Chapter Two

The Doctor was worried. He didn't like to be worried. In fact, when he was worried, it worried him.

Jeremy Larkin had left the room to descend to the floor below and check in with the man he had left on guard. He seemed like a nice chap, Larkin. A bit slow, perhaps, but then that was not entirely fair. So far in his time travels the Doctor had not visited eighteenth century America, so it was possible the trait was genetic.

The English certainly seemed to think it was.

As he was alone, with the exception of his 'patient', the Doctor had removed his sonic screwdriver from his pocket and was tapping it against the palm of his hand. The rhythmic sound helped him think – though he would never have admitted that to his current companion. He had too much fun shushing Amy Pond to ever admit that her intentional and unintentional comments actually helped. 'Hush, brain thinking' had become a byword between them. It meant things were really serious.

The Doctor gave the sonic a sharp look as it rattled in his hand.

"Hush. Brain thinking."

Sometimes it seemed too much of a coincidence that everywhere the Tardis set down there was some intergalactic disaster impending. At times he wondered if the old girl just grew bored easily. Or if, like the young filly she had been when he borrowed her, she had a thirst for adventure to equal his own.

When he had borrowed her, all those long years ago...

Recently he had been feeling quite, quite old. Not ready to hang up the scarf or celery stick so to speak, but wondering if he should. He had made mistakes. Almost killing the Star Whale. Taking on the Daleks with a Jammie Dodger. Leaving Ambrose in charge of the Silurian. If he cast his mind back nearly nine centuries to his first incarnation, he could remember aging; the slow weakening of the body, the steady decline of mental acuity. His first life had ended on the floor of the Tardis, an old man collapsing, unable to go on...

The Doctor halted in front of a mirror hanging on a stretch of hand-blocked wallpaper. He stared at his current visage, absentmindedly reaching up and tugging the crest of dark brown hair that rode his forehead. It was ironic that as he approached the millennium mark he looked like he was twenty.

"Some cosmic joke, no doubt," he said to no one in particular. "Now, where was I? Oh, yes...brain thinking."

Which of his former foes had come to call? And what were they doing in eighteenth century New York? The only clue he had so far was the viral creature in Henry Abington's blood. It had been so long ago that he had first encountered it, long before he had been the old man. Back when the old man had been a young boy, in fact. It was then, on a busman's holiday of sorts, that he had first heard of the Bluhdouls. He and several other young Time Lords had been spirited away to view the death of a once great city. The purpose of the field trip was to show the futility of trying to interfere. The Time Lord accompanying them had explained how the death of this particular city had in time given rise to another greater one, and how any attempt to intervene would have doomed that world to come even though it might have been deemed wise at the time. The boy that was the Doctor had listened, wanting to believe what was said to be true, but that truth had done little to offset the pit of the stomach horror he felt as he watched men and women, and innocent children, succumb to an artificially crafted virus that turned them into monsters and then... In the end, all of them died.

Well no, not all.

So terrifying was the Bluhdouls' curse that they had become a part of the subconscious memory of the universe. Why even the Saturnynians had heard of them. They had to have, or they could not have pretended to be them. They had many names. Plasmavores. Vampyri. Nightstalkers.

Blood ghouls.

The irony was they didn't drink blood like vampires. They invaded it. Used it. Passed it through their technological innards, and then expelled it as a synthetic protein. The trouble was, by the time they were done, so was their host. There was speculation that they had originally been created as some sort of medical diagnostic tool, but something had gone terribly wrong. The blood did not keep them alive, anymore than a fine glass of wine was necessary to a human's existence.

They just liked it.

"So how have you come to be here?" he wondered aloud. "And what do you want?"

Generally speaking the Bluhdouls only surfaced in highly technological societies such as the one that created them, their main sustenance taking the form of synthetic or semi-synthetic amphorous solids. "Not too much plastic in New York to the first power," he mused. The lack of synthetics might explain the fact that all of eighteenth century New York had not yet been turned into a mortuary, or it might simply mean that the Bluhdouls – sort of a creepy crawly nanite – had evolved again and now preferred something slightly more organic for lunch.

