Doctor Who: The Legends of Ashildr Page 8

  ‘Mathematics,’ growled Captain Lopez. ‘I hate mathematics.’

  ‘No,’ said Ash. ‘This is more than that.’

  ‘Your time,’ said Piero. ‘Begins now!’

  The metal ladder dropped down to their level with a sudden clang, and ice-cold water began cascading from the outlet above, splashing around them first in puddles, then rising up around their feet and then their ankles. Ash ran across the tank, and began turning one of the wheels.

  ‘We have to stop the water,’ she said. ‘Come on. Help me.’

  Captain Lopez looked up at the aperture and then the ladder.

  ‘Hundred and fifteen seconds for the average human,’ he said. ‘I reckon I can make it in less.’

  ‘No!’ said Ash. ‘If we work together, we can cut the water off in a minute.’

  ‘Rather you than me,’ said the Captain, and hoisting himself up out of the rising water he began climbing the ladder.

  For a moment, Ash paused. She could join him, climb up after him. They’d both drown, of course, but for her it would last only a moment before she’d revive. She could do that. After all, the Captain had doomed poor Garcia. They would be free now, if it wasn’t for him. But no. She couldn’t bring herself to do that, and so instead, she carried on turning the valve, working until her arms ached, and the water was above her chin, and then her lips, and then her nose…

  Ash kept going for as long as she could, turning and turning the wheel, but eventually she could hold her breath no longer. Against every instinct in every fibre of her being, she breathed in, felt the bitter chill of water flooding into her lungs, and seconds later her world went silent and dark.

  XV

  When eventually she came round, Ash found herself back in the arena, coughing up gouts of cold water, and as her eyes began to focus she saw Piero standing over her with an expression of disbelief.

  ‘That’s… impossible…’ he said.

  She sat upright, and the audience gasped, as if they were witnessing a miracle: the girl who only moments ago had drowned, right up there on those giant screens, back from the dead. Her clothes and hair were drenched, and she was freezing. Next to her, lying on his back, was Captain Lopez, the ground around him wet, his eyes closed and his skin as white as marble. There’d be no miracles for him.

  ‘Tell me,’ said Ash, getting to her feet. ‘How many of your “players” ever make it out of there?’

  Piero backed away from her nervously, as if he were looking at a ghost, which – to all intents and purposes – he was.

  ‘N-n-none,’ he stuttered. ‘One person always chooses to think only of themselves. And we’ve never had three players press green.’

  ‘Thought so.’

  ‘But you… you drowned.’

  Ash shook her head. ‘I breathed in water and I passed out,’ she said. ‘But I never drown. Trust me. This wasn’t a first.’

  She looked up at the audience, casting her gaze across their shocked and slack-jawed faces. What kind of people were they?

  ‘So what happens now?’ she said. ‘Have I won?’

  ‘I… I don’t know,’ said Piero. ‘We’ve never had a winner. And the laws are very clear.’

  ‘Which laws?’

  ‘Governing time travel. We’re not allowed to leave behind any evidence we were ever here.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘But you’ve seen us… you know what we are…’

  Piero gestured to the Caniforms, who were standing guard on every exit, and they began making their way forward, forming an ever-tightening circle around them.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Piero. ‘You really were a very popular contestant, but we can’t let you go.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ said Ash, and reaching into her pocket she produced the gem-encrusted brooch she’d stolen in Seville. Then she leapt at Piero, grabbing him by the hair and placing the lizard’s sharpened tail against his throat. ‘Make one move, and you’ll regret it,’ she said. ‘Now tell your dogs to back off.’

  ‘I… I can’t do that…’

  ‘Do it, or you’ll die.’

  Piero nodded, and with his voice quaking in fear said, ‘Step down. Step. Down.’

  One by one, the Caniforms backed off, looking at one another as if wondering what to do next. They snarled and growled, but didn’t make a move.

