The Bloodless Boy (38 page)

The King’s guards had nothing to aim at apart from the horse, and were uncertain of their actions. They could not see the Jesuit’s plan. They turned as one, keeping between the horse and the King, but were unwilling to shoot at the animal.

Harry, seeing fully his plan, ran to the King in the opposite direction to Lefèvre. As the horse got to the line of the King’s men, Lefèvre hoisted himself up, onto the saddle, and pulled back the lever under his sleeve. His arm pointed at the King.

Harry, taking his sharp piece of the fire-guard’s frame from his pocket, with only the briefest of thoughts for the animal’s pain, stabbed it into the horse’s shoulder, and it reared, squealing. A noise like a stage whisper swished from Lefèvre’s weapon as its powerful spring released, and a vicious blade fired, up and over the King.

Lefèvre somersaulted backwards as the horse went back, and landed cleanly on his feet, already looking around him. The sleeve of his tunic was back, revealing a complex machinery of struts, levers, and springs, strapped to his forearm, and in the middle of it all, a magazine of wicked-looking knives, with flights where a handle should be. He was exposed, and shots fired from the King’s bodyguard.

A woman went down, to more screaming from the terrified crowd. Lefèvre had moved, so quickly that it seemed he had missed out the space in between, appearing in another part of the line of the Procession, back by the Cardinals, who fell back into the Bishops against the Pope’s platform, pushing over the man dressed as the Devil.

‘Hold your fire!’ shouted the King, anxious that no one else in the crowd would be hurt.

Lefèvre jumped up to the Pope, still seeming relaxed, as if strolling in St. James’s Park. There was no sense of hurry, yet he moved with bewildering speed. The crowd shouted, ‘Assassin! Assassin!’ as he climbed.

He was up by the Pope’s face, onto the back of his chair, seeing a way to a balcony, and a window, and a roof.

As he climbed to the highest part of the Pope, onto his golden crown, shots started from the soldiers, safely over the heads of the crowd, but smacking into the walls of the buildings around them. Everybody ducked, and screamed, as volley followed volley.

Every one of the King’s soldiers missed, although some shots had gone through the Pope, who had holes showing through his fabric, the moonlight sending silver threads through them.

Just as Lefèvre prepared to make his leap onto the balcony, the effigy of Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey was thrown from the crowd, smacking into the Pope’s chair, making it rock.

Demonic cheering rose from the crowd, and pebbles, and vegetables, and coins followed, hurled at the Jesuit. Blood appeared, as he was hit, and cut. He fired his weapon at the crowd, the blades slicing into them, one after another, until his contraption had emptied.

From every point of the compass, missiles converged on him, making him quake, and stagger, but he still held on to the Pope’s crown. He reached again for the balcony above him, but a glass bottle smashed against the side of his face, tearing his cheek away. He shook his head, flinging blood over the crowd. His blood streamed down from the jagged wound, running onto the golden crown.

Men combined to throw the effigy of Sir Edmund again, heaving the Justice at the Jesuit. Sir Edmund hit the Pope’s chair, which rocked violently, almost throwing Lefèvre. The chair swayed, and again Sir Edmund was thrown, in the rain of objects aimed at the Jesuit assassin.

Lefèvre took hit after hit, still gripping the Mock Pope, the mob’s bloodthirsty throws turning him to a raw homunculus, misshapen, distorted, his robes tattered, black turning red. Eventually, his hold slipped, and he seemed to float down into the crowd like Death’s angel, to disappear and be ground down under the London mob.

Observation LXI
Of Anger

The Earl sat in the library, with only the company of his automaton.

His eyes throbbed. Even the candlelight hurt them, the flames little spikes of brilliance that pierced them viciously, as spitefully as the pipe pierced his side.

He jerked the curtains across the window, breaking the insistent moonbeam that shone through.

Without the moonlight, the light thrown by the candles was sour, the same shade of greenish-yellow as the juice that had leaked all day. The unpleasant, noxious smell of the wound made him wrinkle his nose, disgusted by his own body, made of sickly flesh and filled with corruption. Rotting before his death, Shaftesbury thought. Another shirt ruined, as the fluid from his liver had soaked through the bandages, an acid stain spreading across it.