The Doctor whirled and crossed the room quickly, alighting on a chair that he first turned backwards and then placed next to Henry Abington's bed. He leaned his chin on his crossed hands and studied the young man. It was a question how the Bluhdouls had managed to infect the apothecary. There were no signs of their usual mode of transport via the proverbial bite to the neck. So, once again, this was something different. The sonic had found traces of the virus in Abington's stomach. Had they been ingested? Was that even possible?

Was he wrong? Was this something else entirely?

No, he was certain he was right. Small nano-robots called Bluhdouls had infected Henry Abington's blood, and though it was a mild case, the odds were that if he lived the apothecary would become a carrier, thereby threatening everyone and everything he knew and loved. The Doctor rose to his feet and began pacing. He needed answers and he was not going to find any sitting here and stewing about it. Action was required! Action and –

"Sir?"

Henry Abington's voice was weak. The Doctor crossed quickly to the sick man's side and sat on the edge of the bed. He reached out and touched the man's forehead. Henry was soaked in sweat, as if he had broken a fever, but it was clear his temperature was rising again. "Henry, you're not at all well. Don't try to talk. Rest. Conserve your strength."

"What...happened?"

"You're not listening, Henry," he gently chided.

"Sorry. Sick...so sick. Feels like," the apothecary drew a sharp breath, "like something...is eating me...alive."

The Doctor was judicious enough not to reply that – in so many words – it was. "All right, Henry, if you want to talk, tell me about yourself."

"Hurts..."

Taking the sick man's hand, the Doctor pressed it between his own. "I know it does, but then that's just life, isn't it? It hurts to be born. It hurts to die. And there are mostly unpleasant bits in-between. But you know what, Henry? What matters most are the moments – those brief, brilliant moments when we come up for air and see the stars or the sun shining in the sky. They shine all the brighter because we have seen the darkness, don't they?" The Doctor paused for breath. He sighed and shook his head as he released the apothecary's hand and placed it on his chest. "And you could care less because right now you have a horde of nano-robots galloping through your veins doing their very best to turn you into one of them."

Henry Abington was staring at him. His eyes were feverish, but fully aware. Though the effort was almost too much, he licked his cracked lips and opened them to say. "Thank...you."

The Doctor shifted back. He ran a hand across his face as he sniffed. "Thank me? Whatever for? I ramble on like an idiot, making light of a pain that's not mine, and telling you to jolly well stuff it and suck it up because the grass is greener on the other side of the hill. Why would you possibly want to thank me?"

The apothecary's lips curled in a faint smile. "Excellent bedside...manner," he rasped.

A short laugh escaped him. He laid a hand on the sick man's shoulder. "I hope I get to know you better, Henry. Hang on."

As Henry Abington retreated back into the bliss of unconsciousness, the Doctor rose to his feet and walked to the window where he stood looking out on the sleeping town. He leaned forward and pressed his head to the bubbled glass, allowing himself just a moment of weariness. They came more often now, but the pace at which he lived left little time to acknowledge them – which was probably a good thing. Otherwise he might just stop.

The room Henry Abington shared with Jeremy Larkin was on the second floor of the inn. Below, on the street, he could see the blond man meeting with his friend, Isak. They were deep in conversation with a third, older and shorter man, who had about him the look of a seasoned campaigner. He had sandy red hair and was dressed like a frontiersman. The Time Lord had to remind himself that this was a country at war. There was little sign of it here other than a general sense of anticipation and collective fear. As the Doctor watched the older man held up a hand, and then doffed his hat and held it against the breast of his rust colored coat as a woman with a child in hand passed by. She didn't seem to be the type one would expect to find walking a colonial street near midnight. Not a strumpet or hussy. Or...

"Oh," he breathed, suddenly remembering his absent companion. "Amy."

