The energy of a poltergeist may toss objects about a room or cause furniture to travel across a floor. Moment by moment now, the Malus was swelling with the power of a hundred thousand poltergeists. It was making ready to burst free of its bondage in the fabric of Little Hodcombe church.
Still it grew. Energy flushed through it like blood and breath, and packed into muscle and sinew. It drew in more power from the village and still more, and as it swelled smoke poured from its gaping mouth and plaster and masonry spouted out of the wall and flew all over the nave.
After centuries locked in the womb of the church wall, the Malus was being born at last.
The Doctor was worried. His search for Turlough and Will Chandler had taken him through all the streets of the village and he had seen not a sign of either of them. Now he was getting close to the Village Green, the busy sounds of activity up ahead and a monotonous rhythmic clatter of drums told him that very soon he would be able to go no further.
The sun seemed brighter and hotter than ever, and the atmosphere throughout the village was so extraordinarily clear that every detail was sharpened to a bright, luminous precision. The Doctor wished it would reveal his friends, lbr all his theories about what might have happened to there were unhappy ones.
Suddenly, as he darted across a sunlit road into the cover of an overgrown rose hedge, he saw Will Chandler.
Will squatted on the ground, half hidden by the hedge; he looked as if he had been stunned. He was in shock. The Doctor crouched down beside him. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked him gently.
Will nodded, but his expression was lifeless and his eyes seemed to be drawn far back into his head, to be looking inward as if he was seeing something far away in his memory. ‘It’s just like before,’ he muttered. His hand flopped to indicate the scene beyond the hedge.
The Doctor frowned. ‘You mean, the last time you saw the Malus?’
Will nodded again, and sighed. ‘I’s not pleased,’ he grunted. He spoke very quietly, as though he were afraid even of the sound of his own voice.
For a moment the Doctor watched him; then he clapped his shoulder sympathetically and rose to look over the hedge and examine the activity on the Green.
This was now so far advanced as to be almost complete.
Indeed, there was an impression of readiness, an air of waiting for something to happen. Ready and waiting for what? the Doctor wondered. A crowd of onlookers had gathered there: men, women and chddren, every one of whom was dressed in seventeenth-century clothes. Not a button or a feather was out of place. There were many more troopers now, and more foot-soldiers. A horse-drawn cart was being led away empty, having deposited its load of brushwood on the pyre.
And now, with a brash military noise two drummers were coming, marching down the lane towards the Green, pounding, pounding their drums with an edgy monotonous rhythm. The people pressed forward with mounting excitement, for the appearance of drummers meant that the Queen of the May would soon he arriving.
All this made a colourful scene; it was like some complicated, carefully-wrought pageant. But the Doctor knew it meant far more than any pageant ever could. It had to be stopped, and quickly, before the Malus took full advantage of the psychic energy being produced and, gorging upon it, grew strong enough to break free of its prison.
Once it had freed itself it would be unstoppable.
Something had to be done now. But what? The Doctor crouched back down beside Will, and tried to puzzle it out.
‘They burned Queen of the May,’ Will mumbled. He winced at the memory. His lips trembled as the event happened all over again in his mind.
Now the Doctor knew the reason for the bonfire: they were going to do it again. A re-enactment, ‘correct in every detail,’ Sir George had said. He had meant it, too -- the war game, as Jane had said, was now being played for real.
‘She’d be the toast of Little Hodcombe,’ the Doctor joked, trying to reduce the horror and come to terms with it.
Will couldn’t do that. The girl’s agony had been too great. She writhed inside his head; her skin blistered and blackened, and he could smell it burning. ‘It ain’t funny,’
he said. ‘She was screaming.’
‘That’s nothing to what Tegan would have done,’ the Doctor replied grimly. ‘Come on, Will.’
Expecting Will to follow, he slipped around the hedge for a closer look at the scene on the Village Green. But Will was too scared to move. He stayed where he was in the hedge, anchored there by his fear, with a burning girl shrieking in his brain.
