The Bloodless Boy (24 page)

Observation XXXVI
Of the Letters Deciphered

Harry had become a machine, so absorbed in his task to unravel the enciphered letters that he forgot the world outside. He had not noticed the morning come.

Sitting at his little table, using the keyword
CORPUS
, he had deciphered his copy of the letter found on the boy at the Fleet.

Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey,
this 23rd day of December 1677

If you read this it means that I am dead. This is that therefore which goes before, a document of posteriority. My worldly reputation now is of no matter; with tranquillity I leave all that behind me.

Impudence makes me wish for a right settling of all things after my death. At least this letter can be offered as a gesture towards that right way of things. Here I am concerned with why I did die. In this last letter I do not dissemble, and offer no strategy from my grave.

I have incurred the anger of Heaven. I chose to live wholly in opposition to God, by the chusing of my actions.

I cling not to a Protestant dismissal of Purgatory to ease my burden.

A man is given two paths, and two lights light his way, and he is given two guides to lead him. One path leads to God in His Creation and the doing of his will through curing bodily affliction. This path is illuminated by the light of Nature. The other way is a more exalted path. It is a calling to heal men’s Souls through the preaching of the Word of God. Its light is the light of Grace.

The light of Nature is the light of the mind. The light of Grace is the superior light, the light of God, which is the light of the Holy Ghost. All things are within the two lights, without which there would be nothing, and no knowledge of them.

The child has to learn himself how not to fear the dark. It is beyond the powers of rhetoric to teach him; nature and experience only convinces him that to enter a blackened room need not terrify. Likewise we cannot be given experience of death, to learn its nature, and so no reasonings can persuade us to pass happily unto it.

We begin to die from the day we are born; yet I find it small comfort that death represents our natural estate. Now in the face of it I tremble in my marrow, and offer myself,

Thomas Whitcombe,
To the Mercy of God.

Harry stood up with difficulty, suffering from his falls in Alsatia, and his clamber across the Morice waterwheels. He looked out from his window across the walks of Moorfields. A fine drizzle misted the air, and everything he could see was drab, and weary-looking.

He had also deciphered his copy of the letter delivered to Robert Hooke.

Dr. Robert Hooke, this 23rd day of December 1677

Sir: My guiding principle was discovery. I directed my time on God’s earth towards worldly concerns, with a singular interpretation of usefulness.

I worked as chymist, operator, mechanic, natural philosopher; call them what you will. I studied physic, anatomy, geometry, astronomy, navigation, horology, astrology, statics, magnetizm, chymistry, alchemical and natural experiments, and knew them each and all more completely than most who profess themselves virtuosi.

For the last year my employments, taking me away from my usual course, have stayed me upon one main stream, and so I have not wandered to follow mazy tributaries. I have uncovered much, whose foundations lie on excellent, diverse, substantial and noble experiments. I have worked secretly, without recourse to Intelligence or Society. I leave with you the flesh of these findings. You will ascertain quickly enough the reason for my secrecy and avoidance of the Club.

God has made this great machine and placed us within a most inconsiderable part of it, and allowed us to survey his Creation through reflections of a glass, darkly; our limited senses and capacities. I presumed to penetrate the depths of Nature, to polish the glass, and to understand the whole constitution of the Universe.

I leave my Observations with you. You are able to decide how my work shall best be used.

Thomas Whitcombe,
Natural Philosopher

Who is – or was – this Thomas Whitcombe, making such claims for himself?

I have incurred the anger of Heaven
. Was he the murderer of the boys, and the taker of their blood?

He may build upon my findings, however these were obtained.
Would Hooke know of the name Thomas Whitcombe? He could not recall mention of it, although Hooke knew half of London.

Looking across at the Bethlehem hospital, Harry wondered whether these letters merely showed the ravings of a lunatic. No one could have worked secretly, and alone, upon so many areas of knowledge, and known them
each and all more completely than most who profess themselves virtuosi
. Such a skilled experimentalist would have had to communicate with other natural philosophers, to share ideas, otherwise he would merely repeat the same trials and mistakes of others.

Thomas Whitcombe’s grand claims could not be true.

But the package, using the same Civil War cipher and in the same meticulous handwriting as the enciphered letter to Mr. Hooke, had been found with Henry Oldenburg. Perhaps Whitcombe had not needed to attend meetings, or correspond with other natural philosophers, if Oldenburg had sent him copies of the experiments in his correspondences, as well as those published in the Society’s
Philosophical Transactions
.

Harry dressed, and placed the deciphered letters in the pocket inside his coat.

