The Bloodless Boy (25 page)

‘After, now firm friends with Reuben, we faced the Royalists at Chelsea Fields. It was a stand-off, nothing more, but it gave us great heart. We spent the winter fortifying London. Men, women, and children worked to build up the Lines of Communication, the walls and sconces, and to dig the great ditch. Even on Sundays they worked! Eleven miles of fortifications ringed the City; the earth wall eighteen feet high.’

He took a great bite of his tart, and then washed it down with half of his beer, and sighed his satisfaction. ‘Then, we went to relieve Gloucester, besieged by the Royalists. I was by now a Captain. Reuben was loath to leave his wife, and his new son Moses, both of whom he loved greatly, but what choice had he?’

Harry assumed the question to be rhetorical, and quietly compared this story with his own little life, one untouched by such turbulence.

‘I cannot impart how cruel those times were. Conflicts, seemingly endless. Both sides feinting different directions, like a fairground pugilist showing one fist only to hit with the other. I lost many of my friends. To see the corpses of men, who just before had been animate and brave, can only be thought repugnant. To have a man burst in front of you makes you wonder about the nature of Creation itself.’

Fields very deliberately looked at Harry, to see precisely what affect his words had.

‘At Alton we fought the Royalists, using the icy roads at the time of a night-frost to move quickly, and we surprised them in the town. Rueben led the way into the church there, and threw grenadoes in to kill the Royalist commander. I spent the following spring in London, recuperating from a wound.’

Fields ran a finger along the scar running over the back of his head.

‘A combination of a musket ball and the chirurgeon’s efforts to remove it. Which did more damage is a moot matter, but I am pleased to inform you that I am still alive!’

Harry smiled nauseously at the old man’s joking of a ball fired into his skull.

‘Do not look so pasty-faced on my account, Mr. Hunt; I was fainted away from the chirurgeon’s cutting, and remember not a thing of it.’ He raised Harry’s deciphered papers. ‘That was the first time that I met the author of these letters, for it was Thomas Whitcombe who cared for me, stitched me up, and healed me.’

The old Colonel opened his mouth wide, pulling at his lips with his fingers, and presented his front teeth, slightly shorter than their companions, tapping at them hard. ‘I lost mine when hitting the ground from the ball. It was Thomas who found suitable replacements, taken from a dead man there upon the field. The roots took hold, and they remain to this day as firm as any of their companions.’

Fields searched for his tobacco in a battered leather-covered box, an old cartridge box, hung from his belt. He spent some time pushing the tobacco into his pipe, looking at it doubtfully, as it was damp from the rain.

After a couple of fruitless tries at ignition, he continued. ‘We then went to relieve Plymouth. After being defeated there, we were set upon by Royalists, beaten and robbed, and stripped of our clothes, which in the rainy weather was a cruel treatment. I was sadly diminished in body and spirit, and endured a fever lasting some two months. Again, Thomas cared for me, and brought me through. Reuben started to help him, preferring the work, and his skills with sewing were prodigious. It was around this time that we three became brothers-in-blood – as I have said, and shown you the scar.’

The Colonel sucked stoically at the pipe, still trying to get the tobacco to catch. ‘The next occasion I saw battle was at Naseby, a great victory for us, but our Sergeant Major General, Sir Philip Skippon, was wounded. A ball passed through him, yet he fought on, clutching his saddle and white in the face. It was Thomas who plugged the hole in his side, with Reuben assisting him.

‘By the following year Charles gave up Oxford, and we had taken Bristol from Prince Rupert. The other Royalist strongholds were quick to follow into our hands; Basing House, at long last, Dartmouth, Torrington, Chester, and we then won a battle at Stow-on-the-Wold. Exeter and Newark surrendered, and the first War was over.’

He waved the pipe in the air, in celebration of the memory.

*

‘We returned then to London. Us three, and Reuben’s wife Abigail – Moses Creed’s mother, therefore – became interested in those calling themselves the Levellers. We followed John Lilburne, who was a Lieutenant-Colonel in our army, and also a man called William Walwyn. Their speeches moved our hearts. I felt as though my eyes were unpeeled of a misty covering, which had before obscured the world from me, from seeing it in its right relations.

