The Anatomist's Apprentice

by Tessa Harris

  Thomas studied Crick as he rinsed the phials in a bowl of water. Even his gestures, the angle at which he held his head, the cadence of his voice, reminded him of Lydia.

  “Are those not the thoughts of Dr. Johnson?” replied the student.

  Thomas was duly impressed. “Indeed so.” He had been fortunate enough to be introduced to the great thinker by Dr. Carruthers when he first came to England and he found him to be a most convivial fellow, with a sharp wit and a tongue to match. His visits to Bedford Coffee House were legendary and the discussions that his forthright remarks provoked were always as lively as a fireworks display.

  “He is a man of great erudition and humor, but I am not sure I agree with him on that particular point,” he said, securing the lid on a sample jar.

  Crick turned to face his mentor. “How so, sir?” he pressed.

  “It matters greatly if the man’s dying was by the hand of another.”

  The younger man paused and looked away. “And you are still convinced my cousin was murdered?”

  Thomas wiped his iodine-stained hands on a damp cloth. “The more I see, the more I believe he was,” he replied earnestly. “And you?”

  Crick sighed deeply. “I do not know what to think, sir,” he replied, as if the very effort of forming an opinion or making a decision was far too much for him to bear.

  Thomas chided him for his ambivalence. “Come, come, you are a scientist, Mr. Crick. We are traveling down the path of discovery and soon we will come to a fork in the road. Which route do we take?”

  The young man looked at Thomas blankly. The doctor waited for a while, but seeing that no reply was forthcoming from his student he obliged him with the answer. “The one of which we are sure, of course,” he said. “The one where we can tread heavily and not be afraid that we will sink. Our path must be built on fact, not on assumption, Mr. Crick.”

  The problem that confronted Thomas was, of course, that there were so few facts at his fingertips that no path presented itself more than any other and he was in danger of finding himself utterly lost.

  The next morning Thomas left London for Oxford once more, only this time he was accompanied by his eager assistant. He had found Francis Crick to be a personable young man, although somewhat lacking in the tenacity needed to pursue the truth. He suspected a certain sloppiness in his manner and haphazardness in his methods that were not conducive to thorough anatomical investigation. He had much to learn, thought Thomas, as their coach bounced and bumped along the main road leading northwest through the rolling Chilterns.

  Once they reached Oxford, Francis Crick was to journey onward to Boughton Hall where he would spend the night and accompany Captain Farrell and Lady Lydia to the inquest in the morning. Thomas was to stay, once more, at the White Horse. First, however, he walked to Christ Church, to pay a visit to Dr. Hascher.

  Thomas found the old professor hunched over a weighty tome in his study. The men greeted each other as old friends and Thomas asked if he might store his various samples and equipment in the professor’s laboratory for safekeeping. They then enjoyed a schnapps together.

  “You are troubled about tomorrow? Yes?” The professor sensed Thomas was as tense as a tendon at full stretch as he sat in a chair opposite him, staring into his glass.

  “It troubles me that I have such little real evidence to present to the court,” acknowledged Thomas. He was used to standing up in front of dozens of students and delivering lectures whose foundations were laid on indisputable facts, but tomorrow he would face a court with little more than a handful of straws. “And yet ...” He broke off.

  The professor frowned. “What is it, Thomas?” he asked, seeing a look of fear shoot across the young doctor’s face as he remembered the scribbled note of warning.

  “And yet someone is worried about what I may find,” he said, delving into his waistcoat pocket and handing the professor the piece of crumpled paper.

  The old man hooked a pair of spectacles onto his nose and looked at the note. “It seems as zough you have disturbed a nest of vipers, Thomas,” he said gravely. “Be careful.”

  An hour or so later Thomas took his leave. The night was as crisp as starched sheets and the air so cold it could have been sliced with a surgeon’s knife. The black dome of the Radcliffe Camera loomed large against the star-studded sky as Thomas made his way across the cobbles toward Broad Street.

