Doctor Who_ The Massacre Part 3

I've told you all I know and now I'm waiting for my friend, the Doctor, to return as we're both just pa.s.sing through.'

'Then I wish you well and a safe journey home,' Lerans replied and turned to the others. 'Gentlemen, we have matters to attend to.' He walked over to the bar and place a coin on it. 'That should be sufficient, I think, including a gla.s.s each for the Englishman and his friend when he comes back,' he said and, followed by Muss and the remaining companion, went outside. Antoine-Marc pocketed the coin and thought how much more would be coming to him when next he spoke to Simon Duval.

Once they were on the street Lerans took Muss by the arm. 'Them,' he said urgently and repeated it. 'Us? All of us? That's unthinkable: we're more than ten thousand strong in Paris.'

'Then a faction,' Muss replied. 'Not your master for that would bring about a catastrophe for both causes.'

'I agree. But nonetheless a group of us has been selected for the Abbot's justice.' Lerans almost spat out the last word.

'But which one?' Muss spread his hands in despair.

'If I were a Catholic which merciful Heaven I'm not I would consider that the most contentious Huguenots, more so than our clergy, are those whose theories and experiments had them disenabled in '67,' Lerans replied.

'The apothecaries!' Muss exclaimed.

Lerans pointed back at the auberge. 'And if what that young Englishman said is true, we have only a few hours in which to warn them.'

'Until Vespers.'

'So we've no time to waste.'

They both strode off purposefully, forgetting that the Doctor had gone to exchange ideas with a Huguenot apothecary named Preslin.

3.

The Apothecary The windows were open yet the heat inside the carriage was stifling as it rattled across the cobblestone streets towards the Sorbonne, jiggling the Doctor about and making him perspire profusely. But his physical discomfort was far outweighed by the curiosity which had led him to make the spur-of-the-moment decision to visit Charles Preslin.

The carriage came to a halt and the driver, leaning over, looked down. 'That'll be twenty sous,' he said and the Doctor handed him thirty as he stepped out. The driver tipped his hat, shook the reins and the carriage rumbled away.

The Doctor looked around him. The Sorbonne tower stood in the centre of a small circus from which six busy streets radiated like the spokes of a wheel. The Doctor studied each of them in turn, looking for the mortar and pestle sign of an apothecary. He could see three such signs within the first thirty metres, all in different streets, and set off to investigate each one in turn, knowing that, regardless of the one he chose to begin with, the shop he wanted would be the third.

Which, of course, it was and, moreover, it was closed and had been for some considerable time by the state of it.

The window shutters were closed, the door locked and the nameplate barely legible but the Doctor managed to discern the name Chas. Preslin Chas. Preslin.

He moved back into the centre of the crowded street to obtain a better overall view of the building. It was a two storey house similar to the ones they had seen when they left the TARDIS on the rubbish dump. There were two windows on each floor and three of them were shuttered.

The fourth and smallest was the top one on the lefthand side. At least someone lived there, the Doctor thought and noticed a narrow lane between two houses a few metres further down the street. 'I'll try the back door,' the Doctor muttered to himself and walked towards it, counting front doors on the way.

The length of the lane was littered with rubbish and opened out onto a general area of wasteland between the backs of the houses. Some people had tried to cultivate their small patches of soil in which vegetables struggled to grow. Others kept pigs or hens in compounds and there were a few tethered goats. The Doctor put his handkerchief to his nose as he made his way among the washing lines slung between the back windows and poles stuck in the earth. He counted back doors as he went along until he reached the one he calculated would be Preslin's. He knocked on it with his cane and waited. No one came to the door so he looked up and saw that all the windows were shuttered. He knocked again but there was still no reply.

'There's no good you doing that, he won't come to the door,' a rosy-cheeked, stout woman announced from her window in the house next door as she prodded some washing out onto the line with a stick.

The Doctor looked up at her and raised his hat. 'Pray, how does one attract Monsieur Preslin's attention, madam?'

'You open the door and you go inside,' she replied.

'Thank you, madam,' the Doctor said and did as she had advised, closing the door behind him.

Enough light filtered through the rear shutters toallow the Doctor to make out his surroundings. The room appeared to be an abandoned laboratory with bottles, jars, phials and jugs stacked on several shelves around the walls.

In the middle of the room there was a table, covered with dust with mortars and pestles and measuring instruments lying on it. There was a door which the Doctor decided led to the shop so he opened it and went into the short corridor which lay beyond.

