No beta. All mistakes are mine.
Richmond Palace, Surrey, midnight 24th March 1603
Captain Jack Harkness started running like a mad man along the corridors of Richmond Palace the moment he heard the whooshing sound of the TARDIS. Stamping to a halt when he finally clapped eyes on it, he crossed his arms in front of his chest and waited outside for the Doctor to reveal himself. When the doors finally opened and the Doctor emerged from his spaceship, Jack gaped. In front of him there was a completely different Time Lord, a thin middle-aged human-looking alien whose style curiously gave him an incredibly youthful look. He was wearing a middle-length black coat with red lining, a loose t-shirt, check-patterned trousers, and his long and a bit unruly silver curls matched the greyish-blue of the big eyes that came into sight when he removed his fabulous black sunglasses.
"Oh, wow!" Jack said, absolutely in awe of the new Doctor. "Look at you, Doctor! You're so hot!"
"Captain Jack Harkness," the Doctor said in a raspy voice as the corners of his lips curled up, "long time no..."
The Doctor was going to finish that sentence but Jack didn't give him the chance to do so. What the former Time Agent did instead was jump on him, push him against the TARDIS and kiss him passionately.
"Oh Doctor, am I happy to see you!" Jack said when he eventually pulled away.
"Yeah, I noticed," said the Doctor, nodding repeatedly. "So as you know, I'm not flattered. I remember this your natural way of saying hello."
"Scottish," a voice suddenly said at the other end of the corridor. Looking in that direction, the Doctor grinned. Despite the many centuries that had passed, he instantly recognised the silhouette of his former friend, Edward de Vere. "You sound Scottish, sir."
"Scottish and really sexy," Jack said, blinking an eye at him.
"So it is really you, sir," said Edward, smiling one of those sweet smiles of his that the Doctor remembered so very well. "The Doctor."
"It is, Edward," said the Doctor, smiling at him. "My dear friend, I'm so happy to..."
Out of the blue, Edward jumped on the Doctor and, as a result of that unexpected jump, the mighty Time Lord found himself pushed against the TARDIS and kissed by a man in a Renaissance outfit for the second time in the last sixty seconds or so.
"Oh, come on," said the Doctor when Edward eventually pulled away. "Is this how you greet everyone now you've entered the seventeenth century?"
"No sir, not at all," Edward replied, "but it is my understanding that this is how one greets one's closest acquaintances in the centuries to come, sir."
"I see," said the Doctor with a frown as his eyes drifted to Jack.
"How long has it been, Doctor?" asked the former Time Agent.
"Oh, I don't know. Lost track of time recently. Who cares anyway? Came here as soon as I got your message. How is she?"
"Well, I'm afraid it's volcano day, Doctor," Jack told him.
"We shall take you to her immediately, sir," said Edward. "Her Majesty has been most keen on having a private and most urgent conversation with you for a remarkably long time. If you will follow me, please. This way."
"Of course," said the Doctor, worry written all over his face.
"Her Majesty has not been feeling very well for the past three months, sir," Edward said as the three men walked along the endless corridors of Richmond Palace. "Not only have many of her dearest friends recently passed away, but her own health has rapidly deteriorated."
"Besides," Jack muttered, "everyone's talking about her new bestie, the Lady Anne 'Bollen', and Lizzy's just a tiny bit worried about her."
"Well, if former Queen Anne Boleyn has been reintroduced at court as Lady Anne 'Bollen' then no wonder they're all talking about her," whispered the Doctor. "Whose idea was that?"
"It was her own idea," Jack answered.
"And why did you let her get away with it?" asked the Doctor as he raised his new majestic eyebrows.
"'Cause she always has, I guess? She's the Queen of England, Doctor! What were we supposed to do? Anyway, there are more things you need to know, but Queen Liz will spill the beans herself."
The three men kept walking in silence until they eventually reached Queen Elizabeth's bedchamber. As the door had been left ajar, Edward pushed it and held it open for the Doctor.
"Unfortunately, sir, Her Majesty doesn't have long," Edward said quietly before he got in.
"What Eddie here means is that you should go straight to the point, Doctor," Jack added. "Don't beat about the bush."
"I won't," said the Doctor with determination.
The Doctor walked noiselessly in as the door closed behind him. Inside the Queen's bedchamber he had been hoping to find the mighty woman he had known way back when, but what he found instead was the unconscious remnants of such a woman. There she was - Elizabeth I, the monarch who had once led her country into the most glorious age it had ever known, engulfed by the pillow on her dark wooden four-poster bed and even paler than the sheets under which her emaciated form loomed.
