The Bloodless Boy (20 page)

Observation XXXI
Of the Nerves

The bright sickening colour of Enoch Wolfe’s blood . . . and the blood drained from the boys. The Red Cipher returned. Titus Oates and Israel Tonge, and their stories of London overthrown.

Sir Edmund had spent the night wandering the streets of London, a distracted figure, his heart sick and his head full of Catholic murder. He had ended up to the east, past Blackwall, and the route he had taken had been irregular, and mazy. He doubted whether he could repeat it.

Why this Catholic need for blood?

Sir Edmund did not believe in transubstantiation, and would never believe it. He had robustly dismissed this Popish superstition at many a dinner, declaring it only meant that a Catholic must piss the blood of Christ back out. Such false notions could only sensibly be dismissed.

He wiped some spray of the Thames from his face, and stared at the waterman taking him to Hartshorne Lane stairs, to gauge if he sensed his timidity. The man carefully avoided his look. The Justice took comfort that the waterman was blatantly alive, with vigorous arms pulling at the oars of the wherry; he saw again the gristle from Wolfe’s throat, rolling across the room . . .

The killing of Enoch Wolfe, so brutally, showed the menace of the Jesuits.

The boys left at Barking Creek, the Fleet, and the Westbourne were portents of a Hellish conscience.

Everywhere he went he heard the rumours. Catholic malfeasance was demonstrated beyond any sensible doubt. Hearing more of the secrets of the Plot laid out before him by Oates and Tonge, like a landscape revealing itself from the crest of a high hill, Sir Edmund knew that his suspicions were proved to be true.

The reappearance of the Red Cipher had been like a blow to his body. With the King’s life in danger he must be resolute – but the pressure in his skull felt as if the gold band around his hat slowly contracted.

An idea struck him, and it chilled his heart.

It was Robert Hooke who removed the blood from these boys.

Hooke’s skills were obvious, his knowledge was prodigious, and he had the Air-pump. And what of his assistant, also proficient with the apparatus? Did they work together?

Hooke and Hunt had told him that they were done with the search. Hooke had told him by letter, and Hunt had told him face to face.

Hooke wanted no part in the leftovers from the Civil Wars. Even at the King’s command his uneasiness had been obvious to all.

Harry Hunt had been duplicitous throughout, and admitted as much to him. Had everything that Hooke’s assistant told him been misleading?

Was Gresham’s College the place he should be searching, as the heart of this wicked enterprise?

He had sought aid from the very last people in London that he should have! He had trusted them foolishly, having too much regard for Hooke’s good reputation about the town.

No, no, it made no sense.

In the absence of certitude, when his mind was assailed by doubts, he allowed fantastical thoughts. He should keep to the maxim of the Royal Society; seek the truth only from what is known, and what can be shown to be true.

Go back to the very beginning, start again . . .

Sir Edmund had wavered between a whole-hearted trust and a deep-seated suspicion since he had met the pair. He wished he knew their true colours.

He, though, had kept much from them also, and could not expect openness in return.

Only Titus Oates and Israel Tonge sought to help him freely.

They told him of Jesuits secretly armed, ready for the rebellion. The Catholic powers abroad gladly aided such a coup. Had there not been incendiarism enough to convince? Southwark had been such a fire, and recently at Limehouse Hole. And how many other times had the lucky finding of fireballs, moments before their discharge, saved the Righteous?

There never came a rising from below. A river has its source from above. The Catholic nobility and gentry must have more careful checks put upon them. The use of an Air-pump to store the boy, the fine candles . . . All pointed to money. When the mob stirred, a Justice looked for those who gained by its anger. An irreligious uprising would be sponsored by those desiring profit.

Perhaps even French Louis had an interest?

Informed by the Angel’s owner, Turner, that Enoch Wolfe was willing to meet with Harry Hunt, he had gone to Alsatia too, having his own questions to put to the eel-fisher. He had seen Shaftesbury’s man, Aires, well-known to him, and Shaftesbury’s black coach-and-four, and that man with one long eyebrow, emerging from the coach . . .

