The Dream Weavers by Barbara Erskine (books you have to read txt) 📕

yourself that gentlemen clergy, especially handsome gentlemen clergy, hold an irresistible fascination for the unmarried ladies in their congregations. Women have been known to come to blows over the honour of making them a sandwich. And this strikes me as being of a similar ilk. Only different in that it’s infinitely more sinister.’

Bea was silent. Heather waited.

‘You’re serious, aren’t you,’ Bea said at last.

‘Very.’

‘You think I should be scared?’

‘Be on the qui vive at the very least. Mark knows what’s going on. He is an experienced clergyman who knows these things happen.’ She smiled sympathetically. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.’

‘You haven’t!’

But that wasn’t true. The malice she had seen in Sandra’s eyes had shocked her deeply. The relief she had felt when Heather told her that the woman had resigned had shown her how worried she was. Something else struck her. Nesta knew about Sandra; the fact that Sandra thought her a witch. She shivered. Nesta was the one who really scared her. She was a powerful entity, far more skilled than Bea. And Bea didn’t know whether she was friend or foe.

‘Bea? You OK?’

Heather had noticed her abstraction.

‘I’m fine.’ Bea stood up. ‘I must get on. I’m going with Mark to a Tenebrae service tonight.’ She smiled. ‘Pity Sandra won’t be there to note the fact that I do go to church.’

They came home late after the service. It had been magical. Bea loved the theatricality of it, the silent meditation, the deep spirituality. As they drove back to Hereford neither spoke much, still immersed in the drama. The Close was silent, empty of people, the statue of Elgar with his bicycle in the corner of the grass a lonely presence in the shadows, the Precentor’s House and the Chancellor’s House, both in darkness, their own lit only by the half-moon of glass above the front door showing they had left the hall light on to welcome them home. Closing the door behind them, Mark kissed her on the cheek and whispered that he would see her later, before letting himself into his study. He was going to pray, she knew. He would probably sleep in there, stretching out on the sofa in the corner.

She lit a candle without turning on the light and sat down on her cushion in the flickering shadows. Her head was still full of the beauty of the Christian story, the drama and the tragedy that was all part of Easter; and she was exhausted. It was very late.

Without realising it was happening, she allowed her eyes to close.

But there was still no sign of Elisedd in her dream. Instead she found herself once more following in Eadburh’s footsteps.

The Emperor Charlemagne’s palace at Aachen was enormous. It was richly built and larger by far than any of the palaces in Mercia or Wessex, the clusters of buildings, linked by covered walkways, bewildering in their grandeur. Eadburh found herself lodged in one of the royal guest houses, ladies provided to wait on her, her vast treasures unloaded and stored in a warehouse nearby.

She had not enjoyed the voyage from Southampton even though the weather had been kind; the wind was from the northwest, gentle and steady, the long swell rolling in from the distant ocean. The ship that had brought her to the kingdom of the Franks, rowed by fifteen pairs of oarsmen, had been large enough to accommodate her and her baggage. Once unloaded on the dunes at Wissant her riches were reloaded onto wagons and her long journey continued north and east across the flat plains of northern Europe.

On the first night after her arrival at this, the emperor’s favourite residence, she was invited to his mead hall, greeted as an honoured guest and, once the feasting was over, she found herself seated beside him. So, this was the man who had negotiated with her father for her sister’s hand for his son, and who had toyed with the idea of marrying one of his daughters to her brother. She felt his keen gaze on her face as servants brought ewer and basin for the ceremonial hand wash and knelt with a soft towel as she dabbled her fingers in the scented water. She felt his eyes on her hands and was glad that she had worn her most beautiful rings and was adorned in the royal jewels of Wessex and Mercia. The king had provided a guard for the riches of her marriage portions and her dowry and she knew she came to his court as a wealthy and desirable widow. She did not know or care much whether he knew why she was a widow; the scandal of her life with Beorhtric was over.

She studied him surreptitiously. He was a tall man, powerful of build, wearing a golden coronet on his greying hair. Two large hairy dogs lounged at his feet, both watching her with lazy interest, and she felt his eyes too boring into hers. This was the most powerful ruler in the western world, crowned Emperor of the Romans by Pope Leo only two years before, after conquering all the German tribes, the man with whom her father had negotiated diplomatic treaties and alliances and who she now planned to ask for protection. She smiled and lowered her eyelids flirtatiously, waiting for him to speak. He leaned back in his chair with a smile. ‘So, why has the Queen of Wessex come to see me?’

‘I am newly widowed, sire.’ She lowered her voice seductively. She had heard that this man could not resist a beautiful, powerful woman, and his wife of many years had died. His last wife, for he had had several, so she had heard, as well as countless mistresses.

‘I came to you for protection, sire. I was surrounded by threats and dangers in my own country.’

‘And your father and brother are dead.’

She tensed. ‘Indeed, leaving me alone in the world but for a little daughter who has been taken from me.’

‘But you have