Essie opened her mouth to protest, but for once she listened to me. It was Johann who was transfixed by the lights and I had to push him sharply through the open doorway, although it pained me to do so. ‘Go!’
There was a hissing noise as the beam of light started to travel across the floor.
‘You see,’ I said boldly to the Scientists, ‘I have a proposition for you. For where you came from…’
I had no idea what my proposition actually was, but I felt we had to start somewhere. All three ignored me, however, their beaks following the path of the light, and the man on the floor.
‘Help me!’ moaned Godfroi in supplication.
And then, in an instant, all was whited out in a scream as the travelling light entered his shoulder and carried on, until the arm fell, with a thump, clean off on the floor and then even the scream was cut off, as he quickly dropped into a merciful faint as the light somehow stopped the wound from bleeding – I could not tell why nor how.
‘What are you?’ I said, rushing to Godfroi’s side, even as one of the figures picked up the discarded arm and started examining the black lumps on it. He cut through the arm quickly and efficiently, as the other man came up with strange black bags that, I now realised, buzzed and moved as they were filled.
‘What are you? What are you doing?’ I said.
One glanced at me. ‘We are Scientists,’ he said.
‘You said that. I don’t know what the word means.’
‘We discover things. We test things. We work on things that are harmful and make cures.’
‘Are you going to cure the plague?’
The masked man nodded his head. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But not here.’ He looked around. ‘We examine, we dissect. We take back evidence and information to stop our own people from getting sick. Far, far from here.’
‘How far?’ I breathed.
On the floor, Godfroi was stirring. His body was jerking and racked with pain. Even though he was a gaoler and a torturer, I still did not like to see it. And especially not on my rug.
‘Can’t you cure him?’
‘Why?’ said the Scientist dispassionately. ‘He is not us. You too should use other animals to test your sicknesses on.’
I stared at him, puzzled. ‘That’s inhuman.’
‘Correct. We are not human.’
‘Are you…’ I glanced out of the window at the suddenly deathly quiet streets that only a few days ago had been so crowded and choked with the colour of humanity; at Godfroi, moaning and writhing on the floor. This world… all I have seen of this world with its wars and its death and pointless cruelty… Oh, it feels done for me.
‘Are you leaving now? To travel back to your own people?’
‘When we have the samples we need.’
‘Can…’ I swallowed. ‘Can we come with you?’
Wherever they go, I thought, it cannot be worse than traipsing so painfully slowly through the muck of this world.
They stopped, all three, together. Their beaks turned towards each other, curious. ‘No disease carriers on the ship,’ said one. ‘Customs controls.’
‘But an entire specimen,’ said one. ‘And it is free from disease. What could we not learn from it?’
‘Patient Zero,’ said the other.
They advanced towards me. I stayed stock still, as the huge beaks turned, and then sniffed loudly in my direction.
‘A perfect specimen. What could we not infect her with?’
Their voices are rising in excitement.
‘We could try everything… from someone as healthy as our own population!’
‘And my children,’ I said boldly.
Their beaks bobbed up and down excitedly. ‘Better and better with the younglings. Are they all in good health?’
‘There will… there will be experiments,’ said the third, sealing his black bag with Godfroi’s diseased arm in it.
I blinked. We would see about that. They could not hold me. I knew it. Nothing can.
And once we were free – away, in space, in the planets, in the many planets beyond this world – and I know there are legion, for I have sat, many, many nights, in the coldest mountains and the hottest deserts and I have tried to count them, and I cannot – I could fight, I could break them. They would not hold me. I would escape and be free, all of us together, riding the stars for ever.
‘Take me.’
They were decided.
‘We will take you.’
‘Essie! Johann!’ I shouted outside. ‘Come. Our journey continues.’
‘BON!’ shouted Essie without hesitation, my bold girl.
And I knelt down and covered Godfroi, who was very near the end now. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I have to leave.’