Sitting by her side on what looked like a very uncomfortable chair and holding her hand was her mother, former Queen Anne Boleyn.
"Hello Anne," said the Doctor, smiling softly as he ambled towards her, "it's so good to see you again."
"Doctor!" she said emotionally, standing up to take his hand. "You have changed your face again, sir. Lord Boeshane said you were capable of doing that."
"Yeah, well... I try not to make a habit of it but sometimes it happens inevitably." Narrowing his eyes, the Doctor studied her fatigued countenance in silence for a few seconds. "How long have you been looking after her?"
"I have been sitting by her side for weeks on end now, sir," Anne answered. "I was informed by her physician that she does not have much longer to live, and while that fills me with such terrible pain, I feel strangely blessed that I can be here, sitting by her side and holding her hand. I have found some consolation in the thought that at least now I can do what mothers naturally do for their children and what I had never had the chance to do for my own daughter until now, sir. "
"I see. You must've been busy then. She can be very stubborn," said the Doctor, a soft smile curling up his lips.
"Indeed she can," she answered, smiling back at him softly. "But it was me that she needed. Her mother. Not her Lady of the Bedchamber or her Chancellors. When she would not sit down, when she would not rest, when she would not eat or drink and when she would not be attended to or bathed, I was the one person she would listen to and whose advice she would take. Even if, sometimes, she would take it reluctantly."
"Like a good child," said the Doctor, "she will obey her mother."
"Mother?" they both heard the Queen say weakly from her bed.
"Elizabeth," Anne said, quickly turning to her as she sat on the chair and took her hand for the hundredth time that night. "Elizabeth, my dear, we have a visitor."
"Hello, Lizzy," said the Doctor.
"Look, Elizabeth, it's the Doctor," her mother announced excitedly.
It took her great effort, but eventually Queen Elizabeth managed to open her eyes, which wandered about the room until the finally drifted from her mother to the stranger in the black coat.
"Doctor?" she asked in a choked voice. "Doctor, is that you?"
"Yes it is," he said, crouching down next to Anne as his eyes looked tenderly into hers.
"You look much older than the last time I had the pleasure of meeting you, sir," the Queen said, smiling weakly at him.
"You don't though," he joked, smiling back, "and neither does your mother. You both gotta tell me what your secret is 'cause I refuse to look a single day older than I do now."
"You sound Scottish too, sir," she added.
"So I'm being told these days, yes."
"Why do you sound Scottish?" she asked, slowly furrowing her brow.
"Well, why shouldn't I? I love the Scottish! They're magnificent people! Which reminds me, cousin Mary sends her regards."
Narrowing her eyes, Queen Elizabeth remained silent as she stared at him for a brief while.
"Mother, the Doctor and I have this most important business to talk about," she said eventually. "Could perhaps leave us alone for a brief while?"
"Of course, my dear darling," Anne said, standing up from her chair and leaning forward to plant a kiss on her daughter's forehead. "I shall fetch you some soup."
"Thank you mother, but I am hardly hungry."
"You were hardly hungry at dinnertime either, my dear, and now you shall eat something," said Anne, smiling softly at her before she turned to the Doctor. "I shall leave you with her, sir. We all know she desperately needs your assistance, and since she refuses to let anyone know what that business is, I understand she does not want me to be around to hear it."
"It's okay Anne," he said as he stood up, "I'll take good care of her."
When Anne closed the door behind her, the Doctor sat on the empty and definitely very uncomfortable chair she had just left. Taking Elizabeth's hand, he smiled sweetly at her before he started the conversation she apparently wanted to have with him so badly.
"So, my dear Lizzy, what am I exactly doing here?" he asked.
"My cousin does not actually send her regards, does she, Doctor?" she asked, ignoring his question.
"Of course she does!" he said in amusement. "Why wouldn't she?"
"Because she was beheaded, Doctor," said Elizabeth bitterly. "And not a single day has gone by on which I have not deeply regretted her death since the instant it took place."
"Well, my dear Lizzy, you're mad if you think I'm going to let you Tudors go round chopping everybody's heads off. I'm the Doctor, and I save people. Nothing's impossible anymore, Lizzy. Look at your mother! Can I add it felt really great to bring them both back, by the way?"
Something inside Elizabeth shuddered when the Doctor shared that information with her. Mary, Queen of Scots, had been alive all those years, and that knowledge had just filled her with tremendous joy! Immediately afterwards it hit her that, if she had never known about it, it must have been because the Doctor had kept Mary safely hidden away from her.
