The Bloodless Boy (39 page)

Sir Jonas made an expansive gesture, his arm sweeping across all of the buildings around them. ‘Since Oliver Cromwell’s time, we have busied ourselves with building up the strength of the Tower, its structure and foundations, shoring it up against the action of the Thames, and we have built new storehouses, and we have a great many people looking at weapons. Currently, we work on a new weapon for the Army, called the fusil, which is a light musket doing away with a glowing fuse. A glowing fuse, you realise, is a dangerous thing to have about by barrels of gunpowder. You have had recent experience with gunpowder – you can, I am sure, immediately see the advantage.’

They walked past a man wearing thick leather gloves, standing behind a long weapon mounted on a tripod. He fired it, the ball slapping into a bank of earth. Miraculously, a few seconds later, he fired the gun again. After a third, quickly repeated shot he poured water over the barrel.

‘Heat along the barrel is a problem,’ Sir Jonas observed. ‘It has a revolving cylinder.’

The weapon was fired a fourth time. ‘As well as looking for new weapons,’ Sir Jonas continued, ‘we seek to improve upon the old. Faster rates of shot, better mixtures of powder, directed charges, shapes of bullet, improved grenadoes and grapeshot, greater range, easier manoeuvrability, methods of aiming, the rifling of a weapon’s barrel to give greater accuracy, and so on; all are trialled within these walls.’

They strode on, towards the entrance of the Armouries, a large structure of red brick, as a huge explosion filled the inmost ward with smoke, and sent earth shooting up into the air, almost as high as the top of the stairs leading up to the White Tower.

‘Ah!’ Sir Jonas exclaimed, checking his pocket watch with a satisfied expression. ‘Ten o’clock!’ He helped Harry up, from where he had dived for cover. Harry brushed the mud from himself, looking shamefaced. ‘Always we look to improve upon ways of killing an enemy – which means, to think of it another way, of saving the lives of our own.’ Sir Jonas brushed some of the mud from Harry’s coat, in an oddly motherly manner, and looked directly at him. ‘Always, we look to save the lives of our own.’

Another explosion rocked the ground. ‘All of which makes for a noisy place to do one’s work!’

Scores of people walked in and out of the Armouries building, and Harry observed that no one seemed to have their hands free. All carried something, or some part of something, or pushed a cart with something on it. It was as if the building pumped people and equipment in and out of itself, a great warmongering heart pushing blood around a body.

‘You are impressed, Harry?’ Sir Jonas asked, seeing his expression. ‘Good, for the King speculates that you might work here.’

Harry stopped, startled by the notion.

They were in front of the steps to the Armouries, and Sir Jonas took Harry by the elbow. ‘You would have a place, if you were to accept it. The mechanical, the philosophical, physiological, analytical, hydrostatical, clandestine and mathematical – all of these skills are employed here, as they are in the battlefields of Europe.’

Sir Jonas led Harry up the short flight of stairs to the entrance, walking quickly, surprisingly so for man of his size. They went in between white stone columns, and turned along a wide corridor, the employees of the Ordnance flowing around them.

‘The Board of Ordnance is not so very different from the Royal Society, and the aims of the New Philosophy,’ Sir Jonas said over his shoulder. ‘Both seek an understanding of practical causes, and a desire for practical effects. We have libraries, and repositories, and elaboratories, and men of talent to use them. We have mechanics and tool-men, experimentalists, and observators. Thinkers and doers. We differ, howsoever, in one important way from the Royal Society.’ He looked at Harry expectantly, an enquiring hand held open before him.

‘You have money,’ Harry answered for him.

‘Yes!’ The hand closed, as if snatching away the money that Harry spoke of. ‘That is how we differ from the Royal Society. We have money. Funds. And we pay generously, to the right people. Here we are.’

Sir Jonas beckoned him into a large room, its walls covered by shelving and cabinets. Philosophical equipment filled every surface: tools, flasks, tubes and stoppered jars of glass and brass and silver. Preserved specimens, of organs and their owners, from insects, fish and monkeys, and skeletons stripped of their flesh, including one of a human child, filled the shelves. These were arranged in order, a chain of being, displayed to show the similarities and modifications of form throughout God’s Creation.

In the middle of the room stood three Air-pumps, whose frames were larger than the one that had occupied the cellar room at Gresham’s College, before being broken, but whose glass receivers were much the same size.

