Free Doctor Who: The Trial of a Time Lord : The Ultimate Foe by Pip Baker, Jane Baker

Thydostanic Kinesectoral energy, she was sent pirouetting out of Time and Logic, to be dumped in the decrepit locale where the Doctor had been deposited.
    Children’s voices sang –
    ‘London Bridge is falling down...
    Falling down...’
    Lingering only to get her bearings in the badly lit Victorian alley, Mel embarked on her zestful search for the Doctor.
    He, at that moment, was being escorted aboard a tumbril ready to be transported to the place of his decapitation.
    This gruesome prospect did not deter the Doctor from approving the style shown by his peers: he was to be conveyed to his execution in a manner befitting an Aristo.
     
    The first guard steadied the shafts of the two wheeled death cart, while the second bolted the rear flap. A flick on the hind quarters of the chestnut shire horse... and the final journey began.
    Clip-clop. Clip-clop.
    The metallic clatter of the shire’s hoofs initiated a swelling murmur of blood-thirsty taunts.
    ‘Kill him!’
    ‘Off with his head!’
    ‘Bring the scoundrel to Madame Guillotine!’
    ‘Death to the upstart!’
    ‘Villain! Villain! Breathe your last!’
    Mel’s efforts to navigate the rat-infested warren of alleys were not meeting with much success. Concern for her own safety as well as the Doctor’s was now a consideration. If Jack the Ripper had pounced from the gloom, she would have been terrified but not surprised.
    So it was with relief she heard the raucous taunts and sped towards them...
    ‘Off with his head!’
    ‘Death to the upstart!’
    Rotting cabbages and squashy tomatoes pelted the Doctor.
    Jolting over cobblestones, the tumbril lumbered through narrow streets of soot-grimed slums; the natural habitat for the pox-scarred, unwashed denizens shying their putrid garbage and baying for the Doctor’s death. His arrogant stance and disdainful mien incited them to fever-pitch.
    Into this mêlée thrust the diminutive Mel.
    Gagging at the malodorous stench given off by the mob, she pummelled to where she judged the Doctor to be.
    Slick as a razor, the upraised guillotine glistened, awaiting the release that would allow it to despatch its victim into the abyss, or, more prosaically, his head into the basket!
    The tumbril had halted in the shadow of the keen-edged blade.
    Erect, betraying not a hint of fear, the Doctor was reminded of the fine prose that brought A Tale Of Two Cities to a noble climax. The last speech uttered by Dickens’ hero before he kept his assignation with Madame Guillotine.
    ‘ "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done;" ’ quoted the Doctor in rich, melodious tones. ‘ "... it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known." ’
    During this peroration, Mel emerged from the motley crowd. ‘Never mind the Sidney Carton heroics! You’re not signing on as a martyr yet!’
    ‘Go away!’ whispered the Doctor urgently. ‘Go away, Mel!’
    Mel did not move.
    ‘That trial was an illusion!’ she declared.
    Illusion?
    As her proclamation hit the air – everything happened at once.
    The guards vanished.
    So did the horse.
    And the tumbril – causing the Doctor to plummet to the ground in an undignified heap!
    ‘You’ve ruined everything!’ he grumbled, dusting off his stain-free jacket.
    Stain-free?
    Not only were the Doctor’s clothes wiped clean, so, too, was the courtyard.
    Gone were the stinking vegetables... the brutish rabble...
    and the guillotine.
    ‘Ruined?’ Mel was nonplussed. ‘I’ve just saved your life!’
    ‘All you’ve done is keep me from a confrontation with the Valeyard!’
    ‘But you were on your way to –’
     
    ‘– a rendezvous with death as a result of a bogus trial and my noble act of self sacrifice.’
    ‘You knew it was an illusion?’ said Mel disbelievingly.
    ‘How come?’
    Had she really been paying attention to the trial when it was being played on the Matrix screen, she would have known.
    Or should have.
    She repeated the question. ‘How