The Bloodless Boy (26 page)

Harry did not open any of these. Instead he piled them up next to him on the floor and moved to the second, far larger, pile,
Observations Philosophical
. Again, when he cut it open, under the top page was another single sheet. Below that were eighteen more bundles, each with their title sheets of the same paper. Harry deciphered Whitcombe’s note on the contents of these bundles.

The knowledge of Things; their Essence and Nature, properties, causes, and consequences of each Species, must be divided according to the several Orders and Species of Things. So far as we have the true notion of Things as really they are in their Being, so far we advance in Real and True Knowledge. Having a true, clear, and distinct Idea of the Nature of Anything, because we are ignorant of their Essence, takes in their Causes, Properties, and Effects, or as much of them as we can know.

Harry read the top sheet of the first of the smaller bundles he had freed. It was titled
Observations of The Light of Grace
. The next was headed
Observations of The Light of Nature
, followed by
Observations Concerning Experience
;
Observations Of Astronomical Magic
;
Observations Of Theological Cabala
;
Observations Of Medicinal Alchemy
;
Observations Of Water
;
Observations Of Fire
;
Observations Of Air
;
Observations Of Breath
;
Observations of the Soul
;
Observations of the Body
;
Observations of Animals
;
Observations of Minerals
;
Observations of Vegetables
;
Observations of the Heart and Blood
;
Observations Of Homunculii
; and the last;
Observations of Miscellaneous Species
.

The largest of the bundles was
Observations of the Heart and Blood
, easily a hundred sheets, followed in size by
Observations of The Light of Grace
,
Observations of The Light of Nature
, then
Observations Of Air
,
Observations Of Fire
, and
Observations Of Water
. The other bundles were far smaller, suggesting that these were subjects more peripheral to Whitcombe’s studies.

Blood, the heart, Grace, nature, air, fire, and water. These would seem to be at the centre of his interests. Unless, rather, this was work Whitcombe had been directed to do, in his ‘employments’.

What was Thomas Whitcombe’s design?

All that Harry had was like the fragments of a shipwreck. He did not yet have enough to see the whole ship.

He brought his attention back to the letter to Sir Edmund, to Whitcombe’s interest in the light of Nature and the light of Grace. Paracelsus, he remembered from one of Hooke’s lectures given at the Royal Society, discussed the two Lights, and Descartes wrote of them also. He looked at the biggest bundle left by Whitcombe,
Observations of the Heart and Blood
. Whitcombe’s interest in the circulation of blood showed his knowledge of William Harvey, the title of his notes upon the subject echoing the title of Harvey’s work,
Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus,
published some fifty years before.

Harry piled the bundles up, again not opening them, and moved to the third section,
Observations Habitual
.

Things we do find amongst other people fit for our imitation, whether politic or private wisdom. Any arts conducing to the conveniences of life.

This third collection of notes had their top pages labelled
Observations on Wisdom
;
Observations on Private Knowledge
;
Observations on Universal Languages
;
Observations on Substance
;
Observations on Nourishment
;
Observations on Medicines
;
Observations on Mechanical Motion
; and the last was
Observations on Perceiving
. The largest pile of these under
Observations Habitual
was
Observations on Mechanical Motion
. Harry put all these aside also.

The fourth pile,
Observations Propagational
, a thick gathering of bound papers, almost as large as
Observations Philosophical
, was divided by Whitcombe’s careful tying into just two sections.

He cut open the parcel, and translated Whitcombe’s note.

The propagation and transplantation of the natural products of the country, fit to be traded for some useful quality they have. Any advantageous commerce; and these notes concern practice or action.

The two headings for each section were
Observations on Production
and
Observations on Trade
.

Harry lay back on his bed, and tried to think of all these piles, pushed out around him over the floor in the dim light afforded by his flickering candle, and all of their titles, to make room in his mind for the receiving of them, so he could better retain their details when he resumed with the deciphering of the
Observations
. He pictured Whitcombe’s themes as objects in a room, jostling one another for space, leaning against one another untidily. He envisaged himself picking them up, moving them around, reorganising them into neat piles. All this helped his memory; a trick learnt from a reading of Cicero.

The scope of Whitcombe’s miscellany made him question where to start. The thickest pile was the notes on
Observations Philosophical
. This coincided more closely with his own interests in the natural, the mechanical, and the philosophical.

In his letters Whitcombe wrote of provoking God, of presuming to penetrate the depths of nature. He described his work as a natural philosopher, an experimentalist, a mechanic, an observator: yet much of the material in the package concerned history, trade, political intelligencing and religious moralising.

Harry was not an antiquary, a merchant, or a clergyman. He would start with what he knew.

He reached for the
Observations Philosophical
, and cut the threads around the pile’s uppermost bundle,
Observations on The Light of Grace
.

It was eight o’clock in the evening. He had arranged to meet with Colonel Fields later, at Whitechapel. He would spend another hour on the deciphering, and then it would be time to go.

Observation XXXX
Of Temperature

Tom Gyles crouched on the kitchen floor while Mary prepared a goose, carefully gathering up the freshly plucked feathers. He had amassed a great stock of feathers, to glue onto the wings of his next project, a machine with wings that flapped, powered by clockwork.

Mr. Hooke had promised to assist him that evening with the completion of his model of the moon. Together, they were to suspend it over the quadrangle, working from the observatory.

Hooke, though, had been waiting for the soldiers who had at last come to take Sir Edmund. A discreet cart was brought into the College, and they had loaded the body in the darkness.

After days of excitement in the building of his moon, as the time of its readiness grew near, Tom felt a curious lack of elation.

When Mary had plucked, he stood up stiffly, a film of sweat on his face. He moved away from the heat of the fire, the feathers in his arms.

