Doctor Who_ The Scarlet Empress Part 32

Then the room of the seers. Their heads on stakes, still muttering. She stood bathed in blue and wondered if they might be talking to her. But there must having been a knack in taking their counsel because, to Angela, their quiet, ominous murmurs seemed indistinguishable. It was while she stood and listened, ears c.o.c.ked, beard bristling, that she realised that someone had followed her on her nocturnal jaunt. Oh, so bravely, the Mock Turtle had stolen after her, worriedly, protectively, out of love for her. He was willing to share her every risk, even in this midnight headstrong escapade. She listened to him shuffle in, sensed him gasp at the sight of the severed heads. Secretly she was glad that she herself was spared the grisly sight.

But the seers were of no use to her. They could talk only about the future. This didn't concern the Bearded lady.What she wanted to know about was the distant, distant past. She wanted the answers to the big, big, big questions: why she was here, what was it that had put her there in the first place. These queries dwarfed the petty concerns of the future, she felt.

'Hmm,' said the Doctor, listening to the Turtle's recounting of events.

"That's the law of diminis.h.i.+ng returns. The future never lives up to what you imagine.'

'Nor the past,' sighed Iris.'Memory always cheats.' Back to the narrative in hand.

Hansel and Gretel, they found the tunnel that opened up beneath the sheer wax floors of the secret chambers beyond the state rooms. They drew in a long suck of breath before going off into that hole. Angela was glad, though she never quite said so, of the Turtle's eyes, for he had found them this portal; he was proving useful. And now the Bearded Lady trembled on the threshold of all she had dreamed of learning.

The tunnel unwound, unspooled, unfurled far into the rocky and loamy earth deep below the palace and below the city of Hyspero. The air they breathed was sour and still, and they supposed - in hushed, awed whispers - that it had remained undisturbed since the birth of the current Empress. And then they saw the jars.

The first jars in the long, long, long sequence that they followed were fully six feet tall. The most recent ancestors of the Scarlet Empress. The women were looking out at these visitors, their lips were pursed, they seemed to be sleeping. But the interlopers couldn't be sure. They pressed on. Gradually, by degrees, the jars became smaller. Four feet, three feet, two feet in height. The Empresses were shrinking with every half-mile they plodded. Soon they were up on a shelf, and still getting smaller, ranged at precisely regular intervals, so that the eyes of the little women were always at the same height as the visitors. The jars stretched out into the distance, like some seemingly endless wine cellar.

All the tiny women they saw - their various majesties - had hands clamped over their ears, as if this breaking and entering was the worst din they had heard in centuries.

Angela and the turtle never said a word. Only gradually did they become aware of a noise. A hollow, far-away chuckling. And it was this that drew them on. The two of them somehow knew that this distant cackle would bring them face to face with their objective. She was waiting for them.

The tunnels sloped and whorled like the valves of an inner ear.

The cackles and chuckles were joined by other voices, murmuring, chanting.

What raging monstrous madam split skulls and took out their hearts and minds?

Empress in her solitude! Unguents and jam!

Cement and as.h.!.+ Un.o.btainable desires!

Children parentless in the gutters! Girls sobbing in old men's arms!

Soldiers and husbands and wives on the streets!

Empress! Empress! Dream of Hyspero! Empty womb mother! Loveless and lunatic, the heavy prejudger, precursor, eldest of all our relics!

Empress in whom our maps, our lie of the land, our cartographies reside!

Empress whose intelligence is pure machinery and malice!

Whose eyes all see nothing, whose minions are everywhere!

Scarlet Queen whose factories and streets are cracked and seeping dust and filth to clog the endless tunnels!

Who loves oil and smoke Who can't abide genius Who severs heads and calls them seers Who causes pain and scrawls designs on the hides of all her men Empress who makes all on Hyspero lonely Whose mind revolves and reaches the sky the earth, the seas, the snow, the woods to pluck up delicacies Light rus.h.i.+ng out of her piggy eyes Empress! Empress! Robot frocks! Skeletal hordes! Capital! Capital!

Demon mother of spectres and djinn and monstrous sensitivity!

We see it all!

We've all been here before you knew it!