‘Now at this time the King was captured, but soon escaped, fleeing to the Isle of Wight, where he made promise to the Scots that if they helped him he would make theirs the English religion, and that he would suppress any who dissented.’

‘Mr. Hooke has told me of the King’s time on the Isle of Wight, where he stayed at Carisbrooke castle. He was then a boy, and his father met with the King there.’

‘Mr. Hooke was then a boy . . . how time races along, for to me it seems freshly as yesterday. Yet I find myself to be an old man. Time is given out to us in mean and miserly portions!’

The tobacco still refused to light, and with the constant trying to coax it to life Fields broke the tube of his pipe, the clay snapping in his grasp. He threw it into the fire in disgust.

‘So! There was the King on the Isle of Wight, and the meanwhile we met at Putney, to debate the future of the country, and the Kingship. Do you remember my mention of Putney at our first meeting? I used it as a keyword to show the working of the Red Cipher.’

‘You demonstrated how it changed the name of Cromwell into numbers.’

‘Just so!’ The Colonel looked gratified. ‘Having won the War, no one knew what to do in our victory. The death of the King came soon after. I saw his head held aloft – and still I believe it was just to see him off so violently; it showed our resolve to move from the old ways of despotism, and cheered us after our years of fighting.’

‘Yet the Wars did not end,’ Harry observed.

‘No, they did not. The execution of the King solved little, for, unlike me, most opposed it, and we had more foes to fight outside our borders. We went to Ireland with Cromwell, to stop their rebellion. The Irish fought savagely, being a barbarous people, and also, we stood on their soil. Think how hard we had worked to protect London, building defences around the whole of the City. In Ireland we met with resistance as stiff. At Wexford, Reuben, upon the scout for us inside the town, disguised and passing himself off as Irish, unfastened the gates for us. Once inside, we were unrestrained, and we put them to the sword. At Clonmel, the Irish defended themselves well and cleverly, building a trench into which we fell when their wall was breached. They killed about a thousand of us, slashing at us with scythes and poking at us with their pikes and partizans. The three of us took a care to escape that hole.’

Fields faltered; an extraordinary twitch working through him. ‘Do you surmise that Mrs. Hannam has more of this tart?’ he asked, once the spasm had passed. ‘For I believe it to be the finest I have tasted. Some more beer, too, for I am out, and this talking brings a thirst with it.’

Dutifully, Harry went out to look for Mrs. Hannam, and she was happy to return to the Colonel, who thanked her for the provisions.

‘A handsome woman, is she not?’ he remarked when she was safely out of earshot, having returned to her kitchen singing to herself. ‘Narrow in the flanks, but handsome. Where was I?’

‘In Ireland, Colonel,’ Harry answered gently, seeing the Colonel’s continued distress. His memories had made him blanch, and his hands shook agitatedly.

‘You may imagine how happy we were to return from there. We went then to Scotland. On the way we lost many through sickness and shortness of rations, about a quarter of our force. All the while Thomas applied himself, saving many, with Reuben assisting him. By the time of the great battle at Dunbar we were wearied, but their discipline was poor, and so we beat them. Cromwell had little time to relish his win, however, for he succumbed to the curious Scottish air, which pulls a man down into his misery. Thomas Whitcombe came then to his notice, for Thomas it was who tended to him.

‘When we returned to England, we were happy to do so, for Scotland is a dismal place. It was then that Thomas and Reuben were taken from me, on Oliver Cromwell’s orders.’

The Colonel chewed ruminatively at his slice of Mrs. Hannam’s tart. ‘You see, Thomas had got to know Cromwell well, and impressed all by his chirurgy. Reuben had killed the commander at Alton, and opened the gate at Wexford, and impressed all by his bravery. He assisted Thomas, more and more becoming a healer, seeing his dexterity as God-given. God seemed to cover their heads. That is why they were selected for covert work, naturally enough.’

‘Both he and Reuben were employed to convey the King to France,’ Harry said.

‘Cromwell thought them the best of men to safeguard him.’

‘What happened to them? Their mission was accomplished.’

‘One stretched from the branch of an oak tree, by the meeting of the Severn and the Teme rivers, after the battle of Worcester. The other, I know, was taken to be Royalist, captured at Brighthelmstone, and sent to the Barbadoes as a slave.’

‘It was Reuben Creed who died, and Thomas Whitcombe who survived.’

