Doctor Who_ The Adventures of Henrietta Street - Lawrence Miles [15]
Either way, Scarlette must surely have reminded Lisa-Beth about the story of the dead prostitute found in the back of the cab, heart (or lungs, depending on the version) torn out. And when Scarlette explained that something truly terrible was about to happen to the capital? When she suggested that from Covent Garden to St John’s Wood, those trained in such things had seen the babewyns trying to scratch their way into the world? What did Lisa-Beth, straightforward to a fault, make of that?
It’s easy to be wise in retrospect. By the end of the year, it was obvious what had been moving in on London and how close to the edge the city truly was. But at the time, with only vague rumours and one possible manifestation to go on, Lisa-Beth must have been sceptical. It was probably the Doctor who finally made up her mind.
The word Lisa-Beth might have used to describe the Doctor might have been ‘Byronesque’, if it weren’t for the fact that the future Lord Byron hadn’t yet been born. She found him not displeasing in appearance, and she took him at once to be the aristocrat-poet type, some weeks later saying that he looked like the kind of well-bred individual who’d ‘end his days as an outcast either for unnatural acts or crimes of religion’. She noticed, almost immediately, that he was wearing a ring exactly like Juliette’s: this must have convinced her that he was a follower, rather than a friend, of Scarlette’s. She had no way of knowing, yet, that it was the Doctor who’d provided both of the rings. In her initial account Lisa-Beth also makes note of the Doctor’s beard, the moustache and neat triangle of hair on his chin, which to her looked slightly darker and more forbidding than the curly brown hair on his head.
The Doctor immediately tried to convince Lisa-Beth that something had gone very, very wrong with the world, which was remarkably in keeping with the mood of the country as a whole. In fact, Rebecca recorded his address to her in detail, but although it’s an important source it has to be remembered that it was written later, and from memory: it may have been influenced by the stories about the Doctor that circulated after the March ball. Furthermore, Lisa-Beth had her own prejudices about the man’s intentions as a cohort of Scarlette. In the following text, the section in italics is particularly suspect. Also, some of Lisa-Beth’s more archaic English has been neatened into a slightly more modern version.
‘Think of it as a kind of story. Once upon a time, there must have been a race of what I suppose you’d call… elementals. A race who pinned down time like tacks in a seamstress’s shop. Who made sure that time didn’t tear, or shred, or pull away at the edges. Except that the elementals don’t exist any more, Lisa-Beth. And they never did.’
(Note: it’s unclear whether the word ‘seamstress’ has a deliberate double-meaning here, given that it’s often used as a synonym for ‘prostitute’. Note also that to a tantrist like Lisa-Beth, this ‘objectifying’ of time can’t have been as anachronistic as it might seem.)
‘So. With the elementals gone, nothing’s holding time together. Except, of course, that you can’t remove their kind of power from the universe and expect it to vanish completely. Too many consequences. Too much history. Which is why there are so many people now trying to do the job the elementals used to do. Which is why the old knowledge of time seems to have worked its way into your culture, admittedly in a particularly arcane form.’ [At this point, Lisa-Beth asked whether he was referring to the Hellfire Club.] ‘The Hellfire Club. The Grand Lodge Freemasons. The witch-cults in Russia. Some of the newer religious orders in the West Indies. People like you. All holding