This chapter wouldn't be what it is without the help of the amazing NoPondInTheForest, the best beta one could ever have!

Taking the tunnel behind the rose keystone archway had not been a problem in itself. The real problem turned out to be the infinitely long spiral staircase at the end of it, identical to the one they had earlier descended. Much to their dismay, they would now have to go up all the way they had gone down before. Stupid as it was, none of them had seen that coming.

When the breathless party finally reached the top of the stairs, they found themselves in a small round room. Embedded in the wall was the shape of a door, right next to a metal lever which looked very much like the one that had allowed them to close the first hidden door they had come across that day, and scarcely had the Eleventh Doctor pulled it up when the thick and heavy stone door started to move.

The time travellers stepped out of the round stone room, and when they looked behind them, they realised they had in fact gone out of a massive pillar. In turning back, they saw a broad, far-reaching nave, and they immediately understood that they were inside some kind of religious building, but one which had visibly been deprived of all its ornaments and riches, and was now derelict. The immense nave stretched before them, flanked on both sides by arches supported by gigantic pillars. Had it not been for the fact that the vaults above their heads seemed to go on and on like forever, none of them would have imagined what a long walk it was going to be until actually reaching the opposite side of the building.

The whole length of the nave seemed to be a very busy area, and therefore, a very appealing one, so they started to walk slowly, curious about the reason why such a large number of people had taken over the place, until the market stalls behind them became visible, and conversations regarding commercial transactions audible.

"Could this be…?" started the Tenth Doctor.

"…Paul's Walk?" finished the Eleventh.

Clara looked at them, her big dark eyes really curious under her hood.

"Before it was destroyed by the Great Fire and after Henry VIII decided to break up with the Pope in Rome," the Tenth Doctor explained, "Old St Paul's became the site of several markets, as well as a meeting point for those who wanted to hear the latest news or gossip."

"That's where we are, then? Old St Paul's?" she asked.

"Yeap. Old St Paul's Church." The Tenth Doctor had been grinning all along since they had come out of the pillar, but as realisation suddenly seemed to be hitting him, his tone sounded infinitely quieter as he went on. "Which, among other things, is said to have had a remarkable rose window which would probably explain the carving on the last keystone we saw."

They all looked behind them, and there it was, right on top of the run-down altar they had seen when they stepped out of the pillar. Clara hadn't even known of its existence before that very moment, but as she laid her eyes on the window for the first time, she knew that the broken fragments of stained glass still attached to the stone told the story of a time when that church had seen days of splendour which were distinctly long gone now.

The rays coming from the rose window gently tainted the nave – or Paul's Walk, as the Doctors had called it – in different hues and bathed all the people on it with multicoloured light. There were men and women everywhere, young and old, some obviously wealthy but many others ragged and poor… There they all were, passing them by as they animatedly ran from one market stall to another or just finished their conversation with the group they had been chatting with until then and simply moved in search of another.

The Doctors and Clara were precisely walking past one of those groups when they unexpectedly heard some their comments – comments which, to the local ear, must have sounded rather alarming.

"She's dying!" exclaimed one man who was almost in tears. "I'm telling you! Her Majesty's dying!"

As if in agreement, the time travellers stopped right next to this particularly numerous group, determined to listen to each and every single one of their words.

"But how can she be, all of a sudden?"

"All of a sudden, you said, sir? Some newsmongers have been killing her for years!"

"And many a traitor has been trying to kill her for decades!"

The racket that was made after that one sentence would need more than a few seconds before it dissipated.

"'N 'ow can ya be sure she's really dying this time, sir?"

"Because she's cancelled all her audiences for the day apparently."

"The Queen? She's cancelled her audiences?"

"She has, I'm afraid, sir, and as you all know, that is most unprecedented!"

"Oh, no! Her Majesty's really dying!"

"So there won't be any celebrations for the Big Day, will there?"

"She might just be indisposed!"

And while this conversation kept going on, the Doctors and Clara could barely hide the smiles on their faces.

"I bet she is," said the Tenth Doctor. "Some indisposition!"

"Oh, how I've missed Jack," added the Eleventh Doctor.

The three time travellers kept walking among the numerous small groups that had formed within the enormous crowd, but were soon detained by the sight of a man rushing up the wooden steps that led to a pulpit. Upon reaching it, the man raised his arms and shouted, in a desperate attempt to gather the crowd's attention.

"Another one's gone missing!" he finally shouted.

And when that sentence reached the walkers' ears, its echo was by the deadly silence that fell unpredictably upon the place.

"Another one's gone missing," the man went on, "same way as the others."

The crowd gasped. The Tenth Doctor and Clara took a look around them after hearing that sound, which prevented them from seeing the Eleventh Doctor putting his hood down and taking a few steps towards the pulpit.

