Doctor Who: The Reign of Terror (4 page)

Ian peered cautiously through the
window. 'They are not coming in ... ' he murmured, surprised and
puzzled.

Rouvray turned to look at d'Argenson's
trembling figure. 'No. They intend to break our nerve,' he said
bitterly.

Susan plucked up courage to speak,
'What did you do with my grandfather?' she asked out of the shadows.

Rouvray gestured at his friend.
'D'Argenson dealt with him. He is somewhere upstairs ... ' he said
vaguely.

Ian uttered a muffled exclamation of
guilt at having neglected the Doctor so long. 'I'll go and find him,
Susan,' he said in English.

'Be careful, Ian,' Barbara murmured as
he edged away from the window and disappeared through the doorway and
up the stairs.

All at once d'Argenson jumped to his
feet and hurled himself at the door leading outside. Rouvray tried to
grab him as he passed. 'Come back, you fool, come back!' he muttered
through clenched teeth.

But he was too late. D'Argenson had
fled outside.

The lounging soldiers got slowly to
their feet, staring almost hungrily at the dishevelled and wild-eyed
figure emerging from the porch into the courtyard. They raised their
firebrands and picked up their muskets in anticipation of a kill.
After a few faltering steps towards the gate, d'Argenson stopped in
his tracks and watched like a mesmerised animal as the sergeant and
his ragged troops slowly closed in on him. The lieutenant, who had
remained seated on the wall of the well watching with cynical
amusement, suddenly stood up as he saw Rouvray coming out of the
house behind them.

'Sergeant ... There's Rouvray!' he
shouted.

The sergeant turned and some of
the troops started converging on the tall, almost noble figure
standing in the porch.

'Do not move!' Rouvray suddenly
commanded, his rich voice ringing impressively round the yard. 'Get
away from d'Argenson.'

'Take that traitor Rouvray!' the
lieutenant ordered, the plumes in his hat quivering with the force of
his indignation.

'No. You will listen to me!' Rouvray
countermanded imperiously, holding his ground. The butt of his pistol
could just be seen protruding from his pocket, but he looked quite
defenceless.

The rabble of soldiers hesitated in an
embarrassed huddle, unsure what to do next. The sergeant's blotchy
face was livid, but he kept quiet and waited to see what the citizens
would decide.

The lieutenant smiled sourly. 'So,
Rouvray, your voice still carries authority, even among my soldiers,'
he conceded jealously.

Rouvray surveyed the sullen, fidgeting
militiamen with a contemptuous glare. 'You . . . Come here!' he
rapped, pointing to a youth wearing a tattered
military coat over his sans-culotte trousers who was holding his
musket like a pickaxe.

The lad shuffled obediently forward.

'Give me your weapon,' Rouvray ordered.

Like an automaton the confused youth
handed over his musket with mute submissiveness.

Rouvray took it and flung it scornfully
at the lieutenant's feet. 'There, Lieutenant. You can give them
uniforms and weapons but they remain peasants underneath ... ' he
scoffed.

Unnoticed by anyone else, the sergeant
had levelled his musket at Rouvray. Just as the fugitive royalist
opened his mouth to continue his harangue, the sergeant fired.
Rouvray stood quite still for a moment, his jaw hanging open and an
astonished look on his handsome face. Then he fell forward flat on
his face in the straw, dead.

With a hoarse shriek, d'Argenson took
to his heels across the yard, desperately making for the open gate
under the archway.

'Stick the pig!' yelled the sergeant,
urging his men in pursuit.

Their bayonets flashing in the
torchlight, the mob easily cornered the hapless d'Axgenson by the
gateway. The lieutenant watched grim-faced as the bristling bayonets
rose and fell over the screaming victim. Then he turned abruptly and
strode over to Rouvray's motionless body. 'A desperate attempt ...
' he murmured almost sympathetically, stirring the corpse with his
boot. 'And it very nearly worked.'

A hearty cheer burst from the execution
squad as they wiped d'Argenson's blood from their gleaming blades.

The lieutenant looked up and grimaced
with distaste. 'The People must have their revenge ... ' he sighed,
shaking his head.

