Doctor Who_ The Roundheads - Mark Gatiss [12]
He looked puzzled. ‘Curiouser and curiouser, said the Doctor,’ he mumbled.
He walked on to the door, popped his head through, and realised, with a start, that he was looking out on to the corridor that led directly to the main console room.
He let out a little laugh and patted the wall affectionately.
‘Oh, bless you,’ he said happily.
Then, as he squeezed himself through the narrow door, his eyes alighted on something lying on the rug right beneath his feet.
The Doctor frowned, then stooped to pick it up. It was a book, solid and heavy, covered in a smooth paper dust jacket and decorated with a pleasantly idealised colour painting dating from some time in the 1920s.
He pressed it to his chest and shook his head in bewilderment. The TARDIS never ceased to surprise him.
As soon as he had stepped out into the corridor, the little door behind him seemed to vanish.
The Doctor blew out the flame in the hurricane lamp and made his way through to the console room, picking up his cloak and swinging it over his shoulders. He drummed his fingers over the book’s surface as he opened the doors and stepped back into the cold alleyway.
It wasn’t exactly what he’d been after, he had to admit, but, in its own particular way, the TARDIS had found what he was looking for and given it to him.
At least Jamie would be pleased, thought the Doctor, plunging Every Boy’s Book Of the English Civil Wars deep into his pocket.
The attic room was a low, dark place which William Kemp normally kept empty. It was used occasionally to put up a guest if the inn was unexpectedly full, in which case a shaky old bed and mattress would be disinterred for the purpose.
Today, though, Kemp stooped beneath its rafters, pouring ale into a heavy jug which sat upon a table which he had spent most of the previous afternoon trying to manoeuvre inside.
Half a dozen men were sitting around it, champing anxiously on clay pipes and, as a consequence, wreathed in a tug of tobacco.
A few moments before, they had been arguing fiercely, but now Kemp’s arrival had stilled their voices. He finished his work and the man at the top of the table, an imposing, silver-bearded figure, nodded to him.
‘Will there be anything else, sir?’ Kemp asked, hoping to be privy to the conversation.
Silver Beard shook his head. ‘Nay, Will. We will call if anything is required.’
Kemp bowed disappointedly and withdrew, looking quickly at the other figures before closing the little wooden door after him.
When they were sure Kemp’s footsteps had faded, the group began at once to speak again in tones of barely concealed fury. The silver-bearded man, Sir John Copper, held up his hands in a conciliatory gesture.
‘Peace, peace, gentlemen, I pray you.’
By his side sat Christopher Whyte, a handsome, cocky young fellow of thirty-three with long, flowing chestnut hair and brilliant-blue eyes. His face, fixed in a sardonic half-smile, managed to look interested and indifferent simultaneously.
Sitting just across the table was the sweating, flushed form of Benedict Moor and it was he who chose to speak now, lowering his voice in deference to Copper’s gesture.
‘Turned out!’ he croaked. ‘Turned out of the Commons!
And by Thomas Pride. God save us, he was a drayman before the wars.’
Whyte shook his head, his long hair brushing over the velvet collar of his coat. ‘If the Commons required us all to be of noble birth, Ben, then it would hardly live up to its name.’
Moor scowled at him. ‘You know what I mean, lad.’
Copper turned to Whyte and patted his hand amusedly.
‘Yes, you do, Chris. And do not play merry with Master Moor’s feelings.’
Moor banged his fist on the table, making the ale in the jug slosh about. ‘By what authority would they try their King?
Have they taken leave of their senses?’
Sir John Copper stroked his beard and looked down at the table, his almond-shaped eyes unreadable.
‘You know what they would say, Ben,’ he said, his voice measured and calm. ‘Fairfax and Cromwell