Part 29 (1/2)

'This has to be him,' said Major Angela.

”They froze him, they said. They said they put him where the sea would get him again. But it hasn't. He's been here ten years.' Gila sounded calmer now than he had in days.

The ice was pierced in many places by a bewildering a.s.sortment of daggers and knives and scimitars.'It looks like a giant pin cus.h.i.+on,' said the Doctor. He could never be sombre when everyone else was. He couldn't bear it. 'Or a giant game of Ker-plunk.'

'I've got that game in the bus,' said Iris.

'Or,' said the Doctor,'it looks like Excalibur.'

They took his word and each of them grasped the jewelled pommel of every sword and knife they could reach. Gila stretched up and took hold of the higher ones. They all pulled and, surprisingly, each of the blades slid out quite easily and cleanly.

They stood back.

'We can all be King Arthur,' the Doctor grinned.

'Now what?' asked Sam.

He pursed his lips and nodded at the ice. It was s.h.i.+mmering and pulsing and it began to melt. Condensation wisped and moisture rolled down the plane surfaces of the ice.

'He's waking up,' Angela said.

Soon they could get a better look at him. His head and shoulders emerged first, and he sat immobile, recovering himself, though they could all see he was returning to life. When his feeble arms emerged he flexed them gentry and the solid block of ice that trapped the rest of him began to crack much faster.

'It's him,' Iris smiled.

Sitting upright in his dewy, sticky sh.e.l.l was the Mock Turtle. His heavy calf s head was damp and his eyes were bleary, stuck together with decade-old ice and sleep.

'He looks,' said the Doctor,'as if he's just been bom, all over again.'

'I wasn't born,' said the Mock Turtle in a throaty whisper, 'I was hatched from a great big blooming egg.'

He shook himself and the last of the ice slid away. He asked them to help him down from the plinth.

'Doctor,' Sam said, tapping his velvet shoulder.'I hate to say this, but...'

'Say what?'

'Something along the lines of,”Doctor, look!”

He rolled his eyes.'They always say that.'

'But look!' Iris cawed.

Into the bay, with its wide white sails blazing and s.h.i.+ning, the s.h.i.+p that had last night been in the far distance came rolling full of splendour and aplomb. From their sh.o.r.e, the party from Iris's TARDIS could see that it was launching smaller rowing boats, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with busy-looking figures, and they were heading determinedly for land.

'Pirates,' spat Gila.

'That s.h.i.+p is theKristeva ,' Iris said.'It's captained by the daughter of the Empress!'

Chapter Twenty-Five.

On The Kristeva

I am a turtle. Not the happiest of fetes.

I have a sh.e.l.l. I have flippers. I get nowhere fast. Unless I am underwater. Then I can do anything. Watch me go. In the past, when I hired myself out with the other three on adventures and quests, all the watery a.s.signments fell to me. Of course the Alligator Man, Gila, thought he was fast and fleet as I, as neat and polished as I, but my point remains that, essentially, he is a creature of the land.

He hated that.We weren't a very happy band, we four.

Turtles are born of eggs. I can even remember cracking out of mine.

What we tend to do, most of us anyway, is peck the egg apart from within with our little beaks and then we go lolloping up the beach to the sea's first cold embrace. At first you're born and you think, But I'm so ungainly! And then, no, not at all, that isn't the whole story at all, not when you get to the froth of the blissful, blooming water and you get all your faculties.

Of course, being a Mock Turtle, I had it harder from the start. I had this different head and my forelegs terminated in - of all things -hooves. Very s.h.i.+ny, pointed, rather delicate hooves, but hooves nonetheless, and I had flippers only at the back.

When I was born, when I hatched myself, I had to hammer the inside of my warm, creamy, coated egg with the fine tips of my hooves to break myself on to the golden sands. I had it harder from the start. Only a Mock Turtle, me.

And for the last ten years I've been frozen up, freed from the uniqueness of my bodily self, with only my mind ticking over. Luckily I find myself a low-level telepath (oh yes, only very low-level, as the d.u.c.h.ess once happily informed me, putting me in my place) and so, via various unreliable but nonetheless entertaining psychic channels,! have managed to keep my suspended self abreast of the ways of this maverick world. Even incarcerated I kept up.

I listened, year by year, as the Scarlet Empress gathered force, hatched her plans, spread her web. I overheard her guards as she sent them around the globe . I earwigged on djinn and viziers as they set stealthily forth to carry out her nefarious business. I know her schemes and dreams. So when my friends here arrived and unloosened the spell that held me in ice, I realised that the time had come to confront our overweening monarch. I have felt the approach of my compatriots, bless them.

It was the Scarlet Empress who put me here.Who froze me in ice, set me upon a plinth, who left my mind running on and on like a tiger in a too-small cage. She put me out of action in the place that would most torture and tantalise me: right beside the sea. I have tried to block out the sense of that surging ma.s.s of water, its salt-water tang, its relentless calling me back.

And in these past ten years, did anyone, did any of my former allies and companions, come rus.h.i.+ng to my rescue? Oh, no. Of course they didn't.

At first I felt sure, sure as could be, that they'd come after me soon. If not today, then tomorrow, or the day after. I pictured them struggling against the odds to come and fetch me. But they never showed up. More fool I, to have confidence in my supposed blooming friends. The days, the months, the seasons pa.s.sed and nothing happened. Major Angela, the obstreperous, unfortunately blind and bl.u.s.tering Bearded Lady, who once claimed pa.s.sionately and against all the odds to be in love with me, with my lovely gleaming h.o.r.n.y sh.e.l.l of green and greasy brown, my soft yellow underbelly - did she come running to collect me from my peril? No, she did not. Did Gila leave his life of petty thievery and urban crime? His smuggling and racketeering and shady connections? He came nowhere near me. His thoughts never turned to me. Did the d.u.c.h.ess deign to wing her divinely solar-powered way to this benighted sh.o.r.e? Did she h.e.l.l. And so here I am. And here they are. Suddenly wanting my help.Well.

And who is this? New friends and new companions to play with.

I turn to the human female. She is still a child, really, with soft blonde hair and a face glum as I'm sure I must look just now.'And what manner of creature are you, my dear?”

She looks startled at my question as if a creature such as I ought not to be able to express and frame ideas or opinions.

But we are on the move. We are in convoy. We are being led up the beach by a rabble of pirates. Of course. I felt the presence of the s.h.i.+p approaching even as I sensed my friends, drawing closer to rescue me.

And so now we are all in the same predicament. Prisoners together. I sensed the pirates coming, I sensed my rescuers coming. Not bad for a mere low-level telepath! Not bad for a mere Mock blooming Turtle!

The s.h.i.+p stands in the bay. Proud, bedecked by all manner of banners and gaudy, makes.h.i.+ft sails and, I must say, I'm enjoying colours again, only as I did when I was first hatched. The world is all new to me again.

Our rowdy rabble of captors in their filched and patched and extravagant outfits catch my eye, too, and I spend some time, as we are hustled up to the boats on the sh.o.r.e, simply admiring the spectacle.

Ahead, though, looms the Kristeva , and I must seriously consider whether I really want to be taken prisoner so soon, so soon after my rescue. The s.h.i.+p is a fat-bellied, fierce little tug, bristling with armaments and a glow of self-worth. Aggressive thing, staffed with bandits, burly henchmen and sc.u.m. How many of its scurrilous ventures and ploys I have tuned in to over the years, through the use of my stunted telepathic capabilities. I have followed the doings of the Kristeva , her crew and her captain with a certain relish.Yet I am in two minds about being rowed and taken aboard.

I am being carried aloft on a kind of bier. I haven't much strength as yet.