William didn't. Saltwater he could grasp, and had often used it to wash his own scratches. The rest sounded more like the seeds of black magic than medicine or science. "This is the devil's parlour," he muttered. Yet could he deny the thrill he felt when he thought on the unnatural practices conducted within these four walls? It was another place where death and life drew together in an intimate embrace, two separate states made almost indistinguishable from one another. His mouth watered and his pulse quickened.
The student looked at him, so aloof. "Hardly. What we learn in here could save lives someday."
Bill chuckled. "It's a different world, to be sure. Not for the likes of us. Would you want to be seeing the goods?"
"Perhaps we should wait for–" Before he could continue, William pulled a knife from the waistband of his trousers and the boy stepped back in alarm. This too gave William a thrill, affirming that no learning in the world could impress with the urgency of a sharp blade. Feeling the sack, he made sure he was at the creature's back and sliced lengthways, mindful not to nick its flesh. The burlap whispered as it parted. When the cut ran the length of the sack, he rolled Old Donald free and stepped away.
Old Donald's eyes rolled, and his head twisted, taking them in. It struggled against its bonds, pulling its shoulders forward as it tried to kick down. The effort was futile, but the intent was clear. It wanted them.
"Well," Bill said, his voice a hush. "What would you be thinking about that then?"
"I ..." The man shook his head. "I should be used to them by now. After the last one." Could they have stumbled across the very same buyer who had made Merry Andrew's pockets chink?
"That's well and good, and you'll forgive me for rushing to the crude facts of the matter, but do we have a sale?"
"I ... it's not my place. Be a little patient, my friend." On the table, the revenant repeated its crude attempt at escape again and again, its shrivelled gaze swivelling between the three of them.
"Patient for what?"
"For who."
The timing was serendipitous, for of a sudden they heard approaching voices. Bill shot William a worried glance, and he returned it with a glare. For the first time, it occurred to him that they could have been duped. If retaining a revenant was punishable by the full weight of the law, how much more severe would the penalty be for trying to trade one? William adjusted his grip on the handle of his blade, the better to slice flesh. He was no stranger to its many uses.
The student noticed the tension in his shoulders, and raised a placating hand. "No, please. You're among friends here. You've done us great service, and ..."
"I suspect I'd rather be the judge of that, Mr Fergusson." William whirled, knife up, as an older man with thinning hair entered the room behind him. While he had a powerful, upright frame, it was soft beneath the frock coat in which he was wrapped. He stopped when he saw William's blade, but there was no real fear in him. He raised a single eyebrow and pursed his lips. His face was stiff and pocked, the ravages of some long ago pox, and his left eye was white and blind. "My apologies," he said. "I had thought I was arriving here on a matter of business, as might be conducted between gentlemen. I was clearly mis ..." He trailed off, his attention caught by Old Donald. William was forgotten, weapon or no. Doctor Knox, for there was no doubt that this was the master of the school, approached the table where the body lay, pushing the knife hand aside as though it were not there. William resisted the urge to stab it into the man's back, and watched as the doctor leaned over the body, bringing his face so close to the revenant's own that he thought for a moment he was going to kiss it. It strained for him, and those dead, expressionless eyes turned frantic with frustration at being so close to its prey. It managed to jerk a little closer. Knox pulled back, but only an inch or so. He was fascinated.
"How old, tell me? When did it die?"
"Two days ago, sir," Bill said, and it was obvious from his tone that he found the doctor every bit as striking as William did. "But only this afternoon did it rise."
"Really? Can you be precise? The exact time?"
"I'm a humble man, sir. No timepiece of my own. Perhaps between one and two this afternoon?"
"Good enough," the doctor breathed. "Yes. Yes, good enough indeed. If I started work immediately ..." He straightened, turning to them. "An excellent specimen, gentlemen. Exactly what I have been looking for. We simply need to agree a price, and you can be on your way."
Bill looked at William, who shook his head. They hadn't discussed what price they might fetch.
The doctor smiled. "Shall we say fifteen pounds?"
William's mouth opened, but nothing useful came out. Bill was faster. "Gladly, sir. A fair price indeed."
Clapping his hands together, the Doctor turned to the young man who had met them at the door. "Splendid. Fergusson, do you have the ledger?"
"Sorry, Doctor Knox. It's in the office."
The candlelight caught the briefest tightening of the doctor's lips. "I see. Well, I shall have to fill it in later. Might I ask your names, gentlemen, for my records?"
Bill frowned. "I'm not sure I see the need for that, sir."
"I do not require you to."
"It's just that, begging your pardon, we thought this might be the sort of transaction best kept off the books?"
"Nonsense. I am running a business, sir, not a criminal enterprise. My accounts must be made to balance."
Sensing that his fifteen pounds might be at risk, William stepped forward. "William."
Bill rolled his eyes in exasperation. "And I'm Joseph." William winced. It had not even crossed his mind to make something up.
"And that is all I require. William and Joseph, suppliers of medical provisions. That is how you will be recorded, sirs. I trust that will fulfil whatever need for discretion you might have."
"It will sir," Bill said. "And thank you for it."
"Fergusson, pay the man."
