Doctor Who_ The Awakening - Eric Pringle [26]
Behind her, in the room, the key turned in the lock, the bolt was unbarred and the door opened. Followed by two armed troopers, Sir George came in with his mouth open ready to speak to Jane, and for a moment he paused uncertainly, looking around the room with a goldfish expression. Then his eyes alighted on the long curtain blowing back from the wide open panel.
‘The fool!’ he fumed – a spark of anger which quickly blazed into a full-throated shout of rage at his men. ‘After her!’ he screamed, adding as they broke into a run, ‘We’ll need some light! Get a candle!’
The troopers snatched candles from the silver candelabra on the mantelpiece and bent down to light them at the burning logs in the hearth. Then they shielded the guttering flames and followed Sir George into the passage. in pursuit of the schoolteacher.
The Doctor and Will Chandler were also underground, bent almost double to move along the low, narrow passage from the vestry.
In the frail light from the Doctor’s torch Will could see only indistinctly its rough, damp sides and roof. They were growing more vague by the minute for the Doctor was moving very fast and Will was lagging further and further behind. It had been like this since their first step from the vestry: the Doctor almost running, swept onward by his eagerness for discovery, while Will, breathless and aching in this constant crouching scuttle, struggled to keep up with him.
Without warning the Doctor stopped suddenly and listened. He beckoned to Will to come nearer, raising a finger for silence. ‘Stay close, Will,’ he whispered.
Will paused at his side, thankful to have a breather. In the wavering torchlight he could see that the passage broadened just ahead and then opened to a wider area that was like a room hewn out of the rock. At one side of it a spiral staircase led upwards; apart from that the place seemed to be featureless – an empty, eerie cavern in the bowels of the earth.
Then Will heard them: feet scuffing the floor above their heads and then moving slowly and hollowly down the stairs. While he was still translating the sound into words in his mind, the Doctor was diving forward and dragging him into the dark area underneath the stairs. They crouched down there and pressed back against the chill, oozing wall, while the stairs above their heads creaked softly.
Will held his breath and hoped the person would never reach the bottom. But the Doctor was impatient, eager to see who it might be. Suddenly there was another, more distant sound – a voice raised in anger far above them.
Then more footsteps scuffed a far-off floor.
Jane Hampden heard the voice while she was still on the stairs. In a panic she looked back towards the passage above, and the last faint spread of light from the parlour, expecting Sir George and his troopers to appear at any second. Not daring to take her eyes off the entrance to the passage, she came down the last stairs backwards.
‘Through here!’ she heard Sir George shout in a voice brittle with irritation. Another, deeper voice muttered something in reply, then suddenly their footsteps were much closer. Jane shivered. She reached the bottom stair and looked apprehensively around, squinting through the gloom at what seemed to be a room cut out of solid rock.
She almost collapsed with fright when a voice hissed from the darkness beside her: ‘Sshh! In here!’
A hand touched her shoulder and she spun round with a choking cry. Then she saw the Doctor and a youth under the stairs and nearly shouted with relief. The Doctor beckoned and she dived into their hiding place; she was just in time, for Sir George was already coming down the stairs, with the troopers lumbering heavily behind him.
Their candles cast distorted, shifting shadows on the walls and roof. ‘Keep that light near!’ Sir George snarled.
And then, ‘We’ll catch her before the church.’ He stopped at the foot of the staircase and looked back up at the troopers’ clumsy descent. ‘Move yourselves,’ he shouted, ‘I don’t want this to take all day!’
They hurried across the