THE ROUNDHEADS.
by MARK GATISS.
PROLOGUE.
She pa.s.sed the lovely old Tower on her way to the museum.
It was a glorious day, hot and sunny with a genuinely cloudless sky as blue as a cornflower. There weren"t many people about at this hour and she enjoyed the unexpected calm of the place, the sound of the city creaking into life, the soft spray of water on the pavement and the distant drone of aeroplanes.
She smiled and craned her neck to look at the Tower"s gleaming metal-and-gla.s.s structure, which shone dazzlingly. It was more like a rocket than a public building.
With a laugh, she realised that she still thought of the thing as quite new the cutting edge of modern achievement, forged from the "white heat of technology" and swinging London"s trendiest landmark.
It wasn"t of course. They"d changed its name and they didn"t even allow anyone to go up it any more, not even to that funny revolving restaurant that made all its diners feel slightly sick.
The Tower held all kinds of a.s.sociations for her, but she put them to the back of her mind as she made her way through the narrow streets of Fitzrovia towards the impressive, columned portico of the museum.
She chatted to the security guards, who were feeling the heat in their dark uniforms and cotton gloves, and then stepped into the cool interior with some relief.
After a brief look around to get her bearings, she began to push through the crowds of tourists and ascend the stairs.
The display she was looking for was on the fourth floor: a brand-new section of gla.s.s cabinets containing a variety of costumes and armour. She glanced at them as she pa.s.sed the plain women"s dresses with their white collars, the men"s tunics in puritan black, the chunky pewter breastplates and lobster-like helmets.
Somewhere a clock was ticking loudly. She seemed to hear every second, reverberating through her.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
As though time itself were calling out to her. Calling her back.
She found what she was looking for in a dark room, its walls smelling of fresh plaster, its temperature cooled to the point of chilliness. In a small case, set back from the wall, a series of objects had been arranged. There were letters and doc.u.ments, yellowed and brittle with age. Several rows of silver coins and medals had been arranged in neat rows alongside them and there were a number of beautiful miniatures, painted on lockets and, in one case, on the inside of a watch the size and shape of a tangerine.
The miniatures showed the face of a fine-featured aristocratic man and those of a coa.r.s.er, rather fierce-looking individual with the bearing of a brusque farmer.
She glanced at them and smiled sadly. Then another object caught her eye and a little thrill of emotion pa.s.sed through her body.
It was a locket, like the others, but it showed a portrait of a very handsome man, his hair flowing down to his shoulders, his blue eyes bright and amused, his expression somehow sad and happy simultaneously.
She bent down so close that her face almost touched the gla.s.s.
It was so distant now. Almost like a dream.
CHAPTER 1.
When the snow began to fall, it fell so densely that it covered the old city like a neat cotton shroud. Every low building, mean little alley, and cramped and crooked house was obscured beneath its blanketing silence.
People hugged themselves to keep warm, wrapping their heavy coats more tightly around them, pulling down their broad-brimmed hats over narrowed, suspicious eyes. The bleak white sky seemed to lower over them, planting a heavy ceiling on their daily lives, depressing and oppressing them.
It was a sky only an English winter could conjure and beneath it a despairing mood of fear was palpable.
An onlooker might sense it, despite the bustle of commerce and the shouted cries of street vendors.
On one corner, beneath the black-and-white-beamed houses, there was cloth and wool for sale, available in heavy bolts of plain, rather drab colour. The ammonia stink of horse manure vied for attention with the sweeter perfume of cloves and lemons, which a little man with one arm was doling out in pewter mugs for a ha"penny.
He shivered beneath his ragged old coat and shot a nervous glance down the narrow, vile-looking street in which he stood. The snow around him had been churned into ruts by the pa.s.sage of carts and carriages and the footprints of the Londoners who daily pa.s.sed him by.
At the end of the lane stood an inn, a grim, black-fronted pile, its eves shoddy and dilapidated, its brickwork crumbling gradually into fine brown dust. A sign, hanging from one old hinge, proclaimed it as the World Turn"d Upside Down and there was a faded picture of just such a catastrophe as imagined some years previously by an artist friend of the owner.
