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

at the cathedral. The woman’s face was nowhere clear in the shadowy pictures, but there was enough detail for her to be fairly sure it was Bea. She put the clippings back in the file and sat for a long time, staring into space.

So, Beatrice Dalloway had a dangerous secret. Her instinct that the woman was trying to hide something from her was right. Not only that, she could tell when someone else was being shadowed by something evil as clearly as she had known it for herself – and Beatrice was being overshadowed by something very evil indeed.

19

‘Should I wish to consign someone to the place of demons forever after watching them die in agony,’ Eadburh whispered, ‘would you be able to teach me the charms I need?’

Bea shivered. Though Eadburh was whispering, the meaning of what she said was perfectly clear. She crept closer.

Eadburh had grown to rely on Nesta more and more over the last two years and, as far as such a thing were possible, they had become friends. Nesta and Hilde were still the only people in the Wessex court who Eadburh fully trusted. Bea saw a flicker of doubt in the woman’s clear grey eyes. ‘What you ask is very wrong.’

‘What these men did was very wrong.’ Eadburh clenched her teeth. ‘Both are murderers. I have discovered the name of one, and the other is for the future to reveal. I have someone who will take the potion to them.’

‘And it is not for anyone at this court?’

‘No.’ Eadburh’s eyes were burning with hate. ‘No one here, and no one will ever know where the death blows came from.’

‘Then why do you need poison? Why not send your “someone” to do the deed honourably with a sword in the open? Poison is a secret remedy.’ Nesta stood her ground.

‘That is for me to know. I am avenging great wrongs, and I am the only one who knows the name of the man who committed one of them.’ She had seen it in a bowl of spring water under the light of the full moon, the face of the murderer of Alfrida’s intended husband, swimming and flickering as he turned towards her, his helmet framing a strong broad brow and flint-dark eyes. She had recognised him immediately. He worked for her mother.

‘The man’s name?’

‘If I tell you, then there will be two of us here who know.’

‘I do not kill strangers. If I have to answer before the gods of my people and the God of yours, I must know why I did what I did and to whom I gave the death blow.’

Eadburh considered this, then nodded. ‘Very well. His name is Grimbert. He came to my father’s court as a murderer seeking sanctuary and my father gave it to him. He has worked to climb in their esteem and is now my mother’s chancellor and, I sometimes think, her lover, though that is not his crime. The man he has killed by foul murder was a king, little more than a boy, by treaty about to become the husband of my sister. The murder has gone unavenged and uninvestigated, and that cannot be allowed to be the verdict of history. He had the young king’s escort slaughtered with him and their bodies thrown in a rubbish pit on the side of the hill near my father’s palace, and then killed with his own hands the men who had helped him do the deed. Now he sits at my mother’s table, preening and enjoying her favours, knowing he has her in his power because he holds her secrets. The other killer murdered a prince; a prince who was my friend. When I know his name, I will tell my messenger to act.’ She tightened her lips. She had said all she was prepared to say.

‘And to hold secrets does indeed give people power,’ Nesta said thoughtfully. ‘So you now have power over me. And I over you.’

Eadburh reached into the scrip hanging from her girdle. Her hand, when she withdrew it, clasped two fine gold belt chains, a tiny gold distaff to hang from one of the chains and some small exquisitely enamelled trinkets. She held them out to Nesta, who took them without enthusiasm.

‘So we are friends.’ There was no warmth in Eadburh’s statement.

‘Indeed we are.’ Nesta nodded slowly. She sighed. ‘Come to my garden tomorrow and I will guide you to the ingredients you need and give you the charm to be said over them, but you must make the spell yourself and you must wait for the waning moon.’ She turned away and walked slowly across the garden, her gown trailing against the beds of lavender and rosemary, releasing their scents into the night air.

Bea shrank back into the darkness. Eadburh had stopped and was looking round sharply, as though suspecting that there was someone there, watching. She must never guess that this conversation had been overheard. For a second Bea felt a wave of real terror grip her. The shot of adrenaline in her stomach shocked her out of her trance, bringing her back to the present and the attic room and the realisation that downstairs someone was knocking at the front door.

Sandra followed Bea into the kitchen and watched as she plugged in the kettle. She sat down at the kitchen table.

Bea lifted the biscuit tin down from its shelf and pulled off the lid. She put it down in front of her guest. ‘I’m not sure when Mark will be back, if you’ve come to see him.’ She could hear the hostility in her own voice.

‘No, dear, it was you I wanted a word with.’ Sandra reached for a piece of home-made shortbread. Bea stared at it, unsure where it had come from. Made by some kind person no doubt for one of the finance meetings, where they were trying to raise millions of pounds for the cathedral fabric fund. She pushed a