Doctor Who: The Awakening (12 page)

‘Doctor ... Wait!’ Jane panted. Eager though she was to straighten her back and rest her legs, there were some doubts which she had to clear up before she went a step further. Indeed, her understanding of the situation was still minimal – and if she were honest she would admit that even the bits she thought she knew were pretty hazy. So she was relieved when the Doctor waited for her to catch up, and as soon as she reached him she plunged into the sea of doubts which surrounded her.

‘Will said he saw the Malus in 1643 in the church.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Then it’s been here for hundreds of years.’

‘Long before the Civil War started,’ the Doctor agreed.

He set off again.

Frustrated, Jane ran after him. She had only just begun.

‘Then why has it been dormant for so long?’

The Doctor paused at the foot of the staircase and explained it carefully to her. ‘Because it requires a massive force of psychic energy to activate it. When the Civil War came to Little Hodcombe it created precisely that.’

Ah, Jane thought. Another key piece of information brought another lightning flash. She felt the picture filling in, and as they crept quietly up the staircase together she whispered, with more confidence than she had felt at any time, ‘And Sir George is trying to recreate the same event?’

‘Yes. In every detail. Tegan’s grandfather must have told him everything he discovered. It’s the only way he knows the Malus will be fully activated.’

The Doctor’s attention was beginning to stray, as he wondered what they might find at the top of the stairs, but Jane, tugging urgently at his sleeve, brought him back to the reality of the moment and he looked down at her worried face. ‘Doctor,’ she said, ‘I’ve just had a terrible thought – the last battle in the war games has to be for real!’

The Doctor grimaced. ‘Precisely. The slaughter will be dreadful.’

Jane tugged at his sleeve again. ‘You must stop him!’

‘Yes, I know,’ the Doctor agreed.

But how was that to be done? They reached the top of the stairs. Ahead, a short passage led to a door, through which they could hear a murmur of voices. Prominent among them was the hectoring tone of Sir George Hutchinson. The Doctor put a finger to his lips, waited for Jane to catch him up again, and they approached the door together.

In the parlour, watched by a worried Wolsey, Tegan was arguing heatedly with Sir George across the oak table. She felt she had nothing to lose now, and had thrown caution to the winds.

‘History is littered with loons like you,’ she shouted,

‘but fortunately most of them end up safely locked away!’

Sir George merely laughed, and said in the patronising, half-mocking voice which so infuriated her, ‘Insight is often mistaken for madness, my dear.’

Wolsey’s agitation suddenly got the better of him, too.

He rose to his feet and faced Sir George. ‘I didn’t realise the power of the Malus was so evil,’ he said.

Sir George glared. He pointed a finger at Wolsey’s eyes.

The finger shook with emotion and his voice was an uncontrolled shout tinged with hysteria. ‘Don’t worry, Wolsey!’ he shouted. ‘It will serve us!’

‘It will use you,’ Tegan countered.

‘Tegan is right.’

And so saying, the Doctor pushed aside the heavy curtain drapes and entered the parlour through the secret door, with Jane following close behind him.

For a moment the occupants of the room were struck speechless with surprise. The Doctor marched straight to Tegan’s side. His eyes dilated a little at the sight of the dress she was wearing, although his surprise was no greater than Tegan’s at seeing him materialise out of a curtain. She knew she should be used to the Doctor’s habits by now, but she still found them disconcerting.

The Doctor wasted neither time nor words. He turned at once to Sir George Hutchinson. ‘You’re energising a force so irresistibly destructive that nothing on Earth can control it,’ he told him. ‘You must stop the war games.’

Sir George went wild. The signs of obsession and hysreria, and his barely concealed joy at the war games’

cruelty had been indications of the road he was taking.

Now it seemed that the sudden appearance of the Doctor through the curtain had committed him to that path: something seemed to break loose inside his brain, and those eyes, which before had been unnaturally bright, now burned with an uncontrollable fury.

He aimed his pistol between the Doctor’s eyes. ‘Stop it?

Are you mad?’ His voice pitched queerly. ‘You speak treason!’

‘Fluently,’ the Doctor snapped. ‘Stop the games!’

Sir George could take no more of this. With a jerky movement he almost threw the pistol at Ben Wolsey.

‘Eliminate him, Wolsey,’ he screamed. ‘Now!’ Grabbing his Cavalier hat, and forcing his wayward limbs to obey his wishes, he stormed out of the room.

