The Bloodless Boy (5 page)

The beauty of her face had not yet faded; she looked to be around thirty years of age, although the thick powder and rouge she wore hid any blemishes there might have been. She did not wear her wig, carrying it instead on her lap, showing her hair to be a dark-brown colour.

She flinched from him, pressing back into the cushioned seat to keep the distance between them, and averted her eyes from his stare.

‘This day of freedom marks the start of my revenge,’ the Earl said.

Her eyes became glossy, as tears formed in them.

He slapped her.

The trace of his hand was clear: a red print on her cheek.

Observation VI
Of Transparency

The boy was arranged like an exhibit, a curio displayed for a penny a show.

‘
Spake I not unto you, saying, do not sin against the child; and ye would not hear? Therefore, behold, also his blood is required.
’

The Justice’s voice rumbled around the walls of the cellar room.

It was much later, the afternoon, by the time Sir Edmund had finally arrived at Gresham’s College.

‘I have seen many murders,’ he continued, looking into the blue eyes as if he spoke through the glass to the boy, rather than to Hooke and Harry. ‘Whether done hotly or coldly, mostly the method is unimaginative, either by use of the hand or some tool. To drain so thoroughly the blood is to consider more closely the way of killing. This globe is secure?’

‘It is,’ Hooke replied tetchily. ‘To keep him preserved we must not allow the air to re-enter, to transmit pestilence and allow putrefaction.’

‘It fits him perfectly. It is as if it were tailored for him.’

‘There are limitations to the size of glass receiver we can make,’ Hooke said. ‘This is the largest we have successfully manufactured; grander attempts all cracked or imploded.’

Harry cleared his throat, and pointed through the glass at the top of the boy’s legs.

‘The holes made after death, if done at different times, show that he was preserved. As we preserve him now.’

Sir Edmund looked grimly at him. ‘This we surmised at the Fleet.’

‘When squeezing the boy into this receiver,’ Harry continued, ‘I wondered whether we merely returned him to another receiver, of the same size. One also made of glass.’

Hooke made a tutting sound. ‘The fact he fits might be fortuitous – he could have been stored in a chamber far larger, one not made of glass.’

‘It is a suggestion, only, Mr. Hooke.’ Harry smarted at being chastised in front of the Justice.

‘You rely too much on your feelings – a fault of yours I have noted before.’

‘The use of glass, then,’ Sir Edmund said slowly, allowing the possibility, ignoring Hooke, ‘if the notion is true, suggests the need for observation. Otherwise, materials less transparent, more robust, would have been employed.’

‘The building of an Air-pump requires great investment and no little skill,’ Hooke observed, ‘whether the receiver was glass, or no.’

‘Who, then, would sponsor such a philosophical murder?’ Sir Edmund snapped shut his book. ‘This will transpire to be a Catholic design, you may be sure of it…but why their need for blood?’ Despite his direct stare at each of them in turn, the Justice got no reply. He turned back to the boy. ‘There are other ways of preservation.’

‘But there are no signs of him being held in liquid, nor of being frozen,’ Hooke said. ‘He was kept in a vacuum.’

Sir Edmund made little faltering nods of his head, from side to side. ‘I must put off the further study of him,’ he told them. ‘For I am called away.’

‘We will wait on you,’ Hooke replied, thinking of President Brouncker’s direction.

The Justice looked around the cellar. ‘This door has a strong lock?’

‘And the other doors also.’

Sir Edmund strode from the room, up the short flight of steps, to inspect the ward and sturdy strap hinges of the iron door sealing off the passage. At last he seemed satisfied. They locked the door to the Air-pump room, and then the passage door. It clanged shut, an impact of iron and oak, a shudder of the frame.

The sound of their steps disappeared away down the long corridor.

The boy, left sitting in the glass receiver, stared into the blackness.

*

The three men stood together in the College quadrangle. Soon it would be dusk. The light bled through rips in the cloud, picking up its colour from the thick atmosphere. Oranges and golds tinted the snow-covered rooftops.

Sir Edmund turned to Harry. ‘Mr. Hunt, I have business with Mr. Hooke. I prefer you kept from it, until Mr. Hooke has considered upon the matter.’

Harry bid a stiff goodbye to both men and headed off for his lodgings at Half Moon Alley, in Bishopsgate Without. Hooke, knowing his walk well, recognised his hurt.

