He looked along the alleyway after the two men, but there was no sign of them. Back at the darkened window of the Angel, he tried to discern any movement inside. There was no sign either of the owner. It was as if they had all been washed down the same drain.
Harry tried the door of the coffee-house, but it was firmly locked.
He walked after the two men from the coach. He could not find a way into the Angel from the narrow passage to the side of it, no doorway or low window. There was only an ominous dark alleyway behind. He took a few uncertain steps into the blackness. He could see nothing, and could hear no movement. He could not understand how the men might have got inside.
He would leave the questioning of Enoch Wolfe until the daytime; he walked no further into the forbidding nothingness in front of him, but turned back on himself, hurrying at a jog to the street.
*
‘Stay still!’
The front door of the Angel had opened, and Harry saw the proprietor beckoning him over urgently.
‘You will not see Wolfe now.’
‘You said that he would see me.’
‘Others come for him.’
‘Who are these?’ Harry asked.
‘Who are you to pose such questions? You would be wise to fear them.’
‘He is not the simple eel-fisher I first took him to be.’
‘Eel-fisher?’ The owner laughed.
A loud smashing of glass from way above them cut short his mirth. From upstairs came the sound of running. Someone at the top of the house.
The two men stayed absolutely still in the doorway for a moment, then the owner, whose name was Turner, was first to react, and he walked cautiously towards the sound, into the interior of the coffee-house, pushing Harry out of his way. Harry, after a longer moment of indecision, followed, stumbling in the darkness up the narrow stairs.
A creak above them stopped them both. On the stairs they could see nothing – Harry could not even discern Turner’s back, although he was less than an arm’s reach away. Harry’s heart thumped, as he listened, ears probing the complete darkness, for the tiniest sound, a boot or scrape of a weapon.
From downstairs there was a sudden bang, as the front door blew shut. Both men froze, until, ahead, Harry sensed Turner take a cautious step up, and he followed, ordering his unwilling feet to move.
They could hear a man’s sobbing. It came from an attic room, another flight of stairs above them. They went slowly, warily, Harry close behind Turner, upwards to the very top of the coffee-house. On the last steps, under their boots they could feel the crunching of broken glass.
As they reached the upper landing, where the frame and glass of a small window lay scattered over the boards, they heard a scream, high-pitched like the squeal of a boar, followed by a whimpering, and a strange bubbling sound.
From below them there came another noise, a loud impact, and then another, and the front door also was shattered, broken in. They had two choices: to carry on up here, or to return downstairs. Again Turner moved first, and pushed open the door in front of him.
Harry followed closely behind.
Against the bedroom’s window were the silhouettes of three men. One was perfectly still, despite the thrashing of the man he held.
Behind them came the sound of feet thumping up the wooden staircase, and Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey’s lamp swung into the room, with the Justice holding onto it grimly. They could see that the man with the strangely-shaped brow held Enoch Wolfe the eel-fisher, who wore a suit and had a metal shield over his nose. The man grasped Wolfe’s neck, holding him up off the floor, avoiding his frantically kicking feet and flailing arms. The driver of the coach stood with his arms folded, looking only at Harry, ignoring Turner and the newly-arrived Sir Edmund, and the murder being carried out beside him.
Harry heard the sound of air escaping from a ripped throat.
Enoch Wolfe slowed, and quietened, and his body slackened, and became limp.
The murderer dropped the body, and spat out Wolfe’s Adam’s apple; the lump fell onto the floor, and rolled towards them. The killer had blood on his lips and chin, and he produced a handkerchief, and fastidiously wiped at it.
His face was so still and blank that it chilled Sir Edmund, Harry, and Turner equally.
The Justice, astonishingly, turned and ran, and Harry and Turner took a look at each other, and then went after him, following him back down the stairs. The lamplight swung wildly, making each step seem to veer crazily beneath them. Sir Edmund charged out through the broken door of the coffee-house, and they heard him make strange mewling sounds as he went.
