Doctor Who and the Crusaders (4 page)

‘Think of the women, Chesterton! We must hold ourselves ready to defend them.’

‘Yes, Barbara’s hiding somewhere on the other side of those trees,’ murmured Ian, with an anxious frown.

Suddenly the fighting stopped and one of the huntsmen, the only one left standing, held up his arms as four of the soldiers made to run at him.

‘I am Malec Ric,’ he shouted.

A man pushed his way through the small ring of soldiers and approached the huntsman.

‘You have no friends to protect you now, Malec Ric.’ The huntsman looked slowly around the wood, his eyes moving from first one and then another of his friends lying on the ground.

‘I am the Emir, El Akir,’ continued the man with the scar.

‘Am I to die as well?’ said the man at bay. ‘If so dispatch me and have done with it.’

El Akir shook his head slowly, a cruel smile twisting his lips.

‘Your fate will be decided elsewhere. To tell of killing the English King, Malec Ric, is a vain story that only a fool might invent. To show a
captured
Malec Ric is what El Akir shall do.’

The tall huntsman stared at the Emir coldly. ‘Take me then and leave my friends in peace.’

‘A king at liberty may give commands. A captured one obeys them.’

He gestured sharply to the soldiers and the prisoner was hustled away by two of them. A look of utter satisfaction filled El Akir’s face, as he beckoned up another of the soldiers to his side.

‘Take such men as you need, search out the others and kill them,’ he commanded. The soldier bowed his head and the Emir walked away, following the soldiers who were now disappearing through the trees with their prisoner.

As soon as he was left alone, the soldier began to beat in the bushes with the flat side of his sword, searching for any hidden enemies. Another soldier appeared and did the same thing.

Vicki suddenly realized that her foot was showing through the bushes. Before she could draw it out of sight, one of the soldiers spotted her, thrust a hand through the foliage and dragged her out into view. Ian immediately launched himself
out of his cover, while the Doctor picked up a discarded lance and beat off the approach of the second soldier. Once again the wood resounded with the sound of conflict, but this time the contest was considerably more uneven than before. The Doctor’s lance was no match for the curved sword and all he could do was thrust and parry desperately, while Ian found himself up against a strong opponent, and without any weapon at all.

One of the wounded men in hunting clothes, Sir William de Tornebu, still weak from the arrow wound in his shoulder, pulled himself to his knees and signalled to Vicki, who ran over to him. He was struggling to draw the sword that hung at his side and she pulled it out for him. He gestured her gently, but firmly, to one side, held the sword lightly as if it were a javelin and threw it with all the strength he could muster, falling to the ground with the effort.

The sword flashed through the air and struck at the soldier who had pinned Ian against a tree. It buried itself deeply into his back, just as he was raising his sword to cut Ian in half. For a second or two the soldier stood, his weapon raised in his hand, a look of absolute surprise on his face. Then he staggered and fell to one side, the sword slipping out of his nerveless hand. Ian picked it up and ran over to where the Doctor was engaged with the other Saracen and, after a few short strokes, ended the matter finally with a fierce cut as the soldier’s guard dropped. Ian threw the sword away from him and walked with the Doctor to where Vicki was trying to nurse de Tornebu, whose effort had expended his last reserve of energy. He lay in Vicki’s arms, his eyes closed.

‘We have our friend here to thank for our lives,’ said the Doctor seriously, bending beside the injured man. ‘These Saracens would have killed all of us without a second’s thought.’

‘Saracens!’ echoed Ian.

‘Of course. You heard that man announcing himself as “Malec Ric”, didn’t you? That was what the Saracens called King Richard of England.’

‘Richard the Lionheart,’ added Vicki. The man in her arms opened his eyes and looked up at the three people around him weakly. It was obvious that even the effort of keeping his eyelids open was a strain.

‘Not… not the King,’ he muttered. The Doctor bent down on one knee.

‘What was that, my friend?’

‘The man… who called himself Malec Ric…’ the other gasped, ‘was Sir… Sir William des Preaux. The King… if he lives… give him the… belt.’

