The Bloodless Boy (10 page)

‘As I say, bear with me . . . So! We were miserably distressed for want of meat, and by tiredness from all the marching. The Royalists set to with fortifying the town and ruining the bridges across the Teme and the Severn, leaving only the bridge closest to Worcester untouched. We were about thirty thousand – far more than those inside the place. At last, we attacked them. I, with Cromwell, stayed to the eastern side of the Severn. Lambert’s men crossed at Upton, to the south, using a plank across the hole in the bridge. Dragging great boats with them, up against the flow of the river, Fleetwood’s men advanced northwards, to build new bridges with the boats, to let us move freely from one side to the other.’

While the Colonel spoke, he looked steadily into Harry’s eyes, and used his hands in chopping motions to delineate where the opposing forces had mustered. The effect was to keep Harry listening, and to make him unwilling to interrupt again.

‘The Royalists disliked our plan,’ he continued, ‘and took against the men putting into place these bridges, and shot at them across the river. Cromwell sent three brigades across the Severn, over the bridge of boats. I went with these, and we met with some Highlanders. We pushed at them until they desisted. We moved into the town, the Royalists running before us. Bodies lay all around, fallen like leaves from an autumn bough. The noise from men and animals filled the air – a terrible keening hum coming from the men, quite unlike a voice sounding from a throat; more like the organs in their bellies crying out with fear and pain. We chased them as they ran; we overcame them, and cut them down.’

Colonel Fields’s voice became very grave, and quiet, so that Harry had to lean closer to catch his words. ‘It was a slaughter. We could not keep our feet in all the blood, and we were covered in it, looking as if we carried wounds ourselves. When our powder was out, we slashed at them, or cudgelled them, or stamped them with our feet, squashing out their brains from their skulls. We pushed survivors into the Cathedral, where the stench of their fright was foul.’

Fields produced a pipe from a pocket of his old orange coat, and Harry noticed that the Colonel’s hands were shaking.

‘An army is a harsh, self-seeking power. Many of our men lost their heads, and broke up the place. For myself, I would rather hack off my own arm than damage a church window, and I did not participate. Mostly, though, those inside, the Royalists, were not killed; they were marched instead to London. Most of the Scots we sent home to their own country. Many of the foreign mercenaries, and the English, were sent abroad as slaves, in the Barbadoes, put to work in the sugar mills there, or to cut the cane out in the fields. The King himself slipped away, eventually to reach France from Brighthelmstone.’

Fields carefully filled his pipe, and spent some time lighting it, inhaling deeply from the tube and blowing into the bowl to spark the tobacco.

‘Have you never asked yourself how it came to be that Charles Stuart escaped away so easily? Despite the rout of his men?’

Harry thought for a moment, recollecting his lessons. ‘He hid himself at Boscobel; he was helped by Catholics, who disguised him as a woodman.’

Fields let out a loud laugh, which ended in smoke-filled coughs. After he had gathered himself, he waggled his finger slowly at Harry, from side to side. ‘His disguise would not have hoodwinked a girl! He went by the name of William Jackson – that is the story Charles Stuart puts about; but it is only half of the story. Perchance you would do well to ask Sir Edmund how the King escaped . . . I surmise, though, that you would find him secretive about his war, and guard closely how he helped the King.’

‘Sir Edmund assisted the King in his escape?’ Harry looked wonderingly at the old man.

‘Charles Stuart left Worcester with about sixty men, including Buckingham, Wilmot, Lauderdale and Derby. And Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey. Sir Edmund was a Parliament man, ordered by Cromwell to lead the King away. There is history from above, Mr. Hunt, and history from below. You repeat the history you have heard, and that is to be expected. But, let me tell you, Oliver Cromwell settled that he would not kill a second King, but would instead escort him to France, where he would be out of the way, penniless, and unable to raise an army.’

He sucked at the pipe, and slowly exhaled, merging more smoke into the dense air.

‘You must be careful, Mr. Hunt. Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey was the conduit for the King’s escape. The Red Cipher was used to arrange it. You must ask yourself: why has it returned?’

Observation XIV
Of Civil War

Hearing the rasp of Harry’s key, the boy raced to the door, and his last jump from the staircase, missing the bottom three stairs, rattled Hooke’s door on its hinges. Harry tousled Tom’s hair as he entered, making it even messier than before.

