Doctor Who BBC N07 - The Stone Rose Page 5

  ‘Except when they don’t get their son back and realise I’ve been deceiving them.’

  Rose gave her a mock-offended look. ‘Hey! I told you me and the Doctor were on the case. We’re gonna get him back!’ She sighed. ‘But first, I’ve gotta pose for this statue. I’m expected to get there at three hours after sunrise. When on earth’s that? Am I supposed to sit up watching for the sun to appear and then go “one hippopotamus, two hippopotamus” for three hours?’

  Vanessa smiled finally. ‘I’ll wake you,’ she said. ‘I don’t sleep much

  – not any more.’

  ‘It’s a deal,’ said Rose. ‘Look, there’s something I want to get done before the light goes completely, so I’d better head back now.’

  But she didn’t move. The sun was going down and she couldn’t seem to tear her eyes away from it.

  All these dramas going on around her. Gracilis and Marcia, desperate for the return of their son. Ursus, with his lust for artistic fame.

  Vanessa’s worries and fears. The slaves – who knew what they were hoping, dreaming? And yet in 2,000 years’ time, they’d all be forgotten. Things that were life and death today would mean nothing even to the next generation, let alone those living in the twenty-first century. By the time she was born, the people here would be dust, the villa rubble. The only thing that would survive was a statue of a goddess, and who knew what it would endure over that time?

  40

  To the setting sun, the time between where Rose was now and where she had come from was no more than a blink. But to Rose

  – who’d been to the dawn of humanity and the very end of the Earth

  – it suddenly seemed an eternity.

  Vanessa finished the piece of bread. ‘Come on, then,’ Rose said, and got up.

  They walked together back to the house, and didn’t look back.

  41

  Rose was ripped from a dream about talking cats the next morning by Vanessa shaking her shoulder. ‘Time to get up,’ the girl said, as Rose yawned and tried to remember where she was. It took her a few minutes to force herself out of bed, yawning the whole time.

  ‘Do you think Ursus will be able to capture the bags under my eyes OK?’ she said as she stared at herself in the circle of polished bronze that served as a mirror. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Two hours after sunrise,’ Vanessa told her. ‘You’ve got an hour before you have to be at the studio.’

  ‘You’d think it’d be more in Ursus’s interests to let me have my beauty sleep,’ grumbled Rose, but she started to get ready anyway.

  Vanessa helped her to do her hair, which took up most of the time they had at their disposal. Finally Rose was ready to go.

  ‘Look, why don’t you come with me?’ she suggested to Vanessa.

  ‘I’m not saying it’ll be much fun, but I wouldn’t mind the company.

  Keep you out of the way of everyone else too. I mean, Ursus has got a slave in there – he can’t really object to me bringing one, whatever he says. Anyway, the way they treat slaves like furniture round here, he’ll probably not even notice you.’

  43

  Vanessa smiled. ‘Yes, I’d like to come.’

  They crossed the courtyard, heading to the workshop by the stables. The Doctor was already up and about, and they waved to him in passing.

  The studio door was locked, so Rose banged a fist on it. ‘Remember, eyes and ears open,’ she whispered to Vanessa while they were waiting. ‘You know, in case he’s a baddie.’

  Vanessa might have replied, but just then the studio door was flung open by Ursus. He scowled as he saw her – probably not the sort of greeting someone like Kate Moss would get, but she could take it. She stepped inside, Vanessa close behind.

  ‘Get her out of here,’ Ursus growled, nodding his head towards the slave girl. ‘I keep telling you and your doctor friend, I don’t allow an audience while I’m working – even slaves.’

  Rose put on an imperious air. ‘So who’s gonna look after me, then?

  What if I need someone to fix my hair, or get me a drink or something?’

  Ursus stumped over to a table and picked up a jug. He slopped some wine into a goblet and held it out to Rose. ‘There. There’s your drink. Your hair’s fine. Now get out!’

