The Doctor felt that his idea was gaining ground, and credulity. Casually he put his hands into his pockets, then leaned down towards Will"s face. "What year is it?" he asked him.
Will reacted with a broad grin. "I knows that un," he said in a pleased voice, as if he was answering a teacher"s question in school. But despite his confidence he hesitated, walking around the Doctor and getting his brain into gear, making sure he got this right. "Year"s ... zixteen hunnerd an" forty ... three!" He finished with a triumphant flourish, but his hand was hurting again and he sat down in a pew and nursed it, grunting with the pain.
"Sixteen hundred and forty three, eh?" The Doctor looked at Will Chandler with much sympathy but, as yet, not a lot of understanding. His idea had been valid, after all. He was not really surprised, for each of the events which had piled one on top of the other since they arrived in Little Hodcombe seemed stranger and more inexplicable than the last. This one, though, was a real puzzle; what was happening in little Hodcombe was arning our to be much more complex and intriguing than the Doctor had first surmised.
Struck by a sudden thought, Will gave the Doctor an apprehensive look. "Is battle done?" he asked. His voice shaking; he sat back and waited for the answer, terrified of what it might be.
"Yes," the Doctor answered gently, rea.s.suring him and wiping away his dread. "Yes, Will. Battle"s done."
But the calming effect of his words was shattered by the door being thrown open wide with a bang that echoed the length and breadth of the church. Whimpering with fright, Will dived behind a pew as Tegan and Turlough came tumbling up the nave.
They were so out of breath with running that when they reached the Doctor they could hardly speak. The Doctor, delighted to see them both safe and well, looked, at Will Chandler out of the corner of his eye and said cryptically, "You"re just in time."
Misunderstanding him, Tegan cried out in frustration, "Just in time? We almost didn"t make it!"
"We have to get out of here!" Turlough"s chest was heaving for breath, and his voice betrayed the stress he was suffering.
Recalling the incident in the barn made Tegan shudder: how could she put that into words? "There"s something very strange going on," she said simply.
The Doctor, however, seemed to understand without the need for words. "Yes, I know," he said sympathetically.
At that moment, out of the corner of his eye Turlough saw Will peeping at them over the top of a pew. "Who is that?" he asked, in a tone which betrayed extreme distaste at the sight of that grubby urchin face.
Tegan looked, saw Will"s clothes and drew in her breath sharply, but refrained from comment. The Doctor merely smiled at Will. "Will Chandler?" he asked, for confirmation. Will nodded, without taking his eyes off Tegan and Turlough.
"Where did he come from?" Tegan asked.
"Ah, well." the Doctor said laconically. He smiled and shrugged. "That"s something we"re going to have to talk about ..."
In the seventeenth-century parlour of Ben Wolsey"s farmhouse, Sir George Hutchinson, country squire and, while the War Game lasted, Cavalier General Extraordinary, stood in front of the fire and casually played with the spongy, black, metallically-shining ball. He kept kneading it in his fingers and examining it with neverending fascination.
From her position beside the window, Jane watched him with growing anger. She was about to have another go at his complacent arrogance when raised voices and heavy footsteps in the next room announced the arrival of Ben Wolsey and Joseph Willow.
As soon as the door opened and they marched in, Sir George turned to them eagerly. "Where is she?" he demanded.
Wolsey raised his visor.
"We can"t find her," he
admitted. "We"ll need more men."
Sir George was furious. With reddening face and narrowed eyes, his manner was suddenly extremely threatening, even towards the big farmer. He snapped, "I want Tegan, not excuses, Wolsey."
Ben Wolsey, taken aback, frowned with surprise at his tone. Jane was incensed. "Don"t listen to him, Ben," she cried.
Sir George turned to her now. His eyes blazed and it was Jane"s turn to be shocked by the vehemence of his manner and the anger behind his words. "Miss Hampden! You"re beginning to bore me with your constant bleating!" His att.i.tude was contemptuous in the extreme. He stood there in his finery and glared at her, his hand ceaselessly working at the silver-sheered substance; for a moment Jane thought he was going to throw it at her.
