Doctor Who_ The Adventures of Henrietta Street - Lawrence Miles [12]
It seems almost unnecessary to complete the story, or to describe what the cabman and sergeant claimed to have found when they’d looked into the back of the cab. As Lisa-Beth would have well known, the story of the mystery beast had been popular throughout the era of the rakes and their blasphemous rituals. The endings of these urban folk tales were predictable. Man found trampled to death in the fields near the Edgware Road; scraps of flesh and clothing discovered in a back street of Holborn, suggesting that someone had been eaten alive; streetwalker clawed to death by unseen animal. Indeed, a critical mind might have asked whether Anne-Belle Paley had ever really existed at all.
But this particular story had been given an interesting incidental detail. According to the sergeant, the thing the woman had been screaming as the cab had moved out of London was: ‘We mustn’t go through the wall.’
This is so suggestive of the horizon, the ‘wall around the world’ described by the tantrists, that Lisa-Beth must surely have pricked up her ears. The babewyns had, at least in rumour, drawn first blood. While high society was fretting over the imminent fall of the government, the women of the streets and seraglios were finding their own reasons for concern. In such an age of suspicion and rumour, it’s possible Lisa-Beth began to feel that even if Scarlette’s tradition was an outdated one, it was at least something. The protection of a House was always an asset, even if the House seemed to be built on shaky ground.
According to Lisa-Beth’s own version of events, she was ‘unimpressed’ by those assembled at the ball. She refers to various masked entities gathered in the hall, including a man wearing the face of a mandrill, who danced in an exuberant manner with a lady Lisa-Beth didn’t recognise. This seems to suggest that the masks were worn by the men not as disguises (this was hardly an era of discretion), but as indicators of the orders and lodges they represented. Lisa-Beth also noticed the red-headed Juliette at the ball, and later noted:
Scarlette’s got this one well-trained. I wonder what she’s going to do with it [i.e. Juliette]? The girl was wearing a ring, I couldn’t get close enough to see the seal. The symbol of Scarlette and her kin? The bitch-mother, I think, is trying to start her own coven here in London. I doubt London will even notice.
It was shortly after this that Rebecca led Lisa-Beth into one of the backrooms of the House, presumably the one in which Scarlette is known to have kept her office, complete with a wooden desk, wooden bookshelves, and all the paraphernalia of bureaucracy (quills and ink, largely). It was here that Lisa-Beth and Scarlette finally met.
Oddly, when Lisa-Beth entered the room she found herself witnessing a swordfight. There were two individuals in the office, both of whom were wearing what Lisa-Beth called ‘masks of crossed metal’ (fencing masks?). They failed to pay any attention to Lisa-Beth as she entered, but carried on with their duel, repeatedly thrusting and parrying at each other’s blows. This isn’t hard to believe, given Scarlette’s character. While those in the main hall of the House were waiting for the Great Hostess to show herself, Scarlette was at the rear of the building, ‘relaxing’ with this physical exercise before making her grande entrance.
Scarlette was very much a woman of her time, even if there was a feeling in society that the time in question was ending. During the American revolution, US publications were full of stories about the ‘amazons’ who fought like hardened soldiers for their country: women who dressed as men to fight as men, or in some cases hid flintlocks and gutting-knives beneath their petticoats. Illustrations depicted