The Dream Weavers

by Barbara Erskine

  He smiled. ‘You are more than a mare, my queen. You advise me; you sign my charters as one of my council. You rule at my side as my equal.’

  ‘And I thought I did so in my own right, not merely as my father’s deputy.’

  ‘Can you not be both?’ He sighed.

  She studied his face in the shifting firelight. He was a weak man, she knew that. He had allowed her to have more and more influence in the running of the kingdom. Was that what had doomed her sister’s marriage? Had Ethelbert of East Anglia, young as he was, proved too strong an option, so he had been swatted away like a hoverfly that turns out to be a wasp, to be disposed of before it stings.

  One of the coral beads was beginning to blacken in the ash. She gazed down at it. What would her father do to a daughter who disobeyed him? If Alfrida did as she promised and tried to leave for a distant convent, would he stop her? Or was God the one person with whom the great King Offa would not dare pick a fight?

  Beorhtric had turned away to extract another letter from the pile, unfolding it, holding it to the candlelight. As she watched him, she saw his eyes widen in horror. She waited while he read it, then sharply demanded. ‘Further news from Mercia?’

  He turned to look at her. ‘This is from the archbishop’s hall in Lichfield. The ghost of King Ethelbert has appeared to the people of Sutton and to King Offa himself, demanding retribution,’ he said softly. ‘It seems the king feels guilty, even if the murder was done by another hand.’ She saw his hand was shaking. ‘He has sent to Rome through his archbishop to ask Pope Adrian what he should do.’ He sighed. ‘The good king, your father, is, it appears, much troubled by the thought of ghosts.’

  Eadburh shuddered. Unable to stop herself, she glanced over her shoulder. The huge hall with its carved and painted beams high above them in the smoky darkness above the reach of candlelight was crowded and noisy, with the scop in one corner tuning his lute to sing to the throng, and in another a group of men laughing loudly at the antics of a tumbler juggling his coloured batons, but in the darkest shadows, the places the candles could not reach, that was where her own ghost lurked, the strange woman who watched her, silent, terrifying.

  Bea jerked back, as though by moving she could hide from the woman’s gaze. The smoke from the hall and the smell of sawn timbers and roast meats, dogs and horses and human sweat, dissipated in a swirl of cold air and she realised suddenly that she was outside, at home in the little back garden in Hereford, sitting on the stone seat in the corner under the mulberry tree. It was bitterly cold, and strangely silent after the roar of the Anglo-Saxon hall.

  ‘Bea? Are you out there?’ Mark was standing at the back door, looking for her.

  She scrambled to her feet. She hadn’t meant to go back. Not again. Not so soon. Not out here, spontaneously. Without the stone in her hand.

  Mark was waiting for her in the kitchen.

  ‘Did you get Simon’s message?’ He had opened the fridge and was looking inside. ‘What are we having for supper?’

  ‘There’s some smoked trout and salad. What did Simon want?’ She was still disorientated and chilled to the bone.

  ‘He seemed troubled. He said he had been trying to reach you all afternoon and phoned me in the end instead.’

  ‘Not his wailing nun again?’ She tried to make light of it as she shrugged off her jacket. She hadn’t intended to dream. She had not had the stone out there with her, or incense, or even a thought of Eadburh and the past. She had gone out to cut some late daffodils, she remembered now, and then sat down to enjoy the sunlight by their little fountain with its shroud of emerald moss. She had left the scissors lying on the seat beside her.

  ‘No, this was his daughter. He took his kids to the church at Marden this afternoon to give them a bit of insight into the story of St Ethelbert and Emma, I think her name is, freaked out. What? What is it?’

  Bea was staring at him in horror. Beorhtric’s hall; the parchment letter in a woman’s hand.

  ‘She saw a figure in the church,’ Mark went on, ‘and is convinced it was the saint. She wanted to light a candle, only there weren’t any apparently, so she wants to come to the cathedral tomorrow to visit the shrine. Simon is a bit concerned that his happy, atheist, solidly fact-based family is disintegrating before his eyes into a superstitious bunch of hysterics, and he is above all terrified that the children’s mother, who has apparently retreated to Worcester to get away from his obsession with the Anglo-Saxon world, will get wind of it.’