All of a sudden, Elizabeth sighed with relief because the Doctor's confession unquestionably did prove he would completely understand what she was about to ask of him.
"My mother is precisely the reason why I have summoned you one last time, Doctor," she said in distress.
"So I've been told, but they've spared me the details."
"That is what happens when one does not share those details with anyone else," she told him. "You must take her out of court, Doctor."
"Why?" he asked with a frown. "What's happened?".
"She is really bright, my mother," she explained. "There were many reasons why my father's advisors found her a really intimidatory person to have around, and that was one of them. That and their own greed hastened her downfall. Still, nearly seventy years later, I find that nothing much has changed. Because she is unshakable in her beliefs and her temper can sometimes be blazing, she has been noticed by people at court and some are spreading all sorts of rumours about her. Where has she so suddenly come from? Who are her relations and her acquaintances? Who is she, really? Now that my father and his advisors are gone I thought I could make her safe, but I was wrong. So far I have been here to protect her, but my time is now ending, Doctor. Very soon I'll be gone, and I have summoned you, sir, to beg you to take her away from this court, away from this country, and away from this point in history, if possible."
The Doctor remained thoughtfully silent for a while, as if trying to figure out the implications of what Queen Elizabeth had just asked him to do.
"Fools tend to hate those who outwit them, Lizzy," he said eventually as he slowly took her hand in his. "Don't think that changes at any point in the future. If anything, it gets even worse. You'd never believe how many clowns I've seen become powerful and influential people just because they sent straightforward messages that were easy to understand, or how many pudding brains will flourish during the coronavirus pandemic in the twenty-first century just because their wee little brains can't even begin to process anything remotely related to science."
"Stupidity is and shall always be an unbeatable foe, Doctor. I may not be as old as you, but I am old enough to have learned that by now. And yet, letting those fools aside, something vital would be achieved if you took her away from here, Doctor. Her true identity would forever remain a secret."
Elizabeth would gladly have elaborated and explained how Anne's true identity could possibly be compromised, but a sudden fit of coughing momentarily prevented her from doing so.
"Hold on," said the Doctor with a smirk, "your mother was executed… Sorry! Your mother was definitely not executed in 1536. Sixty-four years ago, that is. Since this is the year 1603… Who could possibly recognise her?"
Taking a deep sigh, Elizabeth started giving the Doctor the details that, except for Boeshane and de Vere, she had spared everyone else.
"When my mother was imprisoned in the Tower of London, Mary Carey, her sister, would regularly visit, and she would take her daughter Catherine with her. Cathy, my dearest cousin. She was the most talented artist I have ever known! For many years, I kept a sketched portrait of my mother that my cousin had made during those terrible days in the Tower. I was only two years old when my mother was taken from me, Doctor, but I recognised her immediately when you brought her back because I had a miniature copy of that portrait made and placed inside my locket ring."
Raising her hand in his direction, Elizabeth opened her locket ring. Inside it there were two portraits - one of Elizabeth herself and the other, as she had just told the Doctor, of her mother, Queen Anne Boleyn.
"Impressive," said the Doctor after he had spent a significant amount of time studying it.
"I kept the original with me for years," she said, closing her locket ring and letting her exhausted arm rest on her lap, "but when my dear cousin passed away I returned it to her family. Only a few years ago, her grandson Robert Devereux told me it now belonged to his mother, Lettice Knollys, with whom I have not enjoyed the best of relationships for nearly four decades."
"Yes, I know that story," muttered the Doctor, narrowing his eyes.
"If you know that story, you will also know that two years ago, our relationship became much worse. After her son Robert, whom I thought to be my friend, and her latest husband Sir Christopher Blount were executed for treason, she has been trying to take revenge on me. In fact, it was not long after their executions when the rumours about the Lady Anne Bollen began to spread at court. When we were informed they had reached the rest of the Kingdom as well, Lord Boeshane offered his services as an investigator and soon he gathered evidence that proved that Lettice Knollys had made a habit of showing her mother's sketch of my own mother not only to her closest acquaintances, but also to whomever should express an interest in seeing it. She apparently takes a special interest in those who oppose me. I am sure, Doctor, that you can imagine the rest."
"Oh, I see," said the Doctor, narrowing his eyes. "Things like 'the Frenchman's sword was not enough to kill the witch forever as her power emanated directly from hell...' Isn't that the kind of thing they're saying?"
