The Dream Weavers

by Barbara Erskine

  As she walked towards the door she looked back over her shoulder. ‘And still you watch me,’ she hissed at Bea. ‘So, now you know my story and my fate. But be assured, your own destiny will be tied up with mine, as certainly as the sun and moon are linked in the heavens. And that will not go well for you.’

  36

  Sandra’s drive up to the cottage on the ridge had done no more than confirm that it was the right place. She had glimpsed Simon Armstrong walking away from the gate as she went past and that was it. She drove on up the lane, turned round laboriously in the first gateway she came to and then drove slowly back. He had obviously gone back indoors; the front door was closed.

  Letting herself back into her flat she sat down thoughtfully in front of the blank screen of the TV. She was increasingly sorry she had given up her job with the volunteers but on another level she was pleased to have the time to think. The cathedral was a distraction. It had an enormously powerful force field that clouded her thoughts.

  ‘Witch!’ she exploded. ‘She’s a witch!’

  Yesterday she had covertly watched Bea walking across the Close and she had seen the swirling energies around the woman. They had masked her, enfolded her and protected her from prying eyes, Sandra’s eyes. A deliberate shield.

  Sandra clenched her fists in her lap. Mark Dalloway was obviously too generous a man to have recognised what his wife was and Heather too had been fooled. Sitting back, Sandra closed her eyes, forcing herself to relax. If she was going to fight this woman she would need every ounce of cunning she possessed. She would have to become once again the woman she used to be.

  Standing up she went over to the desk and pulled out the bottom drawer. Inside, under her file of cuttings, there was a large cardboard box. She lifted it out and set it down on the carpet. She sat and looked at it for a long time, then at last she leaned forward and lifted the lid.

  Where were you?’ Simon looked up as the door opened.

  ‘I waited over there in the field until Mum had gone,’ his daughter answered sheepishly. She scanned the room quickly. ‘So, Felix has gone with her then?’

  Simon nodded.

  ‘Can I have some breakfast?’

  He pushed the cereal box towards her and poured her a mug of coffee. ‘So, are you going to explain?’

  Emma gave an apologetic little smile. ‘Why? You know why I couldn’t go. I hoped Felix would stay, but it was up to him. He’ll understand why I couldn’t go too. It’s important he gets his GCSEs.’

  ‘And your exams don’t matter?’

  ‘They do if I want to go to uni. Which I will, I promise. But there is something else I have to sort out first. You must understand too, Dad. I know Mum won’t. Not in a million years, so it was easier not to be here.’

  ‘And leave me to deal with the flack.’

  She gave him her most persuasive smile. ‘You know how good you are at dealing with Mum. Text her and say I’m OK, then she needn’t worry about me. Though,’ she reached for the milk jug, ‘I bet she hasn’t given me a thought. She’s got her beloved Felix back. That’s all that matters.’

  ‘Oh grow up, Em!’ Simon sighed. ‘You know that’s rubbish. She loves you both.’

  ‘And next you’re going to say it’s a mother and daughter thing. Well, it isn’t. Bea has daughters and she knows how to talk to them.’

  ‘How do you know? Have you ever met them?’

  ‘No. But she must do. She knows how to talk to me.’

  He sighed. ‘I’ll text your mum, and you text Bea. Let’s see what she has to say about you skiving off.’

  ‘I’m not skiving. I’ll go back when I’m ready. On the train. If I’m late back to school, then you can tell them I was ill.’ She gave him an angelic smile. ‘That bit is true. I am definitely psychologically disturbed, aren’t I. But I will go back for the exams, I promise.’

  There was no point in arguing. He texted Val and then, picking up his mug of coffee, he went into the front room and sat down at his desk, leaving Emma to get in touch with Bea.

  ‘Bea’s coming to collect me in about an hour.’ The whisper round the door was quiet, almost apologetic. He didn’t look up. He was studying the blow-ups of the last page of the chronicle. There were a few words there he hadn’t noticed before.

  ‘So, when Felix said you weren’t in your room when he went to look for you, where did you think you were?’

