Doctor Who: The Reign of Terror (8 page)

Lemaitre spun round sharply. 'Give me
the execution lists,' he snapped, sitting in the rickety wooden chair
behind the gaoler's table.

The gaoler rummaged through the piles
of papers and handed over several crumpled sheets covered in names.

'This other prisoner, the one in there
now ... Lemaitre murmured, studying the lists. 'Which one is he?'

Flattered and delighted to be of some
use to so grand a personage, the gaoler pointed to Ian's name with
his stubby finger. 'That one, Citizen.'

Lemaitre's eyebrows arched even more.
'Ian Chesterton ... ' he exclaimed, a look of surprise briefly
flashing across his grave features. He picked up the tattered quill
from the inkwell and crossed Ian's name off the list with two bold
strokes of the blunted pen. 'Have the body removed from the cell at
once,' he ordered, blotting the wet ink.

As the gaoler shuffled off to summon
two guards to remove Webster's corpse, Lemaitre dropped the execution
list on the table and stared thoughtfully at the deleted name, ian
Chesterton ... ' he murmured, tapping his nose with the quill. 'I
wonder ... '

Utterly exhausted, the Doctor leaned on
the pick handle and wiped a drop of sweat from the end of his nose.
The Time Lord was finding the hot July day unbearably uncomfortable
and his hearts were both thumping protestingly as he panted for
breath. Beside him the other members of the gang were lazily chipping
away at the road without accomplishing anything at all. The Doctor
lowered his head and glanced sidelong at the fat foreman who was
still sitting on the grass bank counting his money with obsessive
concentration. Then he considered for a moment before turning to the
peasants.

'Must be the tenth time he's counted
that money ... ' he muttered, roughening his accent a little.

The gang stopped digging and leaned on
their picks and shovels. 'Does it all day,' one of them chuckled.
'Likes money more than he likes himself that one.'

The Doctor frowned. 'Any of you lot got
any money?' he inquired quietly.

The peasant shook his head and grinned
at the others. 'Wouldn't be here if we did.' They all grinned and
shook their heads.

The Doctor lowered his voice even more.
'So you'd like to be somewhere else?' he suggested mischievously.

The peasants nodded. 'Fat chance,' said
one. 'He's got the pistol and he never turns his back.'

'Just you leave that to me ... '
murmured the Doctor mysteriously. He spent the next few minutes
painstakingly outlining an ingenious plan in as simple terms as
possible, while the gang listened like children being told a story.

When the foreman glanced up from his
glittering coins he saw that instead of working, his slaves were
huddled together staring intently into the sky with shaded eyes.
Snatching up his pistol, he shovelled the money back into the purse
on his belt and swaggered over to the gang. 'So what's going on? What
are you lot gawping at?' he demanded, waving the pistol threateningly
in their faces.

'We've just waiting to see the
eclipse,' the Doctor explained, exchanging covert nods with a tall
thin lad with a gap in his teeth.

The foreman frowned suspiciously.
'Eclipse? What eclipse?'

The tall lad whistled through his
missing teeth. 'Didn't you know? The moon's going to pass in front of
the sun in a minute,' he declared solemnly.

'Surely you knew about it?' smiled the
Doctor.

The ruffian hesitated and then shaded
his eyes to peer up at the hazy sun. 'Yes, well, of course I did,' he
mumbled disconcertedly.

'It is a most interesting phenomenon,'
said the Doctor, pointing upwards. 'It will get almost pitch dark.'

The foreman kept his pistol levelled at
them while he scanned the sky for some glimpse of the moon.

'I can see something ... ' cried the
thin youth, raising his skinny arm.

The foreman turned slightly away from
the Doctor and squinted even harder.

The Doctor unobtrusively pushed up his
shirt sleeve, flexed his fingers and then dipped them deftly into the
open neck of the foreman's leather pouch like a conjuror. He closed
his fingers around a few coins and skilfully withdrew his hand just
as the foreman gave up looking for the invisible moon and glanced
back at his workers.

'All right, all right... ' growled
the foreman. 'We'll see it when it happens. Until then you can all
just get back to work!'