The Sergeant intervened to support his General. "She doesn"t understand," Willow leered. "We must have our Queen of the May."
Queen of the May! Jane winced. Andrew Verney had told her once how Little Hodcomhe used to treat its May Queen. The story came back to her, and the picture his words had conjured up in her imagination returned with it.
It had made her feel sick then, and it made her tremble now. As if to reinforce her fears, Sir George fairly shouted, "Precisely!" He looked at her with a gleaming smile and said, "Think of it as a resurrection of an old tradition."
Jane felt sick again. "I know the way you plan to celebrate it," she cried. "I know the custom of this village. I know what happens to a May Queen at the end of her reign!"
Ben Wolsey looked genuinely surprised. His gentle, ruddy, farmer"s face was as innocent as a baby"s. "We"re not going to harm her," he protested.
Jane shook her head. " You You might not, Ben. I"m not so sure about them." might not, Ben. I"m not so sure about them."
Sir George closed the subject. He brought the conversation to an abrupt end by marching to the table and s.n.a.t.c.hing up his riding gloves. "The tradition must continue," he said, in a tone that was quiet, authoritative and brooked no opposition. It held something very like awe even reverence as he looked from one to the other of than and said, "Something is coming to our village.
Something very wonderful, and strange."
Then he cleared a path for himself between Wolsey and Willow and left the room. They watched him go, Cavalier and Roundhead in an all too serious War Game. Sir George"s last remark hung cryptically in the air.
Wolsey, puzzled, said, "We must find Tegan," and made for the door.
"You"re so gullible, Ben," Jane shouted. "You do anything he says!" If she had hoped that would stop him, she was disappointed. Wolsey ignored her, and went out without a word.
Willow was left alone at last with this nuisance of a schoolteacher, who was using every possible opportunity to try to spoil the fun. Uneasily Jane saw how his lips tightened now, and the deliberate way he took off his gloves. As he looked at her, his irritation changed to fury.
Jane saw it happen. She saw the cloud move across his eyes and felt fear tingle the small of her back. Joseph Willow was a man on a short fuse, and the fuse was already burning. "Something is coming to our village," Sir George had said, but so far as Jane was concerned it was already here, and showing in Willow"s face a kind of madness.
Suddenly she wanted to get away from him. "Right," she said, marching towards the door. "I"m going to the police.
I"ll soon put a stop to this."
But Willow thrust himself between her and the door.
Roughly he pushed her away. "Shut up!" he shouted as she staggered backwards. "Just be grateful it"s the stranger who is to he Queen of the May it so easily could have been you!"
Jane recovered her balance and with all her strength slapped his face. Willow"s cheeks reddened. His eyes filled with hatred. For a moment Jane thought he was going to strike her back, but instead he smiled, a cold smile that was laden with threat. "It still might be you," he said, "if we don"t find her."
And with a triumphant smirk Joseph Willow, iron-shirted Sergeant-at-arms to General Sir George Hutchinson, turned on his heel and left the room. He slammed the door shut behind him.
Before Jane could follow, she heard a bolt being drawn and a key turned in the lock. Willow had made her a prisoner.
"There"s been a confusion in time. Somehow, 1984 has become linked with 1613."
Sitting in a pew in the church, crouched forward eagerly with his feet on the back of the pew in front of him, the Doctor was thinking out loud. His mind raced as he focussed his thoughts on Will Chandler"s mysterious appearance and all the other strange events which had showered on them since their arrival in Little Hodcombe.
He was drawing on all his vast store of knowledge and experience -- and still coming up with blanks.
