Doctor Who BBC N07 - The Stone Rose

  The Stone Rose

  BY JAQUELINE RAYNER

  Published by BBC Books, BBC Worldwide Ltd,

  Woodlands, 80 Wood Lane, London W12 0TT

  First published 2006

  Reprinted 2006 (twice)

  Copyright c Jacqueline Rayner 2006

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Doctor Who logo c BBC 2004

  Original series broadcast on BBC television

  Format c BBC 1963

  ‘Doctor Who’, ‘TARDIS’ and the Doctor Who logo are trademarks of the British Broadcasting Corporation and are used under licence.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  ISBN-10: 0563486430

  ISBN-13: 9780563486435

  Commissioning Editor: Stuart Cooper

  Creative Director and Editor: Justin Richards Consultant Editor: Helen Raynor

  Production Controller: Peter Hunt

  Doctor Who is a BBC Wales production for BBC ONE

  Executive Producers: Russell T Davies and Julie Gardner Producer: Phil Collinson

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by Henry Steadman c BBC 2006

  Typeset in Albertina by Rocket Editorial. Aylesbury, Bucks Printed and bound in Germany by GGP Media GmbH, Pößneck For more information about this and other BBC books, please visit our website at www.bbcshop.com

  Contents

  Prologue

  1

  ONE

  5

  TWO

  15

  THREE

  25

  FOUR

  33

  FIVE

  43

  SIX

  53

  SEVEN

  63

  EIGHT

  73

  NINE

  81

  TEN

  91

  ELEVEN

  101

  TWELVE

  109

  THIRTEEN

  117

  FOURTEEN

  123

  FIFTEEN

  133

  SIXTEEN

  143

  SEVENTEEN

  151

  EIGHTEEN

  161

  Acknowledgements

  173

  About the Author

  175

  Rose carefully dropped three pound coins into the large collecting box at the entrance to the British Museum.

  Her mum tutted. ‘What d’you want to go and do that for? You don’t have to pay.’

  ‘It’s a donation,’ Rose pointed out. ‘They suggest you make one.’

  Jackie raised disbelieving eyes towards the huge domed ceiling.

  ‘That’s only for people who haven’t been dragged here against their wills on a Sunday morning.’

  Rose laughed and exchanged a look with Mickey. ‘You didn’t have to come, Mum.’

  Jackie tossed back her long blonde hair. ‘You think I was going to stay behind? It’s a surprise, Mickey said. Come and see, Mickey said.

  You’ll never believe it. Mind you, things I’ve seen, can’t imagine what I’m not going to believe, but –’

  ‘You’re right,’ Rose interrupted. ‘I didn’t really expect you to stay behind. Come on. Let’s get on with it, then.’

  As Mickey moved off, Rose looked around for the fourth member of their party, but the Doctor had already vanished into one of the galleries. Shrugging, she walked off anyway, following Mickey’s lead.

  Mickey had been really excited to see her this time – even more than usual. Because he had a surprise for her. A huge surprise. An unbelievable surprise. And they were on their way to see it.

  They passed the marble lion that gazed on the museum’s Great Court with hollow, sorrowful eyes.

  1

  ‘He looks so sad,’ Rose said.

  ‘You’d be miserable if you’d been stuck in a museum for –’ Jackie bent down to read the little plaque beneath the statue – ‘nearly two and a half thousand years.’

  Rose didn’t point out that the museum hadn’t been around for anywhere near that long, because she knew her mum knew it anyway.

  But she understood what Jackie meant. She had a sudden wave of il-logical pity for the carved creature, frozen for ever due to a sculptor’s whim over two millennia ago.

  Jackie was still looking at the lion. ‘Two and a half thousand years,’

  she said again. That’s even older than him.’

  ‘Him’, Rose knew, was the Doctor.

  ‘Hey, why doesn’t he get wrinkles? I mean, However many hundred years, even with the new body, got to do something to the skin. Free radicals and all that. I bet we’re not the only planet with pollution.

  Can you find out what he uses? Make a fortune, he could.’

