Doctor Who_ The Massacre Part 15

'This doc.u.ment,' he said as he picked up the parchment, 'is your pa.s.separtout pa.s.separtout out of France, signed and sealed by the Abbot himself. It'll see you and your friends safely to Germany. out of France, signed and sealed by the Abbot himself. It'll see you and your friends safely to Germany.

'Thank you, Doctor.' Each one in turn gave him a Gallic hug before they rode off.

'What about Anne, Raoul and their aunt?' Steven asked discreetly.

The Doctor looked at him sharply. 'What about them?'

'Anne helped me, found me a room at the Hotel Lutece, and Raoul fought with us against Duval. Can't you help them as well?' he pleaded.

'They mustn't return home,' Lerans added. 'It's too dangerous.'

'Couldn't they come with us?' Steven ventured.

'Out of the question', the Doctor exploded and then looked at them in resignation. 'Oh, very well,' he sighed and pointed to one of the two remaining dog carts.

'Take that to the eastern outskirts of Paris and then go as quickly as you can on foot to Picardy.'

'Picardy?' Raoul asked. 'Why Picardy?'

'Because I say so,' the Doctor replied firmly.

'Then Picardy it is,' Anne said. She kissed the Doctor and Steven on both cheeks, and clambered into the dog cart with Raoul and her aunt.

'But what will I do in Picardy?' the aunt wailed.

'Try growing roses, ma'am,' the Doctor snapped in exasperation and slapped one of the Alsatians on his rump, sending the dog cart skittering off into the tunnels.

'And now, young man, I think it's time for us to go,' the Doctor said as he slipped the Abbot's habit over his own clothes.

'But you don't need those any more,' Steven protested.

'Officially, the Abbot of Amboise isn't dead yet,' the Doctor replied and took Lerans's hand between his. 'My best regards to Nicholas Muss.'

'He's with the Admiral,' Lerans replied.

'Where his duty lies,' the Doctor said and smiled.

'Please accept the word of a false Abbot when he says "G.o.d be with you".'

Lerans nodded and everyone watched in silence as the Doctor and Steven rode off into the tunnel.

They entered the Bastille by a secret door as the bells of Notre Dame began to chime and the Doctor handed Steven the key to the TARDIS.

'Open up the shop,' he said, 'I won't be a moment.' He went into the guardroom where the Officer of the Guard leapt to his feet.

'What would My Lord Abbot at this hour?' he exclaimed.

'Take me to the possessed locksmith,' the Doctor ordered and the Officer of the Guard led the way to the dungeon where the poor man still hung, chained to the wall. The Doctor went over to him, stretched out his arms and placed his hands on the locksmith's shoulders.

'Begone, foul demon,' he intoned with severity and jiggled his arms up and down for good effect, then ordered the luckless man cut down, fed and released.

'What about my betties?' the locksmith quavered.

'Make another set, ungrateful wretch,' the Doctor said and left.

In the guardroom he announced that he was about to exorcise the TARDIS but that no one should look at it whilst he did so. Obediently the guards all turned their faces to the wall as the Doctor went out onto the courtyard and entered the TARDIS, locking the door behind him.

While the Doctor was taking off the habit Steven asked him what the Abbot's last role had been.

'On his desk at the Cardinal's palace, I saw an exorcism order for the hapless locksmith so I executed it,' the Doctor replied, rearranging his cravat.

'And why Picardy for Anne?'

The Doctor smiled. 'Because the Governor of Picardy was one of the few who refused to obey the King's edict.'

Steven thought about that reply before he put his next question. 'And Lerans?'

'What would you have expected of him,' the Doctor replied, 'other than to fight to the last?'

'Muss, as well, I suppose?'

'He was thrown lifeless out of the window together with de Coligny's body,' the Doctor stated the fact and then added two others. 'Ten thousand Huguenots died in Paris alone, and the Ma.s.sacre spread to bring a total of some fifty thousand deaths throughout France. It was a senseless tragedy which will never be forgotten in that country's history.'

'One last question, Doctor. What was Preslin working on?' Steven scratched his head. 'You never did tell me.'

'Didn't I?' the Doctor raised his eyebrows. 'It was the theory of germinology, that diseases were caused by bacteria. So I sent him to Germany where a scientist was working on optics, inventing a microscope that would enable Preslin to see the microbes.'

Bemused, Steven shook his head slowly from side to side.

'And you claim you don't meddle!' he said, grinning.

'Don't be impertinent, Steven,' the Doctor replied with the trace of a smile and pressed the dematerialisation b.u.t.ton.

Epilogue.

He sat in the garden and waited for them to return as he knew they would.

'Doctor,' they intoned together.

He looked up and raised an index finger. 'One voice will suffice.'

'There are some questions which still remain unanswered,' a single voice continued.

' Sans doute, Sans doute, ' the Doctor replied, speaking French for the first time in centuries. ' the Doctor replied, speaking French for the first time in centuries.

'We shall deal with the apothecary Preslin first,' a second voice announced. 'You sent him and his colleagues to Germany.'

' Pas moi, Pas moi, gentlemen,' the Doctor replied. 'The Abbot's seal took them there.' gentlemen,' the Doctor replied. 'The Abbot's seal took them there.'

'Which you you had purloined,' a third voice accused. had purloined,' a third voice accused.

'You have proof of that, I trust?' the Doctor retorted sharply. 'Witnesses, for example?'

There was an awkward silence. 'Let us consider the issue of the Chaplet girl and her relatives,' a fourth voice said eventually.

'I hardly knew her,' the Doctor replied.

'Yet you sent her and her family to Picardy,' the first voice stated. 'Why?'

'It was too dangerous for them to return to their home,'

the Doctor explained.

'Did they reach their destination?' the second voice asked.

'I haven't the foggiest notion,' the Doctor said.

'Yet, in another time on the planet Earth you welcomed aboard the TARDIS a young woman of French origins named Dodo Chaplet... ' The third voice was menacing.

'Doesn't that strike you as odd?'

'No. Why should it?' the Doctor half-chuckled. 'Chaplet is to Dubois in France as Smith is to Jones in England. All good common family names. I see no necessary connection,' he concluded, remembering that Dodo was the spitting image of Anne.

There was another pause before the fourth Time Lord spoke. 'We have before us a contemporary woodcut by a witness to the a.s.sa.s.sination attempt on the life of the Admiral de Coligny,' he said. 'It clearly shows the presence of a cleric in an open doorway. Can you explain that?'

'May I see it?' The Doctor was fascinated and held out his hands into which the woodcut materialised. He studied it carefully and thought to himself that the artist who had made it had had a prodigious memory. Everything was exactly as it had happened. 'I think, gentlemen, we must a.s.sume that the cleric is the Abbot of Amboise observing the failure of the Admiral's murder.'

He held out the woodcut which disappeared from his hands. If only de Coligny had taken one half step further towards me, he thought wryly, Maurevert's shot would have missed and I would be guilty as charged of changing history, for better or for worse.

There was a long silence and he knew they were gone.

He picked up Pepys's diary beside him on the bench, opened it at random and tried to read. But his mind was elsewhere.

He was back in the tunnels reliving the exhilaration of those helter-skelter dashes through the darkness.