Doctor Who: The Legends of Ashildr Read online

  She stood then, bowing before him. He made to embrace her, but try as he might, he could not move. Gasping in surprise, he tried to call for help, but no voice had he. Instead he lay there on the couch, and he was not alone. The Destroyer of Delights had come to visit him.

  As he drew his last choking breath, he heard the laugh of Lady Sherade. ‘Husband, my moral is this… You are always better off with a Queen than a King…’

  THE FORTUNATE ISLES

  David Llewellyn

  I

  Letting go of the rope she fell, hitting the ground hard, and tumbled forward, grazing her hands against the cobbled street. No time to feel sorry for herself. Scrambling to her feet and clapping the stones and grit from her palms, Ash began to run. Already, she could hear armed guards and bloodhounds pouring from the castle gates and – from a window high above – the Princess, high-pitched and nasal, shrieking, ‘Stop her! Stop the thief!’

  On this moonless night in 1485, the city of Seville was like an ants’ nest; a maze of manmade gullies and canyons in which it was easy to get lost. Ramshackle, timber-framed buildings jostled one another for space, darkening the streets and alleyways, but Ash – an old, young woman once named Ashildr – had memorised her route, each twist and turn from the castle to the port, and could have made her way there blindfolded if she had to.

  She ran and ran and zigged and zagged till the clump-clump-clump of the guards and barking of their dogs faded away, and she had only the echo of her own footsteps for company. Presently, having reached the port, she stopped running and edged her way carefully and silently along the quayside, hidden by the shadows. There, bobbing gently in the dim harbour lights, was a carrack with the name El Galgo – The Greyhound – painted across its stern. Preparations were being made, a steady column of men carrying crates and cages up its gangplank, the decks bustling with activity. Bound, no doubt, for Genoa or Marseilles.

  It was perfect.

  Pulling her cap a little lower over her brow and hoisting one of the crates up against her chest, Ash marched straight onto the Galgo, as if she had every right to be there. Then, sneaking away from the crew, she began searching for a place to stow away, and found one below decks, in a room already filled with sacks of rice, beans and flour, barrels of anchovies and honey, pipes and butts of wine and stocks of pickled pork. Though cramped, its far corner had just enough room for her to hide, and she doubted even the ship’s cook would notice if she borrowed one or two supplies during the voyage.

  Hunkering down in the shadows, on a makeshift bed of flour sacks, Ash took the lizard brooch from her pocket, careful not to snag her thumb on its pointed tail, and she tilted it this way and that, so that its emerald scales and ruby eyes glistened in what little light there was.

  Ugly little thing, really. Oh, Ash knew it was meant to be priceless and that its maker was considered a genius in his own lifetime, but really. Some people had more money than taste. Still, if the Condottiero in Pisa wanted this brooch for his mistress and was willing to pay two thousand ducats to have it stolen, who was she to quibble?

  Ash put the brooch away and tried to sleep, but it was no use. Her ‘bed’ was not exactly comfortable, and her thoughts were restless with too many ‘hows’ and ‘what ifs’ and the melody of a madrigal she’d heard in Paris several months ago and simply couldn’t forget, however hard she tried.

  At first light, the Galgo left the port of Seville and made its way slowly – too slowly, for Ash’s liking – along the winding River Guadalquivir. Her view of the world outside came through a grille in the ceiling, offering only a latticed blue square of sky. She listened out for the voices of the crew, but still couldn’t gather where they were bound, and it was many hours before she heard the cawing of seagulls and the waves that seemed to shush them, and knew that they were finally at sea.

  II

  Five days in and they were still sailing west. How did she know this? Because each day, as she hid away in that dark corner of the hold, the sunlight coming through the grille came only from the starboard side. But what lay to the west of Seville? There were the Azores, the Portuguese islands, but why would any Spanish ship go there?

  She’d done a good job of hiding so far – keeping as quiet as a mouse whenever anyone came into the hold, stealing only tiny morsels of food, and answering nature’s call in the dead of night when most of the crew were asleep – but she wasn’t sure she could keep it up much longer. Ash had chosen the Galgo because it was a Spanish ship, because she’d assumed it might be bound for somewhere not too far away, some port that would get her that little bit closer to the Condottiero’s palace. It seemed she was very much mistaken.