De Tornebu’s head fell back again.

Vicki said: ‘Is he dead?’

The Doctor shook his head. ‘No, but he’s badly wounded. We must take that arrow out.’

‘What did he mean about the belt?’ asked Vicki. She searched inside a pouch belonging to the unconscious man, pulled out a jewel-encrusted gold belt and gasped in astonishment.

‘Gold… and rubies. Diamonds too, Doctor.’

‘Very useful,’ murmured the Doctor thoughtfully. He suddenly looked up. ‘Where’s Chesterton gone?’

Ian suddenly came running towards them.

‘I can’t find Barbara anywhere,’ he cried. ‘I thought she must have hidden when the fight started, but she isn’t anywhere.’

The Doctor looked at the young man seriously, then down at the ornate belt in his hand.

‘I’m afraid it looks as if the Saracens have taken her,’ he said quietly. There was a pause for a moment or two, then Ian reached down and picked up a sword from the ground.

‘What do you think you’re going to do?’

‘Go after her, of course,’ Ian said.

‘Don’t be a fool,’ said the Doctor sharply. ‘We’re in an enemy country and surrounded by huge armies. You’d be outnumbered thousands to one. Try to be sensible, I beg of you.’

Ian pressed his lips together stubbornly and started to argue with the Doctor. For a moment, Vicki thought they’d come to blows, as the older of the two men stood up, his fists clenched and his whole body shaking with rage.

Ian, almost beside himself with anxiety, tried to ignore what he knew was sound advice, but eventually realized he couldn’t possibly succeed by throwing himself after Barbara. He looked at the sword in his hand disgustedly, broke it over his knee and threw the two pieces as far away from him as he could. The Doctor put a hand on his shoulder sympathetically.

‘We all have the same wish, Chesterton. I have a plan to achieve Barbara’s return, too. We have this wounded knight here, and we have this valuable piece of jewellery.’ He held up the golden belt, and the sunlight brought out all the facets of the jewels embedded in it, until it dazzled the eye with its richness and beauty. ‘How can they help us?’

‘We shall take both the knight and the golden belt to King Richard,’ stated the Doctor. ‘He will be in our debt. He will then accede to your request to go after Barbara, to the court of Saladin, and arrange for her release. It’s the only way, my boy, believe me.’

Ian turned the plan over in his mind and then, after a few seconds, he agreed with it. The Doctor patted him on the back in satisfaction.

‘Good. Now you’re being intelligent. But can you also be patient?’

‘Why?’

The Doctor spread out his hands.

‘We can’t possibly go to King Richard wearing clothes like these. We are on Earth at the time of the Third Crusade, my boy, in Palestine; some time between
A.D
. 1190 and 1192. We must find wearing apparel suitable to the time and place.’

‘Haven’t you anything in the ship?’ demanded Ian.

The Doctor shook his head. ‘Worse than that, my boy, I have no money either. However, it can’t be very far to the town where Richard has his headquarters. I will go there and find a way to get us something to wear. You and Vicki must wait here and look after this wounded man.’

Ian stared at him stubbornly for a few moments. The Doctor read all the doubt and anxiety in his eyes and knew that the younger man was matching this against all those other times when the Doctor’s advice had been the wiser course of action. Eventually, Ian nodded and turned away.

‘Fetch my long, black cloak from the ship, will you, my child?’ murmured the Doctor.

Vicki ran away and disappeared through the screen of bushes. The Doctor rested a hand lightly on Ian’s arm.

‘We will find her.’

‘You’re so sure. So certain. Doctor, we’ve lived on a knife-edge. We can’t go on and on relying on luck and good fortune!’

‘Do you really believe that’s what it’s been?’ The Doctor shook his head. ‘Frankly, I never rely on luck. A most dangerous occupation. No, my boy, I believe in positive thought. I believe in optimism, provided one never takes it to ridiculous lengths. But above all, Chesterton, I’m convinced in the strength of logic and reasoned action. Impulse is all right in a fight, when the odds are against you and only some brilliant piece of improvisation can turn defeat into victory.’

