Tale of Raw Head and Bloody Bones (9781101614631) Read Free Page B

Ravenscroft now to have said that my Soule was bound to the Devil, for I was Word perfect in all my Religious Observances. But what the Rector did not suspect was that my Soule belonged to a rational God.
    I could no more give Credence to the terrifying Mystery of Scripture and Pulpit than I could have turned Water into Wine. Mine was a God of knowable Purpose, a God whose Principles might be discovered, tested, and found comprehensible by Human Reason. The World was as an open Bible; the Challenge was in learning how to read it.
    I went to the Philosophers; to Descartes, to Harvey, to Baglivi, to Hook. I began to comprehend how the intire World was built according to the Principles of Number, Weight, and Measure, and to see clearly how these applied to the Operation of the Human Body. Whatever the Condition of the Soule within, the Human Body was a Machine, susceptible of Damage, Illness and Decay – but also of Repair.
    These Thinkers became my Comfort, in those dark Houres after Church, when my Senses reeled. When my Father dies and Shirelands Hall is mine, I thought, I will construct a great Laboratoryin the eastern Wing, where I shall pass every one of my waking Houres in Experimentation. No mere Surgeon, I will become a Giant of Natural Philosophy, teazing apart the intimate Bonds of the Flesh to discover the Workings of the Machine underneath. I will be the Prophet of a new World, where Logick and Reason will Rule where once Superstition held all Sway. So sweet a Taste, I said to My Self, hath the Electuary of Reason, more effective than any Theriac. Knowledge could heal all Ills. It would be my Mind’s Solvent, my Soule’s Salvation. I should study all the Processes of Life, from the most insignificant to the most profound. I would measure and circumscribe Pain itself.
    I told no one of mine Ambition. None would have understood.
    In the early Autumn of forty-five, when I was approaching the Age of fifteen, it was decided that I should have yet another Tutor. By this Age, I had been under the Tutelage of perhaps six of these Masters, and each Episode had ended in the same Way. “His Wits are too sharp,” each had said to my Father; “Latin and Euclid are too easy for him; with Respect, Mr Hart, you must pay for a learned Scholar from Oxford or London to undertake your Son’s Instruction.” And on each Occasion my Father had sighed, and another poor Curate or struggling Student had been engaged.
    This Time, however, he took on a Protestant Scotsman by the Name of Robert Simmins, who had been several Yeares an Officer in the Army before taking up the Position of Master at St Paul’s School—of which Place he had recently, and hurriedly it seemed, been acquitted. I suspected that some Scandal lay at the Bottom of this, which had almost certainly to do with Drink, but I never found it out. Colonel Simmins’ Prejudice against me, which became plain to me very early in our Association, was founded, I now conceive, in nothing more than that intellectual Laziness of a certainBreed of ordinary Man, which fancies to discern a Threat in everything and everyone considered clever; and which, rather than striving to comprehend it, habitually contemns. He was not, verily, a bad Man, and his own Faults naught but common, venial Weaknesses for which he should perhaps be envied rather than despised. However, at the impatient Age of fifteen, despise him I did, and I could not perceive how I could learn aught usefull from a Tutor whose primary Aim in mine Education was to cure me of Cleverness.
    This Tutor had a Son of his own going by the Name of Isaac, who was several Yeares my junior; and to mine Astonishment and Disgust it was decided that this Son should be allowed to receive Education alongside me, like a Flea riding upon an Hound. He was eleven Yeares of Age, and he turned out to be a light built, girlish little Scrap with shaggy brown Hair, large dark brown Eyes, and Eyebrows of surprizing thickness and excitability. I