Read Doctor Who: Rags for Free Online Page B

under the tilted minstrel’s cap. The mouth was too large for the face, voluptuous and cruel, like a hedonistic shark’s.
    Jimmy gazed into the man’s eyes.
     
    Rod took in the tatterdemalion clothes, bright rags stitched together over shards of leather. The gloves, old leather again, the fingers gnawed away by the elements. The boots, split and caked with the dried mud of centuries. The mummer looked like he’d just strolled down a summer lane that stretched back to the 38
     
    seventeenth century, maybe casually deadheading daisies along the way, nonchalantly playing his lute.
     
    He was playing his lute now. Rod looked up, into the man’s eyes.
    And he knew the pint of beer clutched in his fist just wasn’t strong enough.
    He was playing a merry air, and his eyes were fixed on Sin. He saw past the pout, he saw past the paranoia. He saw the child within, reading Moomin books beside a muttering stream as evening stained the sky. She looked up at him with a welcoming smile, and stretched out a ten-year-old hand. The stream changed tune, and was only the mummer-minstrel’s lute, a quiet trickle of olde melody that was yet as loud as a waterfall in the silent pub. The jukebox had shut up too, almost as soon as the mummer entered, but Sin barely registered that. Her hand was still reaching out for the figure with the childhood-restoring eyes, and now he had stopped playing, was reaching inside his tatters and pulling something out to give to her.
     
    Charmagne saw the pretty Chinese reach for the paper the mummer held out, and the spell she was under broke. She reached past the girl like a jealous child snatching a sweet from a favourite uncle and held the square of paper tight, as if her life depended on it. Maybe her career did depend on it, a voice told her - the inner voice of compulsion, which had carried her this far on a whim and would carry her so much further because of this day, because of this character. She knew this, and read the flyer.
    The Chinese girl snapped out of her bewilderment and snatched the paper back. By then Charmagne had read it, memorised it, no longer needed it. She looked up at the mummer and he was smiling at her with eyes that were the colour of treacle.
    ‘Welcome to the Beginning,’ he said to Charmagne, in a voice that danced like the notes trickling again from his lute. ‘And welcome to the End.’
     
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    Then he turned, and she was shut off from him, left with the memory of his words and the endless space of those eyes.
     
    Jo looked over Sin’s shoulder and read the flyer. The Chinese girl read it aloud for the benefit of Nick, Jimmy and Rod. The mummer was busy distributing more flyers around the pub, and Jo could see that everyone was taking them.
    The flyer said:
    THE UNWASHED AND UNFORGIVING TOUR. JOIN THE
    RAGGED ARMY HATE IS THE SWORD OF US ALL.
    Underneath the bold red capitals was the venue: The Oblong Box Inn, Postgate, Dartmoor. Tuesday, 10th May.
    ‘Two days,’ said Sin, and Jo met her eyes. The Chinese girl’s expression was as ominous as her words. Sin looked away, resuming her icy guard.
    ‘What’s the story here, then?’ asked Jimmy, scratching his hair through the worn Confederate cap. ‘Some sort of crusade?’ Nick shrugged, but looked wary.
    Sin sniffed. ‘Might be a laugh.’
    Might be a laugh. Again the words sounded hollow to Jo. She followed the progress of the mummer as he finished doling out flyers to punks, hippies, bikers and anyone who looked interested
    - anyone who looked hungry, or desperate for something, she realised. The mummer had plugged into something and the air was electric with raw need. She took a step towards the door, hoping the Doctor would flounce in and chase away the cold that had suddenly filled the pub, and noticed with a deeper coldness that it was pitch-black outside. The night had caught them all unawares.
     
    She smelt him before she noticed he was near her. A barn smell, a fog smell, a compost smell. A hand