The Bloodless Boy Page 4

  They balanced him on top of the globe, and Hooke reached up to assist Harry in lowering the legs through the aperture. Harry held them by the shins; they felt as if they would snap from only the pressure of his fingers. The papery flesh was a soft milky colour. Harry’s distaste rose in his throat, and he castigated himself for it, being careful not to betray his squeamishness to the Curator.

  Harry dropped the boy’s feet into the receiver. The knees went in, and then, with a squeeze through the aperture, the thighs and pelvis. He took the boy under the armpits, repositioned him, and carefully finished the stowage of him inside the glass.

  He jumped down off the stool, with a steadying hand from Hooke, and the slap of his landing reported against the walls of the cellar room. Its loudness shocked them both. Each man’s concentration on the placing of the boy into the receiver had transported him into a dreamlike state, in the solitude and silence of the cellar room, deep under Gresham’s College.

  The boy sat, his back against the glass following its curve, his head resting on his knees. With his arms extended by his sides, hands resting on the floor of the globe, palms upwards, he looked like a beggar appealing for a coin. With the boy’s head bowed forwards, there was just enough height to the receiver to be able to replace its lid.

  Observing the boy’s body, Harry became acutely aware of the fabric of his own, conscious of the workings of his stomach and the way that his lungs pressed the insides of his ribs.

  An idea occurred to him, but he was not yet ready to have it scrutinised by Robert Hooke.

  The Curator opened up a box containing a smooth grey paste. ‘The diachylon. We will seal him inside.’

  They spread the diachylon, a blend of olive oil, vegetable stock and lead oxide boiled together, into the crack between the receiver and its lid. Next they prepared a mixture of pitch, which they melted on a small stove kept there in the room, rosin turpentine, and wood ash. They smeared it around the stopcock, and completed the integrity of the Air-pump by pouring oil into the valve containing the cylinder, to lubricate and seal it.

  Rotating the handle, Harry drew the piston to the top of the cylinder. He brought the piston back down the tube with the stopcock opened, sucking air from the receiver into the cylinder. He closed the stopcock, removed the valve, and raised the piston back up inside the cylinder.

  The air was brought from the receiver in this laborious way, time after time, the pumping becoming more difficult as air vacated the glass. Each man took his turn at the handle, and as the air inside the globe got thinner the glass began to groan. Soon the handle required the strength of both. Inside, although the boy was oblivious to the change in atmosphere, he swayed as if in protest with the rocking of the machine as its handle was wound.

  At last, a great creak emanated from the Air-pump.

  ‘Enough!’ Hooke declared.

  Hooke inspected the brass cylinder, and the glass, looking through at the bloodless, huddled figure of the boy.

  ‘We are close enough.’

  *

  The snow still fell, and an adjusted eye would have recognised grey rather than white. The two men stood back in the quadrangle, squinting in the morning’s brilliance. Down in the cellars the door to the Air-pump room, and the great iron door across the passageway, had been securely locked.

  The College clock showed that it was just half past ten.

  ‘Mr. Hooke. Sir Edmund’s man brought a note,’ Harry reminded him.

  Hooke took the paper from his pocket and studied the seal. It bore the impression used by Viscount Brouncker. He broke it and unfolded the message.

  Ordered, that the Services and Apparatus of the Royal Society of London, including Robert Hooke, M.A., Fellow and Curator of this Society, be at the Use of Justice of Peace Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, that the Boy he speaks of be stored, and that his Dissection be continued at the Convenience to that said Justice.

  January 1. 1677/8 Brouncker. P.R.S.

  ‘Sir Edmund busies himself,’ Hooke said. ‘He is persuasive. He sends direction from the President.’

  ‘You would expect Sir Edmund to be busy. It is rare for the President to respond with such speed.’

  ‘The Justice’s influence takes many forms, Harry.’

  ‘I wonder what else Sir Edmund arranges? Still he has not arrived.’

  Hooke locked the door leading down to the cellars, and they returned to his rooms, fatigued after their long efforts with the pump.

  Leaving behind the boy in the cellar, Harry felt the pull of a subtle shame.