  Great Tom was tolling the hour as he walked briskly past the Camera’s steps. From the shadows of the great portico he could hear a girl’s staccato pants of pleasure, punctuated by the rhythmic grunts of a man. They cared nothing for the great works that lay inside: the papers of John Friend’s original chemistry lectures or the collections of such notable scientists as Nathan Alcock. They cocked a snook at scholarship by their actions and their complete lack of respect angered Thomas. He quickened his pace now, past Hertford College in Catte Street.

  A little farther on a group of begowned drunken scholars crossed the street under the disapproving gaze of the great philosophers of the Sheldonian, squawking obscenities like a flock of crows. Their existence was so very different from his own sophomore days in Philadelphia, where the distractions from the labor of the medical book and the apprenticeship of the knife had been more genteel. Thomas shook his head absentmindedly as he thought of what Aristotle and Plato might make of these ignorant dolts.

  The White Horse now lay within sight. Candles burned dimly in its frosted windows. Even his spartan room, with its damp bed linen, seemed inviting now as the chill air began to seep into his very bones.

  He was looking forward to a sound night’s sleep before the inquest tomorrow. He had just begun to cross the last few yards of pavement before he reached Broad Street when he suddenly became aware of a presence beside him. He turned swiftly to see who was there, but he felt only the crushing force of a fist to his jaw. It sent him reeling backward, so that his left shoulder smashed into the wall behind him. Now another blow was struck to his guts, doubling him over. He let out a cry as he felt his diaphragm go into spasm, and then dropped to his knees on the icy ground. As he did so he searched for his purse. “Here, take my money,” he pleaded hoarsely, pointing to his belt. But his pleas fell on deaf ears as yet another blow was rained on his head, striking him just above his left eye. This time he dropped like a stone onto the pavement.

  “ ’Tis not your money that’s wanted, Doctor,” came the gruff voice in the darkness.

  Thomas tried in vain to lift his head, but the pain was so great it felt that flames were licking every nerve ending. Putting his hand to his forehead, he felt a warm trickle of liquid gushing from a wound just above his left eye. It was a feeling so familiar to him, he did not need to see the color of it to know it was blood.

  “For God’s sake, have pity,” he pleaded as he felt another sharp jab under his ribs as his assailant kicked him. The sound of his own cries now filled his ears as the sharp stabs of pain penetrated him like the blade of a stiletto. Again and again the jabs came until the cries died down, the whimpers were silenced, and the night belonged once more to illicit lovers and rowdy scholars.

  The night watchman found him sprawled along the pavement outside Exeter College. Thinking him to be the worse for drink at first, he had kicked him soundly in the ribs, but when he received no response, he bent down and held his oil lamp over the man. It was then that he saw the trickle of blood seeping from a wound to the head. With his foot the night watchman turned the man over, so that he now lay on his back. From his dress and his face he could tell he was a gentleman. Bending down he placed his grimy fingers around the throat, feeling for a pulse. He could find none. So, satisfied that this gentleman would no longer be needing any money, he delved into the purse that hung on his belt and brought out two guineas.

  The find brought a smile to his stubbly face. Not bad for a night’s work. “A brace of shiners,” he said to himself, but that, of course, was not an end to it. He could not move the dead weight. He would have to enl
ist help. Disappearing down Broad Street, he turned into Turl Street and into the Turf Tavern, where he knew he could find a willing assistant.

  “You’ve a good ’un here,” puffed the night watchman’s accomplice, as he helped his friend lift the body from the pavement and into a handcart.

  “At least four pounds, I’ll wager,” replied the night watchman, gleefully tucking the gentleman’s limp arm into the cart for fear of further damaging his precious cargo. Together they pushed their prized load back down Turl Street. Warily they crossed the High Street, then trundled down Oriel Lane, arriving at Christ Church by a narrow back gate—the one they always used for such occasions.

  Usually it was an old one they brought, or a young child, often a fetus, but no matter their age, they were always poor, scrawny specimens without flesh on their bones or money in their pockets. This one was different and Professor Hascher, they told themselves, would pay over the odds for it.