  With Piero still in a chokehold, Ash edged her way across the arena, towards the corridor that led down to the beach. For the first time in what felt like aeons she heard the world outside; the wind rustling through the trees, the sea crashing against the shore, and down the corridor they went, Piero trembling in her grasp. Behind them, at the far end of the corridor and silhouetted by the lights, Ash saw the Caniforms massing together.

  ‘Tell them to stay right where they are!’ she hissed in Piero’s ear.

  ‘Stay back!’ said Piero. ‘Don’t come any further!’

  Once they were outside, Ash saw that they were on the far side of the island, on an unfamiliar beach lit only by starlight. There, nestled in the sand only a short distance away, was one of their two rowing boats, and Ash made Piero push it down to the water, giving its hull an occasional kick herself to speed up their progress.

  All across the hillside, above the arena’s entrance, stood more of the Caniforms, the same archers who had attacked them on the plain. They watched them in silence, their expressions blank and pitiless, and did nothing as Ash and Piero clambered into the boat. Then, the brooch still firm against his throat, Ash ordered Piero to start rowing.

  XVI

  On the deck of the Galgo, surrounded by men armed with muskets and cutlasses, Piero confessed all. He and the people inside the island came here from a world fifteen centuries in the future. Though they found it hard to believe, the crew understood the concept of a wager. To Piero and his audience, this world in their distant past was sport; the crew of the Galgo and – before them – the San Giorgio, were just names who had been lost at sea.

  ‘We’ve done it so many times,’ Piero said, sobbing as he spoke. ‘Roanoke, HMS Blenheim… These names won’t mean anything to you, I suppose…’

  Then, his tale told, he begged for mercy.

  ‘Mercy?’ said Ash. ‘You ask me for mercy? After you killed all of the others. After you turned us against each other. Made a sport of us. You ask me for mercy?’

  Timidly, he nodded.

  This was it. The balance of life was now in her hands, not his. The desire to have the men shoot him where he knelt was overwhelming. If these last few days – indeed, her entire life – had taught her anything, it was that people look out only for themselves; that greed will always win, even when it means losing everything.

  ‘Please,’ said Piero. ‘Let me go. We’ll leave, I promise you. We’ll leave and never come back.’

  The men looked to Ash for their cue. Could she do it? Could she give the nod and have them kill this pathetic, unarmed man in cold blood? What if humanity is only so bad because, when it comes to a question like this, so many make the wrong decision?

  Moments later, Piero was in the rowing boat, alone, and making his way back to the island. The rest of the Galgo’s crew seemed more surprised than impressed by Ash’s clemency, but they didn’t know what she or any of the others had been through.

  It took Piero an age to reach the shore, but the crew of the Galgo watched him the whole way. Below decks, the gunners manned the cannons, prepared for any attack these people from the future might make, but none came.

  Moments after Piero had run back into the mountain, something incredible happened. The current that moved clockwise around the largest island stopped in a tumult of surf, and the sea began to bubble and boil. As if experiencing an earthquake, the islands rumbled and shook, and from somewhere deep inside the mountains came a drone that grew louder and louder. From beneath the sea there came a blazing light that rose up out of the water and surrounded the islands in a vast and shimmering globe. Then, with a sound like thunder, they were gone, and th
e waves rushed in to fill the void they’d left behind.

  In the moments that followed, the Galgo was tossed about in its wake, its hull creaking and groaning against the churning waves, its sails flapping noisily against the wind, but it stayed afloat. Then there was calm, and all about them lay nothing but the ink-black sea.

  XVII

  The Galgo returned to Seville some six weeks later, having lost only nine of its crew. Though some of its men gave second-hand accounts of savage, dog-faced creatures and an archipelago that vanished, an age of wisdom and enlightenment soon turned those stories into folktales and myths. Seven years after that fateful voyage, a Genoese captain named Columbus discovered a continent another thousand miles beyond the islands the Galgo’s crew described. As for Ash, she too vanished into legend, and no woman of that name was ever heard of again.

  If, however, you happen to visit the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, you may be interested to note that a certain portrait, depicting the reputed mistress of a famous Condottiero, shows a very beautiful woman wearing a lizard-shaped brooch, with emeralds for scales and rubies for eyes.