On his right was a narrow staircase winding up to the floors above. The Doctor stood still and listened. He could hear no sounds. 'Monsieur Preslin,' he called out and waited. There was no reply. 'Charles Preslin,' he repeated but again there was only silence. He sighed and opened the door in front of him. He was right. It led to the shop with its dust-covered counter and cobwebbed shelves. He went back into the corridor and mounted the stairs. He looked into both rooms on the first floor. One of them was a bedroom and the other appeared to be a library. He went up to the second floor and opened the door of the room with the open shutter. A man sat at a desk by the window.

He was writing with a quill pen in a ledger and several sheets of paper lay on the desk. The man did not look up as the Doctor came into the room.

'Is that you, David?' he asked, his pen still scratching on the parchment.

'No, it's not,' the Doctor replied and waited as the man carefully laid down his pen on the desk and then slowly, as if preparing himself for a shock, turned around as he removed the small half-spectacles from the tip of his nose.

'And who may you be, sir?' he asked quietly and politely.

'A doctor,' the Doctor replied.

'There are many such,' the man replied as he stood up, 'with clothes of different cuts, medicine, philosophy, the sciences, even the arts.' He studied the Doctor's cape for a moment before asking what lay under it. The Doctor flicked it back off his shoulders and the man stared at him for a while before speaking. 'A strange attire,' he observed finally.

The Doctor smiled. 'Of my own design,' he said. 'I travel a lot and cannot abide discomfort.' Then he hesitated fractionally before asking, 'You are are Charles Preslin, I presume?' Charles Preslin, I presume?'

'A doctor of what, did you say?' the man said as the Doctor took stock of him. He was in his fifties, of average height, slim, balding with shoulder-length straggling grey hair and with intelligent eyes in a careworn race.

'Actually, I didn't say,' the Doctor replied and then smiled, 'a bit of everything, really, a doctor of dabbling, I suppose, who's looking for an apothecary named Charles Preslin.'

'To what end?' the man asked.

'It refers to a footnote I read in a scientific journal,' the Doctor explained and the man smiled wryly.

'Oh, that,' he said and, admitting that he was Preslin, continued, 'it dates back to '66 when a few colleagues and I were engaged in some research. It was just before the certificate of Catholicisation was brought into force. And that, of course, put paid to our work.'

'Which was?' the Doctor asked innocently.

Preslin's eyes darkened with suspicion and, stretching his left arm out, he raised his forefinger and waved it like a metronome in front of the Doctor's face. 'Tch-tch-tch,' he clicked with his tongue, 'you do not catch me out like that, sir. I am too old and wily to confess conveniently to heresy.'

'I a.s.sure you, Monsieur Preslin, that was far from my intention.' The Doctor's indignation was suddenly broken by the sound of feet hurrying up the stairs. An armed, heavily-set man barged breathlessly into the room.

'The ferrets are abroad, Charles,' he gasped before he saw the Doctor. 'Who's he?' he demanded, his hand moving to the hilt of his sword.

'A weasel, perhaps, I don't know. But he's been asking questions,' Preslin replied.

The man half-drew his sword. 'They're using the Abbot's arrival as an excuse to round us up. So let's despatch him and leave his carca.s.s to the ferrets.'

'Just a minute,' the Doctor cut in angrily. 'I came here in good faith to talk to Monsieur Preslin and now I'm being called a weasel and you're proposing to leave my body for the ferrets. I have no idea of what you're talking about.'

Preslin hesitated before admitting that the Doctor might be telling the truth.

'And if he's not?' the other one asked. 'He'll tell the ferrets our escape route. No, we can't risk it.' He was adamant and took a step towards the Doctor as he drew his sword.

'Put up your sword, David,' Preslin spoke sharply and then turned to the Doctor. 'I must oblige you to come with us, sir,' he said.

'That's folly,' David protested, pointing his sword at the Doctor.

'If he's innocent, he'll have time to prove it,' Preslin replied, 'and if we find he's guilty, well then, nothing's lost. Just keep an eye on him, David, whilst I tidy up.'

As Preslin busied himself at the desk, the Doctor asked questions. He wanted to know who the ferrets and weasels were and was told they were two species of Catholic militants, both as unpleasant as they were dangerous.

Preslin closed the shutters and went into the other room to collect his jacket.

'I know your face. I've seen it before,' David remarked unpleasantly. 'It was a long time ago when you were younger. Say, ten years. About then...'

The Doctor shook his head. 'You're very much mistaken, sir,' he replied. 'We've never met until now and, once I have secured my release, you may rest a.s.sured that you will never see me again.'