  Observation V

  Of Release

  From having been the seat of the monarchs, the Tower of London was now a prison, and home to the Board of Ordnance. For his residence, Charles II preferred Whitehall.

  Charles II was why he had been kept here.

  The Earl of Shaftesbury looked up at the rooms that had been his gaol. The windows were dark, empty for the first time in a year. Candles and lamps sent their flickering lights from other windows, each glow indicating a prisoner reading or writing, or, as he had spent so much time doing, preparing.

  His hand rested on the wall, as he surveyed the snow falling around him, blown about at the mercy of the wind. He moved down the timber steps, through the Jewel House and on past the decayed remnants of the Hall. A deferential yeoman led him past the stores keeping the munitions, ropes, masts, and tackle.

  Wearing a long bottle-green coat, which brushed the snow as he went through it, Shaftesbury walked through the gate of the inner wall, where the warden left him. Another man took him through the Wakefield Tower, and to the Watergate. Then through Saint Thomas’s Tower. They reached the last portcullis, and it was raised for him.

  He stood outside on the Wharf.

  A black coach-and-four waited there. Its driver wore an oiled goatskin coat to protect him from the weather. The wood of the coach, lacquered and polished, reflected the released man’s image back to him. He studied it: a pale long face tapering past fleshy lips to a small chin, jowls grown more apparent during his imprisonment.

  He leaned back, brought back his fist, and punched his reflection hard, the noise making one of the horses start, its hooves sliding on the snow. He studied the damage he had made, a crack in the lacquer and a dent in the wood.

  The driver soothed the horse, making low sounds to calm it. He made no attempt to stop the Earl from committing further violence to the coach. It was not his place, and it was not his coach.

  His sounds seemed to calm the Earl too. Shaftesbury raised his hand, which stung from the blow, in apology to his driver. He smiled, at himself as much as at his man.

  He threw back his head and opened his mouth, letting the snowflakes descend onto his tongue. He relished the taste. His new freedom made his senses sharp.

  The door of the coach was swung open, and an arm extended from its interior to help him step up.

  Inside, he settled himself on the cushioned seat, revelling in the smell of his own coach. The window was a sheet of tin pierced with holes, and he put up a hand to its coldness to steady his view. Through these small points of brightness he observed the Lion’s Tower shrink, as the coach lurched, transporting him away. He listened intently for the sounds of the Royal Menagerie held there, but heard only the thudding of the hooves in front, as his horses struggled for grip.

  The animals remain while I leave, he thought, feeling pity for them.

  He could still feel the churning in his stomach. The travel of the coach soothed him. From incarceration to home: Thanet House in Aldersgate Street.

  When he was at last entirely calm, and breathing regularly, he turned from the tin window, and looked towards his companion, a lady dressed in a long, intricately-patterned dark-blue coat, for the first time regarding her directly.

  The beauty of her face had not yet faded; she looked to be around thirty years of age, although the thick powder and rouge she wore hid any blemishes there might have been. She did not wear her wig, carrying it instead on her
lap, showing her hair to be a dark-brown colour.

  She flinched from him, pressing back into the cushioned seat to keep the distance between them, and averted her eyes from his stare.

  ‘This day of freedom marks the start of my revenge,’ the Earl said.

  Her eyes became glossy, as tears formed in them.

  He slapped her.

  The trace of his hand was clear: a red print on her cheek.

  Observation VI

  Of Transparency

  The boy was arranged like an exhibit, a curio displayed for a penny a show.

  ‘Spake I not unto you, saying, do not sin against the child; and ye would not hear? Therefore, behold, also his blood is required.’

  The Justice’s voice rumbled around the walls of the cellar room.

  It was much later, the afternoon, by the time Sir Edmund had finally arrived at Gresham’s College.

  ‘I have seen many murders,’ he continued, looking into the blue eyes as if he spoke through the glass to the boy, rather than to Hooke and Harry. ‘Whether done hotly or coldly, mostly the method is unimaginative, either by use of the hand or some tool. To drain so thoroughly the blood is to consider more closely the way of killing. This globe is secure?’

