The Bloodless Boy

by Robert J. Lloyd

  ‘Can you remember anything else that distinguished these men?’ Harry asked, tiring of Creed’s superior manner.

  Creed laughed at him, as they crossed the courtyard, taking Harry back towards the Gatehouse and Chancery Lane. ‘Oh, I find it difficult to tell one young man from another. A young man does not hold a deal of difference in his appearance to any other. An older man, on the other hand, has a face to set him apart. The alteration from youth to old age is the reverse of that of a stone being washed by a tide. This would smooth over time, its roughness would be polished, and its edges would be lost. We, conversely, grow rough, lined and cragged with age. What will you look like at fifty, I wonder? This would be a skill worthy of your Royal Society, to present a history of what a man has done, or to predict what he will do, using only the evidence of his face. Perhaps the project is already underway; a taxonomy of wrinkles and sagging skin.’

  ‘An interesting notion, Mr. Creed,’ Harry said, reminded of his thoughts upon the couples, old and young, in Alsatia. ‘Have you enquired upon Fellowship?’ he added stiffly.

  ‘I have not.’ They reached the great oak doors of the Gatehouse, and Creed stopped just through them, on Chancery Lane. ‘A man’s mode of dress, of course, is another consideration. The clothing that you wear is no different from ten thousand others. In fact, I would say, you dress to immerse yourself into the congruence of the throng. Young men of the middling sort dress as if Oliver Cromwell still ruled. The rich dress as they please, but then, one dandy too is indistinguishable from another, under his wig and whitener. The older man owns distinguishing features in abundance; younger men seem to disappear as you look at them.’

  The Solicitor mimed a candle’s flame being snuffed out, his fingers tracing the imaginary smoke rising.

  ‘There are enough clues amongst the young to set them apart, if you have the will to observe. You believe that there are no differences, and therefore you do not see the differences.’ Harry became aware that he risked rudeness. ‘I apologise, Mr. Creed. I am too blunt.’

  An unyielding tone entered Creed’s voice. ‘I meet with men more blunt than you are ever likely to be, and have long ceased to resent such egalitarian talk. It is a gentlemanly pursuit to seek offence where none was meant. It is quite right what you say; we do train ourselves to look for certain things at the cost of missing others. I am sure you are no less guilty than most.’

  ‘I have one last question for you, Mr. Creed. You have been most helpful. Do you consider it possible that the men who came to you were, in fact, not men at all, but rather, ladies?’

  ‘Ladies! Females?’ The Solicitor clasped his hands joyfully in front of him.

  ‘Mr. Creed?’

  ‘I had not considered it, and so I am startled by your question. But, yes, conceivably, they could have been.’

  Creed went south, towards the Thames, chuckling to himself.

  Observation XXI

  Of Petrified Bodies

  Robert Hooke stood in front of his cabinet of fossils, swaying gently, contemplating them – as he often did when really thinking on something else. They were a reminder of his childhood, spent scrambling across the cliffs and the sands near Freshwater on the Isle of Wight, where the sea and the frost break the cliffs away over unimaginable expanses of time, the fossils scattering over the beach.

  He inhaled deeply from his pipe, hoping that the smoke would clear his lungs of the thick matter within. He felt the Portuguese bhang slide down his trachea, seeming to stretch his bronchi, and imagined his alveoli, the small, thin air sacs that cluster like balloons, rising eagerly to claim their share.

  Something had blocked the way of his thoughts, but he did not know what it was. Some stray inkling, perhaps, of which his waking mind was unaware.

  He studied a tooth-shaped fossil, and tried to imagine the rest of the creature.

  The cabinet represented mutability in place of stasis, and an ancient rather than a youthful Earth. Instead of a fixed Creation, a diversity of creatures had lived, and died, to be then replaced by other, newer forms of life.

  He must take a care. He did not want to suffer the same fate as Galileo, and fall foul of religious authority.

  He did not wish to fall foul of any authority.