  “This one’ll please ye, doctor,” said the night watchman, as he let his burden land on the dissecting table with an unceremonious thud. But as soon as he pulled back the hessian from the man’s face, Professor Hascher’s interested expression turned to one of horror.

  “O mein Gott!” he cried when he set eyes on the man’s features as he lay limp and crumpled on the dissecting table. The elderly anatomist’s hands flew up to his lined face.

  “It cannot be,” he cried, leaning over the pallet.

  Both the night watchmen were shocked by his reaction as they saw him bend down and put his ear to the man’s mouth. He felt for a pulse in the man’s wrist and his expression suddenly changed.

  “Zis man is not dead, you fools,” he muttered under his breath. “He is unconscious. Stand back,” he barked and, pushing them both aside, he reached for his instrument bag on the desk. Pulling out a pad of gauze and a bottle of iodine Professor Hascher began dabbing Thomas’s head wound.

  By now the blood had congealed around the abrasion. The skin is at its most delicate above the eyes, and the skin on Thomas’s face was like a taut drum hide that had been hit too hard and split. Professor Hascher knew he would need to stitch the wound. He had to forget that this was his friend, his colleague who lay supine and helpless before him.

  As the needle pierced the skin for the first time, he was glad that Thomas was still deep in a crevasse of oblivion, unaware of all feeling and therefore all pain. It was a merciful escape for him because the wound was a long one and the needle penetrated and reemerged several times before the professor’s work was complete.

  A row of black, flat stitches now adorned the young doctor’s bruised brow and Professor Hascher took a small step back to inspect his work from a short distance. He was pleased with its neatness, its precision. He may have been more used to suturing corpses, but he could still turn his hand to a trim piece of handiwork when required.

  The wound now cleaned and sutured, the professor’s attention was diverted to the rest of Thomas’s battered body. His patient made no move throughout the stitching and this troubled him. He opened the young man’s bloodstained shirt and saw there was a wound on his abdomen and severe bruising all around, consistent with having been repeatedly kicked.

  “Pass me more gauze, will you,” he instructed the night watchman’s assistant. The man, of rough appearance, whose stench of stale sweat fought with the smell of preserving fluid in the laboratory, obliged. It occurred to Professor Hascher that if these men would have been prepared to sell a corpse to him, as they had done before, they would also rob it beforehand.

  “Where is the money you stole from zis man?” he asked, taking the gauze.

  The ruffian looked shocked and darted a glance at the night watchman, who now struggled to his feet. Simultaneously both men delved into their pockets and each brought out a guinea, stolen from Thomas as he lay helpless on the pavement. They placed the coins on the desk nearby under the professor’s reproachful eye.

  “If you want zem back, and to avoid ze wrath of ze magistrate, you will have to earn zem zis time,” he told them mysteriously.

  The men looked on puzzled as the professor sat at his desk and scribbled a note. “You will ride to Boughton Hall near Brandwick at first light,” he told them. “And deliver this to Lady Lydia Farrell,” he said, handing the night watchman the sealed piece of parchment. “You will wait for her reply, zen, if she so wishes, escort her back here. Do you understand?” The men nodded vigorously. “Zen we shall talk about reimbursement,” added the professor, dismissing them with a contemptuous wave of his hand.

  The old anatomist watched the men go before returning to his unconscious patient, who remained silent and deathly white on the dissecting table. For all anyone else knew he could have been the next corpse to be sliced open in front of eager anatomy students the next day, so still and pale did he look. His ribs had been cracked like dry twigs and his head delivered a fearful blow, but the life that could so easily have been taken from Thomas had been spared. Whoever had done this to the young surgeon, thought Professor Hascher, could so easily have killed him. They had not. Whoever did this to him could so easily have robbed him. They did not do that, either.

  Slipping his hand into Thomas’s waistcoat pocket, he withdrew the anonymous note that the young doctor had shown him earlier that evening. The villain that had so cruelly treated his friend, he concluded, did not want him to delve any further into the death of the Earl Crick.

