Doctor Who_ The Adventures of Henrietta Street - Lawrence Miles [14]
It’s safe to assume that while all this was occurring at the back of the House, Rebecca had returned to the main hall, because several gentlemen in attendance at the ball reported seeing her at the cardtable at around half past midnight. At any society function, a card table was de rigeur. Game of choice for most gamblers of the upper class was faro, and it’s a testament to the nature of the era that a game such as this, in which chance was the only element and nothing the gambler did or said made the slightest difference to the outcome, should be the height of fashion. As a hostess, Rebecca often did her duty by manning the cardtable at the House of Scarlette, a popular dealer with the gentlemen thanks to her unusual visionary claims.
At this point in time there still wasn’t a distinction between playing cards and tarot cards, and it’s not hard to see how this might have worked. If tarot cards and playing cards are treated as the same kind of game, then predictions become self-fulfilling prophecies. According to the old system, the Three of Spades suggested Loss, and indeed a Three of Spades drawn at the faro table had such a low value that by and large its appearance would signify quite a loss for the gambler. But Rebecca’s predictions were known for being remarkably long term. It was said that several young aristocrats had drowned themselves after receiving portents of life-long doom from Rebecca, although this is provably untrue and no doubt another result of her unfortunate reputation. It doesn’t seem to have bothered her.
It’s said that when the man known as the Doctor first arrived at the House of Scarlette, Rebecca spent some time watching him draw random cards out of her pack: whereas most people could have their fortunes read with just a single card, an entire quarter of the deck was used up in the Doctor’s case. But the card in the dead centre of all those drawn, the one to which Rebecca is said to have ascribed the most significance, was the Ace of Hearts. (There are many interpretations of this. The story in the ‘Sabbath Book’ to the effect that the single red heart on the card turned black the second it was revealed by the Doctor is unquestionably apocryphal.)
Although there were no formal invitations to the ball, Scarlette did produce a number of envelopes, which she distributed amongst the guests at the House that night. Each was unusual, in that it had a sheen on it like the shine of an oil lamp, although each was a bright red in colour (an expensive little folly, for the time). Thirteen of the envelopes were created, one for each of the major factions, both those who’d sent representatives to the ball and those who either wouldn’t or couldn’t attend. The names on the envelopes were written in a dark, spidery handwriting, undoubtedly the Doctor’s. Scarlette must surely have warned him that it was impractical to deliver them to those ‘cults’ in America and the West Indies, and certainly she would have told him that the Mayakai wouldn’t come to the ball. Or wouldn’t be seen, anyway.
Perhaps the envelopes were still on Scarlette’s desk when Scarlette and the Doctor removed their masks to speak with Lisa-Beth. Lisa-Beth gives some account of all the questions she asked Scarlette, though without all the answers. She no doubt stood with her arms folded, scowling and unimpressed, while she asked why Rebecca had brought her here. Curiously, in Lisa-Beth’s account there’s no reference to what surely must have been the big question playing on her mind.
When Lisa-Beth had regained consciousness in her rooms, she’d pulled back the sheet and discovered what Rebecca had been trying to hide from her: a large bloodstain, where her Westminster client had been lying. It’s hard to guess at the significance of this. Did Rebecca’s supposed babewyn slaughter the politician, and if so then did Rebecca dispose of the body before Lisa-Beth awakened, putting Lisa-Beth in her debt? Or did Rebecca arrive at the rooms in time to break Lisa-Beth’s ‘summoning’, again putting her in credit (in