Doctor Who_ The Adventures of Henrietta Street - Lawrence Miles [35]
The reference to ‘other elementals’ is the first indication that the Doctor had friends outside of the House who could be ‘summoned’ to give him aid. These unearthly friends, he told Juliette, would soon arrive at the House. He couldn’t say when, as before he could call them he had to complete certain scientific work in his laboratory-study.
It’s true that the Doctor was spending longer and longer periods downstairs. This could partly be explained by his work on the process of summoning, but there’s another possible explanation. On the last day of the month, Scarlette knocked on the door and received no reply: there was no sound from within, not even the crackling of his electrical devices. Being the only one in the House who ever risked disturbing him, she opened the door and descended the stone steps into the cellar.
There she found the Doctor, a nearly burned-out lamp by his side, slumped over the big wooden table in the middle of the room. She took him to be asleep, but later realised that his state was closer to what might in modern terms be called nervous exhaustion. She thought it best not to awaken him, although in her journal she does pause to wonder how many hours he spent asleep or unconscious behind that door.
He’d been sick when he’d arrived in London, for reasons Scarlette couldn’t deduce, but which she felt may have been related to the absence of his Tardis. Now he was obviously getting worse. And, ritualistic as she was, she couldn’t help connecting his malady to the malady of the House itself. Lisa-Beth’s victory wasn’t enough to permanently lift the House’s spirits, especially not when, on April 24, Katya was attacked in Maiden Lane: not by an ape, but by a crowd of drunks who tore off her dress and nearly left her scarred with a broken bottle before she managed to make her escape.
And there was one final ill omen. During the Whig campaign in Westminster, Charles Fox had asked several notable political figures to help him drum up support. One was an individual whom many still saw as a spokesman for liberty despite his reputation, an individual who’d been responsible for a great deal of damage in the past – who’d once even been thought of as insane – but who’d now repented and was eager to prove himself a force to be reckoned with in the new era.
His name was Lord George Gordon, instigator of the Gordon Riots of 1780. The skin of London continued to prickle.
* * *
3
England
A Night Out
In the first week of May, 1782, a box at the Drury Lane Theatre was reserved at the request of Miss Scarlette of Henrietta Street. This is remarkable in itself, given her reputation: boxes at the Theatre were generally the preserve of the particularly fashionable or royal. The names attributed to her party include ‘Doctor J’, also of Henrietta Street; Miss Juliette Vierge, to whom he was said to be engaged; Mr Fitzgerald Kreiner (a German, apparently, rumoured to be a distant relative of the royal Hanoverians); and Miss Anji Kapoor. When the party entered the box there was hissing from the crowds below, but this was nothing unusual. The Theatre was a noisy place, and the bon ton liked to judge their standing in society by the reaction they were given from the cheap seats. Scarlette would have been easy to recognise as one of the ‘suspect’ demi-reps, though she, of course, didn’t even acknowledge the sound. She was reported to have had a satisfied smile on her face as she took her seat.
Because so many of the accounts of Scarlette come from Lisa-Beth, it’s easy to see this Procuress of Henrietta Street as a woman living in a world of her own. But even apart from the great impact she obviously made on those around her,