  Chapter 22

  As Thomas gazed through the thick fog of returning consciousness, he became vaguely aware of strangely familiar objects around him. In the half light rows of books came into murky focus before retreating into a blur once more. Ill-defined shapes, a table, or perhaps a chair, emerged from the shadows. The smell, too, that met his nostrils was recognizable to him, yet he did not know why. Now he could hear voices at the boundary of his vision. He turned his head in their direction, but felt pain sear into his brain like a red-hot spear.

  “Lie still, Dr. Silkstone,” came a soft voice. Someone was bending over him. He squinted against the daylight that burned into his eyes.

  “Lady L ... ?” His throat felt scorched.

  Lydia was indeed there. “Professor Hascher,” she called. Thomas now recognized the outline of the wiry-haired anatomist. He held a cup of water to his lips and Thomas felt the cool liquid trickle down his throat and soothe his parched gullet.

  Shapes now became better defined. Colors returned. Sounds and smells began to make sense once more. “What happened?” he asked faintly.

  Professor Hascher answered. “You were attacked opposite the White Horse. You suffered a blow to the jaw and head. You have cracked three ribs and have a gash on your leg, but you’ll survive.”

  Thomas tried to acknowledge that he had heard the prognosis with a nod, but the pain returned once more. He stifled a cry.

  “The night watchmen brought you here because zey took you for dead and wanted to make a shilling or two out of your corpse,” the professor told him.

  “You must rest, Dr. Silkstone,” said Lydia softly. She held a damp cloth in her hand and dabbed his forehead gently.

  Thomas focused on her face. She was wearing that same anxious expression as when she had first come to his laboratory, but her very presence was as soothing as any balm or unguent could be.

  “What ... ?”

  Lydia put her finger to his lips and he felt a tingling sensation run through his body. “You must not talk, Dr. Silkstone, only listen.” She sat down on a chair next to the table and took a deep breath. He felt its moist sweetness against his face as she bent low over him.

  “This is all my doing, Dr. Silkstone,” she sighed, shaking her head. Thomas opened his mouth to protest. “Please,” she urged. “Let me say what I have to.” She stilled the hand he had raised and he felt her cool skin against his. “I came to you seeking your help because I knew that you were the best in your field and you willingly agreed to help me find out how Edward died.” She bit her lips, fighting back te
ars. “I prayed that it would all be very straightforward; that you would confirm that my brother died from natural causes and that he could rest in peace. But it was not to be. It would seem that someone is afraid you will be able to find out the cause of his death, which, God forbid, may well be far from natural. It will be murder.” She took a deep breath once more. “I have made you risk your own life, Dr. Silkstone, and for that I can only apologize.” She gripped Thomas’s hand tighter. “You must not give evidence at the inquest.”

  Thomas felt one of her tears fall on his cheek. He wished he had possessed the strength to rise up and comfort her, but all that he was capable of was to summon what little energy he could muster and lay his other hand on top of hers, reciprocating a moment of forbidden intimacy.

  She studied his long surgeon’s hands as if she had never seen fingers before; as if they were something new and wonderful and as she did so, Thomas allowed himself to gaze on her face. It was Professor Hascher’s voice that broke the moment in two like the snap of a bone when it is amputated.

  “Ze inquest will start within ze hour, your ladyship,” he reminded her, moving closer to where Thomas lay.

  Lydia’s hand withdrew instantly from Thomas’s touch. “Yes. Thank you. I must go,” she replied awkwardly, not sure whether or not the professor had witnessed her indiscretion. She rose quickly. “I wish you a speedy recovery, Dr. Silkstone,” she said formally.

  “Thank you,” croaked Thomas weakly. They were all the words his swollen mouth and tongue could form.

  Chapter 23

  The inquest into the death of The Right Honorable The Earl Crick, late of Boughton Hall in the county of Oxfordshire, opened at Oxford Coroner’s Court on November 16 in the year of our Lord 1780.