Doctor Who_ Rags - Mick Lewis [95]
She wondered for a moment how she came to be standing in a field of ancient stones with a furious crowd in front of her and a man dressed as a seventeenth-century mummer next to her. She wondered, too, who she was. The answer to both questions didn’t matter, so she let them go. A vague memory of stumbling around in endless dark troubled her, but gazing into the mummer’s bizarre, bottomless eyes wiped the fear from her mind. The moon reassured her too - it was so serene and beautiful. Kane reached them, and though she had never seen him before she felt instinctively that she knew him, and that it was right he should be with them. She smiled, and he grinned wolfishly in return.
* * *
225
Kane reached for the blonde woman’s hand. It was something he felt he should do. It was like finding a long-lost sister or a best friend he hadn’t seen for years, although he was quite certain they had never met before. She was beautiful, and yet he felt no sexual desire for her. He stood beside her and faced the crowd.
He beamed at the strange mummer man, who walked forward to take his free hand and then Charmagne’s forming a little circle of three. There was a name floating distantly in his mind, and it carried a rag of fear with it. Rag? Yes, Ragman. What was that? It was gone. It was nothing. So was the fear.
The mummer smiled wildly at Charmagne. ‘Orphan no more: you too are my descendant.You are both children of my loins and well matched: a yearning for truth and change in the fair one, a lust for despoiling in the foul one.’ He swung his head so that the grin covered Kane, and then faced the journalist again. ‘Unlike your distant blood kin who stands beside you, stinking of his own excesses, your forefathers wandered far from the birthplace of your disgraceful lineage - now ‘tis time to come home.’ His words were clear even over the roar of the band. ‘You two shall live and spawn alone. In a new world filled with the children of the Great Leveller. In a kingdom of rags.’
Kane didn’t really understand the words, and yet at the same time they made perfect sense. He smiled, to show he was with the dude spiritually. He looked at Charmagne and it didn’t surprise or frighten him to see her eyes were grey as pebbles. From the way she was staring at him, something similar had probably happened to his.
And now he could really feel the throbbing of the stone behind them, stronger than all the others in the field pumped by the ley lines. The stone... the lodestone... he knew what it was, and again he did not know how, or why.
Like a grotesque wedding band celebrating the union of Kane and Charmagne, the resurrected punk mummers played on....
The travellers had taken possession of stonehenge. They were in, 226
through the gap the burning camper van had left, and now they were celebrating. It was half an hour to midnight, the summer solstice was imminent and they had beaten the army. They cheered and roared and flung rocks at the soldiers who didn’t know whether to advance after them into the megalithic circle or remain where they were.
The Brigadier stood beside his command jeep and watched their confusion. His walkie-talkie was in his hand, but he didn’t need it. He had enough men; he knew what to do. The folded orders were tucked away in his pocket and they could stay there -
he didn’t need them either.
He witnessed the frenzy of violence in front of him, saw his soldiers awaiting instructions as they attempted to re-form the cordon around the flaming hulk of the camper van.
‘These filthy deviants are attacking the queen when they attack us!’ he bellowed to Sergeant Benton, who stood indecisively next to him. ‘They’re trying to bring down everything our country stands for! Give the order to fire at will, man!’
Benton grinned happily and turned to Corporal Robinson.