Doctor Who_ Byzantium! - Keith Topping [30]
Well, that was impressive from a distance of fifteen years and at least a couple of cases of probable concussion.
Herbert Effemy.
Spotty Herbert.
Probably an MP or a judge or something similar, these days.
Except that 'these days' is nineteen hundred years from now, give or take a few months, she told herself.
'My body is a temple'.
Temple Gate. That's where the Law Society in London is based.
Was based?
What tense is this?
Past tense? Present tense? Future tense?
I was. I am. I will be...
She had visited the Temple Gate building in the dim and distant past (or future) and knew that it had been built (or would be built) by the Knights Templars.
Looming out of the darkness, the temple door was within reach. Barbara limped the last few painful paces and pushed at it. Mercifully, it creaked open.
Barbara found herself at the back of a huge and imposing tabernacle interior. At the far end of the massive central chamber were several dozen people who had gathered around a space lit by many candles. Hurriedly Barbara covered the lower part of her face with the shawl that had miraculously clung to her shoulders during the madness in the square.
Cautiously, she moved towards the group, happy to have found a refuge, but wary that her presence might be unwelcome here. As she grew closer, she recognised that the people were listening to a prayer to Jehovah, spoken in a rich and deep voice by the impressively bearded man standing amidst the candles. A rabbi or Pharisee, clearly. A man of power and influence. Unfortunately Barbara chose that exact moment, when the murmur of voices in front of her had all but died, to stand on a loose stone on the synagogue floor.
She winced as the slab grated loudly against its neighbour and every head in the building turned in her direction.
'Sorry,' she said, quietly, moving the shawl a fraction to allow her words to be heard and then pulling it back into place.
The holy man began to say something but his words struggled to reach Barbara as others within the group moved slowly towards her. There was an old woman at the front of the congregation, small and squat, with a sore-looking red growth on the side of her neck and several blackened stumps for teeth. Suspiciously, the woman approached Barbara, who found herself rooted to the spot and, as she attempted to say something to calm the atmosphere, the woman reached up an arthritic claw of a hand and pulled away the shawl from Barbara's face, revealing it to everyone present.
Ì know not this woman. She is a spy,' spat the old woman, her words tripping over themselves for release. 'A dirty, filthy, infidel Roman spy.'
The Jews behind her, already furious at the Roman soldiers' murder of their people, seemed ready to take any scapegoat presented to them at a time like this. Someone shouted, 'Stone her!' and there were other horrifying and unintelligible screams. Barbara tried to speak but found herself tongue-tied. Her legs had turned to jelly. She felt as though she would surely faint.
And then, from a distance, there came the booming voice of the holy man, silencing everyone within the temple.
`Cease this unsavoury clamour in the house of the Lord.'
Barbara closed her eyes, swallowed hard, and then opened them again in the hope that she had been magically transported back to Coal Hill. Or Cricklewood. Or Skaro, for that matter. Anywhere, in fact, but here.
Instead, what she found herself looking at was the holy man walking towards her as the crowd parted for him Like Moses and the Red Sea, Barbara thought, before deciding that this wasn't, perhaps, the most tactful of moments to be using biblical metaphors.
'What are you, woman?' asked the priest.
Barbara opened and closed her mouth rapidly but again nothing emerged. She stared into the holy man's marine-blue eyes and found a glint, a sparkle. He was amused.
`You have no need to be afraid, good daughter. For I am Hieronymous. by my mother's name. This is my tabernacle and there shall be no word or deed of violence spoken against or by any man nor woman within this house of