Harry slipped, and crashed to the bottom of the stairs, hitting each tread as he fell. The wall abruptly halted his descent. He slumped to the floor, for a moment dazed. Behind him, Turner grabbed him to lift him up, and shoved him through the exit from the back of the Angel, into a muddy yard with some chicken coups. ‘Go on! Over the wall. Keep on up the hill. A path follows the back of this row.’
‘Was that Enoch Wolfe?’ Harry asked him, disbelievingly. Smartly dressed, and with the noseguard, the man had looked quite different.
‘He feared for his life. That is why he wished to see you. You will never hear what he had to tell now.’
‘Who killed him?’
‘You saw! A monster! He seeks his son the Devil-boy!’ Turner’s face was wild, his eyes black holes in white circles. He raced away, going off in the opposite direction, leaving Harry alone to fend for himself.
Harry jumped over the wall, and staggered on landing, pain shooting up his shins, the other side being lower than where he had taken off. He cried out, but quickly stifled his noise, anxious that the killer would hear. A dog started to bark, a high-pitched yapping, and Harry crawled forwards, hoping that the dog was tethered, trying to ignore the hurt in his shins, and at the base of his spine. He bumped into a rickety framework of planking, some kind of fence or shelter, and he caught his coat on a nail. The leather pulled him, and he tripped, landing on his back.
The rain had stopped while he was inside the Angel. The clouds had started to part, and some dim moonlight came through a gap between them. He stayed for a moment where he was, and looked directly upwards, partly because the air had left his lungs, and partly for the comfort of seeing the moon, familiar and soothing to him amongst the savage hostility of Alsatia.
The dog, its bark coming no nearer, quietened. Harry could hear no other sounds. Cautiously, he picked himself up, and made his way along the narrow path, as fast as he could, desperate to put distance between him and the nightmare behind. His own footsteps felt unnatural to him, Harry not knowing where the next step would send him on the uneven ground, but they propelled him quickly enough, and automatically, as if he rode on mechanical legs.
He went through Alsatia and up towards the safety of Fleet Street, all the way listening out for the sound of coach wheels on cobbles.
Only once he was there, well away from the Angel, and walking on the main thoroughfare, did he relight Hooke’s lamp.
Observaiton XXX
Of Further Articles
The browns and reds and greens of the covers of all the books, with the glittering golds of those with titles on their spines, made it seem a splendid autumn day in the library. The curtains were pulled back, and the bright morning light poured in. Despite this, candles burned everywhere around the room.
Lefèvre saw John Locke studying him, and he stared fiercely back at Shaftesbury’s Secretary. Eventually, it was Locke who cut the invisible lines joining them. Lefèvre transferred his stare to that of the automaton’s, no sign of his small victory discernible, although he seemed to find comfort that the machine would never give way.
Locke sighed, and brought down a book from the shelves; a copy of Hobbes’s Leviathan, describing the relationship between the multitude and its representative sovereign. He thumbed through the book, leaning with an angular elbow against its shelf.
Other than the turning of these pages, the
library of Thanet House was utterly quiet, with no sounds reaching them from outside, or from the rest of the house. The books insulated the place – the great weight of paper stored on these shelves, pages pressed together between their covers, extending sometimes two feet thick from the walls.
A door set into the bookshelves opened behind them. Turning towards it, they saw the long, jowled face of the Earl of Shaftesbury.
Behind him was his elaboratory. His collection of rare objects, his knick-knackatory, was housed in a great cabinet, with glass-fronted doors, reaching almost to the ceiling. In the centre of the room was an Air-pump that he kept there, its glass receiver empty, the lid down on the floor beside the machine.
The Earl gently shut the door behind him. He was without his perruke, and there was a distance in his eyes. After a massage with oils and a smoke of opium and tobacco, Shaftesbury was more at ease with himself, the hole in his side unusually painless.
Lefèvre moved smoothly over to the window, and pulled at the long curtains, closing the gap between them. The motes of dust disappeared as the shaft of daylight was snuffed out, and candlelight regained supremacy in the room.
