Doctor Who_ Byzantium! - Keith Topping [37]
'Walk with me in the garden,' Hieronymous asked.
Barbara nodded and gently led the priest, his shoulders hunched with pain and guilt, to the door. 'I'm a good listener,'
she said, then instantly regretted it as Hieronymous gave her a look of infinite displeasure. That was like a pick-up line used by every good-time girl in every sleazy bar in Soho, she reflected. 'I'm sorry,' she continued. 'I simply meant that if you need a sympathetic ear...'
'My daughter has never recovered from the death of her mother,' Hieronymous said as they entered the oasis of the temple gardens. Rich, green and verdant, life seemed to abound and flourish here, within five miles of a dust-bowl, bone-dry desert. The magical colours of the flowers and shrubs briefly startled Barbara. Hieronymous said something but she wasn't concentrating on him. So much for being a sympathetic ear, she berated herself, and said, 'I'm desperately sorry, what was that?'
Hieronymous looked sheepish and embarrassed, as though what he had just said had required a great deal of courage to get it out first time around and he wasn't looking forward to a repeat performance. Ìt is about your friends,' he stammered. He stopped, turned and held Barbara by the shoulders. 'Be strong, woman, and have faith in the Lord when I tell you that over one hundred and sixty men, women and children died in the midst of the massacre in the market-place yesterday. The overwhelming evidence suggests that your friends were among them.'
He stopped and looked crestfallen.
Barbara accepted this news stoically. 'Life goes on,' she said, reflecting that now was not the time to grieve. 'And we, however reluctantly, have to go on with it.'
When Georgiadis and Evangeline awoke a sleepy Vicki to give her similar news, she was distraught.
`Well, thanks for sharing that,' she said tearfully and got back into bed, pulling the rough hessian blanket over her head.
Gently Evangeline pulled the blanket back down and Vicki emerged, blinking, into the light like a small animal after hibernation. 'Let your tears flow like the river, little one,' said the woman, putting an arm. around Vicki's trembling shoulders. 'The pain will get so much worse before it, eventually, gets better. Embrace the pain; for a while it may be your only friend.'
Strange advice, reflected Vicki in a moment of clarity amidst the horror of her situation. The Doctor was dead. Ian was dead Barbara... Poor Barbara.
'I have nothing left to live for,' Vicki said with a eye for the heightened drama of the situation. Curiously, what she really felt was utterly hollow. She was sad, of course. Her companions were the nearest thing that she'd had to a family since her father's death on Dido. But she was used to being alone. It wasn't the end of the world.
It was only the enormity of her own personal predicament that truly upset her. Without the TARDIS, she was stuck.
Here.
`Life is bigger than you, little one,' Evangeline said in a voice that reminded Vicki of her dead mother.
The association set off a chain reaction, like a dam being breached. As Vicki began to cry, huge choking sobs of regret and sorrow, a free-form melange of imagery and memories came flooding out with it. 'I was eleven when my mother died,' she said. 'She was going to call me Tanni, she always said, but daddy preferred the name Vicki so I was stuck with it... It's a stupid name, don't you think?'
Georgiadis gave his wife a look of concern, but Evangeline shook her head. `Go on, angel, tell me what your heart feels.'
‘Alone,' said Vicki, tearfully. 'Alone and afraid. I'm so scared.'
The Greek woman nodded wisely and sat on the bed, hugging Vicki close to her. 'My own parents were murdered when I was no more than a girl. Younger than you. I survived by my wits and the true kindness of others. And because you have to. Life