Doctor Who: The Legends of Ashildr Page 9

  It served me right when I turned up to our new lodgings and found she was lodged just across the street. I don’t care. I don’t make friends.

  The road bustled full of people making their way to or from the smarter merchant’s homes, leading donkeys laden with meat, fish I could already tell would not be welcome, spices I had not smelled in years and bolts of cloth, all colours. I had to tug Johann away from the spectacle that was simply daily city life.

  We entered our new home, which had straw, clean enough, on the ground; a clear fireplace and a bed for us all and a cot for the baby. I have seen rather worse.

  Essie was looking pale and white, and I grabbed a pot from my bag just in time as she threw up into it.

  ‘I’m not sure you’re the best traveller,’ I said, then I got distracted by something squirming under her sack.

  ‘You didn’t bring Rose?’

  She looked up at me, her brown eyes absolutely huge in her heart-shaped face. ‘She’s my friend, Maman,’ she said. ‘I’m sure she didn’t like living on that boat.’

  The rat regarded me malevolently.

  ‘I’m sure she didn’t,’ I said. ‘But there are enough rats in this town already.’

  ‘Please can we keep her?’ Essie’s eyes were rimmed with pink. The rat was biting furiously at the handkerchief she’d tied him in.

  ‘Darling, get some rest,’ I said. ‘We’ll see in the morning.’

  ‘That means no!’ said Essie, in that confused fury of extremely fatigued children. ‘“We’ll see” always means “No”!’

  ‘Get some rest,’ I said shortly. Rue didn’t look well either. And of course that rat will be long gone in the morning, hopefully a poor man’s breakfast.

  I stepped outside to dispose of Rose, who suffered at the end of my sword a cleaner death than most of my enemies.

  At the corner of our lane, I heard a commotion and moved closer to the wall. It is my new aim: to avoid confrontation. I’ve seen enough of fighting, I think. Surely. For now.

  To my surprise it was Madame Bellice, the lady from the carriage and now our neighbour. She was screaming and yelling, and a thick crowd had of course gathered round, but nobody would go near her.

  ‘Look at me!’ she was screaming. ‘Find me a physician.’

  I glanced through the crowd. She was holding up her hands and screaming in pain. Large black growths were visible underneath her arms. The women in the crowd were running away with their children. Suddenly she saw me.

  ‘Madame! Madame! Alys! Aidez-moi! Help me!’ she cried, sweat running off her, her eyes completely wide in terror.

  ‘I have children,’ I said, but her face was so desperate I approached, telling Johann, who trots everywhere after me like a puppy, to stay back.

  ‘I am so sick,’ she said. ‘Please, please, find me a physician, a doctor.’

  ‘Is there a doctor?’ I said to the crowd, but nobody turned round or identified themselves.

  ‘It’s the plague!’ shouted one man suddenly and the crowd gasped. I heard rumours of plague too, coming up from the Nubians, but had not seen it. Surely it was not here.

  ‘She’s got the plague! God have mercy on us!’

  A cold hand clutched my heart. She was in our carriage. Or, we were in hers.

  Instantly the people dispersed, running, some of them. It was fun, apparently, watching the crazy lady, but the diseased lady, that’s a little too much.

  I hissed at Johann to stay by our doorway on the other side of the street. I was about to leave when I heard a heartrending sob come from Madame Bellice.

  Ach. Motherhood has ripped a layer of skin right off me. She was sobbing exactly like Johann did when Essie broke his wooden dog by washing it in the river; as if the world would end.

  I sighed. I already knew not much can harm me.

  I led her inside her lodgings, which were much like ours, and laid her down. Her room was heavy with sweat, waste and disease. I looked around for clean straw for her bed, but there was none, so I laid the least dirty rug down instead.

  ‘Lie down and I’ll go to the well for you,’ I said in French. ‘You have to boil the water.’ I learned this trick on the silk route, from a Japanese woman almost older than I am, and it has not failed me yet.

  ‘It hurts so much,’ she said, wild eyed and thrashing. ‘Make it stop! Make it stop!’