‘This,’ Sir Jonas said, ‘was Thomas Whitcombe’s room.’ He looked with interest at Harry, but the younger man remained silent. ‘I know you know of him, Harry, for the King has told me that you were given his letter to the Justice, and his letter to Mr. Hooke, and I know you have the keyword to his cipher, for I was there when it was found, inside the stomach of the Justice.’ Still, Harry said nothing, his only reaction a draining of colour in his face. ‘There is more, too,’ Sir Jonas said brightly. ‘Other rooms go off it, for other trials he made.’

He paused, to allow Harry to look around the room.

‘Imagine such a place, Harry, for your own. It could be yours, if you so decide. If not, then no matter; we shall find someone else to fill Thomas Whitcombe’s shoes.’

‘Where is Thomas Whitcombe, Sir Jonas?’ Harry asked. ‘Is he really dead? Or was his letter a lie?’

‘He is dead to us,’ Sir Jonas replied crisply. ‘We have lost him. Or rather, he lost himself. Whether he hides, or whether he put an end to himself, it is no matter.’

‘And if I were, as you say, to fill his shoes, would that be my end also? Would I, too, lose my way?’

‘Every worthwhile occupation carries an element of risk,’ Sir Jonas answered him, after considering the question. ‘If you risk nothing, then you change nothing. You need not worry that to refuse endangers you. As long as you remain silent upon what happens inside this place, then you will be free to go about your business, within the law, whatever it may be.’

Sir Jonas strolled across to one of the Air-pumps, and looked into the empty receiver. He placed a hand on its mechanism, and stroked it gently, sensuously, and turned its handle, taking a suck of air from inside the glass. ‘Do you desire to dwell in Robert Hooke’s shadow all your life? You do not, surely? You have your own way to make in the world, having too much talent to steer by another’s lights.’

He let go of the Air-pump, and moved back towards the exit of Whitcombe’s elaboratory. He filled the frame of the doorway, speaking quietly but with great conviction, as if trying to entrance Harry with the low, soft intimacy of his words. ‘I will leave you to consider. Look at the striving for improvement, at the great purpose of this place. Think of your personal, selfish wants, and think also of the whole; you shall become one amongst many, working for your King and your Nation.’

He stepped away, going back into the bustle of the Armouries. ‘I shall return presently,’ he said. ‘Let me then have your answer. It is a rare chance we give you, Harry.’

Left alone in the elaboratory, Harry took off his spectacles, a new pair as his others had been crushed at Aldgate. He massaged his eyes. That the King should want him to replace the man he had sought as a murderer! But he could not have read of Thomas Whitcombe’s work without the keyword
CORPUS
being left in Sir Edmund’s gut; and it was Mr. Hooke who had found it there. He could not know what Whitcombe had done until he found the
Observations
kept by Henry Oldenburg. Apart from the task of deciphering, all had been given to him.

Thomas Whitcombe had wanted Robert Hooke, the Curator, and now Secretary of the Royal Society, to have his work to infuse blood and revivify the dead.

Not the young Observator, Harry Hunt.

Harry put the spectacles back on, and the leaded frames of the windows looking on to the White Tower sharpened into a grid of lines, black against the bright whiteness outside. It would be a gilded cage to accept the King’s offer.

Harry ran his hand over the surface of a bench, feeling the grain of the smooth, expensive wood, an African hardwood, the bench built to resist cutting and burning and corrosive substances poured onto it. A natural philosopher’s bench.

Of course he must take this position, and this room, and use it to follow his own philosophical path, as well as to do the work directed by the Board of Ordnance.

Sir Jonas Moore had left him there deliberately, knowing that the pull of the room itself was more persuasive than any words.

What best to do?

Observation LXIII
Of Elucidation

A small door led off from Whitcombe’s elaboratory, and it opened with an oiled click of its latch. Even the door handles work smoothly, Harry thought.

Inside, the room was dark, having no windows, but by the light coming through from the elaboratory he could make out a dissection table, long grooves chased into its surface, a large trough at its foot. Placed neatly along the walls was a collection of gleaming instruments. Candles stood along the length of the room, awaiting their lighting for the anatomiser to see by. Harry sniffed at them. They were beeswax.

This was where Thomas Whitcombe had worked on the boys. This was where they had had their blood infused one into another.

Where they had screamed in agony and fear.

This memory was in the walls of the room; he merely heard its echo. Could he contend with such a trace, endure its presence here?

There was another door at the opposite end of the dissecting room, and Harry walked uncertainly to it. Sir Jonas would return soon, and he had to have his answer. Harry still did not know what it was likely to be. He could not tolerate the thought of losing all of this. He could not bear the idea that somebody else might have it, take it from him, use these rooms and tools and have the great luxury of time and materials to make experiments, trials, discoveries, follow the path of the mind, have mechanics build apparatus for him at his direction.

