Doctor Who_ The Roundheads - Mark Gatiss [45]
‘Contacts?’
The Doctor nodded. ‘Yes. Eyes and ears everywhere.’
Scrope nodded Vigorously. ‘Aye. I have to. You have to keep alert in this game.’
‘Quite,’ said the Doctor. ‘Now, I was wondering if you might put some of those contacts at our disposal?’
Scrope nodded and grinned. ‘You lost something?’
‘Aye,’ said Jamie. ‘Two friends.’
Scrope frowned. ‘Oh. Well, happens a lot these days. In the wars, was it?’
The Doctor shook his head. ‘Oh, no. Nothing like that.
They were with us quite recently but our little excursion here has made us miss them. Do you think you might be able to track them down?’
Scrope picked up the sack again. It had left a large yellowy stain in the snow. ‘It’ll be a pleasure, sir, a pleasure.’ He tapped his nose. ‘Nothing gets past this.’
Jamie grunted. ‘Obviously/
The Doctor leaned further out of the window and tried to speak as clearly as possible without raising his voice.
‘The girl’s name is Polly Wright, the boy’s Ben Jackson.
I’ve written down descriptions for you...’ The Doctor stopped, holding the piece of paper out in front of him. ‘You can... er...
you can... ?’
‘Course I can read!’ snapped Scrope, raising his hand.
The Doctor threw the paper from the window and it sailed down, landing at Scrope’s feet.
The old man picked it up looked at it briefly by the light of his lamp.
‘Very well. If they’re in London, I shall find them for you.
Now I must be off.’
He turned and then spoke over his shoulder. ‘I’ll bring news as soon as I can. Goodnight to you, sirs.’
The Doctor and Jamie watched him trudge off through the drifts.
Jamie sat down the wooden sill. ‘We should’ve asked him to help us get out of here.’
‘No,’ said the Doctor. ‘We’ve got to put our minds to retrieving that book. Everything else can wait.’
The streets of old Amsterdam were beginning to glaze with frost as Ben and Sal Winter staggered along them. Their pace was slow, partly because of the amount of ale they had imbibed and partly because, as Ben had discovered to his delight, Winter had a false leg as well as a false nose, completing her extraordinary appearance.
They had left Ashdown in a heap of snoring bodies inside the inn. Ben had been quite tempted to press-gang the sailor on to another ship as a bit of revenge but Ashdown had been kind to him and, anyway, he wasn’t having such a bad time of things.
Ben laughed hysterically as Winter came to the end of another of her seemingly endless supply of filthy anecdotes and slapped the wood-and-iron peg jutting from the hem of her ragged trousers. ‘A twenty-five-footer!’ she bellowed. ‘And it took the lot in one snap!’
Ben’s cherubic face was creased into a broad, astonished grin. ‘What... what about the nose?’
Winter cackled mischievously and stopped, striking a pose with her wooden leg. ‘Ah, now, Master Jackson. I think I’ll have to know you a little better before we get to that tale.’
She smiled coquettishly and Ben felt himself blush.
Rapidly, he changed the subject. The thought of having to somehow get back to London sobered him. He explained his situation to Winter.
‘Then you’ll come with me,’ she said. ‘The Demeter sails on the morning tide.’
Ben was delighted. ‘Are you sure? Will the captain mind?’
Winter let out a huge laugh, her massive chest fairly shaking till the silver buttons on her velvet coat rattled.
‘Mind? Mind? I am the captain of the Demeter!’
Ben was stopped in his tracks. ‘Oh,’ He frowned and then burst out laughing himself. ‘I’ll work my passage,’ he said at last.
Winter shook her head. ‘You’ll do no such thing. You are my guest. And if you’ve been working under that cur Stanislaus, I’ll wager you need a rest.’
Ben nodded. ‘That reminds me, Sal. You never did finish telling me about him.’
Winter’s face fell. She suddenly seemed grave and introspective, as though dredging up some particularly unpleasant memories. ‘He’s a fellow of the night. A dark soul.
I wonder the bastard can sleep.’
Ben was intrigued. ‘Why? What’s he done?’
Winter cocked her head and one good eye glinted in the starlight.