The Adventuress of Henrietta Street (novel)
The Adventuress of Henrietta Street was the fifty-first novel in the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures series. It was written by Lawrence Miles, released 5 November 2001 and featured the Eighth Doctor, Fitz Kreiner and Anji Kapoor.
This novel marks Sabbath's first "official" appearance in a novel - having previously appeared in The Slow Empire as an unnamed figure.
Publisher's summary[[edit] | [edit source]]
On February 9, 1783, a funeral was held in the tunnels at the dead heart of London. It was the funeral of a warrior and a conjurer, a paladin and an oracle, the last of an ancient breed who'd once stood between the Earth and the bloodiest of its nightmares.
Her name was Scarlette. Part courtesan, part sorceress, this is her history: the part she played in the Siege of Henrietta Street, and the sacrifice she made in the defence of her world.
In the year leading up to that funeral, something raw and primal ate its way through human society, from the streets of pre-Revolutionary Paris to the slave-states of America. Something that only the eighteenth century could have summoned, and against which the only line of defence was a bordello in Covent Garden.
And then there was Scarlette's accomplice, the "elemental champion" who stood alongside her in the final battle. The one they called the Doctor.
Plot[[edit] | [edit source]]
The Prologue[[edit] | [edit source]]
In 1782, a prostitute named Lisa-Beth Lachlan is hired by a member of Parliament for her services in black coffee (a term for sex involving tantric rituals). During the act, Lisa-Beth reaches the Shaktyanda and accidentally reaches into the horizon that no human is supposed to tread into. This leads to her accidentally summoning a Babewyn which (presumably) kills her client - leaving behind only a bloodstained sheet.
Chapter 1: The House[[edit] | [edit source]]
Shortly after Lisa-Beth's accidental summoning, the witch-courtesan Scarlette hosts a ball in the House on Henrietta Street. The ball serves as a funeral for the old order of the arcane in America (which has largely been destroyed by the establishment of the United States of America), an introduction to society for Juliette (a young girl under Scarlette's protection), and an invitation to an event that will happen on the first of December. In attendance is members of various organizations - including the near-extinct Mayakai tribe.
Lisa-Beth is present at the ball, not because she was invited but because she seeks to move into the House. During the ball, she is brought into an upstairs room and finds Scarlette fencing with a mysterious man. This man is the Doctor (who entered into the House rather mysteriously, is to maried to Juliette, and organized the ball). The Doctor explains that the ball serves as a way to gather an army to protect the Earth from the threat of the babewyns after the destruction of the "elementals". Most of the attendees have seemingly only joined out of curiosity, however, one attendee has joined for more malevolent purposes - as this attendee attacks the Doctor once Lisa-Beth and Scarlette leave. The attacker (a sixteen year old member of the Mayakai) leaves behind a warning in one word - a name tied to Scarlette's past, that name being Sabbath.
Chapter 2: London[[edit] | [edit source]]
After the Doctor has recovered from being attacked, he begins studying the babewyns but finds that their biology is seemingly only structured to fool necropsies - as though they only exist by sheer willpower. The threat of the babewyns has been steadily worsening. At a rally for Charles Fox, the Doctor, Juliette, and Rebecca stop a babewyn from killing a white coffee prostitute and her client. It seems that the babewyns no longer require tantra to be summoned.
Around this time, Lisa-Beth begins talks with the Service (an organization founded by John Dee with a strong occult tradition) as Juliette begins experiments with time itself (helped by the young Emily Hart) in the Doctor's laboratory. Lisa-Beth's negotiations seem to be double-crossing as the Service and Scarlette are opposed to each other. This is until Lisa-Beth ties up one of the Service's agents and threatens to release the names of the Service's five leaders if they do not leave the House alone.
On the sixteenth of April, a marquis purposefully summons and binds a babewyn - under orders from Sabbath, a rogue agent from the Service.
Shortly after this, as the women of the House have dreams of a horrifying world controlled by the babewyns, Scarlette finds the Doctor in his laboratory, unconscious from a nervous fit. Katya is attacked by an angry mob and Charles Fox gains support from an unusual source - George Gordon, instigator of the 1780 London Riots (the event where Scarlette and Sabbath first met).
