Doctor Who: Nightshade Part 11

'Your daughters are dead, my lord.' Grey kept his calm, Grey knew that his position was hopeless. His idea of though fear was coursing through him.

rescuing Sir Harry was impossible; the knight he had served 'Dead?' Cooke looked at his daughters with sad, so faithfully had vanished into the ball of fire before him.

exhausted eyes.

Grey began to heave himself over the battlements, his tired 'Come away, Sir Harry. I beg you. Come away.'

hands gripping at the ancient stonework for support.

Cooke glanced down at Grey and then at the happy, Tendrils of energy whipped and crackled about him as the smiling faces in front of him.

column of energy slid nearer. He paused briefly on the 'Come, my dears. Come to your father,' he said hoa.r.s.ely.

ramparts, the world spinning dizzily about him. He 'No!' Grey cried out, bolting for the steps.

wouldn't survive the fall, he knew, but there were worse The little girls grinned and moved swiftly to their father things than death. The nebulous thing which had been Sir with outstretched arms, their skirts whispering over the Harry lapped at the stonework like h.e.l.lish flotsam. Grey floor.

closed his eyes and threw himself into s.p.a.ce.

Cooke opened his arms to embrace them and began to squeal horribly as their little faces fell inwards, smiles 104 105.

Jackson saw them first, racing across the moor as if the Cautiously, Jackson mounted the stone steps and emerged devil were at their heels. He looked up from his rec.u.mbent on to the walkway.

position as terrified cries echoed through the night. In an Sir Harry Cooke lay sprawled on his back with a look of instant his men were alert and on their feet.

abject horror on his face, his limbs smashed and broken.

'I knew it!' he cried delightedly. 'I knew they were Jackson walked slowly towards the corpse, stretching out a hereabouts!'

gloved hand to touch the purple face.

But the smile froze on his lips as he saw the gibbering He cried out as his fingers pushed straight through men tumbling through the undergrowth towards him.

Cooke's forehead as though through rotten fruit. He 'Take your prisoners, lads!' Jackson ordered, jogging up to shuddered and felt bile burn his throat as the body Will Todd as the young man collapsed on to the ground.

crumbled to greasy dust before him.

The Roundheads laid hands on the fleeing enemy as they Outside the gates, the horse began to snort and stamp, staggered into the circle of trees.

unnerved. Jackson looked at the creaking beams and black 'Sweet mercy, save us!' cried Todd, pawing at Jackson's stonework. They seemed to quiver and distort as though he legs.

were drunk, swooping, blurring and bending out of shape.

'What is it! What ails thee?' Jackson laid a kindly hand on The air was charged. Jackson shuddered.

the boy's shoulder.

A vast tendril of boiling energy began to crackle around Todd looked up fearfully. 'We are bewitched!'

the battlements like St Elmo's fire, seeping down the stained Jackson frowned and then turned swiftly to his walls and licking at the edges of the gateway. Every stone in subordinates, ordering them to treat their prisoners with the castle shone with unearthly radiance.

care and kindness. Then he mounted his horse and set off at Jackson lost no time, staggering down the steps and across a gallop for the castle.

the empty hall which was bucking like a s.h.i.+p in a storm. He Within minutes, the skeletal towers loomed above him pounded through the gates, dodging to avoid Ralph Grey's and he slowed to a gentle trot. The doors were wide open body, and threw himself on to his horse, flogging at it and horribly inviting. His horse snorted and pulled back a madly until he had put half a mile between himself and the little. Jackson glanced down and gasped as he saw Ralph castle.

Grey's broken body staring up at him, neck lolling to one Light began to rip and twist at the stonework. Jackson cast side.

back glance after glance, urging his horse onwards with Jackson dismounted and stepped over Grey's body. The stabs of his spurs.

hall before him was silent and dark. He glanced around, trying to pick out shapes from the confusion of black shadows. Up on the battlements, there seemed to be the faintest trace of light, like the dying embers of a fire.

106.

107.

[image]

terrible that not a stone remained come the morning. Certainly there is no trace of Marsham Castle today but the visitor may enjoy a fine view of the ancient battlefield from the hill which remains.

The Doctor closed the second book which the Abbot had given him and frowned deeply.

'Interesting?' said Winstanley, still pottering about the shelves.

'Arresting,' said the Doctor. 'Tell me, what's become of this... hill that the castle stood upon?' Winstanley ran his hand along a line of gilt-embossed books. 'Oh, it was just a local beauty spot for years...'

'Is that all?'

