Doctor Who_ The Awakening - Eric Pringle [43]
The Doctor watched the cart arrive and draw to a halt by the side of the Green, and he smiled.
But Sir George Hutchinson, who had been smiling up to now, frowned. He grimaced. Standing up in the stirrups he craned his neck to see over the heads of the encroaching onlookers, and a cloud of anger darkened his face.
A tall trooper, carrying a burning torch, came marching up the Green to station himself at the bonfire, but Sir George took no notice of him, for the villagers’ murmurs and shouts of excitment as they ran to surround the cart had suddenly stopped. Now the crowded people hovered uncertainly, and hung back, taken by surprise.
‘Something’s wrong!’ Sir George snarled. Shouting with frustration, he spurred his horse and galloped towards the cart. Sergeant Willow, too, ran forward. The soldiers holding the Doctor dragged him down the Green. The trooper with the burning torch held it high in the air like a salute. Nobody took any notice of him.
Willow reached the cart first. He jumped up on to the boards and strode over to the slouching Queen of the May.
Lying limply across the chair which had served as her throne, she looked lifeless. Cursing roundly to himself, Willow snatched away the white, ribboned bonnet: the head so roughly revealed was a ragged, compacted mass of straw. Willow lifted the body and felt the light, limp frame of a dummy. Bewildered, he crushed it in his fingers and dropped it back on the cart. Then he turned in dismay towards Sir George, who was forcing a path through the crowd; he held up the bonnet and pointed to the sad mockery of their May Queen.
Sir George could hardly speak. His face was dark crimson. Veins stood out on his neck. His eyes bulged and the skin on his cheeks twitched as though it was crawling with beetles. Willow stood on the cart and watched him coming to pieces, and could do nothing.
‘What’s happening?’ Sir George finally spluttered.
Ben Wolsey, holding the reins at the ready, turned round on his box and looked Sir George straight in the eye.
He too was shocked to see the change in him, but he stood his ground. ‘There’s your Queen of the May,’ he said. ‘You can burn her if you wish. This is not as attractive as Tegan, perhaps, but more humane.’
Ben Wolsey, too, had changed. Gone was the diffident, embarrassed, subservient accomplice to the Squire. Now he was an equal, in charge of his own actions and making them count for something; practical and positive because at last he was doing something, and taking part in a down-to-earth manoeuvre which he could understand. In such a case Ben Wolsey became a giant of a man, and Sir George, recognising the change, backed away from him. He could scarcely believe what he was hearing; he could not comprehend that all his carefully wrought plans were turning to ashes before his eyes. Then, quite suddenly, it hit him. It hit him hard – his last vestiges of self-control crumbled away, and with them went his reason. Before the eyes of Ben Wolsey and Joseph Willow and all the people around him, Sir George Hutchinson was going mad.
‘What are you trying to do?’ he screamed at Wolsey.
‘Wreck everything?’
Wolsey chose his words deliberately. ‘I’m trying to return some sanity to these proceedings,’ he said.
The implications were lost on Sir George. He seemed to be past understanding anything. Holding his head as if it were about to burst, he cried out, ‘You’ve ruined it! You’ve ruined everything!’ With an agomsed expression he turned to his Sergeant. ‘Kill him!’ he shouted. Then he wheeled his horse away.
Wolsey had been expecting this and was ready for it.
Although surrounded by enemies he felt ice-cool; he was seeing things very clearly and he knew that Willow would now go for his sword. He was right, but Willow only got as far