The Dream Weavers

by Barbara Erskine

  Their trysting place was down on the riverbank hidden by a stand of alder trees. Grimbert spread his cloak on the ground and sat down, waiting, watching a kingfisher perched on the stump of a fallen willow as it peered down into the water. The water played its part, rippling, flickering, mesmerising. Still the queen did not come. Grimbert lay back, his arm over his eyes against the sunlight as it danced through the pale green leaves of the willow. A bee buzzed near his face and he brushed it away, sending it veering angrily into the air. Another bee joined it and they homed in on a patch of dandelions near his head.

  Bea’s dream shifted back to the great hall. She watched as the queen leaned over to whisper to Offa and saw his nod, the flash of anger in his eyes followed by the slightest of shrugs as his wife stood up and left the table to slip through the curtain into the private area behind.

  Hilde crept closer. She had anointed her wrists with the essence of rose favoured by the queen. When Grimbert smelt it, he smiled.

  The agonising pain in his ear made him lash out, but the poison was instant. When they found his body there was a dead bee lying on his chest.

  Hilde slipped back into the banquet and took her place amongst the queen’s ladies. If she had been missed, she would have used an urgent trip to the latrines as an excuse, but no one had noticed her absence and no one had noticed that Grimbert had gone. When the queen returned to the hall, white and trembling, some time later, Hilde suppressed a smile. She knew the queen could make no fuss, raise no alarm, for how could she explain what she was doing down there on the bank of the river when she should have been by the king’s side at his feast?

  Hilde stayed several more days at the court – to have hurried away too soon in the uproar and mourning after Grimbert’s untimely death and the queen’s furious grief might have roused suspicion – then she went on her way. But this time she was alone and on foot, her escort sent back to Wessex, while she took the road north and then west towards the cloud-shrouded mountains and deep valleys and passes of Powys on the second part of her quest.

  ‘Jane?’ Simon struggled to place the woman’s voice on the other end of the phone line.

  ‘Jane Luxton. From the cathedral library.’

  ‘Of course. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Listen, I’ve persuaded Kate and Phil to let me bring the chronicle, the folio, and one or two other books in their collection here to the cathedral where they can be stored in our underground archive. We have temperature and humidity control here, and our conservator can have a look at them. I’ve also had a word with an expert from the Bodleian, who has promised to come over and advise us. After that, it will probably be a valuation by Sotheby’s or Christie’s. Kate thought you might like a heads-up. One last chance to see your chronicle before we lock it away.’

  ‘Yes. Please.’ Simon didn’t need to think about it.

  ‘It will have to be today, I’m afraid.’

  He glanced at Felix, who was once more at the keyboard. Emma hadn’t surfaced yet. He had left a cup of tea by her bedside an hour ago and stood beside her looking down with a strange feeling of tenderness such as he didn’t recall feeling since she was a toddler with golden curls and huge dark blue eyes. ‘No problem. I’ll be there.’

  ‘Let Kate know you’re coming.’

  It was a no-brainer that he would take Emma and Felix. They should both have been studying, but he didn’t think that was going to happen and he didn’t want to leave them alone. It would be good to get them out of the cottage for a few hours. He left a message on Bea’s phone before they left. ‘I thought a change of scene might be in order. Can we talk tomorrow instead?’

  They were a little subdued as he retraced his carefully memorised route, but the long winding drive and the overgrown parking space with its mossy gravel in front of the ancient house woke them up. They sat in stunned silence as he drew up and put on the handbrake. ‘This is well cool, Dad,’ Felix breathed at last.

  ‘Sleeping Beauty’s palace,’ Emma whispered.

  Simon climbed out of the car. ‘Come and meet Kate and Phil.’

  ‘Let me take some pictures, Dad. My phone has a much better camera than your old thing. I reckon we could do even better than the ones you’ve taken,’ Felix announced when his father queried the need for more pictures as they gathered upstairs in front of the long table and as his father turned the pages of the ancient book with a careful hand while his son took a fresh sequence of photos. It was as they were finishing that Emma stepped forward and laid her hand flat on the last page.

