the valley peacefully grazing, a buzzard slowly riding the thermals above, letting out the occasional desolate cry. Should he ring his father? Or the police? Or Bea? Felix was frantic. He had been left in charge. It was such a simple thing, to keep an eye on his sister, and he had failed.

  He was sitting down on the low wall, turning his phone over and over in his hands, paralysed with indecision, when he heard the familiar sound of his father’s car, the engine straining as he drove it up the steep narrow lane.

  Simon parked and turned off the engine. ‘Hi, Felix. Everything OK?’ He turned to pull a shopping bag out of the boot. ‘I’ve stocked up on some groceries and bought us pizza for tonight.’ He paused, studying Felix’s face for the first time. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Dad. It’s Emma—’

  ‘What about Emma?’ The voice behind them made him leap out of his skin. She was standing in the doorway, staring out. Apart from dishevelled hair and a crumpled T-shirt she looked normal – perhaps a little sleepy. ‘What have I done now?’

  Felix leapt to his feet. ‘Where were you? I looked everywhere!’

  ‘What do you mean, where was I? I was asleep. I know I should have been revising but I was tired, OK?’

  ‘You weren’t in your room. I checked. I checked twice.’

  ‘You can’t have looked properly. I was there. Unless I was in the loo.’ She stepped outside onto the terrace and reached out. ‘Let me take the shopping, Dad. That would be really nice, to have pizza. What kind did you get?’

  As Simon turned back to the car to collect another bag of shopping she turned on Felix with a furious whisper. ‘I told you to leave me alone! How dare you spy on me!’

  ‘I’m sorry. I was frightened. You had disappeared.’

  ‘I had done nothing of the sort! I was asleep in bed.’

  ‘No, Em, you weren’t.’

  ‘What’s the matter, you two?’ Simon climbed the steps and put the second heavy bag down at his feet. The clank of bottles betrayed the contents. Lemonade and shandy for the kids, lager for himself. ‘What is Emma supposed to have done?’

  ‘I haven’t done anything. He checked on me when I was asleep, and he seems to think I had gone out. Which I hadn’t. If I went anywhere it was to the loo.’ Emma was furious.

  ‘Dad told me to keep an eye on you,’ Felix protested.

  ‘Well, he had no business to. I don’t need anyone keeping an eye on me!’ Emma turned back into the cottage with the groceries and disappeared through the far door towards the kitchen.

  ‘She wasn’t there, Dad. Honest.’ Felix wore his wounded puppy expression which Simon from long experience immediately identified as guilt. He had obviously forgotten to keep an eye on anyone.

  ‘Well, the main thing is she’s here now and perfectly safe,’ he said soothingly. ‘So, may I suggest we forget it and have a nice evening together, OK?’

  They trooped into the kitchen where Emma was stacking her father’s purchases in the fridge. Simon registered her stormy expression with a long-suffering sigh. Felix sat down at the table and pulled out his phone. ‘There’s a text from Mum.’

  ‘Is she OK?’ Simon was stacking the drinks in the fridge.

  ‘No!’ Felix stood up, staring at the screen in his hand. ‘No, she can’t!’

  ‘What?’ Simon and Emma both stopped what they were doing.

  ‘She says she’s texted you both already. She wants us to go home. Tomorrow.’

  ‘No. No we can’t. Absolutely not!’ Emma had visibly paled. ‘Oh God, where’s my phone!’ She was groping in her pockets.

  Simon had found his:

  I’m sorry about the change of plan, but it only means collecting them a few days earlier than expected. I find I have a meeting of my book group on Thursday and I don’t want to miss it. It’s a long drive, so we’ll need to set off in good time. I’ll pick the kids up at about ten, so make sure they’re ready. It won’t do them any harm to get them away from any distractions so they can get ready for school at home.

  As he looked up, Emma snatched his phone. ‘Let me see! What does she say?’

  Simon looked at Felix. The boy appeared distraught. He was astonished at how upset he was himself. ‘We can’t go, Dad, not yet,’ Felix said miserably.

  ‘There’s no way I’m leaving,’ Emma announced. She dropped her father’s phone on the table. ‘It’s out of the question. I have to see Bea again, for one thing. And there are other things I have to do. Ring Mum and tell her we’re not going. It’s not fair. Her stupid book group is hardly that important. She is always missing it at home if something better turns up. She’s just bored with the Fords, that’
s all there is to it. If she wants to go, she can go without us. We can go later on the train.’ She folded her arms.

  Simon thought for a moment. ‘It does seem a shame to cut your visit short. I’ll ring her and see if we can sort this out.’

  Picking up his phone, he walked out of the room. They followed him. No chance of a private conversation then. He sat down at the table by the fire, staring at the blank screen of his laptop as he waited for her to pick up. Her phone went to voicemail.

  He put it down with a sigh. ‘She’s not there.’

  ‘She’s there all right. She’s not taking your call because she doesn’t want to argue,’ Emma said furiously. ‘I’m going to message her.’ She had spotted her own phone on the arm of the chair by the hearth.

  Don’t come tomorrow, she typed. We are not ready. Dad says he will put us on the train next week, so don’t worry. Enjoy your book club! Em

  A few seconds later, Simon’s phone rang. They all looked at each other.

  ‘Val?’ Simon took the call after three rings.

  Emma and Felix could hear their mother’s voice from the other end of the room. ‘Tell Emma there is no choice in the matter, is that clear? I am coming to get them, and I expect you to make sure they are packed and ready.’ She had hung up before Simon had the chance to speak.

  ‘Tough,’ Emma snorted. ‘Because we won’t be here.’

  ‘You probably have to go, Em,’ Simon said wearily. ‘You know what your mother’s like. If you don’t do what she says, she’ll never let you come and stay without her again and she’ll make all our lives hell. It might be as well to get in some serious revision time at home before the exams anyway. Tell you what, I will make her promise to let you both come back here for a large chunk of the summer holidays, how about that?’

  ‘She wants us to go with her to Provence for the summer holidays,’ Felix put in gloomily.

  ‘That’s the first I’ve heard of it.’ Simon looked across at him, shocked.

  ‘I don’t think you were invited,’ his son looked embarrassed. ‘She told the Fords you would be busy with your book and wouldn’t be available.’