The Justice was indifferent to the younger man’s feelings. He produced two letters from inside his notebook.

‘There was another such a finding, Mr. Hooke. Another such a boy.’

Hooke looked sharply at him. He had warned Harry that they risked being pulled into deep waters. ‘Was this other boy also drained of his blood?’

‘Likewise, it was taken.’

‘When was he found?’

‘One week ago. On Christmas Day.’

‘Left at the Fleet River?’

‘Discovered out east, at Barking Creek beyond the Woolwich Docks.’

‘Have you kept this first boy, as you require the second?’

‘He lies pickled at your new College of Physicians.’ Sir Edmund handed over the letters to the Curator. ‘I leave these with you.’

Hooke, looking pained, took them from him.

‘Keep these securely,’ Sir Edmund instructed. ‘The first is a note I have written to you. The second is my copy of the document left with the Fleet boy. It was this endeavour I engaged myself upon this afternoon.’

Hooke blanched. ‘What does it say of the boy?’ he asked. His eyes looked everywhere but at the papers he held.

‘Read these, and then consider whether you are willing to help me.’

‘Does it tell of the taking of his blood?’

‘Read them, please. Good evening, Mr. Hooke.’

Observation VII
Of a Cipher

It was as if the letters formed up into a troop. There was evident strength in the bold verticals, and precision in the horizontals. A neat right hand margin revealed a man who planned ahead.

The Justice’s writing suited him well, Hooke thought. He lifted the paper up to the candlelight. The pressing of Sir Edmund’s nib had left an indented trail through the surface, but not so hard as to suggest an unbalanced character.

Mr. Robert Hooke (only).
At His lodgings within Gresham’s College.
Jan: 1 1677/8

Your Abilities surpass mine to glean Meaning from these Papers. Their Notation takes the form of a Cypher. I rely upon you, Mr. Hooke, to divert your most Earnest Attention and provide a Full and Active understanding, where my own is Limited and Lame.

You are enough Politick, I think, to understand my showing this to You, and only to You. We will discuss further this Business.

Burn this.

Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey Justice of Peace,
from his House at Hartshorne Lane

Hooke swallowed the last of his evening meal, the hare with pease-pudding, and washed it down with some claret. He felt the persuasive pull of Sir Edmund’s note, and the subtlety that lay behind the blend of flattery and exhortation. Sir Edmund was used to getting his way, and employed a range of means to do so.

The Justice was a stimulating man: he had known him for the daylight hours of one day, and found himself with a boy drained of his blood, the second such boy to be found, and now some enciphered papers.

He picked up Sir Edmund’s copy of the document left with the boy at the Fleet. It consisted of sheets of paper each with a grid of numbers arranged in a square, twelve numbers along by twelve numbers down, written on one side only of each sheet.

It brought a misty feeling of familiarity.

Hooke held forth often enough about the application of his discoveries and methods, and the merits of the New Philosophy for practical men. With the finding of the boy at the Fleet, and another at Barking Creek, it was an opportunity to demonstrate usefulness. And, perhaps, receive payment from a grateful State. He suspected, though, that Sir Edmund might lead him into matters he would far rather wish to avoid – especially if there was any truth in the Justice’s suspicion that this was some Catholic business.

What was he to make of this curious man? And why the Justice’s insistence upon burning his letter? Remembering his direction, Hooke folded the paper and dropped it onto the fire, where it furled like the petals of a flower closing. He prodded at it with a firedog until it broke into cinders.

As he stood by the fire he heard the thumps of Tom racing down the stairs, and wondered what the boy was doing out of bed. He listened to the withdrawing of the bolt securing the front door. He had not heard knocking, and could hardly perceive the bolt; a muffled clanking was all. This chill has affected my tubes, he thought gloomily; I now lose my hearing, as well as my senses of smell and taste, as well as my memory.

Tom’s voice called from the lobby. ‘Mr. Hooke!’

Hooke looked at himself in the mirror, picking remnants of hare from his sand-coloured teeth. The catarrh in his head did not trouble him so much as his thoughts on assisting the Justice, as he left the warmth of the fire to go downstairs, to greet his visitor.

*

Tom had invited the caller in, and he stood in the cold lobby, bringing in the even chillier aura of the night. He was a man of about forty years of age, but the manner of his clothes made him seem older – his lack of style noticeable even to the Curator, who cared little for such things. The man rubbed his hands for warmth, which amplified the unctuous air he had about him. His smile did not move, and lacked warmth behind it, as if he had learned to be pleasant from a book.