So, whatever purpose the Jesuit conspirators kept it for, the Earl of Shaftesbury procured the blood for them. Even from the Tower the Earl had arranged it. With all his suspicions though, Sir Edmund knew that he had no evidence against him. He would need the King’s authority to question such a man.

Yet Shaftesbury hated the Catholics, and missed no opportunity to stir opinion against them.

Wolfe had discovered the boy at the Fleet; it was too coincidental that he should have been slaughtered.

These worries gnawed at him; contradictory, inconsistent, incoherent. Amplifying within the great spaces of his imagination, growing ever fatter as he became more fearful.

He took off his hat and cradled his head in his hand, stroking his temples to quieten his mind. He could feel his thoughts unravelling. His reason, the tool of his trade, had become overstretched, through confusion, through lack of direction. He had to get a grip on himself, and on his investigation, or else it would be the undoing of him.

Everywhere he looked he saw only problems, questions, conspiracy, malfeasance.

He tried to believe Hooke’s story of being summoned to the Fleet by a messenger, but what if Hooke himself was the anatomiser, the murderer of the boys? Hooke had been there because he left the boy . . . Did Hooke and Shaftesbury work together? Shaftesbury had the money for the enterprise. Perhaps Hooke’s assistant Harry Hunt manufactured the story of prints left by snowshoes, to divert his thoughts away from their own experiments.

Many strange trials were performed at Gresham’s College.

Think of the doors leading off from the long corridor down in the cellars, behind them vast containers of blood, great glass globes full of broken infants, their eyes moving in ghastly agony. Conduits – tubes made of pig guts or some such material – going from one boy to another, blood coursing through them, a repugnant peristalsis. All of them swaying and swelling under the impulse of blood pumped through them, their hands outstretched, pleading for an end to their suffering . . .

Sir Edmund filled with dread; the feeling diffused through him like black ink dripped into water.

Stop with these thoughts, Edmund, stop with them.

*

The wherry reached the turn at Westminster, where the river flowing from the south swerved lazily east. Sir Edmund forced himself to think of something else, looking at London from this point on the river, and the waterman saw the twitch on his face, the effort of will to do so.

He saw the usual landmarks as he approached his home; the bell tower of Saint Martin’s, the four towers of Northumberland House, Saint James’s Park rising up on the hill behind, the long rows of trees following the line of the canal. He looked over the low buildings of his own coal and wood stores, as the brightly coloured wherry moved against the water’s flow to his own wharf, at the end of Hartshorne Lane.

Did anyone wait here for him, or around a bend in one of the crescent shaped alleys, or behind a door, perhaps ready to fling it open into his face and stun him helpless, knock him to the ground?

He paid the waterman, paying him double the fare for the information that he had heard of nothing untoward around his property, in this part of Saint Martin-in-the-Fields, and that he had heard no rumours of a threat to the Justice.

He jumped from the vessel, and walked slowly to his house, a long narrow building of red brick. He stayed to the middle of the lane, looking to left and right.

Hartshorne Lane, leading from the river to the Strand, was busy, full of people pushing carts. Usually he walked through them like a great flagship surrounded by its flotilla, impervious and separate from those around him, all smooth motion and purpose. This morning his face was pale, and his eyes darted everywhere. The man looked as nervous as a cat in a kennel. He gripped the hilt of his rapier in its scabbard, the weapon poking out behind him from under his coat like Satan’s tail. They scurried away from him, keeping well clear, wondering what it was that he expected.

They, too, had heard the rumours.

Many tiny alleys and courts led off from Hartshorne Lane; like veins diverging from an artery, Sir Edmund imagined. He looked down each of them, into every corner and hollow, behind every crate and box and cart, walking on the balls of his feet, ready to run. Whether towards or away he had not decided. The early morning sunlight flung shadows across his path, and sent bright stars into his vision. He squinted into the bright light, pulling for the shade afforded by the brim of his hat.

He moved stealthily around his house, trying to look in all directions at once, looking intently up at the windows for the smallest sign of movement, checking that no one skulked behind the low wall surrounding it, turning to see if anyone crept behind him.

He went to his outbuildings, still looking around him, to ensure that the locks had not been tampered with.