  ‘I’ll try and find someone to help,’ I said, looking around, although this woman had the stink of death on her, and once it begins, it is a timely fool’s errand to try and reverse it.

  I turned to leave to fetch the water, but suddenly there was a shadow cast through the sun of morning; an ominous shape appeared in the doorway. It startled me.

  It was a man, but wearing a strange mask, like the huge beak of a bird, in some sort of leather. He also wore a broad hat fanning out from his head, and a long cloak, all in the same material. He reminded me of the crows I had seen at Traitor’s Gate.

  I stepped forward. ‘Yes?’

  ‘I am a Scientist,’ stated the figure in a strange, accent-less voice. I had not heard this word before. I stepped back.

  ‘Are you the physician? Can you help?’

  ‘I will examine. It will help.’

  ‘No,’ said the Madame, suddenly terrified and shrinking away from him. And it was true: the man had a sinister countenance.

  ‘This is the doctor come. He can help you,’ I said, although I was not sure about either of these things.

  The figure came forward, opening a black bag he had with him. He had a strange gait. ‘Let me examine you.’

  Suddenly outside I could hear Essie screaming ‘Maman! Maman! I’m sick again!’ I froze as icy water cascaded through my heart.

  ‘I have to go,’ I said.

  The figure continued to approach. Something struck me as strange about him, but I couldn’t tell what it was, and was too torn to care.

  ‘Don’t leave me,’ begged the woman in a guttural tone. ‘Don’t leave me.’

  Outside Essie shouted my name once more.

  ‘I have to,’ I said and backed away. ‘Good luck. Look after her,’ I commanded the medicine man, who opened his big black bag full of instruments, like a dentist, or a surgeon or a butcher, and did not respond.

  And I left and ran to Essie and picked her up in my arms and took her home, just as Madame Bellice began to scream.

  AUGUST 15TH

  AUGUST 16TH

  Oh, the fevered days and endless nights, no better for knowing I cannot be relinquished, for I would have willingly been relinquished.

  AUGUST 17TH

  AUGUST 18TH

  The soldiers came this morning. But it was my least bad night: the buboes were shrinking, the children slept, finally, wiped out, but sleeping, and I thought, ‘We are through; we are finally through this.’

  I had made us drink lots of water boiled over the fire, trying to force the sickness from our bodies and finally this morning, although I was exhausted, I was almost better and could stand. The children seemed better too, and I was heating up some oats for our breakfast and wondering if all the bread in London was mealy and black or if the town warranted more investigation, when I heard a pike at the door. I recognised it immediately.

  ‘Open up!’ called the soldier.

  I rolled my eyes. I thought we had been through enough in London town. ‘Yes, yes, right away, just coming,’ I shouted back cheerily.

  I hushed the children and quickly took out my knife. Whatever they required, if there’s one thing I’ve learned about soldiers it’s this: getting captured is the first mistake. I am not the spoils of war.

  Always move first. If he thinks he’s listening for a woman who’ll be cowering back protecting her children, then he’ll have another think coming.

  ‘Open…’

  I hurled the door open with my foot and whacked my knife up against the side of his neck, holding it there before he had a chance to notice what had happened, and kicked the pike out of his hand. It cla
ttered onto the muddy street.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Unhand me.’

  His fellow came round from the other side. ‘Put the knife down!’ he commanded.

  He expected me to turn my face in his direction and answer him. So I did not do this; instead, I darted out quick as a snake and tripped him in the mud, ramming my foot somewhere I knew it would hurt.

  ‘NOW!’ I shouted. ‘ANSWER ME!’

  So. It turns out England is not in the least like the Hundred Years War, and they have all these rule of law things and everything.

  I was locked up in a white tower, with a broken toe and the usual cuts and bruises, which didn’t bother me in the slightest, even though one of the gaolers looked slightly shamefaced at locking up a lady; whereupon he tried to handle the tile around my neck and I shoved him away.