In his drawing room, Robert Hooke wrote in his diary; his lines, thirty, forty words long, meandering across the full width of the page, the spaces between his letters so small that to Harry the page appeared only as a block of grey. At Harry’s approach, Hooke closed the book furtively, and pushed it away to the edge of the table.

Hooke cast his silver eyes over Harry, seeming uneasy, and dabbed at his nose with a large yellow handkerchief. ‘Sit, sit. Tom, are you able to prepare the tea as I demonstrated to you?’

Tom blushed with happiness at being given the task.

‘I must speak with you in seriousness, Harry, upon a tender matter.’ Hooke’s twisting of his pen between his fingers made Harry suspect that some reproach was about to follow. ‘And you must be entirely candid with me,’ Hooke continued. ‘I busied myself with surveys this afternoon, and have heard rumours about the town.’

Harry’s stomach lurched; the same sensation as when propelled across the quadrangle on Hooke’s glider.

The Curator cleared his throat, and looked displeased. ‘There is talk of a Devil-boy, found at the Fleet, without his blood, and owning the hooves of a goat; a fearful creature from Hell waiting to come alive again. It is fancied that King Charles himself keeps it, in his elaboratory at Whitehall, and makes his own dissection. They say he reveals Catholic sympathies and practises. The boy is one of his bastards, with the vices of the father visited upon it, his satanic form reflecting the corruptions of the Court –’

‘I assure you, Mr. Hooke – as I am certain you believe – I have made no mention of it, to anyone.’ Harry had red spots of anger in his cheeks. He held the edge of the table in front of him, his knuckles white from the pressure of his grip.

‘I am sorry, Harry. I am sure that you would not knowingly reveal anything of the dead boy.’

‘I have revealed nothing! Whether knowingly or unknowingly. Today I went to Colonel Fields in Whitechapel; our conversation involved only the cipher, and Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey. I divulged nothing to him of the boy.’

‘It will be all about London by now,’ Hooke said dolefully. ‘They tell of sacrifice, of Catholic bloodletting, of drinking the blood and eating the flesh of him.’

‘Sir Edmund will be vexed that word escaped about the boy,’ Harry said charily, struggling to keep a level tone. ‘It may be the eel-fisher that let loose the word, as the Justice suspected he would. Or even the old Constable there. Or his man Welkin, who brought him here to Gresham’s.’

‘You are right – others know of this, and word was bound to escape in time.’

A long weighty silence ensued between the two men. They listened to the bangs and crashes of Tom’s scuttling about, setting kettle and stove and measuring out the tea.

‘You found Colonel Fields?’ Hooke said eventually, as a peace offering. ‘Was he able to assist you? Did he confirm the cipher’s reliance upon a keyword?’

‘I did. He was. He did.’ Harry began to calm, but still felt a vinegary resentment.

‘He was familiar with it?’

‘It was one employed during the campaigns of the Civil Wars. He calls it the Red Cipher.’

‘Do you have the message with you?’

‘The Colonel could not unravel the meaning. He said that a single keyword was usually employed, for ease of use in the field. There is nothing within the grids of numbers to indicate this word, or its length.’

‘Why then send it to me without its keyword?’

‘Perhaps it will be sent to you, Mr. Hooke,’ Harry replied. A thought struck him, one connected with the failing of Hooke’s memory. ‘Perhaps you already have it, Mr. Hooke, without realising that you do.’

Hooke made a dismissive sound, and pointed at all the books and papers in his drawing room. ‘I am surrounded by words. How would I find which of them unlocks this cipher? It will be clear if it comes, I am sure.’

‘Perhaps Sir Edmund already knows this word.’

‘But Sir Edmund sent the cipher to us,’ Hooke said testily. ‘Do you suggest that he works upon it, separately, without us?’

‘I cannot say, Mr. Hooke, for Sir Edmund’s undertakings are unknown to me. The Colonel told me of the use of the cipher in a historical matter: our King’s escape to France after the last battle of the wars, at Worcester.’

Hooke stopped still, open-mouthed, gaping like one of the lampreys in Enoch Wolfe’s box.

‘Sir Edmund himself took the King to safety,’ Harry added.

‘What!’ Hooke roared, his eyes bulbous in his dismay. ‘Go no further! Say nothing more! Harry, for your own safety, tell not a single soul of it! Forget all that you have heard from Colonel Fields. We must end our association with Sir Edmund, and with this cipher. Burn all of your workings – let no one see them.’