  This last was to Vanessa, who fairly fled out of the door. Rose was half tempted to follow her. But this was all part of her destiny, wasn’t it? She had to pose for the statue. And the Doctor was relying on her to investigate Ursus too, in case he knew anything about Optatus’s disappearance. She gulped down the bitter wine – she still couldn’t bear the taste, but it might help her to relax a bit.

  Ursus walked through to the next room and Rose followed. There was no Tiro there today, which gave Rose a slight pang of disappointment.

  ‘So, how d’you want me?’ she asked, but Ursus ignored her. He moved over to a table and started sorting through his tools.

  Rose sat down on a bench, awaiting instructions.

  She looked

  around the room – there was one thing different from how it had been the day before, a tall, covered shape in the corner. A work in progress? She hoped Ursus wasn’t spreading himself too thin, because she wanted to get this over with and she really, really hoped 44

  it wouldn’t take too long. She had a horrible feeling, though, that it would. Days, maybe weeks. Was it really worth it – even for a sort of immortality?

  She smiled slightly. She had a sort of immortality already, in a roundabout way. Even if she died, here and now – which, obviously, she wasn’t planning on doing for a moment – in just under 2,000

  years she’d be back on Earth, wandering about London, growing up.

  Almost 200,000 years after that, she’d be on a space station, defeating the Daleks. More years than she could comprehend after that, she’d be watching the Earth die.

  But although that was the future, it was her past.

  And right now she should be concentrating on her present. What was happening to her?

  She suddenly jerked herself awake. She hadn’t been asleep exactly, but she’d got totally caught up in her thoughts, started to drift off. That wine must have relaxed her a bit too much! She remembered that time with Shareen, when they were both kids, when they’d planned to sneak out to Danny Fennel’s party and had half-inched a bottle of wine from her mum’s kitchen cupboard to get them pepped up ready. Except after a glass each they’d fallen asleep, and they not only missed the party but got the ticking-off of the century from Jackie as well.

  Rose blinked. She wasn’t ten any more, and it’d take more than a glass of Lambrusco to make her nod off these days. So why was she suddenly feeling so sleepy?

  She forced her head up and caught sight of Ursus.

  He was sitting on a bench just watching her, and his expression made her feel all hollow inside. Suddenly, it was Silence of the Lambs time. How could she have been so stupid? They’d had suspicions he was a nutter, hadn’t they, and yet still she had merrily stepped into his fly-trapping parlour because of some stupid idea about having to avoid the paradox that would occur if the statue was never made.

  Ursus rose and approached her. He eased the wine cup from her unresisting hand and Rose realised the truth as he waved it in front of her face. He’d drugged the wine. And she’d made it all so easy for 45

  him. She felt a sudden sick fear inside.

  Ursus put down the cup and fetched a spear from the pile of godly odds and ends in the corner. Was this it? Was he going to stab her to death? Rose made a desperate effort to move, but her limbs had gone totally numb.

  But he didn’t stab her. Instead he prised open her hand and put the spear in it. What?

  Rose tried to take advantage of this surprising situation – her captor having handed her a weapon! She tried once again to move, to thrust the pointed spearhead towards Ursus’s ugly, gloating face.

  But once again she failed.

  Ursus pulled her from the bench. She tried to resist
him but she just couldn’t. Now he was moving her helpless limbs, manipulating her as if she was a shop dummy from Henrik’s.

  Aside from being terrifying, it was totally humiliating. Rose Tyler, Barbie doll.

  Had there ever been a Warrior Barbie? Because now, adding confusion to the terror and humiliation, Ursus had picked up a metal helmet from the pile and was placing it oh-so-carefully on her head.

  This wasn’t right. Her statue hadn’t worn a helmet, hadn’t held a spear. What was going on?

  Ursus finally stopped treating her as if she was made of Plasticine.

  Rose couldn’t see herself but she could feel that her head was held high, her spear clutched heroically in one hand as she stood tall and proud. So. . . what happened next?

  The sculptor stood back, admiring her. It was an impersonal, clini-cal look; there was nothing in it that said she was a human being. She was nothing more to him than clay to be moulded into shape.

