Doctor Who_ The Adventures of Henrietta Street - Lawrence Miles [60]
Hardly surprising that there are so many legends about the confrontation. In Masonic circles, for example, it was said that at the very moment the Doctor and Sabbath came face to face, Scarlette – still back at the tavern – became aware of the meeting. The story goes that she stood from her table, and in front of her assembled women announced, ‘the White Hart has met the Black, and I pity the world for the consequences!’.
But this is provably rubbish. At the moment Sabbath and the Doctor met, the fight at the tavern was just winding down and Scarlette was simply brooding. The mysterious (and possibly mythical) man with the rosette had evidently departed, because as the last of the rowdier men were escorted off the premises Lisa-Beth scowled her way across the room and sat in the seat across the table from her employer. She found Scarlette still hunched over her cup of chocolate, ‘reading the stains at the bottom of the cup as if she thought herself an augur’.
Chocolate and the tantra were inexorably linked, in the eighteenth century. Houses of ill repute were often referred to as ‘chocolate-houses’, as the refreshments they provided included hot chocolate (still regarded as a little exotic) as well as more carnal pleasures. Also, it’s worth pointing out that much of the tantra, at least from a woman’s point of view, was connected to blood and the lunar month: and that chocolate had a reputation for both calming and ‘synchronising’ the body’s menstrual cycle. It’s a well-known fact that chocolate does indeed cause distinct chemical changes in the female biology (largely due to the forced production of seratonin), and it’s therefore logical that cocoa was seen as an almost mystical substance. Many would perhaps be surprised that, far from hemlock or newt’s eye, in some circles chocolate is regarded as the definitive ingredient of witchcraft.
It was possibly the effects of the chocolate which caused Scarlette to open up to Lisa-Beth in a most unexpected way. Lisa-Beth records that Scarlette said nothing for a moment or two, but continued to look down into her emptied cup. Then, at last, she looked up and made eye contact. All she said was:
‘It doesn’t matter about Juliette.’
Lisa-Beth merely nodded. It was an acknowledgement, more than anything. Scarlette was making it clear that she knew the secrets Lisa-Beth had been keeping – relating to Juliette’s own background, many suspected – but that she was now prepared to forget the past. Both Scarlette and Lisa-Beth knew that things weren’t going well for their kind, and that things would get even worse before the end. Both of them now accepted that they had to face the future together.
If she’d known how close Sabbath was, Scarlette may have been less confident. Indeed, only moments later Fitz dragged himself into the tavern to report what he’d seen at the docks.
Questions of Importance
Magical theory states that a person is inseparable from his or her place of power. Scarlette was her House, or at least connected to it; the Doctor obviously believed he was his TARDIS (though later events would prove him slightly mistaken); perhaps Sabbath was his warship. It thus follows that King George III was Britain, and an elementalist might have argued that his later descent into tortured, frothing madness was initiated by the events of that summer.
The King was spending much of his time at Windsor, where he’d often take walks around the farms and shops of the community, thoroughly confusing everybody he met. He’d frequently talk with local farmers or tradesmen, about agriculture and local affairs and even religion, but between May and July many of those he spoke to later admitted that he seemed… unwell. He’d switch rapidly from topic to topic, punctuating every sentence with cries of ‘eh?’ and ‘what?’, as if something were following him and only by changing direction could he throw it off his scent. It’s surely significant that when he finally lapsed into permanent madness, in 1811, one of his