"Of course, Doctor." Carefully, the student counted out fifteen notes and passed them to Bill.
"Now if you'll forgive me, I must ask you to find your own way out. I'm sure you remember the way." The Doctor's attention was again fully focussed on the wriggling cadaver. William felt the weight of his attention shift to the thing, as though they had already taken their leave.
"Of course sir," Bill placed a hand on William's elbow, steering him to the door. "And a pleasure dealing with you, if I might say so."
"Wait," though they had their backs to him, William felt that one-eyed, piercing gaze snare him again. They turned.
"If it happens that in the course of your business you should uncover any similar specimens, I want you to be clear that I shall remain a generous buyer. Do you understand?"
"We do indeed, sir, though I doubt in truth anything else like this will to come our way again."
"Nevertheless, you know where I am."
"That we do, sir. That we do."
Chapter 11
William Fergusson
Sunday, November 25th, 1827
"Hold it still!"
"I'm trying!"
"How can it be this strong?"
Fergusson bit back his retort, concentrating instead on forcing the thing's left arm down. Thomas Jones was doing the same with the other arm. Thick leather straps, that had been attached to the table after Merry Andrew had brought them the first revenant, waited to bind the legs, arms, and head. Even an anatomist of Doctor Knox's calibre struggled for accuracy when the subject of his attentions refused to cease wriggling.
With a groan and a heave, leaning his full weight on the flailing limb, he finally got it down to the wood. Alexander Miller leaned in to buckle the strap.
Knox stood at the door, hands clasped behind his back. "Tighter, Miller. It won't mind."
Alex grinned, redoing the strap so that it bit into the skin, and Fergusson let go. Scooting round the table he helped Tom control the second arm, and they repeated the manoeuvre. The most unnerving thing wasn't the fury of the struggle, but
the relative quiet. Low, pitchless moans from the dead thing aside, all the noise came from the huffing and grunting of the three students.
With the second strap in place, they were done. Fergusson stepped back, shaking. The men who had brought him the corpse had gagged it well, and there was no real danger of a bite despite the thing's determined twists of the head. No, he was shaking because of the effrontery of the creature. It had no business being, yet there it was before him, strapped face down in the lamplight, cold and undeniable.
"Horrible," he said.
"But fascinating." Knox too could hardly keep his eyes off it. "Two days old. Are we in time, I wonder?"
Fergusson knew the question was rhetorical, but couldn't help answering. "We're not likely to see fresher again. We're lucky to have a second at all."
The doctor snorted. "Fortune favours the brave, so I'm led to believe." He clapped his hands. "Very well, if you have your breaths?" They each nodded, trying to place the abnormality of the evening to the back of their minds. "Good. Then we can begin observations. Fergusson, you had the most experience with the last revenant we had on this table. Would you say this one is stronger?"
"Certainly."
"Why?"
He frowned, puzzled. It hadn't occurred to him to question it, but now he saw what Knox had leaped on. The last revenant had been bigger, was clearly the corpse of a man who had died younger in life than the one before them.
How odd to think of it having had a life, having once been a thinking being like him.
"Fergusson?"
It was hard to stay focussed in the face of such horrors. Taking a deep breath, he let the pungent, cleansing chemicals on the air burn at his throat and bring him to sense. "They weaken, over time."
"Yes?" It was a test. Knox had divined the answer, and wished to see whether his chief assistant could match him. Fergusson swallowed.
"They weaken over time ... because ... because they atrophy? Yes! The muscles rot. The one before, it had been in the ground for weeks, perhaps even months."
"Exactly! Congratulations, Mr Fergusson. You may one day develop an adequate scientific mind." Knox turned to the others. "You see? In comparing just two subjects, we have identified key truths that we may not have understood through one alone. Observation and deductive thought have led us to enhance our understanding, and we have yet to take a blade to the subject." He glanced down at the snared revenant with a sneer. "These are not creatures borne of magic and mysticism. They are subject to the same natural laws they were in life. That is why fire remains, for the time being, the most efficient means of disposal. Burn away the muscles and ligaments, and whether some unlife yet remains to it or not, it is helpless to act."
Fergusson repressed a shudder. Could the revenants possess even a rudimentary awareness in such a state, buried and broken, unable even to rail against their fates? Why he felt any semblance of pity at all was a mystery to him. Perhaps it was exactly because this skinny specimen was so very fresh. It seemed not yet to be a monster entire, but rather a monster buried in an old man's body.
Tom spoke up from the top end of the table, his dolorous tones an appropriate match for the sepulchral atmosphere of the room. "How can it be said that it is entirely subject to natural law?"
Knox stopped, swivelling his head. "Your meaning?"
"It is ... I mean ... it died, sir! Something which is dead cannot also be alive. That is something we know to be true, something fundamental to the workings of the world. If that truth is unmade, then what else is knowable? How can we hope to proceed?"