William Kemp, for such was the owner"s name, emerged from the doorway of the inn and shot a vicious look at the drink-seller and then a worse one at the snow-heavy sky.
A thick-set man of some forty years, Kemp wore his hair shoulder-length in the fashion of the day. He had a pale, rather dangerous-looking countenance with a mean rat trap of a mouth and wide green eyes. Dressed in a bulky jerkin with hooped sleeves, fawn-coloured breeches, white stockings and buckled shoes, he had a greasy leather ap.r.o.n, splashed and stained with old beer, hanging around his neck.
Despite the snow, the little street hummed with life.
Somewhere a dog was barking incessantly, punctuating the rhythmic roll of barrels over cobbles as the tavern"s coopers went about their work. Their hammers slammed and knocked, iron on wood, followed by a satisfying hiss as a new red-hot hoop was plunged into a bath of water. They cried out to each other as they worked, cracking filthy jokes or humming tunes in time to the beating of their tools.
The one-armed man sidled up to Kemp and proffered a cup of his winter grog.
"A drink, sir? Would you help me? I have lost my livelihood "cause of the wars."
Kemp looked down at him, his brows beetling over his green eyes. "How much?"
"Ha"penny, master," said the vendor hopefully. "To keep out the chill."
Kemp scowled at him. "Is there gin in it?"
The man grinned. "Aye, sir! My little toddy is packed with the juniper!"
Kemp grunted. "Well then, you scoundrel. You"re taking my custom away from me, ain"t you? So get along before I rip out your lights!"
The one-armed man tipped his hat and scrambled backward, the drink sloshing on to his shoes.
"Sorry, sir. No offence, sir," he gabbled, grabbing the pail in which he carried the drink. He abandoned his makeshift brazier and took to his heels, his shoes ringing off the road as he put as much distance as possible between himself and the ominous-looking Kemp.
Kemp kicked the brazier over and watched the hot coals roll away over the snow-covered cobbles, then coughed and felt a ball of phlegm rise in his throat. He spat it out and watched it hit the road, thudding into the snow among the rubbish and the yellow p.i.s.sholes.
Crippled fool, he thought, remembering the vendor.
Thinks he"s the only one to have suffered.
He glanced up at the sign above his inn.
The World Turn"d Upside Down.
Aye, that it had been.
He brushed the freshly fallen snow from his shoulders and shouted at a young boy who stood at the trap-door entrance to the cellar.
"Come on, lad! Look lively! I don"t pay you to dawdle.
Look lively there!"
The boy sighed and struggled on, rolling barrels and blowing into his numb hands to warm them.
Kemp turned back to his contemplation of the sky, wiping his hands on his ap.r.o.n and muttering under his breath.
Suddenly, among the plethora of strange smells that whirled through the street, something particularly evil began to a.s.sault his senses. It was like the worst kind of rotten vegetable, mixed with a dreadful, sewer-like odour. An image suddenly flashed into his mind of himself as a boy, playing in his father"s barn and uncovering the tiny corpse of a rabbit, its hide suppurating with maggots. The stench from it had been nauseating but this...
Kemp turned to see a strange, crook-backed old man crunching cheerfully through the snow drifts towards him. He groaned and placed his broad, splayed fingers across his face in a none-too-subtle effort to avoid the smell coming off the newcomer.
"Good day to thee, Master Kemp," said the old man, his voice high and cracked with age.
Kemp did no more than grunt in reply and slowly shook his head at the fellow"s rough appearance. His tunic and breeches were black but so stained and filthy as to appear almost like a new colour altogether. His collar, ingrained with grime, had not been white for many a year and his holed and wrinkled stockings hung like loose skin around his ankles and ruined shoes.
"Good day, I say!" said the man again.
This time Kemp acknowledged him. "You may find it so, Master Scrope. For myself I have things pressing on my mind."