  Bea and Emma were sitting on the hillside in the sun.

  Emma thought for a moment. ‘Up on the hills somewhere, but not here. The view was different.’

  Bea had seen it too. She had watched with Nesta.

  ‘And you say you were, or you felt you were, Eadburh?’

  Emma nodded. ‘I was wearing the long red dress. It was lovely. Softest silk, with a blue overtunic embroidered with beautiful patterns.’

  Bea smiled. ‘But not really something you would have worn to walk in the hills, either now or a thousand years ago.’

  ‘Probably not.’ Emma sighed. ‘And I was wearing flat sandals with gold studs. So you think I was wearing what I saw myself in, not what Eadburh would have worn in real life?’

  Bea was silent for a while, thinking. ‘Or maybe Eadburh was wearing what she wore in her dreams. She obviously saw herself as young and beautiful.’

  ‘No!’ Emma leaned forward, hugging her knees. ‘No, she WAS young and beautiful.’

  Like you. Bea didn’t point out the obvious. ‘And in your dream she was completely alone?’

  Emma nodded. ‘No prince.’ The two words were unbearably forlorn.

  ‘And, more to the point, no attendants.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No cloak, no belongings, no horse somewhere in the distance.’

  Emma shook her head.

  ‘So it was a dream, but it was such a vivid dream that when Felix looked for you, you weren’t there. You had apported elsewhere. Then when the dream was over you reappeared in your bedroom.’

  ‘Not possible. Even I can see that. He must have come upstairs when I was in the loo. I was half asleep and forgot I’d got up.’

  ‘Or Eadburh borrowed you for a while, to feel again the joy of having a young woman’s body.’

  ‘If she had done that she would have organised there to be a young man’s body around to feel as well,’ Emma retorted. She gave a snort of laughter.

  Bea hid a smile. ‘I suspect that was what she was hoping. Which brings us back to the question, where was Elisedd? Your dad is trying to research him to find out who he was and what happened to him, but it’s not easy.’

  ‘And it doesn’t matter. Eadburh met him. She fell in love with him; she made love to him. Why do we have to analyse everything? Why should it matter who he is? None of this will be believed by anyone else anyway. All we need to do is make it so I don’t sleepwalk over a cliff, and don’t see too many ghosts.’

  She threw herself back on the grass, her arm over her eyes. ‘Do you think I’m deranged?’

  ‘No, of course I don’t.’

  ‘Everyone else will.’

  ‘Not if you keep all this to yourself. That part is in your hands. You will have to tell your dad and, above all, Felix to keep it to themselves.’

  ‘Felix will already have told Mum.’

  Bea grimaced. ‘Well, if he has, you must ask him not to say any more. Do you remember what I was telling you about respecting the privacy of anyone whose aura you see and how you can’t tell them if you see illness there?’

  ‘Or their future.’

  Bea sighed. ‘Or their future. Not that that will happen. We are not fortune tellers.’

  Emma sat up again. ‘If I was, I wouldn’t have to bother with exams. I could make my living with a crystal ball.’

  ‘I shall ignore that remark. I’m being serious, Emma. You must keep all this private. What is happening here is so complex. Dreams within dreams. People drifting backwards and forwards through time and space. It’s like nothing I’ve experienced before. All I can do is keep
you safe. Or at least teach you how to keep yourself safe, and one way of doing that would probably be to go back to London and school and try and forget everything that has happened here. Or if you can’t forget it – which, being realistic, you probably never will – at least keep your distance.’

  Emma frowned, resting her chin on her knees. ‘Do we know what happened to Eadburh in real life?’

  Bea was staring away into the distance. The horizon had grown hazy. ‘No, I don’t think we do. Your father told me she disappears from history.’

  ‘But she wants us to know what happened, so he can put it in his book.’

  ‘Do you think that’s what this is all about? She wants people to know the end of her story?’

  Emma nodded slowly. ‘Doesn’t that make sense?’

  Bea didn’t answer. Lost in thought, she gazed down the hill, where the view had disappeared.