He opened his pale terrified eyes. ‘You, Dame of Misfortune. You brought this.’
‘Nobody knows what brought it.’
‘Will there… Do you think Hell is waiting for me?’
‘Somewhere worse than Earth?’ I said. ‘I doubt it.’
‘Let’s go!’ said Essie, bundling up her clothes. ‘What is their food like?’
‘Have they got big lights?’ said Johann, his eyes wide. ‘I like the big lights!’
We followed the figures outside. How strange to see the city deserted, from the great town houses, made of stone, to the lowliest hovel; everywhere, nothing but crosses on the doors, and quiet sobbing, a low field of lament, almost too quiet to hear, and a deep, lone voice, coming from far away: ‘Bring out! Bring out your dead!’
But I was not sure there was anyone left here to bring out the dead, and they could not walk.
Behind the deserted baker’s, its shingle tumbling down, we saw it, tucked in a stable; something black and shiny. In the shadows it was almost invisible, but as we got closer we saw it was a pointed ship, and we saw that it shone, that it was a strange metal I had never seen before.
‘Ohhh!’ said Johann and the baby on my back pointed out his little sticky finger.
‘It’s beautiful,’ I said.
‘You are ours,’ they said.
‘You think that,’ I smiled politely.
The great door opened silently, lowered a plank, like a ship’s, to the floor. My heart exulted. Inside was full of lights, as well as specimen boxes; an examination table and many other pieces of equipment I did not recognise. Some of it would work perfectly well as weapons. We were so ready.
‘STOP!’
I turned at the noise. I should not have done.
It was Godfroi, stumbling, lurching, his remaining arm turning him into a travesty, his teeth bared like that of a man already dead. ‘You did this to us!’ he shouted, screamed at me. ‘You came and infected us all.’
‘No I didn’t.’
‘You are a Dame of Misfortune, I could see it all along.’
He was deranged. Best simply to leave.
‘Let’s go,’ I said, quickly, to the bird men. ‘Let’s just go.’
Essie was almost at the gangplank. The baby was with me. Where was…
I turned round. Too late. Too late.
‘Bye, friend,’ my little curly-haired Johann was saying, right up at him. And Godfroi had him by the neck, and was starting to squeeze with his black and pustuled arm.
‘You shall not keep him, Dame of Misfortune! And let all the misfortunes become yours!’
I trained for many years so none can best me on the field of battle. I am strong as ten men, through careful work; I can shoot an arrow through a bee and fell a dragoon. I have made myself the greatest fighter the world has ever known.
But that does not matter for this reason: the weakest, feyest mother ever born would have done without hesitation what I did next. In an instant. For that is simply what being a mother is.
I slew him with one clean blow of his own sword. The bird men looked on, silently. Johann was wiping his neck where that man had grabbed him, as Godfroi’s blackened corpse dropped to the ground like an emptied sack, and I was glad.
&nbs
p; I took Johann in my arms, although he was by rights getting too big to be lifted. Still nobody moved.
The bird man slowly sniffed the air with his huge beak. He brought up his large gloved hand and he pointed, steadily and slowly at Johann. Everyone stopped. Silence fell.
‘That one,’ he said. ‘That one is still sick.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘No, no, he’s fine. He’s had it. He’s fine.’
Even as I could feel my beautiful boy’s curls were stuck with sweat to his head.
‘No living carriers,’ said the other, pulling out his pointed light device. He flicked it on. My little boy was half worried, half delighted to see the light again.
‘Maman!’
I froze, utterly horrified by what was unfolding in front of me. The shapes advanced on my boy.
But not for long. I grabbed Godfroi’s filthy sword, and launched myself at the bird-like creature, a word on my tongue that was not French and not English but more ancient and coarse than both.
And I plunged it straight into the first beaked creature, without a thought for consequence or a thought at all except the blackest, bloodiest rage I had ever conceived of.
