Corpse & Crown

by Alisa Kwitney

  “I didn’t mean to be impertinent, Matron. It’s just—the patient was hemorrhaging and the other doctors and nurses were all in the operating theater.” With a quick sidelong glance at the woman’s children, who were sitting quietly in the corner, she added softly, “I had to do something, or the poor woman might have bled out right there in the receiving room.”

  Shiercliffe looked slightly mollified. “I understand that you care about the patients who walk in, DeLacey. But you must remember—even though we have moved into the Royal Victoria, we are still Great Britain’s only Academy of Bio-Mechanical Science and Engineering, and our priorities have not changed. We help patients because it is right, but that is not our primary mission.”

  The school’s primary mission, which had been drummed into all the nursing and medical students, was the research and development of a Bio-Mechanical army that would protect the nation’s borders without sacrificing its young and able-bodied men. It was important work, to be sure, and a welcome escape from working as her mother’s unpaid apprentice, but there were times when Aggie had a nagging sense of wrongness. No doubt this was a vestige of her working class upbringing—in her village, folks were superstitious and more likely to trust a local midwife or apothecary than they were to put their faith in some sawbones from the city.

  Still, Aggie couldn’t accept that she had done wrong in treating a patient when the only other option would have been allowing her to die.

  “I take your point, Matron, but we’re still a hospital, aren’t we? And it’s different here in London. I see more critical cases in a day here than I did in a month back in Henley.”

  “Yes, and the only reason you are seeing them is because the Crown has given us the funding to operate here. The Royal Victoria was on the verge of closing its doors for good before we arrived. Think how many of these poor people would die if our Bio-Mechanical program fails and the government no longer supplies the hospital with the money it needs to operate.”

  Aggie bit back the urge to retort that a hospital that merely appeared open to patients might be worse than one that was clearly closed. You’re not going to win her over, she told herself. Let it go. “I see your point,” she said out loud. “I am sorry, Matron.”

  “I’m glad you’re seeing reason.” She looked at the woman and sighed. “I suppose we can make room for her in Waterloo Ward.”

  “Oi,” came a small, defiant voice from the back of the room. It was the young boy, fists bunched at his sides. “What you going to do with our ma?” Behind him, his little sister burst into tears.

  “Oh, botheration,” said Shiercliffe. “What are those children doing there?” She pointed at the boy and girl crouched silently in the corner.

  “They came with their mother.”

  “Of course.” The matron sighed. “You would think that people would consider their finances before breeding like rabbits. Well. They cannot remain in the hospital unattended.” She looked at the boy. “I don’t suppose there’s anyone at home who is free to come fetch you? Your father, a relative, a neighbor?”

  “Free to come fetch us,” said the boy, rolling the words out as if they were novel concepts. “No problem. I’ll just call for the family carriage to come pick us up, shall I? Or maybe the butler’s free.”

  “Don’t be cheeky with me, boy.” Shiercliffe looked at Aggie as though she was responsible for the children’s lack of extended family. “You’ll have to summon someone from the workhouse to take charge of them while their mother recuperates.”

  “Is that really necessary?” The workhouse was a grim place for a child, and they would separate the brother from his sister.

  A line appeared between Shiercliffe’s brows. “What are you suggesting? That we let them wander around the various wards unsupervised?”

  Now I’ve gone too far. “I’m sorry if it sounded as though I were questioning your judgment.”

  Shiercliffe softened. “You’re a clever girl, Aggie, and good-hearted. And I can see why you sympathize with these poor tykes. But a girl in your position cannot afford to care too much. Leave charity for the rich and the powerful—they can afford it.”

  Aggie bit the inside of her cheek. “Yes, Matron.” She hated to admit it, but Shiercliffe had a point. If she were to be kicked out of nursing school, she would have a stark choice—return to Henley and see if her mother would take her back, or survive on the streets as best as she could.

  “Now, go to the laundry and put on a fresh apron. You look like a butcher’s wife.” She glanced at the woman on the cot. “I’ll get one of the ward nurses to see to this woman...and her children.”

