The Bloodless Boy (13 page)

When he had been Hooke’s apprentice, Harry had watched her about her uncle’s home as he rasped, sawed, filed, polished, and carved. The fullness of her lips, her little pout when concentrating on some task or another. The tunes that occurred to her spontaneously as she hummed them, the murmured music seeming to compose itself, Grace merely following its direction, unaware of its effect on him.

Once, she had asked him to bring down a large pan she was to use for dying cloth. He reached for it, and the back of his hand had brushed the side of her head, touching her hair. His skin felt as if it burned. She had looked at him, but he could not read her expression. She did not move, and it was only afterwards that he wondered whether she had wanted him to kiss her. Eventually, Grace had smiled, and taken the pan from him. Neither of them spoke again of the moment.

Nowadays, Harry visited her uncle on Society business, or to help him with his surveys, and he did not have the excuse to spend such times with her.

He had to desist from such reveries, and turn his attention to the papers in his coat pocket. He had made a copy of the cipher left with the boy, and a copy of the letter delivered to Mr. Hooke.

Like the light bent in the atmosphere, or through the window, his spectacles, and the wine glass, the message did not come to him clearly; it was distorted from its true shape. The elusive keyword was the prism through which the cipher would make sense.

As Colonel Fields had said, it remained a knotty problem. Should he wait for the word to be revealed, either to Mr. Hooke or by Sir Edmund, if he knew it, or spend time guessing at it, to try to uncover the cipher’s meaning?

The papers left on the body must reveal the purpose of the boy, surely, and the reason for the draining of his blood, and perhaps also the name of his killer. There was also the document delivered by the Solicitor. Harry had to decipher them as soon as possible, for other boys might suffer the same fate.

There was a murdered boy, and a cipher. Sir Edmund wanted the boy preserved. Harry’s questioning of the old Colonel had revealed the Justice’s participation in escorting the King to France. The trail of snowshoe prints at the Fleet showed that Sir Edmund had lied to them.

He could not rely upon help from Hooke, who wanted nothing further to do with the business, and so he had to continue deviously.

He had left a message with Enoch Wolfe, the eel-fisher – a man sought also by others, perhaps two women, as Felicity Tarripan had told him in Alsatia. There was the old Constable at the Fleet, who must have seen where Sir Edmund was at the time of the leaving of the boy. Harry could try to find him, but to do so would mean word reaching Sir Edmund.

What best to do?

Candlelight and the fire in the grate were now the only sources of illumination in the room. The stars appeared, and from force of habit he named them as he saw them: Polaris, Sirius, Procyon, Rigel, Castor, Capella, Aldebaran . . .

*

Another light, far brighter than any of the stars or the candles in the room, approached him through the Crown. A lamp, the power of its flame’s illumination increased by mirrors and lenses, caused all in the tavern to shield their eyes, and look sharply at the source of their discomfort. Behind it walked Robert Hooke, late, and looking vexed. The lamp had a self-fuelling mechanism, the oil fed to the flame using a counterpoise, and the candle itself was held by a spring. Hooke placed it carefully on the table between them, opened the chamber, and snuffed it out.

‘My improved design!’

‘Good evening, Mr. Hooke.’ Harry’s eyes grew accustomed again to the easier light of the room’s candles. ‘Your lamp is notably bright.’

‘The ancients knew of such methods. I have merely refined them. Archimedes made use of mirrors for setting on fire the enemy ships in the siege of Syracusa. Aristophanes described glasses and spheres to converge the rays of the sun. I have shown this lamp today at Gresham’s, at the Cutlerian lecture.’

‘Was the lecture well attended, Mr. Hooke?’

‘What do you think, Harry?’

‘By your expression, I would say that it was not.’

‘One person only came! And I believe
him
a spy sent by Cutler to see whether I perform the lectures dutifully. I will publish the talk – eight diverse ways to construct such self-feeding lamps! Eight! I hope more will read of it than troubled themselves to come to the demonstration. The man – an ill-mannered fellow, and rough looking – spoke of the rumours. The blood-drained boy is a portent of a Jesuitical design upon our Kingdom, so they say. He said he had heard talk of the boy being held at Gresham’s. I told him nothing. Grace came in, luckily enough, and put the fellow off his tittle-tattle. I remember he wore a goatskin coat.’

