Lost Properties by Mark Stammers

Author:Mark Stammers [Stammers, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

166

Doctor Who Decalog 2

It was late when the Doctor finally managed to gain entry to the Council Chamber of the Tower of London. It had taken him longer than he had expected to reach his destination. The streets of the city had been filled with bonfires and processions in honour of the recent arrival of Mary, and the filthy roads had been packed with revellers.

He arrived just in time to see a bewildered Jane being guided from the throne.

‘Come down from there, my child,’ the Doctor heard her father tell her. ‘That is no place for you.’

Jane climbed down to stand at her father’s side. ‘May I go home now?’ she asked.

Her question was answered with a terrible silence. With great dignity, she removed the crown from her head.

‘Take this crown of shame,’ she instructed her father, ‘it never did belong to me.’

The Doctor was about to announce his presence when soldiers loyal to Mary broke into the room and led Jane and her father away. After a moment, the old man slipped quietly from the room.

From her high vantage point in the Tower, Jane could only watch as the small black cart clattered out of the courtyard, beginning its morbid journey to Tower Hill. Jane knew that its sole and most unwilling passenger was her young husband, Guildford. It was a trip from which he would not return.

She found herself weeping silently for him as the carriage

disappeared from view. She had never loved him, of course. Even on this darkest of days, the idea was so absurd that it brought a smile to her tear-streaked face. How had she described him in her rage? An ass?

Be that as it may, the poor dumb creature didn’t deserve the fate that awaited him on that bloody hill.

Turning away from the tiny window, she whispered a prayer for his mortal soul. They had become friends of a kind during the year or so of their imprisonment. Prisoners of the Tower were allowed a certain amount of freedom within its walls, and the two young inmates had taken to eating together in the evenings. Jane would then read to Guildford from the Bible and try and calm his fear. He would sit at her feet, his head resting against her knees like a faithful puppy.

Sometimes she would stroke his hair as she read. She had been like a mother to him, despite the fact that he was four years her senior.

On this, their last day, he had asked to see her once more. Jane had refused, knowing that such a meeting would break the fortitude they would both need to face the ordeal that awaited them. Alone in her cell, she began to regret her decision.

The Nine-Day Queen

167

The hours passed slowly, until at last the time of her execution finally arrived. Jane allowed herself to be led down from the Tower that had been her home for the last fifteen months and out into the courtyard where the scaffold stood, the wood dark against the brightness of the sky.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.