  ‘It is,’ Hooke replied tetchily. ‘To keep him preserved we must not allow the air to re-enter, to transmit pestilence and allow putrefaction.’

  ‘It fits him perfectly. It is as if it were tailored for him.’

  ‘There are limitations to the size of glass receiver we can make,’ Hooke said. ‘This is the largest we have successfully manufactured; grander attempts all cracked or imploded.’

  Harry cleared his throat, and pointed through the glass at the top of the boy’s legs.

  ‘The holes made after death, if done at different times, show that he was preserved. As we preserve him now.’

  Sir Edmund looked grimly at him. ‘This we surmised at the Fleet.’

  ‘When squeezing the boy into this receiver,’ Harry continued, ‘I wondered whether we merely returned him to another receiver, of the same size. One also made of glass.’

  Hooke made a tutting sound. ‘The fact he fits might be fortuitous – he could have been stored in a chamber far larger, one not made of glass.’

  ‘It is a suggestion, only, Mr. Hooke.’ Harry smarted at being chastised in front of the Justice.

  ‘You rely too much on your feelings – a fault of yours I have noted before.’

  ‘The use of glass, then,’ Sir Edmund said slowly, allowing the possibility, ignoring Hooke, ‘if the notion is true, suggests the need for observation. Otherwise, materials less transparent, more robust, would have been employed.’

  ‘The building of an Air-pump requires great investment and no little skill,’ Hooke observed, ‘whether the receiver was glass, or no.’

  ‘Who, then, would sponsor such a philosophical murder?’ Sir Edmund snapped shut his book. ‘This will transpire to be a Catholic design, you may be sure of it…but why their need for blood?’ Despite his direct stare at each of them in turn, the Justice got no reply. He turned back to the boy. ‘There are other ways of preservation.’

  ‘But there are no signs of him being held in liquid, nor of being frozen,’ Hooke said. ‘He was kept in a vacuum.’

  Sir Edmund made little faltering nods of his head, from side to side. ‘I must put off the further study of him,’ he told them. ‘For I am called away.’

  ‘We will wait on you,’ Hooke replied, thinking of President Brouncker’s direction.

  The Justice looked around the cellar. ‘This door has a strong lock?’

  ‘And the other doors also.’

  Sir Edmund strode from the room, up the short flight of steps, to inspect the ward and sturdy strap hinges of the iron door sealing off the passage. At last he seemed satisfied. They locked the door to the Air-pump room, and then the passage door. It clanged shut, an impact of iron and oak, a shudder of the frame.

  The sound of their steps disappeared away down the long corridor.

  The boy, left sitting in the glass receiver, stared into the blackness.

  *

  The three men stood together in the College quadrangle. Soon it would be dusk. The light bled through rips in the cloud, picking up its colour from the thick atmosphere. Oranges and golds tinted the snow-covered rooftops.

  Sir Edmund turned to Harry. ‘Mr. Hunt, I have business with Mr. Hooke. I prefer you kept from it, until Mr. Hooke has considered upon the matter.’

  Harry bid a stiff goodbye to both men and headed off for his lodgings at Half Moon Alley, in Bishopsgate Without. Hooke, knowing his walk well, recognised his hurt.

  The Justice was indifferent to the younger man’s feelings. He produced two letters from inside his notebook.

  ‘There was another such a finding, Mr. Hooke. Another such a boy.’

  Hooke looked sharply at him. He had warned Harry that they risked being pulled into deep waters. ‘Was this other boy also drained of his blood?’

  ‘Likewise, it was taken.’

  ‘When was he found?’

  ‘One week ago. On Christmas Day.’

  ‘Left at the Fleet River?’

  ‘Discovered out east, at Barking Creek beyond the Woolwich Docks.’

  ‘Have you kept this first boy, as you require the second?’

  ‘He lies pickled at your new College of Physicians.’ Sir Edmund handed over the letters to the Curator. ‘I leave these with you.’

  Hooke, looking pained, took them from him.