  She tried to speak again. Her fear, her desperation, must have given her strength, because the slightest of slight sounds came out, something that might just have been recognised as ‘Nooooo’.

  Ursus frowned. ‘Don’t do that,’ he said.

  That was good – wasn’t it? At least he had spoken to her. Anything you could do to make them see you as a person, that was the thing.

  46

  Suddenly he turned his back on Rose, and she felt a stab of hope.

  He’d changed his mind, he wasn’t going to do anything to her. . .

  But he just walked over to the covered shape in the corner. Grasping the sheet, he pulled it off, revealing what was below.

  It was a statue, as Rose had suspected. A man with wings on his hat and his shoes, like on the Interflora logo. But there was something familiar about him. . . The curled hair, the handsome features – surely this was Tiro? But he’d said he hadn’t even started modelling yet.

  Ursus smiled at the statue. ‘He didn’t make things difficult for me,’

  he said. ‘He knew that beauty is more important than life.’

  Rose’s stomach seemed to vanish inside her. This couldn’t really be happening to her. It was a dream, one of those ones where your legs won’t obey you, where you can’t run, however hard you try. The talking cats had been real and everything since had been a dream – a nightmare.

  But it didn’t seem as if the nightmare was ever going to end.

  The Doctor had spent the morning doing his Sherlock Holmes thing, not that he thought there was much else to be discovered here. Rose, he hoped, would be using her own detective instincts to find things out from Ursus, while he’d drawn a blank in his search around the estate. Gracilis had suggested having the slaves tortured to make sure they were telling the truth, but the Doctor had managed to persuade him out of that.

  The more people he spoke to, the more convinced he became that only Ursus had any answers. After sharing a lunch of bread and cheese with Gracilis, the Doctor decided that he needed to find out if Rose had discovered anything. Taking some food with him as an excuse –after all, surely even an artist’s model was allowed lunch – he headed over to Ursus’s workshop.

  As the Doctor neared the stable yard, a cart was just pulling away. In the back of it he could see a large wrapped object nestling in a bed of straw. Never one to ignore even the least suspicious of circumstances, he jogged after the cart and jumped on the back before it had gone 100 yards.

  47

  ‘Hoy!’ cried the carter.

  ‘Don’t mind me!’ called back the Doctor. ‘Just wanted a quick look at what you’re carrying here.’ He began to unwrap the object – the human-sized object.

  The carter pulled up and jumped down. ‘What do you think you’re doing? I was told to come here, pick up the goods and deliver ’em,’

  he said, coming round to the back. ‘If that arrives damaged, it’s me who’ll get the blame.’

  ‘That assumes I’m going to be damaging it,’ said the Doctor. ‘And I haven’t the slightest intention of harming this – aha! This charming statue – of Mercury, messenger of the gods, if his winged hat is anything to go by.’

  He rewrapped the sculpture, patted it on its draped head and hopped off the back of the cart, just as the carter was heaving himself on to it.

  ‘Now, don’t let me hold you up any further,’ said the Doctor. ‘I’m sure you’re a very busy man – course you are, statues don’t deliver themselves, do they?’ He waved a gracious hand in the direction of the road, and the carter smiled, despite himself.

  But as the Doctor walked back towards the estate, he wasn’t smiling. He’d recognised the statue. Yes, it was Mercury – but it was modelled on a living man, and that man was the slave Tiro.

  But there was no way Ursus could have completed the statue of Tiro already. No way on earth.

  The most terrible thought struck the Doctor. A thought that explained why Ursus was able to complete statues so quickly. Why they were so lifelike. Why his tools were unused and his workshop unsul-lied by marble dust.

  The Doctor began to run.

  Ursus walked back to frozen Rose. With the gloved tips of one hand, he grasped the gloved tips of the other. He pulled. Slowly, teasingly, the glove came off and he let it flop to the floor – a gross, terrifying striptease. Then he took the ends of the remaining glove in his teeth and pulled that off too.

