Doctor Who

by Alex Kingston

  I watched man after man (and they were all men, of course) walk through the pleasure gardens of Pompey’s theatre, on their way to the place where history records the assassination occurs.

  I’m not a person who naturally blends in, but on occasion I can be discreet. I followed the senators through the theatre (offering up thanks to the Roman gods that I didn’t have to sit through another play) and managed to slip into the meeting house where hundreds of senators crowded, many unknowing that they were part of history – and yet even the assassins would find it hard to believe their names would still be known and their motivations still discussed for millennia to come.

  The murder was almost an anti-climax. Breath held, when will it come? Oh, there it is. A man pretends to ask Caesar a question, and stabs him instead. Caesar hits back with all he has to hand, his pen. More people join in. It was a stupid, scrappy, playground scuffle that would have been ridiculous if there hadn’t been a man fighting for his life. There were no noble speeches, no ‘Et tu, Brute?’ – I couldn’t even tell which one was Brutus, the supposed leader of the coup. A few grunts, and Caesar lay on the floor. And the noble conspirators, risking all for Rome? They all ran away.

  There would be riots. There would be more deaths. The course of history was changed for ever. All from this feeble little scrap.

  And I was no nearer to solving Ventrian’s riddle. There was no sign that Ventrian had been at either of these incidents himself – I’d looked for him – or that there was a connection to my mission in any way at all. I’d got to witness two significant historical events, which I supposed would mean I’d always have something to talk about at dinner parties, but they hadn’t taken me a step nearer to finding the Eye of Horus or Cleopatra’s tomb.

  Cleopatra’s tomb …

  Cleopatra! Could that be why I was here?

  I ran through the streets, trying to find someone who wasn’t rioting and could tell me where to find the Egyptian queen. The house – property of Caesar – was on the banks of the Tiber, and I made my way there, pushing through the crowds. The further I got from the senate house, the less it seemed people knew why they were fighting, just that fighting seemed to be the order of the day.

  Of course, no one wanted to let me in. ‘I have to see the queen. It’s very important,’ I insisted, but I can hardly blame their reaction, which was to say a very firm no. They didn’t know me, and the city was burning. But saying I didn’t blame them didn’t mean I would let it go.

  I thought about Cleopatra and everything I knew about her, and … oh yes. Ding! Lightbulb moment.

  I went back to the forum and took advantage of the uproar to help myself to some goods, and found a slave to assist me (no, I don’t approve. But this was very literally ‘when in Rome’).

  If I tell you that what I bought was a rather nice woollen rug, you can probably work out what my plan was.

  So, there I was, feeling like a sack of potatoes as I bumped along over the slave’s shoulder, trying to simultaneously breathe, in order to stay alive, and not breathe, in order to not choke on the mixed scents of wool, rotten fish, myrrh and goat that laced this delightful carpet.

  The bumping stopped, and I could hear my courier explaining his business. Then we started up again. We were going in. The ruse had worked. Get ready …

  Suddenly I was falling, rolling … I lay there for a second, then scrambled to my feet.

  A dozen swords were pointing at me. But I was where I needed to be.

  ‘Hello, your majesty,’ I said to Cleopatra. ‘We really need to have a chat … ’

  Cleopatra. Her beauty, like Helen of Troy’s, caused tragedy in its wake. That’s what history says.

  Except it wasn’t really beauty. It took only a few moments in her presence to realise she had something much more alluring than mere good looks. She was somebody. She had charisma, she had personality, and I would soon learn that she had a fierce, burning intelligence.

  I once impersonated Cleopatra – which is another story, and one I would not mention to the queen – and had darkened my hair to do so. Strangely, I need not have done so. She had reddish curls, much like mine, although elsewhere we were no match: she was a head shorter than I was and, strangely for an Egyptian queen of Greek descent, had a Roman nose.

  ‘So you use my own tricks against me,’ she said.

  ‘I’d rather say that I learned from the best,’ I replied. ‘And I had to see you. I bring terrible news.’

