Doctor Who_ The Roundheads - Mark Gatiss [28]
The watchman regarded their two charges with renewed interest. ‘I can get a message to John Thurloe,’ he mused.
‘Who knows? Even General Cromwell may be interested.’
The Doctor’s eyes flashed with excitement.
The jailer moved to the door. ‘We will return,’ he muttered.
The Doctor nodded his head sagely. ‘Very well. The McCrimmon and I will await you.’
The two men backed out of the room, the jailer cannoning into the watchman as he squeezed his massive buttocks through the doorway. They both cast final, fearful glances at their prisoners through the little barred window in the door and then, after turning the key in the lock, vanished.
At once the Doctor began to laugh cheerfully and rubbed his hands together. He took out his recorder from his coat pocket and began playing a little jig.
‘Oh, Doctor,’ lamented Jamie, ‘what did you want to go and say all that nonsense for? If they think we’re important, we’ll never get away.’
The Doctor looked slightly affronted. ‘Well, I had to do something, didn’t I, Jamie? And I think we’ll have a far better chance of pleading our case to Cromwell than to those two thugs. Besides –’ he gave a mischievous smile – ‘I’ve always wanted to meet him.’
The standard fell. Fell and was trampled into the mud, its supporting pole snapped beneath the feet of the advancing Roundhead force. Its motto was obscured but its pictures still plain enough: a Bible, the countryside, a sword, a laurel wreath, a crown...
They swept forward, pikes bristling like huge wooden fangs before them, bellowing their battle cry, as men seethed and fought around them.
Their armour glinted dully in the daylight, dazzling those they faced whose eyes were already confused by the riot of colour. Here, the broad orange sashes that were tied around the soldiers’ waists. There, the belching black smoke of exploding powder kegs. Elsewhere, the livid crimson of spilled blood, soaking into the Yorkshire earth.
Hot now it was. Summery hot with woodsmoke smells mingling with the stink of the dog daisies that covered the field of battle.
The constant thrum-thrum of the drums was like blood pounding in the ears. Or the sound of the troopers’ mud-caked boots as they ran at full pelt across the field.
Horses thundered by, musket shots rang out, and the horses fell, whinnying in pain, crashing to the hard soil, crushing their riders.
And now here was a new sound. Unexpected, eerie, almost beautiful. It was singing. The Roundheads were singing psalms as their dragoons roared into the Royalist flank.
The boy stepped bravely forward, facing the Roundhead troopers, the red sash around his waist a proud symbol of is Royalist allegiance. He thrust his pike forward and charged, his mouth stretching into an ‘O’, his throat already hoarse from shouting.
The musket ball seared the air as though it were a comet, striking the boy cleanly between the eyes. He stood stock still for a moment, his senses too shocked to realise that he was already dead.
The pike slid from his grip and he toppled backward into the mud. At once, the troopers advanced over him, their feet smashing his delicate face into bloodied pulp...
William Kemp jerked awake and almost fell out of the narrow bed. He was breathing as though he’d run a mile and his calico nightshirt was drenched in sweat.
He put his head in his hands and tried to focus his eyes in the pitch-dark room.
Beside him, Sarah slept on, but Kemp could see nothing but the boy’s face. The boy from the dream. His own boy, Arthur.
He had been a brave little soldier – all who knew him had said – and had joined the King’s side without a moment’s hesitation, despite his youth. His commander had been a man called Sir Harry Cooke who had nothing but praise for the young Kemp, something that filled his father with pride.
But it had all come to an end. All of it. On a field called Marston Moor, hundreds of miles from home.
The Roundhead musket ball had taken away Kemp’s son but created something else. Inside William Kemp, a hard, black ball of bitter poison had begun to grow.
Pitch and roll... pitch