ELEANOR CLUNG TO THIS HOPE OF OTHER, BETTER INCARNATIONS of Edgar as she watched the Professor take the stand. She could not imagine a man more different from lumpen, brutish Jacob. He was an aging man, who walked with a stick and whose hands trembled as he set them on the bar of the witness stand. But he looked out at the court as if he owned it. She smiled to think of William, standing by the fire, dictionary in hand, boasting out this Professor’s praise of Edgar. He called their son a champion and a hero. Eleanor watched as he drew his gown tight around his shoulders. The jury would be more swayed by the testimony of one of their own than the lies of a blacksmith, she was sure of it.

Ellis strode up to the bench and smiled at the Professor as if he was greeting an old friend. He spoke of the Professor’s reputation, and the Professor went along with him: he was a forward-thinking man, a man who believed in progress. He spoke of how he encountered Edgar at the forge, and how the boy displayed an inventiveness that was far beyond his ten years.

“This inventiveness, sir, how did that manifest itself?”

“He had a most unusual way of looking at the world,” said the Professor. “He was full of schemes of how things might be made.”

“And this is what inspired you to take him from the forge?”

“No, sir. I took him for pure necessity.”

Then followed tales of the museum, of the buckled roof, of the tragic death of Master Thomas and the need of a skilled and agile worker to fill his place. Edgar Jones was simply the only possible candidate. If there had been another boy in Oxford who might have been capable of the work, a more educated and amenable boy, then there was no question that the Professor would have taken him.

“More educated, sir?”

“Edgar Jones came to me illiterate. And he displayed no inclination to better his mind when he was at the museum.”

Eleanor looked over to the jury ranked up on their stools, nodding as if they all knew Edgar already. Look beyond the words, she pleaded silently. Look at the body of this Professor, look at the way he trembles in the box! Look at the way he cannot even turn his face toward Edgar! This is a man who would say anything to save his reputation, to free himself of the taint of association with my son.

And Ellis, with his broad smile, with his hand set upon the bar next to the Professor’s, was doing all he could to fuel the argument.

“And, during this time at the museum, did Edgar Jones manifest any criminal qualities?”

“Looking back upon it, he did, sir. Or at least the beginnings of them.”

Then there were tales of how Edgar was often found in the museum before his fellow workers, swinging from a spur, or clambering up a ladder. This was not a crime, thought Eleanor, this was love of the work, pure and simple; it was just this eagerness that the Professor had chosen him for! But the Professor twisted it all around.

“It was as if Edgar believed the museum to be his own empire.”

“His own empire indeed. Then I suppose he was not best pleased when his contract came to an end?”

“Oh, Edgar Jones was dismissed from the museum before his contract was completed.”

Ellis rocked back on his heels and raised his eyebrows, a pantomime of surprise. “Dismissed? Whatever for?”

“For flagrant disobedience. For arrogance and insurrection, which could have put himself and his fellow men in grave danger.”

And this was just the start of it. Transgression followed transgression as the Professor told how, the night after Edgar’s dismissal, he returned to find his rooms ransacked, his papers scattered across the meadows, and his precious specimens torn apart, a whole wealth of bones missing.

But now the bones returned. A man carrying a silver tray walked the rounds of the courtroom. The pieces that had been found under the floorboards were paraded before the jury. And sitting side by side with them, the blackened remains that had been pulled from the burnt-out shop.

“But, Professor,” said Ellis archly, “this event was two years ago. Did you not think to report it? Did you not suspect the hand of Edgar Jones in any of this?”

“In truth, sir, I would expect a child to take a childlike revenge. I thought this the work of more sophisticated men.”

“I am not sure that I understand you, sir.”

“It is no secret that I have enemies, men who would like to see an end to my work with the bones. I thought my room was ransacked by a fellow scholar. To have brought such a thing to the attention of the authorities would have served only to fuel the argument against me.”

“So you say that such thievery is proof of an advanced mind?”

“A mind advanced in cunning, sir. And not just the thievery; the absurd theatrics upon Broad Street was the very stuff that would fuel the superstitious arguments against my work. Edgar Jones plotted and planned this crime for more than a year, sir, and in my opinion that is proof of a calculating and corrupted soul.”

“Thank you, sir, there is nothing more.”

Calculating. Corrupted. The words echoed through the room as Ellis retreated from the stand. Eleanor felt the fury gathering in her blood. This old man was setting words against Edgar that should surely be set against himself. She watched as he drew the gown around his shoulders, as if it were some kind of armor that gave him protection.

But her anger was not just at the Professor. A part of her was back in the cottage, with William setting the University papers behind glass. If she was at fault for sending Edgar to the forge, then William was equally to blame. He had his mind turned by the sweep of a college gown. If this Professor had come to the cottage, she would have sent him away in an instant. He was a greedy man who would set his own interest before all others, that much was clear to her. The way that his voice wavered when he spoke of his bones, the way his fist gripped tighter around his cane when he spoke of Edgar’s thievery— well, this was a passion she had seen before, in the trembling of the drunkards’ hands upon the edge of the bar. The sign of a man who was led through life by a fierce desire that ruled him. A man who clearly had no understanding of what it was to be responsible for a child.

