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

his death. ‘No nun this time, and no wailing voice.’ She kept her tone light. She let go of his arm.

‘You have to drop this, Bea.’ He glanced at her and then looked away, leaning on the rail, studying the river with exaggerated care. ‘There is too much going on in that cottage. If Simon is satisfied that you, that we, have sorted it between us, then leave it at that.’ He was pleading with her.

Too much going on? He too had sensed there was more to uncover.

‘I’ll leave it when I’m ready, Mark!’ she retorted crossly. It was not up to him to tell her to leave it. She thought she had made that clear. She sighed. ‘In any case, it sounds as if he will be preoccupied with his family for a while. I expect that will distract him and help clear the atmosphere. I’ve no reason to go there again.’

She looked up at him and found he was staring at her. ‘You’re wearing your cousin’s cross,’ he said.

Her hand flew to her neck. She had thought it safely concealed under her sweater. ‘I put it on when I realised she thought I was a heathen,’ she stammered without thinking. ‘I wanted her to trust me.’

‘You wanted who to trust you?’

There was a moment of silence broken only by the sound of the rain.

‘Offa’s daughter,’ she whispered.

She saw him close his eyes as if in pain. ‘Bea—’

She was furious with herself for letting the name slip. ‘I can take it off now. I won’t be seeing her again.’

‘Don’t!’ His reaction was sharp. ‘Don’t take it off, please.’

Bea let go of his arm and stepped away from him. Without the shelter of his umbrella, she was soaked in seconds. The storm was coming closer. The huge black thunder clouds were growing if anything blacker and more threatening.

‘Mark—’

‘Promise me you won’t summon her again. You are summoning her, aren’t you, she’s not just appearing.’ He stretched out his arm to shelter her under the umbrella, but she moved further away, her back to him, studying the river with exaggerated care. ‘I don’t summon her, Mark. She appears when she chooses.’ That was a lie. She watched as a branch torn from a tree by the storm appeared from beneath the bridge, carried downstream on the current. ‘Don’t ask me to promise anything. We agreed you would not interfere with what I do.’

‘But it’s dangerous, Bea. Don’t you understand?’

Obsession and possession.

‘It’s not dangerous, Mark. I know what I’m doing.’ Rain was seeping down her neck and she wasn’t sure if the wet on her cheeks was from the rain or from the angry tears she felt were very close. She gazed up at the sky, clenching her fists. If there was a clap of thunder now, she would probably lose it. Shout at him. Argue. Whose side were the wretched elements on, anyway? Was Thor a Saxon god, or was he a Viking? She huddled into her raincoat, trying to decide whether or not to turn and walk away.

‘Sorry.’ His voice was penitent, so quiet she almost failed to hear it because of the rain. ‘Can we start again? Go and get some tea?’

She nodded. Ducking under his umbrella again felt like a concession, but it was only a small one.

It took a while to get used to the idea that she was queen, that hers were the keys to the household, indeed of the whole-kingdom, that her mother was not going to appear with her face set hard as rock and her eyes as daggers as she surveyed her daughters’ latest assumed transgressions, that Alfrida and Ethelfled had remained in Mercia to satisfy her mother’s need for control while she was free of her at last. The wedding in Hereford had been rich and splendid, Eadburh’s sisters attending as their sister was raised to the status of queen. Eadburh waited with glee for them to curtsy to her, but then when the moment came for her to part from them she found her eyes full of tears and the three girls hugged one another for a long time, all too aware that fate, in the shape of their father, was sending them in different directions and they might never meet again.

Locking away her thoughts of Elisedd as best she could, Eadburh resigned herself to her future as a queen. After all, how bad could that be? She had brought four women with her to her marriage, one of them her closest companion, Hilde, and one the herb-wife, Nesta, with whom her mother had parted with reluctance. She set off with her new husband south to Wessex followed by cartloads of gifts, her dower and her morning gift, the riches presented by the satisfied husband on the day after their marriage. Part of that gift had been the horse she rode, a silky-maned, prancing mare named Mona for the moon.

Beorhtric was some ten years younger than her father, a fine figure of a man, strong, upright, hair brown, his eyes hazel. At first sight she had been pleased to find he did not repel her. Her sisters had spent long jealous hours gleefully explaining to her that even if she hated her prospective husband and he looked like Grendel, she could not refuse him. She was not some common housecarl’s wife; she was a princess, a peace weaver, and part of her father’s plan.

It had not occurred to her that her husband would know at once that she was not a virgin, that perhaps he would be angry and send her back as soiled goods. It was only when she saw him looking sideways at the sheets of their bed after their first night together that she realised she should have listened to her mother, who had advised her to make sure there was a smear of blood on the heavy linen. Perhaps it did not matter, for he made no comment. Her whole body had tensed against him as he