He removed his hat, shook the snow from it, and announced himself as ‘Moses Creed, Solicitor.’

‘Good evening, Mr. Creed,’ Hooke welcomed him warily, wondering whether he came with a subpoena.

‘You are the
illustrious
Mr. Robert Hooke, of the Royal Society?’ the Solicitor enquired, as if to distinguish him from a dozen others. ‘Creator of the famous
Micrographia
, of the weighing of the air, and of the building of the new London?’

Hooke was now even more cautious, alarmed at the intensity of the man’s obsequiousness. ‘I am Mr. Robert Hooke, Curator of Experiments for the Royal Society, and Professor of Geometry here at Gresham’s College,’ he replied.

‘It is an
honour
, Mr. Hooke, to meet you – a most skilled natural philosopher, known throughout the Kingdom for your prodigious interests and ingenious pursuits!’

‘Your words are welcome, and kind.’ Hooke raised his hand to stop the Solicitor going further. ‘What is it, Sir, that I may do for you?’

‘You may take this letter, Sir, that I am engaged to deliver.’

Creed took from a bag slung over his shoulder a small letter, bearing a seal of black wax, and held it towards Hooke.

Hooke, startled, took it hesitantly. It certainly had the appearance of the letter that Sir Edmund had shown them briefly at the Fleet, having lifted it from the body of the boy.

He looked at it more closely. On it was his name, and the address of his lodgings at Gresham, written in a remarkably steady and controlled hand.

‘Who charged you with conveying this to me, Mr. Creed?’ Hooke asked, his voice puzzled.

‘I was engaged for my discretion. You understand, I hope, Mr. Hooke.’

‘When was it left with you? Will you say that?’

‘Do not press me on this. I am not one who betrays the terms of his commissions. I bid you good night, Sir.’

*

Hooke, back in his drawing room, surrounded by his tools and equipment, asked Mary to prepare him some tea. He sat at his table, and broke the black seal, which bore a simple image of a candle and its flame. He opened the letter. He was hesitant in all his movements; for some reason he could not explain even to himself this letter made him more nervous than all of the business with Sir Edmund.

He would not tell Harry; it was an unphilosophical sensation.

It was more pages covered by grids of numbers, arranged in a square on one side only of each sheet, twelve numbers along by twelve numbers down.

Sir Edmund’s writing was ordered, but the writing on these sheets was astonishingly neat. Each number was perfectly sized for its neighbours, and perfectly reproduced each time it appeared. Only occasionally was it discernible that this was not printed, when the character of the pen’s nib, as the ink on it dried, betrayed itself, before being redipped, and the regularity continued. Hooke did not think he had ever seen numbers so perfectly done.

Grace’s voice called up from the lobby.

‘Mr. Hooke, all of London calls upon you this evening,’ Mary said, putting down his tea.

Observation VIII
Of Assistance

Grace let in the visitor, and led her up to the drawing room. The woman wore an enveloping headscarf, whose dryness showed that it had finally stopped snowing.

‘Mrs. Oldenburg?’ Hooke said doubtfully. Then, when he was sure: ‘Good evening to you, Dora-Katherina.’

The old lady’s resolve crumpled. Seeing her distress, Hooke took her by the elbow. He apologised to her for all the clutter, pulled out a chair from by the table, and poured her a small amount of the remaining claret.

‘Mr. Hooke,’ she said to him, once she had recomposed herself, removed her scarf and coat, and was holding the glass he offered to her. ‘I have the most terrible news, and I come for your assistance, and your counsel.’ Her accent revealed her Irish origins.

‘Tom, will you go to your room?’ Hooke said. They heard the crashes of his footsteps above.

She took a long sip of the wine, and then carefully placed the glass down on the table in front of her. ‘Henry committed self-murder this morning.’

‘Merciful God!’ Hooke put his hand to his mouth.

‘I wish not the manner of his death to become known. I think that you, also, would prefer such shame a secret.’ She said the words in a monotone, her mouth moving stiffly.

‘How did he do it, Mrs. Oldenburg?’ Hooke looked even greyer than usual.

‘A ball fired from a pistol,’ she replied. ‘I forgot he even kept the thing.’