The week following Lady
C’s discovery of her new Secret ID, The Night Bird, seemed to pass in a blur of
phone calls to builders who hadn’t turned up to start the restoration work on
the manor, but had received rather an
earful of abuse from the not so refined Lady of the manor, who after
questioning them several times as to, “Do you know who I am?” It turned out
they did not, and so she had fired them before they had even begun which for
them, was a blessing in disguise. Having received a large sum of money from the
Sovereign grant issued by the Queen herself for the sole purpose of
restoration, Lady C had tried in vain to hire the local tradesmen to start
working for her asap, but little did she know that not one local tradesman
would ever step foot in the manor again, not after the last time they were
there when Lady C was away at her majesties pleasure and they were left to the
rather unalluring charms of Hugo, John Cook’s very special cousin who had taken
a fancy to anything covered in brick dust. This included all the builders, the
van they travelled in and a cement mixer, so after one week of continuous
advances, numerous vulgar suggestions and the site of Hugo in one of Lady C’s
negligees, they could not stand it any longer and had left (run screaming) with
the threat of a sexual harassment law suit ringing in Hugo’s ears! Coincidently, or maybe not, this was the day
Hugo left the manor and hopped on a mystery tour bus of London, never to be
seen again!
After several cups of tea and half a bottle
of gin, Lady C decided that she’d call one of those places poor people go to
when they had no money or means to make any. A job
centre apparently, which she found out after a quick google search. Maybe
they could hire some needy and desperate workers to come and restore her
beloved manor so she wouldn’t have to bother trawling through the internet in
search of something that wasn’t going to be stolen to make her money and
hopefully notoriously famous.
It was a hard and arduous task talking to Janis
at the Job centre. She had a very common tone to her voice yet seemed
particularly up herself for someone who worked with layabouts all day. After a
few questions, mostly about the pay, she did promise to try and get something sorted
as soon as Kelly was back at work as she was on leave until a week next Tuesday
and it wasn’t really her department as she worked on new claims and had only
been at Kelly’s desk borrowing her stapler when the phone had rung so all she
could do was take a message and leave it in Kelly’s in tray as her cover, which
had been arranged by the job centre, had called in sick.
Upon asking for the new would be employers
name and upon hearing the title, “Lady” instead of Miss or Mrs, sovereign grant instead of minimum wage, and
Manor instead of council flat, Janis, who usually worked on the first floor
dealing with the new claims of the recently unemployed and was only borrowing a
stapler, suddenly decided to promote herself to Kelly’s position of Job finder
general and promised to not only put the ad on the job centre website herself
that very second, but would also spend the rest of the day looking through Kelly’s
list of unemployed builders until she found a suitable candidate which she
would ring with the intention of getting them out to the manor that very next
day or her name wasn’t Janis Buckle, (although she pronounced it, B’Ouche, probably
in the hopes of impressing the Lady Christina deSouza who she would now tell
people down the Dog and Duck, was her new best friend. )
Lady C thanked her and then tried to hang
up, but Janis had intended to chatter on about how her aunt Gladys had once
worked for a Lady Brown, Forsyth-Smith and did she know her? She eventually
just hung up after her head started to hurt from Janis’ common accent and the withdrawal
of gin!
She would pass the rest of the day away, as
it was still only 11am, but visiting her vault and cataloguing what she had
left in the way of stolen goods after the Queen had tried to clear her out when
the crap of being caught red handed had hit the fan.
Lady C’s secret vault had lots of other
secrets to it such as secrets floors and secret hidey holes that she prayed had
remained secret from her majesty as that’s where she kept her most valuable of
possessions. The things that were worth the most money to any greedy buying who
would pay millions just to say they had possessed it.
As she wandered through the kitchen and
through the cellar door, down the stone steps that led to the basement, she
came to a stop outside the secret hidden door of the vault and froze in fear as
she heard the familiar sounds of engines grinding to a halt just inside of the
vault. It was with a heavy heart and several seconds of heavy breathing to calm
herself, that she tapped in the code to open the door and made her way through,
her heart sinking into her stomach as she saw the towering looming figure of
the Tardis blaring its blue light across the vault as it spun slowly, flashing
like the police light it was meant to be.
The doctor had arrived and no doubt would
try to take all her stuff back to their rightful owners as he often did every
now and then and usually because taking it in the first place had somehow upset
the laws of gravity or time or something else mundane and totally not worth her
listening to when he lectured her.