  THE TRIPLE KNIFE

  Jenny T. Colgan

  AUGUST 9TH 1348

  And now I will write in English even though it is a language that sticks in my troat. Trout. Throat. Alors. So. Donc.

  A new journal for a new journey, as there is nothing to do now except watch the rocking of the bow and listen to Essie’s astonishment – my little French enfant – at what these English consider acceptable to serve for dîner.

  I sang for Johann:

  ‘Rough blows the North Wind… cruel blows the East… heavy blows the South Wind… we all fall BENEATH!’

  and he giggled as I tickled him under the arm, and Rue laughed because he always laughs when Johann laughs, and also he is simply one of those babies who likes to be happy; but Essie wasn’t distracted at all, even as the boat pitched and rolled and we clung on to the rough wooden bench so hard I took a splinter.

  Instead she looked up, away from the food, with that look on her thin face and glint in her dark eyes that I recognised immediately, and I realised I was in for an 8-year-old’s inquisition, which is as relentless as a witch hunt, and I know a bit about those.

  ‘Maman?’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘Why did we leave Marseille again?’

  ‘In English, please.’

  She sighed crossly and repeated the question in that clunky, phlegm-ridden tongue I have painstakingly been teaching them all.

  ‘Well, I told you. We are going to the greatest city in the world! The largest city since Rome! For adventures.’

  Essie pouted. ‘And why isn’t Papa coming?’

  ‘Because Papa is going to look after the fishing nets all safely for us until we have had enough adventures, and then I will send you home,’ I said, because it was true.

  I had… what is the good English phrase, there, I know it: I had sworn blind, never again, but… oh, but Tomas had been. Well.

  So handsome I never saw, and he such a quiet man, practically silent. Never asked a question. Never fussed me. No curiosity about why I had a crown in my locked chest, or why, if he or I woke for any reason in the night my sword would be in my hand and at his throat before you could say, ‘It was just the thunder, Alys, get back to sleep.’

  As for the babies coming, the stupidity was all mine, and then there was Essie, and suddenly, from the second those tiny ageless eyes opened on my breast, sweetness and happiness was mine too, for the first time: a surprise, as I had always considered babies simply an irritating burden, like ringworm, or immortality, or frostbite.

  And so I told myself Johann and Rue were essential really; so they could protect and comfort each other when I had to leave them. As, one day I will. As I have to leave everyone as they turn curious, then suspicious, then horrified, then superstitious and finally murderous, and I think, well, my own children could not do that, but I have seen children do things to parents too, terrible things, because I have seen everything, and I know I could not bear it.

  And so we are leaving Tomas, so that even my quiet man cannot say one more time, it’s astonishing, truly, is it not strange that three babies and twenty years have not marked you, no, not an inch, and does your hair not grow?

  AUGUST 10TH

  The bark creaked. I paid a lot of gold for this tide. Thank goodness it turned early, before Tomas had even stirred. Essie disappeared, and I found her behind a heaped chest of shining oranges, bent over in concentration.

  ‘What are you doing now?’

  I have no fear of the other sailors as a woman alone: they are good enough men on the whole, and I made a point of standing on the prow first day and juggling knives. I pretended it was to entertain the littles, but when I threw them under the boson’s legs and caught them without looking, glinting in the sun, I believe they got the message more or less.

  ‘Ugh,’ said Essie. ‘They served pig gruel for breakfast.’

  ‘The food is different in Britain to France.’

  ‘You should tell them,’ she said. ‘Pig food is for pigs and please may we have some human food please thank you very much also tea.’

  She is obsessed with this new idea of tea. I smiled as the greasy-faced boy who acts as ‘cook’, if you could call it that, overheard this and grimaced and I distracted her quickly.

  ‘I liked it,’ said Johann quietly, hiding behind my skirts. It’s true, he likes everything, and I caressed his curly head.

  ‘Well, you shall make a fine strong English lad,’ I said and he smiled and stuck his tongue out at his sister.

  ‘Look, Maman!’ said Essie, ignoring her little brother.

