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By Root 373 0

tales of her exploits are legion. She was said to have bested the famous dandy highwayman and wencher ‘Sixteen-String Jack’ in a drinking contest shortly before his public execution, and to have disarmed him of his weapon one-handed after he took the defeat badly. And she was just as formidable on the night of the Theatre visit. Arriving by hackney cab outside, her party had been met by a group of prostitutes from south of the river who abused her friends and threatened her with violence, stating that she was bringing disrepute even to their kind. According to one popular story Scarlette responded to this by casually drawing a musket and pointing it at the leader of the women, saying: ‘If it’s blood you wish to see, then let it be on my hands.’

In fact, this story is apocryphal. The truth about the encounter was stranger yet, as later events would show.

Scarlette’s demeanour was one of perpetual calm, and she appeared amused by events around her no matter what the threat. In this respect, she must have got on with the Doctor remarkably well. She spent more time in his company than any other individual at the House, leading to (entirely untrue) rumours that they were having an affair; that his marriage to Juliette was part of some dastardly plot masterminded by Scarlette herself; even that the Doctor was some demonic reincarnation of Francis Dashwood, a rumour given weight by the fact that the founder of the Hellfire Club had died (in suspicious circumstances, naturally) just weeks before the Doctor had arrived.

One night the Doctor and Scarlette spent the entire evening, alone, drinking wine in the salon of the House. Scarlette claims that they lay together on the floor, staring up at the rafters in the ceiling, trying to see through the wood and into time itself. This was punctuated by some giggling – even from the Doctor, it would appear – and the pair attempted to outdo each other with tales of their adventures, the Doctor claiming that he’d once been invited into the boudoir of Marie-Antoinette, Scarlette claiming that she’d once ridden a woolly mammoth (still not believed entirely extinct) which had been a gift to George III from Catherine of Russia. It was probably now that the Doctor made his notorious ‘two hearts’ claim, exactly the kind of story which would have been told by charlatans like Cagliostro in France. When either the alcohol or the meditation caused them to be successful in their efforts to see through the ceiling, Scarlette fashioned a pair of crowns for them to wear out of dyed paper and declared them to be ‘the King and Queen of All Tune’. The Doctor ostensibly stated that he was reluctant to become any kind of king, so Scarlette instead crowned herself the Queen and declared him to be her Physician in Ordinary. (She jokingly said that she was still waiting for somebody truly special to be her Physician in Extraordinary.)

At the Theatre, many members of the party were evidently nervous at the crowd’s reaction, particularly Mr Kreiner and Miss Kapoor. They must have been taken aback by the audience, and probably put out by London society’s habit of loudly talking through the performance about the latest scandals amongst the bon ton. Drury Lane was a place in which one was seen, not a place for seeing. Scarlette had chosen the performance believing it to be a fantastical story of ‘unlikely adventures on the newly-discovered star, Georgium Sidius’, but the information was inaccurate and she spent much of the evening using her discretion-glass to observe the other boxes.

There were more women waiting outside for them when they left. This time they spat at Scarlette and her friends. The Doctor urged Scarlette to ignore the distraction and move on, but Scarlette insisted on stopping right in front of the delegation of prostitutes. This is where the story of the drawn musket probably originates. Scarlette reached into the top of her dress, but the item she drew from her corset, dangling on a piece of cord, was no firearm.

It was a piece of jagged glass: the greatest surviving relic of the bloody, gothic