Cadaver & Queen

by Alisa Kwitney

  “Now, put it on the table.” Makepiece moved, giving Victor room to move past him. Victor placed the cat on the cast iron operating table, trying to keep the tension from showing on his face.

  “Now, take this.” Makepiece handed him the scalpel, and now an icy shock washed away all his frantic speculation. “Take it. Like this.” Makepiece demonstrated. Victor had to shift his grip on the cat to take the scalpel, and he hoped Aldini would take advantage of his one-handed grasp to break free.

  Instead, the stupid animal butted his hand with her nose and began purring.

  “Good. Now, cut its throat.”

  Victor stared at Makepiece, certain he had misunderstood. Makepiece loved this cat. He fed it and pet it and cleaned up after it. Surely he didn’t mean for Victor to slit its throat.

  “Here, I’ll help.” Makepiece grabbed Aldini by the scruff of her neck and pinned her to the table, baring her throat. For a moment, the cat acquiesced, then she tried to roll over. “Go on. Cut.”

  Victor tried to think. The only reason he could think of for Makepiece to sacrifice his cat this way was that the scientist suspected that Victor was more intelligent than he was letting on. That meant that Victor had two choices: kill the cat and keep his secret, or spare the animal and reveal it. Or perhaps Makepiece intended to spare Aldini at the last moment, crying out “Hold!” like the angel of God who told Abraham that he did not, after all, need to sacrifice his son.

  If you reveal yourself, old man, it will be you on that table under the knife. The voice in his head sounded like the Henry of his memories. It sounded like a trusted friend.

  So, what to do? Victor’s right hand, holding the scalpel, began to tremble. His left hand reached out to steady it. No. He would not let his left hand take over this time.

  The cat squirmed to get free of Makepiece’s grip, then relaxed. She had a lovely, trusting disposition; another cat would have hissed and struggled.

  “What is it, Victor? Do you like the cat? Do you care for her?” Makepiece’s gaze was sharp and all too knowing.

  Victor. He used my name. With a sudden, sharp move, Victor’s left hand shot out, seizing the scalpel. Unable to stop his rogue limb, Victor threw himself sideways, slamming his hip bone into the side of the table and causing the knife strike to miss the cat, brushing by the tips of the cat’s sensitive whiskers instead of severing her jugular. The cat howled and turned sharply in her skin, startling Makepiece into releasing her. The terrified feline seemed to explode off the table, skittering across the wood floor with claws still extended before disappearing from view. Makepiece cursed under his breath and examined the scratch on his hand.

  “Well, that didn’t exactly go as I intended.” He gave Victor a wary look as he put antiseptic on the cut and bandaged it. “But did it go as you intended, that is the question.” Victor kept his face carefully blank. “I suppose not. Ah, well. Nothing to do but keep trying.”

  Safe. That was all that mattered, thought Victor. He did not know what Makepiece would do with him if he knew that he was not a mindless automaton, but until he knew, he intended to keep that information to himself.

  But that night, when Makepiece left, the cat shot out the door as if chased by unseen dangers. She did not return the following morning, or the one after that.

  Preoccupied by the loss of his one companion, Victor didn’t recognize the second test until it was too late.

  17

  The door to the anatomy classroom was bolted shut. Lizzie stood outside in the hall, her heart pounding. Today the first year students were being given actual cadavers to dissect, and even though Grimbald had said that female students would be excluded, Lizzie had figured that she would, at least, be permitted to observe. But when she tried the doorknob one more time, just to make sure, she knew there was no mistake—she had been locked out.

  Damn it. She felt as though she had been punched in the stomach. She took a deep breath, her ribs pressing against the boning of her corset. If she gave up and walked away, she would be behind all her classmates. If she pounded on the door and made a scene, she would make a fool of herself. Women, they would say. So emotional. No control. Of course they can’t be permitted around sharp knives, except in the kitchen.

  Damn, damn, damn.

