The Bloodless Boy (14 page)

‘I apologise. My name is Henry Hunt; I work with the Royal Society.’

Creed made a scoffing sound. ‘Your concerns, then, are natural philosophy, experimental learning, the weighing of the air, navigation at sea, and so on . . . not Solicitors engaged as little more than postmen.’ He started walking the way Harry had come, and the younger man followed him back along the corridor. ‘The same can be said of the Justice of Peace. What would he want with me? If the rumours are true, the Catholics are killing our children, and taking their blood. He will be busy finding them out, I imagine.’

‘Sir Edmund sought the help of Mr. Hooke.’ Harry ignored the Solicitor’s discourteous tone. ‘I help Mr. Hooke. Sir Edmund requested that I ask you about its sender.’

‘I see. Sir Edmund himself? Not Mr. Hooke? Ah.’ Creed stopped. Harry waited, both of them at the top of the stairs, thinking that maintaining his silence might prompt Creed to talk sooner. It did not.

‘Mr. Creed?’

Very eventually, Creed responded. ‘There can be few people in London who do not know of Mr. Robert Hooke’s name, of his reputation, and of his prodigious interests. It was an honour to meet
him
the other evening, if only to deliver a letter.’ He started off down the stairs.

Harry, clenching his teeth to stop an ill-considered retort to the stressing of the pronoun, waited for him to say more, but he did not, until they had reached the first landing. ‘I do not yet understand why a letter I delivered to Mr. Hooke is of interest to the Justice,’ Creed said derisively.

Harry hesitated. What best to say to this unpleasant man, whose laborious way of giving out information must surely injure his business? Harry could tell that Creed suspected he was bluffing by the way that he picked at his story. Soon, he would realise that Harry had no permission from Mr. Hooke to be here, and no authority from Sir Edmund to ask these questions.

‘A letter came into the possession of Sir Edmund, which used a cipher. The letter you took to Mr. Hooke used the same way of encipherment. Sir Edmund, naturally enough, requires Mr. Hooke to help him.’

Creed regarded Harry with a faint smile, enjoying the younger man’s annoyance. ‘But there are others Sir Edmund would go to for assistance with a cipher,’ he asserted. ‘There are those who dedicate themselves to the elucidation of ciphers at the Board of Ordnance, for example, working for the King. Why, it would be like using a razor to chop wood to have such a man attack a cipher.’

‘Nevertheless, Mr. Creed, it was to Mr. Hooke the Justice came.’

*

They walked out into the cold, and the Solicitor rubbed his hands. He led Harry towards the Chapel undercroft, and they steered between some students coming the other way.

‘Do you have a letter from Sir Edmund? I see no obligation to answer you.’

‘I can get such a document, if you need one,’ Harry said hurriedly. ‘The Justice’s house on Hartshorne Lane is not far.’

Creed thought for a short while, snorted, and then gave Harry a shrug of permission.

‘My question, then, is this; who brought Mr. Hooke’s letter to you?’

‘There was insistence upon anonymity.’

‘Yet you accepted this commission.’

‘Payment is an effective form of introduction.’

‘You had no notion who it was?’

‘None at all.’

They were underneath the Chapel, the stone arches reaching over them oppressively.

A most frustrating man, Harry thought. Again he tried the tactic of quietness to draw further information. Again the tactic failed.

‘Mr. Creed?’

Creed shot him a testy look. ‘I acted upon instructions. I delivered the letter to Gresham’s College.’

‘His appearance was . . . ?’

‘As any young man. A little like you. Perhaps squarer in the face? Broader. Taller. A very little like yourself, then, considering more fully.’

‘Young?’ Harry could feel the blood rising in his cheeks, as annoyance became irritation.

‘Young. Yes.’

‘Was there one on his own, or was there another with him?’

Harry’s question sparked a change in the Solicitor as impressive as it was unexpected. He became – most startlingly to Harry –
enthusiastic
.

‘The way you ask shows that you think there were two, yet I made no indication that two there were. Your assumption brings about your question!’

‘I make no such assumption,’ Harry replied hotly. ‘’Though I have had a pair described to me, elsewhere, upon another matter. Were there two together?’

‘There
were
two together! One spoke, and one was silent.’

Harry felt defeated, as if Creed had scored a point against him in a game whose rules were only dimly understood.

‘Perchance, Mr. Hunt, the couple you have heard of in your
other matter
were the same men here. What intelligence do you have of them, so that we may assure ourselves that they are the same pair, or no?’