‘A long time ago . . . After Reuben died I loved his wife, Abigail, who shared my admiration of the Levellers. She would never have me, though, loving the memory of her dead husband too much – I never sought another, loving her too much.’

‘Reuben was killed because he knew of the way of the King’s escape?’

Fields nodded, and stroked the bristles over the dome of his head. ‘A brutish act. He was killed, but someone decided that Thomas should live, and that he should continue with the King on his journey to France. At Brighthelmstone, though, he was captured by Parliament forces, thought to be a turncoat, and taken to the Barbadoes.’

‘You heard nothing of him since?’

‘I made my own investigation. I was warned away. I heard of his use in the reaping of cane and the making of sugar, on the Earl of Shaftesbury’s plantations. I thought I saw him, once, years ago, at the place of the old Charing Cross, by the pillory there. It was rumoured that he performed the trepanning upon Prince Rupert, to alleviate the hurt from a wound to his brain.’

‘Where has Whitcombe carried out his experimental and philosophical trials? Who paid for him to do so?’

‘These questions I cannot answer,’ the Colonel replied. ‘If the body upon the Morice waterwheel was not that of the Justice, then you can ask him.’

‘In truth, I cannot ask him, Colonel.’

The Colonel barely paused at Harry’s tacit admission. ‘Did Sir Edmund tell you of the keyword before he died?’

‘It was revealed at the autopsy of his body. He had swallowed it, written onto a piece of paper.’

‘So he supposed that he would meet his death.’

‘Did Thomas Whitcombe have reason to kill Sir Edmund?’

Fields shrugged. ‘Why now, if he has been in London for so long?’

‘Colonel, do you think that Thomas Whitcombe is now dead, also, as his letter to Sir Edmund says?’ Harry asked.

‘I thought him dead before, Mr. Hunt. He returned.’

Observation XXXIX
Of the Observations

The daytime merged seamlessly into evening, the gloom of one replaced by the gloom of the other. The rain still fell outside. He could hear it spattering the roof with a sleepy sighing sound.

Other than the rain, and the occasional crack of a beam as the warmth from the fires left the house, all was quiet. Harry, after his visit from Colonel Fields, had gone early to his bed, in the late afternoon, but the throb in his tailbone and the tenderness of his shin and ankle, becoming ever blacker, made sleep impossible. He also had a sickening headache, which felt as if it opened the bone above his eyebrows.

Accepting defeat, he lit a candle and went to his table, and the package he had found with Secretary Oldenburg’s correspondences. He carefully unwrapped the sailcloth from its contents.

There were four piles of papers, each tied neatly with thread. He spread them out on the floor of his room.

Each of the piles had a title page, uniform in colour and size, bought from the same paper seller. Their titles swam in front of him, but he made himself focus them sharply. He would attempt the work, and perhaps the excruciating aches would subside.

Using the keyword
CORPUS
, he revealed the title of each pile:

Observations Historical

Observations Philosophical

Observations Habitual

Observations Propagational

They contrasted with the various sheets beneath, whose edges rippled, a mixture of weights, hues, and sizes. It appeared that Thomas Whitcombe’s researches were brought together by theme, like a commonplace book, noted on papers bought on different occasions and from various makers. The writing on them was small, with extraordinarily regular lettering – the hand of a chirurgeon, Harry thought.

Threads further divided each of the piles. Harry untied
Observations Historical
. It was some effort to unpick the knots, and eventually he tired of trying to loosen them, and took a small knife to them. He released ten sheaves of notes, and, from under the main title page, a short explanatory letter.

With the help of the brass cipher disk given to him by Colonel Fields, he revealed the hidden message.

History describes mankind’s rules or institutes, concerning Duties, Sins, or Indifference in matters of Religion, or things that are commanded, forbidden or permitted by their Municipal Laws. It describes the opinions or traditions to be found amongst mankind, concerning God, Creation, Revelation, Prophecies, and Miracles.

The ten bundles beneath this sheet were headed
Observations of Religions
;
Observations of Institutions; Observations of Sin
;
Observations of Indifference
;
Observations of Divine Law
;
Observations of Civil Law
;
Observations of Offences against God
;
Observations of Miracles
;
Observations of Obligation;
and
Observations of Atonement
.