The Doctor’s intention was to duck into the crowd of onlookers, lose himself in the excitement of the May Queen’s arrival and then rely on inspiration to fall. But he didn’t get even that far. Luck was against him the moment he left the cover of the hedge, for at that moment Sir George Hutchinson jumped up on his horse; and as he swung into the saddle he scanned the Green’s activities and his glance took in the sight of a man slipping across the road with a wary, half running and half-walking action and eyes which, like Sir George’s own, were trying to see everywhere at once.
Sir George recognised the Doctor immediately and his shout was a great unbalanced cry of both anger and triumph together. ‘Stop that man!’ he yelled. ‘Sergeant Willow, hold him!’
In a trice the Doctor was surrounded by troopers and soldiers; whichever way he turned he saw them running towards him. He attempted to break through the cordon, but he stood no chance; he was overpowered immediately and dragged on to the Green.
8
The look of gloating triumph with which Sir George Hutchinson glared down at his enemy was very close to speechless hysteria. He seemed to have lost the use of words, and it was left to his Sergeant to greet their unwilling guest.
Willow emerged from a knot of troopers and approached the Doctor with an arrogant swagger. ‘You’re just in time for the show,’ he sneered. ‘You can have a front seat.’
The Doctor, who had decided he didn’t care much for the Sergeant, resisted with difficulty the impulse to lash out a foot at him, and for the time being contented himself with an icy stare. Then he looked at the huge pile of brushwood and shuddered; he did not care much for the fate which awaited the May Queen, either.
A roar of excitment swept through the streets leading to the Green. Although he was surrounded by soldiers, the Doctor was held on the crown of the Green, where a very old chestnut tree spread wide its branches; from here he could see between the uniformed bodies of his guard and over the heads of the waiting crowd. He looked across to the road where Will still crouched in the rose hedge, and up a lane lined with waving people.
Down this lane a procession was moving. It was headed by drummers in red coats and steel helmets. They beat on taut drumskins with a never ending rat-ta-tat, rat-ta-ta-ta-ta-tat, over and over and over, and the repeated monotonous rhythm stirred the crowd to ecstasy as the drummers marched down the lane towards them, scuffing their boots in the dust and pounding.
The excitement rippled down the lane like a long, rising wave, and the people shouted and waved and threw flowers at the gaily-coloured cart, which was the coach of their Queen of the May.
Now the Doctor could see past the drummers to the cart itself, and the people closing ranks behind the cart as it passed them. He could see Ben Wolsey driving, leaning forward on the box, looking neither to right nor left but staring straight ahead at the waiting crowd on the Green, and the bonfire, and Sir George standing eagerly in the stirrups on his chestnut horse.
Wolsey’s eyes narrowed when he saw the Doctor being held by troopers, but he kept the cart moving steadily forward behind the drummers, to maintain a constant, smooth pace for the May Queen seated behind him.
After the jolting and rolling journey, the Queen of the May no longer sat up so proudly as she had done at the start. In fact, it seemed to the Doctor that now the parade was reaching its climax she had slumped on her throne and was almost slouching. That wasn’t like Tegan, who was always spirited, whatever the circumstances.
The Doctor watched the cart arrive and draw to a halt by the side of the Green, and he smiled.
But Sir George Hutchinson, who had been smiling up to now, frowned. He grimaced. Standing up in the stirrups he craned his neck to see over the heads of the encroaching onlookers, and a cloud of anger darkened his face.
A tall trooper, carrying a burning torch, came marching up the Green to station himself at the bonfire, but Sir George took no notice of him, for the villagers’ murmurs and shouts of excitment as they ran to surround the cart had suddenly stopped. Now the crowded people hovered uncertainly, and hung back, taken by surprise.
‘Something’s wrong!’ Sir George snarled. Shouting with frustration, he spurred his horse and galloped towards the cart. Sergeant Willow, too, ran forward. The soldiers holding the Doctor dragged him down the Green. The trooper with the burning torch held it high in the air like a salute. Nobody took any notice of him.
Willow reached the cart first. He jumped up on to the boards and strode over to the slouching Queen of the May.
Lying limply across the chair which had served as her throne, she looked lifeless. Cursing roundly to himself, Willow snatched away the white, ribboned bonnet: the head so roughly revealed was a ragged, compacted mass of straw. Willow lifted the body and felt the light, limp frame of a dummy. Bewildered, he crushed it in his fingers and dropped it back on the cart. Then he turned in dismay towards Sir George, who was forcing a path through the crowd; he held up the bonnet and pointed to the sad mockery of their May Queen.
