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off the stool, with a steadying hand from Hooke, and the slap of his landing reported against the walls of the cellar room. Its loudness shocked them both. Each man’s concentration on the placing of the boy into the receiver had transported him into a dreamlike state, in the solitude and silence of the cellar room, deep under Gresham’s College.
    The boy sat, his back against the glass following its curve, his head resting on his knees. With his arms extended by his sides, hands resting on the floor of the globe, palms upwards, he looked like a beggar appealing for a coin. With the boy’s head bowed forwards, there was just enough height to the receiver to be able to replace its lid.
    Observing the boy’s body, Harry became acutely aware of the fabric of his own, conscious of the workings of his stomach and the way that his lungs pressed the insides of his ribs.
    An idea occurred to him, but he was not yet ready to have it scrutinised by Robert Hooke.
    The Curator opened up a box containing a smooth grey paste. ‘The diachylon. We will seal him inside.’
    They spread the diachylon, a blend of olive oil, vegetable stock and lead oxide boiled together, into the crack between the receiver and its lid. Next they prepared a mixture of pitch, which they melted on a small stove kept there in the room, rosin turpentine, and wood ash. They smeared it around the stopcock, and completed the integrity of the Air-pump by pouring oil into the valve containing the cylinder, to lubricate and seal it.
    Rotating the handle, Harry drew the piston to the top of the cylinder. He brought the piston back down the tube with the stopcock opened, sucking air from the receiver into the cylinder. He closed the stopcock, removed the valve, and raised the piston back up inside the cylinder.
    The air was brought from the receiver in this laborious way, time after time, the pumping becoming more difficult as air vacated the glass. Each man took his turn at the handle, and as the air inside the globe got thinner the glass began to groan. Soon the handle required the strength of both. Inside, although the boy was oblivious to the change in atmosphere, he swayed as if in protest with the rocking of the machine as its handle was wound.
    At last, a great creak emanated from the Air-pump.
    ‘Enough!’ Hooke declared.
    Hooke inspected the brass cylinder, and the glass, looking through at the bloodless, huddled figure of the boy.
    ‘We are close enough.’
    *
    The snow still fell, and an adjusted eye would have recognised grey rather than white. The two men stood back in the quadrangle, squinting in the morning’s brilliance. Down in the cellars the door to the Air-pump room, and the great iron door across the passageway, had been securely locked.
    The College clock showed that it was just half past ten.
    ‘Mr. Hooke. Sir Edmund’s man brought a note,’ Harry reminded him.
    Hooke took the paper from his pocket and studied the seal. It bore the impression used by Viscount Brouncker. He broke it and unfolded the message.
    Ordered, that the Services and Apparatus of the Royal Society of London, including Robert Hooke, M.A., Fellow and Curator of this Society, be at the Use of Justice of Peace Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, that the Boy he speaks of be stored, and that his Dissection be continued at the Convenience to that said Justice.
    January 1. 1677/8 Brouncker. P.R.S.
    ‘Sir Edmund busies himself,’ Hooke said. ‘He is persuasive. He sends direction from the President.’
    ‘You would expect Sir Edmund to be busy. It is rare for the President to respond with such speed.’
    ‘The Justice’s influence takes many forms, Harry.’
    ‘I wonder what else Sir Edmund arranges? Still he has not arrived.’
    Hooke locked the door leading down to the cellars, and they returned to his rooms, fatigued after their long efforts with the pump.
    Leaving behind the boy in the cellar, Harry felt the pull of a subtle shame.
    Observation V
Of Release
    From having been