Doctor Who_ The Adventures of Henrietta Street - Lawrence Miles [150]
There was other, more familiar, aid for Fitz and his comrades. Mere seconds before the first of the apes arrived at the alien palace, a single figure was seen striding towards the fortress along one of the crumbling streets. The ritualists were expecting to see a wave of apes tumbling along that road, so Anji had to tell them not to open fire when she saw the stately, red-clad silhouette which approached. Rumour has it that when he realised who it was, the Virginian seriously considered firing anyway.
So it came to pass that Scarlette arrived, even as the apes – their claws scraping on the nearby cobblestones, and their stink clogging up the atmosphere even if they weren’t yet visible – drew closer. Standing before the crowd of men and (few) women, Scarlette casually drew two muskets from her belt, never explaining where the weapons had come from or even where she’d been. At that moment, it was clear that Fitz would no longer be giving the orders.
Scarlette calmly but firmly told her army that it was their duty to hold off the apes for as long as possible. This palace was the last stronghold of the elementals, she said, and its defence was the duty of all those who held the elementals’ legacy. With that she joined the other armed ritualists, turning to face the surrounding streets, ready for the babewyns as they came into view.
Nobody even considered arguing with her, not even the Virginian, as the opening shots were fired.
Earthbound
The third source of help was, literally, a world away.
In late January, both Lisa-Beth and Rebecca arrived back at Henrietta Street. Arrived makes the process sound like a conscious decision, but apparently things were somewhat more coincidental. Lisa-Beth passed the old House, or so she claims in her journal, simply because she happened to be in the Covent Garden region. But when she arrived at the building which had been her home for much of the past year, she found Rebecca there.
The women hadn’t met since their return to London, when they’d gone their separate ways. Yet here was Rebecca, back turned to the narrow, bustling street on a Tuesday afternoon, staring through the windows into the stripped salon. Several of the panes had been shattered, and it was clear that nobody had set foot inside the place in nearly two months.
Rebecca merely nodded to her, and Lisa-Beth nodded back. She confessed to Rebecca that the Doctor, while he’d been delirious in the white room, had asked her to take over the running of the House. He’d been hopeful, even to the end, that the building would keep its doors open in spite of the storm. Rebecca ‘only shrugged’ on hearing this. Did Lisa-Beth hope that Rebecca would give her some kind of reassurance, and say it couldn’t be helped? If so, it was too much to hope for.
For some time after that they stood in silence, while people bustled past them in the street. Then, after a while, Lisa-Beth became aware that somebody else was standing before the front of the building. She saw him first as a reflection, a shadow in the broken glass at the front of the House. When she and Rebecca turned, they saw the man standing just behind them on the pavement, a man they’d both seen before but never been introduced to. He was dark-haired and clean-shaven, and on his smart black shirt he still wore a rosette of blue and white. His hands were folded nonchalantly behind his back, as if he too were contemplating the sad fall of the House.
Lisa-Beth was eager to confront him, perhaps frustrated at her own lack of action, and demanded to know what he was doing here. The man hardly reacted. He simply informed her that he was