Chapter Text
Christopher and Tom were walking though the corridors of Whitehall chatting about nothing in particular when the sound of a gunshot rang out. Looking at each other in concern, they rushed towards the sound.
When they got to the room they thought it was coming from, they found Lord Ashcombe standing on a table, aiming a gun at the ground, and looking as scared as a man like Ashcombe could get.
They stared at him.
A loud bang sounded when Ashcombe fired his gun again.
“Uh…My Lord?” Christopher ventured, “What are you shooting at?”
“There’s a spider” Ashcombe said, intently focused on the ground.
“And why are you shooting at it?” Tom asked very, very hesitantly, a slight quaver to his voice.
“Because,” answered Ashcombe with a growl, “Those creatures are a scourge upon this Earth.”
Christopher eyes lit up a bit. Tom’s widened.
“My Lord… are you afraid of spiders?” Christopher asked with a bit of a smile in his voice.
Tom started gesturing frantically for Christopher to stop before he said anything too foolish. He froze, eyes focused on the floor in front of the table. There was the spider, dark, with a large, bulbous abdomen. Another loud shot rang out, but the spider had already skittered away.
“What is going on here?” said a voice from the doorway.
Christopher and Tom turned. Ashcombe did not, his good eye still trained on the floor.
“Sally!” Christopher exclaimed. In the chaos, he had forgotten she was coming over to visit today.
“There’s a spider,” Tom started explaining, “and Lord Ashcombe is trying to shoot it.”
Sally had to work very hard to smother her giggles. Miraculously, she was successful.
“Would you like me to help with that, My Lord?”not quite managing to keep the smile out of her voice this time.
“I would like for someone to get rid of the blasted thing!” said Ashcombe, “Preferably violently.”
In the end, Sally ended up catching it with a cup and a piece of parchment. Christopher asked her to bring it to his and Tom’s room, saying something about how it could be useful for apothecary ingredients.
The trio spent the rest of the afternoon in a park, the incident mostly forgotten.