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been with the Queen of New York State herself on the day that the British army had surrendered at Virginia and the United States, under General Washington, had been declared a ‘no-go’ area for those of Scarlette’s tradition. The Queen had died that day, and since then the tantrists of London had begun to whisper that the very ground of the Americas was poison to all of their kind, that any English witch or ritualist who set foot on independent American soil would instantly burst into flames… although whenever Rebecca was asked what had really happened in New York, she’d simply shrug and turn her attention back to her deck of cards.

There was a kind of stain on Rebecca’s honour, then. Rebecca had been in America when terrible things had happened there – when Matthew Crane, Hidden Master of the Grand Lodge Temple of St Andrew’s Trust, had ordered the covert exile of all foreign mystics and courtesans from every colony, New York to Virginia – and even if Rebecca herself hadn’t in any way been to blame (she was, after all, still only nineteen) she was considered by many in London to be something of a curse. Typical of the era, when she received a visit from ‘the Prince’ her blood was said to turn to poison. Perhaps this is why Rebecca often seemed so detached from those around her: or perhaps it was her habit of matter-of‐factly making predictions about the future (‘oh yes, there are going to be men flying in balloons… there will be whole wars fought in the sky’) and then changing the subject completely.

So, all things considered, there must have been a great deal of unease in the air on that night in March when the red-and‐black people met, drank, milled and speculated inside the House on Henrietta Street. The world was changing, society was unsettled, and Scarlette’s decision to hold the ball in the first place seemed somehow fundamentally wrong.

Then, on top of all that, there were the rumours about the Doctor.

Master of This House

Lisa-Beth moved into the House on Henrietta Street some time in late March. She was definitely living there by April, when her journals describe the peculiar experiments being performed in the House’s cellar, but if Scarlette’s diaries are to be believed then her first visit was on the night of the ball. According to Scarlette, Lisa-Beth had summoned up something which ‘the witch couldn’t put down’; Rebecca had been sent to help her, probably some time around half eleven; and Lisa-Beth had arrived at the House around midnight, when the ball was in full swing but Scarlette had yet to show herself in front of the guests. (How Scarlette knew that Lisa-Beth had summoned such a ‘creature’ isn’t made clear. There’s a suggestion that this may have had something to do with Rebecca’s alleged preternatural knowledge, but there was at least one other individual living at the House who might have been able to sense such a disturbance.)

Lisa-Beth distrusted Scarlette and felt, like so many others, that this ‘mystical adventuress’ had been milking the legacy of the Hellfire Club for far too long. So why did this most cynical of demi-reps make the decision to move all her things, from her Indian wall-hangings to her surprisingly large collection of books – including the hilariously pornographic History of Marie Antoinette and Wessel’s futuristic Anno 7603 – from her lodgings off the Strand? Lisa-Beth’s own ‘experience’ on that night had something to do with it, of course. But the babewyn Lisa-Beth ostensibly summoned was only part of the picture.

Two weeks earlier, a prostitute named Anne-Belle Paley had been picked up by the watch near Marylebone, to the western side of London. The Roundhouse had been unusually full that night, and as a result the watch had decided to take Paley to a different place of imprisonment just outside the city. The rest of the story reads like some horrible gothic fantasy. The woman had been bundled into a cab, and at first she’d put up no resistance, even flirting with the arresting sergeant (not uncommon in Covent Garden). But as the cab had approached the city limits,