The Bloodless Boy (19 page)

As he craned forward to see more clearly the driver, a man huddled in a goatskin coat, the coach slowed, and came to a halt. Its wood, leather and iron all made their individual groans and grumbles. The door was directly opposite Harry, as if waiting for him to step in. Its window was of perforated tin.

The driver made no movement on his seat, and although they were now quite close, and shared a soaking from the weather, there was no nod of acknowledgement from him. He simply stared forwards, the reins held loosely between thick fingers.

His stillness made Harry feel more anxious. The attitude of the man, whose silence and indifference was unusual as he waited – for what? – made him catch his breath, and hold it. The driver was small but strong-looking, older than he had first appeared, with a whey-coloured face that the flame of his lantern could not impart colour to. Harry thought he recognised him, but it was more the coat that he remembered. From the Crown tavern, its wearer talking to the serving girl.

There was a click, the door of the carriage swung open, and a man appeared from the interior, with a drawn sword. Harry glimpsed him as he walked through the light. He had a flat plane of bone at the top of his nose, the curious shape of his skull pushing his eyes wide apart. One long brow stretched over his forehead. He wore French bucket boots and an officer’s coat. The driver jumped from his seat, taking down the lantern and a grappling hook attached to a long length of rope.

Inside the Angel the candle was snuffed out, turning the window into a mirror, throwing a broken image of the street onto the windowpanes, showing between the notices wedged against them.

Harry turned towards the disappearance of the light, and looked at the reflection in the window of the man from inside the coach. He was being stared at, the man’s gaze holding his, challenging him to turn. He could not; instead he stood transfixed to the flat show of events behind him. He could feel his tongue stick to the roof of his mouth, and his limbs felt heavy, as if the amount of blood in them had suddenly doubled. He could not take his eyes away from the curious face.

Then the man turned away, with an air that made Harry feel he had been dismissed as only trivial, and moved swiftly off, disappearing down the narrow alley between the Angel and a small warehouse next to it. The driver followed him, vanishing just as rapidly from view.

Harry turned from the window, and allowed himself to take normal breaths.

‘Who are those men?’ he said out loud.

‘There are too many visitors to Alsatia,’ a voice slurred, spreading the fumes of strong drink. Harry turned to see he was being studied through one eye; the other was covered by a patch with an eye crudely painted on it, the copy drawing notice to the loss rather than concealing it. Its owner fumed over Harry again, and sloped off, antagonism apparent in his stiff-legged stride.

Harry shivered, and wiped the rain from his face and hair. He took a deep breath, and crossed to the coach, its horses waiting patiently in the road. The driver had not tethered them; they stood obediently for his return. He inspected the vehicle, walking around it. He pulled open the door. The coach was empty, with only the bare furniture of its interior.

He looked along the alleyway after the two men, but there was no sign of them. Back at the darkened window of the Angel, he tried to discern any movement inside. There was no sign either of the owner. It was as if they had all been washed down the same drain.

Harry tried the door of the coffee-house, but it was firmly locked.

He walked after the two men from the coach. He could not find a way into the Angel from the narrow passage to the side of it, no doorway or low window. There was only an ominous dark alleyway behind. He took a few uncertain steps into the blackness. He could see nothing, and could hear no movement. He could not understand how the men might have got inside.

He would leave the questioning of Enoch Wolfe until the daytime; he walked no further into the forbidding nothingness in front of him, but turned back on himself, hurrying at a jog to the street.

*

‘Stay still!’

The front door of the Angel had opened, and Harry saw the proprietor beckoning him over urgently.

‘You will not see Wolfe now.’

‘You said that he would see me.’

‘Others come for him.’

‘Who are these?’ Harry asked.

‘Who are you to pose such questions? You would be wise to fear them.’

‘He is not the simple eel-fisher I first took him to be.’

‘Eel-fisher?’ The owner laughed.

A loud smashing of glass from way above them cut short his mirth. From upstairs came the sound of running. Someone at the top of the house.

The two men stayed absolutely still in the doorway for a moment, then the owner, whose name was Turner, was first to react, and he walked cautiously towards the sound, into the interior of the coffee-house, pushing Harry out of his way. Harry, after a longer moment of indecision, followed, stumbling in the darkness up the narrow stairs.