Nathaniel Scrope let out a funny little giggle and smiled, exposing a gallery of loose black teeth. "See a surgeon, Kemp.
They say water and all manner of things can press on the brain."
Kemp ignored him, his eyes rolling heavenward again.
"This weather, I mean. It"ll keep my customers abed, mark my word. And if they"re abed they"re not drinking and, as a consequence, Master Scrope, I am not a happy man."
Scrope shrugged. "Nay, man. A little frost never harmed no one. I"m living proof."
Kemp let out a short, unpleasant laugh. "Living proof that a little muck never harmed anyone, that"s for sure."
Scrope looked affronted and ran a liver-spotted hand through his mane of matted hair. "You know very well, Kemp, that the work I do is vital to this country"s wellbeing."
Kemp suppressed a smile. The nerve of the man!
"Oh, aye, Nat. I was forgetting." He gave a formal bow.
"Please excuse me."
Scrope nodded, apparently mollified. A stiff wind blew a wave of snowflakes in their direction and Scrope suddenly stiffened. "What"s this?" he muttered.
Kemp listened. In among the cacophony of street sounds they could make out something else. A regular, drumming beat, flattening the virgin snow and echoing around the squalid lanes of the city.
Both Kemp and Scrope turned swiftly as the sound coalesced into the unmistakable tattoo of horses" hooves.
There was a shout and then a troop of soldiers clattered into view, perhaps thirty in number and dressed in heavy breastplates over thick, buff, skirted leather coats. They had on huge, thigh-length boots over their crimson breeches and each wore a segmented helmet that tapered down his neck, revealing almost nothing of his face.
As they pa.s.sed, breath streaming like smoke from the mouths of their horses, all work in the little street came to a sudden halt. It was as though the violence in the air had suddenly taken on solid form.
Kemp shuddered and it had nothing to do with the cold.
"G.o.d a" mercy," he whispered as the soldiers disappeared in a tight pack around the corner. "What next for this benighted land of ours?"
Nathaniel Scrope wiped a drop of moisture from the tip of his nose and watched the last of the mounted men vanish into the freezing fog, his face as grave as an effigy on a tomb.
Nearby was an alley even narrower and more disreputable than the one where Kemp"s inn stood. The buildings that ab.u.t.ted it were black, wet and grimy, the upper window cas.e.m.e.nts on either side so close that they almost touched, forming a dingy archway over a muddy floor strewn with slimy straw and manure.
There were many things a pa.s.ser-by might expect to find in such a place. A seedy gaming house, perhaps, or a den of thieves. Beggars might cl.u.s.ter in its shadows and dogs find a rough meal of greasy bones in the litter-fouled snowdrifts. But there was one thing no one could rightly expect to find: the rectangular blue shape of a twentieth-century police box was nevertheless there, materialising out of thin air with a strangulated, grating whine.
The light on top of the police box stopped flashing and the unexpected arrival stood there in the diffuse morning light, snowflakes collecting in the recesses of its panelled doors. A sharp wind blew up, almost disguising the fact that this battered blue box was humming with power.
No one pa.s.sed by to inquire what was amiss and so the TARDIS remained unmolested, its occupants, for the moment at least, undisturbed.
Inside, in defiance of at least the laws of terrestrial physics, was a vast, white chamber, its walls indented with translucent roundels. At its centre stood a six-sided console, the panels of which were covered in a bewildering array of b.u.t.tons and switches. In the middle of this was a cylindrical gla.s.s column which was normally to be found rising and falling when the TARDIS was in flight. Now it was still, as still as the rest of the strange room, save for the constant hum of power.
Suddenly the calm was shattered by the arrival of three young people from the interior of the craft.
The first, a brawny, good-looking boy in kilt and cable-knit sweater, walked straight over to a chair and sat down, brushing his black hair out of his appealing brown eyes.
"Would you no" hang on a moment, Ben," he complained to his companion. "I cannae understand you."
Ben, a skinny, blond young man with the face of a disreputable cherub, threw up his hands in frustration.