Harry thought of the conversation he had had in the Angel tavern, seeing again Felicity’s smile as she told him her observations of the two seeking Enoch Wolfe.

‘Well, to start, did they wear sea-green coats?’

‘Between a green and a blue? They
were
, I remember.’ Creed’s enthusiasm increased further, his face becoming more animated, and his eyes seeming to shine.

‘Did you see any of their other clothes, beneath the coats?’

‘I did not, unfortunately. Their coats remained buttoned throughout our meeting. I remember, for it was sunny and warm, most surprisingly so in December. My window allows the light in generously, especially late in the afternoon, which was the time of their arrival. I should have offered them employment as curtains.’ Again, he made his scoffing sound, a rattle of phlegm at the back of his throat.

‘Can you remember anything else that distinguished these men?’ Harry asked, tiring of Creed’s superior manner.

Creed laughed at him, as they crossed the courtyard, taking Harry back towards the Gatehouse and Chancery Lane. ‘Oh, I find it difficult to tell one young man from another. A
young
man does not hold a deal of difference in his appearance to any other. An
older
man, on the other hand, has a face to set him apart. The alteration from youth to old age is the reverse of that of a stone being washed by a tide. This would smooth over time, its roughness would be polished, and its edges would be lost. We, conversely, grow rough, lined and cragged with age. What will you look like at fifty, I wonder? This would be a skill worthy of your Royal Society, to present a history of what a man has done, or to predict what he will do, using only the evidence of his face. Perhaps the project is already underway; a taxonomy of wrinkles and sagging skin.’

‘An interesting notion, Mr. Creed,’ Harry said, reminded of his thoughts upon the couples, old and young, in Alsatia. ‘Have you enquired upon Fellowship?’ he added stiffly.

‘I have not.’ They reached the great oak doors of the Gatehouse, and Creed stopped just through them, on Chancery Lane. ‘A man’s mode of dress, of course, is another consideration. The clothing that
you
wear is no different from ten thousand others. In fact, I would say, you dress to immerse yourself into the congruence of the throng. Young men of the middling sort dress as if Oliver Cromwell still ruled. The rich dress as they please, but then, one dandy too is indistinguishable from another, under his wig and whitener. The older man owns distinguishing features in abundance; younger men seem to disappear as you look at them.’

The Solicitor mimed a candle’s flame being snuffed out, his fingers tracing the imaginary smoke rising.

‘There are enough clues amongst the young to set them apart, if you have the will to observe. You believe that there are no differences, and therefore you do not see the differences.’ Harry became aware that he risked rudeness. ‘I apologise, Mr. Creed. I am too blunt.’

An unyielding tone entered Creed’s voice. ‘I meet with men more blunt than you are ever likely to be, and have long ceased to resent such egalitarian talk. It is a gentlemanly pursuit to seek offence where none was meant. It is quite right what you say; we do train ourselves to look for certain things at the cost of missing others. I am sure you are no less guilty than most.’

‘I have one last question for you, Mr. Creed. You have been most helpful. Do you consider it possible that the men who came to you were, in fact, not men at all, but rather, ladies?’

‘Ladies!
Females
?’ The Solicitor clasped his hands joyfully in front of him.

‘Mr. Creed?’

‘I had not considered it, and so I am startled by your question. But, yes,
conceivably
, they could have been.’

Creed went south, towards the Thames, chuckling to himself.

Observation XXI
Of Petrified Bodies

Robert Hooke stood in front of his cabinet of fossils, swaying gently, contemplating them – as he often did when really thinking on something else. They were a reminder of his childhood, spent scrambling across the cliffs and the sands near Freshwater on the Isle of Wight, where the sea and the frost break the cliffs away over unimaginable expanses of time, the fossils scattering over the beach.

He inhaled deeply from his pipe, hoping that the smoke would clear his lungs of the thick matter within. He felt the Portuguese bhang slide down his trachea, seeming to stretch his bronchi, and imagined his alveoli, the small, thin air sacs that cluster like balloons, rising eagerly to claim their share.

Something had blocked the way of his thoughts, but he did not know what it was. Some stray inkling, perhaps, of which his waking mind was unaware.

He studied a tooth-shaped fossil, and tried to imagine the rest of the creature.

The cabinet represented mutability in place of stasis, and an ancient rather than a youthful Earth. Instead of a fixed Creation, a diversity of creatures had lived, and died, to be then replaced by other, newer forms of life.

He must take a care. He did not want to suffer the same fate as Galileo, and fall foul of religious authority.

He did not wish to fall foul of
any
authority.

