Doctor Who_ The Massacre Part 1

DOCTOR WHO.

THE Ma.s.sACRE.

by John Lucarotti.

Prologue.

The Doctor sat in the garden which always reminded him of the Garden of Peace when Steven, no, not Steven, his granddaughter, Susan, and that nice young couple, Barbara and Ian, had their adventure with the Aztec Indians aeons ago. But his reminiscences were elsewhere as he browsed through a copy of Samuel Pepys's famous diary of a Londoner's life in the second half of the seventeenth century. He chuckled at a succinct observation and laid the open book down beside him on the bench.

He looked around contentedly. His journeys through time and s.p.a.ce in the TARDIS had come to a temporary halt. His differences, as he chose to refer to them, with the Time Lords, of which, after all, he was one, were more or less resolved. This celestial retirement was a far from unpleasant condition when one's memories were so rich.

He had had more than his fair share of adventure and secretly he believed that his fellow Lords were a mite jealous of his achievements.

'As well might they be,' he murmured to a pa.s.sing b.u.t.terfly.

That was the moment when he heard their voices all around him.

'Doctor,' they intoned in unison.

He looked up at the blue sky. 'Yes, gentlemen?'

'There is a certain matter we would ' they continued but the Doctor cut across them.

'Just one spokesman, if you don't mind,' he said testily, 'I'm not deaf.'

'The subject concerns your activities ' one of them began.

'Ah,' the Doctor interjected.

' on the planet Earth in the sixteenth century,' the voice continued, 'the year 1572 Earthtime, to be precise.'

'My memory's not quite what it was, gentlemen,' the Doctor replied, remembering in full his involvement in the momentous events of that year. 'Perhaps a further indication would help me to recall exactly where the TARDIS landed.'

'Paris, France,' the Time Lord said.

'Paris, France,' the Doctor repeated slowly as if he were concentrating. 'Yes, I do seem to remember some kind of technical malfunction in the TARDIS which deposited me there but only briefly, I think, an hour or so in their time, was it not?'

'Several days, Doctor.'

'Really? As long as that?' The Doctor did his best to sound surprised.

'We shall accord you a period of time for reflection, Doctor,' the spokesman continued, 'but be warned, our research into the affair reveals that your conduct was highly suspect.'

'Indeed?' the Doctor replied, and wondered how best to extricate himself from yet another 'difference'...

1.

The Roman Bridge Auberge

The TARDIS landed with a jolt which almost threw the young astronaut Steven Taylor off balance but the Doctor did not seem to notice as he studied the parameters of the time/place orientation print-out on the central control panel of the time-machine.

'Earth, again,' he observed and waited for the digits of the time print to stop as they clicked by. But they didn't, at least not the last two. The first settled at 1 and the second at 5 but the last two fluctuated between 0 and 9 indiscriminately. 'In the 1500s, we'll know exactly when in a moment,' he added hopefully. But it was not to be. The numbers kept flickering by on the screen.

'No one should allow a kid like me to go up in a crate like this,' Steven joked but his humour was lost on the Doctor. 'Perhaps we should ask Mission Control for permission to return for an overhaul.'

'I am Mission Control,' the Doctor replied sourly and ordered Steven to open the door as he switched off the main power drives, leaving the interior lighting on the auxiliaries.

Steven obeyed and the stench of putrefaction which hit him in the face almost made him ill on the spot. Under a fierce sun in the clear blue sky the TARDIS stood in the middle of mounds of decomposing rubbish. There was also a wooden fence a little higher than the TARDIS which entirely surrounded them and had a door in it.

'Perfect,' the Doctor observed as he looked out. He wore his cloak over his clothes and his astrakhan hat was on his head. In one hand he held his silver-topped cane, in the other a handkerchief to his nose. 'Putrescence, just what we need,' he added as someone on the other side of the fence threw several rotting cabbages over it. 'Couldn't be better.'

'Your logic escapes, me, Doctor,' Steven replied.

'My dear boy,' the Doctor said indulgently, 'people throw their rubbish over the fence rather than bring it in which means that the TARDIS will remain un.o.bserved here whilst we ' he gestured airily, ' explore.'

'What's to explore?'

'The other side of the fence since the aromas on this side of it give me a clue as to where we might be.' The Doctor momentarily lifted a corner of the handkerchief.