  Pressing her hands onto her stomach and forcing herself to breathe slowly and think, Lizzie considered her other options.

  Appeal to Moulsdale? No, he would just pat her on the head and tell her to run along.

  Appeal to Makepiece? “You’re my right hand,” he told her when they worked together on the Reanimator. “Indispensable.”

  Surely he would intervene on her behalf for something as important as this.

  With a course of action decided, Lizzie straightened her blouse and set off down the hall to the laboratory.

  * * *

  It had finally stopped raining, and the sky was actually blue. Lizzie had never been to the laboratory in midmorning, and she was surprised by how attractive the building looked in the bright October sunshine. There was ivy growing up one of the walls, and on one corner she spotted an endearingly ugly little stone gargoyle, sticking out its curled waterspout tongue at her. Somewhere close by, a robin warbled, paused, then warbled again. There was a whole world of lovely hidden things going on all around her, while she, oblivious, obsessed about cadavers.

  They were probably cutting into them right now back in anatomy class. Oh, Lord, she thought, hand on the doorknob, I do not call on you often, so just this once, do me a favor and let Makepiece be in the laboratory and the door unlocked.

  The door was unlocked and as she opened it, she heard someone moving around in the back of the laboratory. Her prayers were answered.

  “Professor Makepiece,” she began, “I am so glad to find you in. I need to speak to you about...” She stopped midsentence, because the figure that turned around was not Professor Makepiece.

  For a moment, all she saw was a big man standing in the shadows, and she thought he must be one of the local laborers who came to haul rocks. There was endless construction going on at Ingold, with roughly dressed men pushing wheelbarrows or shouting orders at each other, and watching her with a steady, unblinking, predatory stare if she walked past them on one of their breaks.

  Nervous, she lifted her chin and tried for a tone of command. “Excuse me, but are you supposed to be in this building?” The man stepped forward out of the shadows, and she saw it was Victor.

  In the three weeks since she had last seen him, he had bulked up, especially around the shoulders and chest. The bruises on his face had faded, and the swelling around his eye and mouth had gone down, revealing a surprisingly patrician appearance—high cheekbones, a sharp blade of a nose, a strong jaw.

  “’Lo,” he said, “Miss Lavenza.” The words were thickened and distorted, but recognizable nevertheless. Then he smiled, and suddenly he was handsome. Distractingly so.

  “Oh! Hello,” she said, annoyed to hear how breathless she sounded. Her heart gave a little kick as he turned toward her. He was holding a vial in his good hand, while the Bio-Mechanical arm hung loosely at his side. “You startled me.” Why had she said that? It was so unprofessional.

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault. Midterms are around the corner and I’m on my last nerve, as you Brits say.” He frowned, looking confused. “What were you doing?”

  “Working.” He gave her a slightly crooked smile. “Like Igor.” As she gaped at his response—he had never uttered more than a one syllable word before, let alone strung three words together—he nodded to a corner of the room where she spotted the distinctive, twisted shape of the man’s back as he dusted a vat of green liquid. The comparison was patently absurd. Both might be Bio-Mechanicals, but that was where the similarities ended.

  “Your speech has improved a great deal. Have you been working with Professor Makepie
ce?”

  “No.”

  “All this progress on your own?”

  He nodded, then added, “Yes. On my own.”

  “Oh, my goodness, you sound so...so...articulate,” she said, although the first word that had come to mind was “human.” Was he upset that she had deserted him? “I’m sorry I couldn’t come before now. I just got swamped by schoolwork.” He didn’t reply, but continued looking at her with an intensity that left her flustered. “But in the end, you didn’t need me, did you?” Absurdly enough, that made her feel a bit bothered. Wanting something to do with her hands, she began sorting through the vial rack on the table in front of her, moving the glass tubes around so they were graduated from small to large, instead of the other way around.