She'd been gone too long.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Amelia Pond nervously fingered the silk ribbon roses on her apricot gown. She couldn't believe it. She was going to meet the Marquis de Lafayette! Though her obsession with her Raggedy Doctor had been nearly lifelong, other fascinations had come and gone in the meantime. It seemed that whenever she became interested in something, it ate up most of her waking hours. Somewhere after the Doctor, but before the legions of Rome that had invaded Britain, she had fallen in love with the romantic Frenchman who had defied a king and left wife and country behind, all in the name of liberty.

Apparently she was a sucker for dashing, idealistic men who defied custom in order to save the world...or universe.

She was sitting in a sort of waiting area attached to a large suite in the inn – undoubtedly the best set of rooms in the house. Lieutenant Montgomery had placed her there and then disappeared. In the minutes that had passed her excitement and apprehension had grown so that if the soldier didn't soon reappear, she was going to have plucked all the posies on her gown and left its fabric garden bare! Just as that thought crossed her mind and Amy's fingers pinched another pink-orange petal, she heard the sharp staccato of a pair of boots rapidly approaching. Rising to her feet Amy waited. She was only slightly disappointed when Rowland Montgomery appeared alone. The French Marquis must have insisted on a sort of formal audience in his rooms. He was, after all, something like royalty.

Wasn't he?

"Mistress Pond, I regret to inform you that the major general is somewhat indisposed. He sends his regrets and begs your forgiveness, as he says he is not up to company."

Amy's first reaction was one of deep disappointment – quickly followed by suspicion and just a little fear. "Well, he can't be indisposed, now can he?" she protested, forgetting to pitch her voice low and speak softly as women of this era were expected to. "He's one of the bleeding heroes of the war. What about Yorktown?" The redhead paled and clamped a hand over her mouth. "Oi. Forget I said that."

Montgomery seemed not to have noticed her time faux pas. In fact, Rowland Montgomery was more than a little preoccupied. Not only did he look worried, he looked downright scared.

"What's wrong, soldier boy?" she demanded, forgetting herself again.

The lieutenant paled. "I think...I think the general might be dying."

Amy blinked. "Nah. He can't. Got too much to do."

Montgomery's voice wore an edge of anger. "Mortification is no respecter of what a man may or may not want to do." He grabbed her arm, a bit roughly. "Now, come. I need to see you home. I shall have to consult General Washington and see about a physician."

"You mean to tell me you think Lafayette's dying and you're going to leave him all alone?"

The soldier halted. "Oh."

"Leave me with him."

Montgomery shook his head. "No. I have no knowledge of you. For all I know you could be a Loyalist bent on the major general's destruction."

"You trusted me enough to bring me here, you Continental idiot! What's changed in five minutes?"

His grey eyes searched her face, as though he could determine the truth of her statement just by looking. "I don't know. Lafayette's life is in my – "

"Rowland, qu'est-ce que tu fais?"

Amy turned at the sound. She wasn't sure what she had expected to find, but what she found wasn't it. In her mind's eye Major General Lafayette always sat astride a white charger, sword in hand, flashing a madcap smile as he rushed in where angels feared to tread. He was bold and bigger than life. The man who stood before her leaning his weight on the door jamb, panting and pale, bore little resemblance to the fiction she had created. And there was a good reason for that.

He was non-fiction.

"Sir," Montgomery snapped. "I was just about the escort the lady home. Come, Mistress Pond."

She smiled sweetly at the soldier, and then jerked her arm away. 'When pigs fly!" Amy snorted and then crossed the room to get a better look at the object of her childhood fantasies. Lafayette was tall and lean. He was dressed in a loose fitting shirt of fine white linen with a matching cravat untied and falling down its front in a twofold wave. He wore a pair of dark brown breeches that matched his hair, which tumbled across his forehead in a decent imitation of the Doctor's. His skin was pale by nature, but paler still with sickness. High color painted his cheeks pink as a doll's. She instinctively knew if she touched him, he would be on fire. A fine sheen of sweat covered his forehead and the skin of his chest where the open shirt exposed it.

"You're not well," she pronounced.

