The Story Spinner by Barbara Erskine

Author:Barbara Erskine
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2024-07-03T15:45:00+00:00

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In her bed in the guest chamber in the palace of Augusta ­Treverorum Branwen groaned and turned over, her dream growing ever more real. How could a bowl of water hold so many flames? She swirled the water gently and watched as the walls crumbled, the roof fell in and one by one the well-loved landmarks turned to ash. They were still there, the men who had fired the palace, shouting with glee, dancing in the glow of the embers as darkness fell, raking through the ash for anything that might have survived. She saw one, with a yell of triumph, point towards a figure emerging from the ruins. A guard from the villa, a retired legionary, sword in hand, had ducked out of the smoky shadows and was running for his life towards the shelter of the trees and the safety of darkness. The invaders spotted him and with shouts of rage began to give chase as he ran, ducking across the meadow where the horses had grazed. He didn’t notice the pale flickering lights spiralling in the deeper shadow down by the stream, he was too intent on escaping the pursuers behind him. In moments he had run into the strangely uneasy silence of the spiralling lights and in an instant he was lost to sight, leaving his pursuers milling in

confusion in an empty field. They all heard the one clear report echoing through the trees, the sound of a shotgun being fired in another age.

So Branwen had foreseen what was going to happen. She had even heard the shot. Cadi put down her pen and stared unseeing at the page before her. It was several long minutes before she picked up the pen again to see what happened next.

Still in her dream, Branwen put down the scrying bowl. Ducking out of the round house with its woven hangings and carved oak furnishings, she hurried across the roadway towards the gatehouse with its high lookout tower. Climbing the steps, she was relieved to see that the palace was untouched. It looked normal. Sleepy.

She screwed up her eyes in the bright sunlight and now she could see signs of life. There were men in the fields cutting the barley and others working in the vegetable gardens. There were vines in rows in the south-facing vineyard and the hay had been safely stooked and most of it brought into barns against the wet weather that would surely come. All looked peaceful and secure, but if she shifted her gaze across the tinder-dry countryside to the glitter of water that was the estuary of the great river Sabrina, she could see a distant cluster of black dots approaching from the sea.

She shivered. She did not have to see them more clearly to know that this heralded another incursion of pirates and there was no one to protect the palace. She had already seen what was going to happen.

‘You have seen them as well?’ The elderly man behind her had been standing there for several moments before she noticed him.

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