Knox smiled, and it was not pleasant. "Had I not been trapped in the same foolish cycle of doubt but a few days ago, Mr Jones, I would send you away for your puling. Have you forgotten your calling, as I did? Is a mind as young and pliable as your own so swift to abandon all reason and science?" He started pacing, orating, Fergusson was sure, as much for his own benefit as theirs. "This is the beginning and end of everything we are, gentlemen. This is something new. This, here," he stopped and rested his hand on the revenant's back, fingers splayed between its shoulder blades, "demonstrates how short a journey our species has taken along the path of knowledge. The mysteries of our world, our very universe, have barely been uncovered. For mankind to move forward there must always be men of faith who know that they do not know. Only then do we progress. Gentlemen, you are looking at a stepping stone. One that will take us all higher." It was impossible not to be caught up in his passion, and the three of them glanced at one another, the fresh resolve in each set of eyes glittering in the lamplight.
"Now to business. Good science begins with a single slice. Blades, gentlemen. It is time to begin." He lifted his and stepped back, wiping his fingers on a handkerchief which he balled and tossed into a wooden bucket on the floor, then took his cap down from a shelf and placed it on his head. The students followed suit, each man tightening the cords of his rubber coated apron and rattling through their toolboxes for the appropriate scalpels to begin.
Knox took the first cut, blade held like a calligrapher's pen. Leaning over its head, reaching across the body to place his own weight on the table at the far side, he parted the flesh at the base of the skull and drew the shallowest cut in a single steady motion from there to the base of the spine. Satisfied, he stepped away. "To you," he said.
They each took position along the left side of the table, the hierarchy among them clear. Fergusson, the most skilled among them, positioned himself at the shoulders. Alex took the base of the torso, and Tom the buttocks, where a careless slip would cause the least meaningful damage. In truth Tom was more than capable of stripping the body to neat parts, else he would not hold his privileged position as Knox's assistant, but he was the least imaginative of the three. It was hard to tell what Alex and Fergusson himself might make of their futures, such was their potential, but they could all see Tom's path stretching out. He would be respected for his skills, work in the best practical institutions, but he would never innovate. Blue-eyed Alex was as a different matter. Too many underestimated his mind, hidden as it often was beneath his boyish grin, but Fergusson knew him to be formidable. As for himself, he could not say. He knew his skills, and worked hard on his knowledge. Some day, it might be within him to contribute in a meaningful way to the expanding worlds of surgery and anatomy. Perhaps, as part of the doctor's small team, that journey had already begun.
Each man vanished into their own little worlds of focus. All too aware of Knox's eyes on their blades, they positioned their knives almost as one. Fergusson placed the tip of his at the far shoulder, pressing lightly, letting the keen edge of metal do the work. Alex mirrored him, his own scalpel parting skin at the far side of the rib cage, while Thomas began his shallow cut above the buttocks. As one they sliced across the body, drawing their scalpels towards them, careful to part only the skin and avoid the musculature beneath. While the body twitched, giving him cause to scowl at the difficulty of slicing straight, Fergusson did not gain any sense that it was reacting in pain. Rather, it was still engaged in its struggle to free itself and be at them.
They stood back, and he looked to Knox for some small sign of approval, certain that he would not get it. He was right. They had done little more than was expected of a first day anatomy class. While their knife work might be finer than those eager beginners, the result was much the same.
Although it did not seem to be aware of the cuts, the creature's back had divided into four large flaps of skin, two on each side. Blood oozed from the horizontal and vertical cuts, speaking to the freshness of the body. This was when the clock began to tick on their enterprise. No preservative on earth matched the human skin in effectiveness. Once they had peeled it back to peer inside, the body's decay would accelerate, and they would be that much closer to losing their second specimen.
Knox's eyes gleamed. "Would any of you gentlemen care to hazard a guess why we are so interested in its back?" Fergusson hadn't given it a moment's thought. Because you told us to start there
, he wanted to say, but held his tongue.
Alex was quicker off the mark. "The spinal cord?"
"Exactly, Mr Miller. The spinal cord. The brain's courier service, along which it sends its many messages. Why might this be of special interest?"
Fergusson nodded. "After brain death, there are no messages to be sent."
"Yet it moves with purpose. It co-ordinates its limbs. Perhaps, if we can gain some sense of what is happening within its nervous system, we might finally progress towards our goal." Carefully, Knox peeled back the flap of skin above the heart, and Fergusson had to close his eyes for a moment. The twitching of visible muscles, as the creature pulled and strained against its bondage, was hard to bear. How were they doing that, with no oxygenated blood to energise them? "Fergusson? The other side, if you would be so kind?"
Though it went against every instinct in him to touch the thing again, his respect for Doctor Knox overrode all, and he circled the table to begin the night's work.
#
The first glimmers of dawn light were beginning to disperse the fog as the three students left the school in a bleary stumble. All night they had worked, or watched Knox work, attacking the revenant a sliver at time, seeking greater understanding from minutiae. Though the doctor gave every show of being entirely absorbed by the process, Fergusson struggled to see how they had progressed more than a fraction. That was, of course, the very point Knox had been attempting to impress on them when they started almost eight hours before, just after midnight. This was no anatomy class, in which students could be guided to great revelations in the space of a single lecture. While those students were on personal voyages of discovery, the knowledge they sought was known to their betters, bound in books and mastered over lifetimes.
The Flesh Market Page 10