She was about to start yelling for the Doctor
who as she suddenly remembered was now a woman, to show herself and explain how
she had managed once more to get passed the highly technical doctor detecting security,
she’d had fitted some years ago. Albeit it by the Doctor himself as he was back
then, but on agreement that he wouldn’t break in if she didn’t steal anything
that was considered alien. As she had not, he or she had no right being there!
Before she could utter a word, she spotted what looked like an old man at the end
of the vault’s passageway, looking carefully at one the bricks on the wall as
he made some muffled puzzled exclamations about it which sounded a lot like
Scottish.
“It’s here, but not over there which makes
me think that its just a small disturbance, yet it registered big enough for
the Tardis to bring me here herself which is highly unusual”
“WHO THE HELL ARE YOU!?” Lady C suddenly
shouted, very annoyed that not only had the Doctor turned up unannounced yet
again, but that she had brought a weird looking old man with her and was
letting him wander about tapping bricks to his hearts content. She strode over
to the Tardis and banged on the door still yelling. “Oi, LADY DOCTOR, GET OUT
HERE IMMEDIATLY AND TELL ME WHATS GOING ON! I DO NOT APPROVE OF YOU INVITING
YOUR FRIENDS INTO THE PRIVACY OF MY SECRET VAULT THANKYOU VERY MUCH! NOW, SHOW
YOURSELF WOMAN!”
The man at the end of the vault spun round
as soon as she opened her mouth and rushed towards her, placing his hands
gently on the Tardis doors as he looked highly concerned for it after it had
been hammered on so ungraciously. “Woah, woah woah, what’s your problem? I’m
only looking, you don’t usually hear me down here this time of day Christina, you’re
usually still in bed. The Tardis brought me here because of the disturbance in
time that seems to be secured within the walls of your vault. Nice locket by
the way”, He said rather sharply, raising an eyebrow as he gestured towards a
velvet silk lined box that contained the last known piece of jewellery once
owned by the late Lady Jane Mayhurst which had disappeared shortly after her
death. “I’ll be taking that back with me”
Lady C listened in disbelief, her head
turning from the man with the accusing eyebrows to the wall at the end of the
vault and back again, and then started shouting once more. “WHO THE BLOODY HELL
ARE YOU AND WHERE IS THE DOCTOR?!”
“I am the Doctor, what’s the matter with
you? Why don’t you recognise me?” He stopped to think for a minute, his eyes
narrowing as he put the missing pieces of the jigsaw into place in his mind.
“Oh, my apologies, have you not seen this face before? I thought the Tardis
might have given it away as to who I was though”
Lady C screwed up her brow in confusion.
Today hadn’t started well and wasn’t going to end well by all accounts, but she
could probably relax a little knowing the strange man wasn’t a strange man at
all, well he was but one she knew and trusted, although not to break into her
vault it would seem. “You were a woman last time I saw you which I might add
was only a few months ago. Surely you remember that? The wedding, the tiara,
you bumbling in on one of my jobs as per usual being all sanctimonious, as per
usual?”
The Doctor shook his head and wandered off
back to the brick wall to examine it again, talking casually over his shoulder
as he went. “No, not really but then again I don’t tend to visit in terms of
linear time lines. Good to know I’ll be a woman someday. I always fancied
seeing how that would work out, no I think the last time I saw you was the
night I visited you in jail, the first night if I remember and I was wearing
that ridiculous bow tie. How long ago was that?”
“5 years” Lady C replied, almost spitting
the words at him as it was and always would be a sore point. It had confused
her enough to know the Doctor could change his face when he wanted and confused
her further to know he could change sex too, but knowing his visits weren’t in
the same order for him as they were for her, added to the confusing and she
began to scan the vault for her secret stash of gin. Grabbing the only bottle
left from under one of the loose floorboards, she pulled it out and removed a
very sticky note attached to it which read, “Soz, I drank yer wine Mrs
Yer’Ladyship. I’ll get yer a new bottle from Tesco. Love Hugo” She grimaced
slightly knowing Hugo had put his hands on her stuff after probably letting
himself into the vault during the Queen’s raid, but beggars could not be
choosers at this point so she un capped the gin and took a swig, hoping the
slow lull of drunkenness would wash away the stress that the day would no doubt
continue to bring.
