Doctor Who: The Reign of Terror (7 page)

'I'll take any advice that will get
this job done quicker,' growled the foreman.

The Doctor smiled coldly. 'Well, if you
were to expend your energy helping with the digging instead of
bullying and shouting every few minutes and counting your money, the
work would be finished much sooner,' he proposed, rising to his feet.
He saluted with his walking stick. 'Good day to you, Citizen.'

The foreman stared open-mouthed at the
departing figure, his face filled with outraged astonishment. Then he
jumped up and ran in front of the Doctor. 'I suppose you think you're
very clever,' he sneered.

The Doctor pursed his lips and frowned.
Then he grinned. 'Yes, without false modesty I think I can agree,' he
said brightly. 'Now, sir, kindly stand aside.'

With a vicious oath, the foreman
whipped the pistol out of his belt and pointed it at the Doctor's
head. 'Show me your papers!' he ordered.

The Doctor straightened his shoulders,
threw back his head and stared arrogantly down his nose. 'Sir, I am
not in the habit of being ... ' He faltered into silence, realising
that he had been caught out.

The fuming foreman dug the pistol into
the Doctor's ribcage. 'So you can't prove your identity,' he sneered.
'And have you paid your taxes, Citizen?' he demanded, bowing with
mock courtesy.

The Doctor shrugged helplessly and
waved his stick vaguely in the air.

'No? Then perhaps you should put your
energies to better use,' the foreman scoffed, shoving the Doctor in
the direction of the watching peasants. 'Now grab a pick and get to
work.'

With a sigh of resignation the Doctor
laid his stick and his coat on the grass and took a pickaxe from one
of the gang.

The foreman flourished the pistol under
the Doctor's chin. 'And don't try to run away!' he warned.

The Doctor trudged over to the hole and
stood staring defiantly at the grinning bully. 'Aggressive fellow . .
. ' he muttered. Then he bent over the hole and started to chop away
at the broken edges even less energetically than the peasants
themselves.

The foreman spat with satisfied
smugness and sat down on the bank. 'I'll make that schedule after
all,' he grinned, laying the pistol on his knees and unhitching the
purse from his belt.

While the Doctor and the road gang
sweated away in the hot sun, the foreman sorted and counted his
money, occasionally glancing up to bellow at his grumbling slaves.

In the dungeon of the Conciergerie,
Barbara was doggedly chipping away at the mortar joints between the
stone blocks. She was covered in dust and sweat, her arms ached and
the palms of her hands were already badly blistered. She had taken a
mouldy blanket from the bed to muffle the sound of her frantic
excavations, but despite her persistence she had made disappointing
progress in the stifling heat. She stopped for a moment to rest her
arms and to wipe the sweat out of her eyes. Susan, who was leaning
against the door dozing after the sleepless night on the road, opened
here eyes at the sudden silence.

'It's no good, Susan, I've just got to
have a breather ... ' Barbara panted, frowning at her painful
hands. 'I'm tearing them to pieces ... and my knees are raw too.'

Susan stirred guiltily. 'Shall I take
over again?'

'No, your hands are even worse than
mine,' Barbara said firmly.

There was a doomed silence.

'I wonder if Ian's any better eh?'
Susan sighed, peering through the crack where the spyhole had not
closed completely. 'And poor Grandfather ... '

Barbara hung her head and shrugged,
close to defeat.

With a huge effort Susan pulled herself
together. 'Give me the crowbar, Barbara, I'd rather do my stint ...
' she said. 'There's not so much time to think somehow.'

Barbara got stiffly to her feet and
gratefully handed Susan the iron strut. Then she took Susan's place
at the door to keep watch. Susan knelt down and jabbed at the wall a
few times, wincing at the pain from her blisters. She tried a few
more half-hearted jabs and then stuck the end of the bar into the
crack and tried to lever the blocks apart. It was quite hopeless. She
might as well have tried to fly to the moon.

Susan dropped the crowbar on the
flagstones. 'It's no good, Barbara, I just can't ... ' she
whimpered, collapsing onto the bed utterly exhausted.

Barbara came over and slumped down
beside her. 'We'll rest for a while and then try again,' she said,
endeavouring to sound encouraging. 'We've made a lot of headway
already ... ' She knew it wasn't true, but she felt it was vital
not to give in to despair.