  ‘Simon! Are you completely out of your mind!’ Val’s voice shrieked out of the phone at him. He didn’t try and argue. Clearly Felix had spilt the beans and there would be no chance to explain to her until she had got it off her chest. ‘If you don’t bring Emma home now, today, I am calling the police. You have clearly been consorting with a madwoman. I suppose you’ve been having an affair with her?’ She didn’t wait to see if he was going to answer. ‘Put Emma on. This minute. ‘I‘ve been trying to ring her but she isn’t answering.’

  When at last she ran out of breath he had worked out what he was going to say. ‘Can I speak now? Bea is a highly trained counsellor, and incidentally no, I’ve not been having an affair with her or anyone else. She is happily married and in case you hadn’t noticed I love you, you stupid woman! Heaven knows, I would hardly have hung around this long if I didn’t!’ He paused and took a deep breath. ‘Emma has been having a lot of problems, Val, not only here, but over some considerable time, and she had to have help. We were extremely lucky that Bea was here when she was needed, otherwise all this could have come to a head in school. The pressure Em has been under has been colossal and the worry of exams has increased the stress tenfold. I’m amazed the school hasn’t said anything to us, because according to Em they have noticed something was very wrong.’

  There was a heavy silence at the other end of the phone. ‘They did say something, actually.’ Val sounded chastened. ‘I assumed it was because of the exams and would resolve once the pressure was off. It did before, when she was taking her GCSEs.’ Her tone reverted to one of indignation, rather than worry. ‘Felix is walking it and Emma seemed to as well. She is such a bright girl. It’s so unlike her to get flustered.’

  ‘Flustered?’

  The tone of Simon’s voice clearly annoyed her. ‘Yes, flustered! What was I supposed to think?’

  ‘Perhaps if you had discussed it with me, I would have had a chance to think.’

  ‘How could I discuss it with you when you’re never here? If you are here, you have your head in your books!’

  ‘Val—’

  ‘No, Simon, this is clearly your fault. You have to bring her home. I’ve spoken to the doctor and he wants to see her as soon as she’s back. He’s going to put her on tranquillisers so she can get down to her studies.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What do you mean no?’

  ‘I mean no. I am not bringing her home. At least not until she’s ready to come back voluntarily, and you are not going to medicate the poor child. Absolutely not.’

  He was interrupted by a small gasp from the doorway. Distracted by their shouting match, he hadn’t heard Bea and Emma come back from their walk. One look at Emma’s face was enough to make him switch off the phone and throw it down on the table. ‘Darling, I’m sorry you heard that. You mustn’t worry. I am not going to let anything happen.’

  ‘Felix told her.’

  ‘I’m afraid he must have done.’

  He saw Emma’s face crumple. She looked from Bea to her father in despair then pushed between them and ran up the stairs to her bedroom. They heard the door slam followed by an outburst of impassioned sobbing.

  Bea walked towards the kitchen door without a word. Simon followed her. ‘I’m sorry you heard that as well. Val can be a bloody cow sometimes. However much I love the woman, she still manages to infuriate me! I’m afraid our relationship can be a bit tempestuous. It appears the school had spoken to her, but she decided not to tell me or to do anything about it.’

  Bea pulled out a chair and threw herself down at the kitchen table. She put her head in her hands. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘This is absolutely not your fault.’

  ‘But I haven’t helped. I should have done something more.’

  Simon sat down opposite her. ‘I suppose I’m going to have to drive her back to London.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea.’ She looked up at him wearily. ‘I’m not a psychologist, Simon, but as a former teacher myself and the mother of two daughters, my advice would be to let everything calm down. When is her first exam?’

  He thought for a moment, then shook his head. ‘I’m not sure when they start. How bad a father does that make me?’

  ‘A hard-working father, no worse than some, better than a lot. Can I make a suggestion? Would it be a bad thing to ring Emma’s head teacher and talk it over? In broad brushstrokes, without too much detail. If they have already raised the subject, then they know there’s something worrying her. And you must tell Emma that there is always the option of sitting the exams later. It’s not the end of the world if she postpones them. She needs to know that.’

