The Bloodless Boy

by Robert J. Lloyd

  ‘Ah!’ Sir Jonas exclaimed, checking his pocket watch with a satisfied expression. ‘Ten o’clock!’ He helped Harry up, from where he had dived for cover. Harry brushed the mud from himself, looking shamefaced. ‘Always we look to improve upon ways of killing an enemy – which means, to think of it another way, of saving the lives of our own.’ Sir Jonas brushed some of the mud from Harry’s coat, in an oddly motherly manner, and looked directly at him. ‘Always, we look to save the lives of our own.’

  Another explosion rocked the ground. ‘All of which makes for a noisy place to do one’s work!’

  Scores of people walked in and out of the Armouries building, and Harry observed that no one seemed to have their hands free. All carried something, or some part of something, or pushed a cart with something on it. It was as if the building pumped people and equipment in and out of itself, a great warmongering heart pushing blood around a body.

  ‘You are impressed, Harry?’ Sir Jonas asked, seeing his expression. ‘Good, for the King speculates that you might work here.’

  Harry stopped, startled by the notion.

  They were in front of the steps to the Armouries, and Sir Jonas took Harry by the elbow. ‘You would have a place, if you were to accept it. The mechanical, the philosophical, physiological, analytical, hydrostatical, clandestine and mathematical – all of these skills are employed here, as they are in the battlefields of Europe.’

  Sir Jonas led Harry up the short flight of stairs to the entrance, walking quickly, surprisingly so for man of his size. They went in between white stone columns, and turned along a wide corridor, the employees of the Ordnance flowing around them.

  ‘The Board of Ordnance is not so very different from the Royal Society, and the aims of the New Philosophy,’ Sir Jonas said over his shoulder. ‘Both seek an understanding of practical causes, and a desire for practical effects. We have libraries, and repositories, and elaboratories, and men of talent to use them. We have mechanics and tool-men, experimentalists, and observators. Thinkers and doers. We differ, howsoever, in one important way from the Royal Society.’ He looked at Harry expectantly, an enquiring hand held open before him.

  ‘You have money,’ Harry answered for him.

  ‘Yes!’ The hand closed, as if snatching away the money that Harry spoke of. ‘That is how we differ from the Royal Society. We have money. Funds. And we pay generously, to the right people. Here we are.’

  Sir Jonas beckoned him into a large room, its walls covered by shelving and cabinets. Philosophical equipment filled every surface: tools, flasks, tubes and stoppered jars of glass and brass and silver. Preserved specimens, of organs and their owners, from insects, fish and monkeys, and skeletons stripped of their flesh, including one of a human child, filled the shelves. These were arranged in order, a chain of being, displayed to show the similarities and modifications of form throughout God’s Creation.

  In the middle of the room stood three Air-pumps, whose frames were larger than the one that had occupied the cellar room at Gresham’s College, before being broken, but whose glass receivers were much the same size.

  ‘This,’ Sir Jonas said, ‘was Thomas Whitcombe’s room.’ He looked with interest at Harry, but the younger man remained silent. ‘I know you know of him, Harry, for the King has told me that you were given his letter to the Justice, and his letter to Mr. Hooke, and I know you have the keyword to his cipher, for I was there when it was found, inside the stomach of the Justice.’ Still, Harry said nothing, his only reaction a draining of colour in his face. ‘There is more, too,’ Sir Jonas said brightly. ‘Other rooms go off it, for other trials he made.’

  He paused, to allow Harry to look around the room.

  ‘Imagine such a place, Harry, for your own. It could be yours, if you so decide. If not, then no matter; we shall find someone else to fill Thomas Whitcombe’s shoes.’

  ‘Where is Thomas Whitcombe, Sir Jonas?’ Harry asked. ‘Is he really dead? Or was his letter a lie?’

  ‘He is dead to us,’ Sir Jonas replied crisply. ‘We have lost him. Or rather, he lost himself. Whether he hides, or whether he put an end to himself, it is no matter.’

  ‘And if I were, as you say, to fill his shoes, would that be my end also? Would I, too, lose my way?’