  ‘Don’t touch, Em!’ Simon shouted.

  Emma didn’t move. ‘I can hear him,’ she said suddenly. ‘I can hear him talking. He has a pen in his hand and he is looking at his work and someone has walked in and is standing behind him. The old man has dropped his pen and now the inkpot has fallen on the floor, splashing his robe. They can hear shouting in the distance and the old man has climbed off his stool. He’s terrified. He has pushed away the desk and is looking round for somewhere to hide—’

  ‘Emma! Stop it!’

  She took no notice.

  ‘—it’s the enemy. They’ve broken into the church and now they’re in the scriptorium. The two men are running to the door. They run down a dark passage and out into the garden. I can hear their sandals flapping on the stone path and behind them the book has fallen off the desk and into the dark place behind it. The enemy are there, with drawn swords, the blades covered in blood—’ Her voice was rising, the words coming more and more quickly.

  ‘Emma!’ Simon shouted. Felix had put down his phone. He lunged forward and wrenched his sister’s hand off the page as Kate ran into the room. ‘What is it?’ she cried. ‘What’s wrong?’

  Emma let out a sob. Pushing past Kate, she ran out of the door. They could hear her footsteps thudding along the landing and then down the stairs.

  ‘Em had some sort of vision.’ Felix looked down at the open page of the book as if he was trying to see the scene his sister had described. The page was exactly as it had been before. There was no mark from her hand, only that strangely powerful dash of ink at the end of the passage, and then nothing.

  ‘I’m sorry, Kate.’ Simon looked up in despair. ‘Let her go. We had a bad night; she had nightmares and she was sleepwalking. I think this place has got to her. It’s so …’ he failed to find the right word.

  ‘Old?’ Felix filled in helpfully.

  Simon gave a grim smile and nodded. ‘That about covers it.’

  Kate smiled. ‘Don’t worry. Let me go and speak to her. You boys go on with your photography.’

  ‘That sounded a bit patronising,’ Felix whispered as Kate disappeared.

  Simon smiled. ‘Good idea though. Let her go and speak to Em. I have a feeling she might be quite good at it.’

  Kate found Emma in the garden. She was standing amongst the ancient pear trees perfectly still, her arms hanging at her sides, tears pouring down her face.

  ‘Come with me.’ She took Emma’s hand and led her across the lawn to a pergola, heavy with budding creepers. There was a weathered wooden bench under it and she pulled Emma down beside her.

  For a long time neither spoke, then Kate said, ‘Phil has gone out and your father and your brother are busy. There’s no one here. Do you want to tell me what happened?’

  The sympathy in her voice, the sense that she understood, maybe the simple fact that she was another woman seemed to get through the Emma. Once she started talking, she couldn’t stop. The experiences at the cottage. The strange feelings. The bad dreams. Things that had happened at school that no one at home knew about, last night’s inexplicable race out into the dark, finding herself outside and not quite knowing why and now the chronicle. ‘I had to touch it. I had to. I knew I mustn’t. I knew Dad would be furious because it’s so precious, but I couldn’t stop myself. I couldn’t.’ The tears were still pouring down her face. ‘And I could feel it; hear it; see it through my fingers, like electricity! The swords had blood on their blades
. And those two old men were running for their lives and the men saw them and they were chasing them and then Felix pulled my hand away and it all stopped. Just like that. Switched off. Gone. Finished.’

  Kate sat still. When you don’t know what on earth to say, silence is the best option. She didn’t look at Emma, her attention fixed instead on the scattering of pear blossom on the lawn. A bee settled on a flower nearby and paused in its foraging, sitting completely still almost as though it was listening.

  ‘Please don’t tell my mum.’ Emma sounded like a little girl now. A frightened, guilty little girl.

  ‘I don’t know your mum,’ Kate responded briskly. ‘And I certainly wouldn’t tell her if I did. I won’t tell anyone anything unless you would like me to.’ She hesitated. ‘But I think your dad would want to know.’

