The Bloodless Boy (15 page)

‘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
lighter
men. You smoke the difference? They take our trade brazenly. We are the
water
men.’

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.

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.

He slid from his horse, looking unused to being carried by such transport.

‘The King ordered that I should meet with you here, to be shown the body. He asks that we take him to Whitehall. Show me the boy.’

‘If you grasp the tree-root it is an easy climb down,’ Hooke told him. Harry helped him as he joined him at the level of the water.

The lapwing complained again. ‘It is the Tiddy Mun!’ Sir Jonas observed. ‘He follows me here, as he follows me since my work in the fens.’

Harry’s evident confusion encouraged Sir Jonas to explain further. ‘The bog-dwellers tell the legend of the Tiddy Mun, whose voice is the cry of the lapwing.’

Hooke joined them. Sir Edmund preferred to watch from above, as the others gathered next to the boy, the water of the Westbourne splashing around their calves.

‘God’s blood!’ Sir Jonas exclaimed.

‘The others were the same,’ Hooke informed him.

Others? Harry shot a look of enquiry at Hooke. This was the first time he had heard of more than one boy. Hooke, seeing his assistant’s expression, coughed into his hand.

‘This boy is not decayed. Might the freeze have stilled his rotting?’ Sir Jonas asked.

‘It has slowed it, true enough,’ Hooke told him, ‘but if you observe the boy’s eyes, they are fresh. This frost would damage them. I do not believe he was left before yesterday.’

‘You, Mr. Hooke, know best of such things,’ Sir Jonas said.

‘There was a gap of one week between the other findings,’ Hooke told him. ‘This comes sooner.’

‘Do you make surmise, Mr. Hooke, upon this frequency?’

‘I cannot see patterns within so small a number. You, being more mathematical, may care to do so.’

Sir Jonas waved the suggestion aside. ‘The other boys are kept preserved?’

Sir Edmund, on the bank, rubbed his hand across his face. ‘The first found is pickled at the College of Physicians, and the second is at Gresham’s College, in the Air-pump there.’

‘Your famous Air-pump!’ Sir Jonas patted Hooke on the shoulder. ‘We are to study this boy in the King’s elaboratory at Whitehall. Then, I wish to see both of the other boys.’

So, two other boys, then. Perhaps Mr. Hooke tried to protect me, Harry mused, but what else did he hide?

Hooke, reluctantly, and Harry, readily, signalled their assent. Sir Edmund was more reticent even than the Curator.

‘Good!’ Sir Jonas exclaimed, noting Harry’s reaction against those of the older men with him. ‘We will lift out the boy from this place. Put him over my mount – I will happily walk the distance back.’

Sir Jonas climbed out of the riverbed, assisted by Sir Edmund. The two men together helped Robert Hooke. Harry carefully lifted the boy from his cradle amongst the roots of the birch, off the covering of lungwort clinging to its lower bark.

He offered him up, and Sir Edmund and Sir Jonas took the body to his horse to begin strapping him over the saddle.

‘Come on, and we shall leave this bird with her nest in peace.’

With that Sir Jonas heaved himself up onto the horse.

‘Give up your coat, Harry,’ he said, when Harry climbed back to them. ‘Cover this boy.’

Observation XXIII
Of Ingenious Pursuits

Oliver Cromwell’s head, boiled and tarred, still rested on its spike after all these years. He looked peaceable enough, Harry observed, as they went past Westminster Hall, although black from the weather and London soot. The Lord Protector had the perfect vantage point to survey the capital that once was his.

‘I knew him,’ Sir Jonas said, noticing the focus of the younger man’s attention. ‘He was against the draining of the fens, being from those parts, and spoke against the scheme. During the wars, I prepared a model of a New London for him. He was for liberty of conscience, with which I could never disagree.’

*

It was in the nature of Charles II’s court that people wandered freely about its grounds, walking through the Privy Garden and past the buildings of the Cockpit, the Banqueting Hall, and even Whitehall itself, without challenge.

Both Sir Jonas and Robert Hooke were frequent visitors there, and the few guards waved them though. At the King Street Gate, Sir Jonas explained what was to be done with the boy, and two servants took him, and Sir Jonas’s horse, away.

The four men walked through into the Privy Garden, and past the towering pyramidical sundial, its brass and glass glinting dully. It had nearly three hundred dials, all made ineffective by the thick mist. Entering the palace, they walked through a long gallery, Sir Jonas leading them quickly on.

Harry tried to assume an air of importance to match his environment, imitating the manner of a chameleon against Madagascan rock. Reunited with his brown coat, the condescending stares, and the fact that every inhabitant of this place was richly dressed, colourful, and had the expensive smell of cleanliness rising from them, made him feel that he stood out like a spot against the sun.

Sir Jonas took them through another gallery, where they could hear the noise of a crowd and the clatter of sword blades. They were admitted through a lofty doorway.

Inside, everything was red. The walls, the silks, the leathers, the hangings, the carpets, the furniture; all were chosen to match perfectly with one another. An edge showed a flash of gold, a corner a glimpse of silver, but red wholly dominated. The only painting in the room was a fiery depiction of Eos, goddess of dawn; its light threw red over its landscape, drenching it in violence.

The King resided on a long duchesse brisée, also red, with gold eagles embroidered across its fabric. This was placed on a platform to improve his view. Around him, careful not to obstruct his vision, courtiers shouted encouragement to two masked figures practising their fencing. Both employed thin light swords, tips foiled with leather, moving forwards and backwards across the width of the room. The speed of their blades created a swoosh of sound with each thrust, their arcs leaving trails as if painting the air behind them. The audience jumped, and swayed, and shouted, with a fervour suggesting that bets had been placed.

Harry considered whether each combatant was near the limit of their ability, for their swordplay was so quick, each parry and riposte so expertly done, that he was sure that one or other must soon be injured, even with blunted points. The taller of them moved more languidly, seeming to keep perfect balance as he deflected the other’s thrusts, and Harry judged him the better of the two. He saw that as one attacked, the other defended, and he realised that they played by some system, as neither lunged forward at the same time, although the rules were too subtle for him to fathom exactly the etiquette of the bout.