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

‘Certainly not through me,’ Bea said indignantly. ‘She’s being nosy, Mark, and ironically she’s right, we were talking about missing the girls.’ She gave a hollow groan. ‘You don’t think she’s got this place bugged, do you?’

He laughed. ‘I wouldn’t put it past her. Every institution has a Sandra somewhere. But darling, please be careful. If word got out, it could prove so awkward for me. You do see that.’

‘I do. And I have always been discreet. Chris is the only person who knows and she is aware she mustn’t say anything. And Simon has promised. And so had Heather. It was only that one wretched man and if Sandra knew about that she would have let us know ages ago. I don’t see how she could have picked up anything, I really don’t.’ She paused. ‘I’d like to think she came over because she has a kind heart and means well, but could you keep reminding her I’m a teacher. Perhaps drop a few hints that I do some tutoring as well in the holidays. Anything to put her off the scent.’

‘I can’t lie, Bea.’

She sighed. ‘Dear old George Washington! Of course you can’t lie, but you could imply.’ They looked at one another and after a moment’s hesitation they both burst into laughter.

Much later Bea slid quietly out of bed and tiptoed across to the window, looking down into the Close. The half-moon was casting the hard shadow of the roof across the grass. There was no sound from Mark as she made her way to the door.

Sitting down in the candlelight upstairs she took several long quiet breaths, seeking into the silence for a sign from Eadburh, whose story had moved down to the kingdom of Wessex, far from home and from her sisters, far from Offa’s Ridge and the cottage on the hill. There was no danger in watching the queen as she rode, no chance of her seeing Bea. She had remembered to control the scene, to protect herself.

Eadburh was riding along a winding track with high cliffs towering above her, followed by a party of her husband’s warriors. There were two women with her: Hilde, who had accompanied her from home on her first long ride from Mercia, and another who had become her preferred companion among the thanes’ wives who surrounded her. The countryside was spectacular, wild, a land of eagles and wolves.

The messenger caught them up at a bend in the track where the grasses blew gently in the wind. He dived into his bag of letters and found one for her, and she dismounted, then made her way to a fallen lump of limestone that formed a natural bench in the sunlight while her ladies talked and giggled with the messenger as he rested his sweating horse.

The letter was from her elder sister, Ethelfled.

I am married, and in Northumbria, and father’s reach spreads ever further across the island of Britannia. Tell me you still think of me, sister mine, for I am lonely among strangers here. My hope of marrying the son of Charles, King of the Franks, came to nothing. Instead I reign beside my new husband, the king in this wild country. Father was angry beyond measure that his careful plans to ally with the Franks did not succeed, and although Charles’s sons remain without wives he announced he would no longer seek a marriage for me there. Within months l was on my way to wed Ethelred at a place called Catterick on the great road north, and now I live in a savage distant place among the hills.

Eadburh gazed up at the towering grey cliffs above her with a rueful smile. After the gentle landscapes of her homeland she too was in a wild setting, though the palace itself at Cheddar, not two miles from here, was in the flatlands below the Mendip hills, on the banks of the River Yeo. She had been drawn to this wild gorge; it reminded her of the landscape that might have been hers had she married a prince of Powys. She batted away the sudden sharp pain of the memory and turned back to the letter in her hand. For Ethelfled to reach out to her with this homesick missive must mean she was lonely indeed.

I expect our first child and my husband needs a son to grow tall and strong as we live here amongst his enemies who jostle always for position, ever looking for the chance to depose him.

Eadburh dropped the letter on her knee, once more looking up towards the cliff where a peregrine falcon swooped down through the cloud. There was a wild goat up there on the cliffs, balancing on a narrow ledge, its curved horns a sudden silhouette against the sky. So, her sister was pregnant. Unconsciously her hand strayed to her own stomach, which was still stubbornly flat. She had wondered more and more often if her mother’s remedy to rid her of Elisedd’s child, the baby she still mourned so bitterly in some locked away part of her heart, had rendered her unable to bear more children. The time had come, she realised, to seek help in that regard; she needed amulets and charms. With a sigh she refolded the letter and tucked it into the embroidered pouch at her girdle. The messenger had further bulky missives for Beorhtric from Ethelfled’s husband and already he was remounting.

As his horse disappeared round the bend in track, the sound of its hooves echoing off the high crags, Eadburh looked up and with a sudden jolt of fear she crossed herself.

Bea froze. In her fascination with the scene before her she had drifted closer without realising it. The woman’s eyes locked on hers. ‘Demon! Witch! Why do you follow me? I banish you three times three and still you return!’

Her women clustered round their frightened mistress as she leapt to her feet, and Bea saw two of the warriors