Doctor Who_ The Awakening - Eric Pringle [42]
‘She’d be the toast of Little Hodcombe,’ the Doctor joked, trying to reduce the horror and come to terms with it.
Will couldn’t do that. The girl’s agony had been too great. She writhed inside his head; her skin blistered and blackened, and he could smell it burning. ‘It ain’t funny,’
he said. ‘She was screaming.’
‘That’s nothing to what Tegan would have done,’ the Doctor replied grimly. ‘Come on, Will.’
Expecting Will to follow, he slipped around the hedge for a closer look at the scene on the Village Green. But Will was too scared to move. He stayed where he was in the hedge, anchored there by his fear, with a burning girl shrieking in his brain.
The Doctor’s intention was to duck into the crowd of onlookers, lose himself in the excitement of the May Queen’s arrival and then rely on inspiration to fall. But he didn’t get even that far. Luck was against him the moment he left the cover of the hedge, for at that moment Sir George Hutchinson jumped up on his horse; and as he swung into the saddle he scanned the Green’s activities and his glance took in the sight of a man slipping across the road with a wary, half running and half-walking action and eyes which, like Sir George’s own, were trying to see everywhere at once.
Sir George recognised the Doctor immediately and his shout was a great unbalanced cry of both anger and triumph together. ‘Stop that man!’ he yelled. ‘Sergeant Willow, hold him!’
In a trice the Doctor was surrounded by troopers and soldiers; whichever way he turned he saw them running towards him. He attempted to break through the cordon, but he stood no chance; he was overpowered immediately and dragged on to the Green.
8
Stone Monkey
The look of gloating triumph with which Sir George Hutchinson glared down at his enemy was very close to speechless hysteria. He seemed to have lost the use of words, and it was left to his Sergeant to greet their unwilling guest.
Willow emerged from a knot of troopers and approached the Doctor with an arrogant swagger. ‘You’re just in time for the show,’ he sneered. ‘You can have a front seat.’
The Doctor, who had decided he didn’t care much for the Sergeant, resisted with difficulty the impulse to lash out a foot at him, and for the time being contented himself with an icy stare. Then he looked at the huge pile of brushwood and shuddered; he did not care much for the fate which awaited the May Queen, either.
A roar of excitment swept through the streets leading to the Green. Although he was surrounded by soldiers, the Doctor was held on the crown of the Green, where a very old chestnut tree spread wide its branches; from here he could see between the uniformed bodies of his guard and over the heads of the waiting crowd. He looked across to the road where Will still crouched in the rose hedge, and up a lane lined with waving people.
Down this lane a procession was moving. It was headed by drummers in red coats and steel helmets. They beat on taut drumskins with a never ending rat-ta-tat, rat-ta-ta-ta-ta-tat, over and over and over, and the repeated monotonous rhythm stirred the crowd to ecstasy as the drummers marched down the lane towards them, scuffing their boots in the dust and pounding.
The excitement rippled down the lane like a long, rising wave, and the people shouted and waved and threw flowers at the gaily-coloured cart, which was the coach of their Queen of the May.
Now the Doctor could see past the drummers to the cart itself, and the people closing ranks behind the cart as it passed them. He could see Ben Wolsey driving, leaning forward on the box, looking neither to right nor left but staring straight ahead at the waiting crowd on the Green, and the bonfire, and Sir George standing eagerly in the stirrups on his chestnut horse.
Wolsey’s eyes narrowed when he saw the Doctor being held by troopers, but he kept the cart moving steadily forward behind the drummers, to maintain a constant, smooth pace for the May Queen seated behind him.
After the jolting