"Hello! Over here!" he shouted, waving his hand. The man on the pulpit couldn't help but see him, and the Doctor greeted him with his warmest smile and the waving of his right hand. "Hello! I'm father Rory!"

"Good evening… Father?" The surprised man hesitated for a while. No one had ever introduced himself to him at Paul's Walk before, and given that sometimes the royal guard would loiter inside the place, he wasn't quite sure that introducing himself to the cleric would turn out to be a good idea. Eventually, however, the man bowed at him and gave him his own name. "John Chamberlain, at your service, Father."

"Good evening, Mr Chamberlain," a happy as can be and grinning Doctor replied. "Could you please be a bit more explicit, since I've just arrived from Cumbria and I have no idea what you're talking about? Are you implying that people have disappeared?"

Unable to believe that his question had been for real, the surprised crowd turned their incredulous heads to him.

"Oh, brilliant. What was he thinking?" protested the Tenth Doctor.

John Chamberlain hesitated for a while again before answering the Doctor's question.

"We have been told otherwise, Father," he said, sounding rather sceptical. "But in spite of what the Queen's puppet is trying to make us believe, we all know that many prisoners have disappeared from the Tower of London."

"Only prisoners?" the Doctor asked. "No guards?"

"Not that we know of, Father."

"And how long has this been going on?"

The murmuring crowd became incredulously silent again.

"For about a month, Father," replied Mr Chamberlain, who didn't seem to distrust the Doctor as much as all the others did.

"There's a goddess in the Tower!" a brave female voice finally shouted.

'"It's not a goddess! It's a beast!" another valiant voice replied, and this time, a male one.

"It is being said, Father," Mr Chamberlain went on, "that there is both a beast and a goddess in the Tower."

"A beast and a goddess, huh?" the Doctor asked, covering his mouth and chin with one hand and holding his own arm with the other one as he squinted and spent a few seconds thinking. "So, we have the ingredients. A beast, a goddess, and people disappearing. What we need to know now is… What's exactly cooking?"

"I'm sorry, Father?" asked Mr Chamberlain, blinking.

"The prisoners are being saved!" another unexpected courageous voice shouted from the distance.

"Oh, I see," said Mr Chamberlain then as he suddenly realised the real meaning of Father Rory's question. "Well, Father, what we mostly think, but nobody in the land will tell us, is that the prisoners are being saved."

"Excuse me, Mr Chamberlain," said the Tenth Doctor, suddenly stepping forward until he was standing by his future self's side, "what exactly do you mean by 'saved'?"

"Isn't it obvious, father Wilfred?" the Eleventh Doctor asked him, who suddenly sounded rather annoyed.

"So much for not wanting to call people's attention…" said Clara in amazement a short distance behind them.

"I thought it was once, Father Rory," muttered the Tenth Doctor so that only the Eleventh could hear. "I'm sure that you'll remember very well what happened next."

"Oh, don't I remember! Wow!" replied the Eleventh Doctor, visibly amused. "I'd never realised how much fun counting shadows could be until then."

"What I personally believe, fathers," Mr Chamberlain went on, "is that a merciful goddess has been sent from heaven to spare those poor sinners the suffering of their forthcoming executions."

The noisy reaction of the crowd surrounding John Chamberlain made it quite clear that many of those people strongly disagreed with him.

"And how does such gracious deity manage to achieve that?" asked the Eleventh Doctor.

"By taking them with her, Father."

"Where?" asked the Tenth Doctor.

"I don't really know, Father, but it must be to a better place, don't you think so?"

"So I take it, Mr Chamberlain," the Doctor went on, biting his tongue for once in his long existence as he didn't want to attract any more attention that he was already doing, "none of the prisoners has been seen again after being 'saved'."

"You're right, Father, none of them has."

"Oh, merciful goddess!" cried the same female voice as before.

"It's a beast, woman! It's not a goddess!" replied the same male one.

Judging by the easiness and readiness with which the so-called Paul's walkers became tangled up in a fight, both Doctors reasonably imagined that the 'beast versus goddess' debate had probably been going on for a while before their arrival in Elizabethan London.

"Well, we should go to the Tower, don't you think?" said the Tenth Doctor once the steps backwards they had taken had separated them from the fighting crowd.

"That's exactly what I was thinking," the other Doctor replied. "Clara! Let's get out of here, shall we?"

But the Doctors couldn't take their eyes off the fiery crowd in front of them for a short while, both grimacing at the sound of punches and moans of pain and the occasional broken bone as well as at the sight of strands of hair being pulled off from people's heads.

It became obvious only a few seconds later that Clara hadn't even said a word to reply the Doctors' call to action.

"Clara?" the Eleventh Doctor called again. Once more, there was nothing but silence, and that was when they both finally looked around.