*

It occurred to Hooke, preparing some spirit of
sal
ammoniac
to take as a purgative, that Tom seemed subdued. Usually, he would be telling the boy to be more careful, stop annoying Mary, stop asking him questions when he was busy. Instead of the usual thump of him going up the stairs it was a slow trudge. The calm should be welcome; instead, Hooke discovered that it disturbed the stream of his thinking.

When Tom returned down from his room, having deposited the feathers there, Hooke looked more closely at him. The boy’s face was still damp with sweat, and a flush on his cheeks made Hooke motion to him to sit down next to him. A pang of worry made him sound forced and over-cheerful.

‘Rest until Mary brings in dinner. A short sleep will refresh you.’

Mary spoiled Hooke’s attempted air of unconcern by coming to inspect Tom. Holding him firmly by the chin she studied his reddened, moist face.

‘I can feel the heat coming from him,’ she said directly. ‘Look at him, Mr. Hooke! The child cannot feel at all well, bless him. Bless the lamb.’

Tom pulled himself away from her grasp. ‘My back aches. I am sore.’

‘Your joints, they are the same?’ Mary asked.

‘Stiff too.’ Tom stood sullen and miserable.

‘Then you must go straight to your bed, as Mr. Hooke tells you.’

‘I shall call upon Dr. Diodati presently,’ Hooke told the boy, ‘and he will make you better. Mary, will you prepare a broth for him? I have some Aldersgate cordial, which may refresh him. Continue with the goose later, when Tom is put to bed. Dr. Diodati will make his recommendations tonight. He is a capable man.’

Observation XXXXI
Of the Power of Words

The crowd padded softly along Cable Street, their lamps and flambeaux mimicking the night sky, in which a million points of light shone, separated by the reaches of space. The rain had stopped, and the clouds had quickly cleared. With the star-shine came a pitiless cold, and Harry wished that he had come more wrapped. His teeth chattered, despite his leather coat and a thick felt cap loaned to him by Mrs. Hannam, whiffs of her husband still clinging to it.

‘This way!’ commanded Fields, his voice an authoritative whisper. They moved towards the meadows by Knock Fergus. The lights flowed around them on either side. There was no talk amongst the people, only the noise of walking feet and the occasional slap of a freezing hand against another.

Harry, with Robert Hooke’s improved lamp sending a powerful light around them, saw Moses Creed waiting for them, and Fields welcomed him with a tight embrace. Moses Creed gave Harry a perfunctory handshake. Harry, likewise, was not delighted to meet the Solicitor. The Colonel took them on, rejoining the stream of people.

They followed the line of a flint wall, which reflected the lights from its edges. Fields guided them to an iron gate halfway along it, where a barrel of whale oil burned brightly, extending tongues of flame as tall as a man. Here the lights converged, as the people funnelled through the gateway into a large courtyard.

From inside Harry could hear the noise of a crowd, packed closely in, but it was the noise of hundreds of people speaking calmly to one another, rather than shouting or jostling. A man stood at the gate, greeting Fields with a firm grasp of his hand.

The place they entered was built on a square, and the arrangement of its buildings, looking like run-down outhouses leaning together, gave it the feel of a farmyard. They were grateful for the warmth from all these bodies pressed together. Hanging lamps and torches sent scoops of light across the sea of heads. Everyone looked towards a makeshift stage, with a canvas roof and a single chair at its centre.

Most of these heads were grey-haired, elderly, at least fifty years old, and Harry felt out of place, and slightly foolish. He wondered if Creed felt the same, for the other man, although fifteen or so years older than him, was similarly outlandish. Nobody showed them any suspicion, though. In fact, he was conscious of nothing more than an immense goodwill shared throughout the crowd. A calm murmur spread through them, with no one voice taking precedence. Some had brought food, and shared it out. If one had brought bread and a neighbour had meat, they combined; and a third offered beer. Others had blankets with them, and these too were shared, and draped over the shoulders of the watchers. Despite the proximity of bodies there was no pushing, even as more people flowed in through the gate. Some sat on chairs brought with them, at no risk of being shoved aside.

The three men stood towards the back of the crowd, but the slope of the ground meant that they could easily see across all of the grey heads to the stage. Harry felt the growing expectancy amongst them all, as the various conversations around him died down. He saw Fields and Creed beside him hold the same expression as everyone else; rapt concentration, anxious to witness the precise moment that they all gathered and waited for.

He could not see why, for nothing seemed to have changed, and nobody mounted the stage, but there was suddenly the creak of ageing limbs as everyone craned for a better view. It was like the turning of a school of fish; it was done before realisation that the moment had come.

Then, onto the stage, accompanied by an elderly woman, shuffled an even more elderly man. He used a stick to support himself; the woman held him by the other arm.

The air thinned as the crowd inhaled a collective breath.

‘It is, isn’t it?’ A woman just in front of them asked her companion.

‘It is.’

Harry recognised the old couple; he remembered them from Alsatia. The old man’s tremors, that he had seen when seeking Enoch Wolfe at the Angel, were quite gone.

Harry looked across at Colonel Fields, whose eyes were moist with emotion. On the stage, a man as old as the century, who had seen the last Tudor and three of the Stuarts, pulled himself straight to look at them all.

It was William Walwyn, the Leveller.

He gave the crowd a shy smile, his lips twitching with his pleasure at being welcomed by so many; a spontaneous outburst of clapping greeted him back. The first impression of decrepitude as Walwyn had come up onto the stage disappeared.

The clapping finally receded, the strange logic of a crowd dictating its length.

They craned forwards to catch the speaker’s words. Walwyn did not welcome them, but delivered straight away his message to them.

‘I am sure there was no man born marked of God above another,’ he began, his voice unwavering and clear, cutting through the night. ‘For none comes into the world with a saddle on his back, neither any booted and spurred to ride him.’