The Bloodless Boy Read Online Free PDF Page A

air; a man might fly on the end of a sound-spring, but how would such a craft appear? I am too bogged in fantasy. My tendency is to dwell upon such thoughts instead of the writing of my results. I am like a cripple climbing stairs, my progress slow and painful to observe.’
    ‘And the world intrudes as ever, Mr. Hooke. Sir Edmund’s man will be here presently.’
    ‘Yes, yes,’ Hooke said wearily. ‘Come closer by the fire yourself. Mary has prepared me an infusion of catmint to fend off the rheum. Somewhere I have some steel wine. It is no wonder that my understanding of this world proceeds so slowly. Do my headaches and voidings of jelly signal the slipping of my faculties?’
    Hooke took any medicine described to him by helpful associates, and had never yet found health. Harry skilfully kept him away from expounding further upon his ailments by offering to write an account of the meeting at the Fleet. ‘We will be asked pertinent questions should there ever be a trial,’ he said.
    Harry called Tom over to the window, and instructed him to watch for Sir Edmund’s man. Tom carefully carried the board with his section of lunar surface, and some tube to blow through, as the plaster was starting to stiffen.
    Hooke brought across the pan of steaming green liquid, and carefully poured it into a bowl. The bowl had a chip on its rim, which he avoided; it would not have occurred to him to replace it. He took a chest-full of the steam before swallowing any of the catmint.
    ‘It resembles that which it seeks to drain out, Harry, a happy coincidence of signatures auguring well!’
    Harry, his own clothes still damp, would have appreciated the offer of at least a sip of this tincture.
    *
    Hooke sat with his drink and stared up towards the ceiling. He achieved this by tilting back his chair and straightening his spine as far as possible, his stiff neck moving back with it. His eyes did not see joists and plaster, but recalled instead mud, snow, and the body of the boy.
    ‘To take the blood so completely is a difficult undertaking,’ he mused. ‘To infuse it into another is more difficult still. It demands knowledge of blood, and the course it takes about the body, its flow, its pulsation, of the fabric of its conduits, of its sticky coagulation and methods to prevent it stick. Of use of quills, capillary tubes, and funnels. Dr. Lower performed trials with dogs, infusing the blood of one dog into another. Mr. Coga survived, but had only small amounts infused. Professor Denis in France, some ten years ago, placed the blood of a calf into a man who had suffered from a frenzy. The man pissed out black urine, then died.’
    ‘He is the reason that the Society has forbidden the continuance of infusion.’
    ‘Yes, Viscount Brouncker our President put a stop to it.’
    ‘Witches are drained of their blood to take away their power,’ Harry observed.
    ‘It is not Christian to persecute superstitious people.’
    ‘There will always remain a broken line dividing religion, magic and philosophy. I test all things according to my own yardstick. You have taught me to do that, Mr. Hooke, over our years together.’
    For a moment the two natural philosophers of the Royal Society sat comfortably, quietly, enjoying this talk of blood. Hooke produced a pipe and some tobacco. Harry looked over at Tom, to check whether he found their conversation too grisly. The boy looked happy enough, blowing down a thick length of tube, forcing the almost-set plaster into strikingly crater-like forms.
    ‘What of Sir Edmund’s view, that the boy suffered a Papist murder?’ Harry asked. ‘The Catholics believe in transubstantiation, the changing of wine into the blood of Jesus, in their observance of the Eucharist.’
    Hooke inhaled deeply from the pipe, looking directly at his assistant. The smoke circled around him, catching the light, a halo missing its saint. ‘It is not my blood that makes me an Anglican, Harry. It is my childhood, my history, and