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

it was time for lunch she had mugged up on the Carolingian Empire and Renaissance, the early Medieval Church, and had speed-read an overview of the Anglo-Saxons – not written by her father, but well-thumbed, from his library.

Felix eyed her cautiously. When he had opened her door he had found her hard at work at her desk. Somehow that wasn’t what he had expected. He watched as she dug out a couple of ready meals from the freezer and stuck them in the microwave. ‘How’s the revision going?’

‘OK.’ She went over to the wine rack.

‘Mum will go ballistic if we open a bottle of wine,’ he said cautiously.

She gave a grim smile. ‘She won’t notice. Do you want a glass?’ She took his silence for acquiescence and poured. ‘Do you know where Pavia is?’

‘In Italy.’

She looked up astonished. ‘How on earth do you know that?’

‘General knowledge. Why d’you want to know?’

‘It came up in my history notes.’

He hauled himself up to sit on the table with his feet on a chair. ‘Have you heard from Bea since you came home?’

She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. Why had the mention of Pavia made him think of Bea? ‘No. I haven’t. I expect she and Dad have forgotten I existed.’

‘I doubt that.’ Felix spoke with feeling. He reached for the bottle and topped up his glass. ‘Do you think Dad and Bea have something going?’

She stared at him, astonished. ‘No! Of course not. What on earth makes you say that?’

‘He fancies her. I’ve seen him looking at her. She’s quite attractive for an older woman, you’ve got to give her that.’

‘You mean because she’s over twenty!’ Emma punched him on the shoulder. ‘I do think Dad and Bea have become friends, though. He hasn’t got many real friends, has he. He has lots of colleagues, but that’s not the same.’ She paused thoughtfully. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he isn’t quite a lonely person, deep down. But he wouldn’t. No, of course he wouldn’t. He loves Mum.’ Noting Felix’s sceptical expression, she added, ‘No, he does. I think they really do love each other deep down. Otherwise they’d have got divorced years ago. Mum’s got a temper, we all know that, but he knows how to wait until it’s over. Anyway, Bea’s happily married.’

He conceded the point with a slight nod. ‘It’s all so weird. Dad was the one that conjured up the ghost by writing about her, then you and Bea ended up haunted by her. Three people!’

Emma grimaced. ‘She wants her story told. Asser lied about her.’

‘Asser?’

‘A monk who wrote history.’

‘Like Kate and Phil’s chronicle.’

‘Which all ties in. Perhaps a moment comes when lots of right moments collide and the truth has to come out and it’s Dad’s job to reveal all.’ She gave a rueful smile.

‘“The truth is out there.”’ He quoted in a hollow voice. ‘But he can’t tell anyone how he knows. He’s a real historian. He can’t quote ghosts!’ He paused. ‘What a bummer!’

‘Eadburh doesn’t know she’s a ghost,’ Emma put in quietly.

‘No, but we do.’ The microwave pinged and, putting his glass down, he slid off the table. ‘It’s all fascinating, isn’t it. Maybe we should both demand to go back to Dad for the summer. Mum can bugger off to Provence on her own. She’d enjoy it much more without us, and seriously, even if they still love each other, she and Dad need time apart. We both know they do. I think they’ve got it worked out, the way they do things. He goes away for a few months then when they get back together they’re all lovey-dovey again!’ Reaching for an oven glove, he pulled their meals out of the microwave and put them on the table. ‘Don’t do any more ghosty stuff, Em, please,’ he added quietly as he spooned the food onto their plates. ‘Mum would freak out, and we want her on side. You’ve only got to forget it for a few weeks while we do these wretched exams, then she’ll be in a much better mood and we can start our campaign to persuade her to let us go back.’

In Eadburh’s dream she was young again and pretty and at her father’s court and riding up into the hills for a secret meeting with her lover. In the dream they were not spied on or followed and the sun was shining. The prince’s black stallion and her white palfrey nuzzled one another in the shade of an old oak tree while their riders lay on a woven checked rug within the walls of the sheepfold on the edge of the woods, high on the Welsh side of the ever-deepening dyke being dug across the hills. Overhead the buzzards circled ever higher, calling to one another; some days they were joined by kites and once by a great golden eagle from the distant mountain crags.

Emma woke up, stretched and smiled. Through her open window she could hear a robin singing in the garden as it grew light. The noise of morning traffic from their narrow road, a rat run to the West End, was building already. She could ignore that, because the rest of the dream was coming back.

She sat up. Her protection hadn’t worked. Or was it that reading about Eadburh had somehow broken the circle and allowed the memories in. She had woken, not in her lover’s arms, but in a cave somewhere in a dark forest, huddled with a skinny girl and a dog as the rain poured down outside, the noise of the traffic somehow morphing into the sound of water on rock. She reached for her phone. It was just after 6 a.m. Too early to call Dad. Instead she began a text.

Miss you. Would love to come back after the exams. Any news of Eadburh—

She deleted the word and replaced it with Bea.

I hate London. Mum is being a pain. I had a nightmare again last night.

She paused, her thumbs poised over the screen.