  She glanced across at Emma to see she was shaking her head vigorously.

  ‘Has this been happening to you for a long time?’ Kate’s question was cautious.

  Emma nodded. ‘I hate it. I never know when it’s going to come over me. It happened in school once and it was awful. Everyone teased me. They said I was mad. They said I should see the psych.’

  ‘That’s tough.’ A movement at the edge of the lawn caught her eye and she saw Simon and Felix standing hesitantly outside the house. She gestured them away sharply.

  ‘Something like this, Emma, is too much for one person to bear alone. I’m not sure I’ve ever known anyone who can see what you’re seeing, but you do need to talk to someone. Perhaps your friends were right in a way. Perhaps a school counsellor or someone like that?’

  ‘They’d lock me up!’

  ‘No. No they wouldn’t. But they might be able to tell you how to cope with it.’

  It. Kate knew it was an inadequate response, but what was it? Some kind of epilepsy, caused by an over-stimulated imagination?

  ‘I tell you what. Why don’t you all stay and have lunch with us. Perhaps a sandwich or something. I think some food will make you feel better, and I promise I won’t say anything to your dad.’

  ‘Felix knows.’ Emma looked up suddenly. ‘It’s happened in front of him once.’

  ‘And he’s kept your secret?’

  Emma shrugged her shoulders. ‘I s’pose.’

  He hadn’t. And Simon did the only thing he could think of. He dropped Emma off at the cathedral gates on the way home.

  This time Simon’s message had been urgent. ‘Please, Bea, I need you to talk to Emma now. Today. It was a huge mistake taking her to that house. She’s in an awful state.’

  Hilde was dressed very simply. Swathed in a woollen tunic, her hair covered in a veil, with no jewels or money and no possessions at all save a pilgrim’s scrip carrying a comb and spare linen and a letter for a king, she walked slowly along the track up and over the first high ridge and down into the foreign land of her people’s enemies. She had discussed the disguise she would adopt with her mistress and a pilgrim had seemed an obvious choice. The people of Powys were a God-fearing race, they had followed Christ from time immemorial, or so Eadburh told her, far longer than the people of Mercia, and they would respect a woman alone if she were protected by her service to God.

  Hilde’s shoes grew dusty and soon wore thin. At first the people, accustomed to border raids, were suspicious of a fair-haired Saxon, even if she was a lone woman, as she asked her way, begging food and a place to sleep from shepherds and swineherds and cottars as she passed. Most were generous in the end. It had been a good harvest, there was bread to spare. Dogs were sometimes her enemy, appearing to suspect she was not what she seemed, but if she had to, she diverted out of their way, heading always towards the setting sun. On the first night at a tiny farmstead, a farmer cut her a thumb stick to help her on her way. Two days later, at a clas, a small church community isolated in a deep valley, the gentle old abbot gave her a carved wooden cross to hang around her neck on a thong. Everywhere, scattered through the lonely country she found there were churches and chapels and crossroads marked by high crosses of intricately laced stonework, every one a place of refuge.

  She walked west to start with, anxious to put Mercia behind her, afraid that they might come after her, but there was never any sign of pursuit and the further she walked the more she fell into her role as a woman of God and the more the role settled on her, the more she began to think about the terrible thing she had done. Every heather bell and every bloom on the gorse bushes where a bee paused to suck the nectar, reminded her of the bee upon the bank of the river and the sting which was inflicted by her hand.

  When there was nowhere to stay, she curled under a hedge or in a dry ditch, swathed in her cloak and she prayed. She was lost but she no longer cared. When she found her destination, she was instructed to find out who had killed the man Eadburh had loved, and then, armed with the truth, go back all that long way into Mercia to find him. In her hem was the remaining small package, another lethal bee sting to inflict, another vengeful death to take the man who had killed a prince to Hell, another weight upon her conscience.

