The Bloodless Boy

by Robert J. Lloyd

  *

  Outside, in the bright sunshine of a crisp London morning, the rain stopped and the smoke lifted, Harry had with him more of his notes of Thomas Whitcombe’s Observations Philosophical. Without his keys, he waited for a while, listening with his ear pressed to the door, but there was no sound of movement.

  Had Robert Hooke left already?

  He recalled the times when Tom’s face had appeared at the window directly above, when he would shout down to him whether the Curator was in or out, or relay his master’s messages to him.

  He knocked again, more assertively, knowing that Hooke became ever deafer, doubly so after the explosion in the cellars.

  This time – just as Harry turned to go – the window opened, and it was Grace’s face that he saw above him. He blinked up at her stupidly, strong sun in his eyes, unable to form any words of greeting to her. She had evidently just woken, for her long hair was loose, unbrushed, and she had a map of the creases of her sheets imprinted on one side of her face. He could see the top of her nightgown.

  ‘Why do you all rise so early?’ she complained.

  ‘Will you let me in?’ Her appearance made him breathless, as if he had run the way to Gresham’s.

  ‘But no one is here,’ she replied.

  ‘In truth, you are here, Grace.’

  She regarded him for a moment, and then her head disappeared from the window. He had been too bold. What must she now think of him? Some men found it easy to pursue a woman. He worried too much, was too obviously nervous and inexperienced; it made him unattractive to them.

  Then the key turned on the inside of the door. Grace beckoned him in, retreating from the sting of cold from the lobby’s flagstone floor, and from the harsh air invading from the quadrangle.

  ‘It was always Tom who greeted me, when coming though this door,’ Harry managed, sounding hoarse. ‘I shall always think of him when using it.’

  To his consternation, Grace’s eyes suddenly filled. Although she tried to wipe her sorrow away, the tears refused to stop. She cried silently, her mouth behind her hand, her shoulders shaking.

  Harry did not know whether to draw nearer, or stay exactly where he was. He knew he should comfort her, but how?

  He put his hands on hers, to still the shaking of her arms, and then took a handkerchief from inside his coat, to help her dry her eyes. He carefully wiped them, until she took the cloth from him. She looked at him, holding his gaze with hers.

  ‘Grace, I wonder – .’

  His question was never finished.

  Grace kissed him, her mouth wet from her tears, firmly holding his head in her hands, as if worried he might break free.

  Observation LVII

  Of the Popish Plot

  Robert Hooke sent a cautious look over the quadrangle before locking his door and bolting it, his face still touched with pink from the fire in the cellars.

  ‘I slept not well,’ Hooke told Harry, as he walked up the stairs. ‘I had an obstruction in my stomach, which kept me restless for much of the night. This morning I voided myself of a shit, which eased my discomfort.’

  ‘Good morrow, Mr. Hooke,’ Harry greeted the Curator, with a smile. ‘I am sorry to hear of your suffering. I stayed up reading more of Thomas Whitcombe. He separated the blood using centrifugal force, bringing forth its red, white and yellow parts. He experimented on drying them, then reliquifying them with distilled water.’

  Hooke sucked in his cheeks. This morning he felt easier, but he could not help thinking of who had killed Tom, and whether Thomas Whitcombe would be found to pay for his crimes.

  He would go back to his College work as Professor of Geometry, and his Royal Society work as Curator and new Secretary, and his City work as surveyor and architect of the rebuilding of London. Montague House was near finishing, and the Bethlehem hospital wanted repairs, faulty work having brought down a ceiling. The unfortunate meeting at the Fleet had brought him only unwelcome danger, and the death of Tom, for which he had blamed Harry.

  Now Hooke saw that he himself was responsible; it was he who had brought Harry into the business, by passing him the cipher. He had done this selfishly, in order to follow his desire to replace Grubendol as Secretary.

  He should have known that Harry, stubborn since a child, would follow it as far as he could, finding out those who might help him uncover the meaning of the letters, and those who might know more of the blood-drained boys.

  ‘Have you seen the news, Harry?’ he enquired, wondering where Mary was to have let Harry in, once they were both sitting at his table in the drawing room, holding out a copy of the Observator.

