Doctor Who_ Empire of Death - BBC Worldwide [11]
'Are you saying our boy will be simple?' Mr Lees asked.
'To be perfectly honest, I'm not certain. He has spoken since I examined him but he made no sense,' Kirkhope replied, deciding discretion was better than the whole truth.
'What do you mean, made no sense - what did he say?'
the father demanded.
'Mam, is that you?' James asked quietly. His mother stopped squeezing the boy so tightly and leaned back to look at his face in the flickering candlelight.
'Yes, James, it's your mother. What's wrong with your voice?'
'I'm not James,' the boy said. 'You never gave me a name.'
'What's he talking about, Doctor?' Mr Lees whispered, but the physician could offer no answer. Mr Lees approached his youngest boy. 'What are you talking about, son?'
Ì'm not your son - I'm your daughter. Your second daughter.' James smiled at his father. 'Don't you know me?'
'My second daughter? What are you talking about, lad?
I've only got three bairns and they're all boys like you.'
'You have five children - but only the boys were born,'
James said calmly. `Mam had the doctor kill me and my sister before you knew about us.'
Martha Lees staggered back from the boy, one hand held up to her horrified face. 'No! No! This child is lying!'
Mr Lees reached out a hand to his son. 'Come on now James, you're frightening your mother. It's true, she did lost two babies before having you - that's why your brothers are so much older than you - but those were miscarriages.'
The boy shook his head sadly. 'That's what she told you But I was murdered.'
Martha struck James across the face, a vicious slap that nearly sent the boy sprawling. 'You'll stop talking like this, James! You've no right, no right at all!'
James pointed at his mother, his eyes staring at her. 'You killed me. You and the doctor - you murdered me!'
Martha slapped the boy's face, again and again, until she hardly had strength to raise her arm. But still he accused her until she fell sobbing into her husband's arms. Mr Lees looked incredulously at his boy, unable to take in what was happening.
'Doctor, please, tell me - could the boy be possessed? He speaks and says things only a devil would whisper in your ear...’
Kirkhope didn't know what to say. Plainly, the child was speaking in tongues, the sort of behaviour associated with the saintly and the insane. This was beyond the experience of a humble country doctor. More frightening WAS the fact that every word the child spoke was the al in h. Kirkhope had helped Martha Lees to get rid of two tinhorn children. She had begged to be relieved of the burden. The physician had agreed only when the distraught mother threatened to spread word of his nocturnal activities to the authorities. The owners of the cotton mills would not take kindly to having an abortionist in their presence. He had refused to help her a third time, sickened by the woman's actions and his own.
Kirkhope had believed it would almost be a relief if his activities were revealed and his banishment decreed. Instead she had carried the child to full term and given birth to James. Now the doctor almost wished he had acceded to her wishes and killed that baby too.
Then, just as quickly as the episode had taken the boy, it released him. James collapsed backwards on to the examination bench, his head thudding against the wooden surface. The doctor stepped forward to check the child's breathing and pulse.
'Whatever possessed him seems to have gone, for now. I will keep him here, under observation,' Kirkhope said.
'Perhaps this is some passing malady, a phase brought on by the shock of his near drowning. In a day or two this behaviour may fade and he can be returned to you. If not...'
If not?'
'There is