'Garlic, definitely, garlic,' he said and then told Steven to fetch a cloak to wear so that they could begin their exploration.

With the TARDIS locked behind them, the Doctor picked his way delicately through the refuse towards the door.

'We'll need to use the EDF system when we return,' he said just before they reached it.

'What's that?' Steven asked.

'The External Decontamination Function,' the Doctor replied.

'A sort of spatial car-wash,' Steven joked. The Doctor glared at him, opened the door cautiously and peered out.

The fence was on a square of land on one side of the unpaved, pitted street, rutted by carriage wheels. The refuse that had not been thrown over the fence lay there and was being picked at by emaciated dogs. The buildings on both sides were mostly adjoining, between one and two storeys high with overhanging eaves and slated or thatched roofs. The walls were braced with woodenbeams and from most of the small open windows with slatted shutters came pungent odours of cooking.

The people on the street, and they were many, stood or walked under the eaves or in the middle of it. There were hawkers pus.h.i.+ng carts laden with meats, vegetables, fish and crustaceous seafoods of every kind. There was a knife-sharpener with his grinding wheel, a carpenter with his mobile lathe and the remainder of his tools in a leather haversack on his back. There were also vendors with their trays slung by straps from their necks, filled with every variety of cheaply-made knicknack, and all of them were selling their wares simultaneously at the stop of their voices. They wore breeches, billowing s.h.i.+rts and clogs.

Most of them had shoulder-length hair, frequently gathered in a bow at the back. Several had gaudy, gipsy-like bandanas on their heads and a few wore curled, wide-brimmed flat hats.

The women to whom they sold their goods wore full flowing skirts and blouses and their hair was mostly tied back with ribbons. Both buyer and seller negotiated with shouts and yells, shoulder shrugs, arms akimbo, the language of hands and the turning of backs, but each side knowing that shortly the bargain would be struck.

The Doctor stood in the middle of the street, sniffed and announced, 'France.'

Steven smiled. 'French is is what they're speaking, Doctor,' he said. 'But when? And where?' what they're speaking, Doctor,' he said. 'But when? And where?'

'Fifteen hundred and something,' the Doctor replied as Steven wandered over towards the side of the street, trying to read a sign in the ground floor window. 'Don't go there!'

the Doctor shouted. 'Under the eaves or in the middle but not there, Steven, it's dangerous.'

'Why?' Steven asked and a moment later an arm appeared from the first floor window of the house next door and emptied a chamberpot. ' Vive la France Vive la France,' Steven muttered as he retreated hastily to the Doctor's side.

'Oh, look at that,' the Doctor exclaimed, pointing to a shuttered shop. 'It's an apothecary's and it's closed.'

'Has been for some time, by the look of it,' Steven added as he looked at the faded paintwork on the sign.

'In 1563, by decree, all religious prejudice was abolished, and everyone had the right to practise according to his or her beliefs,' the Doctor stated. 'But in 1567 it was said that this pretext of religious freedom was undermining the King's authority.'

'Really?' Steven said, unable to think of anything else.

'And amongst other restrictions, one that was imposed was that no apothecary was permitted to exercise his profession without a Certificate of Catholicisation,' the Doctor continued.

Steven stopped in the middle of the street and asked, 'Why not? What had religion to do with a mortar and pestle?'

'Ideas, young man, heretical ideas concerning life and death that were not in accord with the dogmas of the Church of Rome,' the Doctor replied, staring at the closed apothecary shop. 'The man who owned that place may well have retired normally but equally so he may have been a French Protestant, a Huguenot as they were called still are for that matter who was driven out of business because of his religious convictions.'

'That's a bit unjust,' Steven sounded indignant.

'A bit?' The Doctor raised one eyebrow. 'It got much worse than that, Steven.' He looked around again at the street, at the shop and the people. 'I wonder,' he murmured distractedly.

'What, Doctor?' Steven asked.

For a few moments the Doctor appeared not to have heard the question and when he turned to face Steven his eyes seemed far away and his voice was also distant. 'Where are we and when?'

Steven was taken aback. 'In France in the 1500s. You said so yourself.'

The Doctor's eyes were suddenly sharp again and his voice authoritative. 'But exactly where in France, and more precisely what date in which year?'

