2
Jenny slammed a fist into the man's side. He doubled over, knocking into the man beside him. Another one behind her. Backward high kick. Over the crackle of the fire, she heard the sound of a rib breaking. Maybe two. Good.
Hard right punch. The woman. Two men had been holding her over here, before a hard kick had taken one of them out. Where was she?
Someone grabbed her arm in a twisting grip. Jenny smiled slightly. Bad move! The man sailed over her shoulder and landed hard among his fellows. Jenny grinned, then twisted and hit out, breaking the nose of the gigantic man holding some sort of club. There was an awful lot of yelling now. Rabbit punch, hard left to the jaw.
She turned. There. A spot of red. The woman's shawl, showing through the fire. She'd gone back into the burning house. Was she bloody crazy?
Two men came at her at once. Now that was cheating. Quick uppercut, wheel, kick to the groin. Both men taken care of. Good. Get moving.
Jenny took off at a run, ducking her head as she crashed through the flimsy door. The house was really only a room, and the woman was near the far wall, bent over, frantically stuffing things into a gigantic basket. Jenny skidded to a stop in front of her. "Come on! We need to get out of here!"
The woman's eyes were huge as she stared up at her, unmoving. Shock. Jenny pulled her up by the shoulders, and pushed the woman-girl, really-out the door in front of her. Most of the men had taken off. One was still around. Hard left to the jaw.
A hand grabbed her forearm. Jenny whirled, eyes fixed, to deliver a roundhouse. The move was caught and blocked by a long, deceptively thin hand. Jenny looked up.
"Oh. Sorry, Father."
Her father's eyes were almost black, his face thunderous.
"You ought to be." He glared down at her. "What exactly did you think you were-" Then he noticed the girl Jenny still had a hand on, giving her a comprehensive look. "Oh, hello. You all right? Burned anywhere?"
The girl shook her head, eyes wide.
"Good. Jenny, if you ever…" his words petered out as he reluctantly glanced back at the girl. She was standing, stock still, in the same place that Jenny had left her. "You're not all right, are you?"
He looked around the area. The other little hovels might as well have been empty for all the signs of life that they showed. "You've got family living somewhere around here, I'd expect. Better-"
"My family's dead, sir." the girl said, staring up at him. Her voice sounded frail; low and far away.
"What about friends?" the Doctor asked hopefully. "You must have some friends here in town…"
The girl shook her head slightly. "They can't have me in, sir. The landlord's forbade it."
"Oh. Right. Of course he did." The Doctor said, his voice almost bitter. Jenny watched him as he sighed, his eyes roaming over the little cluster of houses, then turned back to the girl. "Look, I need to get to the nearest pub. Do me a favor and take me there?"
The girl nodded, her coppery hair whipping around her face as it escaped the shawl over her head. Jenny shot a glance at her father. Why did he want to go to a pub?
The Doctor didn't give her a chance to ask. He looked at the burning house, his face grim. Then he turned away. "Well, then, let's go. No sense standing around here."
He turned the black glare back on his daughter.
You can get back to the TARDIS and change into period clothing. Then get over to this pub. Don't make any more of a mess than you already have in the process, if you can manage that. Now get going.
Turning on his heel, he strode away. Jenny stared after him, her head cocked, arms crossed. Oh great.
Glancing at the crackling flames, she frowned, then turned her back and jogged away. He's going to have a fit about this, isn't he?
…
The pub was dark and smoky, the few tables in the room ringed around the fireplace. Here and there, a patron sat huddled over their drink. The Doctor was slouched in a chair a little back from the fire, staring at the door. The young woman beside him was sipping a large mug of milk that he'd bought her. She needed it; the hollows of her cheeks were too deep, and her body had a pinched look to it under her thick shawl and bag of a dress. Under a familiar roof and near a warm fire the signs of shock had finally begun to fade, as he'd hoped they would. The pub would be a good place to leave her. Technically it was against the social rules of the area for a young woman to be in a pub like this, but at the moment he really couldn't have cared less. He was lucky to find a pub that was still open at this period of time, and in such a small village. There must be a wealthy landlord somewhere nearby whose patronage was keeping the place open.