  He was cheered by his refusal to continue his helping Sir Edmund. He had expected more resistance. Used to the pressure from the Royal Society upon his time – his constant work and experimentation for them, despite their lack of gratitude or recognition of the strain that it put him under – he was surprised that he had been allowed to simply put down the matter. He was pleased that Harry was no longer involved. Harry showed much promise, was an able Observator, and perhaps one day would even become Curator of the Society.

  He did not want anything to endanger the young man’s progress.

  He had caused Harry much injury by suggesting that he had let loose word of the boy. From where did this tendency to hurt those closest to him come from? He sometimes felt still to be the boy climbing on rocks, listening to the crash of waves upon them, sprayed by salt from the sea, crushing fossils as he went.

  *

  Grace Hooke came down from her bedchamber, and entered the drawing room quietly, wanting to gauge her uncle’s mood before disturbing him. She saw him standing by the cabinet, one hand out to steady himself, the other grasping his pipe. A sweet, cloying smell filled the room.

  ‘Uncle?’ she enquired tentatively. Hooke’s eyes rotated slowly towards her, his eyelids half closed. ‘Uncle?’ she repeated. ‘Did you not hear the knocking upon the door?’

  Hooke tilted his head backwards, as if shaking the stupor from his brain. ‘I did not, Grace. My hearing . . . this chill . . . my head is brimful . . . would you see who calls?’

  Grace went down the stairs to the lobby as another set of knocks sounded from the door. She opened it to find the head of a horse looking directly at her, but then it swung away to be replaced by its rider, a young man holding a sealed letter in front of him. His breath steamed in the cold of Gresham’s quadrangle. He looked admiringly at her, at her long blonde hair and clear skin, and the half-smile on her perfectly symmetrical face.

  ‘A missive, from Viscount Brouncker,’ he managed.

  She moved as if to take it, but did not pull it from him, and he did not let go. They stood for a brief, flirtatious second, connected by the paper. With a laugh of thanks she took it and shut the door, returning to her uncle and his fossils.

  Hooke, having watched her from the door of his drawing room, frowned at her. She should not risk her reputation with messengers. After the business with Sir Thomas Bloodworth’s son, a setback to his plans, he still had hopes that she would marry a man of high station – the Scourge of the Dutch fleet, Sir Robert Holmes, was said to harbour an affection for her.

  Hooke was too interested in the contents of the letter to worry about the prospects for his niece for long. He took it to his table, broke the seal, and opened it up, and then let out a cry of triumph. ‘Eureka!’ he exclaimed. ‘I am Secretary! I have replaced old Grubendol!’ He moved to her, and hugged her to him. ‘At last! And Harry is to undertake the search of his papers! Where is Mary? And Tom? We must celebrate this news!’

  Instructing Mary, appearing at the noise of Hooke’s enthusiasm, to fetch some wine, and Tom to help her with the best glasses, Hooke cleared the table, and Grace brought chairs from various parts of the room.

  Hooke’s joy was interrupted, though, by another knock at the door, harder and louder, and more officious than the previous one. Again, Grace answered, but this time an older man pushed his way past her directly, and went up into the drawing room.

  ‘Mr. Hooke. The King orders your attendance, immediately, at the Chelsea Physic Garden. A boy has been found, drained of his blood.’

  Observation XXII

  Of the Chelsea Physic Garden

  Like everyone, she had heard the rumours sweeping through London of the Devil-boy. Now another had appeared. Young Tom confirmed i
t.

  She could not wait to tell all of this new portent.

  The instruction to watch her lodger, given from the thin lips of the Justice Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey, which had made Harry an object of suspicion, now made her certain that she was charged to protect him, a young man important to the King. Mrs. Hannam thought of the news that Tom had brought, her discourse to Harry on the qualities of gooseberry interrupted by an almost lunatic threshing on her door.

  ‘All Mr. Hooke told me is this,’ Tom had said. ‘Another boy has been found! You are to go to the Westbourne, at Chelsea Physic Garden!’

  ‘But Mr. Hooke wishes no more of this business!’ Harry had replied.

  ‘The King,’ Tom announced grandly, ‘convinces him otherwise.’

