Doctor Who_ The Banquo Legacy - Andy Lane [97]
‘Ian, you’re hurt!’ Susan exclaimed, and she limped across the room to my side, in obvious pain.
I managed to murmur words that I have always imagined myself saying, although not under the circumstances in which I actually said them. ‘Oh, it’s only a flesh wound. But what’s happened to your foot?’
Fitz quickly brought us up to date with what had transpired outside – the abortive escape attempt, the death of Simpson, the decision by the Doctor and Hopkinson to distract Harries’s attention while Fitz and Miss Seymour re-entered the house.
While Baker checked Miss Seymour’s dressing, Fitz crossed to the door and made as if to open it.
‘No!’ I shouted.
He paused. ‘But if Richard Harries is chasing the Doctor –’
‘His sister?’
‘But surely she’ll be occupied in controlling her brother’s body.’
I shook my head. ‘I think it’s more complicated than that. She seems to be able to control him and herself at the same time. If what she says is true, if her brother’s mind is sharing her brain, then there’s no knowing what they might be able to –’
The lights flickered.
Baker crossed quickly to one of the electrical appliances that lit the room, now flickering in intensity and causing our shadows to tremble. He turned with a hapless expression on his face. ‘I don’t think there’s anything I can do, sir. I’m not familiar with these electrical contraptions.’
‘They must be powered from somewhere.’
‘Down in the cellar. I remember when Wallace had it installed. It runs on coal, I think.’
‘Damn! The fuel must have run out. It’s not just here, then. The lights are going out all over Banquo Manor.’ I glanced around and caught sight of the remaining oil lamp on the mantelpiece. ‘Light that,’ I said. ‘Quickly. If Catherine thinks she’s got us at a disadvantage, heaven alone knows what she will do.’
As Baker went about the task I pounded the couch with my good arm. Why did we have to be so helpless?
The lights gave a final flicker and went out, leaving us in the dark until Baker could light the lamp.
* * *
THE ACCOUNT OF JOHN HOPKINSON (22)
The wood was our enemy. We crashed through the icy branches that clawed at our flesh, our clothes. Our eyes. We slipped and stumbled over the frozen ground – hoping that we still followed the path. I limped on, the pain spreading up my leg, meeting the cold spreading down and exaggerated by the freezing air which we fought to breathe.
The cold air, almost physical, clawed at out hands, our faces. Our fingers were dead, our ears spiders’ webs of pain, our faces burned with the ice and snow that whipped at them.
My jacket was in tatters; my ankle felt as though a red-hot knife had been plunged into it; and then savagely twisted. I could feel the tears clinging frostily to my cheeks, slowing in their traces as they froze to my face. We crashed on through the icicled branches, across the ice-encrusted snow knowing that at any moment one or both of us would collapse and be unable to go on. The cold sapped our confidence as the effort drained our energy. Only our will to survive and the necessity of keeping warm spurred us on. But too slowly.
Behind us, Harries moved effortlessly. Closer. The snow powdered and froze beneath his dread feet as it melted beneath ours. Icicles exploded as his head met them, showering his ripped face with their shattered remains, cold and dead as he; unmelting. Closer.
Perhaps it was nerves, perhaps the anxiety that I would die without understanding why or how, but I felt compelled to talk. My voice was ragged and broken between my gasps for breath. By contrast, the Doctor’s responses were measured and unhurried. How much effort that actually took on his part I can only guess, but the effect on my own confidence and demeanour was positive.
‘So why’, I gasped, ‘did you pretend to be dead?’
‘Oh, a foolish notion,’ he replied. ‘I went for a walk in the grounds, thinking,