"Like another one?" he asked her. She glanced up at him, then away again. "Oh, no sir. This's very good, thank you sir."
The Doctor watched her take another sip. Polite little thing. She'd be pretty too, if she wasn't so care worn. A little thing like her shouldn't be sitting here, dependant on charity for a meal.
And he shouldn't be here at all. He sighed to himself. A fixed event period in Time, and fixed more intricately than most. Everything that happened here was so intricately bound up with the future, so closely interwoven that a single careless gesture could do damage. Just saying hello or stopping to talk in the village square could rewrite a timeline. And look what they'd done; within minutes they'd managed to make the grandiose gesture of pulling a girl out of a fire and dispersing a gang of thugs. As his daughter would say, this was a real bollocks of a thing.
His daughter. The Doctor's frown deepened. She'd just had to jump into the middle of it all, hadn't she? Just had to take sides the minute she saw a fight. Hadn't she had the sense to notice the hallmarks of a fixed event?
Of course, he knew the answer to that. When Jenny's focus was on something, she ignored her surroundings entirely. Despite everything he'd taught her, she had been born a soldier, and still had the instincts of a fighter.
Well, she was going to have to get instincts under control before she killed herself. Or worse. He was going to have a few choice words for the girl when she got here. A few very choice words. You'd think she'd learn…
Well, at least she hadn't changed anything particularly important by pulling this girl out of the frying pan and the fire. He'd been studying her timelines thoroughly on the walk up here to see if they were about to get an influx of Reapers or some other bloody mess. But apparently the human's life had been headed in this direction anyway. The changes they made had been comparatively subtle in her lines. He could be grateful for that at least.
The girl noticed his eyes on her, and ducked her head lower over her drink.
"It's very grateful I am to you for this, sir."
"Oh, don't mention it. I'm the Doctor, by the way."
"Mary. Mary O'Hara of Bally Cu."
"Pleasure to meet you, Mary O'Hara."
She nodded, a tiny gesture. "You'd best not stay in this place for practicing your trade, if you're a doctor. There's not many hereabouts who can pay for your work."
The opening of the door relieved the Doctor of the need to answer. The Walker had changed into a long, high cut blue dress with a small sash, tied on a matching bonnet, and looked fairly in period. Jenny had done better than she usually did on period clothes in a brown dress that was only a few years too early. Above the high collar, her face was blank as marble. She followed her father's nod towards the side of the room furthest from the fire. He stood.
"Well, good luck, Mary O'Hara." turning on his heel, he let his smile drop away. His daughter met his eyes as he reached the wall beside her.
"Do you know where and when we are?" he asked, his voice low.
"Ireland, eighteen forty nine." Jenny replied quietly.
"And do you know what you could've done when you interfered in the events here?"
Jenny nodded sharply. "I made a mistake, sir."
"You made a bloody mess. If that girl had been meant to die, you know what would've happened." He'd told her often enough that she ought to.
"Yes, sir. Sorry, sir." Jenny glanced away, out into the bar.
"Why does everybody look so skinny?"
"It's the middle of a famine. I thought you said you'd checked the databases."
"Only for the date."
"We assumed there was some need to hurry." the Walker added. "This isn't the Potato Famine, is it?"
"Right in one." her grandfather said darkly. "One of the most tightly fixed events in Earth's history, I might add."
"Is that why they were raiding the house?" Jenny asked, "Because they're hungry?"
"That wasn't a raid." The Doctor said, staring into the room. "That was an eviction. Few years before now, the main crop gets infected by a nasty virulent bacteria, they call it a blight, pretty much sums it up; it's wiped out by now-the crop, not the virus- so the people are out of crops to eat and crops to sell. When they can't sell any crops, they can't feed their families, and they can't pay their rents. When they can't pay their rents their landlords—most of the landlords are men who live over in England and just bought up land over here—well, they have the people kicked off, bag and baggage. Have the houses burned so they don't come back after. Most of the landlords put livestock out to graze on the land." he smiled a small, crooked smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Makes good financial sense to them. Beef and sheep make them a lot more money. It gets worse, but that's the start of it. And this is the middle of it."