Shaftesbury nodded his thanks, and indicated to them to sit. Lefèvre appeared magically on his chair. Locke closed Leviathan, and waited attentively, anticipating more elements to the plot.
‘John. Monsieur Lefèvre. I have excellent news, news to assist my design! I have heard from my man Smith, who lurks about Whitehall, that the Duchess of York’s Secretary, Edward Coleman, is known to have sent communications to the French, asking for their aids and assistances.’
Locke leaned further forwards, his chin resting on the book. ‘Do you say this is high treason?’ he asked.
‘It is of little consequence! He seeks money only, but it is as damning. We manufacture meetings between Coleman and Oates, place him at our imagined Consult, and we have first proof of plottings against the King from one close to him! The false wrapped entirely in the real, and all delivered as one.’
‘We can send Coleman affirmatives from friendly parties that his efforts will be rewarded. These alone will hang him.’ Locke said these words as if to test Shaftesbury’s will, although he knew full well that if the plot gathered more momentum, Coleman’s death would not unduly worry the Earl.
‘Write them,’ Shaftesbury commanded.
Locke nodded. ‘And I shall brief Titus Oates.’
‘I desire Oates to swear that he overheard of the firing of Southwark and Limehouse Hole by Jesuits, and to have seen plans to set afire Wapping and Westminster. And plans to slit one hundred thousand throats in London – how the Catholics would go about it. Reminisce of the Saint Bartholomew’s day massacre! Remember fondly Catherine de Medici! All as bloodthirsty as you wish.’
Shaftesbury closed his eyes, and seemed to be drifting to sleep. The other two waited for him to stir. Eventually, his eyes still closed, he spoke.
‘Monsieur Lefèvre, well done. You have killed one hindrance, and discouraged the other. Hooke’s apprentice will now steer clear of us. Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey, too, it sounds, became unmanned. You may concentrate on your assignment to kill the King.’ He turned to Locke. ‘But still we do not have our boy.’
‘Still we do not have our man,’ Locke replied. ‘All our intelligencers search for him. Aires wears out the wheels of your coach in the gathering of their reports.’
‘Should we look to Robert Hooke? He has the abilities that we need.’
‘Too timid, I think. Although, there are means to encourage him.’
‘Tomorrow, then, after Oates and Tonge have met with the King.’
Observation XXXI
Of the Nerves
The bright sickening colour of Enoch Wolfe’s blood . . . and the blood drained from the boys. The Red Cipher returned. Titus Oates and Israel Tonge, and their stories of London overthrown.
Sir Edmund had spent the night wandering the streets of London, a distracted figure, his heart sick and his head full of Catholic murder. He had ended up to the east, past Blackwall, and the route he had taken had been irregular, and mazy. He doubted whether he could repeat it.
Why this Catholic need for blood?
Sir Edmund did not believe in transubstantiation, and would never believe it. He had robustly dismissed this Popish superstition at many a dinner, declaring it only meant that a Catholic must piss the blood of Christ back out. Such false notions could only sensibly be dismissed.
He wiped some spray of the Thames from his face, and stared at the waterman taking him to Hartshorne Lane stairs, to gauge if he sensed his timidity. The man carefully avoided his look. The Justice took comfort that the waterman was blatantly alive, with vigorous arms pulling at the oars of the wherry; he saw again the gristle from Wolfe’s throat, rolling across the room . . .
The killing of Enoch Wolfe, so brutally, showed the menace of the Jesuits.
The boys left at Barking Creek, the Fleet, and the Westbourne were portents of a Hellish conscience.
Everywhere he went he heard the rumours. Catholic malfeasance was demonstrated beyond any sensible doubt. Hearing more of the secrets of the Plot laid out before him by Oates and Tonge, like a landscape revealing itself from the crest of a high hill, Sir Edmund knew that his suspicions were proved to be true.
The reappearance of the Red Cipher had been like a blow to his body. With the King’s life in danger he must be resolute – but the pressure in his skull felt as if the gold band around his hat slowly contracted.
An idea struck him, and it chilled his heart.
It was Robert Hooke who removed the blood from these boys.