  48

  ‘All my life, all I have wanted to do was to create beauty. But the gods cursed me with these. . . ’

  He held up his huge, stubby-fingered hands. They were white, flabby, not the calloused tools of a craftsman.

  ‘I was taunted and teased for years, but I did not give up. I made vows to my goddess, promising sacrifices if she gave me what I desired. And then, one day – she did. I told her what I wished for most

  – the ability to make beauty in stone. And she granted me my desire.’

  Slowly, oh so slowly, he moved closer to Rose, hands raised..

  ‘I have fame now, renown. I am pitied no longer. My mother holds her head up high and talks with pride about “my son”. I have money, money to buy all I want, money to revenge myself on those who once mocked me. But most of all. . . I have beauty. I can create beauty.’

  He reached out a hand to Rose, as if he was going to stroke her cheek.

  She had a memory: a man lying in a hospital bed. Petrifold regression, the Doctor had called that. Had she caught petrifold regression?

  Had Ursus given it to her? What was happening to her?

  The last thing she saw was the horn of plenty, still lying unheeded and unwanted in the corner of the room.

  The Doctor skidded to a halt in front of the stables. There was another cart there, an empty one this time, standing ready to receive its load.

  He was just contemplating the locked door when he heard a sound from the other side of it – grunting, groaning, the squeak of wheels.

  The door swung open and there was Ursus, pulling a wheeled pallet with a marble figure on it. The statue was lying horizontal and the Doctor couldn’t see what it was, but he had a pretty good idea.

  He launched himself on the sculptor. ‘What have you done to Rose?’

  Ursus was as strong as his bear namesake, but the Doctor’s anger made him a match for any man. They grappled, falling to the floor and rolling over and over. As the Doctor lay on the ground, he spotted Vanessa creeping up towards them, a bronze lamp in her hands. She raised it above her head. . .

  49

  ‘That’s it, Vanessa!’ shouted the Doctor as he twisted round, gaining the upper hand again. . .

  And everything went black.

  The Doctor rubbed his sore head and sat up. He sneezed – a piece of hay was sticking up his nose. A donkey looked at him curiously. He was in a stable. Someone must have dragged him here. He looked around.

  Crouched beside a pillar, trembling slightly, he could see Vanessa staring at him. She shrank away as he climbed to his feet.

  ‘I. . . I’m sorry,’ s
he squeaked, more mouse-like than ever.

  ‘You hit me,’ the Doctor said, coldly and angrily. ‘You stopped me from rescuing Rose.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to!’ She was almost crying. ‘You moved! I meant to hit Ursus!’

  The Doctor narrowed his eyes. ‘Say I believe you – for now. Where is Rose? Where did he take her?’

  ‘I didn’t see Rose!’ she gasped. ‘Only a statue.’

  The Doctor let that pass. ‘Well, where is Ursus now?’ he demanded.

  ‘I. . . I don’t know,’ the girl stammered.

  ‘I think you do,’ said the Doctor. ‘I think you know a lot more than you’re letting on, Vanessa. Like, what’s Hadrian’s Wall, Vanessa?’

  She looked at him, wide-eyed and terrified.

  ‘Well?’ he said.

  She could barely get the words out. ‘It’s a wall. It divides England from Scotland.’

  The Doctor raised an eyebrow. ‘A wall that’s not been built yet, dividing two places that won’t be named for a few hundred years?’

  Vanessa burst into tears.

  ‘You know, I was suspicious the instant you were, introduced,’ the Doctor continued. “Vanessa”, Sounds quite Roman, I admit. Marcia, Claudia, Julia, Vanessa. . .

  But I happen to know, because I’m ex-

  tremely clever, that the name was invented in the eighteenth century by a writer chap called Jonathan Swift. And there you were, a girl with a name from years in the future, sitting at a table working out 50

  Merik’s Theorem. Oh, I know what astrological calculations look like, and I know what Merik’s Theorem looks like, and that was definitely the latter, not the former. So would you like to tell me what a girl from at least the twenty-fourth century is doing in the second century AD, and –’ he leaned over and shouted at her – ‘what has happened to Rose!’