John Chamberlain had just descended the stairs and walked into the nave, gradually getting out of sight as he got lost among the crowd that had first been enthralled in a discussion regarding the nature of the supernatural being in the Tower, but which looked a bit later like a bunch of starving men and women fighting for the last piece of bread on the planet. As they eventually scattered when someone managed to pass the message that some of the Queen's guards were approaching, the Doctors' eyes darted from one to another of the several groups of people that were still walking up and down the nave in search for different newsmongers that might give them the latest gossip of the day, but the area surrounding the spot where they had recently been asking questions and trying to get some answers was now as empty as could be, making the truth as worrying as it was also obvious.

Clara was nowhere to be seen.

"So much for not wanting to call people's attention…" said Clara in amazement a short distance behind them.

The thought had crossed her mind many times since the course of events had brought the two Doctors together for a second time within the last thirty-six hours. She had even told them so at some point, seeing how frequently their quarrels seemed to take place and how much each of them seemed to enjoy teasing the other. Apparently, almost as much as they enjoyed saving worlds together whenever they had the chance. What Clara was beginning to understand by now was that it didn't matter whether they were separately trying to pick at the other or on the contrary working hand in hand in such manner that the word 'fraternity' acquired a connotation that took it way beyond its original meaning. Under any of those circumstances, each of the Doctors could still be as difficult as the most stubborn of children, and being in a classroom full of children suddenly seemed nothing to her compared to the impossible task she was up to, which essentially consisted of keeping these two different incarnations of the Doctor out of harm's way.

Still, taking care of one single Doctor had often proved to be difficult enough, so how could she have been so naïve as to think she could deal with two of them successfully all on her own?

Out of the blue, she found herself thinking of that other Doctor, the warrior as she had called him, back at the U.N.I.T. headquarters, where she had the chance to have a short conversation with him. She suddenly remembered how surreal it all had seemed the moment she took her first close look into his eyes and saw them shine with the radiance and vividness that only guiltlessness and righteousness could have conferred them. She also remembered how in that moment she had wished she could see that look in her Doctor's eyes more often, if she had not, it was because of the toll that his drastic decision to put an end to the Time War had been taking on him ever since. And yet, truth, impossible as she had thought it could be, there was still another Time Lord whose eyes whose eyes she now found to be even more excruciating. The melancholy on his predecessor's gaze appeared in fact to have no end.

But now that Gallifrey had been saved and their wrongs righted, she couldn't help but wonder, how much longer could their misery last? Her own Doctor had been briefly overwhelmed with joy by such knowledge, and even if it still didn't show, the Tenth Doctor himself, she was sure, would soon understand the blissful implications his of other selves' and his own actions. As for the other Doctor, the warrior, however fast his memories might have been wiped out, he would never be the same man again.

Run, you clever boy, and remember.

She was certainly starting to like the sound of those six words.

Her attention was suddenly drawn to the heartbreaking sound of someone weeping bitterly not far away from her. She slowly parted from the crowd around her with the intention of locating the place that sound was coming from, and it didn't take her long to spot a middle-aged man sitting on one of the few pews that had not been taken away from the interior of the church. She came closer and, without hesitation, sat down right next to him, then gently put her hand on his shoulder.

"Are you alright, sir?" she asked, but as she had anticipated, not only did the man not answer her question at all – he didn't even raise his head to look at her. In spite of that, she went on. "I'm sorry, sir, I… I don't mean to intrude. Please don't think I'm one of those people who come to this place in search for gossip, 'cause I'm not. I just want to help, if that's at all possible."

The man finally looked up, his complexion as pale as death and his eyes red and swollen, and Clara couldn't help but get surprised when she realised she'd seen that face before. It was Francis Benjamin, the man who had managed to shut them all up the moment he stepped into the Cheshire Cheese.

"Mr Benjamin," she went on, "I know who you are, sir. I saw you in the tavern this morning and I know what's happened to your son."

"No, you don't!" an inconsolable Mr Benjamin sobbed. "You can't possibly know what's 'appened to my son, young lass… 'Cause nobody does!"

An inconsolable Mr Benjamin still didn't say a word.

"Still, my friends… They can help. If you just told them everything you know…"

"I dunno anything!" he cried out desperately. "I dunno whether my own son's still alive! I went to the Tower this morning and they told 'e'd been be'eaded, but yu know what? I don't believe 'em!"

Clara's heart sank in her chest as her senses were suddenly overpowered by a memory. A distant, yet vivid, and always infinitely unbearable memory – the memory of the day her mother passed away. She had thought that no other sorrow could ever compare to that back then, but now, with that recollection still fresh in her mind and in her heart, Clara started to consider the possibility that, maybe since that day, she had been wrong. Maybe the pain of not knowing what had happened to one's son was even more devastating than the pain of knowing too much, and none of it good.