  Maybe it was the lack of sleep that clouded her judgement, or her impatience and curiosity simply got the better of her, but on the fifth day, when the decks were at their busiest, Ash left the hold and stepped out into the midmorning light. After all, she reasoned, the Galgo must have a complement of forty crew. Impossible for anyone to know everyone on board…

  But she was wrong.

  No sooner had she reached the deck than a big, booming voice yelled, ‘Who in blazes are you?’

  The speaker was a titan, a man who towered over her, eclipsing the sun, his face hidden behind a bushy black beard and a scarlet eyepatch.

  ‘My name’s Ash, sir. I’m the… cabin boy?’

  The giant whisked away her cap and roared with laughter. ‘Cabin boy?’ he said. ‘Pull the other one, miss! Looks like we’ve got ourselves a stowaway, lads!’

  Ash was surrounded. This, then, was how it would end. This time. Thrown overboard to be eaten by sharks. That was a new one. She wondered briefly how it might feel, and how long it would take her to mend afterwards. That was assuming she could mend after passing through the digestive system of a shark…

  ‘I’m very sorry,’ she said, hoping it would be enough, but knowing it wouldn’t.

  ‘She’s sorry, lads,’ said the giant. ‘Do I accept her apology? Or do I kick her backside in the briny blue?’

  Among a chorus of men shouting, ‘Kick her in the sea!’ someone emerged from the crowd; a tall, thin man dressed more elegantly than the rest, with dark brown hair and a reddish beard.

  ‘Are you really proposing we kill this girl?’ he said.

  ‘That’s what’s done with stowaways,’ said the giant, who Ash now took to be the captain.

  ‘Hardly an auspicious start, though, is it?’

  ‘Then what do you suggest?’

  ‘That we find something for her to do?’

  The giant glowered down at Ash. ‘Well, girl. What are you good at? Do you sew?’

  Ash made a face and shook her head.

  ‘Cook? Clean?’

  She shook her head again.

  ‘See? She’s useless.’

  ‘I’m good with a sword.’

  The giant laughed. ‘Oh, really? Hear that, lads? She’s good with a sword!’ Then he turned to one of his crew, a scrawny-looking character with one eyebrow, and said: ‘Fernando. Give the girl your cutlass.’

  Hesitantly, this Fernando stepped forward and passed her his sword, giving Ash a look halfway between distrust and sympathy.

  ‘Now, then,’ bellowed the giant. ‘Let’s see what you’re made of, shall—’

  Before he could finish his sentence the cutlass whistled through the air, the tip of its blade passing mere inches from his throat, and the lower part of his beard rained down around his feet in a shower of black tufts. A deathly silence fell across the deck, and the giant reached up, probing his now beardless chin with an expression of alarm. Just as Ash began to fear the worst, he laughed.

  ‘Oh, I like her,’ he said. ‘She can stay.’

  Then with a hefty right hook, he punched her in the face, and her bright blue day turned instantly to night.

  III

  The thin man with the red beard was the ship’s physician, Garcia, and he was the first person Ash saw, when she came to in a room below deck. There, he explained every
thing. The giant whose beard she’d clipped was, indeed, the ship’s captain, Francisco Lopez, and there was a very good reason the Galgo was sailing west, out into the ocean.

  They were engaged in a race with a Genoese ship named the San Giorgio, both of them searching for a western route to Asia. For years, the Mamluk and Ottoman Sultans in Egypt and Turkey had made the old land routes, the ones traversed by Marco Polo and his brothers, impassable. To reach India, China or Japan you would have to sail either around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, which no European had ever done, or west across the Atlantic, and into the unknown.

  Ash’s timing, Garcia told her, was impeccable. Since leaving Seville, they’d discovered that the ship’s lookout, a rather timid lad named Diego, suffered terribly from a fear of heights, and few others on board were nimble enough to climb up to the crow’s nest. While she was unconscious, Captain Lopez had decided to make Ash the new lookout.

