The Dream Weavers

by Barbara Erskine

  He looked up. ‘Do you know the most important word on this page? It’s “here”. This chronicle was written in Hereford!’ He could barely contain his excitement. ‘You’re a genius, Felix! And now the end date of the last entry in this particular chronicle, 1055, makes sense. It was the year the Welsh invaded Mercia yet again.’

  ‘So, Offa’s Dyke didn’t work?’ Felix stared at the screen, fascinated.

  ‘No, it didn’t. In that splodge of ink at the end, Felix, if I’m right, perhaps you can see history happening.’

  ‘Can we go and see where it all happened?’ Emma looked up again. It appeared she had been listening after all. ‘Like the murder of the king. I’d like to see where the miracles took place.’

  Simon nodded. ‘Let me find my book about the history of Hereford. I believe the modern hospital is built on the site of the old priory, so there’s nothing to see now. But we can go to the place where, according to legend, Ethelbert was murdered; a sacred spring was said to have gushed up from the ground after he was killed, and they built a church on the site. Then we can go to Hereford itself to see the cathedral which is dedicated to him – because obviously he became a saint and there is a holy well there somewhere dedicated to him which we can see.’

  ‘What did they do with his head? How gross!’

  ‘According to the records, it was eventually taken to Westminster.’

  ‘Why?’

  Simon looked up at his children and beamed. ‘Why don’t we try and find out.’

  Emma went back to her phone with a sigh then she looked up again with a shiver. ‘There is the most awful draught in here,’ she complained loudly. ‘When are we going to get supper?’

  Simon looked up. He hadn’t noticed that it was already growing dark outside. ‘Now,’ he replied, reluctantly closing the laptop. ‘We can go on with this tomorrow.’ She was right. It had become cold in the room. In the fireplace the logs had burned down to ash.

  The following afternoon, after consulting his map, Simon drove his children over to the village of Marden, near the Iron Age fort of Sutton Walls, and down a long lane towards the church. Besides being the scene of Ethelred’s muder, this was one of the places, he explained, where they had found archaeological traces of Anglo-Saxon habitation, making the fields round here a potential site for Offa’s palace.

  Emma stood at the back, just inside the door of the church, watching her father and her brother as they wandered up the aisle to stand in front of the chancel, staring up at the high windows. Normally she was the one to poke around old churches while her brother scoffed about the stupidity of people believing the garbage that was religion when it was nothing but mind control over the masses, fading him out with the ease of long practice, quietly enjoying the beauty of old stone and ancient art, but there was something about this church that made her uncomfortable. The Church of St Mary the Virgin was very large, almost as broad as it was long, airy and friendly. Or at least it should feel friendly. Behind her, someone had turned a corner of the nave into a library and there were masses of books there, lots of notices on a board, kids’ toys, but there was also a huge amount of dark wood here at the back. So, where was the gushing spring her father had mentioned?

  There was a door in the panelling at the rear of the church with St Ethelbert’s Room written on it. She tiptoed across and pushed it open. It led into a dark, empty room lined with chairs. There, standing rather forlornly in the middle of the floor, was a narrow wooden structure, looking more like a plant stand than anything else, with a brass plate labelling it as St Ethelbert’s Well. She studied it, puzzled, then knelt and lifted the small wooden lid at its base. A circular hole, dry at the bottom, was all there was to see of the sacred spring. She felt a massive jolt of disappointment. She had, she realised, been expecting something much more spectacular: bubbling water, or at least a magical pool. Not Lourdes perhaps, but not this. She gazed down it for several seconds, then slowly replaced the lid and stood up, glancing back through the door.

  Up at the east end of the church, Simon and Felix had stepped up into the polygonal apse with its huge network of roof beams. Walking back into the nave Emma felt her stomach suddenly churning uncomfortably. Her pulse was racing. She wondered if she was going to be sick. Clutching the back of the pew nearest to her, she closed her eyes and tried to breathe deeply and slowly. After a minute she opened her eyes again and saw a young man, no, a boy, much the same age as Felix, standing there, between her and the porch. Tall, wrapped in a long cloak, his eyes were wide, scared, pleading as they sought her face, his mouth open as if in protest as her ears were filled with the sound of a long agonised scream.