  “Thank you, Matron.” Aggie bobbed a curtsy and risked a quick smile for the children. “You two mustn’t worry,” she said softly, kneeling down so she could look them in the eyes. “We’ll be taking the very best care of your mum here. Promise.”

  The girl put her thumb in her mouth, but the boy regarded Aggie warily. “How do we know you’re not going to turn our ma into one of your monsters?”

  Aggie glanced up at Shiercliffe. “Is that what folks are saying?”

  The boy nodded. “They say you’re making your own army of monsters to rule the East End.”

  That was fast. The former Ingold Academy of Bio-Mechanical Medicine and Engineering had only moved into the Royal Victoria Hospital a month earlier. Still, Aggie was all too familiar with the way locals could resent an incursion of outsiders—especially ones involved in mysterious scientific studies that involved dead bodies. She had grown up in Henley, right in the shadow of the infamous medical school. Every autumn she would hear the noisy wheels of two-horse growlers clattering over the cobblestones past her home, transporting new students and their luggage from the train station in York to the mysterious school at the top of the hill.

  Her younger brothers and their friends liked to chase the carriages, scooping up handfuls of manure from the street and hurling them at the coach’s windows, shouting, “Vivisectionists! Butchers!”

  Ingold was the only institution in Great Britain where students could learn the cutting-edge techniques of reanimating cadavers to produce Bio-Mechanicals, and the villagers embroidered the meager facts they knew with rumors and wild surmises, then repeated the tales around their hearths on long winter nights until the lies were clearer and sharper than truths. I saw it with my own eyes, someone would claim—dead-eyed men, shambling along the side of the road, trying to return to lives they could not recall.

  My uncle managed to sneak into the laboratory, someone else might chime in, and he watched an amputated hand curling and uncurling its fingers, till it inched wormlike across the table toward a scalpel.

  In the end, the locals’ distrust and superstition had turned them into a mob that burned the school down last December. Aggie knew that if they didn’t convince the East Enders that their new neighbors intended to help, not harm, this school could meet the same fate as the last one. Of course, the school’s reputation would have benefitted from a bit more attention to women like this one, who could be saved, and a bit less focus on the acquisition of fresh corpses for the Bio-Mechanical program.

  “What’s your name?” she asked the boy.

  The answer came grudgingly. “Timothy.”

  “Well, Timothy, it’s not true. We’re just like any hospital—we treat the sick and try our best to make them better. But some of our doctors also do research for the queen.”

  “Making monsters.”

  “Making Bio-Mechanicals, so if the kaiser ever tries to invade us, it won’t be our young men getting shot and killed. So, now, what would we want your mum for?”

  Timothy looked uncertain. “Dunno,” he said. “Mums go missing on the street at night, though. They say the body snatchers aren’t fussed what they take.”

  Aggie put her hand on the boy’s thin shoulder. “Those are just awful rumors. I promise you, we’re not g
oing to do anything bad to your mum. We’re going to help her.”

  His eyes searched her face. “You swear?”

  “On my life. May I be struck blind if I’m lying.”

  Timothy contemplated this, then spat in his palm and held it out.

  Hoping Shiercliffe would understand, Aggie spat in her own palm and then clasped the boy’s hand in hers. She could see the relief that he could not quite hide—a spitshake was not quite a blood vow, but for people like Timothy and herself, it carried more weight than fancy words and signatures.

  Shiercliffe cleared her throat. “That’s quite enough of that, DeLacey. Now go and wash your hands and find a fresh apron.”

  “Yes, Matron.” She got to her feet and was heading out the door when Shiercliffe’s voice stopped her again.

  “You’re a capable girl, Aggie, with more common sense than most. If you don’t give in to these sentimental impulses, you might just have the makings of a decent nurse.”

  From Shiercliffe, this amounted to effusive praise. Aggie curtsied, then headed for the stairs, still assimilating the fact that the head of nursing hadn’t gone sour on her, after all. The relief of it spread through her like a balm. Without the older woman’s support, Aggie knew she wouldn’t last long here. Her own mother had said as much.