  So I am locked up fairly comprehensively, even by my standards (I have checked for the usual: wall coverings for ladders; bars I can squeeze through; persuadable guards, so far without joy. They didn’t look even tempted. Perhaps everything I have heard about English men is true).

  A rather charming gentilhomme called Godfroi came to interview me; he had the nose of a hawk, and a profile that could only be English; his neck sloping straight down from the chin; a soft voice that did not need to shout to bring authority, for who in England does not know their estate?

  They tied me to a chair in a windowless torture dungeon with a fire roaring, although it is summer time, and an array of pokers and pliers to scare me, which cheered me mightily as both make excellent weapons, and they had left me with none.

  The man coughed. ‘So you are newly arrived, and you are accused of spreading the sickness.’

  ‘Why would I move to a country and try to kill everybody in it?’

  The man shrugged. ‘In my experience that is precisely what foreigners do.’

  I folded my arms. ‘Well, it’s not true. I’ve had it myself.’

  The man coughed again. At first I thought he simply had the pallid flesh of his countrymen. Now I realised he himself was pale and sickening, fast.

  ‘Half your street is dead. And it is carrying on. But you, we see, are not dead. Did you do this by witchcraft? Can you stop it?’

  ‘Is this a trial? I have my own ducking stool.’

  ‘Bringing sickness is punishable by death,’ he said, coughing again.

  I glanced at the instruments by the fire. He saw me looking and beckoned over his guards to stand closer. Two guards. I turned my gaze away in case he saw in my eyes that two dozen might just about give us a fair fight.

  On the other hand there was a moat to swim and locks to navigate and I was very tired and anxious to get home to my littles.

  ‘There are physicians,’ I said suddenly. ‘There was a doctor on the street.’

  He looked up. ‘What kind of a doctor?’

  ‘They say they do science. They can fix things.’

  ‘Where were they from?’

  ‘I couldn’t tell. They were wearing masks.’

  ‘Fools and tricksters,’ he said. ‘Preying on the sick and the stupid.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said.

  He looked at me, his pale eyes curious. And something else. Desperate.

  They left me in the torture chamber for a long time. Certainly long enough to loosen my bonds. So much for the most feared prison in England. I once spent a season getting tied up every night by a young monk in a flagellant’s monastery in Amiens. We both learned a lot that year.

  ‘Essie knows how to get to the well,’ I thought. ‘Please, please, please, let her remember to boil the water.’

  Godfroi returned as I heard guards tramping back in, cross and empty-handed. They had found no strange physicians; just legions and legions of the dead or nearly dead.

  I realised then I simply had to leave. My three chicks needed me.

  ‘Sorry…’ I leaned over as Godfroi entered. ‘I shouted but nobody would respond… but I remembered one other thing they said about where they were going to be… I’m so, so sorry not to have mentioned it before…’ My tone was conversational and light and I leaned forward to talk in a conciliatory manner with the visibly weakening interrogator. ‘I think they said they were going to be in—’

  I kicked out my chair and brought up my knee, which made the table ricochet off his bent-forwards forehead, practically knocking him out.

  The guards jumped towards me but I grabbed a poker and a set of tongs in either hand and, bang, threw my arms up on either side like I wished to fly. They both went reeling and I grabbed Godfroi, removed his knife, and hauled him towards the door. He looked almost relieved someone was propping him up; he weighed almost nothing. Not only that, but he didn’t pull away or resist me in any way. I gave him an enquiring glance.

  ‘If I’m your prisoner,’ he said weakly, ‘will you take me to see these doctors?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said grimly.

  ‘Let her pass,’ he whispered hoarsely to the other guards who were gathering on the stairs. ‘I am her hostage and her powers are legion. Let us pass I command you.’

  We burst down the stairs and onto the bright street, and I hailed a boatman to take us up river. He took us without commenting on the knife I held, although he did mew that he could not go further than Aldgate at this time of day and I said, ‘You will,’ and used Godfroi’s sword to rip open the hem of my coat, and scattered the gold within on the prow.

  The street was quiet, and I tore towards my door, the man in tow.