‘Maybe.’ Ian managed a smile. ‘You’re usually right.’

The Doctor chuckled and took the robe from Vicki as she returned. He moved off, saying over his shoulder, ‘Now keep under cover. Possess yourselves in patience. The old Doctor will find a way.’

As soon as the Doctor disappeared through the trees, the long cloak huddled around him to disguise the rest of his clothes, Ian felt all his worry returning. It was exactly at moments like these when he was very like the Ian Chesterton of old; unsure of himself, frustrated with inactivity, his fertile imagination working overtime as he pictured Barbara in the hands of the Saracens, and particularly a prisoner of the man with the scar, who had called himself El Akir.

At that very moment, Barbara was being carried out of the forest bound uncomfortably to a horse, her wrists and legs tied to each other under the stomach of the animal, dizzy from the blood running into her head as she hung downwards.

‘Who is the English woman?’ she heard one of the soldiers say, who rode near her.

‘I do not know,’ another replied. ‘Nor do I know why we waste our time taking her to Ramlah.’

‘Oh, she will fetch something in the slave market,’ said the first soldier.

Barbara closed her eyes, a dead weight of fear pressing in on her. Her head swam and she felt consciousness slipping away from her. As if from a long way away, she heard one of the soldiers speaking again.

‘Perhaps she will be useful as an entertainment for El Akir. They say he has a hundred ways to torture slowly.’

And as the two soldiers laughed together, the merciful oblivion of unconsciousness stole over Barbara, blotting out everything around her in a jet-black cloud of forgetfulness.

‘The less said about the Doctor, the better,’ Barbara had once said to Ian in the ship, after a particularly dangerous adventure. ‘It’s his constant air of mystery that makes him what he is.’

The Doctor hadn’t overheard this remark, but it would have delighted him if he had. It was the Doctor’s very personal and peculiar strain of individuality that made him capable of bridging all the different places he visited, accepting them on their own terms. He would land abruptly in a new world as a stranger and yet, all at once, become a part of that world; reaching out with curiosity and friendly interest to such a great degree that people assumed him to be no more than an ordinary visitor from across a range of mountains, or from over a small sea.

Thus it was in the town of Jaffa, where the Doctor quickly found his way to the merchant houses and shops, where he knew he could find the vital clothes he and his friends needed.

As he strolled through the town, careful to observe as many of the local customs as he could, noting every action of the other passers-by, so that he would commit no offence or give himself away, he might very well have been an old man walking in the early evening, sightseeing perhaps, or a deeply religious person wearing the simplest of clothes to mark his attitude to life. Around him, the busy little town, prospering with the settlement of King Richard’s armies, flourished and developed. It attracted all sorts of people from a dozen and one countries. Groups of strolling players followed the
army, earning purses of gold for their song singing and acting stories of the ancient Greek heroes. Many teams of sinuous dancing girls, from Circassia, Greece, India and Persia, some as dark as shadows and with tiny bells on their slender ankles and wrists, tempted all to watch them. Musicians filled the streets with melodies, tumblers and acrobats delighted the eye with their speed and dexterity. Sailors from the ships in the harbour drank the local wine of Jaffa and added laughter to the many other sounds. Merchants from Pisa, Venice and Genoa talked and treated, traded and made bargains and most of all, in all this motley mass of humanity, the fighting men from Europe mingled in and were the greatest number. Fine-nosed Austrians, strong-jawed Germans and well-set Frenchmen all laughed and walked, drank and talked with the men of Kent, Cornishmen, Welshmen, men from Yorkshire and Lancashire, the Englishmen who called Richard their King.

Small wonder that the Doctor went unnoticed in this seething mass of humanity and, although he blessed the crowds for the cover they provided, it was, nevertheless, with a sigh of relief that he turned into a quieter street and set his sights upon the shop of one Ben Daheer. The trader stood talking to an English soldier as the Doctor made his unobtrusive way towards the two stalls which flanked the entrance, both loaded with bales of silks and satins. It was obvious to the Doctor that the two men were having some sort of argument, although it was conducted in undertones.