Susan suddenly sat bolt upright.
'Someone's coming!'

They listened with bated breach.
Shuffling footsteps were approaching along the passage from the
vault. Barbara jumped up and grabbed the iron bar to hide it under
the mattress. Then she tossed the blankets in a heap against the wall
to conceal their modest excavations.

'They're coming for us already!' Susan
gasped as the cover scraped aside from the spyhole and a bloodshot
eye peered in at them.

Clinging to each other and trembling
with cold shivers, they backed away from the door. The key grated in
the lock and the door creaked open. The gaoler stooped down and
placed two wooden dishes just inside the door. Each dish contained a
greyish, glutinous soup, a hunk of stale bread and a wooden spoon.

'Bon appetit,' the gaoler scowled.
'Waste of good food if you ask me.'

Susan and Barbara smiled with relief,
but they instantly tensed again as the gaoler noticed the pile of
blankets against the far wall.

'What are they doing down there?' he
demanded angrily.

'What are what doing where?' Barbara
asked innocently.

'The blankets! I'm responsible for
prison property. Pick them up!'

The girls did not budge.

The gaoler leered suggestively at
Barbara. 'It can get surprisingly cold in here at night,' he said
slyly. 'You need something to make you nice and cosy.' He shuffled
across and bent down to pick up the rags.

Susan's fingernails dug deep into
Barbara's arm in panic at the prospect of all their effort going to
waste if it were found out. But just as the gaoler was about to grab
the blankets, a resonant voice suddenly boomed out, echoing
dramatically around the cells, the passages and the vault: 'Gaoler?
Gaoler ... How dare you keep me waiting like this. Gaoler!'

'Citizen Lemaitre ... ' the goaler
gasped, growing pale and scuttling outside. 'Coming, Citizen!' he
called respectfully, hastily locking the dungeon door.

Barbara and Susan listened to his
clumsy footsteps vanish into the distance and then hugged each other,
almost sobbing with relief at their incredible escape.

I was sure he was going to find out!'
Susan laughed.

Barbara hurried over to pick up the
dishes and then they sat side by side on the bed staring at the
unappetising grey mush.

'I thought I was hungry,' Barbara
groaned, dipping her spoon into the lumpy gruel and letting it drop
back into the dish in a series of sticky dollops.

'So did I,' Susan confessed, pulling a
face as she tasted a tiny sample from her own dish.

Closing their eyes and holding their
breaths, they both forced down a few mouthfuls for the sake of their
empty stomachs.

'School dinners ... ' Susan giggled,
covering her mouth.

Barbara swallowed a mouthful the wrong
way, choked and sat laughing and trying to swallow at the same time.
Susan thumped her on the back and finally Barbara recovered. They sat
stirring the foul sludge and bursting into spasmodic giggles like a
couple of schoolgirls.

Wiping the tears of hysteria from her
eyes, Susan put down her dish and reached under the mattress for the
iron bar. 'My turn ... ' she said,
kneeling down by the wall and moving the blankets out of the way.

'No, let me ... ' Barbara insisted,
putting her dish on the floor and blowing on her palms in preparation
for the coming ordeal.

She was almost knocked off her feet as
Susan suddenly uttered a shrill scream and jumped back from the wall,
dropping the crowbar with a clatter.

'What is it Susan?' she gasped.

The dungeon was filled with a furtive
scratching and an ominous squeaking sound. Susan's lips moved but no
words came out. She shook her head as if in denial of the horror she
had uncovered.

Barbara froze. 'What's that noise?'

Susan found her voice at last. 'Rats!
They must've smelt the food. They must be in the drain ... ' she
cried, pointing at the small square hole at the bottom of the wall
from which the water endlessly trickled.

Barbara reacted quickly. Snatching up
the blankets she stuffed them firmly into the hole, blocking it
completely.

Susan had scrambled onto the bed. 'It's
no good. I'm sorry, Barbara. I can't do any more ... Not with those
things there ... ' she pleaded, her teeth chattering with fear and
loathing.

Barbara tried to comfort her. 'They
can't get in here now Susan,' she promised. 'We won't do any more
digging anyway. We need to rest.' She sat on the edge of the bed, her
face darkening with despair. Then she noticed the two dishes at her
feet and a glimmer of hope flickered in her eyes. 'They can't intend
to execute us straight away,' she speculated. 'Otherwise, why on
earth would they bother to feed us?'

