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

Heather’s voice floated into her mind.

You mustn’t do this again, Bea. You know that, don’t you.

Of course she mustn’t. It would be insane. She could not risk being seen, really seen, by those ice-blue eyes from the past. She felt again the sudden frisson of fear, a tiptoe of cold across her back and, for a second, she seemed to hear her teacher, Meryn’s, voice at the back of her head.

Possession and obsession, Bea. Remember the two most dangerous parts of this job. Don’t let either touch you. Protect yourself. Close the doors against the past. Never be tempted to go through them. Never go back.

But if she was completely in control, there would be no danger. The doors were closed. She wasn’t planning to go through them. She was interested, yes, curious as to how the story would progress, yes. But obsessed? No. Obsession would be too dangerous.

‘I have arranged your marriage.’ Offa never spoke to any of his daughters with affection in his voice. He had summoned Eadburh to his private office, behind the great hall at Tamworth. Outside, the autumn winds were racing through the trees in the great forest beyond the palisade, she could hear the roar in their branches but here it was strangely still, the king and queen seated side by side by the brazier that warmed the room, in unaccustomed alliance as they confronted their rebellious daughter. At her father’s words, Eadburh had clenched her fists, hanging at her sides hidden in the folds of her gown. She shivered, her head high, and waited.

‘I have decided to give you the highest honour. You will be married to King Beorhtric of Wessex. We will ride back to Sutton to celebrate Christ’s Mass in the minster at Hereford and meet him to seal the agreements, then the marriage blessing will take place. The marriage will confirm our alliance and ensure peace between our kingdoms and his friendship and support for your father.’

Eadburh opened her mouth to object, to argue, to ask what kind of man it was she was to go to, but her mother was staring into the fire and refused to meet her eye, and already her father had reached for another scroll, his attention focused elsewhere. ‘Oh,’ he looked up again. ‘You should know. The King of Powys’s youngest son, Elisedd. He met with an accident and died.’

She gasped. ‘No!’

But already he had looked away again, calling to his scribe, reaching for another document. There was to be no further explanation, no argument, no further discussion for her.

She stared at her father, her eyes wide with shock, unable to assimilate what he had said. Then she turned to her mother, but Cynefryth was still staring into the fire.

Her shoulders slumped and she turned away, refusing to give way to tears. That was why Elisedd had never answered her letter. He was dead. She found she had stopped breathing as she dashed the unshed tears from her eyes. Was this not, after all, what she had wanted: to marry, to be away from her father’s court and all the memories of what had happened, her dreams of a baby that never was, a tiny soul out there in the darkness crying for a mother who had never held him, she always thought of him as a boy, never had the chance to love him, never wanted to acknowledge he had ever existed. Her dreams that one day Elisedd would come back for her, whisk her away from Mercia into his distant mountains where they could have a dozen more children, had shattered like a piece of glass dropped on a tiled floor.

She shivered. So, she was to marry a king, not a mere prince; and she, the youngest, was to be married before either of her sisters. Taking a deep breath, she straightened her back and raised her chin. Elisedd was gone. Dead. With an effort she put the thought behind her. Dreams were for children. She would never see him again. Had it been an accident or had her father had him murdered? She would never know, but she would find out. One day she would discover what had happened to him. But for now, this marriage must be triumph enough.

The royal household set off down the old Roman road south before the snows came. She was not part of the discussions between the two kingdoms; she remained loftily aloof. Marriage to a king was the summit of a royal daughter’s ambition. Her sisters were insanely jealous that she should have been chosen as the first of their father’s daughters to marry. She pretended she was pleased. She had never set eyes on King Beorhtric. Nor did she wish to.’

She did not see Bea hovering at the periphery of her vision watching from a different world.

15

Transferring the photographs to his laptop, Simon examined the pages of the chronicle, zooming in on each page and studying the text with meticulous care. The first scribe had made very few mistakes and his initial letters were beautifully executed, his writing exquisite. His successors were not so careful. More and more mistakes crept in over the years, most scraped away and rewritten on the rough surface. In a few places trouble had been taken to polish the vellum smooth again before the corrections were inserted, but some of the later mistakes were merely crossed out and the new word written in over the top; as though the scribe was careless or in a hurry. Simon sat back, wondering about this last man. Was there no one to oversee his work? A senior monk perhaps, or the abbot himself? And what had happened to stop him working so abruptly and irrevocably?

Going back to his study of the photographed pages, Simon came to one that was blank and he could see now clearly that several dates with their appropriate entry