In the court below, Clark stepped up to the dock and unfolded a piece of paper from his pocket. Eleanor frowned to see it. This was a boy set in defense of a boy and no mistake, someone who must read his argument from a page.

“What would you say is the worth of Edgar Jones, Professor?” asked Clark.

“The worth, sir? I am not sure that I understand you.”

“Do you recognize this document, sir?”

The Professor glanced down at the page and then looked away. “Of course. These are the apprentice papers of Edgar Jones, assigning him to the museum.”

“Quite so, and can you clarify for me the exact price that you paid to his master?”

“Two pounds.”

Two pounds. The gallery gave out a gasp and the jury muttered. And rightly so. Two pounds, thought Eleanor. The price of a sea of silk. Two pounds … she imagined the cascade of coins dropping down the back of the mannequin and gathering in the belly.

“Two pounds!” declared Clark. “A handsome sum to set against such a difficult child.”

“It is as I have already stated, sir. There was no other boy in Oxford who was suitable for the work. The price I paid for his release was due to the urgency of the task. It is no reflection of his value.”

Value. Eleanor bristled at the word. This Professor talked of Edgar as if he was a thing to be traded, not as if he was a child with a heart and a soul and a future.

In the dock below, step by careful step, Clark extracted the truth of the apprenticeship, trying to put together a more favorable picture of Edgar: of all the things that he had achieved in the Professor’s employ, of how the investment had come good for the University. Eleanor heard tales of Edgar climbing up the broken roof, of him swinging through the sky in his harness. But there was little kindness in the Professor’s account: Edgar was disobedient to his master. He would always be getting into places where he had no authority. No matter how Mr. Clark tried to steer the questions, the Professor still managed to turn Edgar’s achievements to the negative. He may have fixed the roof but he would not take instruction on how to do it; he may have had a skill with the work but his fellow ironworkers neither trusted him nor loved him. He may … but he … He may … but he … back and forth, with the bad parts of Edgar always at the fore.

“And yet,” said Clark, striking on the bar for emphasis, “in spite of all his infractions, you did not exile him completely, Professor.”

The Professor sat silent as Clark paraded the wider evidence before the court—of how the Professor had recommended Edgar to the instrument maker, and of how he had sought him out again when he had need of his magic lantern.

“I put it to you, sir,” said Clark sternly, “that you had little concern for the welfare of Edgar Jones, one way or the other. You picked him up and put him down according to your need of him.”

Up in the gallery, the air was thick with mutterings. Eleanor smiled. William had put it just as plainly himself.

“On the contrary, sir, I was eager to provide Edgar Jones with the opportunity to be a better man. I rather hoped that being the apprentice to an inventor might provide some discipline and calm the wilder parts of his nature.”

“But you could not be sure of this, and yet you still allowed him to return to the place that, in your own words, he felt was his own empire. The very place that you banished him from, with no thought of the effect this might have upon his volatile nature?”

“I am a professor of the bones, sir, not of the mind. It is not within my skills to make such assessments.”

“Even when your colleagues expressed grave concern about the effect that your museum might have upon the weaker minds of the masses?”

Clark unfolded a newspaper from his pocket and read out the account of the Professor’s debate: a tale of dramatic spectacle, accusations of blasphemy, and of the unknown clergyman who stormed the stage and ran mad from the museum.

“I put it to you, Professor, that Edgar Jones is a victim of your philosophies. I put it to you that you collected him for your own purpose, and then cast him out when you were done with him. I put it to you that this is not a born thief that stands in the dock before us but an unfortunate child who took your teachings to heart, and misguidedly animated bones in the hope that it would find him favor.”

“And I put it to you, sir,” said the Professor sternly, “that if every professor was called to account for the impact of his theories, then the colleges of Oxford would be emptied of their teachers.”

THAT EVENING ELEANOR walked the streets home with heavy steps. She could not shake from her mind the image of Edgar, sitting in the dock, his hands and feet roped around with chains as if he were a wild animal. She thought of how she bound Edgar up in blankets as a child, to keep him out of her business. She thought of how Edgar had come into the world, urgent, early, and curled up like a tiny fist. Was he destined, from that moment on, to take the road to the courtroom door, no matter what he had turned his hand to?

She came to the garden gate. The house was lit up like a lantern, and there was William, dressed in his porter’s suit and hat, standing by the window, staring out into the night in search of intruders.

Behind her, at the end of the row of town houses, stood Mrs. Simm’s home. The drawn curtains were bright banners unfurled against the night. Eleanor yearned toward them. She wished for a bit of conversation where nothing really mattered at all. She wished for the simple pleasure of putting together a pattern and making all the pieces fit. But that was no longer the way things were. She looked back at William. He stood frozen, as if all his thinking had turned him to stone. So this was what her family had come to: a boy in chains and a husband shackled within his own mind. She pushed open the gate and walked through the wilderness to her door.