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

in the shadows, but her intention hadn’t worked. Obviously she was there in plain view. She backed away, aware that she could feel the sunlight on her skin, the touch of the wind on her face; she could smell the beds of lavender and the dog roses and honeysuckle that scrambled over the hedges. Nesta was the other side of the garden now, a basket on her arm, cutting a sprig of flowers here, a branch of a shrub there, keeping her back resolutely towards her queen.

‘I could banish you to Hell,’ Eadburh went on conversationally, ‘or I could use you, send you through the hall at night to my husband’s side. And I could watch while you pour poison into his slack dribbling mouth as he paws his latest sodomite, and see you disappear as his warrior bodyguard flock round him to save his worthless life.’

‘No.’

Bea found it a huge effort to speak out loud. The air would not enter her lungs, the wind, so gentle on her face, would not allow her to breathe. ‘What you plan is evil.’

She saw Nesta straighten and turn to face them, she saw the basket dropping from her grasp to lie in the flower bed, the plants scattered, she heard Eadburh gasp. The sun had disappeared behind a cloud, its shadow racing across the garden bringing darkness. In seconds the scene had disappeared. She could see nothing. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t move.

‘Bea! Bea, darling, it’s all right! I’m here!’

Mark’s arms were round her and he was holding her tightly. The light was on, and she was there, in the snug, on the sofa, gasping for air. She looked round frantically, expecting to see Eadburh there in the room, but everything was normal.

Almost everything.

On the rug near the fire lay a scattering of herbs.

28

‘Don’t touch them!’ As Bea scrambled off the sofa, she saw Mark bending to pick up the discarded plants.

Mark straightened. ‘Why not?’

‘Because,’ she hesitated. ‘I think they’re poisonous.’

He looked back down at the wilted greenery lying at his feet. ‘I’m not going to eat them.’

‘No, Of course you’re not. But even so. Please. Leave them. I’ll get some gloves from the kitchen.’

‘Bea.’ Mark sat down on the armchair near the fire. ‘What is going on?’ he looked defeated. ‘Where did they come from?’

She went back to the sofa and threw herself down, her legs curled under her like a child, pulling the rug around her shoulders with a shiver. ‘I dreamt I was in a herb garden. I was watching a woman tell the herb-wife to gather poisonous herbs so she could kill her husband’s lover.’ She gave a deep sigh. ‘Then you woke me up and there are the herbs, scattered from Nesta’s basket.’

Mark closed his eyes and an expression of something like despair crossed his face. ‘That can’t happen.’

‘It can, Mark. Things can travel between existences. I’ve seen it before. I’m going to find my herb book and see what they are. There is rue in there, I recognise that, it has such a distinctive smell.’

‘But surely rue isn’t poisonous.’

She looked down at the scatter of wilting leaves uncertainly. ‘Perhaps I’m wrong. You go to bed, Mark. Leave this to me.’ Suddenly she was determined. ‘I will bag them up and leave them to check in the morning, then I will come up too.’

‘You’d better take photos of them.’ Mark stood up with a groan. He looked exhausted. ‘In case they vanish back down the wormhole.’ He walked over to the door, then he stopped and looked back. ‘Do you have any idea what you’re involved in, Bea?’

She grimaced. ‘If I don’t, nobody will. This is my area of expertise, Mark.’ She wished she felt as confident as she sounded. ‘I tried ringing Meryn a couple of evenings back. He’s still lecturing in the States, and he hasn’t returned my call. So,’ she took a deep breath, ‘I’m on my own. As long as,’ she gave him a sad little smile, ‘you’ve got my back, darling. You and Jesus.’

It had been Meryn who had taught her to use herbs as incense and for saining, the old Scots word for what the Native Americans called smudging. He had shown her how to look for the local plants and meditate with them, to study the traditions of the people with whom she was working. He had given her books on the Celtic lore of Wales, and he had talked of the Druids and their learning and the Physicians of Myddfai, but then he had moved on to the Anglo-Saxon leechbooks and the Nine Herb charm and the folklore of Herefordshire and the Marches and encouraged her to gather plants and dry them so she was ready for any emergency. And this was an emergency. She was strong. She could do this.

Labelled and sorted, the herbs gathered by Nesta fell into two distinct groups. Rue. Hops. Agrimony. All used by celibate medieval monks, according to her books, as remedies for lust. Perhaps something Saxon wives traditionally put in their unfaithful husbands’ pottage. Then there were the poisons. Aconite and deadly nightshade and white bryony. Considering she had had only a few minutes to gather them, Nesta had known exactly where in her herb beds to find the plants she needed. In the case of the bryony she had snatched at it as it trailed with the honeysuckle over the hedge. No doubt, had there been time, she would have gathered more, dried, from her store of pots and jars. Bea sat at the kitchen table staring thoughtfully down at the collection. Those poisonous herbs had other names, according to her book. Wolfsbane, monkshood, mandrake. The words were resonant with threat. Nesta had picked them. The woman was a powerful … Bea found herself groping for the right word. A witch? An enchantress? A spaewife? What was the Anglo-Saxon equivalent? A plant-charmer? A cunning woman? Herbs and charms and amulets had been Nesta’s business, just as