A slight smile touched his lips, revealing deep dimples. "Non. I am Gilbert du Motier. And you, fair lady, might be?"

Slightly embarrassed, she gave a little half curtsey – the type girls did when pretending to be princesses – and answered, "Amelia Pond."

"A name a lovely as its bearer," he breathed.

"Sir, you should return to your bed," Montgomery chided.

The Frenchman waved him off. "I am fine."

"No, you're not," Amy commented quietly. "You look terrible."

That made him laugh. "After two weeks of fawning and flattery, I appreciate your candor, Mistress Amelia."

"Just Amy, actually," she sighed. "Where I come from that word 'mistress' has another meaning."

"And where do you come from?"

Amy wondered if Leadworth even existed yet. Knowing England it did and was old as the Queen's butler's bones. "Leadworth," she answered.

"That's in England, is it not?" the Frenchman asked, seemingly without condemnation.

"Aye, but I'm Scottish. My aunt moved us there when I was a little girl."

Lafayette had remained still during the Q&A. Now, seemingly satisfied that she was neither a spy or assassin, he pushed off the door frame and crossed to the chair she had occupied. Dropping into it, he seemed to crumple for a moment, and then drew himself up to a respectable if precarious height.

"And what brought you to the colonies?"

She considered lying, but decided not to, as backing it up might prove too complicated. "A friend of mine. The Doctor." Amy paused and then added quietly, "I could go fetch him if you want. I'm sure he could figure out what's wrong with you."

"I know what is wrong with me," the Frenchman answered with a wan smile. "I am homesick."

Amy blinked, confused. Then she remembered. The Doctor had said they were coming to meet Lafayette on the eve of his going home to France. That would be common knowledge, wouldn't it? "Doesn't your ship sail soon?" she asked, hoping it was. "It won't be that long 'til you're home."

He stared at her for a moment, and then leaned his head back and closed his eyes. "Not for France," he sighed. "For America. I fear I shall never walk these shores again."

"Sir, we really must see you to your bed," Lieutenant Montgomery interrupted as he headed for the Frenchman.

Amy stood in his path. "I'll do it. You go get that physician you mentioned."

"That would hardly be proper!" the soldier protested.

"Neither is dying," she snapped back. "The chap I travel with has a habit of getting knocked on his ear. I'm used to looking after him. Now get going!"

As testimony to Amelia Pond's strength of will, Lieutenant Rowland Montgomery saluted her sharply and scooted out the door.

Lafayette said nothing for a moment and then, without moving, remarked, "You remind me of my grand-mère."

"Thanks. I think."

"She was une dame formidable," he added with a weak grin.

"So you were used to her giving orders?" Amy smiled in reply.

He opened his eyes and looked at her. "Oui."

"Well, then, French boy, let's get you on your feet and into bed."

When she took hold of his arm to help him rise, Amy found Lafayette was on fire as she had feared. He thanked her and pushed her away and took the first few steps on his own. Quickly faltering, he accepted her repeated offer and leaned into her strength, allowing her to help him to his room. She was surprised by its Spartan nature. There was evidence that the chamber had once been lushly supplied, but many of its rich items had been removed and stowed in a corner. It was the room of a soldier and not a pampered aristocrat and it made her admire him all the more. She helped him to sit, insisted on removing his boots, and then leaned him back into bed. Within minutes Lafayette's breathing had quieted, taking on a shallow frightening quality, and he had fallen asleep.

Amy sat on the bed beside him. She brushed the hair back from his forehead and stared at him while gnawing on one lip. "Come on, Pond," she whispered. "Remember." Lafayette had come to America in 1777. It was late 1778 or early 1779 and he was returning to France on a leave of absence. He returned to the colonies the next year, or the year after, and then went on to fight the southern campaign and help to win the war.

Didn't he?

Was there something she was forgetting? A point in time that this one could be? She thought a moment longer and then snapped her fingers. Holding her breath, Amy waited to see if she had awakened the sick man. When she knew she hadn't, she told herself, "Aye, that's it. I remember now. On his way there, in Fishkill, New York, Lafayette was taken ill and almost died." She glanced at the restive figure on the bed. "Almost. So he has to survive, eh?"

