Jamie struggled with the lock for a moment, cursing under his breath, then opened the door to see the Doctor looking very serious indeed.

"Where's the king?" he asked quietly, wasting no time.

"In yon closet," said Jamie, angling his head at the other side of the room.

This was followed by a short but extremely awkward silence.

"I'm sure there's a perfectly logical explanation for that," said the Doctor, his eyebrow curling, "but it'll have to wait for now. Come with me. You too, Victoria," he added, peering at her over Jamie's shoulder, and then he appeared to pause for thought. "You'd better bring His Majesty, too. This directly concerns him."

Nodding, Victoria turned and opened the closet door to see Richard looking both harassed and confused. She found time for a pang of genuine sympathy: he'd been through an awful lot in one afternoon – quite apart from the battle – and all of it at the hands of what must appear to him to be a motley band of lunatics. Under the circumstances, she admired the good humour he'd managed to maintain so far.

"You are the master of this house, sir?" he said, straightening his clothing and emerging from the closet, directing a faintly imperious look at the Doctor.

"Er. No, as it happens, I'm not." The Doctor looked at the ceiling for a second with a pinched frown, as if collecting his wits, and then returned his attention to Richard. "I'm afraid there are urgent matters afoot, sire," he went on.

"Then pray, explain them," said the king, folding his arms, his voice and his stance now communicating increasing impatience. "I grow tired of these tricks, to say nothing of the impertinence of your household. I have been treated little better than a peasant!"

As Victoria watched, she saw the Doctor's normally benign countenance freeze solid at once. She'd seen this expression many times before. It was one that usually served to conceal a great deal of anger, and this time, she was very grateful for that. Even so, she could see him forcibly reining in his temper.

"Aside from our earlier misunderstanding," he said, stonily, "I'm confident my young friends have behaved impeccably towards you in my absence.

"Oh, I've no doubt you're used to a lot more deference than you're going to get from me," he went on, relentlessly, as Richard's eyes glazed in shock at being spoken to this way, "but you're just going to have to put up with that, I'm afraid. You're more than five hundred years out of your rightful time, and I really don't have the time to observe royal etiquette, because I don't know how this has happened and right now, for all I know, we may all be in grave danger. Do you understand what I'm telling you?"

"I...what did you say?" Richard's face, already as pale as cream, somehow whitened even further.

"I'll take that as a 'yes'," said the Doctor, tersely. "And now I've got to explain things to our ghost hunters as well, which isn't going to be easy, to say the least. So whenever you're ready, I'll be downstairs."

The door closed, and the click of the latch was the only sound to interrupt the congealed silence. After a few seconds, Jamie gave the king a sidelong look and a chagrined smile.

"He's no' usually so short-tempered, yer Majesty," he said. "Truth is he's no' hisself at all today."

"But he – " Richard began, then flapped a hand and subsided, evidently lost for words.

"You'll get used to him," said Victoria, gently. "And if you'll accept my advice, the best thing you can do is trust the Doctor and do as he says."

"Five hundred years?" said the king, his voice hollow and his eyes still slightly unfocused.

"Five hundred and twenty-eight, to be exact," she told him, uncomfortably, but it was clear that this statement quite failed to sink in. She reached a decision, and steeled herself. "Sire, please come with us. Something's very wrong here and it has to be put right. And the Doctor is the only one who can do that."

She smiled at him encouragingly, and then moved to the door of the bedroom and opened it.

As she stepped through, she was plunged into gloom. Victoria whimpered and spun around at once, looking back the way she'd come, seeking Jamie, who'd been right behind her...but he wasn't there, and nor was the king. Through the open doorway she could see the bedroom, just as she'd left it.

No. Not just as she'd left it. Even in her panic, she could see that the room was different. The shrouding dust sheets were gone, and the room was richly furnished and smelled, very faintly, of beeswax and dried lavender. The curtains were drawn back, and just then the floor was washed by the light of a gleaming silver moon, close to full, as it sailed out of a ragged bank of black cloud. And it was only then that Victoria's brain, struggling to deal with her situation, finally slipped sideways in helpess horror.

It was dark outside.

She had frozen on the spot like a cornered rabbit, but now, two conflicting instincts were battling for control of Victoria's body. Part of her wanted to flee, to run screaming through the house until she found her friends; but in spite of this animal urge, her feet instead carried her further into the room and over to the nearest window.

As she moved, it occurred to her that the room was also cold. Deathly cold, in fact, and as she reached the window and peered out, she saw that the glass was covered in patches of frost here and there, forming delicate traceries and curlicues.

Beyond these, Victoria could see the gardens at the front of the house, and though they were lit only by the moon, she could see that they were also different, and lay quilted beneath a soft, unsullied blanket of fresh snow. The gnarled old oaks at the end of the driveway were much shorter; they were merely bare, skinny little saplings that waved in the harsh winter wind as if painting the sky an even darker shade.

She reached up to wipe some of the condensation from the inside of the window. It was so cold in the room that this, too, was on the point of freezing, and she had to scratch it away with her fingernails, the melting ice chilling her soft fingertips.

