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

return to school in the autumn to study for his A levels, so Val was in a good mood when she returned from France.

Emma enrolled at a sixth form college in London to take her exams and prepare for university and Simon was going back with them at the end of the holidays to finish the edits of his book in his own study at home, overlooking the quiet Kensington courtyard.

It was at the end of August that they set the statue of a young woman with a hare in her arms and with a dog sitting at her feet, carved by a sculptor friend of Kate and Phil’s, in a shallow alcove in the stone wall at the back of the garden. Mark held a little service of dedication and of blessing for the spirits of Eadburh and Elisedd. Emma planted a rowan tree nearby.

‘You’re going to miss them terribly,’ Mark said to Bea after they left the cottage. The Armstrong family were driving back to London the following morning.

She nodded sadly. ‘I will. But in a way I’m glad. That little service at the statue was lovely. There was a real sense of closure.’

‘And nothing there to frighten off Christine’s paying guests. Did you notice, already there’s some moss growing on her feet. The statue might have been there for years.’

She smiled. ‘The new people move in next week.’

‘And I trust Christine has promised not to call you if they hear anything untoward.’

‘They won’t hear anything untoward, Mark. We both know that. Offa’s daughter is finally at rest.’

She had seen the figure of the woman standing at the end of the garden watching them. At her feet sat the great golden dog, and there in the distance Bea saw the figure of the prince striding across the fields towards them, his arms outstretched, his cloak blowing behind him in the wind. The two figures approached one another and embraced, then as she watched they turned and walked away together across the hillside, followed by the dog. In seconds they were out of sight.

Author Note

This story owes its original inspiration to my dog walks on the Offa’s Dyke footpath. Several times a week I set off for two or three miles on part of the national trail that follows – more or less – the line of the original dyke. I often found myself wondering about Offa and why he built or dug the dyke. To answer the question I headed to the visitor centre in Kington and subsequently immersed myself in the history books. And thus this novel was born.

The Anglo-Saxons had always fascinated me, living as I had for many years near to Sutton Hoo (as witnessed in my novel, River of Destiny), but I was now drawn in by another thread of their history: Offa of Mercia, his family and his neighbour, the neighbour he was at such pains to keep at arms’ length. All Offa’s daughters had novel-worthy lives, but Eadburh especially intrigued me. There is very little mention of her, but what there is is startling. All we know is that she witnessed some charters, married Beorhtric and killed him. She appears in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and in Asser’s history. Asser had nothing good to say about her. He tells us she was last seen in Pavia. But supposing she didn’t die in Pavia? That magic word ‘supposing’ is the key to the novel.

I knew very little about the kings of Powys or the early kingdoms of what we now call Wales and not enough, after reading up as much as I could find, to provide a protagonist who would fill in both the Welsh side of the story and the gaps in Eadburh’s recorded life and give a motivation for her character and her actions, so I gave her Elisedd. This is a novel and the story of Eadburh and Elisedd is fiction. I was filling in spaces where history falls silent, but I hope I have given them a credible story.

Charlemagne of course is all too well documented. But there is one thing about him which doesn’t seem to appear in the history books. The legend goes that he had a passion for the hunting, herding dogs which we call Briards, or Bergers de Brie. My own beloved Dizzy, long gone to the great dog playground in the sky, reminded me with a ghostly nudge to my hand, as she often does to let me know she has actually gone nowhere and is still in charge, that a Briard must play a part in my novel, and so Ava was born.

Because my modern story is set in the kingdoms of Mercia and Powys I have used real places throughout the story. Offa’s Ridge and the cottage are fictional, as is Coedmawr. I am sorry to say its Chronicle too is totally imaginary. Hereford, Marden, Meifod and Llangynog with the magical little church of St Melangell are all real. There has been no Canon Treasurer at Hereford Cathedral for many years and there is no Treasurer’s House in the Close. As I realised the cathedral was becoming more and more a central character in the story I was tempted to invent a diocese. But how could I? It had to be Hereford. The cathedral is the most wonderful building, nestling in the centre of the town in an elbow of the River Wye. Not one of the huge Gothic cathedrals, it is older, smaller, stouter, with fat Norman pillars rather than fluted columns. It has a very special atmosphere.

For a real place I needed extra help. I would like to thank The Revd Canon Chris Pullen, Chancellor of the Cathedral (and Deliverance Adviser), for his enthusiastic support and patient answers to my endless questions about life in the Close, deliverance, and the running of a cathedral. Thank you as well to Dr Rosemary Firman, the cathedral librarian, for fascinating insights into ancient manuscripts (and wistful suggestions that only