  From that day on, the hours she spent, suspended high above the deck, were long and tedious, and, though she was grateful Lopez and his men hadn’t thrown her to the sharks, Ash still wondered if she would ever find her way back to her client, the Condottiero, and her two thousand ducats.

  Nine days into the voyage, they stopped on the island of São Miguel – as far as anyone knew, one of the last bits of dry land between Europe and distant China – to carry out repairs to the ship and replenish their supply of fresh water. Then they set sail once more, and Ash was back in the crow’s nest, staring out at the boundless deep blue void. Once or twice she saw whales breach the surface, firing great spumes of foam up into the air before diving back beneath the waves, but more often than not it was as if they had entered a part of the world where no other living creature dared to roam.

  IV

  It was on the twentieth day that she saw it: the San Giorgio. Just a grey silhouette at first; then, as they drew nearer, the red crosses of St George visible on its flag and sails. She called out to the Captain, and Lopez had his crew man every station, preparing the cannons in case it was some sort of trap.

  As they drew closer still, Ash saw a single person moving about on the San Giorgio’s deck, a handsome man only a little older than herself, waving at them with his chaperon hat in his hand. Finally, when the two ships were only feet apart, and before Lopez and his men could board the San Giorgio, the stranger came rushing across the gangplank crying, ‘Thank you! Oh, Lord be praised! It is a miracle!’

  Then, overcome with happiness or exhaustion, he collapsed.

  While Lopez and his men began searching the San Giorgio, Ash helped Garcia carry the Genoese stranger below deck, and moments later he came around, blinking up at them in wonder as if they might be angels. Garcia held a cup of water to the stranger’s lips, helping him to drink, and asked him his name.

  ‘Piero of Lodi,’ the stranger replied. ‘Emissary of his Grace, Gian Galleazzo, Duke of Milan.’

  ‘But what happened?’ asked Ash. ‘Where is everyone?’

  Piero’s expression darkened. ‘They are dead,’ he replied. ‘They are all dead.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘An outbreak of plague, four days out of the Azores. I was unaffected, having survived a dance with the blue sickness myself, many years ago. I had to bury the last of my crewmates alone. Wrapped them in their own blankets, weighted them, and threw them in the sea. I’d thought at first I might handle the ship myself, return to São Miguel, but it was no use… a ship that size… And now I’ll never see the islands…’

  Ash and Garcia exchanged a look, both thinking precisely the same thing.

  ‘Islands?’ said Garcia. ‘You mean Japan?’

  Piero shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘The Fortunate Isles.’

  Garcia scoffed. ‘There’s no such place.’

  ‘Oh, there is,’ said Piero, and reaching inside his robes produced a tattered scroll bound with red ribbon. He handed it to Ash, who removed the ribbon and unfurled the scroll to reveal an intricately drawn map.

  ‘What is this?’ she asked.

  Piero eased himself up, resting on one elbow, and traced his finger across one side of the picture.

  ‘Here,’ he said, ‘is the coast of Portugal. This is Africa, the Canary Islands. These are the Azores. And here, a thousand miles southwest of where we are now, lie the Fortunate Isles.’

  ‘But no one has ever sailed that far,’ said Garcia.

  ‘Not true,’ said Piero. ‘A Genoese ship went that way eighteen months ago. They returned with this map, and with nuggets of gold as big as my fist. Diamonds the size of plovers’ eggs. They said there was more treasure there than any ship could possibly carry. The San Giorgio was never sailing for China.’

  V

  Captain Lopez stomped from one side of his quarters to the other, his boots thudding heavily against the wooden floor. In brooding thought, he stroked his chin in the exact place where his beard was just beginning to grow back.

  ‘And you believe him?’ he asked.

  Ash nodded.

  Garcia seemed less certain. ‘Gold nuggets the size of your fist? Diamonds the size of eggs?’

  ‘Of plovers’ eggs,’ said Ash.

  ‘He could be exaggerating,’ said Garcia. ‘You know how these things are.’

  ‘But do we think it’s worth pursuing?’ asked Lopez.