  The next thing she knew, she was running through the churchyard, dodging between the graves, heading through the long grass as fast as she could, twisting her ankle on the uneven ground.

  ‘Emma! Wait!’ Her father’s voice, behind her.

  Get away. She had to get away.

  She came to a stop on the bank of the river that flowed along the edge of the churchyard, staring desperately down into the water. Somewhere she could hear a bell ringing.

  ‘Emma, what is it?’ She flinched as Simon put his hands on her shoulders. She was shaking violently as she subsided onto her knees on the muddy ground.

  ‘Bloody hell, Em!’ Felix appeared at her father’s side. ‘What on earth’s the matter?’

  She was gasping, unable to speak, her heart still thundering in her chest. Simon slipped off his jacket and wrapped her in it, then he squatted down beside her, his arms round her. ‘It’s all right, he murmured. ‘You’re safe. You’re OK now.’

  They stayed like that for several minutes. Felix opened his mouth, about to make a facetious remark, then he thought better of it. He leaned against a tombstone nearby, watching his sister as her colour began to return.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said at last. It came out as a whisper. ‘I don’t know what happened.’

  ‘That’s all right, darling.’ Simon gently pulled her against him, feeling her body relax a little.

  ‘Can you hear the bell?’ She put her hands over her ears.

  That was too much for Felix. ‘The bells; the bells!’ he intoned in a voice full of mock horror.

  ‘Stop it, Felix!’ his father rounded on him. ‘What bell, Em? I can’t hear a bell.’

  She swallowed hard. ‘It’s stopped.’

  ‘Can you stand up?’ Simon straightened painfully. The ground was damp and cold, and a bitter wind was finding its way into his bones now he had given up his jacket.

  Emma nodded. She scrambled to her feet and stood forlornly looking down into the river. ‘What happened to that boy?’

  ‘What boy, darling?’

  ‘The boy in the church. The boy who screamed.’

  ‘It was you that screamed, Em!’ Felix put in. ‘I’ve never heard anything like it. They pay women who can scream like that, you know, for film soundtracks.’

  Emma ignored him. ‘His face was so kind; and it was filled with so much horror.’

  ‘Excuse me!’

  They hadn’t noticed the elderly man approaching across the churchyard. ‘Are you all right?’ He was bent, his face weathered. As he reached them, he was pulling off a pair of gardening gloves. Simon looked up to see where he’d come from and noticed a wheelbarrow, fork and spade under a tree. ‘I couldn’t help seeing the young lady was upset.’

  ‘She’s fine, now. Thank you.’ Simon gave him an apologetic smile.

  ‘Did you see the ghost?’ The old man addressed Emma with a twinkle in his eye. ‘It takes some people like that. There is a ghost of a cavalier who was killed by the roundheads in the church tower, but if you were in the church itself, then you saw the ghost of our young king. If you saw him, it’s a blessing, my dear. More than a blessing; you will never go blind, so they say.’

  ‘Your young king?’ Emma repeated shakily.

  ‘King Ethelbert. His holy well is in the church. Did you see it? In the vestry? It’s here by the r
iver the great man was murdered, and they buried him in secret. But his ghost appeared and Offa, who was king in this part of the world, was forced to go on his knees to the Pope of Rome to ask for forgiveness. Then the pope made Ethelbert a saint. This is a doubly sacred place. You’ve no reason to be afraid. They had to dig him up to give him a proper burial, and when they took his body away on a cart to Hereford, his head, that had been cut off, fell off the cart and bounced across the road, and it hit a blind man who could immediately see again.’ He had obviously told this story before and was thoroughly enjoying himself. ‘See the two stone heads, one on either side of the porch door over there? That’s King Ethelbert and the pope.’

  ‘It wasn’t a man,’ Emma said when the old man finally stopped talking. ‘It was a boy. Like my brother.’

  There was an awkward silence.

  ‘So why,’ Felix put in at last, ‘is the church not dedicated to St Ethelbert? Like the cathedral?’

