Doctor Who_ St. Anthony's Fire - Mark Gatiss [36]
The guards clutched at her wrists and began to bundle her towards the window. She thrust out her legs and rammed them under the brass frame, gulping at the pressure of the soldiers’ claws around her throat.
All she could see was green. A great carpet of green, hundreds of feet below, swaying in the downdraught from the Ismetch vessel.
* * *
The corridor was long, narrow and gloomy, its wooden walls stained a strange dark crimson as though through long exposure to blood. The vaulted roof was heavy with cobwebs.
The woman was walking slowly along it on her way back to her cell when a pattering of feet made her turn round.
Out of the darkness stepped a tall man with a large face and bright, rather appealing eyes. His features were fixed in a permanent, beatific smile and he was swathed from head to foot in silk robes, which glinted the purple of arterial blood in the half‐light of the corridor. His shaven head, topped by a purple skull‐cap, was already showing signs of re‐growth.
The woman bowed low, touching her temples in a familiar gesture of supplication.
‘Chapterman Jones,’ she breathed nervously. ‘How may I serve?’
The Chapterman’s smile did not falter. ‘Not me, child. You are required by Parva De Hooch. He wishes to speak to you.’
The woman’s eyes widened. ‘Parva De Hooch? Am I to be punished for something?’
‘That is not for me to say, alas. But be comforted that if punishment ensues it will be a good and just punishment with much letting of fluids in the name of the Chapter.’
The woman’s face seemed troubled. ‘Yes,’ she said quietly.
‘In peace,’ murmured Jones, turning and melting back into the shadows.
‘In peace,’ replied the woman in a small, scared whisper.
More than anything, she wanted to go back to her room to get some rest. The gruelling round of prayers and fasting she had recently endured had left her exhausted. But exhaustion and misery were part of the joy she had found in the Chapter and, most importantly, the Parva was never to be disobeyed. She must go and see him at once.
Her sandalled feet scraped over the stone‐flagged floor as she wound her way through the maze of corridors, their cloistered environs heavy with sickly‐sweet incense.
The woman found herself troubled by the vision in the cathedral. The pictures she had seen, the feel of fear, of panic, of all‐consuming dread, had been familiar. Yet how could they be?
There had been a time before initiation into the Chapter, but the scholars had told her any remembrance was impossible. The old life was dead. Her soul belonged to Saint Anthony.
The woman stopped before the massive limestone arch of Parva De Hooch’s rooms.
The door was imposing, carved from one huge piece of oak with a smaller, metal‐banded door set into it. Black marble pillars bordered it on either side. On close inspection, the woman noticed they were packed with fossilized coral, exposed like frozen flowers in the dull black stone.
The small door opened and another Chapterman, whom she had never seen before, lean and intense‐looking with acne scars on his shaven head, came out.
‘What do you want, child?’
The woman shuffled uneasily, shivering as a draught from the great empty cloisters fluttered through her robes. ‘Parva De Hooch wishes to speak with me.’
‘Does he indeed?’
The Chapterman poked his head around the door. There was a brief exchange of words and then he came out again.
‘You’re right,’ he said with some surprise. ‘Wait here and he will call you.’
The woman looked about for a chair but, of course, there were none. Comforts of any kind were forbidden. Instead, she rested her weary body against the cold stone arch, feeling the rough surface scraping at her skin.
Although her mind was unfocused and her memory foggy, she knew she had never seen the Parva before, let alone been summoned to meet him. It was almost as extraordinary as meeting Magna Yong himself.
Perhaps, if the Parva favoured her, then this honour too might not be beyond her reach.
She was mentally chiding herself