Just then, a movement caught her eye, and she saw a large black carriage approaching the house, drawn by two chestnut horses. Their snorting breath formed billowing white clouds of vapour in the freezing night air, making them look a little like dragons and adding yet another touch of strangeness to the scene. As Victoria watched, the driver leapt down from his seat, landing with a soft crunch on the icy gravel drive, and then opened the door.

A man in a top hat and heavy grey frock coat got out first, and then reached up to assist a lady, who gathered her voluminous skirts in one hand before stepping down. Victoria felt a lurch in her heart as she studied the woman's clothing. It was familiar to her and yet, at one and the same time, horribly unfamiliar. And it was wrong. So wrong that her hands started to shake and her teeth began to chatter uncontrollably. The woman now alighting daintily from the carriage was dressed in clothing from the nineteenth century, not the twenty-first.

Victoria might have remained at the window longer, but then she heard a soft, high-pitched cry from behind her, turned to find its source, and saw a young boy – perhaps six or seven years old – sitting up in bed and staring at her with the blankets drawn up to his face so that only his eyes, round and black with fear, were visible.

"Go away!" he shrilled

"Where am I?" asked Victoria, just as plaintively, but this only seemed to spur the child on to greater heights of terror. He curled up, clutched at the headboard and whined piteously.

"Go away!" he repeated, his voice rising to a thin shriek. "Go away, please go away!"

"I'm not going to hurt you," said Victoria, trying to speak as softly as she could in spite of a rapidly rising tide of fright almost the equal of the child's. "Who are you?"

"You're not real!" the boy screamed, and then pulled one of the pillows from the bed and hurled it at her. Victoria raised her hands reflexively and stumbled back – right into Jamie's arms. He winced as she accidentally stepped on his foot and winded him with her elbow, and then she whirled around to face him. The sunlight glanced into her eyes and dazzled her for a second, but once her vision cleared, she threw her arms around the young Scot and hugged him tightly, much to his surprise.

"Victoria? Hey noo, what's the matter?" he asked, patting her shoulder in what he hoped was a reassuring fashion.

"I couldn't find you," she cried, her voice slightly muffled against Jamie's shoulder, and then she dragged her head up and looked him right in the eye.

"It was dark, it was snowing, everything was different and you weren't there any more, oh Jamie..." she babbled, her words tumbling and tripping over one another, all attempts at coherency abandoned in her headlong rush to communicate the details of her disturbing vision.

Jamie looked over her head long enough to cast a quick, puzzled glance at Richard, and then returned his gaze to hers and lifted her chin.

"I saw nothin' of the kind," he told her, gently. "Ye walked through the door and the very next second ye was wailin' like a wee babby. That's all I saw, I swear tae ye."

"But it was so real," she said, sniffling softly. "I could feel how cold the room was. I could even smell things. And that poor child," she added, her voice dropping to a murmur.

"What child?"

"It doesn't matter," she replied, pulling herself together and finally loosening her desperate hold on him. "Perhaps I'm just tired. I must be, if I'm seeing things."

"Still, ye should tell the Doctor aboot this," Jamie told her, his eyes searching her face warily, studying her expression with microscopic care. For some reason she didn't like this scrutiny at all. Her mouth twisted and she looked away and down, breaking his gaze.

There was a fallen pillow lying a few feet away on the rug. She gasped at the sight of this and turned back to Jamie, pointing at the pillow. But when she looked back at it again, it was gone, and as a wave of confusion rushed over her, she felt slightly dizzy and sick.

"What're ye pointin' at?" asked Jamie, his brow wrinkling in bewilderment as he followed the line of her arm.

"Nothing," she muttered, lowering her hand.

"Victoria, ye're not a lassie who's given tae wild fantasies," said Jamie, kindly. "An' I still say ye ought tae tell the Doctor."

"Oh, he'll think I'm being foolish," said Victoria, irritably. Right now, she felt immensely foolish, and was in no mood to allow anyone else to confirm it. "Now come along," she added, stubbornly, "we really ought to join the others downstairs. The Doctor's waiting for us."

Stepping through the door once more took all of Victoria's courage, but she was careful not to let this show in front of the two men. Nevertheless, because she was only human, she drew a very deep breath, and reached down and grasped Jamie's hand as she crossed the threshold.

This time, nothing happened. The gallery outside looked perfectly normal, with the afternoon sun bathing the opposite wall and highlighting tiny little imperfections in the diamond-shaped window-panes. Victoria did not relinquish her hold on Jamie's hand as she walked, however. Not even when Richard drew level and glanced down at her, his face a picture of ill ease.

"Your master..." he said, and then stopped, seeming immensely hesitant.

"The Doctor? Yes, what about him?" asked Victoria, politely.

"What manner of sorcerer is he, to work such magic?"

"It's not magic that brought you here, sire," said Victoria flatly, returning his worried gaze for a second. "And the Doctor's certainly no sorcerer."

"Then if it is not witchcraft, what is this?"

"Something worse."