  *

  They hastened to Bishopsgate, Harry with a large portion of Mrs. Hannam’s sweet marrow tart in his pocket, Tom skipping on ahead.

  Hooke waited in the College quadrangle, wrapped in his grey coat. Grace stood with him. The heightened colour of her face from the cold, and the moisture of her breath condensing in the air, made Harry feel the same tightening in his chest as when he laid eyes on Felicity Tarripan in the Angel, and the same drying of his tongue.

  ‘Come! Come!’ Hooke greeted them unhappily. ‘We will find a waterman for the journey to Chelsea. Thank you, Tom. You are to stay here.’

  Harry watched Tom go back inside Hooke’s rooms with Grace, Grace turning to wave. He was so fond of the boy, of his willingness to perform his errands, of his dreaming of the day when he would be a mechanic, when he would help philosophers as wise and skilled as Mr. Hooke.

  Crossing the quadrangle, Hooke’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘Harry, I really am not well. I had a most dreadful night, bursting with cold, although this morning I puked a little, which eased me. Some syrup of poppies and some bhang – judiciously taken – steadies me.’

  Harry made sympathetic sounds, but hurried Hooke on, down to the river, down Fish Street Hill, past Saint Magnus the Martyr where the workmen dismantled the last of the scaffolding, and towards Coldharbour and the Watermen’s Hall, and the wharfs there. Hooke’s nostrils did look extremely sore, to Harry’s concern, until Hooke reassured him: he had also been snuffling the juice of beetroot.

  ‘Sir Edmund’s persuasiveness knows no bounds, it seems,’ Hooke said.

  ‘Has he convinced the King to ensure your continuance with the search?’

  ‘The King commands me to continue. It must be the Justice, surely?’ Hooke did not seem particularly interested in his own question, grumbling the whole way down to the river.

  Between the houses built on the waterfront, they were met by the sickly smell of the Thames. They followed a high-walled alley, narrow and murky, its steps greasy as they descended. It was not the remains of the snow making their journey precarious, but the effluent matter from the City. Discharged into the river it stuck to every surface around them, making them hesitate to stretch out their hands for a hold.

  Emerging onto the quayside, they could see the new Morice waterwheels, replacing those burnt by the fire, beneath the first two arches of the Bridge. Harry could hear the wood straining as they turned on their axles, pushed by the surge of the water. The pumps, made from the trunks of elm trees, were driven by great wooden cogs coursing about their circuits, their force enough to jet the water through the conduit pipes, as high up as Cornhill.

  Hooke’s hunched back provoked the watermen to shout out ‘Oars!’, recognising a frequent customer. His surveying of London made Hooke a regular visitor to the river.

  Clambering into the first wherry, both men gripped its rails, and perched on its high seat. ‘We go to Chelsea, to the Physic Gardens there.’

  The waterman pushed them off, skipping into his vessel gracefully. ‘Yes, Mr. Hooke. Chelsea stairs it is.’

  *

  The whole way west they listened to a relentless commentary on the advantages of travel by river rather than by hackney coach – ‘. . . all that constant rattling which shakes up your innards!’ – with particular ire for the sedan-chairs – ‘. . . joggling and jiggling, it surely cannot claim gentlemanly dignity, can it? What of ladies, carried in such a way, jounced about, it must be damaging to them, it can only be damaging . . .’ – and of the grievances of the watermen against the lightermen for not restricting their services to goods being taken to and from vessels – ‘. . . they’re lightermen. You smoke the difference? They take our trade brazenly. We are the watermen.’

  Harry’s eyes cried from the wind, the cold air loaded with drizzle. He pulled his coat as tightly to him as he could, retracting into the leather to protect himself from the malicious chill.

  Their wherry, rocking over the peaks and troughs of the water, sticky foam splashing their faces, took them past Whitefriars, the mouth of the Fleet, Blackfriars, the one turret of Castle Baynard remaining after the Fire, and then Alsatia.

  A gull, looking well fed and sheeny, landed on the rail, and watched them intently.

  Another spy, Harry thought, flapping his hand to send it away. They are everywhere.

