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By Root 527 0

He was civil in his dealings with Who, politely asking where he might find lodgings on the island before questioning the exact nature of the wedding. Who reassured him, in his best Anglo-Chinese, that everything was in order. Whether Van Burgh knew of the troubles at Henrietta Street is unclear, but, perhaps ominously, he did state that the men of Virginia expected great things of this ceremony. Who just folded his hands together and bowed. (Still, it’s got to be said, the definition of ‘enlightened’ in this era was still a little loose. As has been recorded elsewhere, as late as 1804 Thomas Jefferson – the greatest mind of the age, according to some – genuinely believed that there were giant woolly mammoths living in the American midwest, on one occasion even sending a party to search for them.)

News spread fast. There was an American on the island. Some took this as their cue to be cautious, while others took it as their cue to act, and only days later the delegation from Hispaniola arrived in order to prove that no American presence would cow them. Very soon St Belique would be a hive of activity, as the wedding guests would ‘accidentally’ meet in the heat-sodden streets of the harbour-town. Mr Van Burgh was civil to all parties, although he did seem to have some contempt for the negro rebels.

If the lodges of the world weren’t ready to unite, they were at least on speaking terms. With the apes unseen for a month, a few felt, that the crisis was over, though most believed the creatures were simply regrouping. In this ominous shadow, alliances were certainly possible. But for the lodges to reach an agreement, for the ceremony to have a focus and a purpose, there would have to be a wedding. And on the very same day that the Hispaniolans arrived on St Belique, the Doctor was unconscious in a room of brilliant white, on a bed with red silken sheets.

The room wasn’t in the House. Henrietta Street had been all but forgotten. Though every single record of the era mentions the white room, as all the Doctor’s associates came to visit him during his great sickness, nobody explains where the room actually was. As even Who came to the Doctor’s bedside on one occasion, it can’t have been in England. It may have been somewhere on St Belique, kept apart from the wedding guests who still hadn’t heard of the groom’s decline, but it’s more likely that the room was in the magical gardens of the TARDIS. All the descriptions of it are in that hazy, otherwordly style which Scarlette adopted when speaking of the Doctor’s place of power.

The walls of the room were white and plain, almost sterile, and there’s no mention of the area having any smell (unusual, in an era where medical health went hand in hand with all manner of stinking concoctions). In fact, the walls were so white that often visitors would forget they were there at all and momentarily believe they were in some secret, faraway place with no boundaries. The light – from what source isn’t known – would be bright, enough to make objects within the room seem fuzzy at the edges. The bed was the only large piece of furniture, a huge wooden construction in the middle of the endless space. It’s said that against the great oak headboard, the Doctor looked tiny and wasted, a pale figure propped up on red satin pillows. He lay there day after day, clammy and stripped to the waist, half his body lying under the red silk sheets and the other half lying without. Though his neck was propped up for most of the time, his eyes, when open, seemed permanently fixed on the ceiling.

It looked, for all the world, like a deathbed. But nobody seems to have spoken of such things. Indeed, the Doctor’s associates attempted to act as though this were just a phase. Fitz would often visit the bedside, and give reports of the latest activity both in London and on the island, even though the Doctor was rarely conscious enough to respond. Anji would sometimes stand at the back of the room, looking itchy. The Doctor’s malaise affected his companions badly, not just because they were concerned for him but because