TURLOUGH'S TALE
Chapter Nine
"You're not a ghost," Tegan addresses it, firmly, then says, in a smaller voice, "Is it, Doctor?"
"No," says the Doctor, softly. "I'm sorry if we're trespassing. We didn't mean to disturb your things. They sort of fell on us." Then he adds, "Alexandra?"
"'The Minor,'" answers the figure, lowering her hood. "My mother was 'The Great.' A little family joke." She sits between Tegan and the Doctor, takes the pail of now-cold tea and sips at it. "Many people have sheltered here, although not recently. I am only a little bit surprised to see you."
The Doctor closes the lock box and pushes it to the fur-clad woman. She is, now that we can see her better, old. "I believe this belongs to you. Please pardon our indiscretion. We have no good excuses."
"You found the key!" she exclaims, touching the box.
"No," says the Doctor, "we used this." He shows her the hair grip.
"Oh, a bobby pin!"
"Your ancestors are American," notes the Doctor, smiling.
"Some of them," Alexandra admits. "We've been here at least as long as anyone. Most of our history has been destroyed but I've been digging. Literally."
"We haven't destroyed or removed anything," says the Doctor. "It's all here. We were admiring it. I'm afraid we did read a letter from someone named Gavin to Alexandra. Are you that Alexandra?"
"My mother. Gavin was my father."
"So they did marry!"
"Um, no." Alexandra doesn't look uncomfortable. She passes the tea to Tegan, who sips it and passes it to me. "Look, you are welcome to stay here as long as you need to, but if you could refrain from poking any further into my family history I'd appreciate it."
"Again, I apologize. There… there wasn't much else to do here."
"I understand." Alexandra looks at each of us in turn. "We can enlarge the tent so that we all might lie down. It is late and I am tired. Surely you are too; since there is nothing near this house, you must have walked a long way."
"Yes, we did," admits Tegan. "I'm knackered."
"We were telling ghost stories," says the Doctor, "before bedtime. There is nothing like a ghost story at bedtime."
I don't know how long it takes for the four of us to revamp the tent and lay out blankets to sleep on and under but we sure get wet doing all that. The snow has not relented. Our fire does little to dry us off so we lie shivering in front of it, having removed as much as we dare, which leaves us minimally dryer but colder. The Doctor is the first to speak, raising himself up on his elbows to do so.
"Alexandra, would you mind very much telling us a ghost story?" I think, he's avoiding telling his own story.
She laughs. "Something spooky to warm us up by making our blood run cold? All right. Let me think." She thinks long enough that I start to fall asleep, which would be all right with me, but then she suddenly begins to speak in a quiet voice that brings me fully awake only slowly, so that at first I'm not really aware that she is speaking, but rather think her words are a part of a dream. "About forty years ago, my daughter and I lived in a community. Most people do. That hasn't changed. There was a man who traveled from community to community, transporting goods all across New Columbus, in a kind of round-robin barter – I've heard it called that, though he didn't use that term – and he had lists of requests, ours included, from all over. We, and others, requested building materials, food, clothing, sometimes entertainers, arbitrators if an issue was unresolvable locally, or any craftsperson or professional if a community had lost one to death or simply needed more. Perhaps I am explaining what you already know; I am assuming you have not lived in such a community."
"No," says the Doctor. Tegan doesn't answer; she may be asleep.
"Not I," say I.
"I thought not. I don't know why. Just an impression. Anyway, I was a cobbler and sometimes traveled if a distant community needed arbitration."
"That I've done," interjects the Doctor.
"Then you know that sometimes you leave people unhappy. You can't please everyone. Sometimes all you can do is be fair. Anyway, my daughter was almost twenty. Patty had been traveling with me since she was fourteen, and she was also learning my craft, but I knew she really wanted to be a harpist. There is never much work for harpists but that was her passion. She had an Irish harp she loved, and she took that with her when we traveled. We sometimes got extra food or other things if she could compose personal ditties for the right people.
"Patty composed a personal ditty for the wrong person. He misunderstood, or contrived to misunderstand, and pursued her romantically. Then he just plain pursued her. Us. He followed us from community to community, he showed up wherever we had work and defamed us to the point that it was too inconvenient to give us the benefit of the doubt, and work dried up. He followed us home, moved into our community, set fire to my shop. We couldn't prove it. He poisoned our dogs so that we couldn't travel unless we joined others, and no one wanted to deal with him, so they refused to deal with us. We were ruined."
"That's awful." Tegan is awake and sitting up. "What did you do?"
"We had to move but no one wanted us. We left the community on foot, not knowing where we would end up. We took turns pulling the sled. We ended up here. The house was already something of a ruin but the refrigerator worked. There was a generator. We had no electric light but we could store food; we hunted. We built a greenhouse; we'd thought to bring seeds. We survived.
"Well, we quickly ran out of fuel and that was the end of the generator. We made do. Then he found us."
"Oh no!" whispers Tegan. My eyes are closed but I imagine her concerned face. I imagine the Doctor's expression of sympathy, the same sympathy he'd shown me in the woods, the same expression that I'd found intolerable. He hasn't said a word, though. He can't be asleep. That I can't imagine.
"I suppose he thought, two woman alone in a falling-down house would be easy targets. I'll never know exactly what he thought because when he grabbed me by the neck, Patty got the axe…."
Now I know for sure that the Doctor is still awake because I hear his sharp intake of breath, as well as Tegan's gasp. Alexandra continues, her voice steady and unemotional.
"We buried him. I won't say where. No one ever came after him. We got away with it." She stops there and I think, wow, okay, no ghosts involved, but her tale is spooky enough.
"That's quite a story," I begin, but she stops me.
"There's more. There is no point telling only part of it."
"Go on," says the Doctor.
"I buried Patty the same year. Pneumonia. It happens a lot here, for obvious reasons. This is our reality. It always has been. I know it hasn't always been like this, but I am taking that on faith. There are legends, legends of the whole country, the whole planet, being warm and green and generous. Generosity is not something of which I have recent experience."
"You're alone then?" asks the Doctor.
"Yes, quite alone. Except…."
"Because we could take you anywhere you want to go. Earth, or anywhere. We have the means."
"… except for him."
"What?" The three of us exclaim this more or less together.
"He is dead and buried and he rules this house. You haven't encountered him?"
"No," says the Doctor. "Not that we know of," he adds.
"Oh, you'd know. You'd know. He can trip you. He can push you over. He can blind you, deafen you, make you bury yourself and drown in the snow. He has tried all that on me but I am strong." She pauses. "If he comes tonight, I will protect you."
I am horrified but also tickled by the idea that this little old woman is promising to protect our young, strong, active Doctor. I don't know if he is as amused as I am; he is silent, perhaps absorbing all this, perhaps off on a mental tangent. Then he says, "We should sleep. We have a lot of work to do in the morning." I have no idea what he is talking about but no one says anything other than "good night" after that and soon I am lying awake listening to soft snoring, in harmony and counterpoint. I lie like that until dawn, finally fall asleep and am awakened by the Doctor cheerfully offering everyone more tea, and breakfast.