"He's not the only one, is he?" she asked sympathetically. "Other prisoners are gone too. People seem to believe they have disappeared from the Tower, not that they should've been executed in private."

"It's all true," he said, taking a hand to his face to wipe out his tears. "Nobody knows what they've done to 'em, but the Tower's almost empty. The prisoners… All of'em are gone. Not even the guards want to stay there during the night. They say there's only one living creature that will never leave the Tower…"

"And what is it?"

Mr Benjamin kept looking at Clara but seemed unwilling to answer her question.

"Mr Benjamin," she went on self-confidently, "you've got to believe me. We can help you, I know we can. But you must tell me everything you know, however irrelevant or unimportant it may seem."

Clara could very well imagine the thoughts that might be going through Mr Benjamin's head. Who was she, apart from a woman in fancy dress? Why did she want to know so much when it was pretty obvious people were either scared to death or not very willing to speak about that subject? And most importantly, could she and those friends of hers really be trusted?

In the end, he must have concluded that they could.

"There's… There's a beast in the Tower," he replied, his face distorted with horror.

"I know, that's what they're all saying. But what kind of beast is that?"

"I don't know," he replied, shutting his eyes as he exhaled. "Nobody outside the Tower has ever seen it."

"Then how do you know it's really there?" she asked with a grimace of incredulity.

"Because if it's not there, what else would you expect to be devouring the prisoners?"

"Devouring the prisoners?" she said, scowling.

"That's why there haven't been any executions for weeks! The beast is eating all the prisoners!" he shouted, his voice full of emotion.

"Then why were you so certain your own son would eventually be executed? Wouldn't the beast have killed him first?"

"Not if the beast is the method of execution, you stupid girl!"

Clara's big dark eyes were void of any emotion as she kept looking at Mr Benjamin. Nausea, however, had just started to build up in her stomach.

"Well," she finally said, after having jumped to an obvious conclusion, "one thing's clear, Mr Benjamin. Beast or no beast, we really need to find those people."

"I don't care about the others! I only need to find my son!" Mr Benjamin shouted once again. "The other men in the Tower? They're probably traitors and criminals, young lass, and if they 'ave been sentenced to death 'cause they can't honour and respect our Queen then they deserve to die in the beast's claws!"

"Are you really being serious?" Clara fired back immediately. Mr Benjamin's unexpected declaration had instantly caused her to lose her temper. "How can you say that at all when your own son might be destined to suffer that fate himself? Is he a traitor and a criminal?"

The look of agony and affliction in Mr Benjamin's still swollen and teary eyes suddenly became one of hatred and disdain.

"Impertinent woman!" he shouted at her. "Who are you anyway? And why are you wearing a monk's attire? You're not a monk! You can never be a monk – you're just a female!"

"Well, Elizabeth Tudor is a female and she's wearing her father's crown, sir," she replied, repressing a laugh. Clara had never intended her words to hurt or offend Mr Benjamin at all. He was obviously going through a lot, but still, she thought someone had to try and put some sense into him. That might have to wait, though. Her most important concern now was going back to the Doctors as she was certain they could help him.

The problem was that Mr Benjamin didn't give her time to do so at all. He raised his hand to call out for someone behind her, then shouted.

"Guards! Arrest this woman! She's an impostor!" Pointing his forefinger at her, he went on as they both jumped from their seats. "She's pretending to be a man and wearing religious costume!"

Clara knew how in Elizabethan England male actors would usually dress up as women on stage just because women were not allowed to be actresses – or anything else, for that matter, except someone's wife, a domestic servant and little else, so being caught dressed up not only as a man, but as a monk on top of all… Well, she wasn't sure about the consequences that might have, but they definitely couldn't be any good.

She was looking at Mr Benjamin in disbelief when she felt two strong hands grabbing both her arms and saw a surprisingly short man dressed in sober black attire – the one in charge, no doubt – stepping in front of her, hiding the informer from view right behind his hump.

The Doctors would certainly have been worried in finding out it was Robert Cecil.

"Well, well, well…" he said, walking in circles around Clara, until he finally stopped in front of her and pushed her hood down. Then, cupping her cheek in his sweaty hand, he went on. "What have we got here? I'd swear I saw some other monks from your same congregation at the Cheshire Cheese this morning. Were they all female? And where are they now? Are you on your own?"

He locked eyes with Clara in an intimidating manner, but as no words came out of her mouth, the blood that had started to boil in his veins made him scream with rage.

"Guards!" he said. "In the name of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth I, arrest this woman! She has committed a serious offence against Her Gracious Majesty and against the Church of England. Send her to the Tower! Now!"

Oh, great, Clara thought.

And oddly enough, somehow she'd honestly meant what she'd just thought.