  ‘It’s funny, you know. I’ve been schooling myself to cope when the subject of boys raises its ugly head, but this …’

  ‘This is boys, Simon. Only this particular boy is a Welsh prince who lived twelve hundred years ago. And Emma is feeling the pain and longing and excitement of another young woman who had her dream snatched away, which is unfair, but that’s the way it has always been. It happened in the past and happens all the time now. We have to find a way of mediating that pain and helping Emma deal with it. You have three teenagers, not two, to deal with. The fact that one of them is a Saxon princess is just an added complication.’ She gave a wry smile.

  ‘And what about the older Eadburh, the one you see?’

  ‘In my version, after her exile from Wessex she was offered marriage to his son by Charlemagne, who seems to have been furious when she said yes.’

  ‘Ah, I remember that story. He offered her a choice, didn’t he. Catch twenty-two. And she made the wrong one.’

  ‘Of course you know what happened from the history books. So that bit is true.’

  ‘I can quote from Asser. “He did however give her a convent of nuns in which, having put aside the clothing of the secular world and taken up that of nuns, she discharged the office of abbess, but—”’

  ‘Stop! Don’t tell me!’

  He grinned. ‘You still don’t want to know what happened?’

  ‘No. Not yet. I want to see it for myself. I am trying, Simon, to find out why she yearned – yearns – back to her younger self. Or was that younger self so traumatised by what happened that it somehow split from the rest of her? We read so glibly of the horrors of history, but if one thinks, really thinks, of the things that happened, the things people witnessed, the things that made them helpless victims of events and compare that with what we do for people today if we are in a position to help, what with PTSD, with schizophrenia, with multiple personality disorder, all kinds of trauma, with all these things diagnosed and heavily medicated today, then think of that one woman. Her whole family were dead. Her father was, one assumes, a controlling and arrogant tyrant, probably capable of genocide and maybe an abuser, her mother was a murderess, her sisters disappeared and I don’t know if she ever found out what happened to them. She was forced to abort her lover’s child, and her daughter, the only child she was able to carry full term, was taken from her. Her husband turned out to be gay, and flaunted the fact in front of her. She was guilty of murderi
ng some of his lovers, and at the very least of the manslaughter of her husband, she was exiled, she was offered the world on a plate by an emperor then he snatched it away and locked her in a convent. Perhaps all that was left were her dreams of that love affair, long ago, as a teenage girl with Elisedd, dreams that are now anchored to a real teenage girl, Emma.’

  ‘And the object of all this teenage angst rides fast and furiously past our door up here. So, he’s still looking for her?’

  ‘Perhaps he is. And she’s still calling for him. A thousand or so years of lost love and yearning.’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘This is what I do, Simon. Try to comfort lost souls who stay anchored to this earth by unfinished business, so that they can move on to another stage of their journey.’

  A sound in the doorway made them both look round. Emma was standing there, her eyes red from crying, her hair dishevelled. ‘It’s what I should be doing as well. One doesn’t need to do exams to do what you do.’ She came over and threw herself down on the chair between them.

  Simon opened his mouth to protest, but Bea shook her head at him sharply.

  ‘As it happens, I did do exams, Em,’ she said gently. ‘I have a degree in English and a diploma as a teacher, and I have attended dozens of courses in healing and spiritual development, and on top of all that, I have years of life experience. It’s that experience you need before you can help other people. If you really want to help the dead move on, that’s a wonderful thing to do, but it’s not something you can do without study. I can help you channel your abilities and teach you how to begin, but you have to do the other things as well. Maybe not a degree, you would have to decide about that later, but there will be study involved and I’m sorry, there are no short cuts.’ She reached out to put her hand over Emma’s. ‘Your dad wants to help you and your mum does too in her own way. We have to make this work between us, so you can deal with all this and help Eadburh.’

  She pushed back her chair and stood up. ‘I’m going home now. There are things I have to do there. Your dad and you need to discuss all this calmly and carefully, then I want you to have some supper – it’s important you eat, remember what I told you? To ground yourself properly and then get some rest. And you must protect yourself.’