Chapter 3: England[[edit] | [edit source]]
On May 1st, the Doctor finally manages to bring his companions to the House on Henrietta Street - summoning Fitz and Anji into his laboratory (sans clothing). The other occupants of the House accept the new "elementals" into the House. Despite this new addition, things look dire for the House. It seems that new women for the House are being claimed by other - more predatory - sources. Scarlette is accosted by various working girls outside of an opera house but Scarlette dissuades them from attacking her using a pendant of broken glass she wears around her neck.
Wishing not to disturb Scarlette, the Doctor sends Fitz and Juliette to Cambridge to find information on Sabbath. While at Cambridge, Fitz finds fragments of a chalk circle in Sabbath's old dorm room. This came from the Service's attempts to replicate the Marquis of M___'s babewyn summoning - which led to the Marquis being torn limb from limb. While Fitz does not discover this fact, he does find Sabbath's journals and ties Sabbath's description of a massive "Leviathian" with visions of Juliette's shows a massive war machine and decides that Sabbath is most likely in Manchester building said Leviathan. Before Fitz leaves Cambridge, he spots one of the Professors (who met Fitz in Cambridge) meeting with a Mayakal girl (the same girl who attacked the Doctor).
Chapter 4: The Kingdom and its Environs[[edit] | [edit source]]
In early June, the Doctor's company arrives in Manchester. Here, they find hostility from the local prostitutes. While Fitz and Juliette are looking for Sabbath in the dockyards (having found his factory), they are attacked by a group of prostitutes. Fitz is nearly beaten to death. During the attack, he saw a group of the Service's rat-catchers entering into Sabbath's factory.
Shortly after this, Scarlette's company is attacked by prostitutes in a pub called the "White Hart". It is here that Scarlette meets a mysterious man wearing a rosette. As the brawl rages on, the Doctor and Scarlette board Sabbath's recently-constructed Leviathan (able to do so due to a difference in their perception of time). They find that the rat-catchers on board the ship have been killed by Sabbath's Mayakai assassin (whose name is Tula Lui) and dismembered by the babewyn crew of the ship. The Doctor soons enters into the bridge of Sabbath's ship and finds the captain of the ship. Instead of attacking the Doctor, Sabbath begins a conversation with him. It is here that Sabbath's position becomes apparent - he is not summoning the babewyns but is attempting to bind and control them for his own purposes. Sabbath believes that it is the Doctor who brought the babewyns to Earth and is using his influence to end the Doctor and the House. Despite their conflicting goals, Sabbath allows the Doctor to leave his ship. It is only later that Scarlette discovers another part of their conversation - that the Doctor, despite being Sabbath's enemy - asked for Sabbath to be his best man at his wedding.
Chapter 5: Europe[[edit] | [edit source]]
Despite their new-found alliance, Sabbath refuses to stop using his influence to send the House into ruin due to his desire to see things to their conclusion and as a test for the Doctor. Sabbath has also sent Tula Lui to kill the five (figurehead) leaders of the Service. By the time this is noticed by the House, two of the leaders have already been slain and the other three have fleed to Paris. As such, Scarlette and Lisa-Beth travel to Paris to find Tula Lui. They find one of the leaders but Tula Lui still manages to kill the man and disappears once found by Scarlette.
The Doctor attempts to transport himself to Paris but this backfires and instead sends him into the Kingdom of Beasts, the home of the babewyns. The Doctor soon finds Tula Lui (for whom the transportation has also backfired) and is again attacked by her before he flees.
The Doctor awakens in Sabbath's ship (dubbed the Jonah). Sabbath explains that he found the Doctor adrift in limbo. Sabbath initally assumes that something went wrong with the Doctor's spell due to his own incompetence, but the Doctor reveals that Tula Lui was also sent to the Kingdom of Beasts. This worries Sabbath, both because Lui has been his only human company for two years and because it shows that the moving of the horizon has been exponentially accelerating. As such, Sabbath pilots the Jonah into the Kingdom of Beasts (telling the Doctor not to look at the "Black Sun" in the sky of the Kingdom, which he regards as his true enemy) but arrives too late to stop Lui from being torn limb-from-limb by a horde of babewyns.