But it was here that Thomas Whitcombe had killed the boys, in the service of the Board of Ordnance, blundering his way towards a method that he had never found to revivify a boy. He had expended the lives of twelve other boys, before he felt the final weight upon his soul.

How could Harry step into such shoes?

What would the Board of Ordnance ask of him?

*

Opening the door, he stepped through, and found himself in a much smaller room, with sunlight, painfully bright, streaming through a large window. It was set out like an office, with a table piled high with papers. More papers were stacked on shelves, and the room was strewn with documents, spread out on every surface, on the table, and over the floor.

Behind the table was the Solicitor, Moses Creed, caught midway through the action of writing on a piece of paper.

For a long moment the two men stared at one another. Creed pushed more papers together across the table, tidied them into a pile, and placed his pen down across them.

‘Mr. Creed?’

‘Mr. Hunt.’

‘You work with the Board of Ordnance?’

‘When I am needed.’

‘Sir Jonas Moore brought me – he did not say that you were also here to be found.’

‘Sir Jonas brought me, too. I catalogue the papers here. A legal man was wanted.’

‘You know of Thomas Whitcombe’s work, then?’ Harry asked.

‘Only what I find.’

‘You know he made experiment upon boys, seeking to revivify another.’

‘I record what is here. As I have been asked to do.’

It crossed Harry’s mind that the Board of Ordnance had ways of going about its business that he was not used to. He could not be surprised that Creed worked for the Ordnance, as he had never questioned what else the Solicitor did with his time. He had thought no further than him delivering the letter to Mr. Hooke, or being at Lincoln’s Inn, or standing in a farmyard listening to the old Leveller, William Walwyn.

Harry moved closer to the table to pick up the pile of papers in front of Creed; the Solicitor shot out a hand to cover it. Between his splayed fingers Harry recognised the neat lettering and exact regularity of the lines on all of the
Observations
in the package left with Henry Oldenburg, and the letter sent to Robert Hooke.

‘Mr. Hunt,’ Creed said impatiently, ‘it is of no help to me that you are here. These papers are the King’s property, through being the property of the Board of Ordnance. Until Sir Jonas returns, therefore, and tells me otherwise, I shall not let you peruse them.’

‘Why do you catalogue these papers, Mr. Creed?’

Creed looked at him with irritation. ‘On the orders of Sir Jonas.’

‘Only, it looks to me more as if you search through them, looking for particular documents. These papers are pushed all about the place. A legal man, I think, would more usually work through such a task sequentially, tidying as he goes.’

The Solicitor made his supercilious scoffing sound, and walked round from behind the table, to fetch up the scattered piles of documents from the floor. Then he moved to the door with his arm outstretched, indicating the dissecting room beyond. ‘Will you wait outside, so that I may continue?’

Harry did not move, but instead picked up the document that Creed had busied himself with when he came in.

‘You do not simply catalogue. Your list includes Thomas Whitcombe’s
Observations Of
The Light of Grace
, his
Observations of The Light of Nature
, and
Of Experience
,
Of Astronomical Magic
,
Of Theology
,
Of Alchemy
,
Of Water
,
Of Fire
,
Of Air
,
Of Life
,
Of Spirit
,
Of Motion
,
Of Minerals
,
Of Vegetables
,
Of The Heart and Blood
,
Of Homunculii,
Of Automata
, and his
Observations of Lower Species
. Whitcombe called them all together,
Observations Philosophical
. You will not find them here, as you will not find any of his
Observations Historical
,
Observations Habitual
,
or
Observations Propagational
. For I have them. Whitcombe wanted them with Royal Society’s Curator of Experiments, Mr. Hooke. He did not want them with the King, nor did he want them with Sir Jonas Moore. And he did not want them with you.’

Harry waved the list that Creed had made. ‘He did not desire you to have them, Mr. Creed, even though it was you who wrote them out. This list is written in the same neat hand as all of Thomas Whitcombe’s
Observations
, and the letter you delivered to Mr. Hooke. This then begs a question; are you Thomas Whitcombe, and not Moses Creed at all?’

Creed stood silently at the doorway, looking unblinkingly down the length of his nose.

*

‘Are you Thomas Whitcombe,’ Harry continued, ‘the healer of Colonel Michael Fields, Major-General Skippon at Naseby, and Oliver Cromwell after Dunbar? I would say not, for you are far too young. Colonel Fields spoke of Thomas Whitcombe as a field chirurgeon in the Civil Wars, then taken to the Barbadoes as a slave. You do not bear the marks of such years or harsh experience.’