  ‘Because the Pope of Rome told King Offa to dedicate it to the Blessed Virgin Mary.’ The old man was back on track. ‘She keeps a special eye on our Border March, you see. She’s even come over here, you know, from heaven, over there into the Black Mountains, to make sure we were all right.’ He waved his arm vaguely towards the west. ‘You’ll find an inordinate number of churches in the March dedicated to the Blessed Virgin.’

  ‘My sister heard a bell as well,’ Felix went on.

  The old man looked impressed. ‘Ah, that’s a whole ’nother story. We have lots of stories here. That’s the mermaid’s bell. It fell off the tower and she dragged it down into the depths of the River Lugg here, and she lives in it, so they say. And there’s another bell, the pilgrim’s bell. They found that one in the river and all. That’s in the museum in Hereford.’

  He sighed. ‘I’ve got to go. You go back inside, my dear, and say a prayer for the soul of our king. He didn’t mean you to be afeared of him.’

  They watched as the old man plodded back to his wheelbarrow, collected a thermos from under a yew tree and trundled his way slowly out of sight.

  ‘Do you think he was a ghost?’ Felix said after a moment or two.

  ‘I think it’s time we went home,’ Simon said firmly.

  ‘No.’ Emma bit her lip, then she went on. ‘He’s right. I should go in and say a prayer.’

  ‘You don’t pray!’ Felix sounded incredulous.

  ‘Maybe I should.’ She glared at him.

  Emma pulled off her father’s jacket and, pushing it into his arms, headed back towards the path to the church door. Pushing it open, she peered in.

  Behind her, Simon caught Felix’s arm and held him back. ‘Let her do it alone,’ he whispered.

  Emma stood close inside the door and held her breath. The church was empty and quiet. ‘Are you there?’ she whispered. There was no reply.

  She forced herself to walk past the spot where the figure had stood, moving steadily up the central aisle towards the altar.

  She stood still for a long time, her eyes closed, trying to form a prayer, but she didn’t know how, or what to say, and at last she turned away.

  Simon and Felix had come in quietly after her and were seated side by side in the back pew.

  ‘I want to light a candle for him. There aren’t any here.’

  Simon stood up. ‘We could do that at the cathedral. They have a shrine to St Ethelbert there. Why don’t we go there tomorrow.’

  And perhaps tomorrow he could contact Bea or her husband to ask what to do about a teenage daughter who had seen a ghost. Not the ghost of the powerful king she had expected to see, but the ghost of the teenager from East Anglia who had been lured to Mercia on the promise of a royal marriage, who had been treacherously murdered and at whose shrine Emma now wanted to light a candle.

  18

  The magic had worked. At last, after two miscarriages of the sons her husband longed for, Eadburh had conceived again and carried a child to term. It was a girl. She gazed down at the little thing, lying in its crib, and saw to her dismay in the wide dark eyes an echo of her husband. Although she knew Beorhtric was disappointed it was not a boy she smiled. Nothing would spoil her sense of triumph. This was her child and she would no longer feel so alone. She named her Eathswith.

  For a while she was content. Her dreams of Elisedd had faded, and with them her plans to avenge his death. She only thought occasionally about Elisedd’s baby, whom she still pictured as a little boy, and with him the two lost children that had followed him into the dark. As Nesta had advised she had prayed for each child in turn, promised each her love, kissed each on the forehead in her dreams and pushed them gently away, back into the world of spirits.

  She scarcely thought about her family at all. Her sisters seemed content with their lot and she seldom heard from them, Ethelfled in faraway Northumbria and Alfrida, as far as she knew, still in Mercia awaiting her father’s decision about whom she should marry. She had not really expected to hear from them. Their worlds were different now. She did not hear from her mother at all, beyond a baptismal gift for the child. The little girl was strong and bawled lustily, and life had settled into a routine with her nurses as slowly they travelled around her husband’s kingdom, feasting, hunting, in winter spinning and weaving, playing board games and listening to the tales of the scops, the travelling singers and poets who arrived from across the land. Besides those activities Eadburh joined more and more often in her husband’s meetings, enjoying the political thrust of court life, discussing politics with his ealdormen and thanes and at times calling discussions of her own, feeling more and more empowered as she pushed the limits of her influence to see how much free rein the king would give her, sensing the resentment of the men around her, but ignoring it with lofty disdain. The kingdom was at peace. There had been no further sightings of the heathen ships in the channel. All was well.