It was as I had perhaps suspected, but could not bring myself to believe: his leather-like garments were not leather, but instead his skin, tough as steel. I could not get purchase.
The other Scientists, though, did not come to his aid; they stood back, coolly observing, as the first thrashed his arm about – his strength was extraordinary – and suddenly his fingers uncoiled from what I had thought were gloves; they were in fact three times as long, like tentacles waving from his wrist, each pointed and sharp, and one pierced me in the chest like a needle, and I felt it as it started to draw blood from my body.
I screeched, and Essie grabbed Rue and ran back to the house, but Johann leapt forward and bit the Scientist hard on the leg, even as I screamed at him to stop, and that was just enough to startle the beast, and gave me enough time to jump back and pull out the needle, whereupon I swung my shoulders, as hard and as strongly as I ever had done anything; every second of training, every moment of battle was in it, as well as every ounce of fury that anyone would dare – dare – declare any of my children to be less than perfect, and I screamed and grunted and hacked and swore all the curses, and the arm of the Scientist, still twitching, the tentacles bouncing and open, was lying flat on the ground and he made a sound as crows do, when I shoot them from the trees with my bow without a second thought.
There was a terrible long silence settling in the tiny end of the baker’s lane. I sensed sickening faces at windows. Then, from the Scientist I had wounded, more shrieking.
‘Hellllp mmeeee,’ he said, his huge head twisting, confused, as if he were trying to pick up his arm with the arm he no longer had.
I stood back, waiting, panting, but with my sword still held high. It was not covered in blood; rather something more glutinous and transparent.
‘Helllp meeee.’
The first Scientist simply picked up the light pointer and immediately started to dissect the hand on the ground. The other brought his black bag, for taking back samples.
‘Helllp meeee.’
The one with the light turned towards the Scientist on the ground. ‘Now we shall examine the effects of pain on the spinal cortex.’
‘Nooooo!’
‘Stop!’ I said.
‘But this is Science,’ they said.
Their injured comrade was now on the ground, contorted in pain. I knelt down by him.
‘Our job is to rid our planet of disease,’ he stuttered.
I nodded. ‘By experimenting on others,’ I said. ‘So much for you.’
The buzzing of the light intensified. It was approaching.
‘Tell me. Why do you think Johann is sick?’ I said fiercely.
‘I smell it,’ said the Scientist. ‘That is our beaks. We sniff out disease and injury and we work out how to stop it.’
‘But you kill the person you experiment on?’
‘Sometimes that is how Science works.’
‘Didn’t you think it was wrong?’
‘Science has no right or wrong; only what is true.’
I blinked. ‘What is wrong with Johann? He has had the sickness. He can’t get it now.’
He shook his head. ‘This disease doesn’t work like that. This is something you can keep getting.’
I shook my head. ‘But they seem better.’
The bird eyes blinked. ‘They are trying to do their best. For you. But they are dead already.’
The light buzzed louder.
‘As I am,’ he said.
I lowered my head. ‘What is it?’
‘It is a simple disease. Carried by fleas, on rats.’
I shot up. Essie’s rat. Godfroi had been right, curse him. ‘No.’
‘Don’t leave me. Don’t let me die alone.’
‘You are not alone,’ I said. ‘You have your perfect brethren to tend you.’
The two other Scientists approached, and bent over him, with their needles and equipment and black bags; like doctors, yes. But much more like carrion crows.
I hurried back to our cottage. And there I saw that I should no longer fool myself. All the honey cakes, still there. Unfinished; barely touched. Sitting accusingly in a row. What child does not eat a honey cake, however old? Only a very, very sick one.
They were huddled together on the straw together; scared, as if they had done something wrong.
‘Maman,’ said Essie, quietly.
I stared at them; took in the stench of death that had settled; the stench all around of this godforsaken mud hole of a world and felt the end of everything; for everything I try is bad and wrong and gets worse; nothing will change, nothing will ever get better for me. And I am so tired of it, again and again and again, and I will not stand for it. No more. No.