Steven waved an arm towards the people on the street.

'Ask one of them,' he exclaimed.

'And be thought mad?' the Doctor retored. 'That's a dangerous condition in which to be considered these days,'

he added knowingly. 'No, they are questions we must answer for ourselves.' He looked up at the house roofs and beyond them. 'The skyline should tell us where, a cathedral spire, a tower, a chateau, a river.' He paused and then exclaimed. 'That's it! The river.'

He went over to a vendor with a tray of cheap medallions and picked one up.

'The Queen Mother, Catherine of Medici,' the vendor said quickly, 'and recently struck. A good likeness, don't you think?'

'Very,' the Doctor replied and threw a small gold coin onto the tray. 'Where's the river?' he asked casually.

'The Seine? Carry straight on, sir,' the vendor replied as he popped the coin into the moneybag secured to his belt and hidden in his breeches pocked. 'You can't miss it.

There are two bridges, the large one onto the island where the Cathedral is and the small one off the other side.'

'Thank you, my good man,' the Doctor replied jauntily.

'Come along, Steven,' he added and marched on down the street. Once they were out of earshot he confided that they were definitely in Paris. 'You heard what he said, Steven, the Seine, the two bridges, le Grand Pont le Grand Pont and and le Pet.i.t Pont le Pet.i.t Pont, and l'Ile de Cite with the Cathedral, Notre Dame.'

'But we still don't know the year,' Steven reminded him.

'If the apothecary was forced out of business, then it's post-67,' the Doctor reasoned, 'but a cursory glance at Notre Dame will confirm that.'

'It will?' Steven questioned, not understanding. The Doctor smiled at him indulgently.

'Notre Dame, like Rome, was not built in a day,' the Doctor explained. 'Nor in a century, not even a couple.

Started in the second half of the twelfth, it was completed three centuries later, the last part being the broad steps leading up to it. 1575 unless my memory serves me ill.'

Steven chose not to observe that it frequently had in the past and, no doubt, would again in the future.

As they made their way along the street which frequently twisted and turned one way and then another they noticed that it widened and the houses became more imposing in their style and structure. Then Steven saw the spire of Notre Dame above the rooftops and pointed it out to the Doctor.

'That's where we want to be,' the Doctor conceded and turned off into another street in line with the spire. Steven noted the name of the street they had left, the rue des Fosses rue des Fosses, the Street of Ditches, which he thought was apt, and the one they had entered, the rue du Grand Pont rue du Grand Pont, the Street of the Large Bridge, which they could now see ahead of them.

The bridge was made of stone and wide enough for two horse-drawn carriages to pa.s.s in opposite directions unless it was too crowded which invariably it was; and on either side a jumble of houses and shops precariously overhung the edges. As they approached the riverside the Doctor looked to his right at the imposing square building that stood on its own not far from the Seine.

'The Louvre, the King's council chamber and the first important covered market in France,' he observed. 'It's worth a visit.' Then he paused briefly.

'Yes?' Steven asked.

'No new bridge to the island yet. That's why it was called le Pont Neuf le Pont Neuf, he added, 'and started in 1578 by the King, Henri III.'

'So that puts us in the decade 67 to 77,' Steven remarked, smiling as the Doctor mopped his brow, 'on a midsummer's day.'

'A draught of chilled white wine wouldn't be amiss,' the Doctor replied, 'and there's bound to be several inns on the far side of the bridge.'

Once again they made their way among the bustling throng, being pushed and squeezed to one side as a coach with a liveried driver and a coat-of-arms emblazoned on its doors forced a path through to the island. But once on the other side of the river the crowd dispersed among the streets leading away from the bridge.

'There's one,' Steven said as he pointed to a sign with the name Auberge du Pont Romain Auberge du Pont Romain hanging on the wall of a building with benches and tables outside where people stood or sat, drinking and chatting. 'Why the Roman Bridge Inn?' he asked. hanging on the wall of a building with benches and tables outside where people stood or sat, drinking and chatting. 'Why the Roman Bridge Inn?' he asked.

'Because the Romans built the original bridge,' the Doctor replied, 'though they didn't put up any houses.

They're relatively recent, late fifteenth, early sixteerith century.'

'You seem to know French history like the back of your hand, Doctor,' Steven sounded slightly irked.