  ‘This is the Doctor we’re talking about, not Dad.’ Rose rolled her eyes. ‘He’s no salesman.’

  Mickey was beckoning them, and they left the statue and headed on. There was the Doctor in the Egyptian gallery, examining the Rosetta Stone. ‘It was a right pain when they found this,’ he said, giving a little wave as they passed. There I was, just about to launch my English-hieroglyphic dictionary, when along come Napoleon’s sol-diers and the bottom falls out of the market.’

  ‘There. Not a salesman,’ Rose said. ‘Told you.’ She waved back, then they headed down a flight of steps and round a corner, Mickey never hesitating, as if he knew the way by heart.

  They passed rows of carved Roman heads, hundreds of sightless eyes watching their progress. Then there were some sarcophagi, and a giant stone foot that seemed almost too comedic to be in such a serious place as a museum.

  Then they came to a row of statues, sculpted human forms, some headless, some armless, but all possessed of a shining white dignity despite their misfortunes.

  2

  Mickey stopped. ‘There you are,’ he said. He was grinning, a dog who’d just fetched her a stick and was waiting for a grateful response.

  Rose looked at the statue in front of her, a marble priestess with a veil. It was lovely, but not all that exciting.

  Then Jackie gasped. ‘Oh, my God. I don’t believe it!’

  Rose transferred her gaze to the next sculpture along. And she gasped too.

  It was a perfect stone replica – of herself.

  And, according to its sign, it was nearly 2,000 years old.

  3

  Once Rose had recovered from the initial shock of finding a statue of herself in the British Museum, she got quite excited. ‘That’s brilliant!’ she said., ‘you realise what this means? We must be off to –’

  he checked – ‘second-century Rome. How brilliant is that?’

  ‘Blimey,’ said a voice from behind. ‘Reminds me of a girl I once knew. Wonder whatever happened to her.’ The Doctor had caught up with them and he gave Rose a smile that could probably melt even a marble statue. She grinned at him.

  Jackie was reading the sign under the sculpture. ‘Here, it says it’s a statue of the goddess Fortuna,’ he said. ‘Don’t tell me I’ve given birth to a god. Howard’ll never believe it.’

  ‘Fortuna, Roman goddess of good luck,’ the Doctor told her. ‘Por-trayed with a cornucopia.’

  ‘Says here it’s a horn of plenty,’ said Jackie.

  The Doctor looked amused.

  The Rose figure was indeed cra
dling a cornucopia, overflowing with stone fruit and flowers, in the crook of one arm. The other arm was no longer whole, a wrist stump gesturing redundantly at the group 5

  gathered round it. Rose held up her own two hands. ‘I hope that wasn’t done from life,’ she said.

  ‘Tell you what, though,’ said Jackie, ‘she’s wearing your earrings.’

  Rose took off one to compare. It was a flat silver disc with a spiral pattern radiating out from a tiny flower in the centre. She held it up by the statue’s ear. Identical, even down to the flower. ‘That’s incredible,’ she said. ‘It’s so detailed.’

  She slipped the real earring into the pocket of her denim jacket and grinned. ‘Looks like I’ve got a future ahead of me as an artist’s model!

  I’ve always fancied that.’

  Mickey frowned. ‘When my mate Vic asked you to pose for him, you said no.’

  Rose sighed. ‘Yeah, but lying on a sheepskin rug in my undies while your mate Vic takes photos isn’t quite the same as posing as a goddess for some ancient Roman.’

  The Doctor had put on his glasses and was examining the statue’s remaining hand. ‘Hmm,’ he said.

  ‘What’s up?’ Rose asked.

  ‘Statue’s wearing your ring too.’

  Rose looked down at the ring on her right hand. ‘If he’s wearing my earrings, why not?’

  The Doctor frowned. ‘They often made the torsos separately – mass-produced them, then just stuck on a head. Obviously the sculptor was so enamoured of your figure that you got to be the model for the whole thing.’

  ‘And is that so hard to understand?’ asked Rose, raising an eyebrow.

  The Doctor swung round and gave her a disarming grin. ‘I’m sure it isn’t.’

