The Dream Weavers

by Barbara Erskine

  Going back to his study of the photographed pages, Simon came to one that was blank and he could see now clearly that several dates with their appropriate entry had been scraped off. Again, it had been carelessly done, almost tearing holes in the vellum in places. The lack of care meant the missing words had not been removed without trace. There was a chance he would be able to read them.He reached for his own copy of the chronicle.

  In the year of Our Lord 789 Offa gave his daughter Eadburh to Beorhtric of Wessex, much against her wishes, to make certain that the kingdom of Wessex remained within his alliance, and in those days came for the first time three ships … these were the first ships of the Danes to come to England.

  And in a footnote another scribe had added in a different hand that the ships landed at Portland, on the south coast. Poor old Eadburh. Wessex, her new kingdom, had been the first part of England to be hit by the Vikings. He enlarged the page until it was nothing but a moonscape of faded dots. Slowly and carefully he refocussed and as he did so one of the scrubbed-out sentences became clear: And King Beorhtric’s marriage was attended by lightning and fiery dragons were seen flying in the air and the people saw this as portents of evil attending the arrival of the Mercian lady.

  Simon sat back. That comment was not in any of the other versions.

  He leaned forward again eagerly. What else had the chronicler put into his record? The screen was blank. He screwed up his eyes in frustration. In his excitement he must have leaned on the keyboard.

  He had been concentrating so hard he hadn’t noticed the sound of the wind in the trees outside. Rain was rattling against the window and in the distance he heard a low rumble of thunder. He looked back at the laptop and at that exact moment all the lights went out. Only the pale rectangle of the blank screen illuminated the room.

  Standing up, he made his way to the door and dragged it open. It was eerily dark outside, the sky boiling with black cloud. As he stood on the doorstep he saw a zigzag of lightning slice over the hills of Wales. He gave a rueful smile. So, the King of Wessex’s marriage to Eadburh had been attended by lightning and fiery dragons, and here they were again to frustrate his attempts to read more.

  Behind him, the lights in the house came on for a brief second, echoing the flash in the sky, then they went off again. He reached for the switch by the door. Nothing. Going back to the laptop, he powered it down to save the battery and then returned to the door. If the ancient gods of the Mercians were prepared to put on a show for him, it would be churlish not to watch.

  ‘Bea, are you up there?’ It seemed only minutes after she had retreated up to her attic room that Bea heard Mark’s voice from the bottom of the stairs. She frowned crossly, and levering herself up from her cushion on the floor she went to the door. ‘Yes, I’m here.’

  She heard the thud of his footsteps, running two at a time up the steep narrow flight. She saw his eyes register the candle, the incense in its burner.

  She thought he was going to be angry, but all he said was, ‘I’ve got a couple of hours before I take the service. I thought maybe we could do something together. Go out for a walk, perhaps.’

  ‘Mark, it’s pouring with rain.’ The storm had drifted in over the rooftops from the west and as she spoke a gentle rumble of thunder echoed round the room.

  She saw his shoulders slump.

  Eadburh’s grief at the news of Elisedd’s death had been overwhelming. Momentarily as she turned away from her parents, Bea had seen the look on her face, the fact that she was to marry a king, completely overtaken by her shock and devastation. She never knew, as Bea knew, that before he rode to his death Elisedd had returned to their trysting place. Though he realised their marriage was never going to happen, never had been going to happen, that she had always been and always would be out of his reach, he had ridden up there to say goodbye. Had he had any presentiment that he was going to die? Bea would never know that. She realised suddenly that she was almost in tears.

  ‘Bea?’ Mark was staring at her strangely. ‘Did you hear what I said?’

  ‘Sorry,’ she reached for a tissue and surreptitiously dabbed her eyes. ‘It’s the storm. You know they always give me a headache.’

  ‘I said, let’s go for a walk in the rain. Defy the elements.’

  Another rumble in the distance reminded Bea of a dog growling threateningly in its throat. ‘Are you serious?’ She laughed in spite of herself.

  ‘Yes, I’m serious. I love being out in storms. You know I do.’

  ‘But we might get struck by lightning.’

  ‘Not here. Not in town.’

  She gave in. They headed for Castle Green and then under the lime trees down towards the river. Standing on the footbridge with its iron lacework they paused, staring down at the mud-coloured water of the Wye as it flowed beneath their feet.

  The rain was pattering down on Mark’s umbrella. ‘What did you get up to this morning after I left?’ he said at last. ‘Anything exciting?’ It was a casual question.

  ‘Chris picked me up and we went up to the cottage to leave some spare sheets and cleaning stuff for Simon. I gather his family are coming to stay with him for a few days over Easter.’

  ‘No sign of the ghost?’ Again the enquiry was casual.

  She tensed and too late realised he must have felt her reaction as she held his arm beneath the umbrella.

  ‘No. I did wonder if there was still something in the garden, an echo, but there was nothing there.’ Elise had ridden into the sunset like a lovelorn hero in some romantic movie. Riding, did he but know it, to 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 took her and she had found it hard not to struggle and turn away, for his kisses left her cold. She hoped he would assume that her resistance was natural in a maiden.

  As the long procession wound its way south, the rains set in. They stopped at various royal palaces along the way, none of them as prosperous and well appointed as Tamworth or Sutton, but they would do. She refused to allow herself to think of the riches which would greet her eldest sister if she married the son of the great King Charlemagne. She, Eadburh, was now a queen. It was up to her to guide her husband to greatness as her father’s obedient ally.