Tegan and Turlough, now recovered from their flight, sat in the pews too and waited for the Doctor to come up with some answers. Will Chandler lay flat out at the Doctor"s side; exhausted by his experience and bewildered by the Doctor"s theories, he had taken refuge in unconsciousness and sprawled on the unyielding seat, fast asleep.
Turlough looked at him, and considered the Doctor"s theory. A confusion in time? That left half the problems unanswered. "What about the apparitions?" he asked.
The Doctor looked at him closely, watching for his reaction to the next part of his theory. "Psychic projections," he said.
Tegan drew in her breath. She wasn"t keen on that. It was a spooky idea and she preferred rational, practical explanations. But after her experience in the barn, and with twentieth-century men pretending they were in the seventeenth century, and seventeenth-century youths suddenly appearing in the twentieth century, it was no wonder the Doctor called time "confused". It wasn"t the only one, she reflected. Yet she shuddered at the possibility which the Doctor was suggesting, and tried to find a hole in the argutncnt. "What about the man we saw when we arrived?" she protested. "He was real enough."
"He was still a psychic projection," the Doctor insisted.
"But with substance"
Tegan frowned. Talking of psychic things was getting close to talking about ghosts, and nothing in that line would really surprise her now, after what she had seen.
Turlough grew more enthusiastic the more he considered the idea. He got up and wandered about, trying to absorb the implications and corning to terms with them.
He rubbed his hands together and said suddenly, "Matter projected from the past? But that would require enormous energy."
The Doctor nodded. He had an answer to that one too so simple and so outrageous that it took Tegan"s breath away: "An alien power source."
In an English country village? Here, at the home of her grandfather? Every instinct Tegan possessed protested against this suggestion and yet she felt in her heart that it might be correct. The Doctor was usually right about things like that.
"What about Will?" she asked, in a quieter tone. The Doctor leaned across to peer at the filthy face, torn clothes and battered hands of the peacefully sleeping youth. He smiled. "A projection, too. And at the moment, a benign one."
Turlough, in his wanderings, had reached the crack in the wall. He stopped in front of it and pointed at the now gaping split. "This crack has got larger!" he announced.
The Doctor had already noticed. "Yes," he agreed.
"Ominous, isn"t it?" He turned to Tegan, who was looking dismal, and slapped her shoulder encouragingly. "I know,"
he said, "so is the fact that your grandfather has disappeared. I think it"s time I sought some answers."
As a first, peculiar step in that direction, he produced a coin and juggled it behind his back, slipping it with great speed from hand to hand. Watched curiously by Tegan, he then held out his two clenched fists in front of him and, with the most intense concentration, weighed one against the other.
"Where will you look?" Tegan asked.
Making a sudden decision, the Doctor flipped open the fingers of his left hand. It was empty. He gave a disappointed sigh and opened his right hand. There was the coin, nestling in his palm. The decision was made.
"The village," he said.
"You"re always so scientific," Tegan responded, in a voice edged with sarcasm.
Once his mind was made up the Doctor never wasted time, and now he jumped to his feet and tapped the sleeping Will on the shoulder. "Come on, Will," he said briskly, "you"re coming with me."
"What about us?" Tegan stood up, ready to go with them.
The Doctor shook his head. "You"ll be safer in the TARDIS. And don"t argue," he commanded her, as she opened her mouth to protest. Shouting, "Will!" over his shoulder, he set off down the nave at a smart pace. Will, still heavy with sleep, stumbled down the aisle and followed him out of the church, blearily rubbing his eyes.
Turlough watched them go, with a resigned smile. He could feel Tegan"s frustration, but their instructions had been too precise to misinterpret on purpose.
"You heard the Doctor," he said, pointing the way to the TARDIS.
Tegan knew there was no alternative but to submit, and with a sigh she turned with Turlough towards the steps to the crypt.
When they had gone, a lump of masonry fell away from the edge of the crack in the wall. It made the gap a little wider still, but nothing could be seen in there only a dark void which looked as black and deep as outer s.p.a.ce.
