Doctor Who_ The Stone Rose - Jacqueline Rayner [0]
by Jacqueline Rayner
* * *
Prologue
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
Acknowledgements
About the Author
* * *
For Debbie, who made the Roman years so much fun
* * *
Rose carefully dropped three pound coins into the large collecting box at the entrance to the British Museum.
Her mum tutted. ‘What d’you want to go and do that for? You don’t have to pay.’
‘It’s a donation,’ Rose pointed out. ‘They suggest you make one.’
Jackie raised disbelieving eyes towards the huge domed ceiling. ‘That’s only for people who haven’t been dragged here against their wills on a Sunday morning.’
Rose laughed and exchanged a look with Mickey. ‘You didn’t have to come, Mum.’
Jackie tossed back her long blonde hair. ‘You think I was going to stay behind? It’s a surprise, Mickey said. Come and see, Mickey said. You’ll never believe it. Mind you, things I’ve seen, can’t imagine what I’m not going to believe, but –’
‘You’re right,’ Rose interrupted. ‘I didn’t really expect you to stay behind. Come on. Let’s get on with it, then.’
As Mickey moved off, Rose looked around for the fourth member of their party, but the Doctor had already vanished into one of the galleries. Shrugging, she walked off anyway, following Mickey’s lead.
Mickey had been really excited to see her this time – even more than usual. Because he had a surprise for her. A huge surprise. An unbelievable surprise. And they were on their way to see it.
They passed the marble lion that gazed on the museum’s Great Court with hollow, sorrowful eyes.
‘He looks so sad,’ Rose said.
‘You’d be miserable if you’d been stuck in a museum for –’ Jackie bent down to read the little plaque beneath the statue – ‘nearly two and a half thousand years.’
Rose didn’t point out that the museum hadn’t been around for anywhere near that long, because she knew her mum knew it anyway. But she understood what Jackie meant. She had a sudden wave of illogical pity for the carved creature, frozen for ever due to a sculptor’s whim over two millennia ago.
Jackie was still looking at the lion. ‘Two and a half thousand years,’ she said again. That’s even older than him.’
‘Him’, Rose knew, was the Doctor.
‘Hey, why doesn’t he get wrinkles? I mean, However many hundred years, even with the new body, got to do something to the skin. Free radicals and all that. I bet we’re not the only planet with pollution. Can you find out what he uses? Make a fortune, he could.’
‘This is the Doctor we’re talking about, not Dad.’ Rose rolled her eyes. ‘He’s no salesman.’
Mickey was beckoning them, and they left the statue and headed on. There was the Doctor in the Egyptian gallery, examining the Rosetta Stone. ‘It was a right pain when they found this,’ he said, giving a little wave as they passed. There I was, just about to launch my English‐hieroglyphic dictionary, when along come Napoleon’s soldiers and the bottom falls out of the market.’
‘There. Not a salesman,’ Rose said. ‘Told you.’ She waved back, then they headed down a flight of steps and round a corner, Mickey never hesitating, as if he knew the way by heart.
They passed rows of carved Roman heads, hundreds of sightless eyes watching their progress. Then there were some sarcophagi, and a giant stone foot that seemed almost too comedic to be in such a serious place as a museum.
Then they came to a row of statues, sculpted human forms, some headless, some armless, but all possessed of a shining white dignity despite their misfortunes.
Mickey stopped. ‘There you are,’ he said. He was grinning, a dog who’d just fetched her a stick and was waiting for a grateful response.
Rose looked at the statue in front of her, a marble priestess with a veil. It was lovely, but not all that exciting.
Then Jackie gasped. ‘Oh, my God. I don’t believe it!’
Rose transferred her gaze to the next sculpture along. And she gasped too.
It was a perfect stone replica – of herself.
And, according to its sign, it was nearly 2,000 years old.