  ‘We take people, they take cargo . . .’ their pilot continued reasonably, as if coaxing a child to swallow tough mutton. Harry and Hooke nodded their agreement with him from time to time, silently; for when Hooke tried to engage him in a more considered discussion of the economics of ferrying passengers around a metropolis with only a single bridge he was met with a resolute disparagement.

  Around the bend of the river. Scotland Yard, Whitehall Palace with its Banqueting Hall, and the towers of Holbein Gate. The Abbey, the Hall, and Parliament House, their massive roofs dark against the skyline.

  The waterman’s strong arms took them on. Past Vauxhall and the New Spring Gardens, quiet except for the sounds of birdsong and the wind riffling through the leaves of the plantation, the sibilant noise carrying clearly over the water to them.

  At last they reached the mouth of the Westbourne.

  ‘Chelsea stairs it is, Sirs!’ the waterman repeated, concluding the trip as he started.

  *

  Mist rolled across the undulating ground, gathering in its folds, bleaching greens to greys. The air became one with the ground, and the idea of solidity was forgotten. Stepping onto the grass from the waterstairs brought a jolt to misled senses to find the ground unyielding; it was in fact a thick tough material, which crunched under them in the cold. The movement of the wind slid it about in pewtery ripples.

  They approached the low wall of the Physic Gardens. The immense glass conservatory appeared ahead, visible through the branches of a pair of Lebanon cedars. The heat from its stoves, circulating beneath the brick floor, steamed the panes. A training ground for apothecaries, the gardens were neatly laid out with simples, herbs, roots and flowers. It all looked very bare, a pale imitation of its spring and summer lushness.

  ‘You could poison the City with the contents of this garden,’ Hooke told Harry, cheering a little.

  Beyond the conservatory, they saw a black figure astride a horse; his mount, also, was black. It was Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey, who did not return Hooke’s wave, although he stared directly towards them.

  Waiting for them to cross the ground between them, the Justice looked even more sombre than Harry had seen him before.

  ‘The boy lies there,’ Sir Edmund said by way of greeting. He indicated down into the river.

  The Westbourne was far narrower than the Fleet. Carved only by the movement of water and wind, rather than by any design of Robert Hooke’s, turf grew in clumps over the edge, demanding a closer approach to see where the rich dark earth met running water.

  Harry and Hooke walked to this edge, and looked down onto the naked body of another boy. A birch tree pushed its roots through the sides of the bank, and the boy’s back rested against one, his spine following its contour.

  They looked for footprints in the mud, and Harry surreptitiously studied the ground for the traces of snowshoes, but there were none.
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  Sir Edmund dismounted, and took out his portable pen and ink set from a saddlebag.

  The earth, wet from days of snow and the mist around them, gave way where Harry scrambled down the bank. His descent to the level of the river disturbed a lapwing, protecting her nest by feigning to have an injured wing. Wiping the mud from the seat of his trousers, he gazed at the dead boy; he looked older than the boy at the Fleet, around four or five years old, but he was just as small.

  Harry looked into the eyes, a nondescript grey.

  ‘Drained?’ Hooke called from above him.

  Harry studied the puncture holes and dried texture of the skin.

  ‘Yes, Mr. Hooke. With similar dates by the holes. And there is a cut across his body, over his chest, stitched to close it again.’

  Sir Edmund wrote their findings into his black notebook. From up on the height of the gardens the sound of a horse reached them.

  ‘Good morrow to you, Mr. Hooke. And to you, Sir Edmund.’ The arrival looked down into the Westbourne. ‘And to you, Harry.’

  The man was well known to them, for he was a Fellow of the Royal Society as well as a member of Hooke’s own, more intimate group, the New Philosophical Club. Together with Hooke he had helped survey London after the Great Fire, and had worked on the straightening of the Fleet. He was Sir Jonas Moore, plump, grey-eyed, with curiously transparent skin, showing the plentiful flesh and vessels beneath, like an illustration of the workings of the human body. He was a mathematician, famous for his draining of the Bedford Level and for overseeing the building of the great mole at Tangier.

  Now, he was employed by the King as Surveyor-General of the Ordnance, at the Tower of London.