For a moment after he had gone there was an awkward silence among the remaining occupants. The echoes of Hutchinson’s anger hung in the air. Wolsey pointed the pistol uncertainly and without much enthusiasm at the Doctor.

‘Put that down, Ben,’ Jane said, in the gentlest voice.

Ben Wolsey shook his head, as if trying to clear it of all his illusions about Sir George. ‘I don’t understand him any more,’ he admitted. He looked tired, and his voice was sad; the increasing bewilderment and confusion which he had been feeling for some time had drained him. Now it seemed that everything was beyond him; events had veered out of his control. He was speaking nothing less than the truth: he truly did not understand.

The Doctor felt a lot of sympathy for this kindly, confused man. ‘Don’t try,’ he told him. ‘Sir George is under the influence of the Malus.’ Then he paused. ‘Are you with us, Colonel?’

Weary beyond words, Wolsey sat down heavily. He was no longer pointing the gun at anybody. ‘Can you tell me what’s going on?’ he asked. ‘Because I don’t know any longer.’

‘Doctor!’ Tegan interrupted him. She pointed a trembling finger towards a corner of the room, where something only too familiar to her – although new to the others – was happening.

Lights were forming against the wall. This time they developed quickly, much faster than those in the barn, and in no time the first point of brilliance had become a mass of moving stars which danced like fireworks in the corner.

The others gaped, half shocked, half entranced, but shock took over completely when the lights suddenly grouped together in a complex pattern out of-which there formed, with a phosphorescent glow, a rapidly stabilising image.

It hung on the wall like an obscenely bloated grey spider. Lights still flickered around it and it was not yet fully formed, but it contained in recognisable form all the features of the Malus – the flaring, sneering nostrils, the sardonic mouth, hair like writhing snakes turned to stone, and the unmistakable aura of evil. While the others stood rooted to the floor, hypnotised by the manifestation, the Doctor moved slowly towards it.

‘Be careful.’ Tegan shuddered at the memory of her previous encounter; she was not at all pleased that it was happening again.

‘That’s the thing in the church!’ Jane’s voice had shrunk to an awed whisper.

‘Not quite,’ the Doctor decided. He was close to the wall, and was examining the image carefully. ‘This is a projection of the parent image. It must be one of several energy gathering points.’

Projection or not, the Doctor was much too close to it for Tegan’s comfort. ‘Keep away from it,’ she pleaded.

The Doctor smiled at her concern. ‘It has no force yet.’

He spoke reassuringly, but the image seemed to Tegan to pulsate slightly, and to be growing brighter and stronger by the minute.

By now Ben Wolsey was over his initial surprise. Like the practical, rough and ready farmer he was, he now addressed the situation in a practical, down-to-earth way by aiming his pistol at the Malus image as he would at a crow or a rat. It was vermin, and should be treated as such.

‘Will this put a stop to it?’ he asked.

Holding up his hands to forestall any precipitate action, the Doctor hurried over to him. ‘No, it won’t,’ he said quickly. ‘I’m afraid you can’t hurt it, because it has no substance.’

The image had the colour and texture of old stone, and to Ben Wolsey it looked as solid as a lump of rock. ‘We have to do something,’ he said.

The Doctor nodded. ‘Yes. We have to prevent the re-enactment. The last battle must be stopped. We must spoil it in any way we can.’ He paused, then explained: ‘We have to reduce the amount of psychic energy being produced.’

The Doctor’s words sent relief flooding through Tegan.

‘Then we can forget the May Queen procession!’ she cried.

But Wolsey shook his head and crushed her rising spirits.

‘The cart to take you to the village is already here,’ he said.

Disappointed, Tegan looked to the Doctor for support.

He was frowning heavily. She knew that look of old – it meant that some fast and furious thinking was going on, so she waited for the plan forming in his mind to surface.

Suddenly he gave Wolsey a sharp, appraising glance and asked, ‘Will there be guards for the procession?’

Wolsey shook his head. ‘No, I’m the only escort. But they will send someone to investigate.’

The Doctor reached his decision. ‘Then you make sure that Tegan and Jane get safely back to the church,’ he said quickly. ‘You can use the underground passage. I must find Turlough and Will. And, er ...’ – as he headed for the door he glanced at the image of the Malus growing stronger on the wall – ‘Good luck!’