Harry turned quickly, to look again at the serving girl and the man she had flirted with, but both were gone, and the seat he had occupied was now empty. Had he not also worn a goatskin coat?

He looked back at Hooke, trying to dismiss a rising feeling of apprehension. ‘These rumours spread like a blaze. Might it be for someone else he came?’ he asked. ‘Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey, perhaps, will crave intelligence of your activities, as you have let go of his search.’

‘Sir Edmund would summon me himself, surely? You are in danger of wandering off into invisible notions.’

‘Have you had word from the Justice?’

Hooke shook his head. ‘You said nothing to him in your visit to Hartshorne Lane?’

To tell Hooke of his detour to the Fleet, and of the prints there across the snow, would be to tell him of his deception. He would also leave his visit to Alsatia unmentioned. ‘I said nothing. In truth, I hold the same fears of being entangled in his business as you, Mr. Hooke,’ Harry replied instead.

Hooke, seemingly satisfied with his assistant’s answer, tried to attract the attention of the Crown’s owner, Thomas Blagrove. Blagrove stood behind the serving bench, a high, sturdy table stacked with jars, jugs, lidded decanters, pitchers and bottles. Behind him an open trapdoor led down into the cellar to his impressive stock of imported alcohols, spirits and tinctures, and brews of his own devising. He was something of an experimentalist himself, and often let favoured customers sample drinks imported from the corners of the world, as well his own preparations, educating them in matters geographical as well as in those of the palate.

Blagrove at last came over to their table, and Hooke asked him what he recommended.

‘I have a bracing Japanese wine, made by the fermenting of rice. It has an immediate effect on the head.’

‘I have heard of this drink,’ Hooke replied, ‘but have never yet tried it. I have heard also of a Chinese drink, a variant perhaps, called shamshoo. Your proposal has much to recommend it, Mr. Blagrove, but let us instead begin with some claret. Our troubles with the French have not dried your supply?’

‘I have a man,’ was Blagrove’s inscrutable reply. ‘It does get ever more costly, though.’

‘We will have some anyway,’ Hooke answered for both of them. Harry assented by remaining silent, although he would have liked to try the rice wine.

When Blagrove had poured each of the men a glass of his best Bordeaux, Hooke took a mouthful of it. ‘
In
vino
veritas
, Pliny tells us,’ he said, ‘and, to a certain measure, he is right. But also,
At
the
last
it
biteth
like
a
serpent
,
and
stingeth
like
an
adder
.’

He noticed that Harry had not yet taken any of his drink.

‘Are you well, Harry?’ He looked closely at his colleague. ‘You look unusually pale.’

‘It must be the events of the last three days, Mr. Hooke. They have had a strong effect on me. The boy. The business with Mr. Oldenburg’s death. This cipher from the Civil War.’

‘I have steel wine at Gresham’s, which will settle you. You must try to forget it, all of it, and return to your usual work. The business of the Royal Society will occupy your mind, and your equilibrium shall quickly return.’

Hooke directed his silver eyes at Harry’s, requiring his agreement.

Harry nodded back at him, and managed a weak and brave-seeming smile.

Hooke then busied himself with the oil-feed mechanism of the lamp, adjusting some slight deficiency with his pocketknife.

Harry watched him, glad that he was not expected to engage in further conversation.

The next day, he decided, he would go to the Solicitor, Moses Creed, to see if he remembered who had left the cipher to be delivered to Robert Hooke with him.

Observation XIX
Of Instruction

The hole in his side, pulled at by the silver tube, was inflamed and raw. He would ask John Locke to look at it, for as well as the pain the wound wept unusually, the liquid seeping into his shirt. He could feel it sticking the material to his flesh, tugging as he moved.

He looked up from his book, John Milton’s
Paradise Lost
, disturbed by the entrance of his servant from his reading of the angel Raphael’s conversation with Adam.

‘Aires! What intelligence did you glean from Mr. Hooke?’

‘Nothing of use, Your Grace,’ Aires replied, as he crossed the rich carpeting of the library. ‘I spoke to him of the rumours of the boy found with a goat’s hooves, and asked if he gave them credence.’ He arrived opposite the Earl, who gestured for him to sit by the warmth of the fire. ‘His reaction was fearful. He told me that he had heard of no such thing. We were disturbed by another, a girl, and I could not question him further.’