His men and the prisoners were gazing at the castle in Winstanley looked up from the brown pages of a awe.

spineless tome and thrummed his fingers against his side.

Jackson's horse thundered into view and he thrashed his 'Well, until they built the radio telescope on it.'

arms about in frustration.

'Down! Get down! Lest you lose your wits!'

Great pulses of energy seemed to flood across the moor from the castle which blazed like an Armada beacon against the night sky. Jackson threw himself clear of his horse and rolled under the trees, tucking his head under his folded arms. The soldiers followed suit and scurried for shelter, crying out in distress as a tumultuous explosion stunned their senses. Then the sky seemed to split apart as though the sun had disintegrated.

The original castle, which had stood empty for many hundreds of years, was eventually destroyed during the Civil Wars, just after the battle of Marston Moor. The cause of the fire was unknown but contemporary reports speak of a conflagration so 108 109.

Storey's natural successor. To his chagrin, the power vacuum had been filled, not only by a stranger, but by a woman. His working relations.h.i.+p with Dr Christine Cooper was always tense but he found himself thriving on the Chapter Five frisson between them. Before long, the ebullient scientist commanded his respect and loyalty. Now they were together again, in what Hawthorne was sure must be the bleakest corner of England. Nevertheless, it was England.

He had hated Australia. Hated the flies, the heat and the irritating good humour of the locals, forever slapping him on the back or pressing gnat's-p.i.s.s beer into his hand. He had returned to London with great relief, relis.h.i.+ng the Thomas Edward Hawthorne liked order. Trains that ran drizzle, the smell of damp earth and the sound of cabs on time, freshly rolled cricket pitches, neatly pressed suits slicing through rain-puddled streets. It had been good for a and folded handkerchiefs. He had lived his whole fifty-five while.

years according to an ordered pattern: pa.s.sing from a But London had changed. As the weeks went by, straightforward childhood to a straightforward school and a Hawthorne found himself experiencing something like straightforward double First in Mathematics and Physics.

culture shock. Men who looked like girls paraded up and Above all, he loved the order of numbers, that indefinable, down the streets, wearing embroidered Indian frocks and near-poetic quality which abstract higher maths could their hair down to their shoulders. Young people were in achieve. Sometimes he would sit alone in his spa.r.s.ely open rebellion against authority, organising 'sit-ins' at the furnished flat and simply let his mind wander, drift and LSE or even dropping out of society altogether to live in twist along the mental pathways he had created out of miserable hippy communes. Next best thing to anarchy in beautiful numbers. Those who knew only the cynical his opinion.

misanthrope would never believe the smile of sheer One aspect of British life, however, needled him like no pleasure which inevitably crept across his face.

other, just as its threatened arrival had back in the thirties.

He had risen quickly in his chosen field, joining Frederick There were blacks everywhere.

Storey and his team of radio astronomers, first in Manning the building sites, crowding the labour Cambridge and later in the famous New South Wales exchanges and positively overrunning London Transport. It experiments of the late fifties. Those embryonic days had was unbelievable.

been exciting and fulfilling, Hawthorne and Storey making He thought of the friends who had died in the War, died a strong team. After his mentor's retirement, Hawthorne to preserve a country and a way of life which they revered.

had been confident of promotion, believing himself to be 110 111.

Now it was polluted by the dregs of Empire. By G.o.d, it was Tar Baby, they were dirty, unnatural, somehow less than a sad time to be an Englishman.

human. And Hawthorne was still checking under his bed.

As a young man, he had walked a hundred miles to hear The phone call from Cooper inviting him to join her in Oswald Mosley speaking. He could taste the atmosphere Yorks.h.i.+re had been all the excuse he needed. Leaving even now: thousands of like-minded men, splendid in their London was like recovering from a long illness and the black s.h.i.+rts, listening to that incredible orator denouncing further north he travelled, the more certain and traditional the c.o.o.ns and the yids and all the other sc.u.m that were things seemed to become. But then he had arrived in sapping Britain's strength.

Bradford, realising with sick certainty that he had swapped But Hawthorne was no longer a young man. He had one wave of immigrants for another. There to meet him at watched his dream of a racially pure country vanish in a the station was his new colleague: young, handsome, wash of feeble liberalism.

intelligent and brown as a berry.

