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

she looked up at the sun. Every step westward would remind her of Elisedd and the journey he had made to find her. The other choice was to walk east, towards countries she did not know, to places she had never heard of, until they came to the empire’s end.

‘The sisters of Wyrd have decided for us.’ She smiled at Cwen. ‘We will head for the rising sun.’

Each time they heard travellers on the road below them in the valley, Cwen went down alone and made the decision from the safety of her hiding place in the trees as to whether or not they would prove generous to a beggar girl in rags. On the whole she chose well and they were kind. As the weather grew slowly warmer so the meagre pile of possessions they amassed in their bundles grew. She came back with food and old shoes, shawls and a torn but blessedly clean shift, once a small cooking pot complete with stew to reheat over their fire; and best of all she gathered information. As far as she knew, she reported back, no one was looking for them now. She and the mother abbess had joined the legions of nameless outlaws and beggars who roamed the country without home or master.

Slowly they moved on, avoiding towns and villages. Eadburh didn’t know where she was going or what she wanted. Life went on as they lived hand to mouth, both glad each evening that they had managed to survive another day.

Then as summer tipped over into autumn, Cwen came back to Eadburh with news. ‘There is a group of pilgrims on the road, men and women of God. They say we can join them. I told them we had been robbed and lost everything and they said we could become part of their number. I came to fetch you.’

After that, life was much better. They shared food and companionship and lodgings with men and women on the pilgrim road, heading for Rome, aiming to cross the high pass over the Alps into Lombardy before the early snows came. Each one had their story, the reason they had embarked on a pilgrimage and each night they regaled one another with tales of regret and penance and promises broken or kept. Cwen told of the loss of her mother and the hardship she had endured until a convent took her in. She was on pilgrimage, she said, to thank God for saving her life. Eadburh told something approaching the truth. She had been, inadvertently, the cause of her husband’s death and lived in permanent regret and sorrow at his loss. The dog had been, she said, a gift from the man who wanted her to be his wife, but she had refused, knowing she did not deserve happiness. Instead, she said, she had resolved to beg forgiveness at the shrine of St Peter for what she had done.

The group joined other pilgrim bands and then split off again as people elected to follow different routes; it lost some members as they dropped by the wayside, others decided to stay longer at one place or another. As each new face appeared, Eadburh shrank back and drew her hood across her face in case she was recognised, but there was never any glimmer of recognition and gradually she grew less afraid.

Then, as the pilgrims rested for several days at an abbey guest house in the gentle foothills of a river valley, lined with vineyards, came her first shock. Cwen came to her and with tears in her eyes begged for release. ‘I want to stay here. I feel at home here and the novice mistress said I could take the veil.’ She looked pleadingly at Eadburh, who was astonished at the devastation she felt. She and Cwen had grown close over the long months of their journey and somehow she had envisaged them being together forever, but, in a strange moment of altruism such as she had never experienced before, she found she couldn’t bring herself to refuse. The girl had stayed with her of her own free will, had served her faithfully, saved her life on numerous occasions, and for once she felt the need to be kind, to put someone else first. And besides, she still had her faithful Ava, plodding beside her mile after mile on the long roads south.

Autumn drew on and the pilgrims’ pace increased. Snow comes early to the high Alpine passes and more and more often they were warned that they should hurry if they wanted to cross the great mountains before winter set in. Their route took them past Besançon, then on south, towards Pontarlier, around the great lake Lemmanus to Vevey then along the old Roman Road over the pass beneath Mont Blanc. Now in early autumn it was bitterly cold at night and they huddled together for warmth as they reached each pilgrim halt on the route, following the trail through the southern foothills of the Alps towards Vercelli on the Lombardy Plain where it was still warm and bountiful autumn.

It was when they reached the town of Pavia that, in her loneliness, Eadburh confided in the abbess of the convent to which the hostelry was attached, claiming once more in half-truths and elaborate inventions and evasions that she would be going back to find her sister in East Anglia once she had completed her pilgrimage to the shrines of St Peter and St Paul. She had acquired a slave boy now, Theoderic, who carried her bundle and her scrip and cloak and groomed Ava, whom he adored. She finally began to feel safe, despite the horrifying discovery that, for all the great distance they had travelled, she was still within the empire of Charlemagne, who was amongst his many titles, King of the Lombards. Thankfully, he ruled through others; no one in Pavia could possibly know of her existence. She moved into more gracious accommodation, thanks to the abbess, and wore