With the unfamiliar pistol held out in
front of him as though it were liable to go off by itself, Ian
Chesterton was edging his way cautiously along the upstairs passage.
Without a candle he could see virtually nothing in the darkness and
he was forced to rely on touch. He tried the doors as he passed and groped blindly about in those rooms
he did manage to get into. 'Doctor? Doctor, where are you ... ?' he
called, expecting any moment to stumble over a fallen body. He
stopped and listened for the sound of groans or muffled cries, but
there was nothing, no trace of the Doctor anywhere.

He was about to go on, when suddenly a
piercing scream came from downstairs. It sounded like Susan. Then Ian
heard Barbara's panic-stricken voice pleading 'No ... No . . No . .
. ' Ian turned and felt his way back to the staircase as fast as he
could. He crashed down the narrow stairs and stumbled into the
torch-lit room.

As he came through the door, a musket
sliced out of the shadows and smashed the pistol out of his hand.
Then he was seized from behind and forced over to the table. Behind
it cowered Susan and Barbara guarded by two soldiers. The lieutenant
was standing in the doorway from the porch with his hands on his
hips, grinning with satisfaction.

'My sergeant was quite right,' he
declared smugly. 'It did pay us to look in the house, after all.'

Ian struggled to free himself from the
two militiamen who were holding his arms behind his back. 'But we ...
we have no connection with ... ' he began, searching his memory for
the words in French.

The lieutenant strode forward and
thrust his face into Ian's. 'Silence!' he hissed. Then he marched
slowly round and round the table as if uncertain what he should do
next. 'If any of them speak again without permission, shoot them,' he
ordered.

The soldiers nodded eagerly and
levelled their muskets at their three silent captives. Ian heard
Susan gasp with fright, but he could only exchange helpless glances
with Barbara.

A few minutes later, the sergeant
stomped into the room and his puffy features lit up when he saw the
prisoners, especially the two girls. 'The bodies have been disposed
of, Citizen,' he reported gruffly. 'What about this lot?'

The officer made up his mind.
'Outside,' he snapped, jerking his head at the door.

The sergeant prodded Ian with his
musket butt. 'You heard the citizen, come on outside ... '

While the soldiers shoved their
captives into the yard, the officer lingered in the room for a few
minutes studying the maps and documents from the trunk. He examined
the fake passes with particular satisfaction. Finally he rolled the
papers up and put them in his pocket and marched out into the yard
with a cruel smile playing on his callow features.

Ian, Susan and Barbara had been roughly
tied up to a dilapidated old haycart and the sergeant had drawn his
men up in front of them in two ranks, like a firing squad. Grinning
at his victims with brutal glee, the sergeant raised his sword high
in the air.

'Prime muskets ... ' he ordered.

'We already have,' yelled one of the
soldiers. 'Get out of the way.'

'Take aim ... ' croaked the sergeant,
swaggering tipsily out of the line of fire as the dozen or so muskets
were levelled at the trembling, white-faced prisoners.

Speechless with horror, Barbara and
Susan watched the sword as it waved about uncertainly above the
sergeant's head, ready to signal the squad to fire. Ian struggled
frantically to free his hands and feet from the crude bonds, but
there was little he could do even if he did manage to break away.

Gleaming in the torchlight, the
sergeant's sword twitched spasmodically. Next moment it would slash
through the air signalling the end for the helpless prisoners.

'Stop!'

The lieutenant strode out of the house,
his eyes blazing with anger. 'We take them to Paris,' he bellowed,
marching between the muskets and the three ashen-faced victims.

The soldiers groaned with
disappointment.

'I say we shoot them now,' argued the
sergeant, still brandishing his sword.

'Listen to me,' said the lieutenant
calmly. 'We have captured suspected foreign agents. Do you not want
to take the credit, my friends?'

There was a rumble of discussion among
the troops.

'Just imagine how eager Citizen
Lemaitre will be to interrogate them,' the officer added cunningly.

At the mention of Lemaitre everyone
fell silent.

'That's true ...' growled the
sergeant, sheathing his sword. 'And there might be a reward!'

Susan, Barbara and Ian hung in their
bonds bathed in sweat and shaking with fear as their fate was debated
in front of them.

The officer nodded vigorously. 'The
citizen sergeant is quite right. Perhaps there will be a reward,' he
agreed persuasively. 'And why should we try to do what Madame
Guillotine can do much more elegantly?'

The troops laughed and nudged each
other and nodded their assent.

'We'll take them to Paris!' shouted the
sergeant contentedly.