We had those eyes, that strident voice the eardrums on which the slightest sound will horribly impinge You keep us here, Empress, Empress take us out into the streets, strew our way with flowers take us back and tip us in the water.

At last they were on the final stretch. The jars here were no larger than coffee pots and yet the cackling came even louder. Inside their thick fluids the tiny queens rocked and quivered with mirth.

Angela was aware that the Mock Turtle clung to her elbow. She hated the feel of his clammy hooves. Mussing up her pristine uniform. She knew that he loved her. He made those dewy cow eyes at her at every possible opportunity. Down here, in this thrillingly horrid place, he hung on to her and she was dragging the weight of both of them. His dark glossy turtle sh.e.l.l was quite a weight. She knew it by touch and that it was the most beautiful thing about him. The Bearded Lady had often thought that - it was glossy and coruscated like a huge thumbnail, whorled and ridged. How appalled the Turtle would be if he knew that she often thought about killing him, just to extricate his meaty self from that gorgeous sh.e.l.l. She would dispose of his body and keep his little protection for herself.What an ornament he would make. It was just as well, she thought, that the four of them were almost ready to disband - before the temptation to wrest his jewel away became too great for her.

'I think we are coming to the end,' the Turtle whispered.

On the beach, the Mock Turtle was coming to the end of his own telling of the tale. He regarded his audience dolefully and was privately pleased to see that he had the Doctor and Iris enthralled.

'These tales are often about war and peace, the gaining and losing of property and of friends, and also about ill-considered deeds. This was one of those deeds.'

'She stole the smallest, oldest Empress!' said the Doctor, jumping to the end.

Iris shushed him.'Let the Turtle tell it.'

'We came before the final old woman, the very earliest one, and Angela started asking questions of her. "I am here to demand answers to the biggest, the most fundamental questions. I need to know. I have been told that you will supply all the answers I will ever need. That only you have the knowledge."

'Inside that smallest jar,' the Turtle went on,'which was kept in a fairly nondescript alcove, for such an important personage, the old woman rocked and chuckled."Tell me!"Angela screamed and the rafters shook.

The hypersensitive old ladies who lived in the tunnels squealed in protest. I was very frightened - that the tunnel would collapse and cave us in - and crush the entire living history of Hyspero. Then the oldest living Empress, Ca.s.sandra, manifested herself. She came out, at first, in the form of a golden cloud. Then she had a silver dress and curling blonde tresses. There was a mocking sneer on her face. We were appalled. "Free me," she said, "and I will tell you anything you want."

'How are we to free you?" asked Angela.

'And she said we had to steal her and steal her jar, also. Before I could utter a word of protest, Major Angela took the jar and the Empress Ca.s.sandra gave a triumphant shout as she whispered back inside the gla.s.s. Angela stowed the jar inside her uniform. Then she dragged me back through the galleries and tunnels down which we had searched.

We fled.

'Major Angela was breathless and mad with jubilation.

'We got back to the palace and flew to our rooms. n.o.body had realised what we had done. I slept outside the room of the Bearded Lady, where she left me, on the blooming doorstep. I slept there fitfully, fearing the worst.

'And when I woke in the dawn, Angela was gone. Leaving not a trace behind her.'

'That was ten years ago,' said Angela smugly. 'And it's taken that long for the Scarlet Empress to discover her loss. She doesn't deserve an ancestor like her. And, anyway, the Eldest Empress Ca.s.sandra doesn't want to go back. She loves being my own personal djinn.'

Sam thought that Angela would soon be losing that particular service.

'Where is she now?'

'In my backpack,' said the Bearded Lady.'I keep good care of her.'

'And did you ask her?' asked Gila, suddenly intent. 'What happened when you rescued her and asked her for all the big answers?'

Sadly, with a strange smile, Angela shook her head.'She's never told me anything. She chuckles. She just laughs. Laughter is her only answer.'

Chapter Twenty-Eight.

Welcome Back

On the island they spent some time organising their camp and settling in for the night. Ms lay by the fire and the Turtle went off to fish, claiming that he wasn't really very good at it, but he'd see what he could do. The Doctor looked thoughtful, staring into the flames.

'Iris, when we get out of all this, I'd like to read those diaries of yours. If you don't mind.'

