Doctor Who_ Wolfsbane - Jac Rayner [91]
He laid out clothing on the bed beside her, avoiding the blood: skirt and coat, blouse, underwear, stockings, shoes, even a hat. She felt neither embarrassed nor flirtatious about this man handling her underthings. All her emotions were elsewhere.
She dressed slowly, each action automatic but carried out without the concentration it needed. Foot in left stocking.
Miss. Try again. Foot in right stocking. As she pulled it up her thumbnail went right through the delicate nylon material. Her skirt was back to front, and her coat misbuttoned, a button too many at the bottom and a button hole bulging out unused in the middle.
She went down the stairs and joined the Doctor in the living room. He‟d started to clear it up: the chair was upright again and the scattered silver had been collected together and placed on the table. There was a whistling noise coming from the kitchen, and as she sat down on the sofa he went to take the kettle off the boil and make the tea.
He brought back two cups, already milked and sugared.
She accepted one, and tried to decide how to broach the subject, because she needed to talk to someone.
„I have spoken of this and that of my early life,‟ she said to him. „I have not told you the full story, and I will not do so now, but I will tell you some things, if you are willing to listen.‟
He nodded, and so she told him of not knowing her parents, of the discovery of her true nature, of the classification and imprisonment by the National Socialists, of the murder of the Sturmabteilung. And then she told him of her escape to find her family in England, where she would be safe.
„But I had no family in England,‟ she said. „Cousin George and cousin Hester - with whom I have made my home for these past months - they are not my kin. The memories, the knowledge of them - that was placed in my head by Hester and her magicks. And yet, although I now know this, my mind does not feel it. For it still has those thoughts and memories, that knowledge. So how am I ever to trust myself again? I say I have never known my parents. Perhaps I had loving parents, who cared for me, whom I knew well! But this Hester Stanton, she said, “I need an orphan, I need one to think that she has no family but me”. And so my parents were taken from my mind for ever. Perhaps, in Germany, there is no register of non-humans. This Hester Stanton, she reads in her English papers that the Nazis are taking the Jews into camps, sterilising those they think impure, and she thinks, “I will make this happen in her head, happen to the werewolves, for then she will flee to England, to me”. She hears on her wireless of the Wiessee massacre, and that, she decides, will be the escape, the trigger to send me running for my life across the border. How can I live my life now? I have no past, not one that I know is true. I do not know who I am!‟
The Doctor didn‟t answer. But he sat down on the sofa and put an arm around her shoulder. When she looked up, she saw that he was crying too.
The path Harry had taken was still visible when the Doctor and Emmeline set out later that day. The foliage was becalmed now, but they could see where it had bent back to let him through. They went in the woods one side, and came out the other. The entrance to the cave was not as easy to see, and they might have missed it altogether if it had not been for the sobbing. They followed the sounds - thwarted, hysterical sounds - and came to the place where Hester Stanton had met her end. It didn‟t seem beautiful to them.
George Stanton was lying face down in a shallowly dug trench, throwing mud and flowers to either side.
„George?‟ said the Doctor, softly.
„I‟m not George!‟ shouted back the man, not pausing in his digging. „Not any more.‟
The Doctor raised his eyebrows at Emmeline. „Your majesty King Mordred, then,‟ he said.