Doctor Who_ The Roundheads - Mark Gatiss [11]
In ten minutes he was hopelessly lost.
CHAPTER 2
A fierce wind had whipped up the snow into a blinding curtain enveloping Parliament and muffling the sounds of activity within its precincts.
Pride and Grey still stood before the ranks of troopers, eyes narrowed to slits, their shoulders thick with wet snowflakes. Three more men, three smudged black figures against the whiteness, were in the process of being turned away.
Pride sighed angrily, his breath smoking from his mouth.
‘If you do not retire in peace, sirs, I shall be forced to arrest you.’
The latest victim of the purge snorted in derision, his fat cheeks wobbling. ‘I’ve never heard anything so outrageous in all my life. Arrest me?’
‘Well, if you insist,’ said Pride, signalling to one of the soldiers, who rapidly dismounted and marched over to his colonel.
‘Sir?’
Pride nodded towards the three MPs. ‘These gentlemen are to be confined until further notice.’
The soldier nodded and shoved the leading member in the small of the back. Still protesting, the three men were bundled away.
Grey looked down at the list, now thick with black lines where the members’ names had been excised. ‘Almost a hundred and sixty, Colonel.’
Pride nodded in satisfaction. ‘And the remainder will vote through the King’s trial or I’m Prince Rupert.’
Grey smiled grimly, his mouth forming a thin line like a knife wound. ‘Then our work today is almost done.’
Pride gave a low chuckle. ‘If you fear your blood’s turning to ice, My Lord, then off you go to your fireplace. I’ll stay as long as it takes.’
Grey shook his head. ‘Nay, you’ll not shift me, Thomas Pride. Let’s continue.’
He pulled himself up to his full height as another knot of unfortunates approached.
The Doctor slid down the roundelled corridor wall and gave a little whimper of frustration. Really, it was absolutely intolerable for him to lose his way inside his own TARDIS.
He had been walking round and round in circles, sometimes catching sight of a familiar chair or a bust of some long-dead emperor. But there was no way to tell if he was making any kind of progress. He half suspected the TARDIS
was toying with him, getting a little revenge for all the hard work he made her do.
‘Wretched thing,’ he snapped, kicking against the wall with his boot.
There was a strange, low sound, almost like a groan, and the Doctor looked up in surprise.
Then, with a soft click, a door opened in the wall where he had never noticed one before. It was a perfectly reasonable door, rectangular, soundly constructed and ordinary. But the room it opened on to was quite another thing altogether.
The Doctor scrambled to his feet and stepped gingerly forward, pushing the door back to its full extent.
‘Well I never,’ said the Doctor, a smile creeping slowly over his face.
The room was small, cluttered, and rather airless. It was musty and cobwebbed with a smell like old books and damp clothes combined. And, in contrast to the warm luminescence of everywhere else in the TARDIS, it was completely dark.
A funnel of light from the corridor beyond showed up some things the Doctor recognised at once. Alphabet building blocks were scattered over the floor, which was itself covered by a thick Turkish rug. Clockwork cars, tin soldiers, and slightly sinister Victorian dolls, their fat cheeks and blank eyes grimy with dust, were strewn about the place. In the centre of it all, jerking back and forth, back and forth as though someone’s hand had only just set it in motion, was a rocking horse.
The Doctor walked slowly and carefully through the litter of toys and placed his palm on the cracked varnish of the rocking horse’s head. It stopped suddenly.
‘What are you trying to show me, old girl?’ asked the Doctor to the air.
He looked about and caught sight of a hurricane lamp which was standing, rather incongruously, on top of a box of bricks.
Picking it up, the Doctor slid open the glass front and examined the wick. The lamp stank of paraffin and he rapidly lit a match, illuminating the little room with a soft, pleasant glow.
As he did so, another