'To Paris! To the guillotine!' the
troops chorused enthusiastically, shouldering their weapons. One or
two of them hastened over to cut the prisoners loose. Then they drove
them out of the farmyard like cattle, with the lieutenant following
at a haughty distance behind the ragged procession.

The sergeant lingered in the yard with
several of the militiamen who were carrying flaring torches. He
grabbed one of the firebrands and flung it into the hayloft next to
the house. With a savage cheer, the others threw their torches into
the tinder dry barns and outhouses and up at the farmhouse windows.
Within seconds the straw and wood caught fiercely alight and the fire
spread greedily, crackling and roaring along the timbers and out of
the windows in long hot tongues. Showers of sparks exploded into the
darkness, provoking cheers from the happy arsonists. Reluctantly the
sergeant led his men to catch up with the others on the track leading
to the Paris road.

'The house ... Look at the house . .
. ' Barbara gasped, turning as she heard the crackle of glass and the
clatter of dislodged slates from the roof.

Susan clung tearfully to Ian's arm.
'Wasn't there any sign of Grandfather at all?' she beseeched him.

The soldiers herded them onwards with
their bayonets and musket butts.

'He must have got out some other way,'
Barbara murmured comfortingly as they stumbled on again, but her
despairing glance to Ian betrayed her worst fears.

'I hope so ... Ian muttered, putting
his arm round Susan and helping her along. 'I hope so for all our
sakes ... '

With a vicious oath, the sergeant came
up and shoved them forward along the stony track skirting the edge of
the bleak dark forest, as if he could not wait to get them to Paris.

Unseen by anyone, a small figure was
crouching in the undergrowth beside the track and when the straggling
column had passed safely by, the foliage parted and the pale freckled
face of the little peasant boy emerged and watched until the soldiers
were swallowed up in the darkness. Then the boy sprang out of the
bushes and started running towards the blazing farmhouse among the
trees.

The Doctor had come to with a splitting
headache and a very stiff neck and his throat was parched from the
dust in the tiny boxroom in which d'Argenson had locked him. He found
himself lying on the floor with his head awkwardly bent up at an
angle against the wall. He lay still, groaning and blinking his eyes
to try and clear his blurred vision. Scarcely any light came through
the small high window above him and he had no idea where he was.
After a while he attempted to lever himself into a sitting position
against the wall, but the effort was too great and he sank back on
the dirty floorboards, half-conscious in the eerie silence.

Eventually he was roused by a strange
banging and cracking noise. Suddenly he was seized by a fit of
coughing and choking which brought him round and he realised that the
boxroom was rapidly filling with smoke which was streaming in around
the door and up between the rotting floorboards. Fighting the pain in
his head and his neck, the Doctor rolled himself over onto his knees
and forced himself up onto his feet. Snatching a handkerchief from
his frock-coat he pressed it over his nose and his mouth, and groped
his way around the walls until he reached the door. Choking and
wheezing from the hot acrid smoke, he struggled with the handle and
then began hammering for all he was worth and croaking as loudly as
he could. 'Help me ... Let me out ... Let me out of here ...

But the relentless smoke seared his
lungs and stung his watering eyes. He could feel the tremendous heat
from the raging inferno all around him and the noise of the flames
and the collapsing roof was deafening. Gradually he sank to the
floor, desperately fighting to draw a little breath through the
handkerchief and still hammering with one feeble fist on the walls
and the floor in the vain hope that somehow somebody, somewhere,
would find him and drag him to safety. But in no time at all the
toxic smoke overwhelmed him. His fist knocked feebly on the floor for
a few more seconds and then lay still ...

The three prisoners and their
ill-disciplined escort arrived at the Conciergerie in Paris at first
light next morning. The atmosphere in the French capital was even
more oppressive than it had been in the countryside. The weather was
stiflingly hot and close and there was an air of menace and suspicion
everywhere, as if nobody dared trust anybody else. People hurried
about the narrow back streets with lowered eyes as though afraid to
meet the gaze of others for fear of provoking some unfounded
accusation concerning their loyalty to the Revolution. Soldiers of
the citizens' militia -the Garde Nationale - were everywhere, and so
were small bands of sans-culottes armed with muskets and dressed in
their long trousers, baggy shirts and tall floppy hats turned over at
the top like nightcaps with tricolour rosettes. The sans-culottes
women also wore swords nonchalantly stuck in their belts as they
clattered noisily across the cobbles in their wooden clogs.