"Precisely," said Elizabeth. "Another favourite seems to be, 'now that the illegitimate Queen is dying, the Whore has risen from the death to steal the throne.' The damage to the reputation of the Lady Anne Bollen has already been done."
"That's what usually happens when those sort of brief, clear and accusatory messages are sent. The powerful have always used them to control people's fears, but in time they will backfire. Ordinary men have made use of them as well when they've needed that power transferred to them. Add superstition and ignorance to the equation and you can get a pretty explosive outcome."
"I do not think I shall leave to see the light of day, Doctor," she said matter-of-factly, "thus what they might do to me does not trouble me. What I fear for is my mother's safety."
"I understand, Elizabeth," said the Doctor. And indeed he did. Not only was Anne disliked, she's also hated. And given that she had been accused of being a witch and that people were extremely superstitious in this day and age, she was probably also feared. And fear, he reckoned, had always been a most fearful enemy.
"Will you please take her to safety, Doctor?"
"I will," said the Doctor. Once more, lost in his own thoughts. "I guess if I could do that for cousin Mary, I can also do it for her."
As soon as the Doctor told Anne Boleyn that they had reached their destination, her excitement became extraordinarily visible in her beautiful dark eyes.
It had all happened rather quickly. After Elizabeth's death, the Doctor had taken Anne to the TARDIS without delay to ensure that the course of events that were supposed to be taking place in Britain - the most important of them being the coronation of James I as new king - would not be jeopardised by her presence at court or the rumours that had been spread about her.
Once inside the safety of the TARDIS, the Doctor and Anne Boleyn had all of time to have endless and absorbing conversations. Suspended somewhere in the vastness of outer space she would tell him, among many other things, about her love for music, languages, art, and eventually she would tell him about her recently acquired passion for history. Since she had first set foot at the Elizabethan court, she had spent most of her time quenching her thirst for knowledge in relation to the sixty-four years she had missed. There had been nothing else she would have done instead, and of course her daughter Elizabeth had been more than happy to share her extensive knowledge with her. Anne found the details of the next four marriages of King Henry VIII especially amusing, but she learned about the reigns of Edward V, poor Lady Jane Grey and Mary I, Elizabeth herself had been able to tell that she was absolutely enthralled by her account of such events.
As a consequence, when the Doctor suggested the possibility of telling her everything that would happen in the next four hundred years up to the early twenty-first century, Anne simply jumped at the chance! Thus, he became her tutor, and for months and months he would tell her everything about Plymouth Rock, the newspaper, Newton, Galileo, the American Independence, the French Revolution, the first manned hot air balloon flight, Mozart, Daguerre, Darwin, Abraham Lincoln and the American Civil War, Graham Bell, Marconi, motion pictures, the Russian Revolution, the Titanic, Chaplin, World War One, penicillin, the BBC, women's rights, the Wall Street Crash, commercial flights, the Spanish Civil War, Gone with the Wind, World War Two, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Gandhi, Hitchcock, DNA, the space race, JFK, Martin Luther King, Elvis, The Beatles, 1968, personal computers, Spielberg, Madonna, Mandela, the World Wide Web, the Hubble Telescope, Barack Obama… The list just never seemed to end!
And although she felt horrified at times, what Anne mostly felt was absolute fascination.
Not only did she learn about history during those days. In the fashion of Pygmalion and Professor Henry Higgins, the Doctor would also teach Anne how to speak and how to talk. Only he did it the other way round and thus transformed the princess's ways into the ways of a well-educated woman who had grown up in London in the late twentieth century.
All of this was deliberate since the Doctor had long had a plan. Well, he didn't so much have a plan as he had come across a plan entirely designed by someone else.
Well, not so much designed by someone else as designed apparently by a future version of himself.
When he took Anne to the TARDIS immediately after the death of Queen Elizabeth I, he found what at first sight looked like a very mysterious message on the main screen in the console:
Hello, me! It's me! Oh, that's not a very good introduction, is it? Okay, I'll start again. Hello, me! It's me! Oh no, not again! Well anyway, what I mean is I'm you, I'm the Doctor, and I'm writing from the future. Exciting! Isn't it? I thought about making a Tik Tok video with the gang but you'd probably be quite shocked, so here's a message instead.
Okay, here it comes! I know what you're up to right now and I want you to know that there was a vacancy for a Medieval History teacher at the University of Sheffield. Until today, that is. I may have done a bit of jiggery-pokery as Number Nine would've said. Passport, certificates, driving licence,PhD, rentals… You know, just basic human stuff. Thing is, the new teacher, a certain Ms Anne Bowie, is expected to join the Department tomorrow. See what I did there? Bowie! Anne Bowie! They're going to love her! Everyone loves that surname, don't they? Jiggery-pokery aside, you're going to spend the next few weeks telling her about the history of the next four centuries and you're both going to love it! You'll see how fast she'll learn it all... She's a natural!