Jenny's jaw set. Now she understood why her father looked so grim.
After a moment, the Doctor drew a deep breath. "Right, here's the rules. Don't talk to anybody unless you have to. Don't wander off, and don't, absolutely, definitely don't get involved in anything else. We're going back to the TARDIS, and we're going to get out of here."
Turning on his heel, the Doctor swept out of the small room.
….
"How's that?" the Doctor called.
"Still mauve." Jenny called down from her seat on the edge of the trap door in the floor grating. The Gallifreyan equivalent of an emphatic 'damn!' rang from beneath the floor.
"There has to be an energy drain somewhere." the Walker said distractedly as she worked on the controls, "but it's not appearing on any of the readings."
A sliver of irritable annoyance ran through Jenny's head. "I'm doing the best I can, you ancient grim-crack junk pot." her father grumbled in response below them. "Right, not that…working fine…let's try this then…." he raised his voice, calling out, "will somebody hand me down the tricheric spanner?" Jenny took the small tool out of the box at her side, putting it into the groping hand. Whatever he was doing down there, it wasn't doing much good. It had been twenty-five minutes and thirty-six seconds, and the lights of the console room were still a pulsing reddish color, an unpleasant contrast to the usual amber-green. It wasn't right, and it was really beginning to piss Jenny off. Her father was usually faster than this at fixing things. She passed down tool after tool, listening to his busy muttering.
"Now, this's working, so's this…power absorption's all right…maybe…leak? No…transformation manifold…ouch! You shocked me! You bleeding shocked me, you bloody-minded tin! How in the name of Rassilon am I supposed to fix this if you won't let me touch anything? Crazy old… rectan, right now, Jenny!"
Jenny grabbed up the tool, avoiding the sharp connecting spine as she passed it down.
"Now the manipulation carex!"
….
Three hours and twenty two minutes had passed. And they were still at it, though it was doing not a damn bit of good. The pulsing red light was beginning to give Jenny a headache. The grease on her hands felt good, though; finally she'd been able to help with something down beneath the gratings, inspecting the manifold filters that were perfectly clean, checking and rechecking the energy absorption conduits for obstructions-there weren't any- and checking the hadron crystals. Those were fine too, and now she was back to waiting while her father worked.
The console door burst open.
"Grandfather! My ship is drained as well!"
"What?"
Five hours and twenty-nine minutes. Jenny walked back into the main control room.
"The readings in the cloister room say everything's fine."
The report brought another curse and her father's mussed head poking out from beneath the grating. "There's got to be something down there! A TARDIS doesn't just stop working out of the blue! It's not a leak, not a bad splice…" he growled, and dived back beneath the grate.
"I'll get my ship to do a few readings." the Walker said, her brow furrowed. "She still has about a quarter of her power supply remaining. And perhaps I should also put up a proper camouflage. If we're going to be here for some time, we don't want to become an object of interest."
The only response she got was a growl from her grandfather and a clang of a falling tool.
…..
Seven hours and fifty-one minutes. They'd found a perfect place for hiding the TARDIS, using the Walker's ship to move both of them to the top of a hill crowned by a group of tall standing stones. The TARDIS looked like another stone now. And it was still out of commission.
Jenny stared at the ceiling. She'd been kicked out if the TARDIS understory after the second time she'd been shocked on the machinery, and she hadn't been allowed back down. She stretched her arms over her head, and sighed heavily. She hated sitting.
What she really wanted to do was explore a little. They'd never landed somewhere where they didn't at least take a look around the place. They'd watched Hannibal finish the crossing of the Alps. Hell, they'd watched a human forge the first iron sword and it hadn't worried her father, though that was a pretty fixed point in the planet's history.
Her stomach growled. Jenny leaned over the hole in the floor. "Father, I'm going to go out and get something to eat. Want me to bring something back?"
"Don't." was the muffled response from beneath the grating.
"Right, I won't. I'll be back."