Every fissure in his skull felt stretched, every vein in its flesh felt as if about to split along its length, every cavity felt full of gritty slush, as if the liquid inside started to freeze. The rest of him, though, was far too hot, and although without his periwig, sweat dripped from his hair and down his back.

Self-pity, childish and petulant, welled up again, as it had ever since receiving the intelligence. His own bitterness made him retch.

He did not have John Locke to calm him, to reason him out of his black mood.

He felt the spark, and knew well where it would lead him.

He tried to slow his anger, to regain control of himself. He attempted a prayer, but the words just swam about meaninglessly, never ordering themselves into significance.

He could not believe that Lefèvre had failed.

He could not believe that Robert Hooke’s assistant, whom he had thought merely an irritant, had managed to obstruct his scheme.

Self-pity became resentment – he knew what it would become. He was a victim of his emotions, helplessly in thrall to them. They always defeated him. It was a form of death, he thought; the civilised part of him murdered by the bestial.

His need for violence was unworthy, but unavoidable. Violence came towards him like a driverless omnibus filling the width of the street, its team of horses bearing down upon him. He could hear it; a droning, rattling, rushing, hissing sound.

Shaftesbury could not believe that Thomas Whitcombe had gone.

He opened his mouth wide, trying to let his feelings escape, and paced quickly from the library, through the door between the books, and into his elaboratory.

He crossed the black and white chessboard of the tiled floor. His Air-pump stood before him, all of its surfaces gleaming, illuminated by bright lamps placed around the room. The tools, on shelves and in racks on the walls, similarly shone; oiled, polished, new, never used.

The room awaited Thomas Whitcombe, as the glass receiver awaited the boy.

Shaftesbury closed his eyes, wincing at the light.

His heart twisted.

His anger burst, like the sudden flame of
phosphoros elementaris
when exposed to the air.

He punched the Air-pump’s receiver with the side of his hand, an exploratory cuff. His hand bounced off the thick glass, the sound a dull thudding noise from the thick chamber, which had been made to withstand forces far greater than a blow from a fist. He punched it again, this time with his knuckles.

The machine seemed to stare back at him, unmoved, dumbly insolent. His knuckles vibrated with pain. He had broken the skin.

His animosity towards the Air-pump choked him. He took one of the knives from its place on the table, and stabbed convulsively at the brass cylinder. His third thrust pierced the brass. He had managed to injure the machine.

Shaftesbury’s elation felt demoniacal, and his expression was one of joy. His face shone with an ecstatic radiance, but it was not enough, this feeling – not nearly enough to satisfy him, to calm him once more.

He stabbed the cylinder again, to further mutilate it. Its indifference to him made him feel suddenly threatened, and the awareness of his impotence against it – even if he were to take it apart meticulously, and disperse its parts far and wide, it would have conquered him – made his rage burn even brighter.

He pushed at the heavy wooden frame, rocking it, and then heaved his shoulder into it. The glass receiver swayed, seemed for a moment to be righting itself, swayed once more, and then fell from its place. It smashed, scattering splinters and powder over the tiles.

He lifted the frame, and pulled it up, and over, then stamped on it, breaking one of its joints with a gratifying crack. He jumped on it, forcing the timbers apart. He picked up the brass cylinder, panting under its weight, and threw it back down onto the floor, denting the cylinder and cracking the tiles. He wrenched off the Air-pump’s stopcock, and threw it at his cabinet of curiosities, smashing the glass in its doors.

He pulled out the sucker, and stamped on that, too, trying to squash it flat, until he slowed, from exhaustion.

Shaftesbury bent over, leaning on his knees, his lungs heaving air in and out of himself. A filament of spittle hung from his mouth, and pooled over the floor.

The taste of it made him retch again.

He looked up. The broken machine and the devastation of the room reappeared as the fog of his anger started to clear, and he knew that the sweet feeling of calm approached, as inevitably as his anger had arrived.

He went to the tools on his workbench.

Slowly, meticulously, methodically, he set about taking the remains of the Air-pump apart. At first his shaking hands meant that he kept slipping, once pushing a screwdriver painfully into his finger, but gradually his work became easier as his equilibrium returned.

He placed each component neatly beside him as he worked. Anger was replaced by calm, and then by misery, his mouth quivering, his chest starting to shake.