A creak above them stopped them both. On the stairs they could see nothing – Harry could not even discern Turner’s back, although he was less than an arm’s reach away. Harry’s heart thumped, as he listened, ears probing the complete darkness, for the tiniest sound, a boot or scrape of a weapon.

From downstairs there was a sudden bang, as the front door blew shut. Both men froze, until, ahead, Harry sensed Turner take a cautious step up, and he followed, ordering his unwilling feet to move.

They could hear a man’s sobbing. It came from an attic room, another flight of stairs above them. They went slowly, warily, Harry close behind Turner, upwards to the very top of the coffee-house. On the last steps, under their boots they could feel the crunching of broken glass.

As they reached the upper landing, where the frame and glass of a small window lay scattered over the boards, they heard a scream, high-pitched like the squeal of a boar, followed by a whimpering, and a strange bubbling sound.

From below them there came another noise, a loud impact, and then another, and the front door also was shattered, broken in. They had two choices: to carry on up here, or to return downstairs. Again Turner moved first, and pushed open the door in front of him.

Harry followed closely behind.

Against the bedroom’s window were the silhouettes of three men. One was perfectly still, despite the thrashing of the man he held.

Behind them came the sound of feet thumping up the wooden staircase, and Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey’s lamp swung into the room, with the Justice holding onto it grimly. They could see that the man with the strangely-shaped brow held Enoch Wolfe the eel-fisher, who wore a suit and had a metal shield over his nose. The man grasped Wolfe’s neck, holding him up off the floor, avoiding his frantically kicking feet and flailing arms. The driver of the coach stood with his arms folded, looking only at Harry, ignoring Turner and the newly-arrived Sir Edmund, and the murder being carried out beside him.

Harry heard the sound of air escaping from a ripped throat.

Enoch Wolfe slowed, and quietened, and his body slackened, and became limp.

The murderer dropped the body, and spat out Wolfe’s Adam’s apple; the lump fell onto the floor, and rolled towards them. The killer had blood on his lips and chin, and he produced a handkerchief, and fastidiously wiped at it.

His face was so still and blank that it chilled Sir Edmund, Harry, and Turner equally.

The Justice, astonishingly, turned and ran, and Harry and Turner took a look at each other, and then went after him, following him back down the stairs. The lamplight swung wildly, making each step seem to veer crazily beneath them. Sir Edmund charged out through the broken door of the coffee-house, and they heard him make strange mewling sounds as he went.

Harry slipped, and crashed to the bottom of the stairs, hitting each tread as he fell. The wall abruptly halted his descent. He slumped to the floor, for a moment dazed. Behind him, Turner grabbed him to lift him up, and shoved him through the exit from the back of the Angel, into a muddy yard with some chicken coups. ‘Go on! Over the wall. Keep on up the hill. A path follows the back of this row.’

‘Was that Enoch Wolfe?’ Harry asked him, disbelievingly. Smartly dressed, and with the noseguard, the man had looked quite different.

‘He feared for his life. That is why he wished to see you. You will never hear what he had to tell now.’

‘Who killed him?’

‘You saw! A monster! He seeks his son the Devil-boy!’ Turner’s face was wild, his eyes black holes in white circles. He raced away, going off in the opposite direction, leaving Harry alone to fend for himself.

Harry jumped over the wall, and staggered on landing, pain shooting up his shins, the other side being lower than where he had taken off. He cried out, but quickly stifled his noise, anxious that the killer would hear. A dog started to bark, a high-pitched yapping, and Harry crawled forwards, hoping that the dog was tethered, trying to ignore the hurt in his shins, and at the base of his spine. He bumped into a rickety framework of planking, some kind of fence or shelter, and he caught his coat on a nail. The leather pulled him, and he tripped, landing on his back.

The rain had stopped while he was inside the Angel. The clouds had started to part, and some dim moonlight came through a gap between them. He stayed for a moment where he was, and looked directly upwards, partly because the air had left his lungs, and partly for the comfort of seeing the moon, familiar and soothing to him amongst the savage hostility of Alsatia.

The dog, its bark coming no nearer, quietened. Harry could hear no other sounds. Cautiously, he picked himself up, and made his way along the narrow path, as fast as he could, desperate to put distance between him and the nightmare behind. His own footsteps felt unnatural to him, Harry not knowing where the next step would send him on the uneven ground, but they propelled him quickly enough, and automatically, as if he rode on mechanical legs.

