The Bloodless Boy

by Robert J. Lloyd

  Fields had felt the void within him being filled as he heard the Levellers’ creed. The sovereignty of the people stood as their aim; government by agreement of a people all equal under God, men and women, all to enjoy the fruits of their equality.

  One hundred thousand had signed the Leveller petitions in London alone. Solidarity had spread through the population with the speed of an infection; a glorious, life-affirming epidemic passed from one to another by mouth, by the Word.

  He saw the sign showing the way to Moses Creed’s office. He snorted derisively at the Solicitors pacing the corridors and clattering down the stairs, carrying their bundles of documents. His scorn alarmed one or two, but those practising close to Creed knew that his visitors tended to be of a different cut.

  Fields had been glad to receive the Royal Society man’s visit; it had reawoken his passion for the Good Old Cause.

  The Red Cipher, used again, was the signal.

  He walked briskly up the irregular flights of stairs, his climb betraying nothing of his age. Breathing barely more heavily than he had before his ascent, he reached the Solicitor’s door.

  It opened immediately.

  ‘Yes?’ the Solicitor asked, suspiciously. This man looked to be a villain. Such was his lot.

  ‘You are Mr. Moses Creed?’ asked the villain.

  ‘I am. You are?’

  ‘Fields.’ There was a silence. For a moment it seemed that Creed had met his match in brevity of introductions, until the Colonel continued.

  ‘You have been made mention of, Mr. Creed. Many times before, by someone close to me. I am happy at last to meet you.’

  ‘Who made this mentioning, I ask? And what is it I can do for you?’

  ‘Your father, Reuben, spoke of you. What you can do for me is this: listen to the how and why he died.’

  Observation XXVIII

  Of Correspondence

  Let them take the papers. What were they now to her? His correspondences were her husband, her Henry; in them he lived on, but they were worthless if not with the Royal Society. He had lived for the Society, and, for all she knew, had died for it as well. Let them have them, and glean from them what meaning they could. Through Robert Hooke, and this boy with him, through their learning, her Henry’s work would continue…

  Hooke and Harry took care not to disturb Dora-Katherina’s thoughts, and did not attempt any meaningful conversation with her. Both felt dispirited, affected by the melancholy of the evening, and they were chilled to the bone, Henry Oldenburg’s study lacking a fire. The noise of the rain hitting the roof above them, slapping on the tiles and smacking onto the ground outside, made it difficult to be heard, and so little was said between them all.

  She knew what they came for. The resistance of before had gone.

  Dora-Katherina passed Hooke a small silver key, saying nothing, only a last token gesture of reluctance as she let it go. They listened to her shuffle off, going down into the warmth of her living room.

  The two natural philosophers stood together quietly, looking at the chair in which they had found the Secretary. Its back was suspiciously stained; their cleaning would not have been enough should anyone have looked for signs of violence in this study. Was there still a faintest of smells from the discharge of the pistol? The senses could deceive; you would never notice if you did not know it had fired, Harry decided.

  He moved to look more closely at Oldenburg’s small library, scanning the books, perhaps three hundred or so, seeing only what he would expect in such a man’s collection. Philosophical, mathematical, theological, historical and political; they would not take long to catalogue.

  Hooke held up the key. ‘Let us delay no further.’

  They moved to the chest, and Hooke offered the key to the lock. The mechanism, old and worn, after a subtle twist rather than a direct turn, released.

  Harry lifted the lid, revealing the chest to be full of paper, letters sent from all around the globe. In different hands, time and again, Henry Oldenburg’s name presented itself on them, their broken seals showing the marks of their senders. Some bore the scars of their journeys, crumpled, torn, or stained by saltwater; others looked much as they did when first folded. Some showed spots of ironmould upon them, indicating far from recent communications.

  All of them were to be catalogued, read through, and placed with the collection at the College. Unlike the cataloguing of Oldenburg’s library, this was days and days of work – Harry mentally sized the task ahead, guessing at the time of its completion.

  ‘Grubendol was an industrious soul,’ Hooke observed. ‘I say that for him.’

