HARMONY (a Doctor Who Novella)

Chapter 8

They sat in murky silence a long time, all thought of escape gone. The wick in the earthenware lamp on the ledge guttered out ere long, leaving them in smoky darkness. Still they sat, each lost in his own thoughts. They might have been the same thoughts. He had not the words to ask.

A flurry of activity upstairs interrupted their miserable reverie and he raised his head slowly to listen. The Doctor shifted behind him, no doubt doing the same. A series of shots followed soon after, suggesting morning had arrived, but they had no way of verifying the time. All he knew for sure was that he was exhausted and aching and gnawingly hungry. The rumble of thunder once more shook the house. Belatedly he realised it was not thunder at all, but heavy artillery. Cannon fire. The day was upon them, and with it Rupert's Horse.

In a flash of green and blue light from both sonic screwdrivers, he was free of the crippling shackles and staggering to his feet. For a moment he wasn't sure he remembered how to walk.

"Time to get outta Dodge," he said.

"And not a moment too soon," the Doctor agreed, training a beam of green light onto the remaining shackles. For some reason they were being more resistant to release.

"You're doing it wrong--"

"If you don't mind, you're in my light!"

"What light? Here, let me--" he swiped the sonic screwdriver from the Doctor's hand.

"Do I look like I need help?

"As a matter of fact, yes."

"Stop there if you value your lives."

He spun round at the sound of a quavering voice. Red-headed young Mott stood in the doorway, an ornate bronze lamp in the shape of a peacock in one hand, a pistol in the other. The reluctant time traveller looked none the more pleased to be in the cellar than they did.

"Really," he said, "that's the wrong thing to ask us. And what are you doing down here anyway? They send you to mind the prisoners while the cavalry charges into Brentford? Blimey. We're more popular than I realized. What's your name anyway?"

"Don't talk to me. The chaplain warned me you'd try to bewitch me."

"Did he, now?" He slid the Doctor's sonic screwdriver into his back pocket then raised his hands, turning them back and forth that young master Mott might see that he was unarmed. "There. Is that better? I don't want to hurt you. We don't want to hurt you. Don't want to hurt anyone. Really. We just want to get back home, preferably with all our limbs attached. Bet you want to go home too. Back to Chiswick, yeah? Yeah. You want to go home. What soldier doesn't."

Mott kept the pistol raised, but slowly nodded in agreement.

"But you know what's happening here, right? This is the lull before the storm.

Foggy outside is it? Before long 1,000 Musketeers are going to sweep through Brentford--"

"Braynforde," the Doctor corrected for the time period.

"Braynforde, right, and on toward Turnham Green. There's no going home to Chiswick right now, my friend, and men firing from behind hedges are not going to be enough to hold back what's coming."

"The bridge will hold and if not--"

"Barricades in town? Snipers in the side streets? Lord Brooke's men armed to the teeth? Or what's left of them since you lost half of them to reinforce Essex yesterday--which, by the way, was not supposed to happen. By nightfall all of Br-aynford will be burning. And this house will be the first to fall.