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Spake I not unto you, saying, do not sin against the child; and ye would not hear? Therefore, behold, also his blood is required. ’
    The Justice’s voice rumbled around the walls of the cellar room.
    It was much later, the afternoon, by the time Sir Edmund had finally arrived at Gresham’s College.
    ‘I have seen many murders,’ he continued, looking into the blue eyes as if he spoke through the glass to the boy, rather than to Hooke and Harry. ‘Whether done hotly or coldly, mostly the method is unimaginative, either by use of the hand or some tool. To drain so thoroughly the blood is to consider more closely the way of killing. This globe is secure?’
    ‘It is,’ Hooke replied tetchily. ‘To keep him preserved we must not allow the air to re-enter, to transmit pestilence and allow putrefaction.’
    ‘It fits him perfectly. It is as if it were tailored for him.’
    ‘There are limitations to the size of glass receiver we can make,’ Hooke said. ‘This is the largest we have successfully manufactured; grander attempts all cracked or imploded.’
    Harry cleared his throat, and pointed through the glass at the top of the boy’s legs.
    ‘The holes made after death, if done at different times, show that he was preserved. As we preserve him now.’
    Sir Edmund looked grimly at him. ‘This we surmised at the Fleet.’
    ‘When squeezing the boy into this receiver,’ Harry continued, ‘I wondered whether we merely returned him to another receiver, of the same size. One also made of glass.’
    Hooke made a tutting sound. ‘The fact he fits might be fortuitous – he could have been stored in a chamber far larger, one not made of glass.’
    ‘It is a suggestion, only, Mr. Hooke.’ Harry smarted at being chastised in front of the Justice.
    ‘You rely too much on your feelings – a fault of yours I have noted before.’
    ‘The use of glass, then,’ Sir Edmund said slowly, allowing the possibility, ignoring Hooke, ‘if the notion is true, suggests the need for observation. Otherwise, materials less transparent, more robust, would have been employed.’
    ‘The building of an Air-pump requires great investment and no little skill,’ Hooke observed, ‘whether the receiver was glass, or no.’
    ‘Who, then, would sponsor such a philosophical murder?’ Sir Edmund snapped shut his book. ‘This will transpire to be a Catholic design, you may be sure of it…but why their need for blood?’ Despite his direct stare at each of them in turn, the Justice got no reply. He turned back to the boy. ‘There are other ways of preservation.’
    ‘But there are no signs of him being held in liquid, nor of being frozen,’ Hooke said. ‘He was kept in a vacuum.’
    Sir Edmund made little faltering nods of his head, from side to side. ‘I must put off the further study of him,’ he told them. ‘For I am called away.’
    ‘We will wait on you,’ Hooke replied, thinking of President Brouncker’s direction.
    The Justice looked around the cellar. ‘This door has a strong lock?’
    ‘And the other doors also.’
    Sir Edmund strode from the room, up the short flight of steps, to inspect the ward and sturdy strap hinges of the iron door sealing off the passage. At last he seemed satisfied. They locked the door to the Air-pump room, and then the passage door. It clanged shut, an impact of iron and oak, a shudder of the frame.
    The sound of their steps disappeared away down the long corridor.
    The boy, left sitting in the glass receiver, stared into the blackness.
    *
    The three men stood together in the College quadrangle. Soon it would be dusk. The light bled through rips in the cloud, picking up its colour from the thick atmosphere. Oranges and golds tinted the snow-covered rooftops.
    Sir Edmund turned to Harry. ‘Mr. Hunt, I have business with Mr. Hooke. I prefer you kept from it, until Mr. Hooke has considered upon the matter.’
    Harry bid a stiff goodbye to both men and headed off for his lodgings at Half Moon Alley,