"Sergeant" Joseph Willow glared down at them through the steel bars of his visor, from the safe height of his big grey horse. "Where do you think you"re going?" he snarled.
He had the rasping, ill-tempered voice of a natural bully.
"This is Sir George Hutchinson"s land."
The Doctor looked up at him. Instinctively aware of the man"s short temper, he took a deep breath. This was a moment for patience and sweet reason, not anger. "If we are trespa.s.sing," he said mildly, "I apologise."
It was an apology which Willow refused to accept.
"Little Hodcombe," he persisted, "is a closed area, for your own safety. We"re in the middle of a war game."
Now Tegan understood their armour and weapons.
These were grown men playing at historical soldiers but even so, surely they were being too aggressive? The threat in their drawn swords was very real. "We"re here to visit my .grandfather," she explained, anxious like the Doctor to calm things down.
Willow didn"t want her explanations either. "You"d better see Sir George," he said curtly. "He"ll sort it out." He urged his horse forward, moving between them and the hedge. "Move out!" he shouted.
At his command, the troopers and the foot soldiers closed in around the Doctor and his companions, forming a bizarre prisoners" escort. Then, led by Sergeant Willow, the party moved across the meadow towards Little Hodcombe village and Sir George Hutchinson.
As they went, there peered around a crumbling, mossy gravestone in the churchyard the head of the limping, beggar-like figure they had glimpsed briefly in the crypt.
As he watched the strangers being led away, the sun illuminated his devastated face.
His left eye was gone. Where it should have been, wrinkled skin collapsed into a shrivelled, empty socket.
The man"s mouth twisted awkwardly towards this, and the entire left side of his lace was dead. It looked as if it had been burned once, long ago, as if the skin had been blasted by fire and transformed into a hard, waxen sh.e.l.l which now could feel no pain or any other sensation.
Holding the coa.r.s.e woollen cloth around his throat, so that it hooded his head, he knelt behind a gravestone and stared, with his one unblinking eye, at the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough being herded away through the gra.s.s.
After an undignified forced march, at first among fields and then between the scattered cottages and farmsteads of Little Hodcombe, the Doctor and his companions were escorted to a big, rambling farmhouse next to an almost enclosed yard. Here Willow and the troopers dismounted and at sword and pistol point forced the trio inside, then pushed them into a room that was straight out of another century.
The Doctor, who was first to enter, could not disguise his surprise at the sight of this antique room and the burly, red-faced man in Parliamentary battle uniform who sat on a carved oak settle, facing him. For a second he wondered, as Tegan had done, whether somehow all their instruments had gone wrong and they had turned up hundreds of years awry, but then he saw Jane Hampden sitting at a table by the window in casual, twentieth-century clothes. Rea.s.sured by that, he tried to relax, yet still he felt uncertain; all these efforts to make the twentieth century seern like the seventeenth were unsettling.
The sight of three strangers being thrust unceremoniously into his parlour caused Ben Wolsey to jump out of his seat in surprise. "What"s going on here?" he demanded.
Willow followed them inside and closed the door. His hand hovered on the hilt of his sword. "They"re trespa.s.sers, Colonel," he answered curtly. "I"ve arrested them."
Willow"s final shove had sent Tegan and Turlough staggering across the room towards a small woman, who sat at a long oak table with outrage and astonishment spreading across her face. "I don"t believe this!" she exploded, and jumped to her feet.
Wolsey"s face, too, was a picture of surprise and embarra.s.sment. "Are you sure you should be doing this?"
he challenged Willow.
The Sergeant casually removed his riding gloves. "Sir George has been informed," was all he would say in reply.
Wolsey turned to the Doctor with an apologetic smile.
"I"m sorry about this," he said. "Some of the men get a bit carried away. We"ll soon have this business sorted out and you safely on your way."
The Doctor, who had been giving the room a close examination, now turned to Wolsey. He leaned forward and treated the farmer to his most courteous smile. "Thank you," he said, with only the slightest hint of sarcasm.
Indicating the furnishings, he added, "This is a very impressive room, Colonel."
Ben Wolsey smiled proudly. His head nodded with pleasure at approval from a stranger. "It"s my pride and joy," he confided.
"Seventeenth century?"
"Yes," Wolsey nodded again. "And its perfect in every detail."
Tegan felt exasperated: chatting about antiques wasn"t going to get them very far. Beginning to think they had entered a lunatic asylum, she glared at the woman who, because she was wearing normal clothes, seemed to Tegan to be the only sane person around here. "What is going on?"
she asked her.
Jane smiled and shrugged her shoulders. "I"m sorry, but I just don"t know," she admitted. "I think everyone"s gone mad."
That made two of them. "Look," Tegan tried to sound more reasonable than she felt, "we don"t want to interfere.