  Garcia shrugged. ‘If what he says is true, then we – and His Majesty the King – will be rich beyond our wildest dreams. If, however, he is not, we could be sailing southwest for nothing.’

  The Captain frowned. ‘What was it St Jerome said, in his letter to the Ephesians?’

  ‘You’ll have to remind me.’

  ‘Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.’

  Marching past them, Lopez went up to the deck, Ash and Garcia following close behind.

  ‘Listen up, men,’ the Captain said. ‘We’re changing course, and sailing southwest. Our guest, the Genoese Piero, has given us a map. A map that will take us to the Fortunate Isles!’

  A cheer went up across the deck, though Ash wondered if many of the crew knew what this meant. Before setting sail, they set fire to the San Giorgio, to consign its pestilence to the seabed, and by dusk the Galgo was heading towards an horizon the colour of freshly spilled blood.

  VI

  The first signs that they were near land were the gulls that greeted them one morning, cawing and howling over the deck, diving into the sea around the Galgo and emerging with wriggling fish caught in their beaks. An hour later, one of the crew spotted a single palm leaf floating by, as fresh and green as if it had only just fallen from the tree, and by noon Ash could see the first jagged outline of land, a single crooked outcrop followed quickly by the bumps and humps of other islands.

  These islands, whatever they were truly called, were magnificent, each one towering into the sky and covered in vegetation, so that they looked every bit as emerald-encrusted as the stolen brooch in Ash’s pocket. What’s more, each one was fringed with a beach of pristine white sand.

  The only obstacle between the Galgo and dry land was the pink coral reef that lay some distance from the shore. It would be impossible for the ship to get close without running aground, and so they would have to send out an expedition of smaller boats. But what did that matter? Piero of Lodi was right. There were islands here, and if he was right about the islands, then perhaps he was also right about the treasure.

  It was finally agreed that ten of the Galgo’s crew would go to the largest of the islands. They waited overnight, the Galgo anchored a mile from the shore, and at first light lowered two small boats into the sea, and began their journey across the harbour.

  In the first boat: Captain Lopez, Dr Garcia, Ash, Piero of Lodi and the single-eyebrowed boatswain named Fernando. In the second: the former lookout Diego, an apprentice pilot named Rodrigo, a carpenter named Oskar, another sailor named Bartolome and Pedro the steward. Side by side, the rowing boats crossed the harbour, the rowers struggling against a westerly current that moved aro
und the largest island in a circle. Upon reaching the salt-white sand, the first thing that Ash noticed was the silence; an almost perfect stillness, but for the waves lapping gently against the shore. Twenty yards from the sand’s edge began the dense, green jungle, but if anything was living in there, it didn’t make a sound.

  ‘Does that map of yours say where the treasure lies?’ the Captain asked.

  Piero shook his head. ‘The men who returned said only that it lay everywhere.’

  ‘Then we journey to the interior,’ said the Captain.

  No sooner had they entered the jungle, than the way became very steep, and they had to hack and slice a path through hanging vines and towering ferns. All around them stood enormous, gnarled old kapok trees, and in their branches birds as bright and colourful as tapestries, and timorous, large-eyed monkeys with furling tails and tapering, taloned hands.

  They had been walking for quite some time when Ash spotted something at her feet; a curious, glistening ball that looked almost like ice, jagged and rough but crystal clear. She picked it up, finding it cool but not cold to the touch, and held it to the light. In seconds, she was surrounded by the others, all of them gazing in wonder at the mysterious rock.

  ‘Is that…?’

  ‘Can’t be…’

  ‘You mean…?’

  Captain Lopez snatched it from her hand, studying it for himself. ‘It’s a diamond, all right,’ he said.

  ‘That’s impossible,’ said Garcia. ‘Diamonds are mined out of the earth. They don’t simply sprout up out of the ground like cabbages.’

  ‘See for yourself,’ said the Captain, passing him the stone. Garcia squinted at it for a moment, and his mouth fell open, as if he wished to speak, but had been rendered mute.

  While all this was going on, three of their party had noticed something a little further ahead and one of them, Rodrigo, shouted, ‘Captain! I think you should come and see this.’