Doctor Who_ The Adventures of Henrietta Street - Lawrence Miles [147]
It’s impossible to establish a proper timeline for these events, but it evidently started with the Maroons. Finding themselves in the jungles of the Kingdom, Émondeur and his men immediately fell back on their usual sneak-tactics. They stalked the apes in those wilderness areas, just as the apes stalked them, destroying the monuments of the King exactly as they had on St Belique. And they weren’t alone. The Masonic guests, seeing the apes destroy (at least in shadow-play) their sacred library, at once began devising traps for the animals. The Servicemen did much the same, as did the few Russians. Soon these groups began to mix, coming together in the labyrinthine streets of the crumbling city and fighting a protracted guerrilla war against the apes. The apes may have formed themselves into a hierarchy, but with their hatred of all things knowledgeable they can hardly have had tactics to match those of the humans.
The above Masonic account mentions humans ‘eating of the flesh’ of the apes, and this is certainly true. The Maroons were probably the first to think of the more practical aspects of survival here. With harsh determination, they began to slaughter the animals for food. The beasts were skinned, their pelts taken as trophies; their bones were removed, to be used in rituals of thanksgiving to the black spirits who protected the Maroons in their struggle; and, most importantly, their flesh was eaten. The Maroons believed the creatures would taste of pork, and so, it seems, they did. The broken carcasses of the animals would smoulder over campfires under the bright blue sky (there’s no record of night ever falling in the Kingdom), filling the forests with the scent of bubbling fat.
Fitz and Anji, the twin elementals, were survivors just like the others. To begin with the two of them seem to have stumbled blindly through the backstreets of the city, avoiding rather than confronting the animals. Some time later, though, they found an encampment of other humans on the edge of the Hispaniola-style forest. The humans were mostly Maroons, Malpertuis among them, but some errant Englishmen had joined them. Mrs Gallacher was there as well, keeping order by jovially threatening to whip anyone who stepped out of line.
It was here that both Fitz and Anji realised what had truly happened, when the Doctor and Scarlette had bonded. The guests had been transferred into the Kingdom of Beasts, certainly, but more importantly they’d become a genuine army. Here at the camp, even the softest and fattest of English gentlemen was forced to consider how he might use his own particular ritual skills to bring down the enemy. This was the frontline, where those who believed it was their duty to protect the planet were compelled to put their money where their mouths were.
Fitz wasted no time in establishing himself as the leader of this assembly. Much to the disdain of Anji, Fitz frequently gave speeches to the assembled ritualists which may have been cribbed from the great military addresses of the past. None of the others, Maroon or Mason, negro or Virginian, argued with him. They must have respected his status as an elemental, even though Fitz was quite cheerful in admitting that if they were to survive this then they’d have to locate the Doctor.
Or muttered some, to locate Scarlette. She at least might still be alive.
The location of the Doctor. Something that was on everyone’s minds, and a question that can easily be answered thanks to a most unlikely source: Katya. Disciple of the Empress Catherine, most unexpected of soldiers, it was she who oversaw the survival of the Doctor in those fierce non-days of the Kingdom.
Though most of those transported to the city found themselves in bleak reflections of their own homelands, Katya’s story, as she later related it to her colleagues, was quite different. She arrived at the entrance to a vast