CANDY

Chapter Six

My attendant and I ran into Nyssa and her attendant not far from the TARDIS. "Doctor," she cried, "I've been looking for you. I can't find Tegan!"

"What? When was the last time you saw her?"

"I don't know, at breakfast?"

"Same here. Have you asked staff to help you find her?"

"Yes. No one has seen her."

"All right, let's not panic. She is probably fine. You know Tegan; she went to check something out and got sidetracked and…." I knew I was talking nonsense. I had sent her on a mission, it had turned out to be dangerous and now she was missing. "Anyway, panicking won't help."

"Where could she be? Doctor, I am worried."

"You look in the TARDIS. You may just have missed each other. I have some ideas where I can look. We'll meet at dinner, okay?"

"Yes, Doctor. Oh, and before I forget, two things. One is that the princess is the only person here who is being poisoned. Everyone else comes up negative. The other is that I have made some Prussian blue for the princess but she will need a lot. Eighteen capsules a day! Six at a time, with meals."

"I hope it works. Bring what you have to dinner and we'll give them to her in private right afterwards. Now off to the TARDIS! I hope she's just taking a nap or something."

Having dispatched Nyssa on what I was pretty sure amounted to a useless quest, I got myself accompanied to the kitchen, where I was left in the care of the head cook and her two assistants. They were furiously moving foodstuffs from table to counter to stove, almost a whirlwind of activity. There was no place for me to stand and be out of the way; a low stool in a corner seemed the only safe place and I sat down there and called out to whoever would listen. "Have you seen my friend Tegan? Short dark hair, um, talks a lot?"

"She came through here this morning," said the younger assistant, the one who had brought me a tuna sandwich after my unexpectedly long nap. "She said she wanted to watch us make lunch. Bored, she said, bored and interested in cooking. So we let her watch. After a while she got bored with us too, I guess, and she left." The mad rush had died down by the time she finished answering me and she was now breading long strips of chicken.

"Any idea where she went?"

"She didn't say," sniffled the other assistant, chopping onions at lightning speed.

"Thank you." I started to leave the way I'd come.

The head cook shouted, "Not that way!" I looked where she was pointing. " That way. She went out that way." I crossed the kitchen and went out the back door, where no attendant awaited me. To my right was the kitchen garden, a marvel of shapes and colors, and ahead of me stretched a cobbled path through untrimmed lavender. At the end of the path I found a larger garden, neatly laid out, with stone benches and a fountain. This did not appear to be the garden in which the princess had met Norell, at least not the time I had seen them, but it was lovely and inviting, and I sat down on a bench to think. For a palace with so many gardens, there must be a gardener, or more than one gardener, and I had not met any gardeners yet. It seemed likely that if the princess had at least one accomplice, that would be the gardener. There must be a cottage – I imagined a gardener must live in a cottage – so I got up and set off in search of one.

First I found another path, leading out of the garden and into an almond grove. I kept walking straight through the grove and came out on the other side in another kitchen garden, this one smaller than the first, and on one side of that garden was a hut. The man seated on a kitchen chair in front of the hut rose when he saw me and came at me rather quickly. Almost as quickly I realized that without an attendant I had to be an intruder, and this man, probably the gardener, was about to apprehend me, and, from his expression and demeanor, not gently. "Hello," I said, and then I think I said "Oof," because he had me face down on the ground with my arms pinned behind me. "I'm the Doctor," I continued, my voice probably a bit muffled, pressed into the dirt as it was.

"Liar," said the gardener. "I know the doctor and you're not him. What are you doing here?"

"No, not the court doctor. Just the Doctor. I'm looking for my friend, Tegan. Have you seen her?"

"Short hair?"

"Yes."

"Talks a lot?"

"That's her."

"Tourists," he said, in disgust, and let go of me. I stood up and brushed as much dirt off my clothes and face as I could. "Are you really a doctor?"

"Yes. Well, not a medical doctor."

"That's too bad." He didn't elaborate; if I was just a tourist, it was none of my business.

"Do you know where my friend has gone? I am a bit worried about her."

"She stopped here for about half an hour and we had a little talk about privacy and how not to invade it. For tourists, you sure are snoopy."

