Doctor Who_ The Roundheads - Mark Gatiss [30]
Rubbing his stiff neck, Whyte kept a weather eye on the sleeping Polly and tried to ignore his grumbling belly. He had stayed awake much of the night, as keen to avoid the attentions of the young Ganymedes who frequented the park as to ensure Polly did not elude him.
He had spent much of this time contemplating the current situation. Unlike Sir John Copper, he was no disgruntled Parliamentarian, He had fought bravely for the King throughout the conflict as a captain. Wounded at the Battle of Edgehill, he had carried on the Royalist cause as best he could, as an agent for His Majesty, travelling incognito about London and bringing back his reports to the Royalist base in Oxford. It was while going about his secretive business that Sir John Copper had approached him, almost as a molly might in the park, thought Whyte with a smile. Though initially suspicious, he had soon warmed to the older man’s rhetoric. Copper feared that the army had gone too far, that they would tilt the land into utter chaos unless the sensible thing was done and the King restored to his throne.
To his surprise, Whyte found that not so much separated them as he would have thought. War made strange bedfellows.
On the mildewed bench inside the gardeners’ shelter, Polly stirred and Whyte dropped back into the foliage out of sight.
The young woman stretched and blinked, then grimaced, obviously recalling where she was.
Swinging her legs off the bench, she got unsteadily to her feet and pulled her cloak tightly around her. Then, with a quick look around, she set off to face the day.
Christopher Whyte waited a few moments and then followed close behind her.
The Doctor threw up his hands in exasperation. ‘Do pay attention, Jamie,’ he sighed. ‘You’re supposed to be an oracle.’
‘I am?’ said Jamie with a frown. ‘I thought that was a kind of wee boat.’
‘No, no. An oracle. A fount of wisdom. And it’ll do us a fat lot of good if Cromwell turns up and finds that you know next to nothing about the Civil Wars.’
Jamie folded his arms defensively. The schoolboy’s book lay on the cold stone floor at his feet.
‘I know what Polly said. About the King ruling without Parliament.’
The Doctor gave a soothing smile. ‘That’s right. And he did it, too. For eleven years until he ran out of money.’
Jamie nodded. ‘What did he need the money for?’
The Doctor looked up at the low ceiling of the cell. ‘Oh, a war against the Scots.’
Jamie let out a snort of disbelief. ‘Hang on, Doctor. I thought you said the Scots were on his side.’
‘Yes. But that was later on. This was before the wars broke out.’
Jamie slid glumly down the wall. ‘Och, I’ll never get it.
Why couldn’t you be the oracle?’
The Doctor clasped his hands together. ‘Yes, well, we weren’t fortunate there, were we?’
The cell door rattled and then creaked open, revealing the bulky form of the watchman. He didn’t seem keen to come any nearer to his prisoners and looked at them with something like fear. ‘Very well, you two,’ he said. ‘They’re ready for you.’
It was, Ben thought, the very definition of a motley crew.
Aside from Isaac Ashdown, the rest of the ship’s complement seemed united by only one thing: their oddness. There were Moors, Turks, a hook-handed African and a vast, flame-haired Irishman called O’Kane who seemed to put the fear of God into the rest of them.
Most were now assembled in a sweating, heaving line as they pulled with great effort on one of the ship’s tarred ropes.
With a cry of satisfaction, the topsail they’d been hoisting slotted into place, flapping in the stiff North Sea wind.
At their head squatted Ben and Ashdown, brows speckled with beads of perspiration.
Ben fell back on to the deck with a groan and rubbed his aching arms. Struggling to speak between heaving breaths, he turned to Ashdown.
‘What’s our cargo, mate?’
The older sailor shrugged. ‘Wool. Flour. Suet. Odds and sods.’
Ben let his gaze range over the deck and out across the wild grey sea. ‘And the ship is definitely coming back to London?’
‘Certainly.