"Jenny…ouch-I meant don't go."
She cocked her head. "Why?"
There was an indistinct mutter, in which Jenny made out the words 'said so'. Her eyebrows rose. "You're not serious."
There was a clank, and her father's upper body appeared; suit top and tie gone, shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbows, face marked with greenish grease, hair on end.
"Nobody ever listens when I say 'because I said so.'" he exclaimed, "I can't even count the times I've said 'trust me, don't do it' and they go and do it anyway, and invariably it turns out I was right. You'd think you'd learn to trust my judgment."
He was babbling to get her off the subject. Jenny waited through it, staring at him. After a moment, the Doctor rolled his eyes. "All right, you want an answer. Pure and simple, this is a tightly fixed point in Time. One little mistake can have gigantic consequences."
"I'm just going to buy lunch. We bought pasties at the crowning of Queen Victoria and we had breakfast at the Great Peace Treaty Meeting of PQuelt, and that ended five hundred years of fighting. You didn't have a fit then."
"Yes, but first of all, this is a famine, Jenny. You aren't going to be able to buy food anywhere. Have you read up on the local history yet?"
"I've been a little busy."
"You should never skimp on reading the history, unless you enjoy not knowing what's going on." He warned. "And not knowing what's going on can get you killed in very short order. Besides that point, you've got to remember that our actions had very little effect on the timeline. It really didn't matter whether a vendor sold one more bowl of fessex or he didn't. But people are teetering on the proverbial knife's edge here." the Doctor said earnestly. "Living and dying, making it and going broke can depend on whether they get one more egg or one more customer on a given day. If you go down to the pub, you buy a meal, you pay the bartender. But what if he was just short of paying his bills that month, and the one extra customer, you, lets him break even? Then instead of going broke, closing shop, moving to America, working as a clerk, meeting a girl and having seven kids, he stays open, stays in Ireland, meets a different girl and has a different set of kids. Now the descendents that would've lived and worked in America are missing from the timeline. Or let's say you talk to a woman with three kids who're starving, you're kind; it gives her hope, and she doesn't go to the poor house. So she doesn't go to another part of the country, and her descendants don't grow up in a different area, and they don't fight in a revolution. Can you see where this goes? Even the littlest people play a part in Time."
Jenny nodded. "Okay. Now that I'm appraised of the risks, I can watch out."
The Doctor rolled his eyes. "You can't 'watch out' with every single action you make, Jenny."
"I'll remain on high alert. And I'll screen all events for timeline risks before I involve myself."
"But you can't screen all events!" her father exclaimed, "Nobody can! That's the point! I keep saying it, this is a fixed event-"
"You bought the girl a glass of milk."
"Yes, because I'd already made sure it didn't affect either the girl or the bartender, and-"
"Exactly." Jenny cut in judiciously. She had him on this point. "You checked. So the pub's safe. I want to observe an event like this at close quarters. I might be able to gather intelligence by listening in there. Since you won't let me help with the repairs, I might as well be doing something. I'll get the right currency denominations out of the store room." She crossed her arms over her chest.
After a long glare, the Doctor let out a frustrated sigh, running his grease-stained hand through his hair.
"All right! All right, fine, go down there, but you're to eat and then come straight back." he said, pointing the sonic screwdriver up at her. "Don't talk to anybody if you can help it, don't get involved, and for heaven's sake don't muck about with anything that isn't any of your business! The last thing we need is a paradox we have to fix. You got that?"
Jenny bobbed her head. "Got it." She turned on her heel and stood.
"And be careful!" the Doctor called after her.
…..
Her eyes flickered over the room in quick reconnaissance sweeps. The firelight provided enough illumination for her to see every detail of the room. Of course, her eyes had a higher light-intake index than a human's.
There was an empty seat at the bar, and Jenny took it. The weight of eyes on her back made her neck prickle as she sat. More than half the people in here had to be watching her. She hoped she hadn't made a breach in local protocol. She hated nineteenth century Earth. She always made errors in their rules of decorum. There were too many damn rules.