Chapter 6: The Colonies[[edit] | [edit source]]
After the death of Tula Lui, the Doctor and Sabbath begin to work together. The Doctor moves most of his equipment from the House (which is in dire straits) to the Jonah. The Doctor seems to be avoiding the House, possibly because of Juliette (who seems to be a young girl Lisa-Beth during her training in the tantric arts).
Juliette begins having vivid dreams. In one (which may not be a dream), she wakes at the smell of smoke and finds herself in a darker version of the House. She then meets a woman dressed in all black, who tells her to explore her dark side. Other dreams are more symbolic - showing her as the Mother Gaia being slowly torn apart by both man and the babewyns.
The Doctor and Sabbath travel to Hispaniola to hand-deliver one of the Doctor's wedding invitations. This leads to the Doctor interrupting the execution of a French government worker by former slaves under the leadership of Émondeur. The Doctor saves the man and gives Émondeur the invitation. Émondeur then shows the Doctor and Sabbath a captive babewyn that he claims was summoned by prayer alone.
Anji begins to distrust Juliette and, after Anji sees Juliette vanishing in what Juliette believes to be a dream, Anji decides to follow her in the night. Juliette begins wandering the streets at night, seemingly to enter into the world on her own terms. On one night, Juliette finds a copy of her own wedding dress in a shop window - this one in black instead of in red. Emily Hart (a friend of Juliette's) is also in the shop. It seems that the shop was made specifically for Juliette, though by whom is a mystery.
Chapter 7: The World[[edit] | [edit source]]
As business within the House stagnates (with the women of the House setting up a vote on whether to jump ship or not), the Doctor and Sabbath return to England. Juliette begins to see babewyns in her dreams (though it is debatable if they are dreams) though these babewyns are curiously not aggressive.
Anji becomes increasingly aggressive towards Juliette and after lashing out at her, the two storm out into the street and find themselves in the Kingdom of Beasts. Anji is nearly killed by babewyns but Juliette keeps them at bay - and stays in the Kingdom as Anji escapes. The barrier into the horizon is so weak that one can seemingly cross into it without noticing - as the Countess of Jersey and Lord ___ (who interrogated the Marquis of M___) also discover. Lord ___ is slain by babewyns and the Countess barely escapes with her life.
To recover his TARDIS, the Doctor enlists the help of a Chinese apothecary named Dr. Nie Who, whose view on the structure of time will not summon the babewyns. A ceremony is held aboard the Jonah, with most of the House's remaining occupants (minus Anji and Juliette but including Scarlette) attend. During the ritual, the Doctor explains the nature of the babewyns - they are manifestations of mankind's ignorance, the guardians of the horizon that human understanding simply cannot cross. While this horizon would normally be unreachable, the destruction of the elementals has made this horizon rather easy to reach - especially in an era of changing thought. The ritual is a success and the TARDIS is recovered - seemingly not provoking the babewyns whatsoever.
Chapter 8: The World and Other Places[[edit] | [edit source]]
Once Anji returns to the House and recounts Juliette's disappearance, one figure stands out - an imposing man who was seemingly watching Juliette. It appears that the manipulation was an attempt by Sabbath to claim Juliette as a replacement for Tula Lui. Despite this, the Doctor becomes obsessed with the wedding - meticulously planning out every detail and basically ignoring everything else. It becomes apparent why the Doctor has become so obsessive immediately after he gets a letter from Juliette stating that she isn't returning - as the Doctor vomits up black bile after reading the letter. He is deathly ill, and has been deathly ill at the very least since his arrival at the House (though he claims to have felt the illness for "over a century").
As Dr. Nie Who plans the wedding venue at the island of St. Belique and the wedding guests begin to arrive, the Doctor is bedridden due to his illness. In a rare moment of lucidity, the Doctor gives control of the House to Lisa-Beth.
During the Doctor's time trapped in bed, Fitz begins to piece together why the babewyn attacks have seemingly stopped. The babewyns have gained a King - the King of Beasts (with the King representing the primitive hierarchical structure based on the prominence of the alpha male, which enforces conformity and represses attempts at progress). Once the teething era of the King ends, the attacks will have a new figurehead and become even worse than they have ever been.