  ‘I have been so immersed in deciphering, I have heard hardly a thing of the world.’

  ‘You have heard the bells? And there will be cannons fired. A great pageant is planned, after the death of Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey.’

  Harry took the news-sheet, and read of a Procession, starting at Moorgate, to Aldgate, and finishing at Temple Bar where a mock Pope was to be burned. It was all paid for by the Earl of Shaftesbury. There were also details of Edward Coleman’s crimes, with a transcript of his trial.

  ‘Coleman admits to writing letters to the French.’ Harry looked disbelievingly at the Curator. ‘The Queen is to be removed from Whitehall, voted for by parliament.’

  ‘There is a chalk as long as your arm between wishing the King’s death and seeking monies from France.’

  ‘Coleman is to be drawn to Tyburn, then hanged upon the gallows there, mutilated, disembowelled and quartered.’

  ‘He will be half dead by the time he gets to Tyburn,’ Hooke said grimly. ‘He will be stoned and bottled for all of his journey. With this procession today, and Coleman’s execution tomorrow, London has gone mad, quite mad.’

  Harry read on, and then folded and placed the news-sheet down on the table. ‘There is no mention here of those who seek to use the blood of boys. Only of Papists, and assassins looking to overthrow the King and Church.’ He turned the news-sheet, rotating it on the surface of the table. ‘Sir Jonas has asked me to the Tower. He may know who the recipient boy was to be revivified. Otherwise, why press for the boys to be preserved?’

  Hooke had his bony elbows on his table, his long chin resting on his hands. ‘If you go to him, Harry, then you risk being drawn into this too. Retribution against Coleman has been swift.’

  Harry stared at the quarter of the news-sheet that showed after his folding of it. ‘This man, Titus Oates, here in the picture. I have seen him, on the night that I broke your lamp, being followed up the Fish Street pillar. He was with some soldiers. They were searching into houses.’

  ‘He will be unstoppable now. He is quartered at Whitehall, and given a pension to keep him. He will have half of London arrested before we may say Jack Robinson.’

  ‘The Justice suspected Catholic involvement in the deaths of the boys, yet nowhere have I found in Whitcombe’s notes a mention of those he worked for. If it is all a Catholic plan, then who benefits from his experimental trials?’

  ‘I know not, Harry, I know not. It is all confusion to me. Please have a mind for your own safety – you have shown a scant regard for it since Sir Edmund engaged our help.’ Hooke placed his hand onto Harry’s, seeking reassurance that Harry would follow his advice.

  ‘If I have learned nothing else in this New Year, I have learned circumspection.’

  The clocks in Hooke’s drawing room began their chiming, a process that took a full minute as each clock reached the hour of nine. As one finished its sounding of the hour another was ready to take its place.

  ‘The King bade me go to Whitehall this morning,’ Hooke continued, ‘and he spoke of you. He wanted to know of your capabilities. Indeed he spoke of little else.’

  ‘What was your answer to him, Mr. Hooke?’ Harry asked, flattered but puzzled by the King’s interest.

  ‘I answered truthfully, and fully. You are a most able Observator, and you will, I doubt not, make for a proficient Curator. You are a natura
l philosopher, worthy of the name.’

  ‘I should leave for the Tower,’ Harry said, with a catch in his voice. He glowed from this tribute from Hooke, who so rarely gave praise that it was doubly affecting. ‘Sir Jonas has the answers, I am sure. The way will be blocked by soldiers, and the crowds will be drawn to watch this pageant.’

  ‘You will have a care, won’t you? The Royal Society would not want to lose you, and neither would I.’

  ‘Mr. Hooke, I am sorry about Tom. You were – .’

  ‘You are not to blame, Harry, and you must not blame yourself.’

  Robert Hooke stood as Harry did, the table between them. With an unusual formality, the Curator shook Harry’s hand.

  ‘Mr. Hunt.’ It was the first time Hooke ever addressed him so.

  ‘Mr. Hooke.’

  ‘I have these for you.’ Hooke held out a bunch of newly cut keys, replacements for those Harry had lost at the Monument to the Fire of London.