She perked up and looked at him. 'Really? I thought you objected to them.'

'Maybe I was a little hasty.'

'You were!'

'Sorry if I was rude to you. Sometimes I hate it when people mention things from the past. I forgot so quickly you see. Some things, anyway.

I don't like the thought that other people know much more about me than I do.'

'Don't worry about it,' she said.

'Maybe if I read what you've wrttten. l'd learn something. I go cras.h.i.+ng around the place, making the same mistakes, getting involved in all the same problems. Perhaps if I listened a bit more, I'd manage to have a quieter life.'

'Do you want a quieter life?'

He laughed. 'No.'

She struggled to sit up. It was cooler now on the island, with the sun gone. 'Listen. You go on and make the same old mistakes if you want.

Live the same glorious life again and again if that's what you want. I envy you that. You're a young man again! You can do exactly what you want.'

She reached out for his hand and went on. 'If I get through this whole thing and manage to get myself better, and if by any chance I get to be a younger woman again, that's exactly what I'll do. I won't take the weight of any history along with me again.'

They sat for a while in companionable silence. Then from down the dusky beach there was a shout and they turned to see the Turtle scurrying up the damp sand, with a clutch of squirming fish skewered on a branch.

'I think...' he called out nervously,'I think our transport problem is solved.'

'Oh yes?' shouted Iris.

'Someone has followed us.'

Iris rolled her eyes.'Not that big b.l.o.o.d.y fish, I hope.'

'No,' laughed the Mock Turtle, and pointed.

Through the gently cras.h.i.+ng waves, rolling steadily through the churning spume and froth of the beach, came a dark, familiar shape.

'I don't believe it,' said the Doctor.

'Bless her heartl'yelled Iris.'She's found us!'

Emerging from the shallows, and with sea water streaming from her windows, leaving her a clean and glorious crimson, came the number twenty-two to Putney Common. Seaweed was clumped like laurels on her bonnet.

Julia had ordered that the crew were to put on all their finery. This night was to be their last as paid servants to the Empress and so the Kristeva was bedecked and beribboned. The pirates covered their s.h.i.+p and themselves with all the fancy dress they had h.o.a.rded over the years of looting and scavenging. The dressing-up trunks they had salvaged from wrecks came out, as did the gaudy vestments ripped from the backs of unfortunate, happened-upon seafarers.

Julia was drinking with Wittol, the heron-like creature who was her trusted lieutenant. They drank from thin gla.s.s boiling tubes, holding them carefully at their necks, and sipping the hot, sour nectar inside. 'She promises us,' said Julia, 'that she will give me my freedom if we come through this.'

Wittol was amused. "Then you can sail off into the sunset,'

'Never go near hated Hyspero again.'

'What made the Empress decide to let you off the hook?'

Captain Julia shrugged.'I don't know and I don't care.'

'Only a year ago - when you told her you didn't want to be her heir - she wouldn't hear of it. She was ready to impound you and your s.h.i.+p immediately, and have all of us slain. Just for being your crew.'

'I think my mother wants to be Empress for ever,' said Julia. 'At one time she couldn't bear to think of giving up the throne. Then, as she got older, she had to think about it, and wanted to train me up for the job. You're right, Wittol - she always deplored my carousing and adventuring. Yet now she seems content - after this mission is accomplished - to let me go off and please myself.'

'Perhaps she has found a way to be Empress for ever, after all.'

'I wouldn't put anything past the current Scarlet Empress. She's always messing about with witchery and necromancers. Maybe shewill live eternally.'

'It must have something to do with our prisoners,' the heron said. 'Why not interrogate them and find out what makes them so special? Hmm?

They look like a rabble to me.' Wittol's eyes burned. He had scores to settle with the prisoners.

Julia was thoughtful. 'We could keelhaul them, I suppose. Or make them walk the plank.We haven't had a really good torturing in donkey's years.'

'Shall I fetch them up?'

'Why not?'

Miraculously, the bus was quite dry inside.

'Oh, isn't she a marvel?' cried Iris, as the Doctor helped her aboard.

'Is this really a TARDIS?' asked the Mock Turtle in an awed tone. He braced himself and stepped through the double doors. 'Oh,' he said, looking around.