The Ghosts of N-Space - Barry Letts [44]
‘Where are we going?’
‘Where we should have gone in the first place: the sixteenth century. We have to find out exactly what is going on.’
Sarah pelted after him and managed to catch him just before he went out of the door. ‘Please wait,’ she said, ‘I’ve got something to tell you, something quite appalling.’
He stopped; and she told him what she’d heard and seen and what it meant: Louisa was the white lady.
‘Is that all?’ he said. ‘I came to that conclusion some time ago. Now, do hurry up. We can talk in the TARDIS.’
He set off again with even more purpose.
Sarah caught him up as he set off across the bailey, half following alongside him, half dodging in front. Why couldn’t he stop and listen?
‘But don’t you see?’ she said. ‘We can’t leave now.
Louisa’s going to die!’
He stopped short and turned to her. He was very serious.
‘Of course she is,’ he said. ‘Aren’t you?’
Mario could hardly be accounted a success as a recruiting officer. After going round most of the houses in 155
the village like an odd pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses, they had had no success at all in persuading anybody to come up to the castello; all were either too frightened of the reported fiends or too offended by the Barone’s castigation of them as traditori, which the Brigadier gathered meant ‘traitors’.
As they approached the last house but two, they heard the sounds of domestic strife: a duet of bass rumble and shrieking soprano with a percussive accompaniment of thumps and tinkling crashes, as of thrown pots. The front door burst open and a large fat man came out like the human projectile from the mouth of a circus cannon. Uncle Mario seized his opportunity; the man, one Sergio, seized his, readily agreeing to escape for a while, pausing only to hurl a few more verbal missiles through the open door, which was soon slammed in his face.
The next house producing no reply whatsoever, it looked as if Sergio was to be their entire force. However, at the last house of all, a young man with dark hair, greased into an Elvis quiff, appeared.
‘Why, you sure came to the right little ol’ venue, man,’
he said, as soon as he realized that the Brigadier was English. He dived back inside, a murmur of voices was heard, all of which was unintelligible bar the words ‘ grazie a Dio! ’, and he reappeared, clutching a battered old acoustic guitar.
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The castello defence force thus constituted, it made its way slowly back up the hill, stopping every few steps for Mario to rest his legs, which were starting to wobble; Sergio to get his breath and complain once more that his wife refused to cook for him; and Roberto – for that was his name – to sing another chorus of ‘Blue Suede Shoes’.
The Brigadier plodded on with a grim face. Compared with this lot, Jeremy was starting to look amazingly competent.
Where had Jeremy got to, anyway? He hadn’t seen him since breakfast.
Jeremy was in fact sitting in the stinking darkness of the compartment in the bows of the Princess M. where the anchor cable was housed, wish his hands tied behind his back and a large piece of adhesive wrapping tape stuck over his mouth. His bottom was wet, his nose was sore and he’d got pains in his back, in his belly, in his… Oh, all over!
This was what came of playing the hero, he thought bitterly. All this action man stuff – huh! He was about as much use as one of those plastic dolls. He hadn’t found out a thing, and it was quite obvious that the Vilmio chap wasn’t just going to leave him to rot. Oh no. Their next encounter was likely to be even more unpleasant than the first.
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He tried to rally his always small supply of courage.
Name, rank and number, that’s all they ever gave away in the war films. No matter what they did to him (and his mind turned away with a shudder from the thought), he wouldn’t tell them anything about the castle, or the Brig, or the Doctor or May the twenty-first or anything.
Not that he knew anything about May the twenty-first, apart from the fact that it was tomorrow; so