  Harry, his eyes feeling hot, descended the stairs down to the lobby, and out into the quadrangle of Gresham College.

  Inside, Robert Hooke looked for Mary, but she was nowhere to be found. There was no sound from Grace, who presumably was still asleep.

  The Curator put some more coal on the fire, sat back down, and picked up the Observator news-sheet.

  Observation LVIII

  Of Ashes

  At Aldgate a dozen soldiers blocked the way. Harry waited, wanting Whitechapel, shuffling gradually closer towards the smaller arch, reserved for those going through on foot. The main arch had a barrier across it, the carts and coaches queuing back along Leadenhall Street, Poor Jewry Lane, and Shoemaker Row, their drivers swearing to themselves under their breath. On the other side of Aldgate the queues were even longer; all the people who made their way west, coming in early to get close to the Procession, were being stopped, the soldiers slower, and more thorough with those seeking to enter the City.

  The figures of Peace, Charity, and Fortune looked down on him from the arch. They were illuminated by the noon sunshine, which warmed his back, and Harry could see from their benign expressions that they saw into his mind, and knew of its wonder at Grace’s kiss. He could not help smiling back at them, but his face became serious when he found himself next to be questioned.

  ‘Your name?’ The soldier, a belligerent sergeant, blocked him with a palm, his other hand resting on the handle of his sword in its scabbard, fingers opening and closing continuously as he asked the same questions of everyone going through.

  ‘I am Henry Hunt.’

  The sergeant looked him up and down. ‘Your business?’

  He wished to see Colonel Fields. He had omitted to tell Hooke of his plan to go back to the old soldier’s chapel. Hooke’s worries about Harry searching into the matter of the dead boys had kept him from it. Of all the men he had encountered during his search for the killer of the boys, Colonel Fields was dependable, trustworthy, and might say more of how Thomas Whitcombe had changed from being an Army chirurgeon for Parliament, going to slavery on the Earl of Shaftesbury’s sugar plantation, to becoming a virtuosi natural philosopher.

  Was the Earl of Shaftesbury Whitcombe’s patron? Were Whitcombe’s ‘employments’ carried out for him?

  ‘I am Harry Hunt, of the Royal Society,’ Harry told the soldier. ‘I am the Observator there. I visit a man in Whitechapel on private business.’

  ‘So, not a philosophical business . . . Do you carry anything with you? There is a design upon the King’s life. We must search everyone.’

  ‘Only some papers.’

  ‘Let’s have them!’

  Harry produced them from the deep pocket inside his coat and gave them to the man. The sergeant looked with incomprehension at the first, topmost sheet, with the title Observations Philosophical. He rummaged quickly through the remaining sheets, not untying them, but peering under the corners of the papers.

  ‘What is the nature of this private business?’

  Harry lied to him. ‘Do you know of Mr. Robert Hooke? He is the Curator of Experiments at the Royal Society. I deliver these from him, to a man named Colonel Michael Fields.’

  ‘I do know of Robert Hooke. His reticle is employed in the aiming of guns. I know Colonel Fields better. A great man, in his time. So, is it private business, as you say, or, more rather, Royal Society business?’

  ‘I am sorry, it is Royal Society business.’

  The sergeant, seeing the crush of people behind and the mild looking, bespectacled youth before him, moved aside, giving back the deciphered notes. ‘Tell the Colonel it was his name that took you through.’

  *

  His thoughts still almost entirely of Grace Hooke, Harry went against the tide of people going in to the City, having to keep to the edge of the way, and reached the Saracen’s Head. He turned from Whitechapel Street. He went through the archway, grimacing at the smell of horse manure, and crossed the small meadow in front of the Colonel’s chapel.

  As he approached closer to where he had first met Colonel Fields, he slowed, and then stopped.

  The landscape before him had changed.

  Looking over the meadow, the Anabaptist chapel, which had stood down in the dip on the other side of the fence, was no longer there. Harry could see only its charred foundations and a few beams. Its two columns, which had supported the Colonel’s hammock between them, still stood upright, looking like broken ship’s masts. The wood was flaked by fire, its texture a black mould covering it.