  Harry pulled at the first layer of bundles, imagining the miles of ink held in Oldenburg’s chest, and the hours that the Secretary had spent sitting in this room, spinning out replies and their copies; no sooner one reply being completed than another demanding response.

  Unfolding the first few to hand, he saw the places they had come from; one from Antwerp, another from Buda, a third from Lyon. A fourth, whose reply must have taken the best part of a year to reach its destination, came from Vera Cruz.

  I have never left London since I came in as a boy, he thought, feeling the texture of the far-travelled papers.

  ‘It would be best to sort them here, and list the chest’s contents,’ Hooke told him. ‘Then, a receipt for them can be made.’ Hooke’s voice went quieter. ‘Also, we keep curious eyes away from these letters while we search them.’

  ‘What do you hope to find, Mr. Hooke?’ Harry had to raise his voice over a crescendo of rain, thrown by the wind, battering the roof and the windows. Hooke waited for it to ease before he answered.

  ‘I wish to peruse the letters from Huygens regarding my mechanism for the watch, and those from Mr. Newton, in the dispute upon the motions of heavenly bodies. I never believed that Grubendol behaved straightforwardly in these matters. Be vigilant when you read these letters, Harry. I return now to Gresham’s. I leave you my lamp – it will be dark soon. Toil not for too long. After the rigours of these past few days, you look as though you need some rest. And besides, you have the cipher to work at.’

  As Hooke’s footsteps sounded his departure Harry felt the oncoming silence as a physical thing filling the room, as if the æther pressed harder upon his eardrums. He stood by Oldenburg’s armchair, resting his hand on its back, and a sharp loneliness, as biting as the cold, made him feel an unfamiliar ache in his core.

  He moved across the study, and looked from the window with its view over the Park. From this vantage point he could see the road to Chelsea, to where the boy at the Physic Gardens had been found. He could see the buildings of Whitehall, where he had spoken with the King, and towards Hartshorne Lane, although Sir Edmund’s house was hidden from view behind rooftops.

  London was a city of views, and of windows looking out at them, their lines of sight criss-crossing one another like the system of nerves in the body. Could nothing be done in London that was not also seen? Was it possible to move unobserved through its streets, to keep one’s business hidden? Who knew that he was here today, other than Robert Hooke and Dora-Katherina? Who had been sent to watch him, and to check upon his progress, or perhaps to hinder it?

  These ideas of being observed were intruding too much upon his usual flow of thoughts. He warned himself against them – delusions of persecution were like an infection.

  He returned to the open chest, and withdrew from his pocket a small book to begin his cataloguing. He sat in Oldenburg’s chair – not the armchair in which the Secretary had finally rested, but the one at the desk, like a captain’s chair that might be found on a ship. This was how Oldenburg must have sat, able to reach his shelves of books, able to stretch to the chest to open it and store his correspondences, all without leaving this desk.

  He took one of Oldenburg’s pens – a new one, not wanting to disturb one that Oldenburg had used – and sharpened it with Oldenburg’s knife. He wrote headings into his book: number, sender, place of origin, date of le
tter, subject matter, date of reply, further matters arising, and a column to reference any other correspondence. He left room for more columns should he need them.

  He pulled out a first handful of letters from the chest, to open, appraise, and record their contents. He noted the senders, seeing Spinoza, Newton, Leibniz, Boyle, Huygens, Flamsteed, Malpighi, Leeuwenhoek, and Wallis. With the reading of them, and cataloguing them, three hours quickly passed before he returned to the chest.

  *

  Looking into it, he saw the corner of a darker, larger bundle, through a gap between the letters resting on it. Intrigued by its appearance, he moved these to one side to uncover it.

  It was a large package, wrapped in grubby sailcloth, roughly stitched to secure it, and oiled to seal it against the weather. The contents of the package were wrapped on a diagonal, and so the points of the cloth came together at the centre of its uppermost face. The stitches were further sealed, an unsteady wax line following their pattern. Looking at it closely, Harry saw that originally the cloth had been stitched neatly; it had been opened, and then sewn again more approximately, quickly perhaps. Did the old man Oldenburg close it up again? His unsteady hands could be the reason for the waywardness of the wax lines. A sealed paper was folded and sewn into the fabric.