  “Yes,” he said. “Thanks to you.” He replaced the vial he was holding into the wooden rack she was sorting. He had superb fine motor coordination with his right hand, she noticed, but his left hand remained limp by his side.

  “I didn’t do much.” She replaced the vial rack in the cabinet where it belonged.

  He smiled and shook his head.

  She didn’t know what to say. Before, he had seemed like a patient. Now, suddenly, he seemed like...like any other man. A good-looking man. Not as perfectly handsome as Byram, perhaps, but somehow more...more something. Something that made her breath catch with nervousness, which was ridiculous. “Makepiece must be thrilled with your progress,” she decided to say. Yet he hadn’t bothered to send her a message. She felt a bit stung by that.

  “I do not speak to Makepiece.”

  “Really? After all this time?”

  Victor hesitated. “I do not trust him.”

  “But why? If he knows that you are the breakthrough that he’s been looking for, that can only be better for you, can’t it?”

  “He’s a scientist. Scientists like to experiment.”

  She gave a startled laugh. “You make him sound like some sort of mad vivisectionist! He may be a little obsessive, but he’s not evil.”

  He looked away, and she felt there was something he wasn’t telling her.

  “Perhaps not. But you haven’t told him what you overheard that night, have you?”

  It startled her to hear him mention it. He had seemed like such a different creature then. “No, but the more I think about it, the more absurd it seems not to. I mean, so what if the queen is a patient?” Unless Makepiece planned to do more than cure the ailing monarch...but, as Byram had pointed out, what would the school gain by it? Victoria didn’t rule the country on her own. “It’s not that dark a secret.”

  “Keep it anyway. Better not to say anything about the queen...or about my being able to speak.” He smiled, and she could feel him trying to lighten the mood. “After all, you wouldn’t want me telling your secrets—even though they’re not dark.”

  “My secrets?” For a moment, she had no idea what he meant, and then the room felt too warm as she recalled all the things she had said to him. Dear Lord, had she really nattered on about Perry as if confiding to a sympathetic dog? Fidgeting with the button on her cuff, she said, “Speaking of Makepiece, where is he now? I was hoping to speak to him.”

  “He went to York. For supplies. Ch-chemicals.”

  Oh, terrific, she thought. Just my luck. The trip to York took an hour, at least, and another hour back. No chance of her observing the dissection now.

  “Is something wrong?”

  She was caught off guard by how quickly he picked up on what wasn’t said. “Oh, no.” She smiled reflexively. “It’s quite all right.”

  “Liar.”

  Lizzie gave a startled choke of a laugh. “All right, fine. I’m supposed to be in Grimbald’s anatomy class, where the rest of the first years are getting their hands on cadavers.”

  Victor frowned. “Grimbald? You are not—” he paused, clearly searching for a word “—not permitted to be there? But why?”

  Lizzie sighed and sat down on the stool by one of the long tables.

  “Because my presence could negatively impact on the learning experience of the other students,” she said, parroting Grimbald’s explanation. “According to my professor, it is unseemly to discuss such vulgar things as legs in the presence of a lady.” She looked up at him and laughed. “Oh, the expression on your face! I suppose you’re scandalized, as well.” Another thought occurred. “Or was I speaking too quickly?”

  “No.” He suddenly seemed preoccupied.

  “I just don’t know how I’m supposed to learn anything if I’m not allowed to participate,” she said, more to herself than to Victor. “It’s one thing to read about anatomy in a book, or to see an illustration, but I’ve seen enough of medicine to know that the reality is always messier and more difficult.”

  He didn’t say anything, but seemed to be listening intently again, so she went on. It helped to talk this out, whether or not her companion comprehended her.