  Harry climbed over the fence and walked onto the ashy site of the chapel’s destruction. The roof had fallen in, its emaciated beams folded between the walls. Climbing over them, he knocked against one of Fields’s burnt chairs, disintegrating it. The noise was loud; he looked around, suddenly aware that eyes might be watching him. The sensation of being observed unsettled him, and he searched into the lines of bushes and along the wall of the stables, to verify that he was alone. There was no sound other than those he made. Not even a bird stirred. No cows loomed in the fields.

  Reassured, he went back to inspect the two scorched columns. The wood crumbled to his touch. There was no trace of the ropes or canvas in which the Colonel had lain. Harry kicked at the thick grey ash on the floor, which soggily bound together, the rain of the past few days soaking and flattening it. There was nothing of Fields’s Bible, or his candle. And there was no trace of a body, no smell of it, and no signs of its removal. At least, Harry thought, Fields had escaped.

  Harry sniffed at the air again. He could not smell the burning of the chapel – the smell of horse manure was far stronger. No smoke rose from the fire; no cinders glowed. Kneeling down to touch a charred beam, he felt it to be completely cold. If this had been a recent fire then even with the recent rain the ashes would still be warm. Yet only four days ago Fields had come to him to tell him the story of Reuben Creed and Thomas Whitcombe.

  Surely he would have mentioned the burning down of his chapel?

  A bright edge of something in the ash attracted his notice. He reached for it, and then pulled back his hand quickly. He sucked at his finger, cut by the Colonel’s razor. The stool it had rested on must have been burnt away. He wrapped it in his handkerchief; he would return it to him, as the Colonel had returned his boots.

  The Colonel had returned his boots, after watching him under London Bridge, on the Morice waterwheel.

  He had come to Half Moon Alley, and told of Thomas Whitcombe and Reuben Creed.

  He had presented the cipher disk.

  The Colonel had been too helpful.

  And he had known that it was Sir Edmund on the wheel.

  Harry remembered that Colonel Fields’s head and chin had been covered with stubble.

  Sir Edmund’s dead body was red, discoloured by the proximity to a fire, in an enclosed space; was this chapel, as it burned, left locked to prevent his escape? The body carried the marks of stinging nettles; Harry saw a patch of nettles against where the wall of the chapel had stood, by a low section o
f fence leading to the fields beyond.

  There could be a dozen such places in London, recently burnt down, Harry surmised.

  He continued to search the site of the fire, seeking evidence in the ash, under the fallen beams, moving aside sections of the remaining roof. There was little left of the door, and the fire had removed any evidence of it being locked or barred to imprison the Justice. By the collapsed wall of the chapel, near where the door used to be, he discovered, wet, dirty, singed, a strip of fine lawn cloth. Sir Edmund’s arms had been tied. Harry picked up the cloth from the ash and wound it round his own wrists, not pulling at the material too strongly in case it shredded after its roasting.

  Still, he would not allow himself to be certain. Carrying the lawn cloth with him, he further examined the ruins. After a search which would have been abandoned, were it not for his resolve to inspect every inch of the place, as he pulled aside the scorched remains of a chair, one of the horseshoe of chairs that had been arranged for the Colonel’s congregation, he found a shiny, yellow strip of cloth.

  It was the gold band from Sir Edmund’s hat.

  Here was where Sir Edmund had died, after swallowing the piece of paper with CORPUS written on it. After the fumes and the heat of the fire overcame him, his body had been dragged from the burning chapel, redressed, delivered to the Thames, and engaged in the mechanism of the Morice waterwheel.

  Sir Edmund had come here to see the Colonel, either about the cipher or about their time in the Wars, when Thomas Whitcombe and Reuben Creed had been covertly employed to help escort the King to France. Was it Sir Edmund who had hanged Reuben Creed from a tree, anxious that he should not reveal the details of the scheme?

  Why had the Colonel waited until now, over twenty-five years later, to take his retribution?

  Harry pulled his coat tighter to him, more to comfort himself rather than for warmth, feeling again that eyes watched him.

  What best to do? Who should he go to, to tell of the death of Sir Edmund at this chapel?

  He left the site of the devastated chapel, crossed the stretch of meadow and walked back to Whitechapel High Street. He would return to Gresham’s College.