Lefèvre was dead. The machine was dead. Thomas Whitcombe had gone.

His boy was dead.

He quietly came out of the elaboratory, and crossed to his scribe. It was the nearest thing to humanity that he could touch.

Feeling utterly weary, and utterly alone, he clasped the automaton to him.

Observation LXII
Of a Proposition

All these houses on the Minories were new. In the Great Conflagration, to save the Tower every house within half a mile had been brought down, before the fire could reach it. If the munitions stores had blown, then half of London, north and south of the river, the Bridge and all of the ships moored nearby, would have gone.

Reaching the open ground of Little Tower Hill, Harry looked west, towards the spot where Archbishop Laud was beheaded; Laud, whose way of religion had caused the country to go to war with itself.

For what? The King was back on his throne. The King had rewarded those who had helped him, giving them lands and money taken from the men who had supported Parliament. He had punished those who opposed him, and executed the men who had had his father executed. He had had Oliver Cromwell’s body dug up, and the Lord Protector’s head still perched on a pole above Westminster. Some fled, preferring the New World to follow their religious beliefs. Others hid, fearful of the consequences of being found out, the tolerance that Cromwell showed to them overturned.

Men such as Michael Fields could not escape the wars. Mr. Hooke, too, was wary of the past.

To each side of him walked a burly soldier. Two more soldiers, one with a sword drawn and the other with a pistol, walked behind.

Harry could see down to the Iron Gate, at the level of the water, and the steps. He felt the chill of the place, rising from the River.

They had come for him that morning, at Mrs. Hannam’s house in Half Moon Alley, and taken him, despite his avowals of innocence, and his assurances to them that he had been the saviour of the King, and not one who plotted against him. They told him only that his arrest was on the orders of Sir Jonas Moore. One had clouted him when he grew tiresome with his protestations.

They marched him over the moat, as far as the Develin’s Tower. A yeoman gestured him through with his halberd. Another old, tough man, Harry thought, and guessed at what he had done in the wars. Perhaps he had fought against Colonel Fields, at Edgehill, or Naseby, or Worcester.

The high walls to each side of him seemed to meet above him, as if they leaned in over his head. This was where the Thames used to be, and the mud was soft under his feet, sticking to his boots, pulling him back into it so that every stride was an effort. It was a fanciful notion, but it felt as if he had to resist history, too, in order to be his own man.

There, standing by the gateway between Lanthorn Tower and Salt Tower, waited the Surveyor-General of the Board of Ordnance, his portliness making him instantly recognizable.

‘Good morrow, Harry,’ Sir Jonas Moore welcomed him, an effusive smile across his face. ‘I hope my men were not too rough. At least they protected you from being knocked on the head by a Jesuit, eh?’

Harry did not return the smile, and only grudgingly shook the hand that Sir Jonas extended.

‘I will explain why you were brought here. Without ado, it is because the King wishes it. You have impressed upon him your proficiency in your natural philosophy, and in your practical action. He spoke of the Boscobel tree, the tree in which he hid from the troops of Parliament, until Cromwell’s spies could get to him. He said that you looked in the wood, but wanted guidance to the oak itself. He wishes to reward you. And besides, you had seemed reluctant to see me.’

Harry’s astonishment was apparent, and Sir Jonas gave him a reassuring pat. The relief that his arrest had been to get him to Sir Jonas was quickly replaced by resentment, confusion, then wariness. He had steered clear of Sir Jonas, worried that the Surveyor-General would not welcome being challenged. Instead of waiting, Sir Jonas had had him arrested, as a display of his power.

Harry had wanted to be surer of his ground.

Any story that men such as the King and the Surveyor-General of the Board of Ordnance told him, even if they shared philosophical interests and knew one another through the Royal Society, would be the story that he was expected to believe, and expected to tell. Or perhaps expected to keep secret, their opinion being that it was too sensitive to become widely known.

But what if it were not the truth?

*

He could not fight such men. He would have to comply with their wishes. He hoped one day to become the Curator of the Royal Society.

Then he might be worthy of Grace Hooke.

Grinning at Harry’s rapid array of expressions, Sir Jonas guided him towards the new Armouries building, which housed the employees and stores of the Board of Ordnance, responsible for the King’s munitions, supplies, equipment, and for the Tower itself.