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

in the convent cell with its silk-covered pillows, soft rugs and fine linen sheets. ‘Oh God!’ She buried her face in her hands. ‘What’s happening to us?’ She looked at her watch. It was two in the morning. She couldn’t ring Simon to see if Emma was all right at this hour; please God, they would both be asleep.

Climbing to her feet she opened the door and, trying to move as silently as possible so as not to wake Mark, she began to creep downstairs. She passed their bedroom, its door, half open in the dark. There was no reassuring shape in the bed; it was empty. There was a lamp on in his study. She could see the faint line of light round the door. Cautiously she pushed it open. He was kneeling at his little prayer desk in the corner. Looking up, he smiled. ‘What time is it?’

‘Late. Have you been praying all this time?’

He nodded. ‘I had a lot of prayers to say.’ Standing up with a groan, he stretched. ‘Shall we make a hot drink?’ Putting his arm around her shoulders as they made their way into the kitchen, he went over to draw the curtains against the darkness outside in the garden. ‘I hope you haven’t had any interference from the most powerful exorcist in England.’ It was meant to sound like a joke but somehow it didn’t come out that way.

She ducked away from his arm and went over to the kettle. ‘I’m hoping I don’t need exorcising. But I am prepared. I haven’t sensed anybody poking round.’ She had been much too busy watching an abbess in her faraway convent to worry about Sandra and her attempts to interfere. ‘Did she give you any idea how she had come by these amazing powers?’

Mark sat down at the table. He yawned deeply. ‘Nope. I’ve no idea.’

‘And she didn’t tell you how she was going to manage this exorcism?’

‘Absolutely not.’ His smile didn’t quite reach his eyes.

She sighed. ‘It’s too late for coffee. Do you want a hot chocolate? I think we’ve got enough milk.’ Stooping, she opened the fridge. ‘Oh dear God!’ she slammed the door shut.

‘What? What is it?’ Mark was on his feet in a second. ‘What’s in there?’

Pushing her out of the way, he pulled open the door. Staring in, he shook his head. ‘What is it? What did you see?’

She peered over his shoulder. ‘It was on the shelf. A rat.’

‘No. No, there’s nothing here. Sweetheart—’

‘It’s OK. I let my defences down. I’m so tired.’ She turned away, rubbing her arms with a shiver. ‘I know what’s going on. There’s nothing there. She’s testing me. I won’t be caught again.’ She gave a brief, bitter laugh. ‘That’s the way to deal with this sort of thing. Laugh it off.’ Her eyes widened. ‘Oh Mark. If that was Sandra, she knows what she’s doing! What on earth is going on? Who is she?’

Mark closed his eyes. He murmured a short prayer and made the sign of the cross then he reached in for the milk. ‘Whatever fiendish powers she may have acquired, I’m not letting her come between me and my bedtime drink.’

She gave a wobbly smile. ‘I should think not. Quite right.’

Reaching for an empty saucepan, he sighed. ‘I’ve never blessed a fridge before. Do we gather that that was some kind of psychic attack?’ He poured the milk into the pan.

As they sat down at the table he reached across and put his hands over hers. ‘Shall we recite Patrick’s breastplate together?’ It was the special prayer that never failed to wrap her in a feeling of warmth and protection. As Mark closed his eyes and prayed out loud, she felt the words spiralling round the kitchen, sealing them with God’s love. Whoever, whatever, had been prowling the shadows had withdrawn into the dark.

In her bed in the cottage Emma stirred again. She was asleep in the guest house of the king’s hill fort of Caer Mathrafal and tomorrow she would ride to the clas of St Tysilio to find out if the senior canon, the king’s son, Abad Elisedd would see her. She moved back and forth restlessly in her sleep, her tears dry now, a smile on her lips. She was in a dream within a dream, a dream treasured by a man and a woman of their younger days, and a dream in the sleep of a young girl, lost in the past. Twelve hundred years of time spun and twined around her, and the wind and rain and sunlight of a millennium of seasons.

Simon crept downstairs and opened the front door with infinite care, not wanting to disturb Emma. Something had awoken him and he had lain quite still staring up at the ceiling in the dark and not for the first time. Each time he had started awake, he had heard his daughter in the next room, tossing and turning, and occasionally she had cried out in her sleep. She seemed to be quiet now and he squinted at his wristwatch. It was nearly morning. Easing himself into his jeans and sweater, he had tiptoed to his bedroom door.

A glimmer of light on the horizon showed where dawn would soon come and he stood for a while letting his eyes get used to the dark. Quietly closing the front door behind him, he crossed the terrace and ran down the steps to the lane.

The dawn chorus rose at him like a wave from the woods below the ridge and he found himself smiling involuntarily at the beauty of the sound as he walked slowly along the track. The air was bitterly cold and the stars were a glittering carpet only now fading slowly as the light grew stronger.

He had come outside to think. The peaceful retreat he had selected to finish writing his book had proved to be a whited sepulchre and he didn’t know what on earth to do. Emma was his first