style="font-size:15px;"> Standing quietly in the shadows of the hedge, Nesta, daughter of the forest, herb-wife and sorceress, smiled to herself. She had recognised this woman at once as a kindred spirit, a seeker of truth, a follower of the stars. In picking up the stone, the woman had accepted the challenge, and so was bound now to follow the story to its end.
Mark was in his study when Bea returned home. She paused outside his door. His room had once been the formal dining room of the house, overlooking the Close with its ancient lime trees and the huge squat shape of the cathedral itself filling the view from the windows, and it made a pleasant study with more than enough space for his desk and his books and chairs for when he needed to use it for private meetings. All was silent behind the door. She turned away to tiptoe upstairs without disturbing him.
While he had been a parish priest they had grown used to living in what they liked to call tied cottages, the last, a small modern house built in the corner of a rapidly expanding rural village, a typical new rectory to replace the long-ago-sold Old Rectory. Since they had moved into the Close, however, home had been this wonderful piece of history. It was one of several houses upgraded for the senior clergy in the early nineteenth century from a range of far older buildings. It had the best of both worlds – the back rooms still felt medieval, the front were late Georgian. Bea loved it.
It was on the attic floor at the back, high under the hipped slate roof, that Bea had made her own sanctuary in a room overlooking their small garden. It was her private domain. She called it her study. This was where she felt safe, where she studied the world that meant so much to her, the world with which she didn’t want to embarrass her husband.
Going in, she quietly closed the door and leaned against it. Up here she kept her books, her notes, her meditation space. There was a large cushion on the floor, candles, framed hand-coloured Arthur Rackham prints, and pictures of sacred landscapes on the walls. She stood staring out of the window across the walled garden towards the huddled roofs of the old town beyond it for a few long minutes then turned back into the room. She needed to think, and by think she meant meditate and pray. Now she was safely home, on her own ground, she wanted to analyse what had happened.
What should have been a routine visit, a gentle exploration of a situation, a reassuring encounter with a lost soul who needed guidance and love to send him or her on their way, had turned into an unsettling and frightening experience, over almost before it had happened, followed by something that seemed to be a dream but was so lucid and meaningful that it had to be a part of some message from the past.
She pulled the stone out of her pocket. Seeing it suddenly there in front of her outside the cottage, she had subliminally recognised it as a signpost into the narrative into which she had been led by Simon’s book. It was part of the story. She didn’t know how yet, but she had sensed it strongly.
Lighting a candle, she sat down on the cushion, the stone between her hands. On one of the courses she had been on they had made a study of psychometry, the science – she smiled to herself at the word Simon would have balked at – of conjuring the past through the touch of the fingers, by connecting to something tangible, holding an artefact – a piece of jewellery, a comb, a lock of hair – and using it to focus the mind on the person or place to whom the artefact was linked. This was something she had practised instinctively as a child, not realising then that what she did was anything more than her imagination, that the ability was a reality and a very precious gift. She had tried it before with stones from castles and ancient sites, from gardens and ruins, always conscientiously returning them when she had finished with their story. With this stone perhaps she could link to the past of the cottage, safely, here at home without a sceptical historian looming over her. Stones had always been there; stones were brilliant witnesses. They were as old as the ground around them and perhaps if she had found the right one it would provide the link she needed to whatever had so frightened the woman at Simon’s house. If she had been guided to the link, she owed it to that lost soul to find out what had happened.
Slowly Bea began to compose herself as she heard the cathedral clock chime the hour.
A nest of vipers.
The phrase leapt out of nowhere. And then,
But that is not how it was.
‘You know Papa intends me to marry the son of the King of the Franks.’ Eadburh’s eldest sister, Ethelfled, looked up suddenly from her sewing. Taller than her sisters, she was a powerful young woman, clever and humourless. Her face wore a smug smile. Her sisters froze. They were all of an age where they knew marriage was their destiny and that their destiny was at present foremost in their ambitious father’s thoughts. Aggressive and relentlessly acquisitive, Offa of Mercia ruled with ruthless ambition what had become the most powerful of the kingdoms of Britain. Girls of marriageable age were valuable assets, and his three daughters perhaps the most valuable of all.
‘Did Mama tell you that?’ Eadburh frowned. ‘I thought Ecgfrith was going to marry one of King Charles’s daughters. He wouldn’t want you both over there, surely.’ Their only brother, a more powerful bargaining chip even than they were, was still in the mead hall across the courtyard with their father and his advisers. She reached into the basket on the centre of the table for a skein of silk. The sound of music drifted across the compound to the women’s bower, together with the rowdy shouts and laughter of the men.
‘Mama thinks King Charles is playing politics. He uses his children like pieces on a gaming board just as Papa does, and has no intention of marrying any of them to anyone at present,’ Alfrida, the middle sister, put in. She was the most thoughtful of the three girls, quieter and perhaps the cleverest.
‘It wasn’t Mama. I overheard two of the thanes’ wives gossiping.’ Ethelfled blushed.
‘Well, you can’t believe anything they say,’ Eadburh retorted. ‘He might have chosen any of us. Me, for instance. I may be the youngest, but I’m the prettiest!’
Her sisters both laughed. ‘I think we can guess who he has in store for you.’ Alfrida fixed Eadburh with a mocking gaze. ‘He’s obviously got the puppy from Powys lined up for you.’
Eadburh stared at her. ‘Who?’
‘Prince Elisedd.’ Alfrida giggled. ‘Why else would he send you off with him to stare at a line of wooden stakes and a thousand men carrying baskets of mud for his wretched rampart when he could have sent one of his surveyors. Marriage is the best way to ensure peace between the kingdoms. He’s told us so often enough.’
‘So, if you know so much about it, who has he got in line for you?’ Ethelfled pushed back her stool and stood up suddenly. ‘Has he told you?’
Alfrida shook her head. ‘He keeps very close counsel, as we all know.’
‘Who keeps close counsel?’ Their mother swept into the room, two of her handmaids trailing after her carrying baskets of newly picked herbs. Cynefryth, unlike her daughters who all took their colouring from their father, had dark hair and sallow skin. Her eyes were hazel, and at this moment narrowed as she sent a sharp glance at each of the girls in turn.
‘Papa.’ Alfrida met her mother’s eye defiantly. ‘We were discussing our marital fate.’ Her voice carried a touch of bitterness. ‘I presume that was why he allowed Eadburh to go riding with King Cadell’s
