Doctor Who_ St. Anthony's Fire - Mark Gatiss [68]
She flinched and dived for cover as a nearby door opened and a Chapterman stepped out. He was splendidly dressed in freshly pressed purple and had on a ceremonial skull‐cap trimmed with gold.
A draught of air from the room he had vacated reached her. It had the sickly‐sweet quality of a crypt.
When the Chapterman had disappeared from view down one of the long corridors, the woman crossed the hall and slipped quietly into the room.
It seemed to be some kind of viewing point. Small, dark and cramped, it was nevertheless furnished with a wooden bench and a variety of gently rocking candle‐holders.
What passed for a window was in fact a highly decorated wooden fenestella, the fluted holes in its structure giving a view of some impenetrable darkness below.
The woman crept across the room, bending almost double in order to do so. She sat down on the bench, crossed her legs and gazed out of the wooden frame. She could make out little or nothing of what was below.
Suddenly, a pinprick of light appeared in the darkness, sailing about like a will‐o’‐the‐wisp. Its sputtering yellow glow betrayed it as a candle. It was instantly joined by another, then another.
Soon she could see Chaptermen scurrying about, lighting tall, tall beeswax candles. They seemed to be in a circular pattern and this was explained when, with a dreadful, tortuous creak, a vast wooden chandelier was hauled towards the roof of the chamber.
As the chilly light spread, the woman realized that she was looking down into the cathedral.
The place was filling rapidly now, dozens of Chaptermen beginning to take their places, kneeling on the uncushioned stone floor and abasing themselves, chanted prayers spilling from their lips.
The cathedral was now ablaze with candle‐light. Under other circumstances it could have been a lovely sight, the woman decided, but something unnatural was going on. She could sense it.
The great doors burst open and two lines of penitents stumbled inside, their hopeless faces downcast in abject misery. All wore huge pointed cylinders like dunces’ caps, the brims banded with heavy lead and steel. Even in the candle‐light, the woman could see the caps cutting into the penitents’ foreheads, reopening scarcely healed scars already livid on their sweating skin. Blood dribbled down their faces.
Great thick, tarry ropes were slung over their shoulders and they hauled behind them four enormous metal cages on spoked wheels.
Somewhere, a great gong was struck repeatedly in time to the penitents’ advance.
As they trundled inside, clattering over the flagstones, the woman was startled to see the cages packed with people. Mostly they were men and women but here and there were children, some as young as six or seven. All were howling in fear, gripping the bars, their eyes wild with terror.
The woman blinked slowly in her hiding place, the light from the cathedral bathing her face. Somehow these people seemed familiar.
The cages came to a juddering halt and the cathedral fell silent save for the pounding of the gong and the wretched whimpering of the prisoners.
Footsteps.
The woman felt her throat constrict.
Something terrible was about to happen.
* * *
‘Well, they certainly like to make an entrance.’
Bernice kept her head down as the last echo of the dirigibles’ explosion died away on the wind and the rain of fiery debris abated.
Liso was cupping his claw over his good eye and bending apart the branches before him. ‘I can see Grek. Some others I know. The rest…’
He stepped back, his translucent reptilian eyelid closing. ‘The rest seem to be Cutch.’
Bernice shrugged. ‘All friends together?’
Liso looked over ‘You don’t have to humour me. We’re fighting the Keth now.’
The great black ship was descending rapidly in a vortex of twisting air, the jungle thrashing about as it was buffeted by the downdraught.
Bernice shook her head and let a thin whistle escape between her teeth.
The colossal