  “I’ve studied the pectoral girdle, but I need to actually see where the tendons attach the clavicle to the scapula. I understand that the temporomandibular joint is there so the mandible can move, but all I’ve ever touched are skeletons, so I’ve never seen the articular disk or the ligaments that connect to it.” I’m babbling, she thought, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself. Something about the way Victor seemed to be listening to her, attentively, with a glint of good-natured humor in his eyes, made her want to divulge everything—all the little insecurities and doubts she kept hidden from everyone else, even Byram and Will. Especially Byram and Will. “I know some people think the charts in the books are actually better than the physical specimens, but I’ve studied the diagrams six ways from Sunday, and I’m still a little confused about the precise location of some of the abdominal organs. I mean, I’ve got a general sense, but that’s not good enough once you’re digging around with a scalpel.” Which was what all her classmates were doing, right now at this very moment. “Damn it.”

  She felt the flush creeping up her cheeks. Had she really cursed in front of a man? Well, not a man in the most literal sense of the word, she supposed. Yet enough like a man that she couldn’t stop blushing.

  “I understand.”

  “That’s very kind,” she mumbled, looking at the scuffed toes of her boots.

  His hoarse laugh startled her, but not as much as what he did next. Bending down so that his head was on a level with hers, Victor took her hand in his. “I mean I understand.” Distracted by the sensation of her bare hand resting in his, she forced herself to pay attention to what he was saying. “I understand how the median and ulnar nerves run through the hand,” he said, turning her palm up and tracing their path with one finger. “I know where the abductor and adductor muscles are.” He pressed his thumb into the pad of muscle below her thumb. “I know anatomy.” He stroked his thumb across the center of her palm, causing the nerves to tingle in a way they never had before. Then, giving a low whoop, he clasped her just above the waist, lifted her off her feet and swung her around in a wide circle. “I know anatomy!”

  18

  Victor’s heart was racing as he lowered Elizabeth so her feet touched the floor again. She gave a gurgle of laughter as a lock of hair came loose from its pins and suddenly her face was inches from his, her body pressed against him for one breathless moment. Then she broke away, still laughing as she attempted to pin her hair back.

  “Well!” She was blushing scarlet, and no wonder. He tried to slow his breathing and not look as though he was about to grab her again.

  You should have kissed her, old man. That would have been Henry’s advice. He was always giving romantic advice, although as far as Victor knew, he had never even held a girl’s hand.

  “Here,” said Victor, seeing that Elizabeth was struggling. He twisted her thick hair and then pinned it back, a little haphazardly, but at least it was staying put.

  “Thank you. M
y hair has a mind of its own.”

  It should meet my left hand. A sudden image of his hand tangling in her unbound hair, pulling her head back for his kiss, made him feel light-headed, and as it was, his pulse was still pounding. He wondered if his heart, brought back from the grave, could handle the strain. Not that it mattered; there were so many other things that could go wrong right now that cardiac arrest felt like the least of his problems.

  “Sorry,” he said, feeling awkward.

  “No need to apologize. I’m sure I would have done the same, if I were in your position. But how do you know anatomy?”

  He hesitated, then decided to risk confiding in her. “I think I was a student. Like you.”

  Her eyes widened. “A medical student? But Victor, this is incredible! What else do you remember?”

  She was so innocent, gazing at him with admiration and wonder. Had he ever been that fresh and unspoiled? “I remember this place.”

  She frowned. “You mean you were a student here, at Ingold? I suppose that makes sense. It’s just that Professor Grimbald taught us that Bio-Mechanicals are usually created from the unclaimed corpses of workhouse paupers, convicts and lunatics. The most successful specimens were claimed straight from the prison gallows. Well, never mind.” She waved her hand, as if batting away an annoying insect. “Your case must have been an exception. Perhaps that’s what makes you so unique. Do you remember anything else?”

  “Not certain.” He concentrated, and suddenly he recalled being struck by what felt like a bolt of lightning, and the searing pain that had exploded in every cell of his body. The force of the electricity firing through his brain must have destroyed certain memories, but others had just been buried somewhere in his mind. And now, finally, those memories were coming back.

  Elizabeth was speaking to him again. “So, if you were a medical student here, it stands to reason you must have friends who are still classmates here.”