The large man behind the bar walked over, his greyish hair catching the waning sunlight through the window. "Yes miss? Would you be wanting something?"
He was going to die from disease next year. But she couldn't see any line disturbance caused by her. "Yes," she said, "I'll have a whiskey, thanks."
"Whiskey?" the man repeated, eying her carefully, "Are you sure, miss?"
"Aw, giv' it to 'er Tom." said a voice on her left. Jenny noted the subtle difference as he switched from English to another language. "Be nice to see the little English pansy fall over on her stumps."
The innkeeper turned sharply. "I'll thank you to mind your tongue while you're drinking my stout, Harry McGrath." He snapped, using the same language. That must be Irish. The databanks said it was a common language in the period.
A man with a battered tweed cap lowered his eyes sullenly under the barman's glare. Jenny spoke up to break the tension.
"And if you've got anything in the pot I'll have some of that too. It smells lovely."
The man turned, staring at her with wide eyes. Then Jenny realized she'd used the language they'd been speaking. That had been stupid. If people spoke a second language, they were often doing it to speak privately. She'd have to watch herself after this.
"'Tis nothing but cabbage, miss." the barman said in English, still staring at her.
"Great. I love good cabbage." she said. Anything was worth a try.
"Oh, so kind of you, missus." the man in the cap sneered. Jenny studied him without appearing to. He was a thin man glaring at her from under his cap, his lips set in a mocking half smile. Trying to get a rise out of her. Weird to have a stranger heckling her, a girl, in this time period. Guys were supposed to leave girls alone in the nineteenth century, she thought.
A small woman with white in the brown of her hair set a glass in front of her. "Here you are miss, and don't mind Harry, he's always on about something."
"Thanks." Jenny said. She bet he was. She knew the type of man; they showed up in spaceports all over. An annoyance, but not brave enough to be an actual threat.
Her roving eyes wandered over the room, studying timelines for dangers. Her eye caught on a crop of copper hair, and she grinned. Taking her glass, she walked over to the table. "How are you feeling now? Better?"
The girl's head shot up, her eyes wide- then she gave a little smile. "Oh! Oh, miss, hello. Yes, thank you, I'm much better now." She said, staring at Jenny. "And I wanted to thank you for your kindness to me. I never did so earlier. You were so…quick."
"It's just my training." Jenny demurred with an easy smile. "Mind if I take a seat?"
The girl bobbed her head. "As you like, miss."
"Thanks." She said as she pulled out a chair, "My name's Jenny by the way. And I never got yours."
"Mary sir," the girl said quickly, "Mary O'Hara." The girl sat staring at Jenny as if trying to memorize her face, then casting her eyes down. Such a lot of confused emotions were running around in her head. Gratitude. But there was fear there too, fear of-what? For a second Jenny thought it was her, but that didn't make sense- and a little anger too. It was too much of a mess to sort through, so Jenny gave up trying.
The uncomfortable silence was broken as the barwoman set a bowl on the table.
"I'd like another bowl over here when you've got a minute." Jenny said as the bowl was set down. Mary looked up sharply. "Oh you mustn't miss, I'm really-"
"Really, really hungry." Jenny cut in. "And I'm not going to eat while you watch. By the way," she said, studying her bowl with interest, "What're we eating?"
"Tis nobbut cabbage. A fine English lady such as yourself won't likely have had it before this."
"Yeah, but I'm not-" Jenny changed her words mid sentence, remembering her accent did indeed sound English to anybody from Earth. "picky about what I eat." she took a large bite. "Mm. It's good, too." she lied. She swallowed. "By the way, where are you sleeping tonight?"
"Oh, Mr. Connely offered me a place in the stable behind the inn for t' night."
Jenny nodded as the second bowl of cabbage was set down. Despite her protests, the girl dug into it with a will. The girl glanced up at her.
"And you miss, where are you staying then?"
"Oh," Jenny said, "pretty close by."
The girl studied her. "The nearest fine house with rooms to let is some ways off."
"Yes, I know." Jenny fabricated quickly, "I have a coach waiting for me on the other side of that hill with the standing stones on it. I want to poke around there for a while; it's pretty intriguing."