  ‘Keep these securely,’ Sir Edmund instructed. ‘The first is a note I have written to you. The second is my copy of the document left with the Fleet boy. It was this endeavour I engaged myself upon this afternoon.’

  Hooke blanched. ‘What does it say of the boy?’ he asked. His eyes looked everywhere but at the papers he held.

  ‘Read these, and then consider whether you are willing to help me.’

  ‘Does it tell of the taking of his blood?’

  ‘Read them, please. Good evening, Mr. Hooke.’

  Observation VII

  Of a Cipher

  It was as if the letters formed up into a troop. There was evident strength in the bold verticals, and precision in the horizontals. A neat right hand margin revealed a man who planned ahead.

  The Justice’s writing suited him well, Hooke thought. He lifted the paper up to the candlelight. The pressing of Sir Edmund’s nib had left an indented trail through the surface, but not so hard as to suggest an unbalanced character.

  Mr. Robert Hooke (only).

  At His lodgings within Gresham’s College.

  Jan: 1 1677/8

  Your Abilities surpass mine to glean Meaning from these Papers. Their Notation takes the form of a Cypher. I rely upon you, Mr. Hooke, to divert your most Earnest Attention and provide a Full and Active understanding, where my own is Limited and Lame.

  You are enough Politick, I think, to understand my showing this to You, and only to You. We will discuss further this Business.

  Burn this.

  Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey Justice of Peace,

  from his House at Hartshorne Lane

  Hooke swallowed the last of his evening meal, the hare with pease-pudding, and washed it down with some claret. He felt the persuasive pull of Sir Edmund’s note, and the subtlety that lay behind the blend of flattery and exhortation. Sir Edmund was used to getting his way, and employed a range of means to do so.

  The Justice was a stimulating man: he had known him for the daylight hours of one day, and found himself with a boy drained of his blood, the second such boy to be found, and now some enciphered papers.

  He picked up Sir Edmund’s copy of the document left with the boy at the Fleet. It consisted of sheets of paper each with a grid of numbers arranged in a square, twelve numbers along by twelve numbers down, written on one side only of each sheet.

  It brought a misty feeling of familiarity.

  Hooke held forth often enough about the a
pplication of his discoveries and methods, and the merits of the New Philosophy for practical men. With the finding of the boy at the Fleet, and another at Barking Creek, it was an opportunity to demonstrate usefulness. And, perhaps, receive payment from a grateful State. He suspected, though, that Sir Edmund might lead him into matters he would far rather wish to avoid – especially if there was any truth in the Justice’s suspicion that this was some Catholic business.

  What was he to make of this curious man? And why the Justice’s insistence upon burning his letter? Remembering his direction, Hooke folded the paper and dropped it onto the fire, where it furled like the petals of a flower closing. He prodded at it with a firedog until it broke into cinders.

  As he stood by the fire he heard the thumps of Tom racing down the stairs, and wondered what the boy was doing out of bed. He listened to the withdrawing of the bolt securing the front door. He had not heard knocking, and could hardly perceive the bolt; a muffled clanking was all. This chill has affected my tubes, he thought gloomily; I now lose my hearing, as well as my senses of smell and taste, as well as my memory.

  Tom’s voice called from the lobby. ‘Mr. Hooke!’

  Hooke looked at himself in the mirror, picking remnants of hare from his sand-coloured teeth. The catarrh in his head did not trouble him so much as his thoughts on assisting the Justice, as he left the warmth of the fire to go downstairs, to greet his visitor.

  *

  Tom had invited the caller in, and he stood in the cold lobby, bringing in the even chillier aura of the night. He was a man of about forty years of age, but the manner of his clothes made him seem older – his lack of style noticeable even to the Curator, who cared little for such things. The man rubbed his hands for warmth, which amplified the unctuous air he had about him. His smile did not move, and lacked warmth behind it, as if he had learned to be pleasant from a book.

  He removed his hat, shook the snow from it, and announced himself as ‘Moses Creed, Solicitor.’

  ‘Good evening, Mr. Creed,’ Hooke welcomed him warily, wondering whether he came with a subpoena.