Doctor Who_ Byzantium! Part 17

'I am sorry that your carriage has disappeared,' James continued, sensing the cause of the Doctor's misery.

'Perhaps it will turn up.'

'Perhaps,' the Doctor noted. 'Though I doubt it'

'You must have faith,' said James. Then he saw the thoroughly grumpy expression on the Doctor's face and decided to change the subject. 'Hebron is worse,' he said.

The Doctor stood up and followed James back into the cave, to a quiet corner where Hebron lay propped up on one elbow, his face twisted in pain. Seeing the Doctor approach, Hebron instantly switched on a beaming smile and lay back.

'You have come at last, my friend,' he said.

The old Christian was clearly ill, the Doctor had seen that in Hebron's pale face, the sagging skin that was evidence of a dramatic weight loss and those sudden moments when he could no longer hide the excruciating pain that he was suffering. The Doctor seldom befriended anyone, but in Hebron, with his fascinating tales of his travels, the Doctor had sensed a kindred spirit. Someone to whom the cause of adventure was not lost or hidden, but which had been embraced.

The Doctor knelt beside Hebron and gave him a clay pot to drink from. It was painful to watch as the old man coughed and struggled to swallow the water in his throat.

'Do you know what ails him thus?' asked Judith, resting a hand on Hebron's fevered brow. Her palm came away slick and wet and she gave the Doctor and James a grave look.

'I have some very unpleasant suspicions,' the Doctor noted.

Hebron's eye opened and he seemed suddenly alert again. 'Then you will share your knowledge with me, perhaps?' he asked.

The Doctor shook his head. 'I am only guessing.'

'Then make it a good guess, my friend. Hebron replied.

Placing his hand on Hebron's chest and using his fingers and the heel of his wrist as two pressure points, the Doctor rocked his hand back and forth around Hebron's breastbone.

'The pain,' he asked. 'When you swallow, particularly. Is it here and here?' He indicated two small lumps on Hebron's chest.

'Yes,' choked Hebron as the pressure of the Doctor threatened to squeeze the life out of him. The Doctor removed his hand just before James had the chance to grab his arm and remove it for him.

'Do you know what it is?' asked James The Doctor nodded, sadly. 'A blockage in the oesophagus, the part of the alimentary ca.n.a.l between the pharynx and the stomach. It could be something very basic like a hernia or a stricture of some kind, but...' He paused and looked at Hebron with a sadness in his eyes. 'I'm sorry, but I believe it to be a cancerous growth.'

'Can it be cured?' asked Judith.

'No,' said Hebron before the Doctor could speak. 'Not even the Lord himself can choke the thirst of a cancer.'

'I am very sorry,' the Doctor repeated. 'I wish there was something I could do apart from giving you a diagnosis.'

'You have given me the greatest gift of all,' Hebron said brightly, the pain lessening from his face. 'The knowledge of the future.'

The Doctor had never felt so helpless, in more ways than one. 'Your fort.i.tude in the face of such news is commendable,' he managed to say, standing, and wiping the dust from his toga. 'You are a good and brave man, Hebron.'

'And you, my friend, are a braver and better one,' Hebron noted as he closed his eyes and fell into a light sleep.

'Let him rest now,' the Doctor said as Hebron's final words played around in his mind. 'I am not usually so selfish,' he told James. 'It seems I must mend my ways.'

James gave the Doctor a casually dismissive gesture. 'We must all all do that before the judgment of G.o.d,' he said. 'It is what is contained within our hearts that truly counts' do that before the judgment of G.o.d,' he said. 'It is what is contained within our hearts that truly counts'

Just then, there was a commotion at the entrance to the cave. 'Someone is coming,' said one of the Christians keeping watch on the approaches. A moment later, Daniel burst into the cave. Even in the dim light it was obvious that he was exhausted and very upset.

' What is wrong?' Judith asked instinctively.

I tried to stop them,' Daniel said, pitifully. 'But they would not listen to me.'

'Who?' asked James.

'Aaron. Jacob. John the weaver and his brother Samuel.

They're all dead.'

The cave was plunged into total silence by this revelation.

'How?' asked James at last.

'They tried to stop the executions. As though the Romans would have had any intention of allowing them so to do.' He stopped and wiped the tears from his eyes. 'The Zealots attacked them and the Romans stood by and did nothing.'

Again, it took time for this information to register within the shocked and stunned group. Finally James picked up a handful of dust and poured it on to the fire, extinguis.h.i.+ng it.

'We must make ready to flee this place,' he said as the flames died and the cave became a dark and cold place.

'Pack up your belongings and make Hebron as comfortable as possible. Byzantium is no longer safe for Christians. We leave within the hour.'

Vicki and Iola ran through the streets of Byzantium as the gathering gloom turned to the velvet black of night. The rain came as they ran, hard and slanted, splattering on their faces, set grim by the foul weather, and soaking their clothes to the skin.

'Hurry,' called Iola who was fitter and more sprightly than Vicki as they reached the corner of the market square and hurried towards the Greek quarter. 'The curfew is enacted. If they catch us, you will not be able to talk your way out like you did back at the hill.'

'That never happened,' Vicki said, catching up with her friend, grabbing her shoulders and shaking her so that rainwater cascaded from her bobbing head and fell to the puddles already forming on the cobbled streets. 'Do you hear me? We were never there. We've just been walking around and we lost track of the time.'

'My mother will flog the skin from our backs with no mercy if she discovers that we have lied to her,' Iola said in a terrified voice. I am not going to do that.'

'That's nothing to what she'll do if she fmds out how close we were to being deflowered by that Roman. Now say it, Iola, tell me where we've been.'

Iola shook her head. 'I can not...'

