Doctor Who_ Bad Therapy - Matthew Jones [35]
At least that was the official version of the story. Gilliam cracked open a small flask of wine, and took a long swig from the bottle. She had long suspected that there was more to the story of the first royal couple than this legend of betrayal and murder. And so she had decided to abandon her royal duties and engage in a little bit of historical detective work. Her suspicions centred around the small symbols which had been neatly inscribed into the walls of the chamber.
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The palace was famous for its song. Petruska had decorated the walls of her bedchamber with unique symbols which could be translated into a beautiful piece of music: a song of love for her husband, Moriah. Or so the archeologists said. The music was now one of the best known pieces in their society; indeed it had been played at Gilliam’s own wedding. It was a quiet, simple melody.
And it had always struck Gilliam as being more a torch song, mourning what had been lost, than a declaration of passion and love.
Its sadness had always intrigued Gilliam. She had first heard the aching melody as she walked down the aisle on her wedding day. It had accompanied her uncertain steps towards a future with a man she didn’t love, and her angry steps away from the man who had abandoned her.
She brushed away the resentful feelings which still haunted her and unpacked her equipment. She dug out the sheaf of research notes she had made on the musical symbols. Gilliam had first begun to suspect that the symbols might be more than just the notes to a song when she had made a study of Petruska’s life before she had been crowned queen. During this period of Kr’on Tep’s history, before Moriah had invaded, a curious sexual division of labour had been in place which allowed women access to the arts and sciences but forbade them involvement in political life. Gilliam had heard of proto-feminist writing hidden in the musical notation of the period. These women had been communicating to each other in a language secreted in musical phrasing.
Using a small handheld recorder, Gilliam took an electronic impression of the carvings on part of one of the walls, a sort of sonic brass rubbing. Using the snatches of earlier writing as a code breaker, Gilliam fed the results of the scan into her portable terminal and waited. If there was a message hidden in Petruska’s song, the terminal would decode it, and offer a translation. She was so absorbed in the small hieroglyphs flickering across the screen as the computer searched for matches, that she wasn’t aware of the man’s presence in the chamber until he was right beside her.
‘Good evening, Highness.’
Gilliam almost knocked her terminal over as she whirled to face the newcomer. Her immediate reaction was to hide her work guiltily but she forced herself to leave the computer to finish its operation. ‘Ala’dan! I have to say I’m glad it’s you that’s come for me and not the –’ She just managed to stop herself as she realized what she had been about to say.
The king’s chancellor bowed. He was an old man, his angular face tanned and etched with thousands of wrinkles from a long life spent in the desert.
Ala’ dan had always been quietly supportive of her, and Gilliam was terribly fond of him.
‘It is good to see your Highness. When I heard of your disappearance I was concerned that perhaps the Thordon ambassador had kidnapped you. I must 59
say that I am surprised that you chose this place as your bolt-hole.’
‘I suppose that I’ve you to thank that the king didn’t send his personal guard to drag me back by my hair?’
Ala’dan had