  ‘Maman!’ came a voice and I nearly screeched in relief and joy and pulled Essie, pale, so thin, into my arms and whirled her around.

  ‘I took good care of Rue,’ she whispered, and I wiped his precious brow and hoisted him onto the sling on my back, which had felt so empty, and Johann clung to me with filthy dirty fingers and my heart burst with joy, and I gave gold to Essie and told her to go to the bakers and buy every sweetmeat they had.

  ‘Set me down,’ said Godfroi. I had forgotten all about him; he was leaning against a wall, breathing heavily; he could have run away a hundred times and I would not have cared a whit, but here he was, panting, diminished so.

  I let him lie on my good rug, which shows I am not evil in fact. Johann padded over and patted the man on his strange pale hair and looked up at me questioningly.

  ‘Is he our new friend?’

  ‘Hmm,’ I said.

  Essie came slowly back from the bakers with a few tired cakes in her basket. ‘No more cakes,’ she said sadly. ‘The lady said no more cakes, for the baker is dead.’

  I looked for the cheerful words I could put on this and found none, except that, like me, thank goodness the children appeared to be over the sickness and thus immune, like their measles and their quinsy. So I put out the stale honey cakes anyway.

  ‘These taste old, Maman,’ complained the little gourmande, after one bite.

  ‘I like them,’ said Johann, looking at me hopefully for praise. I let the baby suck on one; let his gummy paws sticky as a cub in honey whilst I tended to Godfroi on the floor, grateful that my children were past the danger.

  ‘Water?’

  But he couldn’t keep a thing down and I turned my head as I felt, rather than saw, the shadow at the door.

  This time there were three of them, all the same size and shape, with those great pointed beaks on their faces.

  They moved smoothly and slowly and I realised what it was that was so strange about them: they did not smell as we did.

  They did not smell of England or of the North or of France or everywhere I had been on Earth: of blood; old straw, of livestock, of the latrines we trod through every day in rivulets on the streets; of the old food and fetid cheese and turned meat we ate in town, or the curds of country living; the special smell of gaps of teeth in the mouth, the ancient salty sweat from clothing never removed and cuts undressed: the proper, natural rich and loamy deep smell of all the things that live.

  They smelled of a place I
had been once before, a long time ago; a clean, empty space without muck or soil. Oh yes. I had smelled it before.

  A spaceship.

  I could scarce remember the word. But oh, my body remembered, for my eyes started blinking rapidly, and my heart pounded, and I felt a feeling of battle soak through my veins.

  These men… they came from those places beyond the stars. I looked at their masks again. I did not see straps, or joins. Were they even masks at all?

  I stepped forward. But were they friends, like the girl in the box? Or false friends, like the man in the box? Or destroyers, like Odin?

  And if they were friends… My heart leapt again. No more trying to scratch a living day by day. We could go, out into that wild universe where creatures such as me were not unknown; where there were lives we could have where I did not lie; where I did not have to give up my children and pretend to be unknown to them; where I was not unnatural; where I did not have to lie and kill and cheat every day of my life simply to get by.

  I stepped forward. ‘Here they are,’ I said to Godfroi, whose pallid face had taken on a hopeful look as they entered.

  Johann stood behind me. ‘Scared, Maman! Bad men!’

  ‘Not to you,’ I whispered carefully, keeping my eyes on them.

  The Scientists took out a sharp implement with something I had not seen for a long, long time: a light that was not fire.

  Once again, excitement lit up my breast. Johann forgot his shyness and came out to gaze upon the tool in wonder. Essie looked at me, happy and excited like she was at a travelling fayre. The instrument gave out a beam of violet light that crossed the room.

  Oh yes. I had seen lights like that before. Lights from other worlds, other places.

  ‘Don’t touch it,’ I said, feeling Rue’s grabby fingers behind me. ‘Don’t!’

  I hastily unbundled Rue and shoved him into Essie’s arms. I had to see what was happening, but they did not.

  ‘All of you. Outside,’ I said. ‘Outside, now’