'Yes you can, tell me where we've been.'

'Just walking around the city,' said Iola in a staccato burst.

'We lost track of the time and we are very, very, very sorry and we shall never do it again.'

Vicki nodded, approvingly. 'Good, let's go.'

They reached the door just as Evangeline emerged from the Georgiadis house; she seemed more frightened than angry. 'Where have you been?' she screamed as the girls threw themselves into the house and Georgiadis himself, standing behind the door, shut it, and placed a wooden pole over the door frame to prevent any further entrances or exits.

Vicki gave Iola a sympathetic look. 'It's all my fault,' she said. 'We were just walking around the city, down by the sea walls, and in the Jewish quarter. We didn't realise how late it was. Well, Iola kept on telling me that we should get back home but I dillied and dallied. So, I'm totally to blame, and I'm very, very sorry.'

Georgiadis joined his wife and the pair looked at Vicki closely. 'Do you believe her?' he asked.

'Not a solitary word of it,' replied Evangeline. Iola,' she snapped. Is this story true?'

There was a long and terrible silence, during which Vicki's entire life seemed to flash before her eyes. Her pony, Saracen. Learning her lessons for an hour a day wearing a virtual reality headset. Her mother dying shortly before she and her father left Earth for a new life in 2493. Dido and Koquillion. The Doctor.

Iola,' shouted Evangeline.

'Yes, Mother,' said Iola quickly. 'It is all true, every word of it. We were just walking about, by the sea walls. I told Vicki that we should get back home but she said we had plenty of time...' Iola's voice trailed away and she began to cry.

'Father, you believe me, do you not?'

Oh, excellent, excellent, thought Vicki, cynically. Set your parents against each other, why don't you? thought Vicki, cynically. Set your parents against each other, why don't you?

Georgiadis clearly wanted nothing to do with this argument and ignored his daughter's plea, going to sit in the corner and stoke the fire instead.

It was then that Evangeline placed a maternal arm around her daughter's shoulder and hugged her tenderly. 'Be not upset, my lamb. I believe you. Set the places for supper.' Iola sniffed, nodded, kissed her mother and scuttled over to the table trying hard not to look at Vicki.

'As for you,' Evangeline told Vicki, clearly blaming their interloper for coming perilously close to leading her daughter astray with her alien ways, 'after supper, you and I shall speak again about your conduct within this house.'

Oh good,' said Vicki with an innocent smile. I'll look forward to that.'

Chapter Nineteen.

Some Call It G.o.d-Core

And all the city was gathered together at the door.

Mark 1: 33

So long as unwanted visitors like t.i.tus and Phasaei were absent, then life was quiet and peaceful for Barbara in Hieronymous's home. She found time to recover her shattered nerves in the beautiful gardens, and read some of the scrolls in the priest's library. They were mainly obscure Jewish religious texts, but no less interesting for all that.

Barbara had decided that if she was going to be spending the rest of her life in Byzantium, then she wanted to be armed with as much knowledge as to the beliefs of those who lived there as she could.

A further encounter with t.i.tus and Phasaei after the execution of the two Christians had helped to cement her initial impressions of the pair. One was clearly a clever and dangerous man. t.i.tus said little, smiled a lot, and could viciously press home a point or change the subject in the bat of an eyelid without the unwary even being aware that they had just made a mistake.

Phasaei, on the other hand, Barbara continued to twist around her little finger. Even a basic knowledge of the contradictions contained within the Old Testament was all that was needed to destroy any of the arguments that he attempted.

And, what was even more amusing, he didn't even seem to be aware that he was being manipulated and thoroughly set up.

t.i.tus was, though.

After the meeting, once again Hieronymous warned Barbara to be careful when dealing with the men, particularly t.i.tus, but this time he was more encouraging with the way in which she had used chapter and verse against Phasaei's bombast.

In fact, Barbara had the uncomfortable feeling that everything she was doing, from the simplest of household tasks, was impressing Hieronymous more and more.

Too much, in fact.

She had asked Hieronymous if he harboured any desires towards her and the priest had bl.u.s.tered and squirmed his way out of the question with clear embarra.s.sment.

So, she went back to thinking about how it might be nice, for once, not to be spending New Year's Eve alone this year, with a small box of Quality Street and a bottle of Babycham and endless turkey sandwiches.

She had seen nothing of Gabrielle, Hieronymous's daughter since their brief and tense meeting almost a week ago.

So she was quite surprised to hear a female voice drifting up the spiral stone stairwell to her bedroom early one morning.

Cautiously, and not wis.h.i.+ng to announce her presence, Barbara crept to the top of the stairs and eavesdropped on the conversation taking place.

'I have been worried about you,' Hieronymous was saying. 'I was not certain of whereinsoever you were.'

'You made no significant effort to find out,' Gabrielle replied, harshly.

'Not so.'

'I was abiding but five minutes away, Father. At the dwelling of Esther, the widow of Joachim the carpenter. You could have discovered that with just a few simple questions.

But you did not.'

Barbara knelt down, pressing her ear close to the stone so that it amplified the voices.

'It was your decision to leave, not mine to command you to leave.'

'Command?' Gabrielle shrieked. 'You would have me share a roof with that woman?' that woman?'

Barbara winced. Clearly Gabrielle hadn't got used to the idea of Barbara remaining as a house guest. In a roundabout way, Barbara understood her feelings. It cannot have been easy having your home life disrupted in such a way and by an outsider. Barbara decided that she would go downstairs immediately, apologise for her intrusion but a.s.sure Gabrielle that she harboured no wish to break up her family, and that if Hieronymous was agreeable, she would leave as soon as a safe place within the city could be found for her.