The girl's green eyes widened. "Now miss? So near to dark?"
Jenny shrugged, hating the damn dress that constrained her movements. "I'm not really the scaring type. The dark doesn't worry me."
"Oh it's not that I was saying," Mary said, "tis only…"
"What?" Jenny asked, cocking her head. Mary looked away.
"Tis silly to be saying so miss, it may be so much prattle to one such as yourself, but up near the hill at dusk is a bad place to be."
"Why?" Jenny asked, encouraging her as she took another bite. Maybe there was some cause for the TARDIS's power failure after all.
Mary shrugged, her eyes flicking downwards. "It's a queer place, and queer things happen there." She drew a deep breath. "And besides, tis very rocky and you might turn an ankle. Best to go in the morning instead."
Jenny nodded. "Thanks for the warning. I'll keep that in mind. And my coachman is probably waiting."
Standing, Jenny paid the barman, then walked out the pub door and into the dusk.
…
Mary sat quietly, staring at the door. Such a queer girl. Fine, no mistake, but strange. Now that she was properly dressed and all she was a bit less odd, but before…
"And what were you doing going on with that English primp, Mary O'Hara?"
Mary glared up at Harry McGrath where he'd come to stand beside her table. "I'll have you know that girl saved my life, Harry. If she'n her father hadn't helped me out of my cabin I'd be dead by now, y'hear?"
"So now you're a friend of the English?" Harry spat.
"They saved my life!"
"And that absolves them, does it?"
"Harry, you've said quite enough." Mrs. Connely said from behind the bar. "The poor cailin's had enough sorrow for one day, and you can leave off heaping more on her. Finish your beer or be off with you!"
Harry rounded on the woman, his eyes narrowed in his sharp face. "And who are you to give me a hiding over a high handed English chit, biddy Connely? I'd lay odds she's a load of money on her as well, with the fine dress she had on her. If a few of the lads were to-"
"And you can get out of this pub right now with talk like that, Harry McGrath!" Mr. Connely roared, coming out from behind the bar. His mustache bristled as he glared down at the smaller man. "Go on, get out! I'll not have the law down on us on top of all our other troubles! Out!"
Harry glared up at him. "Fine. I'll get out. I wouldn't drink with the likes of you anyhow." He stamped to the door, kicked it open and strode out into the falling night.
…
The lone figure wound his way down the path towards his cabin, seething inside himself. He hated Matt Connely. Hated the old biddy his wife. And that had been the last if his money, and would be the last of his stout for who knew how long. And his food. He'd be hungry tomorrow. The English girl wouldn't be, he'd lay odds. He hated that little English brat with her well fed face and gold in her pockets. He kicked a stone, sending it skittering down the lane. English tart. Lording it over them all, pretending to take pity.
Maybe he would just see if he would find her up on Knock-na-Cu. He didn't need the others for that chit. And if she said a thing, why, strange things happened on the hill did they not? He turned his steps off the path. In little time he'd reached the foot of the hill, the stones at the top outlined against the fading sky.
The girl had to be here somewhere. He started around the side of the hill, where there was a path leading up.
Coming around the side, he heard a sound, like something falling on the grass. And there was a flash of white. But when got a good look, it wasn't the English girl at all.
A woman was walking towards him. She wore only a thin, pale shift of a dress that billowed about her legs, though there was little wind tonight. Harry swallowed in a throat that had gone dry. The woman was beautiful, with honey-gold hair that fell below her waist. She smiled as she met his eyes. "Well met, my man."
Harry took a deep breath, and was very careful with his words. It wouldn't do to upset one of the fair folk, for that was what she must be. No woman had a look like that in these days.
"Good evenin', your ladyship. Blessings on you and your kin."
She stepped closer, so close that he could have reached out and touched her. "I have travelled long and long man, and am much wearied. Much in need. I need a thing of you."
The man stared at her, at her great bright eyes. Something compelled him to reach out a hand."What do you need, m'lady?"
She took his hand.
When it came, Harry McGrath's scream was so weak that it hardly made a sound.