Doctor Who_ Battlefield - Marc Platt [25]
‘The Idylls of the King’
Tennyson
Chapter 1
Doris watched the helicopter settle on the lawn like a malevolent black insect. The trees and plants quailed under the surge of its propwash.
She turned and re-entered the house where Alastair was finalizing arrangements. She thought that his Brigadier’s uniform looked a little tight, but there was a rightness to it.
For all his acquired domesticity, the man of action still lived on underneath. She reprimanded herself for being flustered, while he, who was going off to face heaven knows what, maintained an outward appearance of complete composure.
The cup of coffee with which she always finished lunch was stone cold. The food was hardly picked at.
He had finished his.
She tried to imagine the magnitude of crisis that could summon him out of retirement. Worse, she was sure that he was eager to go.
There had been a night when his restless sleep had woken her. She had heard him mutter: ‘Corporal Bell.
Chap with the wings. Five rounds rapid.’ And then he grabbed her arm and yelled: ‘Doctor! Don’t do it!’
Although names like Mike Yates and Sarah-Jane Smith occasionally cropped up in conversation, the true nature of his military career was kept a closely guarded secret. She respected him too much to ask about it.
She had gleaned information from other sources, notably the State Secret TV documentary, but the Doctor had never been mentioned at all.
‘What do you think?’ Lethbridge-Stewart asked. ‘I’d worried it wouldn’t fit me. But not bad, eh?’
‘Alastair,’ she said. She had kept his UNIT cap badge hidden in some vague hope that it might delay his departure. But there was no point. It was better to wave him bravely and dutifully off. She pressed the badge into his hand. ‘Alastair, I found this.’
He smiled and pinned it on to his cap. ‘Thank you.’
One final glance at the mirror. ‘Well, I’d better be off then,’ he said. She handed him his case and followed him out into the garden. He gave a wave of acknowledgement to the pilot who waited in the helicopter. The propwash blew Doris’s auburn hair into disarray.
‘You will be careful, won’t you?’
‘I’ve always been careful. Don’t worry. I’ll sort this out and come home.’ He held her tightly and she kissed him on the cheek. Then she pulled away.
‘I think they’re waiting for you,’ she said quickly.
‘Of course.’
The Brigadier straightened up. She watched him walk briskly towards the helicopter and climb in next to the pilot.
The machine tilted forward slightly as it lifted away.
Doris saw him give a brief wave and she raised her hand in response. The helicopter was already disappearing over the trees. Away north towards East Grinstead and London beyond.
Why wasn’t Alastair too old for this? Too comfortable and retired. Surely they could have found someone else.
She thought that if he didn’t come back, her heart would break.
‘Merlin!’ exclaimed Shou Yuing.
‘You’ve got it wrong, mate, this is the Doctor,’ insisted Ace.
The Black Knight was laughing as he pulled at the buckles of the jesseraunte armour. He met the Doctor’s stare head on. ‘Oh, he has many names, but in my reckoning he is Merlin.’
The Doctor helped prise the dead armour open, allowing the knight to move freely. Underneath, he wore a hauberk of light chain mail.
Testing the armour in his hands for its strength and composition, the Doctor said casually, ‘So you recognized my face then?’
‘No. It’s not your aspect, but your manner that betrays you.’
The Doctor raised an eyebrow.
‘Do you not ride the ship of Time?’ went on the knight.
‘Does it not deceive the senses, being smaller without than within? Merlin, cease these games and tell me truly. Is this the time?’
‘The time for what?’
The knight was apparently perplexed. ‘Thou dost not know, truly?’
Ace’s patience finally ran out. ‘Do you think he’d be asking if he did, tinhead?’
Instantly, the young man drew his sword and raised the blade in an earnest salute. ‘Why, the answer to Excalibur’s call,’ he cried. ‘The time of retribution.