Doctor Who_ The Adventures of Henrietta Street - Lawrence Miles [151]
A cryptic message, indeed. And with that the man turned his back on them, to walk away from the House. Lisa-Beth shouted after him as he went, demanding to know who he thought he was, but without turning to face her the man simply said that he’d be most disappointed if the women failed in their task at this stage.
Rebecca stepped forward then, and held Lisa-Beth’s arm, though it was hardly necessary. Lisa-Beth admits that the man had stung something in her, perhaps reminding her of the duty she still felt she owed the Doctor. So the two of them watched the gentleman vanish into the crowd, before turning their attention back to the front of the House.
It was, says Lisa-Beth, Rebecca who forced the lock and allowed them both to enter.
Can a word like ‘meanwhile’ be used, to bridge the gap between the Earth and the Kingdom of Beasts? If it can, then meanwhile the battle for the palace was already under way. Of all the bloodthirsty images of the other realm, none are worse than this. Scarlette, both pistols drawn, letting loose the first shots as the apes come into view along a road which ‘seemed to have been torn from the architecture of Vienna itself (Masonic archive). The armed members of the Conclave following suit, pistols at the ready, blowing bloody chunks out of the animals’ bodies. The remaining beasts barely even noticing, ripping their colleagues to shreds as they vault over the corpses. The apes would keep pouring through the streets from the King’s Square, and really it’s a miracle that the humans held them off for as long as they did. As Scarlette herself describes it, it was like one of the bull-runs of Spain, hundreds upon hundreds of sweating, hairy, shrieking bodies crowding the streets and pushing each other aside. The humans stood firm in the gateway of the palace, those with firearms at the front, those without – like Fitz, or Anji, or the by now hysterical Mrs Gallacher – standing at the rear, clutching whatever makeshift weapons they could gather.
In less than a minute, the first humans had fallen. Unsurprisingly, it was the Maroons who suffered: they were always better prepared to lay their lives on the line than the others. Scarlette gave the order, in bellowing tones which must have surprised all those present, to fall back slowly. As far as she was concerned, they were buying time for those concealed deeper in the palace. She must have been prepared to see herself and all her comrades die, if it would give the Doctor more time. Inch by inch, yard by yard, the apes made their way into the palace.
Some fell back faster than others. Fitz and Anji realised early on that they were virtually useless in close combat, and that they’d do more good attending to the Doctor. At this stage, of course, nobody knew for certain that the Doctor was inside the palace… but somehow everyone assumed he’d be there. Fitz was certainly convinced that the Doctor would be found at the heart of the stonework, even if Anji was more cynical. So it was that the two of them left the frontline, and made their way through the crumbling vaults of the fortress, heading for what they estimated to be its centre.
Descriptions of the palace interior are manifold, but all of them describe something approaching one of the ancient, Sultan-ruled palaces of the Arabian Nights (it may or may not be coincidental that a new English version of the Nights was to be published in 1783, to much public interest). There was a labyrinth of great hallways beyond the huge gate, and all of them displayed an angular, hard-edged architecture which reminded many of the unusual buildings of the Far East. But the décor within the halls had all the pomposity of Westminster. There were statues, enormous figures in stained black stone, of Presidents