He was cheered by his refusal to continue his helping Sir Edmund. He had expected more resistance. Used to the pressure from the Royal Society upon his time – his constant work and experimentation for them, despite their lack of gratitude or recognition of the strain that it put him under – he was surprised that he had been allowed to simply put down the matter. He was pleased that Harry was no longer involved. Harry showed much promise, was an able Observator, and perhaps one day would even become Curator of the Society.

He did not want anything to endanger the young man’s progress.

He had caused Harry much injury by suggesting that he had let loose word of the boy. From where did this tendency to hurt those closest to him come from? He sometimes felt still to be the boy climbing on rocks, listening to the crash of waves upon them, sprayed by salt from the sea, crushing fossils as he went.

*

Grace Hooke came down from her bedchamber, and entered the drawing room quietly, wanting to gauge her uncle’s mood before disturbing him. She saw him standing by the cabinet, one hand out to steady himself, the other grasping his pipe. A sweet, cloying smell filled the room.

‘Uncle?’ she enquired tentatively. Hooke’s eyes rotated slowly towards her, his eyelids half closed. ‘Uncle?’ she repeated. ‘Did you not hear the knocking upon the door?’

Hooke tilted his head backwards, as if shaking the stupor from his brain. ‘I did not, Grace. My hearing . . . this chill . . . my head is brimful . . . would you see who calls?’

Grace went down the stairs to the lobby as another set of knocks sounded from the door. She opened it to find the head of a horse looking directly at her, but then it swung away to be replaced by its rider, a young man holding a sealed letter in front of him. His breath steamed in the cold of Gresham’s quadrangle. He looked admiringly at her, at her long blonde hair and clear skin, and the half-smile on her perfectly symmetrical face.

‘A missive, from Viscount Brouncker,’ he managed.

She moved as if to take it, but did not pull it from him, and he did not let go. They stood for a brief, flirtatious second, connected by the paper. With a laugh of thanks she took it and shut the door, returning to her uncle and his fossils.

Hooke, having watched her from the door of his drawing room, frowned at her. She should not risk her reputation with messengers. After the business with Sir Thomas Bloodworth’s son, a setback to his plans, he still had hopes that she would marry a man of high station – the Scourge of the Dutch fleet, Sir Robert Holmes, was said to harbour an affection for her.

Hooke was too interested in the contents of the letter to worry about the prospects for his niece for long. He took it to his table, broke the seal, and opened it up, and then let out a cry of triumph. ‘Eureka!’ he exclaimed. ‘I am Secretary! I have replaced old Grubendol!’ He moved to her, and hugged her to him. ‘At last! And Harry is to undertake the search of his papers! Where is Mary? And Tom? We must celebrate this news!’

Instructing Mary, appearing at the noise of Hooke’s enthusiasm, to fetch some wine, and Tom to help her with the best glasses, Hooke cleared the table, and Grace brought chairs from various parts of the room.

Hooke’s joy was interrupted, though, by another knock at the door, harder and louder, and more officious than the previous one. Again, Grace answered, but this time an older man pushed his way past her directly, and went up into the drawing room.

‘Mr. Hooke. The King orders your attendance, immediately, at the Chelsea Physic Garden. A boy has been found, drained of his blood.’

Observation XXII
Of the Chelsea Physic Garden

Like everyone, she had heard the rumours sweeping through London of the Devil-boy. Now another had appeared. Young Tom confirmed it.

She could not wait to tell all of this new portent.

The instruction to watch her lodger, given from the thin lips of the Justice Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey, which had made Harry an object of suspicion, now made her certain that she was charged to protect him, a young man important to the King. Mrs. Hannam thought of the news that Tom had brought, her discourse to Harry on the qualities of gooseberry interrupted by an almost lunatic threshing on her door.

‘All Mr. Hooke told me is this,’ Tom had said. ‘Another boy has been found! You are to go to the Westbourne, at Chelsea Physic Garden!’

‘But Mr. Hooke wishes no more of this business!’ Harry had replied.

‘The King,’ Tom announced grandly, ‘convinces him otherwise.’

*

They hastened to Bishopsgate, Harry with a large portion of Mrs. Hannam’s sweet marrow tart in his pocket, Tom skipping on ahead.

Hooke waited in the College quadrangle, wrapped in his grey coat. Grace stood with him. The heightened colour of her face from the cold, and the moisture of her breath condensing in the air, made Harry feel the same tightening in his chest as when he laid eyes on Felicity Tarripan in the Angel, and the same drying of his tongue.