He set out on his search, and left them to their preparations.

Tegan turned to the farmer. ‘Do you know where my clothes are?’ she asked him.

‘I’ll fetch them for you,’ he promised, ‘but stay as you are for the moment.’

‘Why?’

He sighed, a picture of the unbounded obsession of Sir George Hutchinson filling his mind. ‘Because if you don’t turn up in that cart, Hutchinson will turn out the whole village to search for you ... and the Doctor won’t stand a chance.’

Tegan’s heart sank. Shc knew he was right, and that she was going to he Little Hodcombe’s Queen of the May whether she liked it or not.

Will kept running until he reached the village. Once there, he hid in an orchard to catch his breath and get rid of the painful stitch in his side. Then he crept warily from house to house, from one hiding place to another, gradually making his way towards the Village Green. Every step he took was dangerous, for there were troopers everywhere.

He reached the last cottages surrounding the Green, and looked nervously up and down an open section of road to make sure it was clear. Then he scampered across it like a bolting rabbit and hid on the other side, among the prickly foliage of an overgrown climbing rose which festooned a wooden fence.

After a few moments he had recovered his composure enough to reach up and peer between the pale relics of dead rose blooms towards the Green. The thorny branches criss-crossed his vision like barbed wire. When he saw the Green, his heart nearly stopped.

He caught his breath and bit his lip. Tears rushed to his eyes and his spirits sank to the bottom of his buckled shoes. He could hardly believe his eyes, for what he saw there on the Green
he had seen before
: everything was exactly as it had been when he passed the Village Green on his way to Little Hodcombe church before the terrible battle in 1643.

Everything was happening again – all over again, every detail. There was the tall maypole with its white ribbons whirling gently in the breeze, just as they had then. Near it were the foot-soldiers building up a bonfire for the festivities’ fearful climax. And there were the troopers, and the bravely fluttering banner, and the horses and the gaudy uniforms – all the colour and activity which had brightened that day too, before it was crushed, and transformed to screams and blood and ashes.

Will sobbed. On that bright afternoon Squire Hutchinson had cantered about the Green on his big chestnut horse, masterminding the preparation – and here was the new Squire, Sir George – another Hutchinson -dressed in identical Cavalier clothes, riding up to the spot where his Sergeant was telling the soldiers to build the pyre ever higher. ‘It’s perfect!’ Sir George cried triumphantly. Will could hear him clearly, in his hiding place among the roses.

Sir George turned to gaze out across the Green to the houses and streets of the village. He seemed to be looking directly at Will, whose heart thumped madly as he dived down out of sight.

In the narrow, bare hut on the outskirts of the village, Andrew Verney stopped hurling himself at the door and sank exhausted onto a bale of straw. He held his aching shoulder and looked groggily across at Turlough, who gave the door one more battering and then, gasping for breath himself, dropped down beside the old man.

‘The door must give way soon,’ he groaned.

‘Agreed,’ Verney, said. ‘But at the moment all we’re doing is wearing out our shoulders.’

Frustrated almost beyond endurance by that stubborn piece of timber, Turlough staggered back on to his feet.

‘There’s no other way!’ he cried, making ready to charge the door again.

As Turlough attempted to break down the door, a farm cart, decorated with flowers and boughs of greenery and pulled by a glistening white horse, was rolling away from Ben Wolsey’s farmhouse. Watching farmhands cheered, and women in seventeenth-century clothes threw rose petals over their Queen of the May.

The cart was her royal carriage. Tegan rode high upon it, looking, in that spring-coloured dress, every inch like a queen setting out to greet her subjects. Jane Hampden was on the cart too, as the Queen’s companion. The ‘carriage’

was driven by Ben Wolsey, sitting forward on the box with the reins held loosely in his hands.

Now, as the cart left the farmyard, he flicked the reins and the horse kicked and pulled faster. Villagers lined the route; they waved and threw rose petals. The Queen and her companion exchanged nervous glances and gritted their teeth, steadying themselves for the trials to come.

A fierce heat overlay the village and wrapped itself about the surrounding countryside. The activity which throbbed and stirred inside it made waves which rippled through the fervid air and rolled and crackled like static electricity across the fields, to be drawn as if by a magnet towards the church. Inside it they were swept up into a physical force which charged the Malus with energy.