He wandered back to the grass bank and
sat down again in the shade, still brandishing his pistol. As the
peasants reluctantly resumed their toil, the thin lad gaped
inquiringly at the Doctor. The Time Lord grinned cheekily and opened
his hand revealing several gleaming gold livres. The boy's ryes
widened in awed admiration. The Doctor bent down and hurriedly buried
the coins except for one among the dried clay and broken stones
around the edge of the hole. Then he placed the unburied coin by
itself on the surface.

Taking up his pickaxe, the Doctor
pretended to work away for a minute or so. Then he suddenly stopped.
'Hey, look at this!' he exclaimed excitedly, pointing at the ground.

The road gang gaped at the gold coin
and murmured in exaggerated surprise, just as the Doctor had
instructed them to. The Doctor stooped, picked up the glittering find
and showed it to the gang as they crowded eagerly round him.

With a savage oath the foreman jumped
up and strode over to them, flourishing his pistol menacingly. 'What
the devil is it now?' he raged, shoving his way through.

The Doctor held up the gold litre. 'I
just found this!' he said breathlessly. 'It's obviously part of some
hoard.' He narrowed his eyes and fixed the foreman with a penetrating
stare. 'No doubt the hoard of some tax evader or other ... '

The foreman snatcehd the coin greedily.
'Hoard?' he scoffed. 'More likely dropped by some passing traveller.'
He bit the coin to test its authenticity and his face immediately lit
up with avaricious interest. 'Where were you digging?' he demanded.

The Doctor pointed with his pick
handle. 'Just there.'

Keeping his pistol trained on them, the
foreman thrust the coin into his bulging purse and grabbed the
Doctor's pickaxe. Feverishly he started scraping at the place
indicated by the Doctor and within a few seconds he had unearthed a
second gold livre among the clay and stones. 'Here's another!' he
roared excitedly, picking it up and testing it in his yellowing teeth
before stuffing it into his purse.

'Get your tools, boys. Let's dig!'
urged the Doctor.

But the foreman rounded on him, aiming
his pistol at the Doctor's head, his eyes wild with greed. 'This
money belongs to the authorities, Citizens ... ' he declared. 'As
their representative I'll do the digging. Now stay back!'

Obediently the Doctor led the others
aside. The foreman waited until they had retreated to a safe
distance. Then he stuck the pistol into his belt, spat on his hands,
grabbed the pick and set to work in a renewed frenzy. The Doctor
watched for a moment and then winked at the others. Cautiously he
took a shovel from the thin lad and edged his way up behind the madly
digging ruffian. He hesitated for a few seconds, unhappy about the
drastic action he was about to take. Finally he sighed, spat on his
hands, lifted the shovel high above his head and brought it down with
a clang on the foreman's straw-hatted crown. The big bully uttered a
muffled gasp, looked up in almost comical amazement, and pitched
forward onto his ugly face in the rubble.

With a nod of satisfaction at his
handiwork, the Doctor silently handed the shovel back to the thin lad
and hurried over to retrieve his coat from the hedge. While he was
putting it on, the peasants suddenly took in what had happened.
Cheering their saviour, they flung down their tools and fell upon the
spilled livres scattered out of the foreman's purse. Filling their
ragged pockets with treasure, they took to their heels like children
let early out of school.

The Doctor picked up his walking stick
and wandered over to the prostrate figure lying in the middle of the
road. Kneeling down, he sifted through the rubble and unearthed a
buried coin. He polished it on his sleeve and then place it carefully
over the foreman's closed eye.

'There you are Citizen,' he chuckled
smugly. 'What did I tell you? A total eclipse ... '

The screams of terrified prisoners, the
yelling of the soldiers and the ominous clanging of cell doors had
been growing relentlessly louder and louder. Susan and Barbara sat
clinging to one another on the bed in the dungeon, knowing that their
turn would come after all. And it did. They heard the stamping of the
guards' boots coming round the corner and the terrible grating of
the key in the lock. They both felt sick with fear.

'All right, you two. Come on out!'
roared the gaoler as the door creaked open.

Prodded by the vicious bayonets they
stumbled out into the smoky gloom of the passage.

'Get in line,' the gaoler rapped,
locking up the dungeon again.

