Part 2 (1/2)

'Sergeant' Joseph Willow glared down at them through the steel bars of his visor, from the safe height of his big grey horse. 'Where do you think you're going?' he snarled.

He had the rasping, ill-tempered voice of a natural bully.

'This is Sir George Hutchinson's land.'

The Doctor looked up at him. Instinctively aware of the man's short temper, he took a deep breath. This was a moment for patience and sweet reason, not anger. 'If we are trespa.s.sing,' he said mildly, 'I apologise.'

It was an apology which Willow refused to accept.

'Little Hodcombe,' he persisted, 'is a closed area, for your own safety. We're in the middle of a war game.'

Now Tegan understood their armour and weapons.

These were grown men playing at historical soldiers but even so, surely they were being too aggressive? The threat in their drawn swords was very real. 'We're here to visit my .grandfather,' she explained, anxious like the Doctor to calm things down.

Willow didn't want her explanations either. 'You'd better see Sir George,' he said curtly. 'He'll sort it out.' He urged his horse forward, moving between them and the hedge. 'Move out!' he shouted.

At his command, the troopers and the foot soldiers closed in around the Doctor and his companions, forming a bizarre prisoners' escort. Then, led by Sergeant Willow, the party moved across the meadow towards Little Hodcombe village and Sir George Hutchinson.

As they went, there peered around a crumbling, mossy gravestone in the churchyard the head of the limping, beggar-like figure they had glimpsed briefly in the crypt.

As he watched the strangers being led away, the sun illuminated his devastated face.

His left eye was gone. Where it should have been, wrinkled skin collapsed into a shrivelled, empty socket.

The man's mouth twisted awkwardly towards this, and the entire left side of his lace was dead. It looked as if it had been burned once, long ago, as if the skin had been blasted by fire and transformed into a hard, waxen sh.e.l.l which now could feel no pain or any other sensation.

Holding the coa.r.s.e woollen cloth around his throat, so that it hooded his head, he knelt behind a gravestone and stared, with his one unblinking eye, at the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough being herded away through the gra.s.s.

After an undignified forced march, at first among fields and then between the scattered cottages and farmsteads of Little Hodcombe, the Doctor and his companions were escorted to a big, rambling farmhouse next to an almost enclosed yard. Here Willow and the troopers dismounted and at sword and pistol point forced the trio inside, then pushed them into a room that was straight out of another century.

The Doctor, who was first to enter, could not disguise his surprise at the sight of this antique room and the burly, red-faced man in Parliamentary battle uniform who sat on a carved oak settle, facing him. For a second he wondered, as Tegan had done, whether somehow all their instruments had gone wrong and they had turned up hundreds of years awry, but then he saw Jane Hampden sitting at a table by the window in casual, twentieth-century clothes. Rea.s.sured by that, he tried to relax, yet still he felt uncertain; all these efforts to make the twentieth century seern like the seventeenth were unsettling.

The sight of three strangers being thrust unceremoniously into his parlour caused Ben Wolsey to jump out of his seat in surprise. 'What's going on here?' he demanded.

Willow followed them inside and closed the door. His hand hovered on the hilt of his sword. 'They're trespa.s.sers, Colonel,' he answered curtly. 'I've arrested them.'

Willow's final shove had sent Tegan and Turlough staggering across the room towards a small woman, who sat at a long oak table with outrage and astonishment spreading across her face. 'I don't believe this!' she exploded, and jumped to her feet.

Wolsey's face, too, was a picture of surprise and embarra.s.sment. 'Are you sure you should be doing this?'

he challenged Willow.

The Sergeant casually removed his riding gloves. 'Sir George has been informed,' was all he would say in reply.

Wolsey turned to the Doctor with an apologetic smile.

'I'm sorry about this,' he said. 'Some of the men get a bit carried away. We'll soon have this business sorted out and you safely on your way.'

The Doctor, who had been giving the room a close examination, now turned to Wolsey. He leaned forward and treated the farmer to his most courteous smile. 'Thank you,' he said, with only the slightest hint of sarcasm.

Indicating the furnis.h.i.+ngs, he added, 'This is a very impressive room, Colonel.'

Ben Wolsey smiled proudly. His head nodded with pleasure at approval from a stranger. 'It's my pride and joy,' he confided.

'Seventeenth century?'

'Yes,' Wolsey nodded again. 'And its perfect in every detail.'

Tegan felt exasperated: chatting about antiques wasn't going to get them very far. Beginning to think they had entered a lunatic asylum, she glared at the woman who, because she was wearing normal clothes, seemed to Tegan to be the only sane person around here. 'What is going on?'

she asked her.

Jane smiled and shrugged her shoulders. 'I'm sorry, but I just don't know,' she admitted. 'I think everyone's gone mad.'

That made two of them. 'Look,' Tegan tried to sound more reasonable than she felt, 'we don't want to interfere.

We're just here to visit my grandfather.'

'Oh yes, so you said,' the Sergeant snapped, banging into their conversation as he had barged into their lives.

'And who might he be?'

'His name is Andrew Verney.'

Just two simple words a name but their effect was enormous. A stunned silence foollowed, and the atmosphere became electric. Tegan felt almost physically the shock her words had inflicted upon these villagers. She saw their hasty glances at each other and noticed Joseph Willow look for instructions from the big Roundhead soldier he called Colonel.

'Verney?' he prodded, but the red-faced man said nothing; he appeared to be embarra.s.sed, and not to know what to say. Tegan felt suddenly apprehensive.

'What's wrong?' she demanded.

Jane Hampden was also looking to Ben Wolsey for some explanation, but he remained stolidly silent and eventually she herself turned to Tegan. As gently as she could, she said, 'He disappeared a few days ago.'

Tegan's apprehension became chilling anxiety. 'Has anything been done to find him?'

'Ben?' Again Jane turned to Ben Wolsey, and again the former refused to answer, dropping his eyes and turning away.

'Well?' Tegan shouted.

It was time for the Doctor to act: he knew the signs and was only too well aware of Tegan's talent for jumping to conclusions and diving in at the deep end of things. He walked quickly towards her and held up his hands for restraint. 'Now calm down, Tegan,' he warned. 'I'm sure we can sort this out.'