He must take them to Mr. Hooke. And he must tell him of the murder of Enoch Wolfe.

Pulling his boots on, he was still troubled by their return.

They had discussed whether the boy had been preserved in glass, to allow for observation. Harry had been dogged by feelings of being observed, as if he were in a similar receiver.

But by whom?

He went out of his room, and Mrs. Hannam caught him at the bottom of the stairs, having just returned from the Green Yard white market. Her hair was wet from the rain, and it hung unflatteringly against her head. She clutched a chicken, which drooped forlornly, its neck reminding him of Sir Edmund’s on the wheel. He grasped the rail to steady himself, suddenly feeling light-headed.

‘You look pale, Mr. Hunt,’ she said. ‘Should you venture out? The weather is too cold, and this drizzle brings a melancholy with it.’

‘I must go to the College. I have pressing business there.’

‘I hope you are not short of time, for everywhere there are soldiers, and they stop everyone. I was questioned twice – a fine thought, me and my chicken Jesuitical assassins!’

‘Because of the rumours of a plan against the King’s life,’ Harry reasoned.

‘And more. A dead man was recovered from the waterwheels under the Bridge, and there is talk that he was the Justice of Peace, Sir Edmund. The last to see him heard him muttering of the Catholic plot. I pray that he is safe, for he is one who protects us.’

Before Harry could think of the best response for her, some safe and reassuring remark, there was a booming knock at the door.

Observation XXXVII
Of the Wartime

Harry stopped Mrs. Hannam, holding her by the shoulder, a contact between them that made her eyes widen with surprise.

It was certainly not Tom’s knock, and the circle of Mrs. Hannam’s friends would not bash at the door in such a forceful manner. In more serene times Harry would not think twice about going to answer it. After seeing the murder of Enoch Wolfe by a monster, and then recover Sir Edmund – the best man to catch Wolfe’s murderer – from a wheel of the Morice waterworks, Harry had become far more wary.

He stepped down into the narrow hallway, and placed himself in front of Mrs. Hannam.

The knock came again, even louder.

‘Mr. Hunt! Are you in there?’

Harry recognised the voice.

He hurried to the door before the old soldier could launch another assault on it.

Coming in, Colonel Fields clasped Harry firmly by the hand. He was unshaven, a beard beginning to extrude into the world, a stubble of hair surrounding his head, the top left bald and shiny.

‘It is good to see you once more.’ Fields followed Harry into the hallway, filling its width. ‘You have your boots! I wondered if the soldiers at Gresham’s College might have off with them.’

‘It was you who returned them, Colonel?’

‘I watched your endeavours upon the Morice waterwheel, to take the body from it.’

‘I am obliged.’ Harry ignored Mrs. Hannam’s incredulous expression, and her sudden letting-go of the chicken.

‘I did not call upon you then, as there were a great many soldiers about,’ the Colonel said. ‘Whose was the body you found? And who came to look at him at the College?’

‘Mrs. Hannam,’ Harry said. ‘This is Colonel Michael Fields. May I speak with him here?’

‘Of course.’ Her voice was tremulous with the news that Harry was the man who had climbed out onto the wheel. ‘Talk away!’ She then caught his meaning, and moved to the door of her parlour, and urged them in. ‘Are you hungry, Colonel, and Mr. Hunt? I shall search out what food there is.’

‘When a man does not know where his next meal is, he is always hungry, Mrs, Hannam,’ the Colonel replied gratefully.

Mrs. Hannam found herself curtsying to him, before she could correct herself. Feeling a warm flush over her face, she fled off to the kitchen.

Fields watched after her. ‘A handsome woman, Mr. Hunt!’ The soldier had a way of stating things that if you disagreed you would think twice before speaking up. ‘Is she a widow?’

‘Her husband is in a debtor’s gaol.’

‘Ah . . . life owns a way of disappointing most, does it not?’

Harry waited until she was out of earshot. ‘Colonel, we know not who the dead man is, and I cannot divulge who came to Gresham’s.’

‘The King came to Gresham’s College. With Sir Jonas Moore. I shall answer that question for you, as I respect your duty to stay quiet on the matter. I imagine also that the man’s identity is known, but I shall not insist upon an answer, for we are friends. I have my suspicions. The Justice of Peace, Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey, for example, is a good candidate for the man upon the wheel.’ He inspected Harry. ‘I see that you have a card-playing face. It is no matter. I am here for quite another reason. We last met in Whitechapel, and discussed the wartime cipher. Have you advanced at all in its revelation?’