  ‘Every worthwhile occupation carries an element of risk,’ Sir Jonas answered him, after considering the question. ‘If you risk nothing, then you change nothing. You need not worry that to refuse endangers you. As long as you remain silent upon what happens inside this place, then you will be free to go about your business, within the law, whatever it may be.’

  Sir Jonas strolled across to one of the Air-pumps, and looked into the empty receiver. He placed a hand on its mechanism, and stroked it gently, sensuously, and turned its handle, taking a suck of air from inside the glass. ‘Do you desire to dwell in Robert Hooke’s shadow all your life? You do not, surely? You have your own way to make in the world, having too much talent to steer by another’s lights.’

  He let go of the Air-pump, and moved back towards the exit of Whitcombe’s elaboratory. He filled the frame of the doorway, speaking quietly but with great conviction, as if trying to entrance Harry with the low, soft intimacy of his words. ‘I will leave you to consider. Look at the striving for improvement, at the great purpose of this place. Think of your personal, selfish wants, and think also of the whole; you shall become one amongst many, working for your King and your Nation.’

  He stepped away, going back into the bustle of the Armouries. ‘I shall return presently,’ he said. ‘Let me then have your answer. It is a rare chance we give you, Harry.’

  Left alone in the elaboratory, Harry took off his spectacles, a new pair as his others had been crushed at Aldgate. He massaged his eyes. That the King should want him to replace the man he had sought as a murderer! But he could not have read of Thomas Whitcombe’s work without the keyword CORPUS being left in Sir Edmund’s gut; and it was Mr. Hooke who had found it there. He could not know what Whitcombe had done until he found the Observations kept by Henry Oldenburg. Apart from the task of deciphering, all had been given to him.

  Thomas Whitcombe had wanted Robert Hooke, the Curator, and now Secretary of the Royal Society, to have his work to infuse blood and revivify the dead.

  Not the young Observator, Harry Hunt.

  Harry put the spectacles back on, and the leaded frames of the windows looking on to the White Tower sharpened into a grid of lines, black against the bright whiteness outside. It would be a gilded cage to accept the King’s offer.

  Harry ran his hand over the surface of a bench, feeling the grain of the smooth, expensive wood, an African hardwood, the bench built to resist cutting and burning and corrosive substances poured onto it. A natural philosopher’s bench.

  Of course he must take this position, and this room, and use it to follow his own philosophical path, as well as to do the work directed by the Board of Ordnance.

  Sir Jonas Moore had left him there deliberately, knowing that the pull of the room itself was more persuasive than any words.

  What best to do?

  Observation LXIII

  Of Elucidation

  A small door led off from Whitcombe’s elaboratory, and it opened with an oiled click of its latch. Even the door handles work smoothly, Harry thought.

  Inside, the room was dark, having no windows, but by the light coming through from the elaboratory he could make out a dissection table, long grooves chased into its surface, a large trough at its foot. Placed neatly along the walls was a collection of gleaming instruments. Candles stood along the length of the room, awaiting their lighting for the anatomiser to see by. Harry sniffed at them. They were beeswax.

  This was where Thomas Whitcombe had worked on the boys. This was where they had had their blood infused one into another.

  Where they had screamed in agony and fear.

  This memory was in the walls of the room; he merely heard its echo. Could he contend with such a trace, endure its p
resence here?

  There was another door at the opposite end of the dissecting room, and Harry walked uncertainly to it. Sir Jonas would return soon, and he had to have his answer. Harry still did not know what it was likely to be. He could not tolerate the thought of losing all of this. He could not bear the idea that somebody else might have it, take it from him, use these rooms and tools and have the great luxury of time and materials to make experiments, trials, discoveries, follow the path of the mind, have mechanics build apparatus for him at his direction.

  But it was here that Thomas Whitcombe had killed the boys, in the service of the Board of Ordnance, blundering his way towards a method that he had never found to revivify a boy. He had expended the lives of twelve other boys, before he felt the final weight upon his soul.

  How could Harry step into such shoes?

  What would the Board of Ordnance ask of him?

  *

  Opening the door, he stepped through, and found himself in a much smaller room, with sunlight, painfully bright, streaming through a large window. It was set out like an office, with a table piled high with papers. More papers were stacked on shelves, and the room was strewn with documents, spread out on every surface, on the table, and over the floor.