The Doctor eyed her over
his shoulder but for once didn’t remark about her drinking, nor about her time
in jail, even though it was he who had put her there. Instead he carried on
tapping bricks whilst mumbling to himself about how strange it was.
Lady C was about to ask him what the hell he
was up to when he suddenly jumped backwards and yelled “HA! Found it!” He spun
round and grabbed Lady C by the hand and pulled her to him, his eyebrows going
crazy with his mixed emotions. “There was a temporal disturbance here, but it
was confined to just one brick, but I now know what it is, it’s a doorway
probably to another time or dimension or planet maybe, could even be a space
craft. I found one just like it in an elevator once, but this one manifested by
itself, right here in your vault. Shall we take a look and see where it goes?”
Lady C was not in the slightest bit excited
by the prospect of travelling through dimensional space with an alien. She had
been there and done that with him many times before, and whilst it had always
been adventurous and thrilling, she had only managed to escape with her life
still in tact each time and she had begun to fear the Doctor each time he
turned up to whisk her away somewhere new. Today was no exception.
“Well you can if you want, but I very much
doubt I’ll fit through that one brick even though I have lost a lot of weight
recently, but if you think you can then be my guest. I’ll wait for you upstairs
if its all the same with you?”
The Doctor looked at her with confusion
etched across his face and he totally ignored her request to stay behind and
uttered “Nonsense” under his breath and still holding her hand tightly, he
moved his other hand through the brick so that it disappeared and the temporal
doorway around it began to spread to accommodate his body as he moved further
through it.
Lady C was about to
protest louder and tried to pull her hand free but before she could utter a
single sound, she was stood in a completely different place, surrounded by cold,
damp, dark shapes that omitted an awful smell of rotting flesh and worst of
all, she had dropped the bottle of gin which was now spilling out all over her
vault floor.
“Where are we?” she whispered, unable to
shout abuse at the doctor as the stink had got into her throat and was choking
her whilst making her eyes sting. The doctor lifted his sonic screwdriver into
the air and let it analyse the surroundings for a moment before he looked at
its findings.
“August 2012, think it’s a Friday although
Tuesdays are very much like Fridays in terms of time travel. Norfolk, England.
Christina, what was the last thing you thought of just before I pulled you
through the doorway?”
Lady C rolled her eyes and glared through
the dark at the doctor, almost wanting to slap him if she thought she wouldn’t
miss. “7 bloody years ago, and we’re still on earth? What kind of time travel
is that? I could have probably managed that myself if I still had Captain hot
stuffs vortex thingy. Hang on, 7 years? Good lord although I was at my best
then. Maybe we can go and find me and tell me not to listen to a bloody word
you tell me and maybe I wouldn’t have to go to prison!”
It seemed like a great idea to be honest.
Why wouldn’t she want to warn herself about the dismal future she had, but the
doctor had other ideas and she uttered a small cry of surprise as his face
suddenly became so close to hers, she could feel his breath on her skin. “Do
nothing of the sort. If you change things here you have no clue to what kind of
future you’ll be going back to, you should know the laws of time by now Christina,
now tell me, what was the last thing you thought of?”
There was anger in his voice and panic too
which wasn’t like him but she was too freaked out by how close his face was to
hers to start an argument with him at that point, but she would bring it up
later and completely ignore him as she always did and send her past self a text
message when he wasn’t looking.
“Erm, about the pendant, I think. Just as
you yanked me here against my will, I thought to myself, hide that bloody
pendant whilst he’s gone” She had taken to pouting now in the vain attempt to
make him feel sorry for her, but she remembered it was dark, so she stopped and
whined instead. “There are no living descendants of Lady Mayhurst so what would
it matter if I kept the damn thing? She was dead when I took it after all”
The doctor flashed his sonic once more and
checked the data. This time pulling Lady C along with him as he moved toward a
stair case that led to a door which hopefully led outside. “It matters” he growled angrily “because 1,
its not yours and 2……” They climbed the staircase and the doctor pushed open
the door. There was a surge of heat and a blanket of black smoke welcomed them,
almost covering them and surely choking them to death if he hadn’t of slammed
the door shut as quickly as he’d opened it on the crumbling wreck of what was
once a magnificent building.
“2…this is Mayhurst Manor and I think it’s
on fire!”
To be continued…
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