Sir George could hardly speak. His face was dark crimson. Veins stood out on his neck. His eyes bulged and the skin on his cheeks twitched as though it was crawling with beetles. Willow stood on the cart and watched him coming to pieces, and could do nothing.
‘What’s happening?’ Sir George finally spluttered.
Ben Wolsey, holding the reins at the ready, turned round on his box and looked Sir George straight in the eye.
He too was shocked to see the change in him, but he stood his ground. ‘There’s your Queen of the May,’ he said. ‘You can burn her if you wish. This is not as attractive as Tegan, perhaps, but more humane.’
Ben Wolsey, too, had changed. Gone was the diffident, embarrassed, subservient accomplice to the Squire. Now he was an equal, in charge of his own actions and making them count for something; practical and positive because at last he was
doing
something, and taking part in a down-to-earth manoeuvre which he could understand. In such a case Ben Wolsey became a giant of a man, and Sir George, recognising the change, backed away from him. He could scarcely believe what he was hearing; he could not comprehend that all his carefully wrought plans were turning to ashes before his eyes. Then, quite suddenly, it hit him. It hit him hard – his last vestiges of self-control crumbled away, and with them went his reason. Before the eyes of Ben Wolsey and Joseph Willow and all the people around him, Sir George Hutchinson was going mad.
‘What are you trying to do?’ he screamed at Wolsey.
‘Wreck everything?’
Wolsey chose his words deliberately. ‘I’m trying to return some sanity to these proceedings,’ he said.
The implications were lost on Sir George. He seemed to be past understanding anything. Holding his head as if it were about to burst, he cried out, ‘You’ve ruined it! You’ve ruined everything!’ With an agomsed expression he turned to his Sergeant. ‘Kill him!’ he shouted. Then he wheeled his horse away.
Wolsey had been expecting this and was ready for it.
Although surrounded by enemies he felt ice-cool; he was seeing things very clearly and he knew that Willow would now go for his sword. He was right, but Willow only got as far as laying his hand on the hilt when Wolsey yelled and whipped up the horse and the cart lurched forward.
Willow lost his balance completely and fell sprawling from the cart. He lay winded on the ground.
While this was going on the Doctor had trled to take advantage of the confusion to slip away from his captors.
Unfortunately for him, the soldiers had grown even more terrified of their leader in his manic condition than they had been before, and they were making doubly sure that his fury was not increased by the loss of his prisoner. So instead of their grip on the Doctor slackening it increased, and his chances of escape were less than ever.
Then he saw Will Chandler.
Will had watched the events on the Green with an overwhelming joy when he saw that by some miracle the sacrificial burning of the May Queen had been avoided. He had breathed a big sigh of relief and edged forward to see if he could help his friends; now he saw the Doctor’s predicament at the moment the Doctor saw him.
‘Over here, Will!’ the Doctor shouted.
Will ran.
What happened then occurred so quickly that afterwards Will was unable to separate one event from another. When he started to run towards the Doctor he had not the vaguest notion of how he was going to help him.
But as he crossed over to the Green he saw, out of the corner of his eye, the trooper carrying the burning torch.
Almost without thinking, he changed direction and dived at him. Although the trooper was twice Will’s size the charge took him completely by surprise, and he staggered backwards and dropped the torch It rolled across the grass.
Will picked it up. The heat scorched his fingers, but he gritted his teeth and holding the torch firmly with both hands, began to whirl it around his head. The swinging flames made a peculiar roaring noise, like water tumbling over a weir. Will was a fearsome sight as he advanced on the soldiers holding the Doctor, with sweat running down his forehead, a look of stubborn determination on his face, and the torch flying and roaring in his hands. The soldiers scattered in fright as it flared towards them – and the Doctor was free.
But now Sir George Hutchinson was galloping across, yelling with fury. Without thinking Will turned to face him, too. He was still whirling the burning torch about his head. With sparks flying in all directions, the flames swept round towards Sir George’s horse. It panicked and pulled its head away from the heat, rearing high in the air and throwing Sir George out of the saddle. He fill head first to the ground, and lay very still.