  As she penetrated further into the kingdom of Powys following a barely defined track that led northwards now through valleys between the mountains, the people greeted her almost everywhere with courtesy and friendship. By now she had learned a few words of their language and the inhabitants of the small lonely cottages grew even more hospitable, sharing their dry bracken beds, piles of woollen blankets and sheepskins to give her warmth as summer declined into autumn, pottage to eat and stories to tell by the fireside at night even though she understood only a few words. She was puzzled that there seemed to be no villages on the road, which wound its way more and more deeply into the mountains, where she heard wolves howling at night and eagles calling in the day as they swept high amongst the cloud-covered peaks. She passed lonely steadings and on the tops of some of the mountains she saw castles and palisades and she would feel a ray of hope, but again and again people shook their heads when she asked for the king’s court and again they pointed her onward.

  Time passed. She learned to hide her loneliness, always hoping that soon she would reach her destination, wondering now if she was walking round in circles. Then at last puzzled faces and eloquent signs of incomprehension were replaced by nods of encouragement. Soon she would be there, they seemed to say. She prayed to the Blessed Virgin to watch over her and learned the names of new and unknown saints to add to her list of protectors.

  One day, as the track descended into a broad river valley she saw signs of a larger church, surrounded by dry stone walls and buildings with fields around them and there she stayed for several weeks as a guest of the abbess, regaining her strength and her resolve. This lady spoke her language and was kind, welcoming a new face and inviting her to stay as the cold winds swept in, carrying ice and snow, screaming through the rounded arches of the abbey. She thought sometimes of Eadburh waiting for news, always waiting for news as she had when she was a young princess, and she wavered, but Eadburh was safe and warm by the fires of the palaces of Wessex, and here in the frost dusted valleys the abbess cautioned her to wait until the weather cleared and then go on to find news of Prince Elisedd. When she spoke of him, the abbess looked doubtful and sad and said she did not know anything about what happened to the king’s younger son or how he had died. She had not even known he was dead.

  Simon and Emma were standing by the gate to the Cathedral Close, while Felix waited for his father in the car by the kerb. The girl was wan and tired and tearful. ‘She insisted she wanted to speak to you,’ Simon said in an undertone as Emma began to hurry away from them towards the cathedral. ‘She needs you to calm her down. Reassure her. Tell her she’s not a freak!’ He looked distraught. ‘Let me explain what happened—’

  ‘Let her tell me herself, Simon,’ Bea said firmly. ‘She is not a freak, I can assure you. She is a perfectly normal young lady who needs some reassurance, that’s all. You go and get yourselves some coffee. I’ll text you when we’ve talked.’ Bea was watch
ing Emma who had stopped, scuffing the path with her toe, waiting for her. ‘Try not to worry. Go. Look after Felix.’ She had seen the boy’s anxious face peering at them from the car.

  Bea led Emma back towards her house, skirting the cathedral’s great west door and crossing the grass with its crowds of people enjoying the spring sunshine, and, mindful of the likelihood of Sandra’s beady eyes spotting them, ducked into Church Street, past its inevitable busker, then down the narrow alley between two shops where the back gate into their garden was hidden in a small private courtyard. Going in that way, no one was going to spot them.

  She listened to Emma’s story in the kitchen over tea and cake, coaxing her to eat and drink, drawing out the story the girl had told Kate, and as she listened she felt a strange dawning affinity with this sensitive, lost, frightened girl.

  ‘It’s nothing to be afraid of. I do it too,’ she explained at last. ‘It’s a gift: the ability to read an object’s past through touch. It’s called psychometry, and it’s an amazing thing to be able to do. Some people are born with the ability, and other people spend hours trying to teach themselves how. You are blessed. And so am I. We can do it naturally.’

  She watched Emma’s face change from misery to interest and at last to a slow dawning hope. ‘You do it too?’

  Bea nodded, thinking of the stone upstairs. ‘You were sensing something that happened in the scriptorium where the book was being written. The intense emotions of the people there, the scribe, the other monk, the invading army, their feelings were so strong they have embedded in the fabric of the pages so that centuries later they can still be felt by someone who has the gift.’

  Emma’s expression morphed again, this time into one of complete incredulity. ‘That’s not possible.’