Chapter 9: The Threshold[[edit] | [edit source]]
In England, an unknown girl resembling Juliette is hanged at the gallows. While most likely not the actual death of Juliette, this is viewed by Scarlette as a symbolic death - Juliette's sacrifice - and also a mirror of Sabbath's indoctrination.
By this time, the Doctor has written out his will, giving various objects to various peoples (including giving Juliette his "screwdriver sonique" and making thirteen boxes with thirteen notes presumably directed to the thirteen parties that the Doctor invited to his wedding and storing them in his TARDIS with the demand that they never be opened). By this time, members of the thirteen parties have arrived on St. Belique and begin talks that the wedding will not happen at all.
Seeing how dire things have become, Scarlette begins hosting hunting parties to hunt the babewyns in the days leading up to the wedding - using the TARDIS to summon them. This actually works rather well, with the guests killing many of the babewyns. It is not entirely without its faults, as it seems that the King of Beasts begins building monuments on St. Belique during the hunts. In the midst of the hunt, the last of the Mayakai arrives on St. Belique to give Scarlette away and Rebecca meets with Juliette on St. Belique.
The purpose of this becomes rather apparent as shortly before the beginning of December, Scarlette announces that she is to be wed to the Doctor instead of Juliette. On the next day, Juliette seemingly visits the Doctor on his deathbed.
Chapter 10: The Kingdom of Beasts[[edit] | [edit source]]
The night before her wedding, Scarlette hosts a Cyprian Auction - including a rather crude effigy of Juliette and herself (though she makes herself completely unpurchaseable). After the auction, Lisa-Beth tells Scarlette that the House is effectively dead. Scarlette states that she already knew this. Presumably on the same day, Fitz and the Doctor (who has recovered enough to leave his deathbed with a help of a wheelchair) sip champagne together.
On the day of the wedding, the Doctor refuses to allow himself to be seen as a dying man and walks to the wedding (though it is still a pitiable sight due to the Doctor's illness). The wedding largely goes off without a hitch (only interrupted by a man in an ape mask showing that, symbolically, not even the babewyns will object to the Doctor and Scarlette's wedding) until the Doctor and Scarlette kiss. Immediately after this, the wedding guests are transported to the Kingdom of Beasts after a horde of babewyns descend on the church.
Within the Kingdom, the wedding guests see various representations of things familiar to them reduced to grey ruins and covered in a plague of babewyns (most notably, the Masonic guests see a massive library filled with babewyns defiling the various tomes within). The Doctor finds himself looking over the corners of the Kingdom and converses with the man with the rosette. Their conversation is essentially a bill of surrender for the man (an old nemesis of the Doctor's) until he can solve the problems currently plaguing him. Once the Doctor's conversation ends, he notices the Jonah - and notices that Juliette is hanging over the side by a noose.
As this is happening, Rebecca manages to find that the guest who was assumed to be wearing the ape mask (an overweight Frenchman claiming to be a disciple of Cagliostrio) bound and gagged in his room. Someone else was wearing the ape mask, someone with a link to the apes (most likely Sabbath).
Chapter 11: The Universe[[edit] | [edit source]]
The Doctor saves Juliette from the noose and (still rather weak from his illness) falls unconscious. It is likely that the hanging was a form of death-ritual for Juliette, a symbolic death like the hanging of the unknown prostitute. Juliette soon finds the Doctor's body and brings him to a mysterious palace - one that resembles the palaces of the Doctor's destroyed homeworld. Juliette finds that Katya is already inside the palace and puts the Doctor into her care.
The other wedding guests begin battle with the apes, slaughtering many of them, until the King of Beasts begins a mass charge of babewyns to kill every single one of the intruders into the Kingdom. The gathered army soon retreats into the palace and begins a final stand to give the Doctor enough time to save them.
The Doctor, however, is beyond saving anyone. He is essentially dead. Everything attempted by the House has done nothing to cure the Doctor of his illness and all seems lost. That is until Sabbath (followed by Juliette) enters into the palace. Sabbath rips the Doctor's second heart (a link to his homeworld which has been slowly poisoning his body) out of his body. This revives the Doctor - who promptly begins screaming.
