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

been there. There were books and papers scattered all over the living space, unwashed mugs and a cereal bowl in the sink in the kitchen and a couple of shirts hanging on the line in the garden at the back.

‘It looks as though he’s making himself at home,’ Chris said as she unloaded her shopping bags. She had brought cleaning materials and spare linen and a couple of extra saucepans. ‘I didn’t suppose he was going to have any massive parties, though he did mention that his wife and kids might come for the odd weekend,’ she said as she stuffed a packet of dusters and some surface cleaner into the cupboard under the sink. ‘Somehow I got the impression he hoped they wouldn’t. At least he’s got everything he might need now.’

‘He mentioned he had a couple of teenagers,’ Bea put in. She was standing gazing out of the window into the garden.

‘He wasn’t sure they would even want to come.’ Chris straightened, her face red from bending down to the cupboard. ‘Frankly, I’m amazed he would want them here. That’ll be the end of his peace and quiet.’

‘Perhaps they are students of Zen.’ Bea smiled.

‘I don’t think so. That’s why he looks for isolated places to do his writing. Good,’ Chris looked round. ‘That should sort him out if they come. There are two beds in the second bedroom anyway and a couple of blow-up mattresses in the cupboard under the stairs. They can’t expect the Ritz. So, are you going to go all crystal-ball on me and check if your ghost has really gone? I’ll sit out on the terrace and contemplate the view while you do your thing.’

Her thing. It was the last thing Bea wanted to do. She was exhausted and stressed, but at the same time it would be interesting to have a feel of the atmosphere. Leaving Chris seated at the small table outside the front door, she wandered round to the back garden, trying to spot anything that reminded her of the sheepfold in her vision. This was the place, she was almost certain. The outline of the hills was the same, the angle of the ground, the lie of the land on the far side of the wall. The garden was uneven, hidden now beneath shrubs and drifts of daffodils. She walked over to the wall, the stones sprouting ferns and clumps of moss, liberally dotted with patches of yellow lichen. Had this wall witnessed Eadburh and her prince making love? She checked her watch. She probably had no more than ten minutes before Chris began to wonder where she had got to. She rested her hands lightly on the topmost stones and emptied her mind, waiting.

But there was no trace of any echoes outside or inside the cottage, of the nun or the fear she had felt, nor of the passion that had so briefly flared and died within the walls of that sheepfold so very long ago. The drama, the intense moments of love or lust, then the loss and sorrow were gone. Bea had sensed rather than seen the prince ride into the sunset, quite literally a silhouette against the glowing sky as the sun slid behind the mountains. She gave a wistful smile. The passion between the two had been so strong, but she guessed he had had a lucky escape. She doubted if Offa would have been a comfortable father-in-law.

She made her way back to Chris. ‘Is everything put away and neat?’ She knew that was important to the landlady in Chris’s soul.

Her friend nodded. Growing bored with the view she had gone back inside to do a bit of surreptitious tidying. She had even remade the bed and twitched the covers straight. Everything had been tucked into the rightful places in the cupboards and she had looked round the living room, obviously itching to pick up the scattered papers and straighten the cushions on the armchairs by the fire, but managing to resist the urge.

Locking up behind them, the two women made their way down the path and back to the car.

‘No ghosts now?’ Chris looked across at Bea as they climbed in.

‘No ghosts now,’ Bea confirmed. ‘The cottage feels at peace.’

‘Well, let’s hope Simon doesn’t stir anything else up,’ was Chris’s crisp comment as she backed the car round to drive back down the hill.

‘Can you really read it?’ Kate was standing watching as Simon made himself comfortable at the table and switched on the Anglepoise. He had brought his notebook, and a pencil – no ink of any kind must come near this sort of treasure – and they had agreed that it made sense if he were to take photos of the pages that referred to the kingdom of Mercia so that he could pore over them at home. But in the meantime he would allow himself this one day with the actual thing.

‘I’ll leave you alone then,’ Kate whispered when she realised he wasn’t listening. Already he was there, deep in the text.

In this same year of Our Lord 757, Ethelbald, King of Mercia, was murdered at Repton … Offa seized the kingdom of Mercia … Offa, the son of Thingfrith, the son of Eanwulf, the son of Osmod, the son of Eawa, the son of Pybba, and so on back to the last, or in fact the first, name on the list, the son of Woden.

That was so cool. To be descended from the gods. He loved this stuff and knew a lot of it by heart from the printed versions of the main surviving chronicles. The births and deaths of the successive kings of the kingdoms of what was to become England, and their bishops and the kings of the Franks and the popes: the men – and they were nearly all men – who mattered, the battles between them and the laconically reported appearances, as first rare and then more and more frequently, of ‘the heathen’, the Vikings,