The Doctor and The Nightingale {1}

tooth and claw 2.4

Something carved on the door sparked Nova's attention. She ran her hand over the carving. "Mistletoe. Sir Robert, did you father put that there?"

Robert shrugged. "I don't know. I suppose"

"It's on the other door too" The Doctor mentioned, referring to the door Robert was sitting in front of. "No, a carving wouldn't be enough. I wonder" He licked the woodwork. "Viscum album, the oil of the mistletoe. It's been worked into the wood like a varnish. How clever was your dad? I love him"

"Oh, mistletoe! How groovy!" Nova cheered. "Bursting with lectins and viscotoxins"

"And the wolf's allergic to it?" Rose asked.

"Well, it thinks it is" The Doctor answered. "The monkey monk monks need a way of controlling the wolf, maybe they trained it to react against certain things"

"Nevertheless," Robert spoke. "That creature won't give up, Doctor, and we still don't possess an actual weapon"

"Oh, your father got all the brains, didn't he?"

"Being rude again!" Rose said.

"Good. I meant that one. You want weapons? We're in a library. Books! Best weapons in the world" He put on a pair of glasses. "This room's the greatest arsenal we could have" He grabbed a couple of books. He threw one over to Rose and the other to Tate. "Arm yourself" The two companions caught the books.

______

Rose and Tate flipped through a book together. "Biology, zoology" Rose listed off. "There might be something on wolves in here"

"Hold on, what about this?" The Doctor held a book out in front of Nova. "A book on mistletoe?"

"A book on magic" Tate said, grabbing another book.

"Some form of explosive" Robert said, flipping through his own book.

"Hmm, that's the sort of thing" The Doctor said. Something in the book clearly interested him. He placed the book on the table. "Look what your old dad found. Something fell to Earth" The Doctor referred to an illustration in the book. Everyone crowded around.

"A spaceship?" Rose asked.

"A shooting star" Robert began reading the text under the illustration. "In the year of our Lord 1540, under the reign of King James the Fifth, an almighty fire did burn in the pit. That's the Glen of Saint Catherine just by the monastery"

"But that's over three hundred years ago. What's it been waiting for?"

"Maybe just a single cell survived" Nova suggested. "Adapting slowly down the generations, it survived through the humans, host after host after host"

"Then why does it want the throne?" Robert wondered.

"That's what it wants. It said so. The, the Empire of the Wolf" Tate answered.

"Imagine it" The Doctor said. "The Victorian Age accelerated. Starships and missiles fueled by coal and driven by steam, leaving history devastated in its wake"

Victoria, who was sitting the entire time they were searching through book after book, stood to her feet. "Sir Robert" The man walked over to her. "If I am to die here"

"Don't say that, Your Majesty" Robert said.

"I would destroy myself rather than let that creature infect me. But that's no matter. I ask only that you find some place of safekeeping for something far older and more precious than myself" She opened her bag and started digging through it for her precious valuable.