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

‘And I thought I did so in my own right, not merely as my father’s deputy.’

‘Can you not be both?’ He sighed.

She studied his face in the shifting firelight. He was a weak man, she knew that. He had allowed her to have more and more influence in the running of the kingdom. Was that what had doomed her sister’s marriage? Had Ethelbert of East Anglia, young as he was, proved too strong an option, so he had been swatted away like a hoverfly that turns out to be a wasp, to be disposed of before it stings.

One of the coral beads was beginning to blacken in the ash. She gazed down at it. What would her father do to a daughter who disobeyed him? If Alfrida did as she promised and tried to leave for a distant convent, would he stop her? Or was God the one person with whom the great King Offa would not dare pick a fight?

Beorhtric had turned away to extract another letter from the pile, unfolding it, holding it to the candlelight. As she watched him, she saw his eyes widen in horror. She waited while he read it, then sharply demanded. ‘Further news from Mercia?’

He turned to look at her. ‘This is from the archbishop’s hall in Lichfield. The ghost of King Ethelbert has appeared to the people of Sutton and to King Offa himself, demanding retribution,’ he said softly. ‘It seems the king feels guilty, even if the murder was done by another hand.’ She saw his hand was shaking. ‘He has sent to Rome through his archbishop to ask Pope Adrian what he should do.’ He sighed. ‘The good king, your father, is, it appears, much troubled by the thought of ghosts.’

Eadburh shuddered. Unable to stop herself, she glanced over her shoulder. The huge hall with its carved and painted beams high above them in the smoky darkness above the reach of candlelight was crowded and noisy, with the scop in one corner tuning his lute to sing to the throng, and in another a group of men laughing loudly at the antics of a tumbler juggling his coloured batons, but in the darkest shadows, the places the candles could not reach, that was where her own ghost lurked, the strange woman who watched her, silent, terrifying.

Bea jerked back, as though by moving she could hide from the woman’s gaze. The smoke from the hall and the smell of sawn timbers and roast meats, dogs and horses and human sweat, dissipated in a swirl of cold air and she realised suddenly that she was outside, at home in the little back garden in Hereford, sitting on the stone seat in the corner under the mulberry tree. It was bitterly cold, and strangely silent after the roar of the Anglo-Saxon hall.

‘Bea? Are you out there?’ Mark was standing at the back door, looking for her.

She scrambled to her feet. She hadn’t meant to go back. Not again. Not so soon. Not out here, spontaneously. Without the stone in her hand.

Mark was waiting for her in the kitchen.

‘Did you get Simon’s message?’ He had opened the fridge and was looking inside. ‘What are we having for supper?’

‘There’s some smoked trout and salad. What did Simon want?’ She was still disorientated and chilled to the bone.

‘He seemed troubled. He said he had been trying to reach you all afternoon and phoned me in the end instead.’

‘Not his wailing nun again?’ She tried to make light of it as she shrugged off her jacket. She hadn’t intended to dream. She had not had the stone out there with her, or incense, or even a thought of Eadburh and the past. She had gone out to cut some late daffodils, she remembered now, and then sat down to enjoy the sunlight by their little fountain with its shroud of emerald moss. She had left the scissors lying on the seat beside her.

‘No, this was his daughter. He took his kids to the church at Marden this afternoon to give them a bit of insight into the story of St Ethelbert and Emma, I think her name is, freaked out. What? What is it?’

Bea was staring at him in horror. Beorhtric’s hall; the parchment letter in a woman’s hand.

‘She saw a figure in the church,’ Mark went on, ‘and is convinced it was the saint. She wanted to light a candle, only there weren’t any apparently, so she wants to come to the cathedral tomorrow to visit the shrine. Simon is a bit concerned that his happy, atheist, solidly fact-based family is disintegrating before his eyes into a superstitious bunch of hysterics, and he is above all terrified that the children’s mother, who has apparently retreated to Worcester to get away from his obsession with the Anglo-Saxon world, will get wind of it.’

‘Poor Simon.’ She hooked a chair out from the table with her foot and sat down. ‘Are we allowed a drink today?’ They had agreed that giving up alcohol for Lent was a step too far this year, but they would try and do it three days a week.

He gave a wry smile. ‘I think we might. It has been a stressful day. I encountered Sandra on my way home this evening. She is still very concerned for your welfare.’

Bea sighed. She stood up and went to the cupboards in the dresser to find a bottle of red wine and two glasses. ‘Jesus will forgive you,’ she said firmly as she poured him one.

‘Jesus forgives everything.’ He sounded almost too fervent. ‘Even Sandra Bedford.’

‘What did you say to Simon?’

‘That I would meet them tomorrow so we could go to the shrine together to pray for the soul of St Ethelbert.

‘Wow. This is two teenagers?’ She took a sip from her glass. She was still trying to banish the picture of Beorhtric’s hall from her mind.

‘It doesn’t necessarily make them bad people. It would be nice if you came too.’

‘I would like that. I’m sorry I