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Scarlette had only lent Juliette the glass totem until her wedding day: it was to be the ‘borrowed’ part of the ‘old, new, borrowed, blue’ ceremony (itself a tradition with its roots in fire/earth/water/air elementalism). Yet the Doctor saw the theft of the glass as a positive sign. As far as he was concerned, Sabbath’s aim was to turn Juliette away from the ways of the House. As long as Juliette carried Scarlette’s charm, said the Doctor, there was a good chance she’d return home before the planned wedding day. Nobody mentioned the fact that Juliette had failed to take with her the red wedding dress that Scarlette had commissioned.

Before Juliette’s disappearance, the Doctor had begun displaying signs of obsessive behaviour. He’d been worried about the slightest details of the wedding, from the decor of the vault to – bizarrely – the question of whether any of his family would turn up on the day to give him away. Now all that had been replaced by a new obsession, the idea, perhaps rooted in self-delusion, that Juliette would return to him.

Lisa-Beth records that Fitz even feared for the Doctor’s sanity. The Doctor was so insistent that the TARDIS had helped his mysterious sickness that he seemed almost hyperactive, and periods of heavy, rapid breathing were common… periods which would be followed by extended disappearances into the TARDIS’s interior. (Incidentally, it’s a matter of record that Fitz and Lisa-Beth slept together at least once during this period, probably more out of boredom than out of passion. Neither was exactly inhibited, and this should surprise nobody.)

So, with the wedding no more than six weeks away, those remaining at the House busied themselves with whatever they could and tried to pretend that they were being constructive. Often they’d talk about Juliette, though never in the presence of Scarlette or the Doctor, wondering exactly where the girl had been taken and what kind of ‘initiation’ she might be undergoing at the hands of Sabbath. Fitz and Rebecca would sometimes scour the town, from the Shakespeare’s Head to the finest of coffee-houses, listening for news on the grapevine. Lord _____ hadn’t been seen in a month, and whispers in the Tavern claimed the Countess of Jersey had been there when the Lord had been torn limb from limb by a pack of wild animals. The Lady, the stories went on to say, had experienced something of a revelation after this. Soon afterwards she’d made a report to the surviving members of the Star Chamber of the Service. Tittle-tattle insisted that when the Countess had left the Chamber, it was the Servicemen, and not her, who’d been shaken by the interview. There was even news of Emily. Two months earlier the wife of the British Envoy in Naples had died, and as the Envoy’s nephew was Charles Greville it was said that Greville’s mistress might be ‘passed on’ to the grieving uncle. In retrospect it’s easy to see Sabbath’s hand in events. Given the events of later decades, an agent in the court of Naples would have been a boon to him.

The other thing which had been noticed in the underworld was the unusual activity of witch-lodges around the world. Envoys from each of the great cults were on the move. An agent of the Virginian lodge had apparently left America, to the consternation of many. The followers of Mackandal had seized a French merchant vessel, and a delegation of negro occultists had allegedly set sail. Even in the Russian embassy, there’d been talk of personal directives from the Empress herself.

It’s not hard to see what was happening. All roads were leading to St Belique. In the centre of the vault of the Church of Saint Simone, Who had erected an enormous table, varnished with smooth red lacquer and lavished with delicate, intertwining wreaths of orchid-blossom. The table was huge, so big that it had been specially constructed inside the vault itself, and though it technically had thirteen sides it was generally referred to by Who’s native assistants as ‘the round table’ (interesting, given that they wouldn’t have