Sleeper’s Castle: An epic historical romance from the Sunday Times bestseller - Barbara Erskine

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every barbed head met its mark, were hideous. Men and horses alike writhed and fell, and Andy in her dream could do nothing. In her sleep she groaned and wrestled with her pillows. She lashed out with her arm again and struck the wall. The pain woke her.

      She stared round in the darkness, nursing her bruised knuckles, aware that she had been shouting. She was, she realised, drenched with sweat. She was shaking with real terror. She lay staring up at the darkened ceiling, trying to recall the nightmare. It was about death. That much she remembered. She was watching men die. And she was not alone. There was another woman with her, a woman wearing a dark cloak with the hood pulled up over her hair. They were standing next to each other in the shelter of the trees and they were both frozen to the spot by their horror and their helplessness.

      Dragging herself out of bed, Andy switched on the light and looked at her watch. It was just after 3 a.m. She had been asleep barely two hours. Reaching for her dressing gown she pulled it on and stumbled downstairs to the kitchen. Exhausted though she was, she didn’t think she could go back to sleep. Her head was too full of the horror of what she had seen. It was a battle, that much she could remember now. A battle between two armies. She had seen men die, writhing in agony on the bloodstained mud of a battlefield. Sitting down at the kitchen table she put her head in her hands and closed her eyes.

      Something she had eaten at the supper party must have disagreed with her; her mother always used to say food made you dream. But this was a house of dreams. Her eyes flew open and she caught her breath as she recalled Roy’s explanation of the house’s name. Surely not! No, this was something she had read about or seen on TV, regurgitated by her tired brain as a protest against the rich food and wine. She had lost the habit of eating and drinking late over the last few months, that was all. She would have a hot drink and go back to bed. Wearily she dragged herself to her feet and put the kettle on, then she searched through the cupboard. In the house of a herbalist surely she would find some camomile tea. She did. A perfectly ordinary commercial brand. So, even Sue needed a quick fix at times. With a weary smile she pulled a teabag out of the box and put it in a mug, then she turned to take the kettle off the hob. As she retraced her steps to the table she glanced towards the door. A figure was standing there. A woman, huddled in a dark cloak. They stared at each other in astonishment for barely a second, then the woman was gone.

       5

      Catrin woke and looked round in the dim light of a flickering fire. Her heart was pounding from the horror of the dream. The dream she had shared, did she but know it, with another woman, a dream she had dreamt recently, at home in Sleeper’s Castle. But she wasn’t at home. She pulled her cloak around her, shivering, confused as to where she was. Then she remembered. It was the first night of their summer tour. They had arrived at Painscastle after dark, the limping horse between them, afraid there might be some kind of curfew which would consign them to a barn or an outhouse until the next day. But the constable was at home and they found they had been half expected, looked for. ‘You always come around this time of year, my friends,’ he had said with a smile. He had taken their hands and brought them to the great fire in the central hearth; his wife had hugged Catrin like a lost daughter. Visitors were not so frequent in this lonely place that they would not be welcomed royally. Their wet clothes were taken for drying, they and their horses were given warm shelter. Edmund ate with the small garrison and the servants at the lower table in the hall, Dafydd and Catrin with the constable and his wife at the high table, differentiated in this small castle only by its proximity to the fire. After supper they would sing or tell a story. That would earn their night’s keep and perhaps a silver coin or two before they rode on in the morning.

      Later Catrin found her way outside to make sure the injured horse had been taken care of. She found Edmund gently rubbing salve into the animal’s leg by the light of a lantern. He glanced up at her as he heard the rustle of her skirts in the straw as she approached him. ‘How is she?’ she asked.

      ‘She’ll do. It’s not a bad sprain. Rest is all she needs.’ The smell of the salve floated in the air. She sensed there was lavender there and peppermint and perhaps juniper.

      ‘Did the grooms give you that ointment?’ she asked. She had seen them huddled round a brazier in the yard; they had told her where to find him.

      He shook his head. ‘I always carry a pot of this with me when I travel.’ He straightened, rubbing his hands together and then rubbing them up and down on the front of his doublet. ‘Good stuff. I make it myself. It does for men as well as beasts.’

      She raised an eyebrow. ‘Only men?’ she found herself asking pertly.

      He laughed. ‘I dare say it would do for ladies as well,’ he said. ‘There is nothing there to harm them. You like it, don’t you, my love.’ He had turned back to the horse, his voice a low croon. The horse rubbed her muzzle on his arm and nibbled his sleeve.

      Catrin watched fascinated. ‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ she said at last. ‘Do you have all you need out here?’

      ‘I have plenty, thank you.’

      ‘Then I’ll bid you goodnight.’ She hesitated then turned and retraced her footsteps to the keep.

      Her father had noted her absence and guessed where she had gone. ‘Is the boy all right?’

      She sat down beside him on the bench at the table. ‘He’s fine. He’s with the horses.’

      Dafydd nodded. ‘They have asked us to sing again.’ He glanced at their host and hostess, who were watching them eagerly. ‘Shall we give them a lullaby or two to send us all to bed?’

      She smiled. ‘I will fetch my harp.’

      As she unwrapped her instrument, set it on her knee and began to tune it, her fingers finding the little pegs with accustomed ease, she felt extraordinarily happy.

      But that night the nightmares came back. Awake with painful suddenness, she stared up into the darkness, her heart heavy. It was a warning, of that she was certain, but of what? There was always skirmishing in the March. There was war in Scotland too. Edmund had told her and her father something of that as they rode and she had learned that he was tempted to join a company of archers. ‘The pay is good as an archer.’ He had glanced up at Dafydd’s face as he walked at the horse’s head near her. ‘I no longer have a place with my wife’s family, God rest her soul’ – he crossed himself sadly – ‘but now I am back at Hardwicke, I have no place there either. My brother Richard will inherit all that there is to inherit. Joan is safe with you. So I am free to go wherever fate sends me.’

      To go to war. Catrin shivered under the warm covers of the truckle bed she had been given in the women’s chamber, high in the keep. Was it Edmund’s war she foresaw? The war with Scotland or perhaps in France? He had talked a little of such matters as they had walked through the mist earlier and grudgingly she had had to admit to herself that he was an intelligent man, intrigued as he was by the politics of kings. He had told them of the treaty with France and of the repeated demands by the king for money to fund his excursions into Scotland.

      Sleepily she pictured her father’s study, his much rubbed-out parchment, the words of horror he had written there. She was not the only one to have premonitions of death. He had tried to keep his fears from her and she had kept hers from him, but they were going to have to discuss it one day; to try and discover what the walls of their house were telling them of the future and who it was who was being forewarned.

      Sitting up with a sigh, she pulled her cloak around her for warmth and sat gazing into the heart of the embers of the fire. The women servants of the castle slept on truckle beds near her. The room was warm and safe but it was not her own little bedroom. She thought back to the dream. How strange that something so intimate, which belonged to Sleeper’s Castle, could follow her here.

      She wasn’t sure when in her dream she had realised she was not watching the battle alone. Another woman

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