The Bloodless Boy by Robert J. Lloyd
From the traditional perspective, the mystery in The Bloodless Boy is “Who killed the boy?”. The mystery of that age was, “How does the body work?”.
The time is 1678. The English civil war has been over for many years; Charles II sits uneasily on the throne. Author Robert J. Lloyd incorporates many historical characters in this tale of political disruption and brooding insurrection. Medical science seethes with new ideas promulgated by society’s revered philosophers, for at the time medicine was more philosophy than science. Medical advancement was enticing, unregulated, and thoroughly class ridden.
Nobody cared about the life of the bloodless boy. After all there were so many boys in London, and there had been a number of bloodless boys already found in London over a fairly short period of time. The more intriguing question was, “What was the purpose of draining a body of its blood?”. Transfusion was the obvious answer, because transfusion was a new technology, applied during the civil war to preserve the life of important members of the army. All to disastrous consequences – death in agony.
In the case of bloodless boys, the scientific process was evident, because each of the four drainage holes made in the bodies was marked with the date of extraction, over a period of days or weeks. Now that we know how transfusions actually work, this early crude practice is horrifying. On the other hand, a similar process to empty infection from one of the prominent characters did work, albeit clumsily.
Robert Hooke, Curator of Experiments of the Royal Society for the Improving of Natural Knowledge, and his assistant, Harry Hunt, Observator of the Royal Society, are called in by the king himself to answer the mysteries of the bloodless boy, in particular the identity of the perpetrator. Time is short, because supporters of the parliamentary factions are fomenting unrest in the general population. Word of this diabolical practice is being spread ferociously as a way to set the mob against the king.
Harry’s scientific and personal scruples make him strangely immune to power and its corruptions. Against advice, and indeed against explicit instructions, Harry follows the trail of facts and evidence. His physical well-being is jeopardized over and over, but that doesn’t concern him much, since he always manages to avoid disaster. He does solve the mystery of who killed the boy, and he rejects the temptation of taking power.
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