Jamie had followed her, impossible not to, the glorious young woman who had suddenly appeared in the room and taken his hand in the dance. Other than Zoe and the Muses, she was the only woman in a room full of reeling men, the reel that had made him forget entirely the loss he’d sobbed over just moments before. Even now, running through a corridor that must have taken them from one end of the Musaeum to another, and then hurrying up a spiral staircase, even this pace felt like a dance, like horses galloping to music.
‘Hurry,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘Faster still.’
And though Jamie was thinking he had never run so fast or climbed so high since he was a boy, training hard in the hills, he was able to keep going, to leap up the seemingly never-ending steps.
And then they were there. She put up a hand to stop him, a wide door lay ahead, she held a finger to her lips, then took both of Jamie’s hands in hers.
He thought she was going to kiss him, thought his heart might burst from the running and the dancing, all anger run out, danced out – and then he stopped thinking as the hand she brought to his face pinched a point on his temple. He stopped thinking because the pain was so intense, because she was bringing him to his knees with pain, because all he could see were the stars in his eyes, and then nothing. All was dark.
When Jamie came to, it was on the other side of the big door, in a bright room, white marble floor, white stone walls, beneath a dome of fine alabaster, letting in a pure, diffuse light. Jamie was strapped to a table, arms, legs, head and body pinned down. There was a strong smell of cloves and of lavender and something else that he didn’t recognise.
‘It’s turmeric.’
Jamie heard the young woman’s voice and turned his head the fraction the binding would allow.
She stood to one side, grinding something with a mortar and pestle. ‘Turmeric, lavender, cloves, comfrey and a few others I don’t think you’d know, even if I knew your native words for them. They’ll help with the pain.’
‘Good,’ Jamie said. ‘I could do with some help with the pain. I could do with getting up off this table too.’
She smiled and carried on grinding the mixture.
Jamie tried again. ‘If you’re not going to let me go…’
‘It’s not up to me.’
‘No, of course not,’ he said. ‘Then do you not want to give me that mixture? My head’s pounding from whatever you did at the door, and my back and knees aren’t doing too well after all that dancing and running either.’
She shrugged and came closer to the table, close enough for Jamie to see how beautiful she was, how beautiful and yet now – how frightening, as she smiled and said, ‘This isn’t for the pain you feel now.’
‘No?’ he asked, not looking forward to the answer.
‘It’s for the pain you’re going to feel.’
Jamie, who had feared it might be something like that, decided discretion was the better part of valour, closed his eyes and began breathing deeply to calm his fear. The Doctor and Zoe were bound to be on their way to rescue him, weren’t they? Then he pictured Zoe deep in conversation with the astronomer, the Doctor rolling helplessly on the floor, crying with laughter. And he pictured himself, laid out on the table, a worse pain promised, no one coming to his rescue.