  Behind the table was the Solicitor, Moses Creed, caught midway through the action of writing on a piece of paper.

  For a long moment the two men stared at one another. Creed pushed more papers together across the table, tidied them into a pile, and placed his pen down across them.

  ‘Mr. Creed?’

  ‘Mr. Hunt.’

  ‘You work with the Board of Ordnance?’

  ‘When I am needed.’

  ‘Sir Jonas Moore brought me – he did not say that you were also here to be found.’

  ‘Sir Jonas brought me, too. I catalogue the papers here. A legal man was wanted.’

  ‘You know of Thomas Whitcombe’s work, then?’ Harry asked.

  ‘Only what I find.’

  ‘You know he made experiment upon boys, seeking to revivify another.’

  ‘I record what is here. As I have been asked to do.’

  It crossed Harry’s mind that the Board of Ordnance had ways of going about its business that he was not used to. He could not be surprised that Creed worked for the Ordnance, as he had never questioned what else the Solicitor did with his time. He had thought no further than him delivering the letter to Mr. Hooke, or being at Lincoln’s Inn, or standing in a farmyard listening to the old Leveller, William Walwyn.

  Harry moved closer to the table to pick up the pile of papers in front of Creed; the Solicitor shot out a hand to cover it. Between his splayed fingers Harry recognised the neat lettering and exact regularity of the lines on all of the Observations in the package left with Henry Oldenburg, and the letter sent to Robert Hooke.

  ‘Mr. Hunt,’ Creed said impatiently, ‘it is of no help to me that you are here. These papers are the King’s property, through being the property of the Board of Ordnance. Until Sir Jonas returns, therefore, and tells me otherwise, I shall not let you peruse them.’

  ‘Why do you catalogue these papers, Mr. Creed?’

  Creed looked at him with irritation. ‘On the orders of Sir Jonas.’

  ‘Only, it looks to me more as if you search through them, looking for particular documents. These papers are pushed all about the place. A legal man, I think, would more usually work through such a task sequentially, tidying as he goes.’

  The Solicitor made his supercilious scoffing sound, and walked round from behind the table, to fetch up the scattered piles of documents from the floor. Then he moved to the door with his arm outstretched, indicating the dissecting room beyond. ‘Will you wait outside, so that I may continue?’

  Harry did not move, but instead picked up the document that Creed had busied himself with when he came in.

  ‘You do not simply catalogue. Your list includes Thomas Whitcombe’s Observations Of The Light of Grace, his Observations of The Light of Nature, and Of Experience, Of Astronomical Magic, Of Theology, Of Alchemy, Of Water, Of Fire, Of Air, Of Life, Of Spirit, Of Motion, Of Minerals, Of Vegetables, Of The Heart and Blood, Of Homunculii, Of Automata, and his Observations of Lower Species. Whitcombe called them all together, Observations Philosophical. You will not find them here, as you will not find any of his Observations Historical, Observations Habitual, or Observations Propagational. For I have them. Whitcombe wanted them with Royal Society’s Curator of Experiments, Mr. Hooke. He did not want them with the King, nor did he want them with Sir Jonas Moore. And he did not want them with you.’

  Harry waved the list that Creed had made. ‘He did not desire you to have them, Mr. Creed, even though it was you who wrote them out. This list is written in the same neat hand as all of Thomas Whitcombe’s Observations, and the letter you delivered to Mr. Hooke. This then begs a question; are you Thomas Whitcombe, and not Moses Creed at all?’

  Creed stood silently at the doorway, looking unblinkingly down the length of his nose.

  *

  ‘Are you Thomas Whitcombe,’ Harry continued, ‘the healer of Colonel Michael Fields, Major-General Skippon at Naseby, and Oliver Cromwell after Dunbar? I would say not, for you are far too young. Colonel Fields spoke of Thomas Whitcombe as a field chirurgeon in the Civil Wars, then taken to the Barbadoes as a slave. You do not bear the marks of such years or harsh experience.’

  Harry picked up a small black leather-bound book from the table, with loose papers held between its pages.