  ‘Poor Simon.’ She hooked a chair out from the table with her foot and sat down. ‘Are we allowed a drink today?’ They had agreed that giving up alcohol for Lent was a step too far this year, but they would try and do it three days a week.

  He gave a wry smile. ‘I think we might. It has been a stressful day. I encountered Sandra on my way home this evening. She is still very concerned for your welfare.’

  Bea sighed. She stood up and went to the cupboards in the dresser to find a bottle of red wine and two glasses. ‘Jesus will forgive you,’ she said firmly as she poured him one.

  ‘Jesus forgives everything.’ He sounded almost too fervent. ‘Even Sandra Bedford.’

  ‘What did you say to Simon?’

  ‘That I would meet them tomorrow so we could go to the shrine together to pray for the soul of St Ethelbert.

  ‘Wow. This is two teenagers?’ She took a sip from her glass. She was still trying to banish the picture of Beorhtric’s hall from her mind.

  ‘It doesn’t necessarily make them bad people. It would be nice if you came too.’

  ‘I would like that. I’m sorry I didn’t get Simon’s call. I left my phone on charge.’ It was still there plugged in on the dresser. She dragged her attention back to the present with an effort. ‘I haven’t met his children.’

  She did so next day as she followed Mark into the Chapter House garden behind the cathedral café. They found them seated at a table, Simon with a cup of black coffee, Felix and Emma with bottles of juice, both young people looking a little self-conscious. Introductions made, Mark and Bea sat down with them.

  ‘So, you’re a real ghost hunter.’ Felix obviously did not believe in the subtle approach. He fixed Bea with a stare that was half admiring, half accusatory.

  With a quick apologetic glance at Mark, she gave a small nod. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t pick up your calls yesterday,’ she said to Simon. She had switched on her phone at last, her eye as always automatically scanning down the list of missed calls in case there was something from Anna or Petra, then skipping on to play back with increasing concern Simon’s series of messages. He had obviously been very worried about his daughter. Emma was sitting at the table now, studying her drink with exaggerated care. ‘Can you tell me what you saw?’ Bea asked.

  Emma shrugged her shoulders. ‘The king.’

  ‘With his head on,’ put in her brother with a grin.

  ‘When you’re ready, we can go to the shrine.’ Mark was wearing his dog collar, from time to time acknowledging the greetings of people walking past.

  Emma looked scared at the prospect. ‘What do we have to do?’

  ‘You don’t have to do anything, Emma. It’s up to you.’ He waited for a response, then when she didn’t look at him, stood up. ‘Shall we go and see?’

  He led the way back into the cathedral and towards the Lady Chapel where the brightly coloured pillar shrine to Ethelbert, king and martyr, stood in the middle of the floor, surrounded by a swirl of tourists. Emma stared at it and he saw the dismay on her face.

  ‘I thought it would be old, with ancient carved stone.’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ Mark sighed.

  ‘What happened to the original one?’

  ‘I expect Henry VIII had it demolished,’ her brother put in. ‘Remember the Reformation?’

  ‘It’s too modern,’ she said at last. ‘I wanted to light a candle. I wanted to pray for him quietly.’

  Bea traded glances with Mark, then stepped forward and touched Emma’
s arm. ‘Come with me.’

  The chantry chapel was empty of people, two votive candles already lit on the shelf beside the altar. ‘This is one of the places set aside for private prayer,’ Bea whispered. ‘I’ll wait for you outside.’ There was no sign of her priest in the shadowed corner where he so often sat. Pulling the heavy door with its ancient grille half closed behind her, she tiptoed out, leaving Emma alone.

  ‘I’m not sure I know what I was expecting a shrine to look like,’ Simon said later when they returned to the café for lunch, carrying their trays back into the garden. ‘But not that. I understand it’s a memorial and modern and tells the story of the poor man’s murder, but I agree with Em, it’s not a place designed to encourage you to contemplate and pray for his soul.’

  ‘Different times,’ Bea said apologetically.

  ‘And our main shrine these days is to St Thomas Cantilupe,’ Mark put in. ‘In medieval times his name became more famous than that of St Ethelbert, I’m afraid, and although the cathedral is still dedicated to St Ethelbert, Thomas has rather taken over. There is a splendid shrine to him over there in the north transept with a place to light a candle to his memory and to pray.’ Mark stood up. ‘Forgive me, folks, but I have things to do. I’ll leave Bea to look after you and show you Thomas’s shrine, and perhaps some of our other treasures. The Mappa Mundi and the chained library are world famous.’

