The Ghosts of N-Space - Barry Letts [66]
A moan came from Nicodemus. ‘Master!’ he called.
Relinquishing his hold on the Doctor, the friar floated across the room. As he approached it, he grew more and more transparent; and melted into the wall.
For a moment: the Doctor stared at the arm, which was now quite still. Then he turned and left the workshop. He closed the door behind him and quietly walked into the darkness.
‘These scrambled eggs are undoubtedly the most delicious I’ve ever eaten,’ said Sarah Jane, scraping up the last morsels and squidging them onto the last buttery scrap of toast. ‘Why didn’t you let me have them before?’
There was a generally festive air in the TARDIS now they were back in their own clothes and safely on the way to the twentieth century. True, it was tempered by a certain amount of sheepish guilt on both their parts that the puritan policy of non-intervention had been abandoned. But still, it 232
looked as if they’d managed between them to solve the problem they set out to solve, even if the Time Lords wouldn’t have approved.
Guido’s plan for their escape had worked impeccably.
Sarah in a servant’s gown, complete with apron, and a kerchief to hide her short hair (all pinched from the sewing-room), marched out of the busy gate minutes before a clean-shaven clerkly fellow in a black robe (the red surcoat being left, along with an unsavoury mess of second-hand whiskers, tucked under a pile of saddle-cloths). But it wasn’t until they had located the TARDIS and closed the door behind them that Sarah could rid herself of the feeling that they were being followed.
‘The eggs? Yes, they were good, weren’t they?’ said the Doctor, ‘I’d forgotten I had them, to tell the truth. They’re royal eggs in a sense. Came from the King’s kitchen.’
He really was a bit of a snob, the Doctor. ‘Don’t you mean the Queen’s?’
‘No, no. The King of Wessex. Chap called Alfred.’
‘King Alfred? The one who burnt the cakes?’
‘Not while I was there. He had a cook: name of Ethelburg. A dab hand at bear rissoles, I remember.’
So the eggs were over a thousand years old. Uggh!
‘Hardly fresh from the hen, then.’
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‘Mm? Couple of days at the outside. Don’t forget there’s no time in the TARDIS, so they’re probably fresher than the ones you get from the supermarket.’
Here we go again! thought Sarah, She’d better get sorted out in her own mind exactly what had happened –
and what they could expect when they got back.
The Doctor picked up her plate, waving away her half-hearted attempts to say that no, she’d do it, and carried it off into the neighbouring kitchen-cum‐lab-cum‐workshop with the little sink that made curious swallowing noises when you let the water out.
As they had now sorted Max out, she thought, right at the beginning of his shenanigans, then presumably when they got back, it would turn out that none of what she remembered happening would in fact have happened (this time round, she thought – and then guiltily suppressed the thought, remembering what the Doctor had said about there being only one present moment), So the Brigadier would have to have a different reason for being at his Uncle’s house – if he was in fact there.
Of course, everything she remembered about her trips with the Doctor was still as valid as ever – and she thought about the N-space stuff and the visit to Louisa… And then she remembered Louisa; her romantic fantasies; her sweet personality; her horrible end.
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‘Do you know something, Doctor?’ she said brightly, deliberately to shake off the feeling. ‘I believe you’re mentioned in that book of Ann Radcliffe’s.’
‘What book?’ said the Doctor from the kitchen, with a background of clinking china.
‘The one Jeremy found in the library. The Mystery of the Castello. Louisa said that there was a magician – she thought it was Merlin, and that could have been you once you’d given up the Father Christmas at Selfridges bit –
anyway, this good guy turned up in a pumpkin or a flash of lightning