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

When Bea tiptoed into their bedroom twenty minutes later, he was fast asleep. She stood looking down at him then she dropped a gentle kiss on his forehead and crept out of the room. She would sleep in Anna’s room. If she had more nightmares, she didn’t want to wake him.

41

The cottage was incredibly quiet without the children or Val. Simon had waved the car off down the lane the next morning. To his astonishment, Emma had in the end made no fuss about going back to London. She said she had slept well and, though pale and strained, had collected her gear and climbed into the car beside her mother with barely a word.

Val had stayed the night in the end after sharing supper with her husband and her daughter, and after Emma had gone up to bed she and Simon had talked long and late over a bottle of wine. As always with Val’s tempestuous rages, her fury had exhausted itself, and in the end she had conceded the cottage was rather nice, that he was doing his best with Em and that she was very proud of him. The Fords, she said, had copies of all his books. When Simon had tentatively offered to sleep in the blow-up bed downstairs so she could have his room, she had told him not to bother, then had snuggled in beside him. Result! He smiled at the memory.

He walked back indoors and stood looking down at his worktable. Almost on cue, his phone rang. It was Jane Luxton. ‘I’ve news about the chronicle,’ she said. ‘I’ve arranged to take some of the photos the experts have sent me over to give to Kate and Phil, and it occurred to me you might like to meet me there.’

He didn’t need asking twice. By midday he was bumping slowly up the hidden drive and parking beside Jane’s car in front of the main door to the house. Jane had brought a folder of beautiful high-definition photos which she spread out on Kate and Phil’s kitchen table. ‘Look at this, Simon. We sent the chronicle to the Bodleian Library where they have all sorts of specialist infra-red cameras and things that can show up old inks.’

‘There is masses more than we could see before.’ Simon marvelled at the detail; Felix’s efforts, brilliant as they’d been with the resources available, could not compare with this. He leaned closer. ‘I wish Felix was here. He would love to see this.’

‘He can see them when he comes back next holidays,’ Kate said comfortably. ‘Poor old Felix. When do the dreaded exams start?’

‘May thirteenth.’ Simon leaned closer to the table. Blown up this large, he could see the characters easily. ‘This is fascinating. This shows the details about that last Welsh raid in 1055. So, they did know who it was who was on their way to attack Hereford. Gruffydd, the King of Gwynedd and Powys was accompanied by the outlawed King of East Anglia,’ he leaned closer. ‘With an army of Vikings from Ireland, for goodness’ sake, coming to attack the Earl of Hereford. What a mixture!’ The next photo showed the last page of the chronicle, the final, panicked scratch of the pen and then nothing more. ‘It did not end well for the minster or the priory. We can almost see it before our eyes. Those poor guys. It must have been so utterly terrifying. Monks had no way of defending themselves presumably, no way of knowing exactly when the end of the world, in the form of that army of men with swords and spears, was going to appear over the horizon.’

They gazed at the photos in silence for a while. Simon was thinking how pleased he was that Emma wasn’t there. With her imagination she would have been poleaxed by the words of the ancient monk, sitting scribbling at his desk, clinging to his pen as the only thing he knew how to do, the only thing he could know what to do.

‘Simon?’ Kate had leaned across and put her hand over his. ‘Are you OK?’

He grimaced. ‘I was thinking about my kids. We are made so vulnerable through them.’ He nodded ruefully towards her protruding stomach. ‘Until they come along, we only have ourselves to look out for, but once they’re there, we are hostage to our love for them.’

‘But this man was a monk, Simon,’ Jane reminded him briskly. ‘No kids.’

‘His community would have been his family and as dear to him perhaps as children,’ Kate retorted. Her hand strayed to her bump. Her baby was due any day now. ‘I know it might have been quite different. Perhaps they all bickered and fought and hated each other, like a real family, but I don’t see it somehow. Not if he stayed at his desk to the last. And how do we know he was ancient?’

‘Perhaps because of his skill,’ Simon said. He had shrugged off the moment of weakness and was back in didactic mode. ‘It takes years of practice.’

‘And perhaps because the younger monks and lay brothers, if they had any sense at all, would have gathered up the monastery treasure and headed for the hills at high speed. No one in their right mind would have stayed there, writing their diary and waiting to be massacred, unless they were incapable of moving,’ Phil put in. ‘Either way, we will never know. Apart from those scribbles there is no way of finding out what happened.’

Simon caught Kate’s eye and realised she was thinking exactly what he was thinking: unless, like Emma, they had the gift of seeing the past in graphic recall, with all its love and longing, its horror and squalor and hatred and, who knew, at the end, the terror and pain of its death.

‘That’s enough winding ourselves up for now,’ Kate said firmly. ‘The past is the past and must stay there. I’m going to make us all some good