Doctor Who_ The Adventures of Henrietta Street - Lawrence Miles [40]
Meanwhile, the Doctor was discovering much of this information from his own sources, mainly Scarlette. She had, after all, been party to the events that had first seen Sabbath break away from the Service in 1780. The Doctor made plans accordingly.
One afternoon in early May he took a trip by carriage to Tyburn, not exactly the teeming centre of the metropolis and quiet enough on most days, but famous for being the site of the country’s most noted public gallows. Travelling with him were Fitz and Lisa-Beth. Lisa-Beth describes Fitz (with sarcasm, we feel) as ‘likeable enough, though you would expect a more alert countenance from an elemental’. Fitz was in his early thirties, and in the House it was considered that he’d have been something of a rake if he’d been better bred. He had a habit of grinning inanely at the women who lived in the House with him, as if he weren’t sure what the protocol was supposed to be. He’d frequently look away nervously when he saw Lisa-Beth in a state of undress, though Lisa-Beth was utterly unconcerned.
The purpose of the Tyburn trip was odd, to say the least. There was no execution scheduled for that day, and even if there had been it’s unlikely that the Doctor would have wanted to spectate. The previous night, the Doctor had enlisted the services of Rebecca, Juliette, Lisa-Beth and two of the other women in what had appeared to be an elaborate seance. The Doctor had placed a red envelope in the middle of the floor – one of those wedding invitations which hadn’t yet been delivered – and instructed the women to focus on it, all the time asking curious questions, apparently to whomsoever the envelope was addressed. Rebecca had used various items, including her deck of cards, to supply answers. When Anji had impatiently asked the Doctor what he was doing, the Doctor had replied: ‘Navigating.’ Indeed, he did seem to have been trying to ascertain a certain place through this ceremony, although Lisa-Beth’s suggestion was that he was actually navigating through time.
The Doctor ordered the cab to stop when it reached the end of the long dirt road that led from central London into Tyburn. He walked around the area for some time on arrival, inspecting the gallows and the empty spectator grandstands, searching for an exact spot (the spot indicated by the ‘seance’?) while Fitz and Lisa-Beth looked on. Finally he settled on the huge gallows structure itself, which he claimed was ‘probably’ the correct site. He carefully removed one of the supporting beams of the structure, then placed the red envelope inside the framework before replacing the beam, sealing the invitation away out of sight.
He evidently believed that from the hangman’s platform the invitation would somehow make its way to its proper destination. Lisa-Beth records that she saw the writing on the envelope, in the Doctor’s hand, and that it simply read ‘Family’. How he expected anyone to find it in Tyburn she didn’t know, but she admits that several months later she went back to the site to see if the envelope was still there. It was, even though the Doctor was by then claiming that the invitation had been received.
But there was another reason for this day out on the city’s outskirts. It was on the way back home that the Doctor gave certain instructions to Fitz, instructions he didn’t want to speak of in the presence of Scarlette. While Lisa-Beth listened, he said that it’d be Fitz’s task to find Sabbath, and that he already knew where the hunt should begin. The Doctor must have perceived this shadowy, unseen agent as some kind of monster – a brooding presence, throwing his considerable bulk up against all the old orders and factions – and if there was one thing the Doctor couldn’t ignore, it was a monster.
So if Scarlette’s relationship with the Doctor was starting to suffer at this point, then it was hardly a surprise.