The Flesh Market

by Richard Wright

  Trying to focus, to place where he was in the unfamiliar graveyard, he remembered the schoolyard that backed up against one wall. While the gates would be guarded, the lower school wall wouldn't. That, perhaps, was how he had found a way in. Why he had decided to spend a night with the dead was a mystery for later.

  Hunched over and staggering, he pushed through imagined phantoms in search of escape.

  #

  The Old Town was stirring to sluggish life by the time he reached home. Scavengers were about their work, cleaning away from the gutters what the city no longer wanted, vanishing the occasional coin or item of value beneath their cloaks. Wives and children, tight-wrapped against the chill, set out for the wells with buckets in hand to collect water for the day's chores.

  Black ice formed invisible, treacherous patches in the dirt, but that wasn't what slowed him as he descended the slope of Tanner's Close. The lodging house presented a peaceful enough facade from the outside, but there was the potential for storms within. He tried to gird himself to face Nelly, but the wretched ache of the hangover was too great a hurdle. He would let her have her say, maybe get some food in him, and then spend the rest of the morning in bed. When he was full in his senses he might be able to find an apology that would mollify her, or at least assure her that the night had been an aberration. He had been behaving until then, and she knew it. Whether it was enough to have her overlook this stumble remained an unknown. He paused at the door, fingers on the chill, damp wood. If he could convince himself, it would help. Perhaps it was just the shadow of the drink still on him, but the self-contempt he felt was enough to drown a man. To spend a night on the streets, and no idea how he had got there or why? No, he couldn't forgive himself that. It was a shameful way for a grown man to behave.

  He pushed the door and found it unlocked. Maggie was already making her own way to the well, then. If he was lucky Nelly would be with her, and he could climb into bed and worry about that conversation after the comfort of blankets and oblivion had eased him a while.

  Sliding inside, he leaned heavily against the wall, grateful for the support. Being upright was costing him after letting the night leech his strength away. The door to his own small room was closed, and he pushed himself toward it, listening for movement and hearing nothing. When he reached the door, he paused to rub his face, hoping to massage some life into it.

  He stepped inside, shutting the door behind him so that whatever argument might happen would be done in the pretence of privacy, and turned to the bed.

  Nelly lay under the coarse sheets, eyes open. Her face was lifeless as she stared at him.

  Bill started to speak, not yet knowing what his tongue would come up with by way of excuse, but then stopped. Something was wrong. "Nelly, love ... what is it? Are you well?" A flicker of something in her eyes, maybe confusion, and the barest twitch of a cheek. "Did I ..." He couldn't finish. The idea that somewhere in that blank in his memory he might have given her cause to shy from him was the sum of all his fears.

  "What happened last night, Bill?"

  It was little more than a whisper, but he grasped at it, making himself smile, mixing a tiny portion of his shame with false cheer. "Love, truth be told, I'm not the best man to ask. I was at the Hart with some lively lads, and William came along and all but dragged me up to the Drop. It's all a bit of a blur after that." It wasn't possible, but he would swear she hadn't blinked since he stepped into the room. "Come on now, tell me what's the matter. I'm sorry I got carried away, but no harm done, and I never promised to make a saint of myself. Can you not let this one go?"

  "You don't remember last night?" He nodded, keeping it light, but ever more scared by her quiet, motionless demeanour. "You need to go upstairs, Bill. You need to see what's up there."

  It felt as though his heart had stopped. "What?"

  "Upstairs."

  Bill nodded, opening the door and backing out of the room. Something flashed through his head, the frayed edge of a dream, an image that made no sense. He refused to acknowledge it, turning for the stairs. They seemed to have doubled in number, and his creaking legs were in no hurry to speed the journey. He pretended that he did not sense how recently he had made the same climb. Did his shoulder ache because he had stumbled a few hours ago, pitching into the bannister and bruising his ribs and arm? That surely could not have happened, because he had been out, sleeping in a graveyard.

  He stopped at the top. On one side, William and Maggie's quarters. On the other, the spare room, where a sick man lay sleeping. He knew which one Nelly wished him to see, but nevertheless made a show of debating with himself.

  The door to the spare room was ajar, and he pushed it all the way in. The room was gloomy, but he saw the empty whisky jar beneath the cot, and the burned down candle in the middle of the room.

  Joseph was on the bed, flat on his back. The sheets had been stripped from him, and piled beneath the window. Somebody had tied his wrists and ankles to the legs of the cot with cast off strips of shoe leather. The lodger showed no signs of concern at his privacy being interrupted with such bold abandon, but that was because he was dead.

  Bill didn't need to check his breath, or feel for his pulse. He'd known Joseph was dead from the moment he had seen Nelly's face.

  Dead, and tied to a bed. Bill wondered if the lodger had been bound before or after he had (been murdered) passed away.

  Had Nelly heard something? Had she heard everything?

  What had there been to hear?

  There were things seething in the hole where his memories of the previous night should have been, and he no longer wanted to know what they might be. "Christ, William," he said. "What in God's name did you do?"