Hooke’s skills were obvious, his knowledge was prodigious, and he had the Air-pump. And what of his assistant, also proficient with the apparatus? Did they work together?
Hooke and Hunt had told him that they were done with the search. Hooke had told him by letter, and Hunt had told him face to face.
Hooke wanted no part in the leftovers from the Civil Wars. Even at the King’s command his uneasiness had been obvious to all.
Harry Hunt had been duplicitous throughout, and admitted as much to him. Had everything that Hooke’s assistant told him been misleading?
Was Gresham’s College the place he should be searching, as the heart of this wicked enterprise?
He had sought aid from the very last people in London that he should have! He had trusted them foolishly, having too much regard for Hooke’s good reputation about the town.
No, no, it made no sense.
In the absence of certitude, when his mind was assailed by doubts, he allowed fantastical thoughts. He should keep to the maxim of the Royal Society; seek the truth only from what is known, and what can be shown to be true.
Go back to the very beginning, start again . . .
Sir Edmund had wavered between a whole-hearted trust and a deep-seated suspicion since he had met the pair. He wished he knew their true colours.
He, though, had kept much from them also, and could not expect openness in return.
Only Titus Oates and Israel Tonge sought to help him freely.
They told him of Jesuits secretly armed, ready for the rebellion. The Catholic powers abroad gladly aided such a coup. Had there not been incendiarism enough to convince? Southwark had been such a fire, and recently at Limehouse Hole. And how many other times had the lucky finding of fireballs, moments before their discharge, saved the Righteous?
There never came a rising from below. A river has its source from above. The Catholic nobility and gentry must have more careful checks put upon them. The use of an Air-pump to store the boy, the fine candles . . . All pointed to money. When the mob stirred, a Justice looked for those who gained by its anger. An irreligious uprising would be sponsored by those desiring profit.
Perhaps even French Louis had an interest?
Informed by the Angel’s owner, Turner, that Enoch Wolfe was willing to meet with Harry Hunt, he had gone to Alsatia too, having his own questions to put to
the eel-fisher. He had seen Shaftesbury’s man, Aires, well-known to him, and Shaftesbury’s black coach-and-four, and that man with one long eyebrow, emerging from the coach . . .
So, whatever purpose the Jesuit conspirators kept it for, the Earl of Shaftesbury procured the blood for them. Even from the Tower the Earl had arranged it. With all his suspicions though, Sir Edmund knew that he had no evidence against him. He would need the King’s authority to question such a man.
Yet Shaftesbury hated the Catholics, and missed no opportunity to stir opinion against them.
Wolfe had discovered the boy at the Fleet; it was too coincidental that he should have been slaughtered.
These worries gnawed at him; contradictory, inconsistent, incoherent. Amplifying within the great spaces of his imagination, growing ever fatter as he became more fearful.
He took off his hat and cradled his head in his hand, stroking his temples to quieten his mind. He could feel his thoughts unravelling. His reason, the tool of his trade, had become overstretched, through confusion, through lack of direction. He had to get a grip on himself, and on his investigation, or else it would be the undoing of him.
Everywhere he looked he saw only problems, questions, conspiracy, malfeasance.
He tried to believe Hooke’s story of being summoned to the Fleet by a messenger, but what if Hooke himself was the anatomiser, the murderer of the boys? Hooke had been there because he left the boy . . . Did Hooke and Shaftesbury work together? Shaftesbury had the money for the enterprise. Perhaps Hooke’s assistant Harry Hunt manufactured the story of prints left by snowshoes, to divert his thoughts away from their own experiments.
Many strange trials were performed at Gresham’s College.
Think of the doors leading off from the long corridor down in the cellars, behind them vast containers of blood, great glass globes full of broken infants, their eyes moving in ghastly agony. Conduits – tubes made of pig guts or some such material – going from one boy to another, blood coursing through them, a repugnant peristalsis. All of them swaying and swelling under the impulse of blood pumped through them, their hands outstretched, pleading for an end to their suffering . . .
The Bloodless Boy Page 16
