Doctor Who_ Ghost Light - Marc Platt [18]
As the manservant left the study, Josiah’s white-gloved hands unfolded a pair of spectacles with lenses of black, smoked glass.
Nimrod extracted the scored, yellow tooth from his pocket and held it tightly in his fist. Beyond hope, he clutched a link with his long-lost home. Josiah knew nothing of the token’s portent. True, he had taught Nimrod much in terms of survival in this changed, tamed world. Nimrod had learned the lore of language and etiquette and subservience, and for these he was grateful. But there were older memories that he could not forget, lore that few people of this age remembered. No one here listened to the wildness of the woods and the waters. Their thoughts were turned in on themselves so that they never heard the endless, ruthless struggle of life itself in the air and the earth. Only Nimrod heard.
Tonight the Burning One, Nimrod’s god, stirred angrily in his dreams and a stranger carried a token of ancient magic to the house of Gabriel Chase. But how could he tell if the Doctor was a harbinger of good or ill omens? Nimrod was not born a seer; he was not able to interpret the signs like the wise men of his tribe. He heard only the wind’s song in the branches and saw the patterns in the embers of the dead fire; he did not understand their meaning. He stared at the tooth, willing it to speak its secrets in his head. It had come to him and he must understand.
Uncertain whether to stay close to his master and therefore near to the Doctor, or to attempt to placate the growing anger of his god, whatever sacrifice that might mean, Nimrod resolved to wait. In this place, time flowed faster than in the old wild world, even though the sun still travelled the same course. The days chased each other more swiftly. Nimrod would be the stationary point which events moved around. He would watch as he always had watched and listened, because he would then have new tales to tell.
Wearily, he sat down on the stairs and waited for something to happen. The thunder rolled, the clock ticked steadily forward and from the drawing room came the sound of voices raised in anger. Nimrod listened, plucking idly at a baluster where it was starting to come into leaf.
‘Let me guess,’ revelled the Doctor, encouraging Ernest’s misplaced tirade. ‘My theories appal you, my heresies outrage you, I never answer letters and you don’t like my jumper.’ He helped himself to a piece of seedcake from the tea tray.
‘You are a worse scoundrel than Darwin, sir!’ retaliated Ernest.
‘Just call me Doctor,’ said the Doctor and finished the cake. He seated himself on the piano stool and flexed his fingers. ‘Do excuse me. It’s a long time since I tickled the ivories.’
So saying, he launched into a heavy boogie-woogie: he pounded at the keys; not too much pedal or he would lose the stomp. He was just getting into the feel of the thing when he glanced up to catch the open-jawed and aghast reception he was getting from his audience. Ernest Matthews, his senses under unimaginable assault, was, for the second time that day, rendered speechless.
The Doctor smirked. ‘So sorry. I was forgetting the time.’
Without a quaver’s pause, he dropped effortlessly into some Beethoven. The gentle opening bars of Ludwig’s Moonlight Sonata seemed to relax the distraught dean.
The pianist smiled knowingly as the sinuous line in the upper hand began to weave a mysterious aura through the room. As the silvery melody rose and fell, the gas-lamps seemed to dim in sympathy around them. Glancing beyond the enrapt Ernest’s shoulder, the Doctor saw a door swinging slowly open in the clustering shadows at the far end of the room. He continued playing as dark undertones began to assert themselves in the lower register of the music. A figure was emerging from the gloom of the house.
Its hair was white and long; its skin pale and leech-like. It wore a night-blue, velvet dinner-jacket and black, pebble-lensed spectacles that looked like tiny craters on its wizened, wicked face. As it