Shaftesbury put his book down, and closed it carefully, aligning its edge with the table’s. ‘The talk is all around London. Hooke must have heard it. It is in the news-sheets, as a sign of a Roman Catholic invasion. We know that Hooke still stores our boy, for I have the place watched constantly. What I cannot let happen is for Hooke to dissect him.’

‘I could get more from the Curator, if less discretion is required.’

‘That will not be necessary. We know that he lies, for another man noses into our business. Titus Oates has been to the Justice, Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey, this morning, and is to give further evidence to the King. We must not allow any interference. Mr. Hooke’s assistant went to Whitechapel, and spoke with Colonel Fields.’

‘I warned Michael Fields before.’ Aires looked as if he relished the memory. ‘When he nosed into our business.’

‘The assistant was seen at the Fleet, where the boy was left, there again this morning. He is young. He wears a brown leather coat. He has spectacles.’

‘Then I spied him, inside the Crown tavern with Mr. Hooke, after the lecture.’

Shaftesbury picked up a small piece of paper, and held it up for Aires to inspect. ‘This same assistant went into Alsatia, seeking Enoch Wolfe.’

The paper he held was Harry’s note, asking to meet with Wolfe, that he had left in the window of the Angel coffee-house.

‘He is busy.’

‘His name is Henry Hunt. He wishes to meet with Enoch Wolfe. We will ensure that he does. Monsieur Lefèvre will be there also. You understand what I want?’

Shaftesbury crumpled up Harry’s note, and threw it into the fire.

‘I do. And this assistant will also.’

Observation XX
Of Identity

It was a quarter past ten in the morning. Harry checked the time on Harris’s clock on Saint Dunstan-in-the-West. Put up in gratitude for the church’s escape from the Fire, the clock rang out every quarter, and the sound of its bell, clanged by the pagan giants Gog and Magog, followed his back.

The last of the snow was now atolls of refrozen slush; grip could be found in the gaps. The light was flat, coming through a mist obscuring the horizon and fading the roofs and each end of Fleet Street. Harry turned up Chancery Lane to Lincoln’s Inn, and in through the red brick archway of the Gatehouse. Surrounded by the jumble of old buildings housing the Solicitors, Barristers, and Clerks of the Inn, he asked for directions; a careless wave sent him across the courtyard, past the Hall, and through a passageway, to a sign needing some care, the dirt of years obscuring much of the name. After wiping it with his hand, he interpreted it as pointing up to the
Office
of
M.
Creed,
S
olicitor
.

The stairwell was dark, its few windows high and small, its walls wanting new plaster and paint. Pushed and heaved by its shifting joists and beams, the tall narrow building twisted like the breaking of a neck. The stairs never turned at a right-angle, and each tread had its own way of lying. The boards of the corridor, once the stairs had been done, were similarly chaotic.

Along the very top storey Harry found a door marked ‘
M.
Creed’
. It was one of several identical doors doubtlessly leading into similar small offices, only the names on them setting them apart.

Answering his knock, Moses Creed did not welcome Harry in, but instead blocked the doorway; a fusty smell emanated from inside. Harry had a glimpse of a room piled high with documents tied with green ferret string or red tape. Large ledgers and ancient law books leaned in from the walls. Under layers of thick dust, appearing to be rarely handled, they seemed to have settled into their shelves as if sweating their contents through the pores of their leather.

It reminded him of Robert Hooke’s rooms: a portrait of a life.

The Solicitor carefully shut the door behind him, and locked it, leaving them standing in the corridor. Although shorter than Harry, Creed gave the impression that he looked down on him, achieved by pushing his head far back.

‘Mr. Creed? Mr. Moses Creed?’

‘Mr. Moses Creed I am.’

The Solicitor looked to be around forty years of age, but presented himself in the manner of a man far senior, his dress and attitude suggesting that he inhabited a different scale of time.

Harry got straight to the point with a lie.

‘You delivered a letter to Mr. Robert Hooke, at Gresham’s College, on the evening of Monday, the first day of January, three days ago. Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey has engaged our assistance; he asked me to question you, concerning the appearance of the person, or persons, who brought you this letter.’ Harry’s sentences reached towards his own idea of a legal man’s rhetorical mode, and he told himself to desist. ‘People . . .’

Creed aimed his gaze along the length of his nose at Harry. ‘And you are?’