We"re just here to visit my grandfather."
"Oh yes, so you said," the Sergeant snapped, banging into their conversation as he had barged into their lives.
"And who might he be?"
"His name is Andrew Verney."
Just two simple words a name but their effect was enormous. A stunned silence foollowed, and the atmosphere became electric. Tegan felt almost physically the shock her words had inflicted upon these villagers. She saw their hasty glances at each other and noticed Joseph Willow look for instructions from the big Roundhead soldier he called Colonel.
"Verney?" he prodded, but the red-faced man said nothing; he appeared to be embarra.s.sed, and not to know what to say. Tegan felt suddenly apprehensive.
"What"s wrong?" she demanded.
Jane Hampden was also looking to Ben Wolsey for some explanation, but he remained stolidly silent and eventually she herself turned to Tegan. As gently as she could, she said, "He disappeared a few days ago."
Tegan"s apprehension became chilling anxiety. "Has anything been done to find him?"
"Ben?" Again Jane turned to Ben Wolsey, and again the former refused to answer, dropping his eyes and turning away.
"Well?" Tegan shouted.
It was time for the Doctor to act: he knew the signs and was only too well aware of Tegan"s talent for jumping to conclusions and diving in at the deep end of things. He walked quickly towards her and held up his hands for restraint. "Now calm down, Tegan," he warned. "I"m sure we can sort this out."
But Tegan was in the grip of her anxiety and in no mood for more talk. With a frustrated cry of "Oh, for heaven"s sake!" at the prevaricating fools around her, she made a dash for the door and was through it before anyone else even moved.
The Doctor was the first to react. He called, "Now Tegan, come back!" but even as the words rang out he knew it was useless, and in the same instant he turned to his other companion and shouted, "Turlough! Fetch her, would you? Please?"
Turlough reacted quickly this time. He was fast on his feet and had hurled himself through the door before Willow"s hand reached the pistol on the table.
But now Willow s.n.a.t.c.hed it up and pointed the barrel right between the Doctor"s eyes, in case he should have any thought of following his young friends. "You!" he screamed, "Stay where you are!" He was furious with himself for allowing the escape; anger twitched the skin of his cheek, and his finger hovered dangerously over the trigger.
The Doctor looked into the round, ominous tube of the barrel, and raised his hands in surrender.
3.
The Body in the Barn
Tegan ran blindly out of the farmhouse into dazzling sunlight. Propelled by fear for her grandfather"s safety, and bewildered that such events could be happening in a supposedly peaceful English village, she didn"t care where she was going so long as she got away from Willow and the troopers. She could make some firm plans later. So now, clutching her scarlet handbag, she stumbled over the uneven farmyard and raced towards the shelter of some buildings on the other side, hoping to reach them before anyone came out of the house to see which way she had gone.
She dived around the corner of a barn, and stopped. She was gasping for breath and leaned against the barn wall for support, beside its open doorway. The bricks, warmed by the sun, burned against her back.
Tegan pressed the handbag against her forehead to feel its coolness, but no sooner had she done so him it was roughly s.n.a.t.c.hed out of her fingers, and with a shock she saw a hand disappear with it into the barn.
She thrust herself off the wall and into the doorway, but the deep shadow inside made her pause. It looked solid as a wall, black and still she could see nothing in there "What are you doing?" she shouted. The shadows soaked up her voice like blotting paper. "Give me that back!" she called again.
Taking a deep breath, she stepped forward into the velvet darkness. It wrapped itself around her like a cloak.
After the glare outside it took a moment or two for Tegan"s eyes to grow accustomed to the gloom. Then she saw a floor stretching away into even deeper shadow, littered with farm produce, implements, sacks and bales of hay. A rope hung from a hook on the wall and a rickety wooden staircase led up to a dark gallery above.
Everything was still. There was no sound, and no sign of the person who had s.n.a.t.c.hed her handbag. He had simply disappeared. Unless... Tegan approached the stairs. The thief might be above her head at this moment, crouching up there in the dark gallery, waiting quietly for her to give up. But Tegan was not about to give up she decided she had been pushed around enough for one day.
It was a basic fact of Tegan"s nature that her emotions sometimes drove her to take risks. That was part of her courage. Now her frustration and anger were coming to a dangerous head and she was quite prepared to venture where others would fear to tread: with a glance at the inky blackness above, and knowing full well that there was probably something nasty up there waiting fine her, she began to climb the steps.
But when she was only part way up the staircase the big door of the barn slammed shut with a bang like a cannon going off. Now she was enclosed in total darkness. The noise set her nerves tingling, and now that the light from the doorway had been cut off she felt a sensation of claustrophobia so choking that she was forced to turn and hurry back down the steps towards the door.