  Within the first weeks of their marriage she discovered that her husband intended to leave her to her own devices; at night in the royal bed he demanded her obedience and submission, crowing that he was a stallion, a rutting stag. She gritted her teeth and bore it all in silence. In the daytime he was like her father, constantly overseeing his vast and sprawling kingdom, dictating letters, meeting with the ealdormen and thanes who ruled it for him, distracted by the shocking raid of three heathen longboats on the most southern part of his kingdom and the slaughter that ensued before the raiders put back to sea.

  She began to assert herself slowly, tentatively at first, asking whether she could appoint her own ladies of the household. He waved her away and told her to do what she thought best; he was preoccupied with matters of state. Slowly, cautiously, she increased the range of her influence. The wives of her husbands’ thanes were her companions. She disliked most of them and knew the feeling was mutual. She was seen as an outsider, a symbol of Mercia’s perceived aggression, but she quickly became more confident, realising that the women were afraid of her. Once, in a fury at the clumsiness of one woman who had dropped her spindle, she swore she would have the woman’s hand chopped off. That same night Beorhtric arrived in their bedchamber white with anger. One of his most senior thanes had complained to the king that his wife had been threatened and he had left the court not only with his wife but his entire retinue and his war band.

  ‘I only shouted at her because she was so careless!’ Eadburh was full of righteous indignation. ‘The woman is a fool.’

  ‘The woman is the wife of one of my most valued thanes. Why was she spinning like a serf?’

  ‘We all spin, Husband.’ She was genuinely astonished at his anger. ‘In her case, badly. If her husband cannot control her outpourings, he is weak and you are better off without him!’

  The king had stared at her in silence. She could read his thoughts so easily she was actually sorry for a man who could not dissemble. He was shocked, he was angry, but above all he was full of admiration. She met his gaze unflinchingly. ‘I understand people, Husband,’ she said quietly. ‘I learned from my father.’

  She saw the muscles of his jaw tighten and she suppressed a smile. She understood Beorhtric himself well enough by now to know that any mention of Offa would stop him in his tracks and remind him that his was now in every sense a client kingdom.

  Push and pull. Demand and give. She was working out her own way of controlling him. Before he had time to process her words, she reached for her girdle and began to slip out of her gown. She knew by now he was not a man who could resist the lure of flesh. As he shouted his climax loudly enough to alert the whole hall of his triumph, he would forget any doubts he had about this forceful young woman who was sharing his kingdom and his bed. He would never know that as he mated with her she closed her eyes and, grasping for a modicum of comfort, pictured her dead prince.

  It had not been part of the arrangement that Val would arrive a day early at the cottage on Offa’s Ridge, drop the children off and then go. Simon stared at his two offspring in sheer bewilderment, trying to process his wife’s reaction to the cottage, the rain, the mess of papers and books, his own scruffy, unshaven work attire. She, as usual, was immaculate, even in casual clothes, chosen no doubt to look good in her role of elegant, relaxed chauffeur arriving at a country cottage: slimline jeans, designer trainers, expensive sweater that had somehow managed to survive a 150-mile drive uncreased, her ash blond hair as always softly waved, seemingly untouched by the Welsh wind and rain that had assaulted them on their way up the path from the car. He couldn’t help comparing her with Bea in her functional but slightly arty attire, woven tops and dresses, linen trousers, beads and scarves and the little cross she had taken to wearing.

  Val’s look of barely disguised dismay registered with him only too painfully. ‘I had already guessed this place would be too small for all of us, Sime, so I made a back-up plan.’ She gave him a hug. ‘I’m going to leave the kids with you and then go and stay with the Fords in Worcester. I didn’t think you’d mind. They’ll be revising a lot of the time anyway so you can still work, and you don’t want me kicking around here getting in your way.’ She wandered into the kitchen, which thanks to his landlady was spotless, and he could hear her voice as she talked urgently into her phone. He looked ruefully from his son to his daughter and back. They avoided his gaze, both standing uncomfortably near the front door as though they too might change t
heir minds about spending the Easter holidays with him. Val returned after a full five minutes. ‘OK. That’s fixed. I can do my own thing while you entertain the children for a few days. I am sure you will all have a wonderful time without me. But don’t forget they’ve both got revision.’

  She hadn’t even stayed long enough for a cup of tea.

  ‘It’s OK, Dad. Chill. We won’t get in your way.’ Fifteen-year-old Felix threw himself down in the armchair by the fire, his phone already in his hand, his eyes glued to the screen.

  Emma was still standing at the door, looking wistfully after her mother. As the sound of Val’s car died away, she turned and surveyed the room. ‘I like it here,’ she announced. ‘It’s cool. Kinda magical.’

  Simon felt a surge of gratitude. ‘That’s a good word for it. Sorry about the rain.’

  ‘It’ll clear – I checked the weather app.’ Felix glanced up. ‘We brought all our gear. Mum said it always rains in Wales.’ They had dropped their belongings in a heap of rucksacks and boots and anoraks just inside the door.

  ‘And you’ve brought your books?’ Simon scanned the luggage for signs of study. Felix was about to take his GCSEs, and his sister her A levels.

  ‘I’m having the spare room, if there is one,’ Emma announced, ignoring his question. ‘Felix can sleep on the sofa. Where is the sofa?’ she added, casting a suspicious eye over the cottage.

  ‘No sofa.’ Simon felt it was a personal failure. ‘There is a spare room and I gather there are blow-up beds.’

  Felix greeted this news with surprising equanimity. He was once more engrossed in his screen. The internet signal was apparently having one of its better days.