Doctor Who_ The Roundheads - Mark Gatiss [48]
Richard looked up, astonished, and then scrutinised the page again to make sure he had read it correctly. He mouthed the dates and gulped nervously. According to the strange book, his father would die in ten years’ time!
Quickly, he read on. ‘Lord Protec— Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland.’
Richard felt his pulse quicken and a strange, buzzing in his ears. His father, then, would rule the kingdom, alone. As something called Lord Protector.
Richard laid the book down on the blanket and shivered.
What could it mean? Where had the strange volume come from?
‘Perhaps some prophecy,’ he muttered to himself.
He picked up the book again. It was unlike anything he had ever set eyes on before. He knew that it was somehow special.
A fragment of some conversation sprang into his mind. Of course! The Scotch seer and his doctor. He had heard of the strangers Thurloe had uncovered. Perhaps the book had something to do with them.
Resolving to investigate further in the morning, Richard was about to put the book aside and go to sleep when a thought struck him.
Gingerly, he began to leaf through the pages. What if he were in there, too?
Captain Sal Winter’s peg leg made a hollow clopping sound on the cobbles as she and Ben followed Stanislaus and Godley.
Ben gritted his teeth, convinced that the noise would be heard, but they kept their distance through the labyrinthine streets and, though more than once they thought they had lost the two men, they eventually came to a halt in a small, tumbledown courtyard.
It was dominated by a vast, sloping roof which came down from the highest building in the yard and continued to the ground, a kind of rough barn having been erected in its shelter.
Next to this was a collection of ramshackle houses with high gables and broken lead guttering. One of these, smaller than the rest with elaborate but faded blue tiles on its walls, had a lamp burning in a window.
Ben and Winter kept well back, crouching down by the barn and watching as Stanislaus approached the house.
He looked behind him furtively and then laid his hand on a wire bell pull.
There was a soft, resounding tinkle and the sound of someone stirring within. Godley swept his hat from his head and he too looked back the way they had come, his big brown eyes shining in the starlight
After a moment a bolt was drawn back and the door opened, revealing an extraordinarily tall figure standing in the porchway. From their vantage point at the entrance to the courtyard, Ben and Winter could make out nothing of the man’s features. He inclined his head slightly, as though in greeting, and Stanislaus and Godley went inside.
As soon as the door was closed behind them, Ben crept out from his hiding place and, keeping close to the walls of the houses, made his way to the tiled residence.
Once he was below the window he sat down on the cold ground and beckoned urgently to Winter. The woman began to hobble across the courtyard and Ben winced at the steady clatter of her false leg.
Winter gasped as she slid her bulk down next to Ben and the young man held up his finger in a gesture of silence. There was more light coming from within the house now and they could see the shadows of the three men moving about.
After a time, all three sat down and Ben pricked his ears in the hope of catching a fragment of their conversation. If only the weather had been warmer, he thought ruefully, perhaps the window would have been propped open. But it was cold now and he drew his cloak closely about him as the night air grew ever more chill.
Ben beckoned to Winter, who slid across the cobbles on her voluminous backside.
‘What else do you know about this Stanislaus bloke?’
asked Ben in a low whisper.
Winter’s huge shoulders contracted in a shrug. ‘He’s no better than a pirate,’ she spat. ‘And treats his men no better than beasts.’
Ben frowned. ‘Then why do they stay with him?’
Winter grunted. ‘Pirates pay well. They get to supplement their wage with whatever booty they can strip off