  ‘Nice guy,’ Felix commented as Mark made his way out of the café.

  Bea smiled. ‘I’m glad you approve.’

  ‘Talking of the library, I haven’t told you yet about that wonderful old book I went to see,’ Simon put in. It took some time. As she listened, Bea watched the interaction of Simon with his two offspring, both of whom seemed fully engaged with his enthusiasm.

  As the story unfolded between elaborate explanations from Felix about multispectral imaging techniques and the possibilities of finding an infra-red microscope, she began to feel a whisper of unease.

  ‘You say the house was down a long drive; the library was on the ground floor?’

  He nodded.

  ‘This house. I know you have to keep its whereabouts secret, but it isn’t by any chance called Coedmawr, is it?’

  The shock on his face confirmed it without him having to say anything else. ‘You know it? You know Phil and Kate?’

  ‘I don’t know them, no, but I went there once, a while ago. There was an elderly couple living there. The Huttons. They were tenants.’

  ‘Ah, before Kate’s aunt died and Kate inherited.’ He gave an abrupt laugh. ‘Jane asked me if I thought it was haunted and I said no. But what do I know?’

  ‘And you were right. It isn’t any more.’ Bea shivered.

  Felix looked up eagerly. ‘You went there to deal with a ghost?’

  ‘I went there to deal with a poltergeist.’

  ‘Oh good grief!’ Simon glared at his son. ‘Well thank God Kate and Phil don’t know about it. At least they’ve never mentioned it.’

  ‘And we won’t mention it either.’ She waved her hand dismissively. ‘We’ll talk about it some other time. Go on about the chronicle.’ The chronicle which was perhaps one of the books Ken Hutton had threatened to burn. She had begged him not to. Perhaps she had saved the library with that last impassioned plea.

  She listened enthralled as Simon related the local version of St Ethelbert’s demise, and the amazing relics that were destined to lie for a while under the roof of the local priory.

  ‘So, Offa admitted the murder and repented?’ she said when he finished. Her voice was husky. Surely it could not be coincidence that the story should emerge now. ‘But why did he admit blame when your chronicle says it was his wife who did the murder?’

  Alfrida herself had said it was her mother, consumed with jealousy, in her letter to Eadburh, a source about which Simon knew nothing.

  ‘Offa was scared of the ghost,’ Emma put in. ‘Imagine murdering a saint; even if it was his wife who actually did it. He would’ve had to take the blame – he couldn’t let people think she would do something like that without his knowledge. And on his own doorstep. They think his palace was right there, you know, across the river from the church.’

  ‘But Ethelbert wasn’t a saint then, Em,’ her father pointed out. ‘It was the murder, or martyrdom, that led to him being created a saint.’

  ‘It was the miracles he performed, Dad,’ his daughter corrected. ‘I’ve googled him.’ She had cheered up with a plate of food in front of her. ‘The pope told Offa to build the cathedral or be damned.’

  ‘It wasn’t quite like that. He told him to build the church at Marden first, and then yes, a great cathedral where the saint could finally rest.’

  Bea listened quietly. She could feel her heart beating unsteadily as they skirted round the story, the story she already knew. ‘So, what happened to Offa’s daughter, widowed before she was even married,’ she asked Simon at last. ‘Do you know?’

  He nodded. ‘I mention all this in my book on East Anglia, but I felt it deserved at least a footnote in the present volume as well. It was all so dramatic. She fled to Ethelbert’s kingdom of East Anglia and made her way to Crowland Abbey in the Lincolnshire Fens, which was dedicated, interestingly, to the same St Guthlac as the minster here, where our chronicle was written. The story goes that she had herself walled up in a cell as an anchorite, or anchoress – that is someone who devotes their life to God and is declared dead to the world. She spent the rest of her life there.’

  ‘Grim.’ Felix licked his lips ghoulishly.

  ‘And how long did she live?’ Bea whispered.