  “London, is it? You’re just asking for trouble. Aren’t nurses supposed to keep their legs crossed? We’ll see how long that lasts. I reckon you’ll be ruined by one of them young doctors and selling yourself on the streets within a year.”

  Her mother had been cutting an onion when Aggie walked out the door of her childhood home, and had refused to acknowledge her goodbye.

  Aggie did not regret her decision. Sometimes, it was more important to have the hope that things would improve than to have the security of knowing that things would not get worse.

  Of course, the flip side of taking a risk was that there was also a chance that things could deteriorate, and instead of gaining something new, you would lose what little you had.

  4

  A cloud drifted over the moon, casting the graveyard in shadow. The Artful Dodger didn’t worry—his eyes adjusted quickly to the shift in light, and he’d always had a talent for finding his way through the dark. Maybe it was in his blood—as a boy, his mother had taught him that the Jewish calendar followed the moon, but he could no longer remember the names of the Hebrew months or the prayers that attended them.

  Ah, well. It wasn’t as though prayers had helped his mother much.

  Stepping over a rotting tree stump, he spotted a bright splash of orange—a small cluster of edible winter mushrooms. At least, he was fairly certain they were edible. February was too late in the season for deadly funeral bells, which looked similar and also grew on deadwood, but still, he wouldn’t be the first to mistake a foe for a friend.

  Well, nothing was certain in life, and he wasn’t one to pass up a free meal. Crouching, he picked as many as he could cram into his handkerchief. He hadn’t been thrilled about meeting Bill Sikes after dark in the thieves’ cemetery, but he knew how to forage in nature as well as in rich men’s pockets.

  Faygie liked to claim that the thieves’ cemetery boasted the finest pickings in London—the best dandelions for wine, the perfect nettles for tea, blackberries so sweet and tart the queen herself couldn’t ask for better—but this was nothing but a humbug. Dodger had foraged in old churchyards from Mile End to Highgate, and the outcast dead didn’t make better fertilizer than respectable citizens. Strip away the layers of silk and bombazine, and you couldn’t tell a debutante from a bangtail.

  Tying up his handkerchief corners to secure the mushrooms, he saw that he was standing at the foot of a fresh grave. Someone had taken the time to plant a wooden grave marker at the head, and to carve the words Beloved Letitia and the dates bookending the girl’s brief life: June 1886–February 1903.

  Seventeen—same age as me, more or less. He wasn’t entirely sure of the year of his birth, but unlike Bill, he looked young for his age. Bill had attained both the size and scruff of a hardened criminal, while Dodger was lean enough to slip into small spaces and smooth faced enough to pass for innocent—so long as no one looked too deeply into his eyes. Thievery, like acting, was a profession that required the ability to lie with real conviction, and he was an excellent thief.

  Dodger froze as something frantic rustled in the brambles. Whatever was on the other side of the thorny bush scampered off, low to the ground, and he let out his breath. Probably a fox. Where the hell were Bill and Nancy, anyway? These days, it wasn’t exactly safe to go traipsing about graveyards on your lonesome.

  Last month, the tabloids had broken the news that the Royal Victoria Hospital was now under new and shady management, followed by a series of increasingly histrionic headlines: “Corpse-Walker Docs Set Up Shop!” “Good Morgue-ing: Hospital Offers Deals on Fresh Bodies!” “‘I Woke Up Screaming’: Local Man Mistaken For Dead, Wakes Moments Before Ghoulish Doc Turns Him Into Bio-Mechanical!” The stories were accompanied by lurid illustrations, often of beautiful young women in clinging nightclothes being menaced by living corpses.

  Rags like the Illustrated Police News were notorious for printing rubbish, but there was at least a grain of truth in these recent reports. The Royal Victoria was actively advertising for corpses, to be used “in service to the Crown.” The advert promised as much as two pounds for a fresh body taken in the prime of life, with a ten shilling bonus if the body was no more than two days old.