She felt as if the barn, like those great dark beasts in nightmares, had opened its arms to envelop her. She had to get out fast, or be swallowed up.
In his Cavalier clothes Sir George Hutchinson looked like a brilliantly plumed bird as he swept into Ben Wolsey"s parlour. What he saw his Sergeant pointing a pistol into the eyes of a stranger displeased him, for it implied unlooked-for complications when there were already enough matters of overwhelming importance to be dealt with.
"What"s this?" he growled.
Without taking his eyes from the Doctor, Willow explained, "He tried to escape, sir."
With a gesture of impatience Sir George pushed down Willow"s arm. "But he isn"t a prisoner, Sergeant Willow."
He kept his voice mild and friendly, for the stranger"s benefit. "You must treat visitors with more respect."
Surprised by his Commander"s att.i.tude, Willow lowered the pistol. Sir George smiled placatingly at the Doctor, then turned away to glance at Wolsey and find somewhere to lay his hat. The Doctor, no longer under immediate threat, felt encouraged to speak to the new arrival: Sir George was only too obviously involved in these War Games, and he also seemed to be in control around here.
"What is going on?" he demanded, like Sir George keeping as civil a tone as he could manage.
Sir George spun round. His eyes glowed. "A celebration!" he cried. His expression displayed pleasure and triumph and his voice an eager, tense excitement. He moved close to the Doctor, almost alight with antic.i.p.ation, like a firework about to go off. "On the thirteenth of July, sixteen hundred and forty three," he exclaimed, "the English Civil War came to Little Hodcombe. A Parliamentary force and a regiment for the King destroyed each other and the village."
He made it sound like a party. "And you"re celebrating that that?" the Doctor asked, puzzled by this feverish excitement.
"And why not?" Sir George"s words were thrown down like a challenge; as he removed his riding gloves he watched the Doctor closely for a reaction. "It"s our heritage," he continued.
"It"s a madness," Jane exclaimed, unable to contain her impatience with such talk any longer.
Hutchinson treated her to a sardonic, dismissive smile, "Miss Hampden disagrees with our activities."
"I can understand why," the Doctor said, looking at the s.a.d.i.s.tic enjoyment on Willow"s face.
Irritated by their opposition, Sir George held out a chair for Jane, inviting her to sit down and keep quiet. Then, moving around the table to approach the Doctor, he looked him up and down and demanded, in a voice clipped with anger, "Who are you?"
"I"m known as the Doctor." The Doctor blandly endured Sir George"s examination, aware of his puzzlement at the frock coat, cricket pullover and sprig of celery in his b.u.t.tonhole, "Are you a member of the theatrical profession?" Sir George finally asked.
The Doctor smiled. "No more than you are."
"Aha!" Sir George laughed at the joke, but his sideways glance at Wolsey was humourless, hinting that these intruders might turn out to be more of a nuisance than at first appeared. Then he glared sharply into the Doctor"s eyes. "How did you get to the village?"
"Through the woods, via the church," the Doctor bluffed.
"That"s where found him, sir," Willow confirmed. Sir George was silent for a moment. He studied his gloves, flicking then against his hand. When he spoke again his voice was quiet and deliberate, and contained more than a hint of threat. "I would avoid the church if I were you," he said. "It"s very dangerous. It could fall down at any minute."
"So I noticed."
"However," Sir George smiled, now deliberately lightening the tone of their conversation, "since you"re here you must join in our game. It"s our final battle."
"Do you know, I"d love to," the Doctor replied, equally amiably. His relaxed voice disguised a rapidly increasing nervous tension, for he was gearing himself for action. "But first I must find Tegan and Turlough. And Tegan"s grandfather I gather he"s disappeared. Good day," he concluded, and with a single movement of his arm swept maps, papers and pistol from the table before turning on his heel and running for the door.
The lightness of his tone had fooled the others completely and this sudden explosion of activity took them all by surprise. All Sir George could do was shout, "Wait!
Wait!" and by the time Willow had dived for the pistol and levelled it at the doorway, the Doctor had gone.
"Wait!" Sir George shouted for a third time. But he knew he was wasting his breath, and when Willow turned to him and told him that Tegan was Verney"s granddaughter, his face set into stone. All the affected bonhomie with which he had addressed the Doctor vanished completely.
"Double the perimeter guard," he snapped. "He mustn"t get out of the village." Then a new thought struck him and his smile returned. "And help him find Verney"s granddaughter..."
"Right! Willow snapped his heels together.
"I"ve something rather special in mind for her," Sir George grinned. The look of eager antic.i.p.ation on Willow"s face showed that he fully understood all the implications of that remark. Sir George turned to Jane. She had watched these proceding with increasing concern and now registered her disapproval again: "Detaining people against their will is illegal, Sir George. The Doctor and his friends included."