The main store for his coal was long and squat. It was strongly built, for when he held the coal back, working with his allies at the Woodmongers’ Company to keep the prices high. The coal dust dispersed over the ground and across the walls of the structure, the bricks around the doorway looking as if an explosion had sent black powder blasting from it. He hefted the large door, made of rough thick planking, pegged to its braces rather than nailed. It was firmly locked, with no sign of being tried by a jemmy or blade.

The yard in which he kept his wood, with its stacks of planking kept apart on blocks to dry with the air moving freely around them, sagging tarpaulins suspended over them to keep off the weather, afforded perfect cover for any Jesuit assassin. Here the gloom cast by the tarpaulins was almost impenetrable.

He drew his sword, holding it in front of him, feeling his way into the shadows with its point. He circled each of the stacks, and moved aside some of the timbers to reassure himself that no one hid under them.

He found nothing. He entered the narrow passageway along the side of the house to go in through the door.

More shadows. Damn this strong light. Away from the lane, only silence.

Who came after him, who taunted him with these signs, and infected his head with girlish nervousness? He would check his weapons. He could at least defend himself while in his own home. He would stay there for a day; try to rest. He was fraught. He had gunpowder, pistols and muskets. Enough to start his own insurrection, should he so choose.

Left in the gap between the door to his house and its frame was a letter, sealed with black wax, with a design of a lit candle. He slid the sword back into its place on his belt.

Breaking the wax and pulling open the letter, he saw that it had just one word written on it.

He unlocked the door to his house, and went in.

Observation XXXII
Of Rest

Harry first stirred when the bells of St. Ethelburga-the-Virgin sounded for the one o’clock service. He had missed the whole of the morning, sleeping on. No dreams had troubled him. He wondered if he had even moved a limb.

He lay for a while, his mind blank, thinking of nothing.

He sat up, but the hurt from his tailbone made him cry out. It brought back the memory of Alsatia; he had not thought of it, as if his mind worked to keep it from him. He turned onto his belly, wriggled to the edge of the bed, and gingerly placed his feet onto the floor. The weight through his shins reminded him that he had fallen over a wall, after seeing Enoch Wolfe’s throat being bitten away.

Harry could see the monster’s teeth, each one outlined by dark blood. The monster had stared at him as he held Wolfe. And the other with him, the driver of the coach, had also stood and watched him.

Why had they not watched Turner? Or Sir Edmund, when he arrived?

Harry reached for his chamber pot from under his bed, and convulsively puked into it, until only a thread of thin liquid was left. His throat and nose burned from the taste, and he washed it away with some beer. His eyes streamed; he wiped them with some paper, and then put his glasses on.

He had slept in his breeches. Carefully, he pulled them down to inspect his legs. One shin did not look too bad, a dark yellowy-green spreading down from his knee, and the skin was not broken. It did not feel too sore, either, although he would not want to bump it. The other shin, though, had gone black, the bruise from his fall following the line of sharp bone. He touched it, and immediately winced, pulling his hand away. He felt it again, checking that it was not cracked. The pain brought tears to his eyes, but he pressed his finger against the bone, running it along its length, seeking a notch or line.

It did not seem to be broken. It looked spectacular, even worse than it felt. He had been lucky not to shatter it. His heel, too, was sore. He also had a cut in his hand from a stone, the congealed blood crusting it over.

He took the little mirror he kept by his bedside, and used it to observe his coccyx. He pushed at it, each side. It was not too damaged, only bruised.

He would rest today, he decided. As soon as he had settled upon this decision, he heard a voice telling him:
three boys are dead
.

He jumped, startled, and looked around his room, but of course, no one was there. It had been a man’s voice. Not Hooke’s, whose nasal tones he knew so well. An older man’s voice. Not Sir Edmund’s. Not Colonel Fields’s. Not anyone’s that he could remember.

It was a voice from his imagination, he realised. The voice of his conscience. Perhaps it was the voice of his older self. It had been so clear.

Three boys were dead.

The discoverer of one of them, Enoch Wolfe, was also dead, murdered by a monster, a bestial man.

How many more would be killed?

Why had Wolfe been killed? Had he been sent to collect the boy, as the size of his box of lampreys suggested? Was it, then, because of his failure to take the boy from the Fleet?