Chapter 12: The House[[edit] | [edit source]]
By this point, the Babewyns have lit the front of the palace on fire to kill everyone inside of it. This fails, as the now recovered Doctor (along with everyone else in the palace, sans Sabbath and Juliette) walk through the flames completely unharmed. Once outside, the Doctor challenges the King of Beasts to combat - in the Doctor's territory. As such, all of the foreigners to the Kingdom are booted out back onto Earth.
Once back in the House (in early February of 1783), the occupants of the House find that Rebecca and Lisa-Beth (who never entered into the Kingdom) have refurbished it from its decrepit state. This soon becomes redundant as a horde of priest babewyns (the only babewyns truly loyal towards the King) swarm into the House. During the battle, Scarlette makes a last stand as the Doctor finds the King of Beasts - seemingly sacrificing herself to stop the priests from attacking the Doctor. The Doctor finds the King in Juliette's room and decapitates the monarch with the screwdriver sonique - nearly becoming as feral and beastial as the King in the process. Rebecca finds the Doctor and collects the head of the King to show to his babewyn servants. The servants, seeing that the battle is lost, flee.
Scarlette's funeral is held on the next day. A coffin is dropped into the Tyburn river, destined to flow into the third fork of the river. Though he believes Scarlette is still dead, the Doctor keeps his wedding ring on. Before the Doctor leaves in his TARDIS, he has a brief conversation with a very alive Scarlette - who tells him that she faked her death so that he wouldn't be bound to her (and stuck on Earth) forevermore.
Chapter 13[[edit] | [edit source]]
As a massive fireball streaks across the skies of England, Sabbath and Juliette stand on the deck of the Jonah and discuss the future. Sabbath has transplanted the Doctor's second heart into himself (with help from his babewyn crew) and can now pilot the Jonah seemingly anywhere in space and time. Juliette is still thinking of the Doctor as the Jonah leaves Earth behind.
Characters[[edit] | [edit source]]
- Eighth Doctor
- Fitz Kreiner
- Anji Kapoor
- Scarlette
- Juliette Vierge
- Lisa-Beth Lachlan
- Katchka Nakhova
- Rebecca Macardle
- Tula Lui
- Sabbath
- Man with the Rosette
- Nie Who
- Anne-Belle Paley
- Charles Fox
- Charles Greville
- Emily Hart
- Émondeur
- King of Beasts
- Makandal
- The Countess of Jersey
- Lucien Malpertuis
- Mr. Van Burgh
Worldbuilding[[edit] | [edit source]]
Biology[[edit] | [edit source]]
- The Doctor briefly grows a beard to demonstrate how change is possible. He claims to be able to transmogrify himself into a being of pure energy through three thousand years of meditation.
- Sabbath removes the Doctor's second heart - which had been poisoning the Doctor - and transplants it into his own body.
Locations[[edit] | [edit source]]
- The Jonah is Sabbath's steam ship. Able to travel through space and time, its rather Biblical name is a reference to Sabbath's initiation into the Service.
- People of Hartlepool are called "monkeydanglers" due to a supposed incident where they hanged an ape (possibly a babewyn, though also possibly a normal ape) thinking it was a French spy.
Philosophy[[edit] | [edit source]]
- Sabbath cites "Knox's maxim" when remembering his experience in the deeper realms of time.
The Doctor[[edit] | [edit source]]
- While at the House, the Doctor writes memoirs detailing various parts of his life and the world around him. Within these memoirs are several (maybe purposefully) eroneous predictions about America. The memoirs receive a very limited print run.
- The Doctor paints a painting of his "grandfather". During his time in his deathbed, the Doctor places the painting over his bed.
Species[[edit] | [edit source]]
- The Babewyns originated in the Kingdom of Beasts - a land constructed of ruined versions of locations familiar to its visitors and watched over by the mysterious "Great Black Eye". They serve as guardians of the horizon that human consciousness cannot cross - essentially serving as an allegory for reactionary, anti-progressional thought. They resemble massive apes. Due to the removal of the "elementals" from time, the horizon begins rapidly and exponentionally shrinking in size in 1782.