Almost everything about the churchyard was green. Inside the green fringe of willow trees about the perimeter, the green gra.s.s was badly overgrown, tufted and choking the weatherbeaten old gravestones. Many of these were crumbling away, and others were themselves greened over with a growth of moss and lichen. The rest loomed grey-white above the crowding vegetation.
It was peaceful here as the Doctor led Will Chandler towards a row of, gravestones. They stood silent as a row of speechless old men, still and warm in the hot sunshine.
Yet around them the air was restlessly throbbing; there was an incessant cawing of rooks and a constant chattering of smaller birds, moving unseen among the flowering gra.s.ses and cow parsley and about their hiding places in the willow trees.
Will, too, felt restless. He didn"t like this place, and what he saw in it he didn"t understand. The implications terrified him. He wanted to run away but the Doctor wouldn"t allow it even now he was pointing at another worn gravestone for Will to look at. The youth crouched obediently down in the gra.s.s and pushed a clump of red sorrel aside, so that he could look at the stone properly.
Some lettering was still visible beneath the clinging moss. There were figures a number ... Will touched it with his fingers to convince himself that it was real, and the breath sobbed out of him. A date had been carved into the stone: "1850" it said. Yet when Will had shut himself into the priest hole, to escape from the battle that had raged around the church only hours ago, it seemed the year was 1643!
"This ain"t possible," he breathed. He was scared to think what it meant if it was true. His eyes misted over. The Doctor was walking along the other side of the row of gravestones. He watched Will"s reactions carefully. "Look at the others," he suggested in a gentle, sympathetic voice.
Will stood up. With a last glance at that unbelievable date he moved further down the row, observing the worn, ancient monuments and every one, thrusting as silently out of the gra.s.s as if it was growing there, told a similar story. They were all from the nineteenth century. Will grew more and more agitated; he moved faster and faster until he was running, away from these gravestones and across the path around the church. His feet crunched the gravel. He found another memorial tablet, containing another awesome date, set low down into the wall of the church itself. He crouched down and pretended to examine it.
In reality he was hiding from the Doctor the tears in his eyes. Will wanted to blub like a baby.
Not far away from where he was crouching, the Doctor noticed a small door in the church wall. He tried the handle. The door gave a little. His fingers tightened around the latch, and he pushed harder. With a fall of dust and a creaking noise that echoed hollowly inside, the door opened.
At that moment there was a sound of hooves approaching. A mounted trooper rode around the corner of the church. As soon as the Doctor saw him he pushed the door wide open and hissed, "Will! Come in here!"
Instantly, as the Doctor disappeared inside, Will left the memorial tablet and ran towards the open door. A second trooper appeared close behind the first; they were walking their horses through the green churchyard. Will"s curiosity overcame his fear and he ducked down behind a b.u.t.tress to watch their approach. This was a foolhardy thing to do, because already the troopers were almost upon him, and now he dared not move again. ,Just as he thought he must be discovered, the Doctor"s hand reached out of the open doorway and yanked him inside.
The Doctor closed the door without making a sound.
The hors.e.m.e.n rode on by, quite oblivious of the fact that their quarry was only inches away.
As the Doctor and Will Chandler were going through that side door, not far away from them Tegan and Turlough were entering the TARDIS.
Turlough was in front, and he hurried through the console room without looking around him; but as soon as she was inside the TARDIS Tegan held back, feeling instinctively that something was wrong. There was a noise in the console room, a deep, reverberating tone topped by scattered tinkling sounds which exactly repeated the noises which had afflicted her in the barn. Bracing herself, she entered the console room and there, high upon the wall behind the door, she saw lights dancing.
They circled around each other, shimmering and constantly on the move, and the noise which accompanied them grew steadily stronger. Tegan stood rooted to the spot again.
Turlough had heard the noises too. Now he came slowly back into the console room, and stared up at this ghostly manifestation. "We"re too late," he murmured.