Somewhere, deep in the shadows of his complex mind, Hawthorne found himself flinching whenever Vijay came Hawthorne kept his own private bogeyman. An image near him, the boy's cultured, almost too English accent from his childhood half-wrapped in fear and half in annoying him intensely. It seemed unnatural and forced, nostalgia, bringing with it memories of his mother as she sat like a chimp at the zoo dressed in human clothes - an by the bed reading stories. Even as a child, Hawthorne had a.n.a.logy which pleased Hawthorne immensely.

possessed a rational mind, his imagination balking at the He was glad to work with Cooper again. She brought obvious conceits of the fairy story. How could a carpet fly?

back some of the certainties of before, her no-nonsense How could a genie fit inside a bottle?

att.i.tude a st.u.r.dy rock upon which to anchor his future. The Only one story fascinated him and he would urge his Kidd girl was all right too, if a bit c.o.c.ksure and modern in mother to read it over and over again. It was a little Uncle her thinking. She was a friend of Jocelyn Bell, the Remus tale concerning Brer Fox's plan to ensnare Brer postgraduate down at the Mullard observatory who had Rabbit in a th.o.r.n.y bush by means of a sticky facsimile child discovered the first pulsar earlier in the year.

called the Tar Baby.

But now there was this flood of bizarre, unfathomable Hawthorne had never been afraid of the nasty fox, never data, none of which made any sense. And the telephones really cared whether Brer Rabbit would escape or not. It was were out of order. The only certainty seemed to be that the the image of that sightless, dripping black baby in its cage of double star Bellatrix, in Orion, had just gone nova. The p.r.i.c.kles which haunted him. He would check under his bed signals were just discernible amongst the nonsense which every night, fearful that a tacky black paw would clutch at had overwhelmed their systems the previous night.

his ankle.

Thomas Edward Hawthorne liked order. At twenty-six Without really knowing why, he still connected his fear of minutes to eight on 23 December, a chunk of disorder called outsiders with that terrifying childhood memory. Like the Ace came into his life.

112.

113.

'What the h.e.l.l...?'

'Well, young lady. What are we going to do with you?'

Cooper scurried towards Ace and managed to prevent the girl's head from hitting the console. Ace flopped weakly The night had become dry and frostily clear. The Doctor, into Cooper's arms, sucking her cut lip and mumbling strolling into Crook Marsham with his umbrella hoisted insensibly.

over his shoulder, looked up at the bone-white moon on its 'Trespa.s.sers,' sighed Hawthorne. 'That's all we need.

bed of brilliant stars. He breathed in deeply and enjoyed the What's happened to the b.l.o.o.d.y security guard? It's cold air which flooded his lungs.

outrageous.'

Leaving the moor path, the Doctor rounded the corner of 'Gone AWOL,' said Cooper, prising open one of Ace's the Post Office and walked up the main street, his shoes eyelids.

crunching smartly on the frost-crazed pavement.

'It's outrageous.'

There was a soft chime from his coat pocket and he noted 'All right. You've made your point. Help me get her into with some satisfaction that he was almost exactly on time.

the chair. She's in a state.'

The Abbot's books, intriguing though they were, hadn't Gingerly, Hawthorne took Ace's arm and dragged her delayed him unduly. Strange coincidence, that. The over to a padded chair, noting her curious clothes with telescope being built on the site of the old castle. A castle some distaste.

reputed to be haunted and destroyed by a mysterious fire.

'Locals wandering all over the moor. You'd've thought The Doctor smiled. Every old building had its echoes, they'd be used to the telescope by now.' He pushed his every battlefield its mournful piper or whey-faced soldier.

gla.s.ses back up the bridge of his nose and ran a hand Ten a penny.

through brilliantined hair. Cooper wiped the blood from No, it was time to face the future. Act on his impulses and Ace's mouth with a handkerchief.

do something positive about his resolution to... How had 'Look at her clothes. They're a conservative lot in these Ace put it? Retire. Yes. There was something comforting parts.'

about that word.

'She looks like a dustman in that jacket. The things they I have done enough.

wear these days.'

It was good to be here in a tiny, dull corner of his Hawthorne turned his attention to the data chattering favourite planet with nothing to distract or entice him. He before him. The green display flared light across his gaunt glanced back across the moor and saw the telescope dish, features.

illuminated by its arc lamps, s.h.i.+ning brilliantly in the dark 'Bellatrix again. h.e.l.l of a nova. I just wish we could sort night.

out the real signals from all this... dross.'

I have done enough...

Cooper frowned thoughtfully, sat back on a bench and looked at Ace's sleeping form.

114.

115.

Warm colours and a babble of excited voices washed over The big policeman took the Doctor's arm and led him up the Doctor as he pushed open the door of The Shepherd's the stairs, Trevithick trailing behind. 'It's just up here, Cross.

Doctor er...?'