Doctor Who_ The Adventures of Henrietta Street - Lawrence Miles [143]
DOCTOR: I’m sick. I’m helpless. You must know that.
THE MAN: I rather think that’s my point. Do your duty Doctor. However tedious it may be. Save the universe. Become King of Time. Go after that irritating black object in the sky. Whatever you think is necessary. Once you’ve done that… well, perhaps the universe will be ready for us again, who can say? Then we can set about destroying each other properly. Otherwise, I’m afraid this is hardly our arena any more.
Or, as in the fourth version of the story, the man might have simply pointed to the harbour below him. According to the story there was a ship in that harbour, shining like metal in the black sunlight. It’s written that when the Doctor saw the vessel, and the tiny, red-haired figure who hung from a noose on the deck, he immediately leapt to his feet (despite the obvious disability, one notes) and hurtled down the hill towards the dock.
In the world more familiar to mankind, however, one more thing should be added. Some hours after the bizarre wedding ceremony, Rebecca Macardle investigated the lodgings of all the visitors to the island in the hope of finding some trace of them. All the rooms were empty, except for one, that of the exuberant Frenchman with the fat grey horse. She found the Frenchman himself there, half-naked on his bed, both bound and gagged. Once she released him, he informed her that he’d been there since dawn, when person or persons unseen had entered his room and struck him a blow from behind.
So it couldn’t have been him, who’d dressed in the mask of an ape and given his wordless consent to the marriage of Scarlette and the Doctor. It must have been some other stout, some would say overweight, gentleman with a flair for drama. By the time night drew in on December 1, however, the guest list was hardly the issue.
* * *
11
The Universe
The Neck in the Noose
Christmas came and went, with no comment other than the usual English complaint about the cold. New Year came and went as well, leaving things much as they were before. At the beginning of 1782, Parliament had been in a state of uproar, the government on shaky ground and the Whigs manoeuvring for position. At the end of the year, the situations were much the same, with Shelburne’s government looking as unstable as North’s and the world waiting to see whether the King would be able to weather the storm. So the time the Doctor spent at Henrietta Street was the period of transition, when nobody knew what the future held or where tomorrow’s battle-lines would be drawn. Whether the war against the apes was a reflection of that, or a consequence of it, is up to the individual to decide.
1782 had also been a good year for the ‘new science’. In London, Dr Graham’s infamous Temple of Health and Hymen had finally been closed after a campaign by the Morning Herald, the doctor having spent several years laying ‘infertile’ women out on his miraculous electrical bed and expecting them to suddenly conceive amidst a cradle of bizarre electrical devices. The gulf between the new science and the practices of the old alchemists was evidently closing, and 1783 was to see much more of the same. Later in the year, Casanova would slip his notorious letter into the diplomatic bag of the Venetian Ambassador, claiming that Venice would be razed to the ground by an earthquake on May 25. Casanova wrote the message out of spite, having already been exiled from Venice, but it says much about the nature of the times that the ‘prophecy’ would be taken seriously by many and lead to mass evacuations of the city.
By January 1783, Lisa-Beth and Rebecca were back in London. They presumably arrived back in England by ship, as the TARDIS was still standing on the edge of the forest of St Belique. The price of hiring a merchant captain to make passenger space for a journey all the way to England would have been high indeed, so one can only guess at the services the women must have performed for the crew. Lisa-Beth had moved back to the rooms off the Strand by late January, while Rebecca… well, history