Doctor Who_ The Roundheads - Mark Gatiss [95]
Winter recovered at once and struggled to her knees.
‘Thank ‘ee Ben!’ she gasped, lifting her own sword and steadying it over Stanislaus’s throat.
The Pole let out a long, miserable groan. Ben saw the rope whip across the mud flat like a sidewinder and grabbed desperately at it.
It tautened at once and he heard the voice of his rescuer again.
‘There’s three of us, lad. Hold on!’
Ben wound the rope around his hands once more but he was unable to take his eyes off the scene before him.
Winter paused before delivering the final blow to her hated enemy.
‘Goodbye, then,’ she said with a smile, the moonlight glinting off her silver nose.
Stanislaus gritted his teeth and stared up at Winter. ‘I curse you, Winter. With my dying breath I curse you.’
Winter laughed. ‘You’d not be the first.’
There was a short, loud crack and Ben looked round. He was just beginning to slide from the mud and thought for a moment that the rope had snapped.
But it was still firm in his hands and, as he shifted and writhed, he began to be pulled free of the dreadful mud.
He looked quickly round. Sal Winter was no longer kneeling above the prostrate form of Stanislaus. She was lying on her back, blood pumping from a huge hole in her neck.
Ben realised at once that the sound had been a shot. He could already see figures from the beached ships racing across the mud towards them.
He began to scrabble at the great, filthy mass around him as his rescuers pulled from the shore. Then, in one swift movement, he was free and lying flat out on the mud.
Stanislaus was lying there too, bewildered and not quite sure what had happened..
He looked over at Ben and then, with shocking speed, jumped to his feet, almost delirious with joy. He kicked Winter’s body and swung round to face the exhausted Ben.
Ben didn’t wait for the Polish captain’s latest smart retort.
With a snarl he leapt to his feet and, with a rapid one-two, smashed him full in the face.
Stanislaus hovered for a second and then toppled backward.
Ben was tempted to grind his face into the mud, to drown the bastard there and then, but he could see the figures approaching and was, in any case, far more concerned with his friend Sal Winter.
Swiftly, he knelt down and lifted the woman’s head from the mud. She was already ghastly pale but managed a flicker of a smile as she focused on Ben’s face.
‘Sal-’
Winter shook her head and wagged a fat finger in Ben’s face.
‘It’s over, my lad,’ she whispered. ‘The sea shall claim me at last.’
Ben stroked the blood-matted hair from Winter’s eyes and shook his head sadly.
‘You must promise me... you must promise me that you will avenge me, Ben,’ gasped the old sailor. ‘Avenge me...
with style.’
She smiled and then the smile froze on her face. Her one rheumy eye rolled upward.
Ben sat for a long moment before the voice from the shore broke his reverie.
‘Come! Come! They are almost upon you!’
Gently, he let Winter’s head fall to the wet ground. Then, with a final look at the unconscious Stanislaus, he raced across the mud towards the land, little caring whether he hit another pocket of quicksand.
As he reached the firm shore, another musket ball whistled by him. He had escaped just in time.
Three men were waiting for him as he scrambled across the shingle. Two were little more than boys, dressed in ragged, disreputable clothing. The third was an old man with a leathery face and the most appalling body odour Ben had ever encountered.
Even in his desire to thank them for saving his life, Ben couldn’t help but avert his nose from the fearful stink.
‘Ben Jackson?’ said Nathaniel Scrape, extending a hand.
Ben was too astonished to shake it. ‘How do you know my name?’
Utterly dejected, Frances Kemp ascended the stairs that led to the room above the inn and made her way sluggishly down the corridor. Her heart was leaden in her breast, and her every movement spoke of her misery.
In her hand she carried a rolled parchment