'I've met this man,' David said aggressively to Preslin as he came back into the room.

'Where?' Preslin asked, eyeing the Doctor with renewed suspicion.

'I don't remember yet. It was not a pleasant encounter, that much I can recall.' David's voice was filled with menace. 'But I'll get it, have no doubt.'

'Lead the way down the stairs. But prudently,' Preslin advised the Doctor as David indicated the open door with his sword. It occurred to the Doctor that he might just have time enough to slam it shut in their faces. 'And don't touch the door whatever you think to do,' Preslin added for good measure.

They went downstairs and stood in the corridor. Preslin opened the door into the shop and beckoned the Doctor to go through.

'I still think you are mistaken to insist that he accompanies us,' David stated as they pa.s.sed into the shop.

'We'll debate it later,' Preslin replied as he crossed over to a shelf behind the counter and, lifting off a large jar filled with dark green liquid, pressed the panel of wood behind it. A section of shelves the width of a door swung silently open. Beyond it was a flight of stone stairs leading downwards. Preslin took a taper from under the counter and lit it. Then the three of them left the shop and went down the stairs with Preslin carefully pulling the secret entrance shut after him.

With the flickering taper as their only light they made their way carefully down the steps until they reached the side of a narrow tunnel which led away in both directions.

In front, the Doctor hesitated at the entrance.

'Turn left,' Preslin said and they made their way along the tunnel. The Doctor noted that there was a slight cool dry breeze and that several other sets of stairs led into the tunnel. They walked without talking, their footsteps reverberating off the walls into the distance. Suddenly they saw another flickering taper ahead of them.

'Jules?' Preslin called.

'Yes, Charles?' echoed the reply.

'Are there many others?' David shouted.

A peal of laughter came bouncing off the walls towards them followed by the same voice: 'You know how swiftly Lerans and Muss can move.'

Lerans and Muss: the Doctor immediately recognised the names and thought he could see a ray of light in the tunnels of his mind, a way to extricate himself from the predicament in which he found himself. 'The gentleman's referring to Viscount Gaston Lerans and his friend, Nicholas Muss, I believe,' he said.

'You know them?' Preslin asked.

'Coincidentally,' the Doctor tried to sound nonchalant.

'This afternoon, just before I came to see you, my companion and I drank a goblet of wine with them in the Roman Bridge Inn.'

'How fortuitous,' David replied sarcastically, 'that you just happened to be in the right place at the right time.'

'Did you speak to them?' Preslin asked.

'Not exactly, no,' the Doctor conceded. 'They were having an altercation with a man named Simon Duval.'

'That pig!' The words erupted from David's mouth.

'What was the row about?' Preslin put the question quietly in an effort to calm down David. The Doctor told him everything that had happened whilst he was at the Inn. David laughed at Lerans's jibes to Duval.

'Lerans is a bold one, a man after my own heart,' he exclaimed.

'But lacking in discretion,' Preslin said.

'Exactly what Nicholas Muss remarked,' the Doctor added.

'No matter, Lerans has the Admiral's protection and that's as good as the Queen Mother's.' David was scornful of Preslin's concern. 'Only by the law can they catch us out, which is why there are ferrets and weasels,' he emphasised the word, 'in our midst.'

Beyond the taper in front of them was a faint glow of light and the Doctor became aware of the murmur of voices. Then the taper disappeared to the right.

'It sounds as though everyone was warned in time,'

Preslin remarked as the light became brighter and the voices louder.

They reached the end of the tunnel and on turning to the right entered a large, well-lit vaulted cave. There were tables laden with bread, cheeses, cold meats and flasks of wine, drawn from the casks which lined one side. There were at least fifty people in the cave men, women and children and the air was filled with the babble of voices as the children played, the women prepared food or came from or went into small cubicles which were cut into the walls, and then stood and talked among themselves.

'What have you there, Charles?' a heavy-set bearded man asked Preslin as they came into the cave. He indicated the Doctor.

'He claims he's a traveller, pa.s.sing through, who came to talk to me about my work,' Preslin replied.

'Not one word of which I believe,' David's voice rang out in hatred. 'He's a spy, a Catholic spy, a weasel sent among us by Charles de Guise, the Most Ill.u.s.trious Cardinal of Lorraine.' One of the listeners, a man of medium height and flaming red hair, rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

'You're talking rubbish,' the Doctor retorted angrily.

'What Charles Preslin has said is the truth.'