  ‘This book I recognise, being that of the Justice of Peace for Westminster, Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey. In it he wrote the progress of his investigations, into the finding of boys left at tributaries into the Thames, and his searching for Catholics plotting against the King. He had it with him on every occasion that I met him. These sheets, though, within Sir Edmund’s book, held between its pages, have writing on them that is unsteady, and untidily done; a tremulous hand.’

  Harry held up the sheets to Moses Creed. With the cipher written across it, although it was arranged in blocks of letters, twelve along and twelve down, its lines rose and fell like a wave, and they were irregularly spaced. Sir Edmund’s copy was far neater than this scrawl, and did not bear the blots of ink that this one did.

  ‘This is the original cipher of Thomas Whitcombe’s letter to Sir Edmund, left on the body of the boy at the Fleet. It has the same seal of black wax, with the symbol of a burning candle, but it is written poorly. I only ever saw Sir Edmund’s copy, which I later returned to him.’

  Harry put the book, and the papers, back down on to the table.

  Creed made as if to move away, through the door, but checked himself, as the sounds of footsteps across the elaboratory reached them. It was Sir Jonas Moore’s heavy stride, accompanied by another lighter rhythm.

  ‘I wonder why,’ Harry continued, ‘this enciphered letter should be here upon this table, within the Justice’s book.’ He looked through the dissecting room, to see if the two men approaching were there. ‘I think it means you were with Colonel Fields at Whitechapel, when Sir Edmund was poisoned by the fire, as the chapel burnt down.’

  ‘Fields was not there!’ Creed said, mockingly. ‘Sir Jonas returns, and my business is done. For if you have Thomas Whitcombe’s papers, then my searching here is futile.’

  ‘It was you who killed Sir Edmund?’

  Creed looked at Harry contemptuously. ‘That old man would not have killed the Justice! Fields never did before, ’though he had reason enough to do so. He trembled at Lincoln’s Inn, in case he was taken, or killed.’

  Harry put his hand into his pocket, to hide its shaking from the Solicitor. ‘Was Sir Edmund the man who killed your father, after the battle at Worcester?’

  ‘My father did not even threaten to tell of it. Sir Edmund himself strung him from a branch. He seemed pleased to tell me, at the end . . .’

  ‘Why did he go to Whitechapel?’

  ‘I asked to meet him there. I told him I had
witnessed the boy you found at the Chelsea Physic Garden being carried from the Queen’s rooms, in Somerset House. It was an easy fit into his certainty of Catholic insurrection, Queen Catherine following the Romish way.’

  ‘A lie? You witnessed no such thing.’

  ‘I took the boy there. He was the last that Thomas Whitcombe had worked on.’

  ‘I thought their leaving in tributaries significant, but apart from the boy left at the Fleet, and the boy you left for him at Chelsea, it was only chance where they were deposited.’ Harry nodded his head slowly, understanding coming to him. He wiped his mouth with his hand, a gesture reminiscent of the Justice. ‘The others disappeared into the Thames forever, taken from this room, thrown from the Tower,’ he surmised. ‘Only the boy found at Barking Creek re-emerged.’

  ‘Exactly so. I begin to see why Sir Jonas asked you here.’

  ‘But you did not know Sir Edmund had swallowed the keyword to the cipher.’

  ‘I did not. You are clever, but not so clever as to break such a cipher yourself.’

  From Whitcombe’s elaboratory, they heard Sir Jonas calling. ‘Mr. Hunt! Are you there?’

  ‘I am here, Sir Jonas. And I have my answer to you!’

  *

  Harry turned his attention back to Moses Creed. ‘Why would you deliver the letter from Thomas Whitcombe to Robert Hooke?’

  ‘I was Whitcombe’s amanuensis, writing out his notes and correspondences for him, throughout his last years. I did not know the meaning, copying out only the numbers. He found me; he searched out Reuben Creed’s son.’

  ‘I believed you when you told me of the pair in sea-green coats. You yourself wrote out the letter for Mr. Hooke.’

  ‘I told you what you wished to hear. You made mention of a pair wearing the colour sea-green for their coats; and so I furnished a pair in sea-green. You asked whether the deliverers could be female; I said, conceivably. I laughed at you. I did not know that Whitcombe planned to disappear, and I did not know where he had lodged the Observations, with his findings on blood. He kept that from me.’