He went through Alsatia and up towards the safety of Fleet Street, all the way listening out for the sound of coach wheels on cobbles.

Only once he was there, well away from the Angel, and walking on the main thoroughfare, did he relight Hooke’s lamp.

Observaiton XXX
Of Further Articles

The browns and reds and greens of the covers of all the books, with the glittering golds of those with titles on their spines, made it seem a splendid autumn day in the library. The curtains were pulled back, and the bright morning light poured in. Despite this, candles burned everywhere around the room.

Lefèvre saw John Locke studying him, and he stared fiercely back at Shaftesbury’s Secretary. Eventually, it was Locke who cut the invisible lines joining them. Lefèvre transferred his stare to that of the automaton’s, no sign of his small victory discernible, although he seemed to find comfort that the machine would never give way.

Locke sighed, and brought down a book from the shelves; a copy of Hobbes’s
Leviathan
, describing the relationship between the multitude and its representative sovereign. He thumbed through the book, leaning with an angular elbow against its shelf.

Other than the turning of these pages, the library of Thanet House was utterly quiet, with no sounds reaching them from outside, or from the rest of the house. The books insulated the place – the great weight of paper stored on these shelves, pages pressed together between their covers, extending sometimes two feet thick from the walls.

A door set into the bookshelves opened behind them. Turning towards it, they saw the long, jowled face of the Earl of Shaftesbury.

Behind him was his elaboratory. His collection of rare objects, his knick-knackatory, was housed in a great cabinet, with glass-fronted doors, reaching almost to the ceiling. In the centre of the room was an Air-pump that he kept there, its glass receiver empty, the lid down on the floor beside the machine.

The Earl gently shut the door behind him. He was without his perruke, and there was a distance in his eyes. After a massage with oils and a smoke of opium and tobacco, Shaftesbury was more at ease with himself, the hole in his side unusually painless.

Lefèvre moved smoothly over to the window, and pulled at the long curtains, closing the gap between them. The motes of dust disappeared as the shaft of daylight was snuffed out, and candlelight regained supremacy in the room.

Shaftesbury nodded his thanks, and indicated to them to sit. Lefèvre appeared magically on his chair. Locke closed
Leviathan
, and waited attentively, anticipating more elements to the plot.

‘John. Monsieur Lefèvre. I have excellent news, news to assist my design! I have heard from my man Smith, who lurks about Whitehall, that the Duchess of York’s Secretary, Edward Coleman, is known to have sent communications to the French, asking for their aids and assistances.’

Locke leaned further forwards, his chin resting on the book. ‘Do you say this is high treason?’ he asked.

‘It is of little consequence! He seeks money only, but it is as damning. We manufacture meetings between Coleman and Oates, place him at our imagined Consult, and we have first proof of plottings against the King from one close to him! The false wrapped entirely in the real, and all delivered as one.’

‘We can send Coleman affirmatives from friendly parties that his efforts will be rewarded. These alone will hang him.’ Locke said these words as if to test Shaftesbury’s will, although he knew full well that if the plot gathered more momentum, Coleman’s death would not unduly worry the Earl.

‘Write them,’ Shaftesbury commanded.

Locke nodded. ‘And I shall brief Titus Oates.’

‘I desire Oates to swear that he overheard of the firing of Southwark and Limehouse Hole by Jesuits, and to have seen plans to set afire Wapping and Westminster. And plans to slit one hundred thousand throats in London – how the Catholics would go about it. Reminisce of the Saint Bartholomew’s day massacre! Remember fondly Catherine de Medici! All as bloodthirsty as you wish.’

Shaftesbury closed his eyes, and seemed to be drifting to sleep. The other two waited for him to stir. Eventually, his eyes still closed, he spoke.

‘Monsieur Lefèvre, well done. You have killed one hindrance, and discouraged the other. Hooke’s apprentice will now steer clear of us. Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey, too, it sounds, became unmanned. You may concentrate on your assignment to kill the King.’ He turned to Locke. ‘But still we do not have our boy.’

‘Still we do not have our man,’ Locke replied. ‘All our intelligencers search for him. Aires wears out the wheels of your coach in the gathering of their reports.’

‘Should we look to Robert Hooke? He has the abilities that we need.’

‘Too timid, I think. Although, there are means to encourage him.’

‘Tomorrow, then, after Oates and Tonge have met with the King.’