Susan shuddered, her eyes still fixed
on the blankets plugging the drain. 'Perhaps they've got something
worse than the guillotine waiting for us ... ' she murmured.

Ian Chesterton had been standing under
the barred window in his cell in the hope of finding a breath of
fresh air to relieve the foetid heat. At the back of his mind was the
anxiety that Webster's corpse would be left where it lay and he
shuddered at the thought of what the clammy atmosphere would soon make of it. As he stared up at the hazy
blue sky, he almost dreamed of wings and of flight.

The arrival of Lemaitre had struck a
new fear into him. He vividly recalled the effect the name Lemaitre
had instantly had on the soldiers in the farmyard as soon as the
lieutenant had mentioned it to them. Was this the dreaded
interrogator of the revolutionary authorities, Ian wondered, as the
gaoler unlocked the cell door to admit Lemaitre and then locked it
again? He kept his back to the door and waited, his heart pounding
and his mouth feeling tacky and dry.

Lemaitre was an imposing figure with
aristocratic features and a large head. His thick black eyebrows were
well-arched, his long roman nose flanked by deep-set chilling eyes.
He wore his long black hair tied at the back with a large silk bow,
and two long curls swept down in front of his large, sculpted ears.
He was dressed in a long black greatcoat with a cape, a frilled white
shirt and cravat tied in a bow, black breeches and snowy white
stockings. A broad tricolour sash was slung from his shoulder and
tied on the opposite hip, again in a large bow. A pair of black
gloves and a long thin cane completed the image of austere authority.

He glanced briefly at Ian's back and
moved to the bed. Drawing the blanket aside, he gazed with acute
disappointment at Webster's dead face. With a sharp twist of the
wrist he slashed his cane against his leg in frustration and flung
the blanket back over the pale corpse. 'How long has he been dead?'
he demanded, his wide nostrils flaring ominously.

Ian suddenly found he could not
remember a single word of French. He kept silent, staring fixedly at
the sky beyond the grille.

Lemaitre strode across, seized his
shoulder and whirled him round to face him. 'I asked, how long has he
been dead?' he repeated, thrusting Ian hard against the wall.

Ian stared back into the grey eyes,
racking his brain for the words.

'Answer me!' Lemaitre snarled, raising
his cane.

Ian swallowed and took a deep breath.
'Several hours ... ' he eventually mumbled. 'Citizen.'

Lemaitre paused, sizing up this defiant
captive. Then he turned abruptly away and walked slowly
round the cell, tapping the head of the cane against his prominent
chin. 'Did he speak?' he inquired at last.

Ian thought for a moment. 'No. No, he
did not speak,' he replied with calculated hesitation.

Lemaitre stopped by the door, deep in
some complex inner dilemma, still tapping his chin with the cane.
'What a pity,' he sighed.

Ian waited, tense and afraid, expecting
that any moment the strange interrogator would slash him across the
face and scream a barrage of questions and accusations.

But Lemaitre simply sighed quietly and
rapped on the door for the gaoler to let him out. When he had gone,
Ian wiped the sweat from his face and sank trembling onto the other
bed. He suspected that Citizen Lemaitre would be back sooner or
later.

Lemaitre drew the gaoler across the
vault and out of earshot of the cell. 'I shall ask you once more,' he
said icily. 'Did they talk to each other? Yes or no?'

The befuddled gaoler licked his lips,
uncertain what to say for best. 'Well, Citizen ... ' he mumbled,
terrified of saying the wrong thing. 'They may have done ... But
there again they may ...

Lemaitre's cold stare struck him dumb
again.

'Caoler, just tell me - quite simply -
did you ever hear their voices in conversation?' Lemaitre asked
patiently.

Cornered, the hapless gaoler decided to
tell the truth. 'Well, Citizen, yes I did,' he admitted warily.

Lemaitre nodded thoughtfully, a trace
of a smile playing round the edges of his wide mouth as he walked
slowly across the vault to the gaoler's alcove.

Emboldened by the absence of any
rebuke, the gaoler trailed after him. 'I didn't hear exactly what
they said ... ' he went on, 'but I definitely heard them talking .
. . not for long but ... '