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

‘I’m fine.’ Sandra managed a smile. ‘My fault. I wasn’t looking.’

And she wasn’t expecting the spear to be hurled right back. Beatrice had been ready for her; she was obviously going to be more of a challenge than she had expected. And her riposte had been far from churchy. Which was worrying. Sandra had never done anything quite like this before; and certainly never had a reply to any threats she had made, in kind. This had all the hallmarks of a practitioner of skill and strength.

*

Smiling, Nesta watched Sandra with satisfaction. The woman was like a child playing with toys. No doubt Beatrice could have dealt with the curse, but a curse was something she understood and it had been a reflex action to intercept elfshot in any form and hurl it back.

In central Pavia, the woman who had started the riot had staggered back from the parapet of the bridge clutching her side. She screamed as blood seeped out between her fingers. Around her, the crowd swarmed closer, their attention shifting from their original victim, their bloodlust roused. As they closed round her, suddenly the mob halted in its tracks, thwarted. The woman who had screamed had disappeared.

It was several minutes before Sandra felt strong enough to move on. The traffic lights had changed. Her would-be rescuer had walked on towards Hereford Cathedral, leaving her alone beside the swiftly running water.

Bea had gone to sit in the garden at home. She had not expected to see Nesta there. Behind the woman she could see the wild hillside and beyond it the forest.

‘It was I who told Elisedd to go to the kingdom of the Franks,’ Nesta said, the wind catching her words and whipping them away like so many dead leaves. ‘I told him if he loved her he should follow her, and he paid with his manhood.’

‘Did he survive? Did either of them ever return to Britain?’ Bea reached out towards her and felt with her own fingers the cold wind that tore at the woman’s cloak.

Nesta said nothing for a while then she smiled, ignoring Bea’s question. ‘The enemy you have made in your own time grows more daring. She thinks she can throw flaming spears at you to frighten you away.’

‘Flaming spears!’ Bea repeated the words in astonishment.

‘She has read books and studies cards with pictures that tell her what to do and she flails in the halls of the elves like a trapped moth.’

‘Sandra?’ Bea whispered.

‘You need to swat her away.’

‘Swat!’ Bea echoed, unable to prevent herself from repeating Nesta’s words like an echo.

‘She travels through time, trailing previous lives behind her, always the same person, incapable of redemption.’ Nesta folded her arms. ‘But in this story it was she who pushed Eadburh back towards her destiny. The sisters of Wyrd were working through her.’

Fleeing back to the hostelry, Eadburh threw herself on the abbess’s mercy. The woman told her she could no longer stay but, good Christian that she was, she did not turn her out in rags. She told the sobbing woman who knelt before her to leave the hostelry, leave Lombardy and follow the long route back over the mountains and across the empire and across the northern sea to Britannia where in expiation of her sins she should go to a shrine somewhere in one of those cold distant kingdoms and remain there, an enclosed anchorite, until she died.

Eadburh froze with horror at the abbess’s words, visions of her sister rising up before her eyes, but by the time she had packed her belongings into a bundle and once more gathered up her scrip and staff to join a party of pilgrims on the return journey from Rome on the Via Francigena, she was more optimistic. She had her slave, Theo, with her still, and she had Ava and where else was there for her to go?

She had much to fear, going once more into the heart of Charlemagne’s territories, but if she managed it and headed across the sea to the northern parts of Britannia, far away from Wessex, she would surely find shelter and solace there. She could look for her sister Ethelfled in Northumbria, and if she was still alive find succour there. Of one thing she was certain, she would not join Alfrida in Crowland Abbey in the bleak, lonely fens where as far as she knew her happy, carefree sister was immured by her own choice, forever, giving her life to God. No way was Eadburh going to obey that part of the abbess’s injunction. Ever.

Slowly Bea became aware of the trickle of water from the fountain. The garden was very quiet. So, Eadburh had not died in misery and rags in Pavia. The people who had reported that news back to Asser so long after the event had succumbed to wishful thinking. The former queen had set off once more on the long walk home.

And Emma? Once more she tried to reach out, to find her, but there was nothing but a wall of silence.

She sat still, thinking hard. What had happened next to Eadburh? Had she made it back to Britannia or had she fallen somewhere unknown and unnoticed by the wayside? Whatever had happened to her, she had not in the end drawn enough attention for her demise to be mentioned in the chronicles. If she had been captured and murdered or executed there would have been a record. Asser in his malicious account of her life could not have resisted mentioning that.

With a sigh, she leant back on the bench and sat with unfocused eyes, waiting for the past to open up to her again.

‘Bea!’ Mark’s voice from the kitchen brought her back to reality with a jolt.

‘Do you want some tea?’ He was filling the kettle. ‘You’ll never guess who I was speaking to just now. Jane Luxton came over. She was wondering if the budget could stretch a few million to buy the Coedmawr Chronicle for the cathedral