  "Nothing He'd put his name to." William said from behind him. Bill turned, too deep in shock to be surprised. "No point being a maid on it now, Bill. Hard bit's done. Rest is easy."

  "I ..." He looked back to the bed, and the still corpse there. "I was no part of this."

  William gave a harsh laugh. "Not the way I remember it. Your idea, it was."

  "No."

  "Said you wanted it done with. Surprised me."

  "I wouldn't ..."

  "Did. You don't remember?" Bill nodded, but it wasn't true. Specifics, yes, they were gone. He didn't remember sitting on the end of the bed, splashing whisky into three cups by candlelight and passing them round. He couldn't picture Joseph's face, grateful for the late night company even as he spluttered and coughed.

  He didn't remember putting a pillow over Joseph's face, as William held their victim down.

  There were no images to go with these things, but he knew they were true. "Christ, William, how could you let me?"

  "Was thinking on it anyway," William said. "Surprised you took it in your own head. Don't see what troubles you so. We sped him on, and now we'll see good coin for it."

  "We could hang."

  "Nobody to tell on us. Maggie'll be happy to swap the sickness for hard cash. Your woman's your own problem."

  Bill's stomach dropped, and he steadied himself against the door frame. "She saw?"

  William shook his head. "She'd have heard, though. She's not daft."

  Tears spilled from Bill's eyes. The look on her face. The horror and shock. He was the cause. "Jesus. How can she ever look at me?"

  "Put her in a new dress. See how she thinks on things then." Bill nodded, more reaction than agreement. "Good. Work still to be done. Got to get him to your friend Knox."

  Swallowing, Bill stepped into the room, up to the corpse. "I need a knife."

  "Too late for that."

  "The clothes. We need to get rid of them. Anything he owns that might be recognised. Anything that ..." He trailed off, thoughts afire, unable to believe the words coming from his mouth.

  "Might send us gallows-wise." William doffed his shoulder, not seeming to notice Bill shrinking back. "You've the knack of this Bill. You keep us right. What should I do?"

  "Get up to the school. Same one as last time
. Let them know we're coming tonight. I'll ... prepare him. See if they'll organise a porter."

  "They'll know where we live."

  "City's not that big, William. If they want to find that out, they will."

  William grunted, and turned for the door.

  "William?" His landlord, his accomplice in murder, paused. "Why did we tie him to the bed?"

  "Can't be too careful." William stepped out, and Bill heard him descend the stairs. He turned back to the corpse in horrified wonder. A dead man, tied down in case he might cause them harm. He sat on the end of the bed, and waited.

  An hour later, Joseph's eyes snapped open and his teeth drew back in a merciless snarl. As the corpse began to thrash, stirring him from his fugue of misery, Bill wondered how his landlord could possibly have known.

  Chapter 16

  Robert Knox

  Tuesday, February 12th, 1828

  Knox trooped up the steep slope of Infirmary Lane, past the imposing Royal Infirmary itself, head down against a fine drizzle that somehow soaked him more efficiently than abject downpours he had known. He ignored the curious stares of students making their way for the dubious pleasures of The Royal Oak at the top of the street, being well used to the less welcome aspects of his notoriety among the academic fraternity. Among those who would count themselves his peers there was a sharp divide between the contingent that would rush to pass the time of day with him, mostly those from lesser academic disciplines who had little to lose should they incur his disfavour and much to gain by reputation should he tolerate their company, and others who would affect diffidence if they came across him. Students, those he taught and those who knew him only by fearsome reputation, were content to look on from afar and clear a path if they barred his way.

  The public house was parked on the corner of South Bridge, the crest of his ascent, and he paused a moment to glare at the monstrosity on the other side of the road. The University of Edinburgh's New College had been forty-seven years from the laying of its foundation stone to its current partial completion, a span that had been intermittently interrupted by inconveniences such as the death of original planner Robert Adam and the outbreak of the Napoleonic wars. Even now it was incomplete, with the cost of fitting out the library deemed too excessive in the current climate. Was there something about an ornamental dome intended for atop the ostentatious entrance before him? It sounded right. The vast fluted columns on each side of the arched gate looked incomplete without some great weight to bear aloft.

  Knox loathed the neoclassical affectations that had infected the city one overblown construction at a time. Already Edinburgh was known far and wide as the Athens of the North, and seemed ever ready to trade off this image. The homage was flattering, and Knox could readily embrace the acknowledgement of the new enlightenment that their work had ushered in a century ago. Yet their accomplishments were on the wane, a thing more of history than the present. Only a couple of years previously he had walked the streets of Paris, studied and even passed time with Cuvier and his contemporaries, and he knew his home town's collective ego was no longer merited. There was no point in expressing this publicly. While he was ever prepared to dally with controversy, the shadow of Napoleon made pronouncements of French superiority an unwise course, even amidst the ivory towers of academia. Since returning to Scotland, he had worked too hard to jeopardise his escalation with such bold declarations of the true state of things.