"We started out as tourists but we are trying to help the royal family." I was pretty sure I shouldn't go into too much detail with the fellow, but I had a feeling he could tell me a lot if encouraged. He snorted; so much for encouragement.

"Sure you are. And Grigs still has an empire and I'm eight feet tall and handsome. Right. Pull the other one."

"I suppose," I said, a bit ungraciously, "it would be an invasion of your privacy to ask what your name is."

"It's common knowledge. I am Rad Dark and I have the honor and pleasure of being the palace groundskeeper. Not that you have been forthcoming."

"I told you; I'm the Doctor."

"Right. Doctor what?"

"Just 'the Doctor.'"

"Right," he repeated. "I'll call you an escort to take you back to your tour bus or whatever."

"That won't be necessary," I said, hastening off the way I'd been going before Rad Dark had jumped me.

"Oh, I think it will be." I was onto the next path, curving around to open up into a more familiar-looking garden, before he could call anyone, but assuming he would, or even had, I neither hung around nor took the path at the other end but instead slipped into the wilder area that surrounded the far path. It occurred to me that if I climbed one of the trees I might be able to survey large swathes of the palace grounds without actually strolling through them. I found a likely candidate and climbed up as high as I could, pleased that its branches supported me as well as affording me a splendid view in all directions. Such a lot of gardens hard by the palace, not to mention the ones we had seen elsewhere on the grounds. Sugarcane as far as the eye could see in the back. I didn't see Tegan in any of them. Apparently, though, I was easy to spot. Below me, three men were pointing oversized guns up at me.

"Hello," I called down, in as calm and friendly a tone as I could muster. "May I help you?"

"You can help yourself," said one of the men, "by coming down. Now."

I obliged by shinnying down the tree, and was rewarded with a smack in the stomach with the barrel of one of the guns. At least it was a smack and not a jab, I thought as I doubled over, but that thought was dispelled by a jab in the small of my back, which straightened me halfway back up. The third blow was on my shoulder blades, and my next thought was that geophagy was getting decidedly old. Now that each of the men had taken a turn, I was pulled to my feet and marched not back the way I had come but farther through the woods until, after a long walk (or maybe it just seemed so because various parts of me were aching) we reached a gravel path that bordered the palace walls, and I was further marched out to the front and into that leaky security shack, dry today but still tiny and grim. I sat down on the bench and waited.

This time I was collected quickly, since the attendants all knew me. I asked to be taken to the TARDIS but was told it was dinner time and a friend of mine was waiting for me. It was, of course, Nyssa, and she had brought a few tall bottles of large capsules, assuring me there was an even larger number of them back at the TARDIS. "I need more bottles," she declared. "To get the right dosage I need big gel capsules. I wonder if we can get them from the court physician?"

"I doubt it," I said, ruefully. "He is against using Prussian blue and in fact is quite suspicious of us. I wonder where else we could get some?"

"I can probably make them but do we want to stay here a long time? And did you find Tegan?" I briefly described my search. "Doctor, are you okay? Did they hurt you?"

"Not much," I lied; I was actually pretty sore. "I'm all right, just worried about Tegan."

The princess entered the dining hall looking upset – frantic, even. She sat by me and took both of my hands in hers. "He's gone," she said, breathlessly. "My baby is gone."

"No!" Nyssa and I exclaimed at once.

"I know you can't find your friend, Tegan is it? Do you think… is it possible…?"

"No," I said, emphatically. "If they are together, if one's been taken, they've both been taken. Tegan is not like that at all." Nyssa nodded vigorously in agreement. "Your Highness, I need to be able to search alone without being stopped. I had a bit of a rough time today. Is there some kind of credential you can give me that will afford me unimpeded access? I must be able to search for your… for the prince and for Tegan, whether or not they are together, or separately lost, or kidnapped, or…." I stopped because both Nyssa and the princess were nearly in tears. "May I have something that shows I am on a mission for you and not a villainous intruder?"