Susan and Barbara were shoved brutally
forward to join the procession of dirty, bleary-eyed, frightened
prisoners huddled at the end of the vault. Some were crying
hysterically, others simply stared into space as if in a trance. The
gaoler checked the names on his lists against the pale, cowering
victims. 'That's the lot for today,' he declared, handing the lists
to one of the guards. 'Another batch for Madame Guillotine.'

'But where's Ian?' Susan exclaimed in
English, gazing around her.

The gaoler leered cruelly, enjoying her
anguish. 'You mean your handsome friend?' he chuckled. 'He was
lucky, Mademoiselle. Citizen Lemaitre crossed him off the list.' He
leaned forward so that Susan recoiled from his sour alcoholic breath.
'You ladies were not so lucky.'

Susan's eyes brimmed with tears and she
bit her lip as if to prevent herself from saying something that might
make things worse for Ian. Barbara clasped her hand tightly, her face
frozen in a mask of hopeless resignation.

'Take them away!' roared the gaoler,
swaggering back to his alcove and his bottle of cognac.

The soldiers drove their victims along
the vault like a herd of animals. As they passed Ian's cell, Barbara
and Susan caught a brief glimpse of his pale face pressed against the
grille in his door, his white knuckles gripping the bars in impotent
rage.

'Barbara! Susan!' he shouted, rattling
the cell door as if trying to wrench it off its hinges.

The girls tried to stop to speak to
him, but they were grabbed and hurled along with the rest of the
prisoners up the steps and out into the courtyard.

Ian Chesterton ran across to the barred
window and pulled himself up to look outside. He saw a ramshackle
cart painted a livid red colour, with a roofless cage of wooden poles
lashed together, standing in the courtyard. Between the shafts a
dusty old horse stood with sagging knees and drooping head, waiting
for its cargo of condemned. He watched with mute horror as the
prisoners were herded into the tumbril and the gate was fastened
across the back. The bored little driver clambered up onto the box
and the creaking tumbril slowly rumbled away escorted by half a dozen
soldiers marching raggedly alongside. As the cart turned under the
archway and disappeared, Ian caught a heartrending glimpse of
Barbara's and Susan's pale faces jammed against the cage and frozen
in dulled resignation.

He let go of the bars and slid to the
floor. Slumping onto the bed he sank his head into his hands. Up
until that moment he had almost managed to convince himself that the
whole adventure had been a ghastly nightmare.

Now he knew that it was not. Far from the Conciergerie, two young
men armed with muskets and shrouded in cloaks despite the heat were
lurking in the shadows of a narrow alleyway leading off a forlorn and
almost deserted back street.

The elder man was Jules Renan. He had a
handsome but slightly fleshy face and his dark eyes were sharp and
alert. His short neck made him look stockier than he really was and
he wore a flat tricorn hat on his squarish head. His younger
companion was very fair and slimmer, with more refined features, and
he wore a tall rounded hat with a broad brim. Both men wore their
hair tied at the back with small bows. Jules had an air of calm
authority, whereas his companion looked impulsive but utterly
dedicated to their cause.

'The tumbril should have passed by now,
Jules ... ' muttered the younger man, fidgeting impatiently.

Jules smiled placidly. 'You should try
to cultivate a little patience, Jean,' he chided. 'It will stand you
in good stead one day.'

Jean tried hard to keep still. 'I shall
never ever get used to the endless waiting,' he confessed. 'If only
it weren't so stiflingly quiet.'

The air was indeed charged with a
feeling of calm before the storm and there were occasional rumbles of
thunder over the city.

'That is precisely why we are
positioned here, Jean. A crowded street and an ambush do not mix
successfully.'

'I know that, Jules, but it's so late.
Perhaps they took another route.'

Jules shook his head confidently. 'No,
they'll come this way just as they always do. Are you sure you're
ready, Jean?'

The younger man checked his musket and
the two loaded pistols in his belt. 'I'm ready, my friend. How many
soldiers do you think there will be today?' he asked nervously.

Jules smiled to himself. It was a
question Jean always asked, like a child needing reassurance. He
shrugged. 'The usual: five or six.'

Jean peered out into the street. 'It's
a pity Leon cannot be with us today. The odds would have been more
favourable.'

Jules Renan thumped his friend
encouragingly on the shoulder. 'True. But remember that we have
surprise on our side, Jean. That is worth three extra men, mon
brave!''