She would have believed that before she met the Doctor. But now she knew that time could be rewritten. And if it could... If something intervened to change history – like say the arrival of bright blue box called the Tardis that traveled through time – then the man lying in the bed beside her, the one who helped to win the American Revolution, could die. From what little she remembered the illness had been a mysterious one. No one had been able to diagnose it. To this day – well, to the day she lived in - there were people who said it had been psychosomatic, and others who believed the Frenchman truly ill. Amy's frown deepened. A mysterious illness with no cause or reason and the arrival of the Doctor.

She had a bad feeling about...

Amy froze. Too close by a floorboard had squeaked. She started to turn around, but before she could something hard and padded struck the back of her head and she fell forward onto the bed unconscious.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Jeremy Larkin stifled a laugh. Him coping with the Doctor was hard enough. Isak's reaction to the curious Englishman had been to offer to carry messages to General Washington and to ride out of town.

Sergeant Daniel Boggs looked like he might die of a fit of apoplexy.

They had been standing at the entrance of the inn speaking in hushed tones of the general's health and the impending trip home, when the Doctor had come dashing out of the door wild-eyed and worried about his companion. Jeremy's offer to help in the search had at first been turned down, but the stranger had seemed to think better of it and invited him, Isak, and Boggs along. After Isak's departure, he and the sergeant had followed the Doctor on a beeline to the market and ended up at Mistress Water's dress shop, the locked door of which the stranger somehow miraculously opened. At the moment the brown-haired man in the twill coat was kneeling with his long face pressed against the floor, one eye shut and the other open, examining the boards as if he expected to find some sort of map there to tell him where his lady friend Amelia Pond had gone. The boards were polished so highly that the Doctor's face reflected back from them - an ostentatious show of wealth meant to impress the older lady's highbrow clientele - and so there was little chance any evidence would be left of the passage of Amelia Pond's soft-soled shoes. In spite of that Jeremy watched as the Doctor reached out, ran his finger across a slight stain on one, and then popped the finger in his mouth.

"Polyvinyl chloride with a trace of polytetrafluroethylene. Something like plastic fish fingers dipped in carbon custard." He stuck his tongue out and made a face like a little boy after taking his medicine. "Yuck."

"Jeremy!" Boggs' whisper was tense. So was the sergeant's grip on his arm. "What are we doing wasting our time following this lunatic when he deserves to be to be shut up in Bedlam?"

The Doctor's ears were apparently as sharp as his sense of humor. Jeremy had discerned fairly early on that a great deal of his chatter and manic behavior was for show. Like a river, the upper currents of this man ran quickly. Those deeper down were incredibly still.

"Bedlam? Oh, right, been there, done that, caused an uprising." The Doctor leapt to his feet and came nearly nose to nose with Sergeant Boggs. "Back in 1600, no wait, 1620 – that was the year I took a short jaunt to Cassiopeia – I helped the inmates compose the Petition of the Poor Distracted People in the House of Bedlam. Can't say it was an immediate smash success with the MPs, but I hear it's gangbusters now."

Boggs was nearly spluttering. "You're mad!"

The Doctor's green eyes narrowed to slits as though the insult had been taken. Then he grinned. Still the next words were spoken with an undercurrent of threat. "Not yet." He danced away then, once again returning to his examination of the floor. "But I will be if we don't find Amy." After a moment, he stopped and turned toward them, waggling his near non-existent eyebrows. "I don't suppose you two would care to step outside for a moment?"

"Why?" the sergeant demanded.

The Doctor cocked his head and smiled. "Because I asked nicely?"

Once outside Daniel Boggs let loose a long string of words suited to a soldier and then began to pace. He was worried, Jeremy knew that. Even if not confronted by this enigma in twill, he imagined the older man would have been short-tempered and perhaps even a bit surly. Apparently, like Henry, the general was not feeling well. Lafayette was suffering from the rapid onset of an ague and had been bedridden when Daniel left him earlier in the day. They were due to set off on the morrow for Albany, and from there to take the road to Boston. Everything hung in the air at the moment, and Daniel Boggs was a man who liked the earth firmly under his booted feet.

