Doctor Who_ The Adventures of Henrietta Street - Lawrence Miles [125]
She was just about to turn back when she noticed a single human figure, standing quite still at the end of one of the pathways, a black silhouette against the sunset. It was the same figure Rebecca had seen through the window of the House during her last afternoon at Henrietta Street, and true enough, the stories are remarkably similar.
Neither woman seems to have been surprised by the other. Rebecca asked the woman in black what she was doing there, and the woman replied that it seemed a good place to be, ‘amongst the rest of the hunted things’. Then Rebecca asked whether she’d come to see the Doctor, or perhaps Scarlette. The woman hesitated, then said that there was most probably little she could say to Scarlette, although she asked after the health of the Doctor. When Rebecca informed her that he was dying, the woman hesitated again, before asking whether Rebecca thought it would be acceptable for her to see the Doctor once more.
This time, Rebecca said that it probably was. Things had changed since October: now the Doctor was felt to be not merely sick but actually doomed. However, Rebecca made one stipulation. If you see the Doctor, she told the woman in black, then you must make it perfectly clear to him that the connection between the two of you is severed, and that his heart no longer belongs to you. At this the woman agreed, before turning her back and vanishing into the jungle.
Rebecca may have shared the story of the woman in black with someone that night, and it may have spread throughout the island, because when the Revels began the next morning there was a renewed determination to catch the ‘succubus’. Those factions who kept a tally of kills even went as far as to put a bounty of a hundred points on the woman’s head. As the idea of a succubus hunt spread, new stories emerged about the mysterious creature’s powers. She’d once been human, said one story, but she’d made a pact with the Devil and now had the power to become pure vapour and vanish at will. She was rumoured to be the mate of the King of Beasts, a human consort and accomplished witch. The Maroons even held that she was an aspect of the Black Virgin herself, their answer to the Holy Mother of the Catholic slavemasters. It’s doubtful whether many of the guests took these stories seriously, but a bounty of a hundred points was nothing to be sniffed at.
And yes, the hunters were becoming increasingly aggressive. Scarlette had been expecting this. As the wedding day approached and there was still no sign that an actual ceremony would be held, the guests took out their frustration on the apes, or indeed on any other animals of the forest which got in their way. It didn’t help that the prey was getting thin on the ground. At the beginning of the Revels each use of the TARDIS had called forth a whole host of animals, but now the apes were becoming scarce. The Hispaniolans proudly declared that they’d very nearly wiped the beasts out, although nobody else believed this. It was as though the animals were no longer blindly following the summons. Once or twice those creatures which did come failed to attack as usual: they were sighted hiding in the trees, hissing and licking their claws, as if biding their time.
Then, on November 22, the Frenchman – the guest with the closest links to the Catholic Church – received news from the Vatican. There was a certain Cardinal there at the heart of the Holy Roman Empire who, according to the Pope’s informers, had interests in Satanism. (This may sound shocking, but at the time occultism was often practised by the high-ranking members of the established Church. Cardinals viewed