  Harry lifted the package out from the chest. It was weighty. He put it on the desk and studied it. Running his fingers over its edges and corners, he could feel the bumps of lines and knots under the sailcloth. Papers tied into sheaves with strings. He attacked the wax, which was a dark red colour and had Oldenburg’s seal, and unfolded the paper.

  The Eminent Dr. Robert Hooke

  To be sent 1st Janry. 1678.

  It was the Secretary’s handwriting. Henry Oldenburg had not released it to Hooke.

  Instead, he had shot his brains out.

  Under the red wax that Oldenburg had poured onto the package was a smaller patch of black wax, which Harry exposed by patiently scraping away Oldenburg’s seal. It had the symbol of a candle and its flame.

  Harry felt a growing unease, like a vibration from the earth going through him. How the bodies of three boys, an eel-fisher named Enoch Wolfe, Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey, Catholic plotters, the suicide of Secretary Henry Oldenburg, the Red Cipher, the old soldier Colonel Michael Fields, a Solicitor Moses Creed, two ladies dressed in sea-green, Sir Jonas Moore, and the King were all conjoined – what the links were in the chain, where the points from which it hangs sit, and its shape – might all be revealed within this package.

  He found himself reluctant to break into it. It had no postmark; he could see why the sender had not relied on the Post Office, as such a package would draw attention to itself. The Lord High Treasurer Danby’s spies would carefully untie it, break its seals, read its contents, and then reseal it so only the closest inspection would reveal it had ever been tampered with. Or else, everyone mentioned in it would be arrested . . .

  He considered whether to take it straight to Hooke, as Oldenburg had not. Was he obliged to do so? He was there to catalogue the Secretary’s papers.

  Finally, he decided to open it up, using the small knife to help him, separating strings from wax, letting loose the bundles of papers within.

  A letter, in Oldenburg’s untidy hand, was uppermost. It had been written on the morning of his death.

  Pall Mall 1st Janry 1677/78

  Sir,

  I Henry Oldenburg Secretary of the Royal Society of London for Improving of Natural Knowledge, doe give unto you our esteemed Curator and Honoured Friend this quantity of papers.

  This Creature is fallen from what he was, miserabilis homuncio, so I doe give over the Enterprize of their decypherment.

  The Sin of our first parent Adam, in eating of the forbidden Fruit from whence proceeded all Eternal punishments, is the cause of all our Miseries. His Disobedience and Pride is mine also. I can no longer continue with it, nor can I destroy the Endeavour of such a Man who saw so far. By leaving them for you Mr. Hooke I follow the wishes of the Writer of these works.

  I am at the end of my Useful life. I am desirous that some Use be made of these, by that Man who is the Wisest of all in that Solomon’s House, the Royal Society.

  I am, for little Time longer,

  Henry Oldenburg

  Flicking through the bundles in the package, beneath the Secretary’s letter, Harry recognised the same grids, twelve letters by twelve, as the Red Cipher. They were written out in an extraordinarily neat hand, the characters so regular that it seemed impossible that a human hand could have created them. Harry left them still tied, reread Oldenburg’s words, and spent some while considering what he should do with this package.

  Judgment reached, he reassembled it, placing its different parts carefully as he had found them, tied it with some of Oldenburg’s string, locked up the chest, and said his goodbyes to Dora-Katherina.

  With the package concealed in the pocket inside his coat, he headed reluctantly off, leaning into the fierce rain.

  It was time to meet with Enoch Wolfe.

  It was not the weather that made him hesitant. The thought of going to Alsatia, at night, filled him with fear.

  Observation XXIX

  Of Nocturnal Creatures

  The Angel creaked on her chains, her sign swinging in the wind. Rain sprayed onto her, gathered along the bottom of the board, and fell as a stream onto the rough and muddy pavement.