‘Not to tell Sir Edmund may do him great disservice, for his interest may be far wider than only this boy. For all that we know, he may be investigating a Catholic plot to use the blood from boys.’

‘To what end? I never took you to be so credulous – I am greatly surprised at you.’ Hooke flapped his hands at Harry, as if pushing him away. ‘We helped him at his request. We must now draw back from this, for we are men of philosophy, of natural knowledge, not of politicking. You are a young man, Harry, and you do not know what living through the Wars was like. They were supposed to change so much, yet ever since we have all had to assume a second face. The fire dies down. Let it cool.’

Hooke looked expectantly at Harry, demanding his agreement.

‘I will keep my silence. As I kept it before.’

Appeased, Hooke placed his hand over Harry’s wrist. ‘I will write a letter to the Justice. You wish to help him . . . do not burn your notes. Deliver them instead to him, to demonstrate our helpfulness. You know where he lives, along Hartshorne Lane, near Scotland Yard? I shall at last be able to concentrate upon the workings of the Society and the Secretaryship. Let us think and speak no more of this – I have no desire to wake up dead!’ Hooke smiled thinly at his bleak joke, and looked beseechingly at Harry for his complete agreement.

‘Colonel Fields remains alive, and he has known of this for nearly thirty years.’

‘You will go to Sir Edmund’s house tomorrow with your notes and his copy of the cipher,’ Hooke said peremptorily. ‘He already knows of the system; he may continue with its uncovering alone.’

‘But, Mr. Hooke –’

‘Harry! If you are wise you will take my advice: think no more upon it.’

Observation XV
Of Snowshoes

The next morning was bright and warm. The icy skin over the pavement was still hard, but beneath it the movement of melt-water could be heard under the pressure of his steps. White cracks branched out from the landing of each stride. Harry considered his footfalls to make a sound similar to the hitting of a stretched copper wire.

He could not take Hooke’s advice. The thoughts persisted, round and round, and there was nothing he could do to expel them from his head. The boy drained of his blood had some connection with the Wars fought before Harry’s birth, ending a quarter of a century before, and the King’s escape to France. At least, a cipher used then had resurfaced again, as if pushed up through the snow with the body of the boy.

Who else knew of the Red Cipher? He should have quizzed the Colonel further. Did Sir Edmund have the keyword? Why, then, pass the letter left with the boy to Mr. Hooke? Sir Edmund suspected a Catholic involvement. Did he know more, or was it merely hatred of Popery that so directed his thoughts?

Schooled by Robert Hooke to accept only the evidence of his senses, to examine first causes without trusting only the word of others, and to make trials for others to repeat and share, the intuition that there was something more, something deeper to distrust about the Justice, still troubled him.

Harry took the lower road, Throgmorton Street. It was early, and few people were about. He felt the bundle inside his coat: Sir Edmund’s copy of the cipher left with the boy, his own notes to show his working upon it, and a letter from Hooke severing them from the search. He paced quickly, a feeling of exhilaration quickening in his veins. He aimed towards Holborn, his excitement wrought by disobedience.

Harry had been careful to promise only that he would keep his silence. Nevertheless, he knew that Hooke had understood a more complete compliance, and his deception brought a flush to his skin.

His steps took him back to the bridge where the boy had been left.

He made a mental list of reasons why he should not just comply with Hooke’s wishes.

Firstly, he wanted justice for a small and innocent boy, so gruesomely misused. This was the noble aim, but he knew he had other, less praiseworthy motives for continuing in the direction that he did.

Secondly, and recognising his childishness, he noted that he was no longer Hooke’s apprentice, but the Royal Society’s Observator. Tom Gyles now had that role, yet Hooke still seemed to treat him as his servant.

Thirdly, he found himself intrigued by the Civil Wars. He knew of them only through the stories of older men such as Hooke. The Wars had made a whole generation fearful, even men such as the Colonel, impressive though he was. This was a disposition Harry was determined to resist, despite his natural inclination to be so.

Fourthly – and this reason was simple resentment – Hooke had accused him of spreading word of the boy.

Fifthly, Harry realised he had a more selfish reason: he was excited by the freedom of working without Hooke, of taking responsibility for his own actions, and not simply complying with the requests of another.