The Dream Weavers

by Barbara Erskine

  They too heard the sad call of the woman, carried echoing on the wind. They attributed it to the tylwyth teg, the fairies of Wales, and left offerings of milk and bread to ensure their benisons. The offerings were always gone by morning. In March shepherds would watch the hares boxing and on moonlit nights in summer they would see, sometimes, a lonely hare staring up at the sky and they would shiver, but they would never harm her. The hare had always been a magical creature. She was sacred to the Celts … Their sheepdogs would not go near the wall where Eadburh and Ava lay.

  The farmhouse fell into ruins in its turn and then a Victorian collector of oddities came and fell in love with the site and built himself a cottage there. He pressed ferns into a book and wrote poetry and he heard the cries on the wind and shivered and went away. No one by then remembered the story of the lonely lady of the hares who was Offa’s daughter.

  ‘So, she’s buried here?’ Emma stood up slowly and looked round her.

  Bea nodded. ‘I believe she is.’

  ‘What shall we do?’

  ‘Perhaps we could set up some kind of memorial to show that she and Elisedd are not forgotten. To show them we have understood their joy in this place and their pain at being separated and we could pray that their spirits can now be released to join one another in the light.’

  ‘Their two lonely graves were high on separate hills.’ Emma gave a sad smile. ‘It would be nice to mark this place somehow, you’re right. And say prayers to allow them to rest in peace together at last. Then the cottage won’t be haunted any more.’

  ‘I think it’s a lovely idea.’ Bea put her arm round Emma’s shoulders. ‘Let’s go and talk it over with your dad and Mark.’

  And Chris, she thought privately. What would she say to a memorial in the back garden? Would that go down well with her holiday visitors? It seemed strange to think of anyone else staying here in the cottage Emma had referred to as home, but when his six months were up, if not before, Simon would be going back to London. That had to happen for Emma’s sake. Once she was back amongst her friends, and refocused on her own life, she would slowly be able to distance herself from all this. But she was right, here, before they left, there had to be some final closure for that troubled spirit and the first thing she, Bea, could do was return her touchstone to the flower bed. This time it would stay here, invisible beneath the mats of wild thyme and saxifrage.

  Sandra did not waste any time. She rented out her flat, immaculately cleaned, with fresh flowers on the table, booked her trip online and packed her bags, but not before she had disposed of her Tarot cards buried in the bottom of the rubbish bag and quietly slipped her crystal ball into the swiftly flowing waters of the River Wye.

  ‘It was all in my head,’ she said before Heather could enquire. ‘I was ill. I hurt myself quite badly and I thought Bea had done it with a bolt of lightning. As if she could hurt me. An ambulance came and they explained I was having panic attacks.’

  Heather stared at her, aghast. ‘Why didn’t you call me?’

  ‘I did. Your phone was off.’

  Heather closed her eyes. She had blocked the number. ‘And you’ve given up all that psychic stuff?’

  Sandra nodded. ‘It’s not real. It never existed. I was making it up. I’ve been to the doctor and he sent me straight to a counsellor who made me see it was all to make me feel important. It was because I was lonely. I’ll get a job when I come back from Spain.’

  Heather nodded slowly. ‘And you’ll come back to us at the cathedral?’

  ‘I might do,’ she said. ‘I’ll send you a postcard when I get to Compostela. Look after yourself, Heather.’

  Kate and Phil asked Mark to christen their baby; their chronicle was to be sold the following year and they had promised donations in remembrance of St Ethelbert and St Melangell. Simon was going to write the official description.

  When his mother had left for Provence, reluctantly accepting that her children would not be going on this particular holiday, Felix had caught the train to spend the summer with his father and his sister. His results when they were published were exemplary and he planned to return to school in the autumn to study for his A levels, so Val was in a good mood when she returned from France.

  Emma enrolled at a sixth form college in London to take her exams and prepare for university and Simon was going back with them at the end of the holidays to finish the edits of his book in his own study at home, overlooking the quiet Kensington courtyard.

  It was at the end of August that they set the statue of a young woman with a hare in her arms and with a dog sitting at her feet, carved by a sculptor friend of Kate and Phil’s, in a shallow alcove in the stone wall at the back of the garden. Mark held a little service of dedication and of blessing for the spirits of Eadburh and Elisedd. Emma planted a rowan tree nearby.

  ‘You’re going to miss them terribly,’ Mark said to Bea after they left the cottage. The Armstrong family were driving back to London the following morning.

  She nodded sadly. ‘I will. But in a way I’m glad. That little service at the statue was lovely. There was a real sense of closure.’

  ‘And nothing there to frighten off Christine’s paying guests. Did you notice, already there’s some moss growing on her feet. The statue might have been there for years.’

  She smiled. ‘The new people move in next week.’

  ‘And I trust Christine has promised not to call you if they hear anything untoward.’

  ‘They won’t hear anything untoward, Mark. We both know that. Offa’s daughter is finally at rest.’

  She had seen the figure of the woman standing at the end of the garden watching them. At her feet sat the great golden dog, and there in the distance Bea saw the figure of the prince striding across the fields towards them, his arms outstretched, his cloak blowing behind him in the wind. The two figures approached one another and embraced, then as she watched they turned and walked away together across the hillside, followed by the dog. In seconds they were out of sight.

  Author Note

  This story owes its original inspiration to my dog walks on the Offa’s Dyke footpath. Several times a week I set off for two or three miles on part of the national trail that follows – more or less – the line of the original dyke. I often found myself wondering about Offa and why he built or dug the dyke. To answer the question I headed to the visitor centre in Kington and subsequently immersed myself in the history books. And thus this novel was born.