  It was then I noticed the rat in the dim corner, bigger than a kitten. He was an ugly brute, but I was pleased to see him. When you can’t find a rat: that’s the time to worry about a ship.

  ‘Don’t touch him,’ I said. ‘He might bite you.’

  She showed me a small piece she must have prised off the wheel of good Nederlander cheese I brought wrapped in a cloth.

  ‘He likes this.’

  ‘I expect he does. He likes fingers too.’

  ‘You won’t eat me, will you Rose?’ said Essie, leaning towards the rat, who hissed.

  ‘Rose?’

  ‘It’s a pretty name.’

  I looked at her. ‘I suppose it is. But don’t let it get too close.’

  It was too late. The rat was already nibbling from her fingers because, one, Essie disobeys everything I ask her to do as a matter of principle, and two, she loves all creatures, animals, the weaker and the younger the better. She always has. I know I should teach her to stay away from the weak; to seek out the strong and close her ears to everyone else. I’ve seen it time and time again; it’s the only way not to stumble by the wayside. But it doesn’t matter; I can’t change her. And in truth I don’t want to. She is the very, very best of me.

  ‘There you are, Rose! Nice and delicious, yum yum yum!’

  I realised Essie was now giving her lunch to her rat. He didn’t seem to like it much either.

  I glanced over to where a couple of the sailors were tossing Rue in the air to make him giggle. He’s become quite the pet. Johann was watching enviously, and so I went over and grabbed him impulsively, clambered up the steps out of the musty below decks and onto the foredeck, where the spray was lighting the air, so fresh and salty it made you gasp, and the little bark was tossing down and up, but none of us gets sick easily; and instead I swung Johann round and round as he giggled and his little hands grabbed my shoulders and I twirled him into the netting, just as someone shouted, ‘Land ahoy!’

  I stopped whirling Johann, who shouted, ‘More, more!’ and instead stopped and smelled the cool earth as we glided into the deep mouth of a river; someone said ‘South of Hamp Town’, and people on the wide, wide beaches stopped from what they were doing – gathering eels in their nets, the midshipman told me – and looked up. There were cooking fires dotted across the
bone-white sand, and they looked like tiny stars.

  AUGUST 13TH

  ‘Why is it so big, Maman? Who are all these people? They are dressed strangely.’

  ‘You have a lot of opinions for an 8-year-old.’

  ‘In Marseille, they have silk,’ Essie had returned serenely, as we finally reached our lodgings, beating off the clamouring hands of the young grubby boys who had accosted us at every town shouting, ‘Lodgings? Safe! Clean! Carry your bags,’ despite the fact you could see the lice dance on them even as they spoke.

  ‘And also it is almost mostly definitely not raining at home,’ said Essie.

  ‘Look up,’ I said.

  The houses fell against each other like weary travellers – many timbered, two-storeyed, collapsed drunks, shop signs creaking in the breeze. And above them were the great stained-glass windows of the cathedral, their colours holding an exhausted Johann in its spell. Also, the longer they looked up at the great church, the less time they spent looking at the iron poles with the remains of traitors on them, and the crows that perched there.

  I have been to Trondheim, and to Paris, so I consider myself knowing in the ways of cities, but this place is different altogether; so vast, so filled with different people, so empty of anyone who would give us a second glance amongst the rowdy jugglers, the shouting sellers, the mendicants, the soldiers and the priests, of course. Always the priests.

  I kept all our clothes plain to avoid notice as we pushed through the throng, but I had enough gold sewn into the lining of my cloak to find us decent lodgings near the Moor’s Gate, far enough away I thought from the stench of the tanneries, but I was wrong about that.

  Essie was quiet and tired after the long journey, and I felt nauseous myself. We were long enough in the cart, next to a French woman, Madame Bellice, who kept her nose buried in a bouquet of lavender that reminded me of Provence, and protested that the English stank of old milk. Johann burbled to her in French but she was indefatigably uncharmed, then Essie started being rude about her in English and required a scolding I did not truly mean and kept smirking through.