  ‘There have been rumours.’ She looked away briefly. To hide the pain in her eyes? Had she loved Caesar? He was 55 and she was 25, but I’m hardly one to talk about the age difference in a relationship. But it was only a fleeting moment. She looked unmoved as she said, ‘I would hear your news.’

  I told her what I had witnessed.

  There was no outbreak of tears, no outpouring of emotion. No panic about how her fate may be tied to Caesar’s. She was there and then a queen; her back straight, her eyes steely.

  ‘You must leave,’ I told her. ‘You and your child. As Caesar’s son, he will be in danger too.’

  ‘He is the child of Caesar, but of foreign birth,’ she said. ‘He has no rights, even though Caesar acknowledged him. However, if a child of Caesar were conceived here, on Roman soil, that is the child who would be in danger.’ And she placed a hand on her belly, and I knew what she was telling me. ‘Now, let me treat those bruises you have procured in my service. For you did not study your lesson closely enough: when I did as you tried today, I ensured I was set down carefully.’

  As slaves rubbed my knees and elbows with healing salve, Cleopatra began to ask questions of me – questions about me. I decided to be a traveller from Ostia, and was elaborating on my journey when the queen held up a hand to stop me.

  ‘All lies,’ she said. ‘Do you think I have survived seven years as queen without being able to tell a lie from truth? Although I admit you tell your lies fluently and well.’ She looked curious, rather than cross. ‘I am an incarnation of Isis, the mother goddess herself. Are you too of the gods? For what I see in front of me is not a traitor who lies for his own gain, or for fear of punishment, but one who weaves herself covering after covering of lies, as a hermit crab inhabits shell after shell.’

  Well, I suppose my darling Doctor has been known to call me crabby …

  ‘I’m not a goddess,’ I said. ‘But you can trust me.’

  And she nodded, and said, ‘Strangely, I believe I can.’

  The life of an ancient queen is fraught with danger, and I think Cleopatra could sense I had had experiences beyond those of most people. Her world was barbaric and she had to fit into it – but so was mine, and so had I. The 55 centuries between us couldn’t disguise that in many ways we were kindred spirits.

  Saying we became friends would not be entirely accurate. A woman in her position could not have friends. In what sphere would she find them? Friends could not be made of those of lower status, but her peers were either rivals or allies, often oscillating between the two – and if sometimes you had to court favour with a new ally by sending them an old friend’s head in a box, well then, that was just how things were. Your main aim was to be the beheader rather than the beheadee. Family bonds did not exist. If you were of royal blood, you had to climb to the top over the bodies of your parents and siblings. Not wanting power didn’t make you safe, it just meant you were easier to clear out of the way.

  I should say that In Cleopatra’s case, there was an exception to the family rule: her son, Caesarion, or to give him his full name, Ptolemy Philopator Philometor Caesar. I knew that in the future Cleopatra would make Caesarion her co-ruler of Egypt, hoping for him to become sole ruler when she contemplated fleeing the country, so he could continue the Ptolemaic dynasty. A lot of her hopes and dreams lay on the child’s shoulders. And aside from all that, she loved him – not as the incarnation of the mother goddess, just as a mother. I saw it with my own eyes.

  Caesarion wasn’t yet three years old, and I played
with him – sparring with wooden swords, moving little figures around on a pretend battleground, tossing knucklebones – while his mother made plans to flee Rome. My pragmatic approach to time travel took a beating once more, knowing that the little boy who called me ‘Wivver’ wouldn’t make it to his 18th birthday.

  When it was time to leave, I carried the child until we reached the ship that would take him and his mother back to Egypt, to Alexandria.

  It was time for me to return to Alexandria too. My method of transport might not be pleasant, but it was better than several weeks of sea sickness. (Plus there was a smell. Really. Cleopatra was a bit of a fragrance fan and liked people to smell her coming – she was always preceded by a wave of myrrh and spice, and she’d come up with this idea of sousing her ship’s sails in the perfume too. I’m not saying the scent was bad, I rather liked it as a matter of fact, but I wasn’t sure I could spend a thousand miles feeling like I was stuck inside a floating Danish pastry. Of course, I do have a respiratory bypass system – something else I inherited from my unusual parentage – but holding my breath for that long felt like a lot of work.)

