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

of the most important things that happened, but occasionally a flash of personal opinion breaks through. Or even better, gossip.’

Jane laughed. ‘All historians are romantics at heart in my opinion, and us librarians are more so than most. I saw you stroke the page. I wanted to do the same. Those books have almost certainly sat there unread for centuries. They showed me the library downstairs. Very dark and musty. The books must have been collected at some point by an antiquarian ancestor of Kate’s, but I suppose they’re now destined for a glass case somewhere.’ She sighed. ‘I wish we could acquire that chronicle for the cathedral, but Phil and Kate need the money and we could never afford it.’ The car bumped over the cattle grid at the end of the drive and turned onto the road. ‘You think you’ll find your way back here?’

Simon laughed. ‘Or will it disappear into the mist like Brigadoon and we’ll never find the house again.’

‘Or the people in it.’ Jane shivered. ‘Did that place strike you as haunted?’

Simon looked across at her sharply. ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘No, it didn’t.’

It wasn’t Mark who had given Bea the little cross, but her mother’s cousin. ‘I thought it apt, dear, as you’re marrying a vicar,’ the old lady had said, pressing the small velvet-lined box into her hand. Bea had never worn it, but now she sat on the bed, the closed box in her hand, staring down at it. Last night, Mark had returned after she had finally gone to bed and he had taken care not to wake her. This morning he finally left at about ten o’clock, kissing her on the top of her head as she sat, still in her dressing gown, over the last dregs of her coffee.

She had awoken late, with a splitting headache, and he had offered to cancel his appointments for the day to look after her, but she’d insisted she would manage without him. ‘I think I might go back to bed for a bit, catch up on some sleep. Don’t worry about me. I will be fine.’

She pressed the little button on the velvet-lined box and opened the lid. The gold cross was about three centimetres high, a proper crucifix with a tiny slim figure of Christ on a twisted, strangely arboreal cross, beautifully engraved in minute detail. She picked it up, the chain slipping through her fingers, and studied it critically. Some of the house healers she knew made a point of wearing a cross when they worked, on the grounds that the predominant culture of this country had been Christian for two thousand years and even for non-believers it was part of a common reference point from which to work. She always took her small hand-held wooden cross with her, but she had never felt the need to actually wear one, conflicted as always between her reluctance to label herself in any way and her loyalty to Mark and the Church she had been brought up in. But now. Now, she felt oddly at a loss. She sat for a long time, the gold cross in her hands, staring across the room towards the window. Eadburh had thought her an evil demon and invoked the cross of Christ against her. Would it put the woman at ease to see her wearing the symbol of their mutual faith, or was that the most awful hypocrisy on her part? And what was she thinking even contemplating the idea that she might encounter Eadburh again, that she would defy common sense and do the very thing Mark had begged her not to do.

Putting the cross down on the bedside table, she began to dress. Jeans and sweater. She was not planning on going out. She made the bed and went to the door, hesitated, turned back and, grabbing the cross, slipped the chain over her head, tucking it inside her sweater, then she headed for the attic stairs. She couldn’t leave the story there, she just couldn’t. If Eadburh was prepared to tell her more, then she needed to find out what happened next. However scared she felt, she believed the cross would give her courage to go on with her quest and use the knowledge she gained to help the woman’s soul find peace. She was fully prepared this time. It wouldn’t be dangerous and Mark would never know, unless she told him herself, and she had no plans to do that.

13

Cynefryth had insisted that Nesta ride close to them on the long journey through the kingdom of Mercia, back to the most spacious and the grandest of Offa’s royal palaces, his base at Tamworth. The herb-wife, brighter than most, she had grudgingly to admit, and a source of knowledge derived from Celtic roots as well as life at the Saxon court, seemed to have formed some kind of friendship with her unruly youngest daughter as they worked together over the herbs in the stillroom, and the queen hoped that she would be able to deflect some of Eadburh’s tantrums which were beginning to upset the entire household. She was not accustomed to enquiring about the serfs and peasants who served her, and was not sure what Nesta’s background was; for all she knew the woman was the daughter of some local ealdorman, but she was intelligent, literate and experienced, and in spite of her relative youthfulness she had a certain confidence about her that occasionally called for respect and a certain wariness. She knew the women of the household thought she was a sorceress, a witch. So much the better. She was happy to wash her hands of Eadburh and leave her to Nesta.

Nesta watched and waited.

*

Eadburh had missed her monthly flow and she felt sick and tired and aware of an increasing sense of panic. It could not be that she was with child. It had to be because of the exhaustion of the ride back