Fields would be a powerful ally. As for what kind of enemy he would make, this old soldier turned preacher, it was difficult to decide. Fields certainly had more that he could say upon the use of the Red Cipher by Thomas Whitcombe.

Harry made his choice.

‘I have.’

‘You found its key?’

‘Yes. The word was
CORPUS
.’

Fields looked immensely satisfied.

Harry took out his papers from his coat, resisting the urge to produce them with a flourish. ‘These are two letters from a man calling himself Thomas Whitcombe. He may be a boastful man, or else he may be the greatest natural philosopher who ever lived.’

The Colonel clapped his hands, the sound alarming in the small room they were in. ‘With Thomas Whitcombe,’ he said, ‘there will be an aspect of both.’

‘You know him, as another user of the Red Cipher.’

Fields nodded. ‘As well as your boots, I have another gift for you. I have kept it for many years, as a memento. It shall live a more useful life with you, I think.’

He produced a small cloth bag with a drawstring round its neck, and took out what looked to Harry like a flat plate.

‘It is a cipher disk, the one I used when a soldier.’

Made of brass, it was in fact three disks, one fitting inside the other; on two were the letters of the alphabet, and on the third were numbers. By turning the disks the two alphabets and the numbers could be made to align, or be shifted by any number of steps, until it returned to the starting position.

‘It is easy to use, and easy to carry, sturdy and simple in its construction. A perfect instrument for the field!’ Seeing Harry’s reluctance to take it, Fields insisted.

‘Take it! And I shall tell you more of Thomas Whitcombe.’

Observation XXXVIII
Of a Blood-Covenant

They sat in the simply furnished parlour, each with beer and some cowslip tart.

‘So! You have many questions, Mr. Hunt,’ the old soldier stated, as he finished reading the letters.

Harry found Fields’s bluff manner entirely trustworthy. The promise to Sir Edmund not to speak of the boys seeming no longer binding, he had passed the letters over.

‘The first being: what do you know of Thomas Whitcombe?’ Harry said.

Fields stood to take off his coat, which he folded and placed on the small oval table in front of him. ‘Thomas served under me. In the Wars that split this nation apart. I told you before, when you came to me in Whitechapel, that I did not know the Solicitor, Moses Creed.’ Fields rolled up his shirtsleeve, revealing a still-powerful forearm, and indicated for Harry to come closer. ‘However, I did know
of
him, having met him as a child. I knew his father very well. We, Reuben Creed, Thomas Whitcombe, and I, all of us three, were for a time inseparable.’ Fields turned his arm, revealing to Harry his scar, a whorl of colourless skin. ‘We even made a blood-covenant with one another.’

‘Done with a pipe, Colonel?’

‘A quill, I think. It was quickly done, in a tent by Lostwithiel, in Cornwall. A juvenile enthusiasm, perhaps, but indicative of our bond. Thomas Whitcombe supplied the method. He was a field chirurgeon, his skills unsurpassed.’

Fields lowered his arm, and replaced the sleeve. ‘Reuben was a glove-maker before he was a soldier, and so became useful to Thomas, in the stitching of men together. I told you of the last battle, at Worcester. Before that encounter, there had been ten years of wars.’

The Colonel sat down again, very upright; his mind, back in the wars, allowing his body some of his younger self’s vigour and bearing.

‘I was with the London Trained Bands. These London regiments became a stout and trustworthy force, often called upon when Parliament had need, ’though they never liked to stray too far from home.’

‘And was Thomas Whitcombe with you?’ Harry asked. ‘And Reuben Creed?’

The Colonel looked at him kindly. ‘No, no. Not yet. I did not meet with Reuben until I fought at Edgehill, near Banbury, by the side of the Roman Fosse Way. We faced a charge from their horse. It was the Prince Rupert who laid into us. My company, in amongst it, drew back . . .’

Fields looked uncomfortable, and Harry suspected that his talk of ‘drawing back’ hid the true situation: that of a frightened mass of men spinning away from the oncoming horses, fleeing from the shaking of the earth.

‘Reuben moved through our men, pacifying them with his calmness, so very contrastingly with the majority. This is how he first came to my notice. The matter went to push of pike. The King’s standard bearer was killed, and the Royal standard captured.’

‘I have heard of this, Colonel,’ Harry said. ‘It was Sir Edmund Verney who held the standard; his dead hand had to be cut from it, so resolute was he.’

Fields raised his cup above his head. ‘History from above, and history from below.’ He brought the cup back down, spilling some of his beer. ‘It has the air of myth about it. It is difficult to follow what happens on a battlefield; it is such a busy place.