  Rose found it quite hard to tear herself away from her stone double, but as the Doctor pointed out, if she stayed there looking at it for ever, then it would never get made and they’d all be swallowed up in a terrible paradox. So she let herself be led away, past the giant foot –

  ‘Ah, my fault,’ the Doctor commented. ‘The last remains of the Ogre of Hyfor Three. Silicon-based life form. I defeated it back in, oh, must be AD two hundred and something. There was me: take that, you evil 6

  ogre! And there was it: ha, ha, you’ll never defeat me! And there was me: don’t be so sure about that. . . ’

  ‘It says it’s from a colossal acrolithic statue,’ Mickey pointed out hurriedly.

  ‘Well, they would say that,’ said the Doctor – past the sarcophagi, past the rows of stone heads, their gazes now seeming to signify kin-ship to Rose.

  They lost the Doctor in the Egyptian section again, and Jackie went off to see if she could find a postcard of her stone daughter. Rose and Mickey stood together in the entrance, waiting.

  ‘So, how d’you find out about it?’ asked Rose after a few moments’

  silence. ‘Not your usual haunt, this, is it?’

  Mickey seemed embarrassed, looking down at the floor.

  She opened her eyes wide. ‘What? It can’t be that bad, can it?

  You’ve not been robbin’ it or something? Or you been seeing one of the girls in the gift shop and you don’t wanna tell me about it?’

  He frowned a no, but still looked sheepish. ‘Come on. Tell me!’ she said.

  Mickey put back his shoulders, attempting a bit of bravado. ‘Well..

  I’ve been doing this volunteer stuff. You know, kids and that.’

  Rose laughed delightedly. ‘But that’s brilliant!’

  He shrugged, embarrassed again. ‘Well, there’s you off doing good all round the universe – just thought I’d do a bit at home, that’s all.’

  The Doctor was approaching them now. ‘Don’t tell him,’ Mickey hissed.

  Rose sighed, exasperated. ‘Yeah, ’cause being a nice person’s so uncool, isn’t it?’ But she couldn’t help reaching up and giving Mickey a quick peck on the cheek. ‘You old softy.’

  Jackie joined them, her postcard hunt having proved unsuccessful, and the four of them made their way out into the sunshine.

  ‘Well, bye for now. Take care. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t,’ said the Doctor as they reached the bottom of the museum’s wide stone steps, holding out a hand to Mickey.

  ‘What, you off already? Barely give me time to say hello to my only daughter before you’re dragging her away again!’ complained Jackie, 7

  hands on hips.

  ‘We’d love to stay,’ said the Doctor insincerely, putting a hand on Rose’s shoulder. ‘Love to. Love to. Love love love to. But I’m afraid we have a date to keep.’

  ‘We have?’ said Rose.

  ‘Would have thought that was obvious,’ said the Doctor. ‘You and me are off to ancient Rome.’

  ‘Hang on!’ Jackie called after them. ‘I’ve seen that Rome on telly!

  You just watch yourself, my girl. The things they get up to.’

  Rose laughed. ‘Keep your toga on, Mum! I can look after myself.’

  Rose stumbled into the control room as the T ARDIS lurched to one side. The Doctor was dashing round the giant bronze mushroom in the centre, pushing a button here, pulling a lever there, doing something energetic with a pump somewhere else.

  She took a hesitant step forward as the time machine seemed to settle down – but it must have been waiting for that, because the instant she moved it lurched the other way. The bed sheet that had been draped over her shoulder fell to the floor, but it at least broke her fall as the next TARDIS tremor came.

  ‘We’ll be able to find somewhere to stay,’ the Doctor said, looking down at her from his still-upright but fairly precarious position. ‘No need to bring your own bedding.’

  ‘It’s for wearing, not sleeping,’ said Rose. She sighed. ‘I went to a toga party once, but I can’t remember how to tie this thing around me.’

  The Doctor grinned. ‘Nice girls don’t wear togas,’ he told her.

  ‘They don’t?’

  ‘Nope. And even if they did, they probably wouldn’t have one with Winnie the Pooh on.’

