Doctor Who_ The Stone Rose - Jacqueline Rayner [45]
Rose peeked round a tree. There was a clearing in front of them, only a small one, but enough for there to be a break in the tree‐top canopy overhead. Rose hadn’t realised how dark it had been among the trees until the sunlight hit her and dazzled her eyes. As they came back into focus, she realised what the Doctor had been talking about. In the clearing was a small stone building, a derelict husk with gaping holes in its walls.
‘What is it?’ she whispered. ‘Some sort of shrine?’ The Doctor nodded. ‘I think so,’ he said. ‘A very old one. Abandoned, obviously – well, by most people. You know, tomorrow is the Quinquatrus. I think Ursus is planning to hold his very own festival here.’
There was a noise from inside the shrine: a scuffling sound.
‘Maybe not that abandoned,’ said Rose.
They crept forward, silent as mice, and peered through a gap in the nearest wall. Rose and Vanessa both had to stifle gasps as the Doctor frowned at them to be quiet.
Ursus was inside – but so was a woman. She was turned away, so they couldn’t see her properly, but Rose could tell she was clearly wearing a helmet and carrying a shield and spear. She reminded her of the picture of Britannia on the back of a fifty‐pence piece, but something more than that… Ursus had dressed Rose herself in a helmet like that, made her carry a spear like that. That meant this woman too was dressed as the goddess Minerva. Rose grimaced – he obviously had some sort of art/war goddess thing going on, and she felt unclean at the thought she’d been a part of it.
But then the woman turned and this time Rose wasn’t able to stop herself gasping. The light! The light that shone from the woman’s eyes! The beautiful, ethereal glow from her face! The way her hair swam out around her head in a halo, as though she were under water.
This woman wasn’t dressed as the goddess Minerva.
She was the goddess Minerva.
Ursus was speaking. ‘I have created the most perfect work to honour you, at this time of your festival,’ he said.
The Doctor nudged Rose. ‘That’s you!’ he whispered, rather insensitively she thought.
She nudged him back and kept listening.
Minerva nodded. ‘And you will be rewarded for your devotion,’ she said, in a voice like honey and rose petals. ‘As long as you make offerings to me, I will give you what you desire.’
‘I don’t think I want to watch this…’ murmured Rose.
There was another sound from the temple, a frightened baaa. Ursus was carrying forward a baby lamb.
‘I really don’t want to watch this!’ said Rose, as the sculptor held up a knife. ‘Oi! You! Stop!’ She was halfway into the shrine before the Doctor could react. No cute farmyard animals were being slaughtered on her watch…
The knife hung in the air as she charged forward. It dropped, lower, lower… Rose felt as if she was in slow motion.
She was in slow motion. The goddess was looking at her with those unearthly, shining eyes, and she wasn’t able to run any more.
She was dimly aware of the Doctor and Vanessa following her into the temple.
She was dimly aware of the painful, heartbreaking final bleat of the lamb as its lifeblood ran on to the floor, and of Ursus’s triumphant cry.
But all she could see was the goddess, blood pooling around her feet.
And then – horribly – the blood began to vanish, as if the goddess was a sponge, soaking it up. Then the body of the lamb, already tiny, began to shrink. Its essence was liquefying, puddling where the blood had been and being sucked up in its turn until there was not a woolly fragment left.
* * *
THIRTEEN
Rose stared at where the lamb had once been. She felt sick.
‘Don’t be upset, Rose,’ Minerva said. ‘Even gods must eat. It is no different from you consuming –’ she paused, as if searching for the right words – ‘a lamb chop or a kebab.’
‘Right,’ said Rose, dazed. ‘Er, I think maybe I won’t be doing that any more.’
‘Come forward, Doctor, Vanessa,’ the goddess continued. ‘No harm will befall you here.’
‘Are you sure?’ said the Doctor. ‘Because your follower