  And was there not a chance, a sliver of possibility, that they were once more at a tipping point? Anatomical theory was the cutting edge of progress. The charge to lay bare the secrets of the species, the mystery of race, the mechanics of movement and the dark influence of pathogens and disease, was the defining struggle of the era. In a hundred years, in two hundred, the men who unravelled the secrets of biology would be studied and revered. Although many of their students progressed to undistinguished careers tending to the ailments and injuries of their fellow men, the opportunities for great minds to study and research, to shape the future, were second to none.

  In the revenants there lay opportunities for discovery that could not be matched, and if the powers that be would simply let him work then he would gift this mewling, grasping city a legacy that would echo through the ages.

  Yet they tied his hands, withheld the subjects he required, refused to recognise his authority and skill. He glared at the college, and all the barriers it erected around him. Today, perhaps, he would force the submission he required.

  He strode across the road and through the grand entrance, then across the quadrangle within to a small flight of stairs. It wound upwards, a tight passage leading away from the lecture halls and laboratories, ascending to the office of Professor Alexander Monro. Tertius. The greatest barrier of all.

  A corridor at the top of the stairs had several offices off, and Monro's was at the very end. He heard voices as he approached, and recognised them immediately. As he entered he found that he was last to arrive to their meeting. Monro was slouched behind his desk. A jowly man with a fast receding hairline, he dressed with an almost insolent lack of care. Monro often opined that cleanliness was an attribute ill-becoming of an anatomist, an affectation that stood in apparent denial of the literal guts of their trade. He was nothing if not consistent in his ideals. While no one thing was deeply amiss, there was something inherently repulsive about this man whose parentage had gifted him the university's professorial chair in anatomy. Both his father and grandfather had been great men, pioneers in the field. Their progeny was not.

  As befit its owner, the office was a sty. Papers were scattered loose across the desk, several deep, and had spilled onto the floor. The shelves were in disarray, books piled haphazardly into available spaces, on their sides or upside down, some with the spine faced inwards so that it was impossible to know what the tome actually was. Others were piled in corners and used as inappropriate additional shelving. Monro's filthy anatomy apron was propped on a stack of recent editions. The garment was so crusted with blood that it refused to fold in on itself, was practically a sculpture in its own right. The light in the room was poor, the windows grubby and resistant. Knox slipped off his coat, saw that there was nowhere to hang it and nothing he would risk laying it upon, and folded it over his arm.

  Taking a deep breath to curb his contempt at his surroundings--he needed this meeting to go well--he nodded at Syme, who stood with pallid hands clasped behind his back in the centre of the room, and John Lizars. Tousled and slim, Lizars was a popular and genial man whose own anatomy teachings were well-established at his Argyle Square premises. That those teachings relied more on textbooks than the knife was something Knox was frequently scathing on, but this was a day for unity not strife. "Thank you for joining us gentlemen. And thank you for agreeing to meet, Alexander."

  Monro's perpetual scowl twitched. "As though I could let the opportunity to witness this great moment pass me by. Knox, Syme, and Lizars in the same room at the same time with a common purpose. We should have asked your brother to attend, John. He could have captured the moment with one of his cartoons." Lizars raised his eyebrows. His brother was a respected artist, well exhibited in the city, but if Monro's dismissive tone offended then the anatomist let it wash over him without further comment. Good for him.

  "To business then," Knox said, moving things on before Monro could set too sour a tone. "We have a proposition for the city, one we wish to propose jointly and with vigour. Were you to add your voice to ours, we feel–"

  "James has already covered this ground," Knox shot a glare at Syme that would have made a student weep, but his competitor only shrugged. "You wish the city to cease its unequivocal destruction of all revenants in order to provide you each with a supply upon which to work your skills."

  Knox straightened, hating being on the back foot. "In the briefest terms, yes. We do."

  "Why?"

  Surely the man could not be so obtuse. Knox searched the amphibious face for any hint of mockery. Dust specks drifted
between them, catching what little light was available. "I am not certain that I understand your question."

  "Why do you wish to hack at these things? They are of the same makeup as you and I. You can cut more easily into the muscle of a true corpse than the twitching tendons of a beast that wishes only to feast on you. A muscle is a muscle. There is no difference."

  Knox's temper surged. "You stagger me, Monro."

  Syme tried to derail him before he could go further. "Robert, you should explain–"

  "Where were you?"

  Monro shrugged, his lips curled in what might have been enjoyment. "When?"

  "When the dead rose en masse and surged through our streets. I was at the Castle, treating the injured, watching monstrosities being born and feeding. My colleagues here, my academical adversaries in the craft, were at my side, as were medical men from all walks of life, many from within these learned walls, some mere students who have taken our classes. You were notable in your absence. Where were you?"

  "I was not called upon. I was in my home, waiting for news." It did not appear to have occurred to him that when the city most needed skilled and respected medical practitioners, they had passed him by entirely.

  "Exactly. You did not see them rise and walk, sir. You did not set your eyes upon them and quail at the perversion of everything we thought we knew, everything we pretend to teach with such authority. How can we profess to understand how a muscle works, when it can animate with such purpose in the absence of life itself?"

  "What does it matter?"

  Knox opened his mouth to reply, but no words would come.