Okay, the date is 1st September 2020. Oh, don't forget to tell her I'll pop by some time for a girl's night out... It'll be fun!
Gotta go now - I'm busy! I've finally been able to design a way to communicate with every single type of coronavirus known to science so far, wherever they may be, and I've managed to convince them to leave the planet for good. Possibly. Remember what happened to the adipose? Well, I'm planning to do exactly the same thing... The virus just walks away! Incidentally, they'll get sent to an uninhabited planet at the edge of the universe that they'll never be able to leave. Wish me luck with that! Not only are they slippery, they also keep changing the terms of our agreement. Hopefully I'll succeed and there'll be no more lockdowns ever again!
Cheerio!
The Doctor found the message both amusing and weird at first, but soon he found himself observing each of the indications it contained, and to the letter.
So, here they were now. Outside the TARDIS, the Department of History of the University of Sheffield. Inside the TARDIS, a very nervous but terribly enthusiastic woman was about to start a new life and find her future outside. As the Doctor saw her beaming, he couldn't stop his hearts from filling with pride.
"May I?" he said, offering her arm to her. Anne hooked her arm to his and they walked towards the door.
"This is where I leave you, Anne Boleyn," said the Doctor as they got to their destination and turned to face each other. "Behind those doors, your future's waiting."
The appreciative look he saw in her eyes was a mixture of both anticipation and sorrow, which was exactly what the Doctor had been feeling as well. There had been too many goodbyes recently for each of them, and the fact that Anne Boleyn had become a modern and independent woman who was alive and about to start making her own future didn't make this last goodbye any less painful to any of them.
"I'll never forget you, Doctor," she said, opening her arms and encircling them around him.
There had been days when this new regeneration had not been very fond of hugs, the Doctor remembered. When one of his many companions had come running to him and he had either refused to be hugged or accepted reluctantly. While he more than willingly wrapped his arms around Anne, he tried once more to remember the face of that one companion whose hugs he had once tried to escape from, but the face remained elusive. Sometimes he would think that it was all really weird, whereas sometimes he would conclude that he was simply getting too old!
Oh, he was getting so old!
"I won't let you anyway," he answered, blinking an eye at her as he pulled away. Burying his hand inside the pocket of his red velvet coat for just a brief moment, the Doctor produced a smartphone. "Take this," he said as he offered it to her. "It's your direct line to the TARDIS. If you should ever need me, all you need to do is press one. Also, it's a camera phone. Send me a picture from time to time."
"Thank you," Anne said, taking the phone from his hand as tears welled in her eyes. "Though I'd rather you popped by for a girl's night out, as you said."
"You can count on that," he said nodding before he slowly planted a kiss on her forehead. "Now remember, Ms Bowie - let the children use it."
Smiling broadly at him, Anne opened the door and gently stepped out of the TARDIS. The Doctor watched as she took a few slow steps forward. There she was, the eternal Lady Greensleeves, clad in a two-piece olive green suit and walking regally in her high-heeled black shoes.
Oh, she would be amazing. He had no doubt that she would.
"Doctor!" he suddenly heard her shout when he was about to close the door of his spaceship. Poking his head out, the Doctor listened as she spoke. "I was just thinking, Doctor, you could bring Clara when you come to visit... I'd really love to see her again!"
The Doctors' hearts stopped beating on the spot.
Clara.
He knew that name. Of course he knew that name. He had dreamt of it countless times.
In his dreams, it usually sounded petite - a very strange thing to happen to a name and he knew it, but that wasn't the only strange thing about it. It had also sounded feisty and adventurous.
'Run, you clever boy,' it would say to him in its silky and beautiful voice.
'And remember.'
Oh yes, the name 'Clara' had a voice. Sometimes he could almost remember it. He just couldn't match a face to it.
"Clara," he whispered, savouring the way that each of those sounds would form inside his mouth as he watched Anne turning around from him and walking the short distance that separated her from the Department of History. "Of course, my dear Anne. I'll come and visit. And perhaps, when I do, you could tell me about her."
THE END
So, this is it! Once again, I'd like to apologise for how long it took to get this done. If you can find precious time, I'd really appreciate it if you could let me know what you think. Thanks for reading!