Doctor Who_ The Adventures of Henrietta Street - Lawrence Miles [160]
Evidently Sabbath was quite happy to acknowledge that it was the Doctor’s role to deal with the King himself. Almost certainly though, he considered this to be the last great stand of the elementals rather than the beginning of a new era for the Doctor. Besides, from February onwards he and Juliette had other matters on which to concentrate.
The Siege of Henrietta Street
The events that took place at the House on February 8 are often known as ‘the Siege’, but as the battle lasted almost no time at all it was hardly a ‘Siege’ in the normal sense. Unless, of course, those who gave it that name acknowledged what all those who’d fought in the Kingdom of Beasts had suspected. The palace and the House were in accord, bound together by blood. The Siege had begun a world away, and only the final moves were made in Covent Garden.
It’s not hard to see why so much importance should be attached to this ‘last stand’ at the House. For one thing it was well recorded, catalogued in the journals of those who survived not as one of the myth-battles of the Kingdom of Beasts, but as a real, and vital, historical event. It also set in motion the events which would end in Scarlette’s funeral, a week later, although this is hardly noted in the establishment’s accounts.
What would the Doctor have seen, when he regained consciousness in the House on that day? He would have found himself in Scarlette’s bedroom, and in Scarlette’s bed. The House had changed somewhat since he and his friends had left it. In Scarlette’s room the walls were adorned with works of (counterfeit) art, the four-poster returned to its space in the corner. If it wasn’t opulent, it was at least respectable. The rest of the House followed suit. The pianoforte once again stood in the salon, while the walls of the hall and the bedrooms were hung with tapestries and paintings, including one of the earliest prints of Fuseli’s Nightmare. New rugs had been laid on the floors, new paint applied to the walls. Those broken windows at the front of the House which hadn’t yet been replaced had at least been boarded over, and while fuel had been scarce at the end of the previous year on that particular evening the oil was burning all through the building. The House was once again filled with lamplight and body-heat, even if there were few women to seat themselves provocatively on the chaise-longues.
The rebirth of the House had been down to Lisa-Beth and Rebecca, of course. Unable to discover who actually owned the House, even though they knew that Scarlette had once paid the rent, they’d simply broken into the building and begun to redecorate. It’s impossible to say where the money had come from. Successful prostitutes in Covent Garden often hoarded money for their later years, it’s true, but even the combined savings of the two women couldn’t have accounted for all the new furnishings. To be romantic about it, it may even have been Sabbath who’d had a hand in things; reversing his earlier decision (for once) and encouraging his contacts to pump money back into the old bordello. If he did, then it was probably to keep the Doctor and company out of his hair, such as it was, rather than out of sheer compassion.
Alternatively, the women might just have sold off all the equipment in the cellar. No debt-collector had ever dared touch it.
Nonetheless, it was in this rebuilt seraglio that the Doctor found himself when he sat bolt upright in bed, shortly after nightfall on February 8. It’s not clear how long he’d been lying there,