The Dream Weavers by Barbara Erskine (best ereader for pc TXT) 📗

With relief she stepped back, stuffing the silk into the bag and slinging the bag on her shoulder. The sunlight was illuminating the valley below, sucking up the low-lying mist. It was a beautiful spot. She glanced back towards the stone, feeling a stab of regret. The intensity of her visions had been so immediate, so real, she had been intrigued and captivated and entranced. Don’t go back. There is danger there. The old priest’s words echoed for a moment in her head. He was right, the job was done. The voice had gone; to pursue the quest would risk … What? Risk contacting the past in a way that was far too intimate and seductive. At the end of a successful delivery from a ghostly manifestation she had been taught to visualise those two great wooden doors closing slowly behind the figures as they walked towards the light. Those doors must never be reopened. She must close the doors on the past and let it go.

She was jolted out of her reverie by the distant sound of a car climbing the hill. It grew closer, the engine straining. Simon pulled in beside her, bringing with him the unedifying smell of burning clutch, and emerged carrying two bags of groceries. He grinned at her. ‘I wasn’t expecting to see you here.’

‘I’m sorry. I know when you rang this morning you said there was no need for me to come up again but I needed to return –’ She paused abruptly. She had been about to mention the stone. ‘Your key,’ she improvised hastily. It was after all still in her pocket.

He nodded. ‘You needn’t have bothered. There was no hurry. Come and grab a cup of coffee while you’re here. As you can see, I’ve been stocking up.’ He led the way up the path and opened the door.

‘So, no more signs of your unwelcome visitor?’ Following him through into the kitchen, she dropped his key on the table.

‘Not a peep.’

‘Can I ask you something?’ She followed him back into the living room and perched on the edge of one of the two chairs, clutching her mug as he dropped some kindling into the hearth and bent to light the fire. ‘Is there any possibility that this cottage was once part of a much more ancient building?’

He glanced at her as he reached into his pocket for his matches. ‘You’re still on the quest then?’

‘I’m still intrigued. I don’t want to stir anything up, especially as the problem seems to have gone, but I was wondering – following an idea, no more than that.’

This was not what she had planned to do. She did not want to pursue the story, and yet somehow she could not stop herself asking.

‘I suppose Christine might know about this place’s antecedents. I’m no architectural historian, but the walls do look older in some places than in others,’ he replied as he found a slightly larger log to balance on top of the flames. ‘I vaguely assumed it might have started life as a farm building. I think it’s been a dwelling of some sort for a hundred years or so. Victorian maybe? I can’t quite remember what she said.’ He threw himself down opposite her. Like her, he had kept his coat on; the spring sunshine had not yet managed to find its way inside the thick stone walls.

‘Not Anglo-Saxon then?’

He shook his head. ‘I doubt it. But to be honest, it would be very hard to establish anything for sure. As I said, probably a byre, later converted to a cottage, maybe incorporating some ancient walls. Who knows how old they might be. An archaeologist would probably be able to tell you more.’

‘But it wasn’t a palace.’

‘Oh, good lord, no.’ He laughed. ‘The footprint of the building is tiny.’

She nodded thoughtfully. ‘I thought I might go and see what’s left of Offa’s stronghold at Sutton Walls,’ she said. ‘It’s so odd that I live near it and yet I never even knew it existed.’

‘That’s because it doesn’t.’ He grinned. ‘As far as I can ascertain, there is no sign of a stronghold up there from his dates. They have more or less ruled out anything at the Iron Age fort itself, and although archaeological digs have produced Anglo-Saxon stuff in quite a few places around the area, and they did find a couple of Saxon water mills down near the River Lugg, there is nothing to see now.’

‘Oh.’ She felt let down.

‘Sorry.’ He glanced at her in some amusement. ‘There are lots of places round here you can still see the dyke though.’

Oh yes. The distant hills, the sunset, the tell-tale line of smoke, the armed men on their impatient horses as Elisedd and Eadburh exchanged chippy remarks. Bea could picture them so clearly, she with her red, woven cloak, the hood pulled up over her braided blond hair, he, also cloaked but in a dark checked heavy wool, fastened on the shoulder by a round brooch, sword at his side, hanging down next to his saddle, his horse with its decorated bridle. His head was bare. No hood, no helmet, no restraining circlet as a king or a prince might wear, just wild dark hair, the same colour, she remembered now, as his horse’s mane.

And she had been there. The wind had been blowing, snatching her hair too, feeling cold, roaring through the stand of trees behind them in the valley beyond the ridge.

No, that couldn’t be right. She hadn’t been there. It was a dream.

‘Bea?’ Simon’s voice was sharp. ‘Did you hear me? Are you OK?’

She swallowed. ‘Sorry, I was remembering something. A picture.’ Almost without realising it, she pushed her hair back out of her eyes. ‘It must have been some history book from my childhood.’

‘Ah. Children’s books so often hold evocative memories.’ He reached for his coffee and took a gulp. ‘I asked if you’d been to the Offa’s Dyke Centre. That’s the place to go if you want