As Jeremy watched the older man beat a path through a crust of newly fallen snow, he heard that same strange sound again – the warbling one he had heard from the passage outside of the room he shared with Henry and Isak. He pivoted sharply and saw – for an instant – the dress shop filled with a pale green light. It disappeared, and then both it and the sound occurred again. This time Jeremy could see the Doctor's concentrated face and realized the man was holding a cylinder of metal in his hand from which both the light and sound came.

A shudder passed through him. He didn't believe in sorcery, but... Jeremy closed his eyes to steady his nerves and then opened them again – only to find he was staring directly into the Doctor's eyes.

"No fair peeking," the man chided softly.

Jeremy glanced at Boggs who was now speaking to another soldier – a tall young man with dark brown hair – and then back to the Doctor. "Forgive me, sir. I did not mean to. That...tool you have. What is it?"

The Doctor's hand went involuntarily to his breast pocket. "This old thing. It's just a..." He frowned and then continued, almost speaking to himself. "Do you have screwdrivers yet? Yes, I think you do. 1778, is it? Yes, that's what it is – a tool for driving screws."

"That casts an unnatural glow and sings?"

"Yes, well. I've had it blessed." The Doctor sniffed and his countenance grew sober. "Jeremy, my friend, you must trust me. There are forces afoot here which you cannot begin to comprehend."

"And you do?"

The man shrugged. "It's what I do for a living. Now, we must find Amy. As your Mr. Franklin puts it, 'We may delay, but time will not'."

"Jeremy," someone called.

The rebel leader turned. Daniel Boggs had left a gathering crowd of soldiers behind and crossed to join them once again. The frontiersman looked as if he had suffered that fit Jeremy earlier feared. He was white as a winding sheet and trembling. Jeremy expected the worst.

"The general, is he...?"

"Alive. No thanks to this man."

The Doctor had been staring at the shop, thinking. At Daniel's words he pivoted on his heel. "I beg your pardon?"

"You will have to beg more than that, sir. I will be most pleased to see you beg for mercy when the Judge Advocate pronounces sentence and you are hanged!"

"Daniel, what is this?" Jeremy demanded.

In answer Sergeant Boggs raised a hand. He signaled the soldiers who marched to their side and apprehended the Doctor, two taking and holding him by the arms while the rest pointed loaded rifles at his head and chest. When Boggs was satisfied that the stranger was secured, he turned to Jeremy and said, "There has been an attempt on the general's life."

"Someone has tried to kill Lafayette? Who?"

Boggs signaled again and the tall dark-haired soldier he had been talking to stepped up. The soldier's grey eyes brushed Jeremy but fell with concentration on the Doctor. "Tell him, Lieutenant Montgomery," Boggs commanded.

Montgomery was the essence of England born in America. His was brown haired, willowy of build, and his skin was pale perfection. His grim smile showed teeth white as the snow surrounding them. "This man, through his agent, the one called Amelia Pond," the lieutenant reported. "She made her way into the general's quarters and poisoned him."

"Stuff and nonsense!" the Doctor protested loudly. "If I was going to poison the Marquis de Lafayette, do you think I would send a six foot tall ginger-haired knock-out like Amelia to do it? Every soldier between here and Albert Hall must have noticed her walking by." He hesitated. "Maybe every one between here and the Taj Mahal."

"You will remain silent," Sergeant Boggs growled.

"I will not. This is America. I have a right to freedom of speech."

Boggs glanced at Jeremy, who did not like the look, and then nodded curtly to Lieutenant Montgomery. Before Jeremy could protest, the soldier stepped smartly forward and decked the enigmatic Englishman with a single blow.

"This isn't America," Daniel Boggs snarled as he shifted the unconscious man's body with his booted foot. "It's war."