  ‘Come with me,’ the queen had said. ‘I will give you a position in my household.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘My work isn’t finished yet.’

  ‘I could make you come with me,’ she said. ‘Or have you killed for your refusal.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You could.’

  She smiled. ‘Goodbye, River. May the gods guide you truly.’

  ‘And you,’ I said.

  The ship departed. The sea voyage would be rough, but I knew Cleopatra was happy to be going home again.

  As I watched her sail away, I wanted nothing more than to go home again too.

  Trouble is, I don’t really have a home. I just have places where I live.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  EGYPT, 30 BCE

  I was back in the latest of my temporary ‘homes’: Alexandria 30 BCE, and I wasn’t talking to my cat.

  OK, if you want to be pedantic, Cat Malone hadn’t actually ordered me to return to those parts of Caesar’s past, she hadn’t guaranteed I’d find answers there. Fair enough, I’d agreed with her reasoning and made the decision myself. But I was annoyed at finding myself no further forward and it’s easier to take that out on a fictional character in the body of an animal than on oneself.

  Not that the cat cared a jot how I felt about her, provided that fish still magically appeared in front of her at times of her choosing, so in the end I just shrugged and stopped the sulk.

  We debated the rhyme once again. Beware the Ides. The Ides were a set day in a month, the 15th in months of 31 days, the 13th in all others. But ‘beware’, alongside the mention of Caesar – it had to mean that one particular famous example. What did we have to ‘beware’ of? What danger? I thought about having another look through Suetonius, see if he said anything –

  Oh! I thought of the archaic language of the historian, all ‘thus’ and ‘upon’ and so forth.

  ‘Maybe it isn’t “beware” – it’s “be-ware”. Meaning, be aware of. Be informed about. What information do we know about the Ides of March?’

  ‘March 15th said Cat Malone. ‘Three-fifteen. Maybe it’s the numbers. A safe combination?’

  ‘A three-number combination would be fairly feeble.’

  ‘Add the year, then,’ said Cat Malone. ‘Three-fifteen-forty-four.’

  ‘Except we’re not exactly surrounded by combination locks in Ancient Egypt,’ I pointed out. ‘It has to be something that Ventrian had access to that he thought I’d have access to as well.’ And then it hits me. The book! I pulled it out of my bag. ‘Ventrian marked out the pages on his papyrus! This is why! Page three, line 15, word 44? No. No line’s long enough to have 44 words. Page three, paragraph 15 word 44? Not enough paragraphs on the page. Page 315? No, there isn’t one.’ I thumped the table. ‘Damn!’

  ‘Geez, don’t blow your wig,’ said the cat.

  ‘Why on earth did I make you put on that ridiculous cod accent … ’ I began.

  ‘Ooooh, cod,’ said Cat Malone.

  ‘Wait,’ I snapped. ‘Maybe that’s it. Melody Malone – speaks like a detective in Old New York Town! Don’t you see? You’re using American dating conventions. But when I told Ventrian about the Ides of March, I would have said the 15th of March – so it’s one-five-three, not three-one-five!’ I turned to page 153. Counted down to word 44.

  The word was ‘ruby’. Well, that didn’t exactly tell me anything I didn’t already …

  But as my finger rested on the word, it came to life. Shapes soared out of the page, a maelstrom of diagrams, equations, instructions. I was caught up in them, a living component, the figures pulling themselves together through me, then swooping off elsewhere; a constellation of numbers as bright as any stars.

  The Eye of Horus Device was capable of unravelling reality. This showed a way to make it unravel itself. I thought of Ventrian, lying on his death bed. He was capable of this and yet his life had become an Ouroboros, a snake eating its own tail, working only to undo the harm he had himself caused.

