The Doctor's Shadow

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

London Back Streets 8TH June (Afternoon)

Five children were playing a game with sticks.  The one that pulled the shortest got dunked in the running sewer.  Tegan was disgusted.  Turlough rolled his eyes.  It was not evil.  High spirits.  Children had to have their fun.  Especially in these squalid narrow pungent streets.  A little boy pulled the shortest.  He accepted his mucky fate with a shrug of the shoulders.

“I can’t believe this is...”

“Well,” Turlough sighed, “I feel for this little child.  It is exactly how I felt at being dragged away and tied up all the time!”

Tegan bit her lower lip: “We were a little awful with you, weren’t we?”

Turlough smiled.  “Fair is fair,” his eyes clouded over.  “I did try and kill you and the Doctor.”

Tegan mentally kicked herself.  “I’m sorry,” she said.  “I should not have...”

“It is all right.  The amount of fun we’ve had the past year has more than made up for it!”

He squeezed her shoulder.  Tegan turned around begging for a kiss.  Turlough was about to but Tegan shivered.  The temperature had lowered.  

“Harps!” a girl cried.

“Come,” a lovely ghostly voice echoed round the alley, “come little children.  Have meat, cakes and bread.  Come! hungry children, come be fed!”

Tegan gulped.  Rubbing her arms at the sudden chill.  The children did not feel that though.  They stopped playing and turned to the direction of the fey voice and the melodious harps.  

“Le-etle children?” it sang.

The children glanced at each other.  “Come on!” said the leader.  “We’re all ‘ungry!”

“Come little children.  Come for your feast.  Come little children.  Come all who are least.”

Tegan was about to run out to grab at least one of them but Turlough dragged her further into their narrow, dark mucky street.

“What was that about? We could have saved them!”

“NO!” Turlough exclaimed harshly.  “We could not!”

Tegan frowned at him and made to turn but Turlough gripped her again.  “OH NO YOU DON’T!” he shouted.  “LOOK! I know what that is...” Tegan freed her wrist to run.  “TEGAN! NO!”

The King’s Court

“There,” the woman said triumphantly.  “Now,” she turned her attention to Dorothy.  Slowly circling round the distraught girl.  The sound echoed mendaciously around the room.  When she was facing Dorothy she knelt down on the floor so their eyes were level.  With her cold thin fingers she tilted Dorothy’s chin and wiped Dorothy’s tears with the pad of her thumb.  “Do not mourn, Dorothy.  Please, take my hand, sister.  Sister’s we shall be!”

Dorothy’s eyes flashed such hatred through her tears that some of the more delicate women standing by had to hide their eyes.  

“You are not my sister!” she pushed the woman onto the floor, rose up by herself and started to run for the doors.

“SOMEBODY STOP HER!” the woman yelled.

Two men stepped in front of Dorothy.  The woman righted herself and stepped smartly up to the defiant girl.  For girl she was to her.  

“Get off me you witch!” Dorothy exclaimed as the woman pulled her back into the centre of the room.  

“Your Royal Highness,” Lady Elizabeth pushed her way through.  “Lady Dorothy is a cousin of mine.  Please, she knows not what she does.  We have known her husband is worthy of the asylum long ago.  Dorothy, alas, is in possession of a hot-head and stubborn heart.  She is allowing love to blind her to the eccentricities.  Please, I shall take care of her.”