  Harry had avoided trouble, careful to keep his head down, as he walked through Alsatia. Some men had shouted after him, but he had ignored them, and they did not pursue. Something had been thrown, but wildly, and he did not turn.

  He peered in through the black window of the Angel coffee-house, rubbing at the wet glass with his sleeve. His note, he saw, had gone, leaving a gap amongst all the cards and papers. Hopefully, Enoch Wolfe had spied it, or heard of it, and was there to meet him.

  Inside, the owner of the coffee-house sat alone with a pipe in one of the booths, reading a pamphlet by the light of a single candle.

  Harry backed away from the window, avoiding the sign’s cascade even though water was already well inside his collar, and moved towards the door. He readied himself to disturb the proprietor. The man was brusque; Harry could imagine his displeasure at having his reading interrupted. He extinguished Hooke’s bright lamp from consideration, not wanting to blind the man at his door.

  As Harry raised his hand to knock he heard the rattle of a coach’s wheelbands on cobbles.

  Harry turned towards the sound, and watched a coach-and-four move steadily up the hill towards him. It was black, its surfaces silvery in the rain. This could not be Enoch Wolfe arriving, he thought; the coach was far too expensive-looking for an eel-fisher.

  As he craned forward to see more clearly the driver, a man huddled in a goatskin coat, the coach slowed, and came to a halt. Its wood, leather and iron all made their individual groans and grumbles. The door was directly opposite Harry, as if waiting for him to step in. Its window was of perforated tin.

  The driver made no movement on his seat, and although they were now quite close, and shared a soaking from the weather, there was no nod of acknowledgement from him. He simply stared forwards, the reins held loosely between thick fingers.

  His stillness made Harry feel more anxious. The attitude of the man, whose silence and indifference was unusual as he waited – for what? – made him catch his breath, and hold it. The driver was small but strong-looking, older than he had first appeared, with a whey-coloured face that the flame of his lantern could not impart colour to. Harry thought he recognised him, but it was more the coat that he remembered. From the Crown tavern, its wearer talking to the serving girl.

  There was a click, the door of the carriage swung open, and a man appeared from the interior, with a drawn sword. Harry glimpsed him as he walked through the light. He had a flat plane of bone at the top of his nose, the curious shape of his skull pushing his eyes wide apart. One long brow stretched over his forehead. He wore French buc
ket boots and an officer’s coat. The driver jumped from his seat, taking down the lantern and a grappling hook attached to a long length of rope.

  Inside the Angel the candle was snuffed out, turning the window into a mirror, throwing a broken image of the street onto the windowpanes, showing between the notices wedged against them.

  Harry turned towards the disappearance of the light, and looked at the reflection in the window of the man from inside the coach. He was being stared at, the man’s gaze holding his, challenging him to turn. He could not; instead he stood transfixed to the flat show of events behind him. He could feel his tongue stick to the roof of his mouth, and his limbs felt heavy, as if the amount of blood in them had suddenly doubled. He could not take his eyes away from the curious face.

  Then the man turned away, with an air that made Harry feel he had been dismissed as only trivial, and moved swiftly off, disappearing down the narrow alley between the Angel and a small warehouse next to it. The driver followed him, vanishing just as rapidly from view.

  Harry turned from the window, and allowed himself to take normal breaths.

  ‘Who are those men?’ he said out loud.

  ‘There are too many visitors to Alsatia,’ a voice slurred, spreading the fumes of strong drink. Harry turned to see he was being studied through one eye; the other was covered by a patch with an eye crudely painted on it, the copy drawing notice to the loss rather than concealing it. Its owner fumed over Harry again, and sloped off, antagonism apparent in his stiff-legged stride.

  Harry shivered, and wiped the rain from his face and hair. He took a deep breath, and crossed to the coach, its horses waiting patiently in the road. The driver had not tethered them; they stood obediently for his return. He inspected the vehicle, walking around it. He pulled open the door. The coach was empty, with only the bare furniture of its interior.