  The complexity and ingenuity of the solution astounded me. I knew I could never hope to remember it. But once I had the Eye of Horus, I could apply it.

  I knew all these elaborate measures were in place so the Device would only be found by someone set on destroying it – me. But how many more twists and turns were ahead? How many more blind alleys would I stumble down?

  Talking cats, secret signals in books, diabolic riddles.

  The Eye’s the only Rubicon.

  Maybe that meant there was only one river left to cross: finding the Eye itself.

  This time, I had to get into the tomb.

  ‘Come on, Malone,’ I said. ‘We’ve got a Silent to sort out.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  EGYPT, 30 BCE

  ‘You cannot kill me,’ said the Silent. ‘You cannot pass me.’

  I kept staring at it. It was using hypnosis to implant that idea in my head, but as long as I stayed alert in its presence, I was safe. And I’d come prepared.

  I’d brought no gun with me into the past, no laser pistol or photon blaster. But the Ancient World was full of weapons, and we were mere months past the Battle of Alexandria. This monster couldn’t hurt me as long as I kept my distance, there was no electricity for it to draw on here.

  I looked the Silent in the eye, raised my bow, swivelled quickly to one side and shot an arrow straight at the wall.

  ‘What the – ?’

  The cat looked up at me and shook its head. ‘You can’t see them, but there are now four arrows stuck in the wall,’ it said in my voice. ‘I did try to tell you. It hypnotised you the first time you got in and you’re not seeing or hearing anything else while you have a weapon pointed at it. Now back away carefully, and we’ll go through it one more time.’

  I retreated, not breaking eye contact until I was out of the corridor and backing up the stone steps. I sat down at the entrance, and looked at my quiver. ‘I hope I get it first time,’ I said. ‘How stupid of me to only bring two arrows.’

  ‘Did you only bring two arrows?’ said Cat Malone.

  I indicated them. ‘One, two.’

  The cat sighed. ‘For the fourth time, at the bottom of these steps is a corridor. In the corridor is a Silent. You are suffering from induced amnesia and post-hypnotic suggestion, which means that every time you step into that corridor, you forget you’ve done it before, and every time you leave you forget you’ve done it again.’

  I grimaced, but I didn’t doubt that the cat was telling the truth. I was brought up around these things, I knew what they could do. Not being able to trust your own brain is hard; not being able to trust your senses is hard. That’s why the Silence are so terrifying.

  I sat deep in thought for a few moments. Then it came to me. How had I missed such an obvious solution? ‘Of course!’ I said. ‘I can use the Vortex Manipulator. Tiny hops can be tricky,
but if I – what?’ That was to Cat Malone who was emitting a strange growly purr that seemed to be her version of laughter.

  ‘“Tiny hops can be tricky, but if I can figure out the spatial coordinates to four decimal places”,’ she said, exactly as I would have said it.

  The words ‘How did you know what I was going to say?’ started crossing my mind, but I’m not stupid, I realised the answer before I’d said any of it out loud. ‘I’ve said that before?’ I asked.

  ‘Look at your left thigh,’ Cat Malone told me. I lifted my tunic. A red patch. ‘That’s the bruise you got the first time the deflection field threw you out and you landed on that rock over there.’ Her whiskers indicated the rock in question. ‘You only tried it twice before you started to listen to me, or you’d probably be hobbling by now.’

  Damn. ‘I can’t use the VM, I can’t shoot the Silent. So I need a better plan this time,’ I said.

  ‘Ooh, let me think, that must be … one, two, three … the fourth time you’ve said that!’ said Cat Malone. I don’t mind her jeering a bit when I’m writing her, but it was a bit much when she started being sarcastic to me.

  ‘Well, do you have any ideas?’ I asked her.

  ‘Actually, I do,’ she said. ‘And I’ve told it to you every single time. You just forget it as soon as you get inside that thing’s orbit.’

  I was thinking. ‘You’re saying that it’s not coming up with an idea that’s the problem, it’s remembering it.’

  ‘That is the case.’