"Yes, of course." The princess called over an attendant and whispered to him. He hurried away and did not come back for 20 minutes. The princess waved away the food that was brought to the table, and so did Nyssa and I. "Maybe later," said the princess, rising, so we rose too. Then she sat back down, so we followed suit. We waited in silence for the attendant to come back with what turned out to be a note, on vellum, for the princess to sign, with a heavy pen for her to use and a seal. She gave me the signed note as well as a glass disc displaying an image of the same seal. I examined the glass, then handed it to Nyssa. Her eyes got wide.

"Doctor," she said. "It is possible that this disc is the source of the thallium poisoning Her Royal Highness. Your Highness, where did you get this?"

"It was made for me," she replied, "in Ambarba, where we import many of our supplies, royal stuff like my scepter, which I rarely use, and this disc, which I keep close at hand, as I designed it and it gives me comfort. Could it really be poisonous?"

Nyssa said, "Not terribly, all by itself, but if you touch it a lot, maybe. May I examine it in the TARDIS, in my lab?" It was actually my lab, but Nyssa had taken it over, and rightly so; she is more skilled at chemical analysis and other such lab work than I will ever be.

"Yes, of course, but then what shall I give the Doctor?"

"I suppose," I said, "your note will have to do. Let's hope the people I run into are willing to read it."

"Here," said the princess, removing a signet ring from one delicate hand; I wondered how the ring even stayed on, so small her finger was. "This will have to do."

I stood up and bowed – it seemed the right thing to do – and put the ring on the pinkie finger of my left hand, where it easily fit. "I will take care of it and return to you your son and the ring, intact."

We had forgotten about the others in the room, most of whom looked shocked at the mention of poison. "Here, Your Highness," said Nyssa, pressing the bottle of pills into the princess' hands. "Six capsules with each meal, not tea, just breakfast, lunch and dinner. I have more. This is just a start. I have more and will make even more, but first I want to get you some activated charcoal to go along with the Prussian blue. Please eat a little something so you can take these now."

The princess let it be known she was ready for her dinner, and we did the same, little appetite though we had; we also knew we needed to keep our strength up. The princess obediently took six pills.

"Now Your Highness," I whispered, "can I ask you something privately?"

"Yes, of course."

"I think the TARDIS is the most private place," I said, indicating for the princess and Nyssa to follow me… and the ubiquitous attendant, until the princess dismissed him and just followed me to the TARDIS. She took the dimensional difference well, with barely a gasp. Nyssa ran to get a seat for her and she slowly sat, eyeing the console, the roundels, everything she could take in, with appropriately regal aplomb.

"Your ship… your home? This place is amazing," she admitted.

"Thank you, Your Highness," I said, simply. "I need to ask you, if you know, who the three men were who apprehended me this afternoon."

"I can find out, of course," said the princess. "Were they inappropriate?"

"Well," I said, hesitantly, "they struck me."

"That was uncalled for," huffed the princess. Nyssa's mouth was open, her eyes full of pain. "And how did my attendants allow that?"

"I am okay," I said, largely for Nyssa's benefit, "but they did strike me with their weapons. That's why I asked for credentials. Otherwise I would not have bothered you about that."

"Were you not attended?"

"I'm sorry, Your Highness, but I find it difficult to investigate with an attendant following me around. It is distracting and inhibiting."

"I see," said the princess, frowning. "Well, I shall find out who they were and they will be dealt with. It is not acceptable to use weapons against guests, whether by shooting or by striking."

"To be fair," I pointed out, "they didn't know I was a guest. Still, to assume otherwise…. Although again, that's their job, well, maybe their job, depending on who they are, but anyway I did look like an intruder, especially when I was up a tree, but on the other hand, each one had a turn thwacking me, and once would have been more than enough…."

"Doctor," said the princess, as Nyssa giggled, "you are arguing with yourself. They're not allowed to strike you or threaten you unless you're actually doing something forbidden, and I am not even including trespassing, since people have been known to wander onto the grounds by accident. Your attackers will be dealt with." Then she asked, in a completely different voice, "Has Vandon seen this ship of yours? I think he would love it!"

"Yes, he has seen it and I think he does love it." Nyssa assured the princess.

The princess briefly looked like the happy young mother she should have felt free to be.