  ‘I don’t suppose anyone knows for sure, but one version says she might have lived another forty years or so. Can you imagine!’ Simon gave a theatrical shudder. ‘It’s generally assumed her tomb was lost when the Vikings attacked the abbey. She too was made a saint.’

  Bea was tempted to tell them about the letter, about Alfrida’s angry and heartbroken vow to her sister, but how could she? If she ever told Simon about her secret peephole into the past it would be in private, without his children or Mark there. And if she told him any more about her visit to Coedmawr, that too would be very private and on condition he never told Kate and Phil. There must be no mention of poltergeists unless they mentioned them first.

  She was shaken out of her thoughts by the sound of her name. ‘Bea, dear!’ Sandra Bedford had made her way through the crowds unnoticed and was hovering over their table, a mug of tea in her hand. She interrupted Felix’s next question, which was about the practicalities of being walled up; food, and sanitation. Her gaze swept over Emma and Felix to Simon, and rested on him speculatively. ‘I saw the dear canon leaving you just now. How nice to be able to sit here in the sun with your friends.’

  Bea’s heart sank. ‘Sandra. Simon, this is one of our invaluable volunteers. They run the cathedral for us.’

  Simon stood up and held out his hand. ‘How nice to meet you. This is a wonderful place.’

  ‘May I join you?’ Sandra was already sitting down. ‘I saw you earlier at the shrine of St Ethelbert. Such a sad story, but such an inspiration.’

  ‘I saw his ghost,’ Emma put in. Bea looked away. This was the last direction she wanted the conversation to go.

  ‘Indeed?’ Sandra smiled, reaching forward to put her hand over Emma’s. ‘Then you were indeed blessed, my dear. Was that here, in the cathedral?’

  Felix took a swig of juice from his bottle. ‘Dad took us to see the church where the murder happened.’

  ‘Indeed. That is interesting. You are teaching your children to love history,’ she smiled at Simon again. ‘I’m sure I know your face. You’ve been here before, I think? I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.’ Bea saw the sideways glance, the eager way she sat forward.

  ‘I’m Simon Armstrong. I’m a historian specialising in the Anglo-Saxon period, so we are spending some of the Easter holidays doing some research on the hoof, as it were.’

  Please, don’t menti
on the ghost in the cottage. Bea’s fervent plea was so loud in her head she was sure that the others must have heard it. Hurry up! Drink your drinks and let’s get out of here. But it was too late.

  ‘So, how do you come to know Mark and Bea?’ Sandra’s attention was directed at Simon with what Bea was beginning to think of as her gimlet smile.

  Simon hesitated. ‘We have a mutual friend in the owner of the holiday cottage I’m staying in.’

  ‘Bea is helping Dad with the ghost in the cottage,’ Felix stepped in with both feet. His self-mocking grin, designed to show he wasn’t entirely serious, escaped Sandra completely.

  She swivelled on her seat to face Bea, her gaze avid. ‘You help with ghosts? Surely that’s the canon’s job, dear.’

  ‘And Mark sorted it for them,’ Bea said firmly. ‘He went up to the cottage and prayed.’

  ‘But you’re the actual ghostbuster, right?’ Felix persisted. ‘I wanted to ask you about that. That’s the coolest job!’

  For a moment Bea was speechless and Simon must have seen her panic for he stood up suddenly. ‘Listen, I’m so sorry, but we are going to have to go. Come on, kids. I’ll ring you, Bea.’

  Emma was glaring at her brother as she stood up. ‘You berk! Do you want to tell everyone!’ Her whisper carried clearly across the garden as the three of them hurried away.

  Bea was left staring helplessly at Sandra. ‘Nice people,’ she said. ‘But it makes me realise how pleased I am my girls are grown up now.’

  ‘What did he mean, you are the actual ghostbuster?’ Sandra’s voice was icy.

  ‘He’s confused. The owner of the cottage Simon is staying at is, as Simon said, a friend of mine. The daughter, Emma, is a bit flaky as you saw, and Mark suggested they come here so he could pray with them at the shrine.’

  Sandra nodded. ‘She’s a pretty girl.’

  Bea breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Isn’t she. Poor Simon. As he said, he’s a historian. I don’t think he realised his wife was going to deliver the kids to the cottage and leave them with him for a few days. He had come up here to write in peace and he has been trying to think of ways to keep them engaged with what he does.’