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

‘I didn’t want to be protected against him.’

‘I know. But I’ve got you now. You’re safe.’ The child’s aura was thin and ragged, a pale shimmering veil, the colour of dust.

29

‘Simon said he was taking her back to London. That I mustn’t contact them again. I messed up so badly, Mark.’

They were sitting side by side in the snug. She had waited all afternoon for a phone call from Chris saying that Simon was demanding his money back, that he was suing her friend for having a haunted cottage; or from Simon himself, accusing her of some sort of child abuse. Her phone, lying there on the coffee table in front of them, had remained stubbornly silent.

‘You should have called me.’

‘I know you don’t want to be interrupted when you’re at work.’

‘And you think this isn’t part of my work?’ Mark put his arm round her shoulders and pulled her gently against him. ‘Was Emma OK, as far as you know?’

‘Physically, yes. She was all over the place mentally. Will you go up there, please, Mark. He trusts you.’

When Mark rang him, Simon’s phone went to voicemail.

Mark sighed. ‘OK. I’ll go up to the cottage.’

‘I’ll come with you—’

‘No! I want you to stay here, and I want you to keep out of trouble.’ He looked at her sternly. ‘Please, darling. Don’t go chasing Eadburh through the stratosphere. I need to know you’re safe.’

She nodded slowly.

Mark stood up and was pulling on his jacket when there was a knock at the front door. Bea looked up, ragged. ‘Not Sandra, please. I can’t cope with her as well.’

It was Simon, with Emma and Felix behind him. Mark led them into the snug without a word.

‘I’m sorry. I was unfair,’ Simon said awkwardly. ‘I tried to pack up to take the kids back to London but they wouldn’t go.’

For a moment they all stood there in an uncomfortable circle then Emma flung herself into Bea’s arms, sobbing.

‘We had a family conference,’ Felix announced as his father appeared to be incapable of further speech, ‘and Em and I decided we didn’t want to go to London. We think you two are probably her only hope. So there.’ He glared at his father, then sat down on the armchair by the window, his hands folded neatly between his knees.

Mark looked at Simon. ‘Is that what you think?’

‘I don’t care what Dad thinks!’ Emma shouted through her tears. ‘He doesn’t understand.’

‘No, I don’t,’ Simon said at last. ‘But Emma seems to think Bea can help.’ He looked from Mark to Emma and back. ‘I don’t know what else to do.’

Bea noticed he didn’t look at her. ‘I’m willing to help in every way I can,’ she put in quietly.

‘And she can help,’ Felix put in from his chair by the window. ‘None of this is her fault, Dad. The voice came to you. It was your book that escalated things; the manuscript we’ve been reading, the whole Anglo-Saxon thing has stirred it up and Bea’s the only person who has a clue what’s happening and how to deal with it. To blame her is ludicrous!’

It was nearly midnight when Bea slowly climbed the attic stairs to her room and went in, closing the door behind her. Simon and Felix had gone back to the cottage, leaving Emma behind. Mark had retreated to his study while Emma helped Bea peel potatoes. It had seemed a soothing, unthreatening way of defusing the day’s events. The bangers and mash had gone down well, and Emma had retired to bed early without argument. Only when Mark too was asleep did Bea feel she could take the time to confront and attempt to unravel the day’s events.

She stood for a while in the dark, staring out of the window across the dark oasis of the garden towards the loom of the city lights beyond the wall. Finally, she turned and lit a candle, then put the match to some charcoal under a gentle cleansing incense. The energies in the room were uneasy, a remnant of earlier experiences, not quite there but not completely gone either.

She sat and waited several minutes until she felt centred and calm then she looked deep into the heart of the candle flame and began to circle herself with light and the armour of prayer. Only when that was complete did she turn her full attention to Eadburh.

‘Right,’ she said softly. ‘I’m ready for you. I want to hear the whole story. Go on, lady. Let’s hear what happened next.’

The king’s latest lover was dead. The royal hall was in uproar, the candles burned low and smoking, the high, elaborately carved rafters shadowed, echoing with whispers, the king’s warriors aroused from their sleep on the benches round the walls. The queen wasn’t there; she was in the nursery, bent over the sleeping figure of her little daughter, her face expressionless in the dusky chamber as the sound of shouting from the hall reached her across the courtyards and through the tapestry-hung walls. She was aware of the uneasy glances of child’s nurses as they huddled round the fire. No one approached her. They were all afraid of her.

Beorhtric did not come to her bed for several weeks, preferring to drink himself insensible with the men of his personal guard and amusing himself, so she had heard, with yet another favourite. When he came at last, pushing through the heavy curtains to their bed, Eadburh lay still, her eyes closed and gritted her teeth, waiting. He did not touch her. He threw himself down beside her, fully dressed, and lay there without moving, his eyes open in the darkness. ‘It was you,’ he said softly at last. ‘You killed them.’

‘How am I supposed to have done that?’

‘You have devils and demons to serve you and do your bidding. Everyone knows it; everyone whispers that you are a sorceress. Everyone is afraid of you.’

He could not see her smile in the