Doctor Who_ The Room With No Doors - Kate Orman [48]
Just made it worse. Wasn’t until the fence caught fire that they started to move. Stray energy bolt hit it. Went up in a whoosh of pink flame. Still some of them wouldn’t go. They were trying to put the fire out. I couldn’t get them all to go. Some of them even came back after we’d got them over the fence.
Why didn’t it help us? Why didn’t it protect us?’
‘It’s selfish,’ said the Doctor. ‘It only saved me because it thinks I can help it.’
‘It thinks?’ said Penelope, but the Doctor ignored her, frowning. He glanced through the doorway, towards the untouched shrine.
‘If the samurai try to take it. . . ’
‘They wouldn’t listen to me,’ murmured Mr Cwej. ‘They wouldn’t listen to me, none of them would!’
‘Shhh. . . ’ The Doctor stroked Chris’s hair until the boy quietened. ‘That’s better. Now listen to me, Chris Cwej.’ The boy nodded, almost imperceptibly.
‘What happened here was not your fault.’
‘I was supposed to stop this –’
‘No. Listen. You couldn’t have stopped this. It was just very bad luck.’
‘You asked me –’
‘I didn’t ask you to magically prevent anything from happening. By evacuating the villagers, you did the best you could to save their lives. You couldn’t have done anything more to help them. Do you believe me?’
Mr Cwej’s head lowered further. ‘No,’ he whispered.
The Doctor put his other hand on Chris’s head, making his companion look up into his eyes. ‘Do you believe me?’ he repeated, sternly.
‘Yes.
‘You need sleep. There’s nothing more to be done now. Get some rest.’
Mr Cwej obediently lay down on his side and curled into a ball. In moments, he was snoring.
The Doctor moved over to Penelope’s side. ‘He was so badly affected,’ she murmured. Mr Cwej’s hands had been curled into fists; now they were relax-ing, pale fingers against the sooty floor. ‘Have you. . . healed him?’
The time traveller shrugged his shoulders, folding his arms as though to keep himself warm. ‘He’ll need a lot more than that to regain the confidence he’s lost. Long before we arrived here.’
‘These villagers have lost a lot more,’ Penelope said, and the words just came tumbling out. ‘See what your interference has done, you proud man.
Look at them!’
The Doctor didn’t look up. ‘And where were you during the battle?’
98
Penelope frowned. ‘Helping Mikeneko pull her grandchildren out of a burning hut.’
‘Ah,’ he said, and smiled without humour. ‘There’s hope for you yet.’
‘I feel,’ said Penelope, ‘filthy. Not because there is soot in my mouth and nose and my clothes are muddy. I feel damned for my part in this tragedy.
Damned.’
‘Then you have two choices,’ said the Doctor. His voice sounded as though it was coming from a long way away. ‘You can stay in hell.’
‘Or?’ said Penelope, at length.
The Doctor looked up at the time conveyance, lying in the corner like a sorry collection of clockwork.
‘You can win.’
The afternoon was dragging for Aoi. He sat on the veranda of the house, his back to the captives, and wished his father had seen fit to give him a more important duty than watching over these peasants.
He felt a little sorry for them, but peasants must be used to this sort of thing, so why didn’t they stop crying? He shifted his position, holding his spear across his lap.
From here he had a view of the rest of the ruined village. In the centre were the remains of the great bonfire where they had burnt the enemy corpses, along with the handful of villagers who had been caught by arrows or trampled by horses.
To one side was the shrine. Two huts to either side had collapsed, their singed roofs lying on piles of charred timber. The shrine itself had escaped the fire, though it was covered in soot and ash.
Their own honoured dead were being taken to their families by the messengers who were returning to court.
Kiiro was amongst them, slain by some kind of demon fire, his skin blackened and his armour warped. Father had not said a word about his old friend’s demise, though his face was stem.
Aoi had caught a glimpse of the object inside the shrine, part stone