  The Anglo-Saxons had always fascinated me, living as I had for many years near to Sutton Hoo (as witnessed in my novel, River of Destiny), but I was now drawn in by another thread of their history: Offa of Mercia, his family and his neighbour, the neighbour he was at such pains to keep at arms’ length. All Offa’s daughters had novel-worthy lives, but Eadburh especially intrigued me. There is very little mention of her, but what there is is startling. All we know is that she witnessed some charters, married Beorhtric and killed him. She appears in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and in Asser’s history. Asser had nothing good to say about her. He tells us she was last seen in Pavia. But supposing she didn’t die in Pavia? That magic word ‘supposing’ is the key to the novel.

  I knew very little about the kings of Powys or the early kingdoms of what we now call Wales and not enough, after reading up as much as I could find, to provide a protagonist who would fill in both the Welsh side of the story and the gaps in Eadburh’s recorded life and give a motivation for her character and her actions, so I gave her Elisedd. This is a novel and the story of Eadburh and Elisedd is fiction. I was filling in spaces where history falls silent, but I hope I have given them a credible story.

  Charlemagne of course is all too well documented. But there is one thing about him which doesn’t seem to appear in the history books. The legend goes that he had a passion for the hunting, herding dogs which we call Briards, or Bergers de Brie. My own beloved Dizzy, long gone to the great dog playground in the sky, reminded me with a ghostly nudge to my hand, as she
often does to let me know she has actually gone nowhere and is still in charge, that a Briard must play a part in my novel, and so Ava was born.

  Because my modern story is set in the kingdoms of Mercia and Powys I have used real places throughout the story. Offa’s Ridge and the cottage are fictional, as is Coedmawr. I am sorry to say its Chronicle too is totally imaginary. Hereford, Marden, Meifod and Llangynog with the magical little church of St Melangell are all real. There has been no Canon Treasurer at Hereford Cathedral for many years and there is no Treasurer’s House in the Close. As I realised the cathedral was becoming more and more a central character in the story I was tempted to invent a diocese. But how could I? It had to be Hereford. The cathedral is the most wonderful building, nestling in the centre of the town in an elbow of the River Wye. Not one of the huge Gothic cathedrals, it is older, smaller, stouter, with fat Norman pillars rather than fluted columns. It has a very special atmosphere.

  For a real place I needed extra help. I would like to thank The Revd Canon Chris Pullen, Chancellor of the Cathedral (and Deliverance Adviser), for his enthusiastic support and patient answers to my endless questions about life in the Close, deliverance, and the running of a cathedral. Thank you as well to Dr Rosemary Firman, the cathedral librarian, for fascinating insights into ancient manuscripts (and wistful suggestions that only crowdfunding would possibly secure my imaginary chronicle for the cathedral library). Also thanks to Sheila Childs for her invaluable knowledge of the inner workings of the cathedral and its inhabitants and to the various guides and helpers who are absolutely nothing like Sandra. So many people helped generously with advice and suggestions and no one seemed fazed at the thought of ghostly goings on. Mark Townsend, sometime vicar in Herefordshire and now priest at large, who combines his Christianity with magic and mystery, gave me some very useful ideas and advice as did the enthusiastic guide (sadly I never found out your name) in Lichfield Cathedral who showed me their angel and the St Chad gospels.

  I would also like to mention the many healers and spiritual teachers who have shared with me their learning and experience of other worlds, in friendship and courses and books, over many years. The knowledge I have gained from them has emerged in most of my novels. I feel I should at this point say, ‘please don’t try this at home unless you know what you are doing’. My particular thanks go to Sue Percival whose friendship and wisdom I have valued for almost 40 years. She helped me so generously during her last illness with information for this book. Sadly she was no longer with us by the time I had finished it, but we hoped that one day, somewhere, she would find a way to read it.

  A final word of thanks goes as always to Kim Young, to Sophie Burks and my wonderful team at HarperCollins, plus my editors Susan Opie and Anne O’Brien and my brilliant agent Isobel Dixon with Sian Ellis-Martin, and to my son Jonathan for his constant support.

  The writing of this book coincided with the first Covid Lockdown in 2020. That put the kibosh on one or two of my carefully planned research trips – hopefully you didn’t notice. And who knows if GCSEs and A levels will still exist by the time the book is published, but, if not, I am sure everyone will always remember them and the stress they caused.

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  About the Author

  Barbara Erskine is the Sunday Times bestselling author of over a dozen novels. Her first book, Lady of Hay, has sold more than three million copies worldwide and has never been out of print since it was first published thirty years ago. Her books have been translated into over twenty-five languages and are international bestsellers. Barbara lives near Hay-on-Wye in the Welsh borders.

  To find out more about Barbara and her books visit her website, find her on Facebook or follow her on Twitter.

  www.barbara-erskine.co.uk

  Facebook.com/barbaraerskineofficial

  @Barbaraerskine

  Also by Barbara Erskine

  LADY OF HAY

  KINGDOM OF SHADOWS

  ENCOUNTERS (SHORT STORIES)

  CHILD OF THE PHOENIX

  MIDNIGHT IS A LONELY PLACE

  HOUSE OF ECHOES

  DISTANT VOICES (SHORT STORIES)

  ON THE EDGE OF DARKNESS

  WHISPERS IN THE SAND

  HIDING FROM THE LIGHT

  SANDS OF TIME (SHORT STORIES)

  DAUGHTERS OF FIRE

  THE WARRIOR’S PRINCESS

  TIME’S LEGACY

  RIVER OF DESTINY

  THE DARKEST HOUR

  SLEEPER’S CASTLE

  THE GHOST TREE

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