The Bloodless Boy Read Online Free PDF Page B

fractured a foot when making its maiden voyage across the quadrangle, was slung on the wall; they skirted around its frame, canvas, and the springs that powered its wings.
    The subterranean coolness was different in quality to the outside air; in the separate category of cold reserved for such places, which had never been warm and never would be.
    They went through a solid-looking iron-faced door going across the passage, heavy studs protruding from its surface. At the top of a short flight of rough wooden stairs, Harry called down:
    ‘Mr. Hooke?’
    ‘I am ready.’
    Harry gently placed his hands beneath the dead boy, and lifted him, carefully descending the few treads. The lack of blood made him light. They should not have been so overly fastidious as to bring him on the tumbrel, the effort more trouble than it was worth. Welkin followed him down the steps, and the three men stood in a tall narrow room, the floor dug down to give the height needed for the apparatus standing in its centre.
    This philosophical instrument left only a tight margin around the claustrophobic space to give the room to work it. Two bulky lamps hanging on opposite walls provided the means of seeing, their lights reflecting dully, glancing off glass and brass.
    The apparatus was the Machina Boyleana , more commonly referred to as the Air-pump, sometimes as the Pneumatical Engine. Robert Hooke and his patron Robert Boyle had used it to investigate the properties of air, and its absence.
    Its base was a bulky frame of oak; two equilateral triangles at right angles to one another formed a skeletal pyramid. On it sat a hollow globe fabricated from thick glass. This was the receiver. The thickness of the glass varied slightly across its surface – viewing Robert Hooke through it, Harry observed a grotesque version of him, his bent form exaggerated, features and limbs stretched into impossible curves.
    The top of the receiver was cut away, a glass lid fitting the gap. Through this aperture experimental apparatus could be placed. The globe, as Hooke had suggested at the Fleet, was just large enough to hold the boy, and its aperture was wide enough to lower him through.
    From the lower part of the receiver, a thick brass tube, with a stopcock key protruding, joined another brass cylinder. This had inside it the sucker, a wooden cylinder with a thick piece of leather glued to its top, the leather completing the necessary tightness of fit inside the tube. A rotating handle driving a rack and pinion forced this piston up and down, to clear the receiver of air.
    Welkin coughed, and held out a note to the Curator. ‘A missive for Mr. Hooke,’ he said gruffly. ‘From Sir Edmund.’
    Hooke took it from him, and nodded to Harry for him to lead Welkin back out.
    The man bade Harry a curt farewell, and walked to the Justice’s carriage. Harry took a draught of the Bishopsgate air, and turned back for the cellars, relocking the outer door. He returned through the corridor to the Air-pump, where Hooke had unwrapped the cloth covering the boy.
    *
    Harry climbed onto a small stool placed next to the apparatus, and Hooke gently lifted the boy to him. Rigor mortis had long relaxed its grip upon the body, and the boy’s arms and legs splayed loosely. Harry perceived with a jolt how thin and fragile the boy was.
    They balanced him on top of the globe, and Hooke reached up to assist Harry in lowering the legs through the aperture. Harry held them by the shins; they felt as if they would snap from only the pressure of his fingers. The papery flesh was a soft milky colour. Harry’s distaste rose in his throat, and he castigated himself for it, being careful not to betray his squeamishness to the Curator.
    Harry dropped the boy’s feet into the receiver. The knees went in, and then, with a squeeze through the aperture, the thighs and pelvis. He took the boy under the armpits, repositioned him, and carefully finished the stowage of him inside the glass.
    He jumped down