  Rose looked more closely at the sheet. In one corner, Winnie the Pooh sat eating honey, Piglet by his side. ‘I didn’t notice,’ she said.

  ‘But nice sheets you keep. You know, if any toddlers happen to come on board. So what should I wear, then, O Roman god of fashion?’

  8

  He waved a hand. ‘Oh, there’ll be something back there. Look under R for Rome. Or A for ancient.’

  ‘And what about you?’ she asked. ‘C for conspicuous?’

  The Doctor was dressed in a resolutely twenty-first-century suit with blue shirt and plimsolls, not the sort of thing that would blend in several millennia ago.

  ‘I’ll find something,’ he said, leaning over to twist a dial.

  The TARDIS spun too as Rose tripped towards the doorway, dragging the sheet behind her. ‘It’d be a lot easier if you fixed some sta-bilisers to this thing,’ she called back.

  ‘Sailors keep their feet through worse than this!’ he retorted happily, performing a few steps of a hornpipe to prove his point.

  Rose groaned. ‘Yeah, well, I couldn’t half do with a tot of rum myself.’ She staggered off again.

  The TARDIS finally landed. Rose was now wearing a n ankle-length dress in pale blue – clashing slightly with the greenness of her still-nauseous face – with a dark blue shawl draped over her head, hiding hair that was now elaborately curled and scraped off her a e. The Doctor wore a plain white tunic that ended at the knees, his sonic screwdriver stuck absurdly in his belt.

  ‘Let’s hope we are in ancient Rome,’ said Rose. ‘You’ll get lynched if you hang round the estate dressed like that.’

  ‘I’m sure you’d rescue me,’ said the Doctor.

  He opened the doors and they stepped out – that first step into an alien world or time that never lost its excitement, however many times they did it.

  They were in a town or city, tenement blocks to either side of them.

  The sky was blue, b
ut the colder sort of blue that said spring or early autumn.

  The Doctor peered up at the skyline. ‘Aha! See that?’ He indicated an enormous pillar with the figure of a man on top, just visible above the roofs. ‘Trajan’s Column. Definitely Rome, then. Unless your estate’s gone majorly up in the world.’

  9

  ‘It stinks like the estate,’ said Rose, wrinkling her nose. She took a step forward and grimaced as her sandals splashed into a deep puddle.

  ‘And look at these streets – they’re flooded! Is this Rome or Venice?’

  The Doctor looked down at her feet and raised an eyebrow. ‘Well, that explains the stink anyway.’

  Rose frowned. ‘What do you –’ Then she realised. ‘Oh, ugh. Ugh ugh ugh. Hey, I thought the Romans invented sewers and drains and stuff?’

  ‘Pretty much,’ the Doctor told her. ‘But I don’t think we’ve landed in the nicest part of town. . . ’

  ‘I’ll say we haven’t!’ exclaimed Rose, as a cry suddenly rang out from a nearby street.

  Both of them immediately began running towards the sound.

  Three young men were crowded round an elderly bearded man with grey hair. He lay on the ground, clearly winded, staring up in fear at the dagger that was being waved in his face.

  ‘Oi!’ yelled Rose. ‘Leave him alone!’

  The men didn’t even turn to look at her.

  ‘Help!’ croaked the old man. ‘Please, help me!’

  ‘Just hand over your cash, grandad. You do what we say and everything’ll be fine,’ said the man with the dagger.

  ‘Er, excuse me, gentlemen,’ began the Doctor confidently, striding forwards.

  This time they turned to look, and Rose took advantage of the distraction. There was a pile of large clay jars in the doorway next to her and one soon found itself hurtling towards the head of the dagger-wielding mugger. The Doctor stepped in and relieved the dazed man of his weapon, as more jars connected with his two companions. Soon all three were racing off down the street, shards of pottery clinging to their hair and clothes.

  ‘Ha!’ Rose called after them, as the Doctor helped the old man to his feet. He seemed a bit shaken – well, that was hardly surprising.

  ‘Thank you so much,’ he said weakly. ‘Gnaeus Fabius Gracilis at your service.’