  It was a shock when the letter came. She stared down at it, the words jumping in the candlelight, seeming to wriggle and writhe upon the page like a basket of snakes. Her husband had handed it to her when he found it amongst a bundle of letters in Offa’s messenger’s bag. She had been sitting by the fire playing with their little daughter. The letter was from Alfrida.

  I was betrothed to a king at last. A boy king, some years younger than me, but I was assured good looking and already lusty. And he came from his kingdom of East Anglia, to our court at Sutton for the treaties and the wedding vows. And he was young but he was tall, and so handsome and gracious, sister mine, and kind and good and rich and strong amongst kings, and our mother saw him and she was bitterly jealous that I was to wed such a handsome lad, and she had him slain! Murdered! They cut off his head! Our father claims Mama had discovered a plot to assassinate him, but that is untrue. I know her and her insatiable lusts. She could not bear for me to be happy and free!

  Alfrida had written with such force the nib of the quill had torn through the parchment.

  I am no longer a daughter of Offa and our mother is as dirt beneath my feet. Beware lest they betray you too. I am going to my promised husband’s kingdom and there I will give myself to God. I will no longer be a piece on my father’s gaming board.

  Bless you, my sister and may God give his protection to you and to my little niece. You will not hear from me again.

  Eadburh’s hands were shaking as she read the last words. ‘What is it, Wife?’ She hadn’t realised that Beorhtric was watching her. He threw down the document he was reading and reached out for her letter. She handed it to him without protest, too shocked to speak.

  He read it twice then put it down on the table. ‘I trust she cut the throat of the scribe who wrote these words for her,’ he said coldly. He paused then he went on, ‘I have a missive from your father on the same matter. His version of the story speaks of East Anglian treachery and betrayal.’

  ‘And who do you believe?’ She did not tell him that Alfrida’s letter had not been written by a scribe. She recognised her sister’s hand, with her anguish and fury portra
yed in every line.

  He sat back in his chair looking thoughtful. ‘I am your father’s ally.’

  Eadburh beckoned the nurse who was hovering in the background and handed the baby to her, dismissing her curtly. ‘And so you are as ever bound to him hand and foot!’ She saw his expression darken. ‘Is it not true? You were, after all, given my hand as a bribe to keep you trotting at his heels.’

  ‘As your sister Ethelfled was given to the King of Northumbria. It is the way of kings.’ His voice was surprisingly gentle. ‘You knew why you and I were bound together. You and your sisters are peace weavers. I suspect your father’s version is the true one. He saw your sister as another link to a kingdom he saw as his ally, then he discovered treason.’

  ‘So he admits it? He admits murder? He didn’t send the boy king home, he had him executed in cold blood!’

  ‘It was the boy king who planned murder, Eadburh, and the queen who uncovered the treason. It is written here, plain.’

  ‘No!’ Her anguished denial rang out over the crackle and hiss of the logs in the central firepit. Silence fell in the mead hall as faces looked towards them and hastily looked away again. She was still holding the string of corals she had been dangling before her little daughter’s fascinated gaze. As the baby pulled at them the string broke and the beads rolled away onto the floor. She watched them as they came to rest. The boy who had arrived with a basket of logs for the fire put them down and bent to gather up the beads, but she gestured sharply that he leave them lying in the ashes.

  ‘My sister was in anguish when she wrote that letter,’ she cried.

  ‘King Offa will find her another mate.’

  She looked up at him, her eyes narrowed. ‘So that’s it. We are mated like mares to a stallion. One mate does not suit so its throat is cut and another chosen.’ Elisedd too had been unsuitable and so had had to die. She fell silent as the flood of bitter memories overwhelmed her.