Notes[[edit] | [edit source]]
- This novel departs from the "normal" novel style in that it is told as a non-fiction history book.
- What is suggested as the remains of Gallifrey is seen in this novel.
- The novel saw Lawrence Miles' surprise return to writing Doctor Who novels following a well-publicised online "resignation" in August 1999.[1] He claimed that he wrote it for money so he could buy new LEGO sets.[2]
- A hidden page on the Faction Paradox website listed several behind-the-scenes facts about the novel.[3]
- The novel begins in 1782, which saw the first printing of Les Liaisons dangereuses, a story about "a teenage girl's initiation into society while her destiny is manipulated by a scheming courtesan-queen and a dashing gentleman who seduces her in the name of society politics. Towards the end of the story, the gentleman finally asks the courtesan-queen to marry him. But then he dies horribly."
- Though thirteen groups were invited to the wedding, only twelve were ever named or mentioned, and one name on the list of invitations was illegible. The website parenthetically notes that it "obviously" couldn't be Faction Paradox, which "doesn't exist in this version of the universe". The comic Political Animals showed that the Faction did indeed survive the end of the War in Heaven.
- Given the book's "reliance on the mythology of the Doctor's universe", the website says it seems odd that no vampire contingent is invited to the Doctor's wedding. However, the Russian group, the Ereticy, is named for a vampire sect from Eastern European folklore. They were represented in the novel by Katya.
- The historical Lady Hamilton, who appears in the novel as Emily Hart, indeed has a significant gap in her life story around the time of this novel, and there has never been an explanation of why she changed her name from "Lyon" to "Hart".
- The Mozart premiere attended by the Eighth Doctor and Sabbath is the same one depicted in the film Amadeus.
- In AHistory, Lance Parkin acknowledges that Lawrence Miles intended the Man with the Rosette to be the Master. He is present at the Doctor's wedding: the Doctor's only family. He has no beard because the Doctor grows one, wears all black, apart from a blue and white rosette on his lapel, and refuses to fight the Doctor on the grounds that there are only four Time Lords left in the Universe. Despite being amnesic, the Doctor recognises him; Parkin wrote The School of Doom for the fanzine Myth Makers, showing a previous meeting, and discussion about the four survivors, between the Doctor and the Master during the first interim of Father Time.
- Daniel O'Mahony's A Rag and a Bone, published in the fanzine Myth Makers Presents: Essentials in 2003, follows this novel and shows Sabbath successfully supplanting the Doctor as part of the story's metafictional commentary on the state of Doctor Who at the time.
Continuity[[edit] | [edit source]]
- Sabbath continues to turn up in novels (though not always the main "villain") including PROSE: Anachrophobia, History 101, Camera Obscura, Time Zero, The Infinity Race, The Domino Effect, The Last Resort.
- The Man with the Rosette is next seen in The Gallifrey Chronicles.
- Mary Culver appears alongside Sabbath in AUDIO: Sabbath Dei and AUDIO: In the Year of the Cat.
- The Mayakai reappear alongside Sabbath in COMIC: Political Animals and COMIC: Bêtes Noires & Dark Horses.
- The Hellfire Club appears also in AUDIO: Minuet in Hell.
- The zoo on the Strand seen in the opening of this novel is later mentioned in PROSE: The Book of the War.
- The Doctor mentions the worlds of Ceres Alpha (PROSE: Dark Progeny) and one where faerie-tales come true. (PROSE: Grimm Reality)
- Fitz recovers a wheelchair from the TARDIS. (TV: Castrovalva)
- Thomas Jefferson's expedition for woolly mammoths in the American midwest is seen in PROSE: Grass.
- Scarlette mentions George III's mammoth. (PROSE: Grass, The Book of the War, COMIC: Political Animals, Bêtes Noires & Dark Horses)
Footnotes[[edit] | [edit source]]
External links[[edit] | [edit source]]
- The Adventuress of Henrietta Street at the Faction Paradox wiki
- The Adventuress of Henrietta Street at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
- The Discontinuity Guide to: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street at The Whoniverse
- The Cloister Library: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street
- Outpost Gallifrey - Interview: Lawrence Miles (archived)