NO.
Blinded, I ordered them to nap, then charged back outside, round the corner. The gleaming ship was still parked there. Of the first scientist there was almost nothing left; they had chopped him up and packed him away. But I didn’t care about that, I did not care about him. I had absolutely nothing left to lose.
This entire filthy world had sickened and died on me. But I still had my knife and my sword.
‘You must still take me,’ I said boldly. ‘To the stars.’
‘Of course,’ said one. ‘We are always happy to have bodies donated to medical science.’
The two Scientists marched up their gangplank without looking behind them.
I looked behind at the once-bustling, now empty streets of a town I had barely got to know; where I had, running once again to escape, found nothing but the very bile of life.
Inside the ship, a buzz and a hum had started up and lights had started to sparkle inside the cabin in the most remarkable fashion, and the excitement built up in me, that finally, FINALLY I could leave it all behind me.
Yes of course I had loved them, but they were dead. They were dead.
‘Wait for me!’
I will always remember this from the many battlefields I have traversed when the young men fell.
Whether French or Saxon or Nordic, their last words were always the same and they weren’t, I should say, much about poetry, or death and glory and the magnificence of battle and their wonderful rewards in the afterlife.
As I stepped across the red fields and the bodies of the dying time after time wiping my blade, I heard them say only one thing, in different tongues: mother. Mummy. Maman. Mutter. Madre, o Madre.
They all, at the end, cried out for their mothers, like the little boys they were, with their big steel hats and their scarlet cloaks and their fancy horses.
You will all die, except for me.
You may die on the field of battle, or retching black bile helplessly in a room that reeks of the tannery, or without your mind in your own filth in a corner, staring at long ago.
There are no noble deaths. And most people – oh, yo
u are so, so alone. So alone.
When you came into this world there were warm arms to greet you, to welcome you and hold you, to take you, and make you feel a part of this world, hold your flesh to the flesh whence you came; still your cries to the soft motion of your mother’s heartbeat as she held you in her arms and promised over and over again how she would love you for as long as the moon and the stars.
But the moon and the stars are cold and do not care and last for ever. And when you leave the world, when you are undone, you will be alone: ripped on a foreign field, or under the hooves of a galloping horse, or sweating your life blood out, or babbling to yourself on a chair, the world disdaining to come near you, to warm your pallid, sinking flesh.
And you will want your mother.
I looked at the beautiful – and it was so, so beautiful, gleaming bright shiny metal – I looked at the beautiful ship once more.
The Scientists inside looked back at me, and cocked their strange heads.
The stink in our little home is deep now; the end is close. Rue is crying his little lungs out, but plaintively, not demanding; not in a way he thinks anyone will hear him. Essie is breathing in a shallow way, but trying to say, ‘Rue, Rue, don’t cry.’ Johann simply stares at me, his eyes huge and mute in terror.
I feel once more around my neck. The tile is there of course. It is always there. The tile that shares immortality. Waiting to be given. I look from face to face.
I have tried to cut it. I have sharpened my knife, so many times. It will not cut. It cannot be shared.
Will it be my brave, my brilliant Essie? My sweet, my loving Johann? Or my laughing baby, whom I do not even know?
And then I think, ‘It cannot be the baby. He would be a baby for ever.’ And I look at my girl and my boy. And my heart, which has been kicked from palace to ditch, from shore to shore, is stabbed anew. And I am looking at my girl and my boy. My girl and my boy.
I step forward, lifting the tile up and away from my body. I tear my eyes away from my beautiful tousle-headed boy, who is gazing at me. I cannot. I cannot look at him. I take one more step towards Ess, my skin crawling with horror at what I am about to do.
Then suddenly Essie groans in deep pain. And I freeze and shudder. I do not know how this alien magic I carry works, nor what it is supposed to do.
Doctor Who: The Legends of Ashildr Page 10