  A bloke could get quite creative over the prospect of two pounds, ten shillings.

  A gust of cold wind rattled the branches of a yew tree, and Dodger shivered and blew on the bare tips of his fingers, exposed by his half gloves. Bloody Bill and his penchant for meeting in graveyards. Bill said he preferred to do business transactions away from prying eyes, and that in the graveyard they could look over what each of them had stolen that day and figure out what it was worth without worrying about being double-crossed by some other gang. Fair enough, but Bill never showed up on time, and Dodger would have preferred to take his chances somewhere where he could order a pint and a meat pie.

  Something rustled in the bushes, and Dodger froze. A moment later, there was a scurry of something small—doubtless the mouse that the fox had been hunting. Sod it—his nerves couldn’t stand much more of this.

  He pulled a silver fob watch out of his waistcoat pocket to check the time: just after nine. Bill could have till half past, and not a moment more. Suddenly, there was a shift in the air, subtle but unmistakable for anyone who lived by his nerves. Without turning around, he said, “Hurry up and surprise me already.”

  Nancy stepped out of the shadows, smiling and shaking her head. “You must have the ears of a bat.”

  The watch was back in his pocket as he turned to greet her. “My love for you is such that I am exquisitely attuned to the merest hint of your presence.”

  “You saying I smell?”

  Dodger smiled back at her. “Only of violets.” The truth was violet water could only partially mask the scent of healthy girl, especially when she only had one dress. Not that he minded. He liked how Nancy smelled. “Where’s Bill?”

  She shrugged.

  “Nance, you didn’t come here on your own?”

  She gave him a level look. “I came here the same way you did. What’s your point? That I’m too helpless to fend for myself?” With a flick of her wrists, Nancy revealed two little switchblades.

  “You’re a dab hand with the blades, Nance, but face facts—neither of us can stroll around the way Bill does. He’s got the size and the mug to scare away trouble—and he’s got his dog, besides.”

  She retracted the blades and stashed them back under her sleeves. “Feeling jealous?”

  That stung, but not as badly as it once had. “Don’t worry, luv,” he said, picking a berry from his hat and offerin
g it to her. “I’ve learned my lesson. You’re Bill’s girl.”

  “I’m my own girl,” said Nancy, and it would have been convincing if he hadn’t watched her moon over Bill for the past three years. “Aw, damn. Would you look at that.” She was kneeling down in front of the fresh grave.

  “Did you know her?”

  “Yeah, from the workhouse. Her bed was a few feet away from mine. We lost touch, though—haven’t seen her in a year or so.”

  The back of Dodger’s neck prickled with unease a moment before they heard the sound of footsteps. Nancy stood up, her face all lit up at the prospect of seeing Bill, but Dodger gripped her arm and pulled her back into the shadow of the yew tree.

  Oliver Twist stepped into view, a shovel resting on his shoulder, and Dodger sighed. Just when he thought the evening couldn’t get worse. He stepped out of the shadows, making Twist jump. “Hullo, Twist.”

  Twist straightened his jacket and tipped the brim of his top hat. Like Dodger, he affected a gentleman’s dress. “Dodger. Wasn’t expecting to see you here.” Spotting Nancy, he added, “And the lovely Miss Grimwood. Don’t tell me you’re both working the resurrection game?”

  “We’re not grave robbers,” said Nancy, planting her hands on her hips. “And even if we were, we wouldn’t go digging up some poor girl what never caught a break in her life.”

  “Aw, c’mon, Nance,” said Twist, leaning on the shovels. “Don’t be so harsh. It’s not like Lettie’s going to care one way or another.”

  “It’s not right,” insisted Nancy. “She had enough of men bothering her when she was alive. Now she’s dead, she deserves a bit of peace.”

  “Now that she’s dead,” said Twist, “she has it. If you believe in souls, then hers is off in a better place. What does it matter if I make a few bob from her fleshly container?”

  “Leave off,” said Dodger. “There must be some other grave you can desecrate. And don’t the hospital want blokes for their experiments?”