"It matters," said Lizars, "because it makes frauds of us all. The Natural World is laughing in our faces."
"Let it laugh. These ungodly things are of no consequence. They are not part of your Natural World, Lizars. They stand in defiance of it. Why should we strive for their unholy secrets, when we intend only to destroy them on sight? They are not a problem for the sciences, gentlemen, but for the military."
Knox could not contain himself. "Do you think the great minds of the continent are going to sit back and wave this away? No! They are going to study, and learn. This is a wholly new field of science, a revelation from which we might derive such knowledge of our bodies as to drive back a thousand ailments! Our bodies can thrive beyond death, man! Think of the possibilities–"
Monro sneered. "If it is indeed a science, then it is not ours. Let it be a pursuit for men willing to poke into the darkness and stir it up. What you propose is nothing short of legitimised necromancy, an affront to God."
"If there is a God, and if I have learned nothing more from my studies I have learned that to be a question rather than a fact," Lizars and Syme each twitched at that, "then He has inserted these things into the natural order. We are picking apart all his other mysteries. Why quail at these?"
"Gentlemen," Syme said, raising a hand as though he could deflect the course of the conversation with a gesture, "we are straying from the point. This is not a philosophical matter, but a practical one." Knox let him speak while he recovered himself. He had been baited despite himself, and pulled off course. His dislike of Monro was long-standing, having formed long ago when he himself was a student. Back then there had been few alternatives to attending the man's lectures and demonstrations, for independent anatomy teachers were scarce. Monro's indifference to his own calling, the manner in which he exemplified it as a somehow filthy thing of gore and pus, had made a profound impact on Knox. On reflection, his own always impeccable dress and the fire with which he strove to lecture were an antidote to the mediocrity Monro had established. His eye caught a dusty carving hung on the wall, the coat of arms of the Royal College of Surgeons. In the very centre, the prostate human body bordered by saws, trepanning drills, fleams and lancets. Representation of the quest for understanding, the unpicking of questions bound into the human form. Above the prone form, next to the cross of St Andrew, a hand reaching down for the body, an open eye staring from the palm. The surgeon's hand. The hand that sees.
Yet when it came to the revenants, they were blind.
Syme was droning on. "What might we offer in solution, were we to delve into these abominations? How are they made? Might we not offer some prevention, some tool which our watchmen and soldiers might employ in the field? Surely the potential benefits of such offerings might justify a few samples being passed to us under carefully controlled conditions."
"We have a solution," Monro spat. "Fire and watchfulness. They have proven effective for over a year now."
"While the things appear in limited number, yes." Lizars paced alongside the shelves, badgering back and forth. "But if they arise in great numbers again, if the Cadaver Riots are repeated, what then? Is it not our job, as men of science, to anticipate such disaster and strive to prevent it before it can sweep us away? Against the many ailments and injuries that may beset the body, could it not be said that it is we who are the soldiers."
"Pah. Enough. You each dissemble, and I find it ill becoming. You profess a desire to help your fellow man, but it scarcely conceals your naked ambition. You lust after glory, to splash your names across the history books. It is hubris, gentlemen. I will not pander to it."
"And if we do seek reputation through this, what of it?" Knox sneered. "Not all in this room dine on the accomplishments of our ancestors. Some of us have navigated challenges, embraced our science. I will not stand to be judged by a man who barely understands the import of our art. To gain notoriety for providing a service to the generations who will follow serves all ends, ours and that of mankind at large."
Monro stiffened. "I believe our conversation is over. You will not have my support. In fact, you may trust me to raise my voice against your petition."
Such was Monro's standing with the city that his objection would make their struggle that much harder. "You are a cretin, Alexander Monro. You embarrass your line, and our profession."
"And you are an ambitious fool, Robert Knox, a strutting peacock willing to go to any lengths for your own professional betterment."
He brushed his hands over his blue velvet waistcoat, picking out the shapes of the golden orchids stitched into is folds. "I do not consider that to be an insult."
"That is what most worries me. Your drive, your vigour on this matter ... could it be that you have already attempted to acquire subjects suitable for your study? Do I have to underline the consequence for all of us if a superficially reputable practitioner were found to have flouted the law for his own ends? It would not do, Knox. It would not do at all."
He stiffened, and was it his imagination or did Lizars twitch too? "It would, as you say, have consequences for us all if any one of us were found to be harbouring an active revenant. We should all hope, very fervently, that no such discovery is ever made."
He strode out, leaving Syme and Lizars to comport their own farewells. Without Monro's endorsement there was little chance that a supply of revenants would be forthcoming through official channels. As was ever the case on the flesh market, those bold enough would continue to source their supplies through independent contractors, and none were bolder than he. That slight twitch of the cheek he had seen on Lizars's face told him all he needed to know about the need for ongoing action. He was not alone in his quest after all.
It was well that his new Irish suppliers had followed up the promise of their first two deliveries with others, just as fresh, for the race was on.
Chapter 17
William Fergusson
Tuesday, March 18th, 1828
Fergusson rubbed his face with both hands, trying to summon some semblance of colour to his cheeks. Exhaustion piled down on his thoughts, making them sluggish. It was the price he paid for putting himself in the service of Doctor Knox. His head had barely hit the pillow the previous night when Davey Paterson, Knox's dogsbody, had appeared at the servant's entrance of his brother's home with a message. "Another subject on the way, sir," he said. "A fresh one. The doctor asked me to fetch you." William had offered his apologies to his brother John, with whom he had been staying since beginning attendance at the University, but his brother had waved it away. Late night summonings were now the norm, and to become a solicitor John had undergone demanding apprenticeships of his own.
"Take it on the chin, Will," he said. "If your Knox is half the brain his reputation suggests then you'll be thankful enough for your time with him when it ends." John suspected that the out-of-hours activities might have something to do with the supply of cadavers necessary to the operation of an anatomy school, but if he were ever to suspect the still-twitching nature of the bodies being received, he would be horrified beyond measure.
Paterson had made himself scarce by the time Fergusson arrived, and Knox would not hurry to join him, trusting him to check the quality of the delivery and make payment. The two Irish arrived within the hour, a spasming revenant in their care. They both smelled of drink, but the more talkative of the two was a particularly wretched sight. Unshaven and red-eyed, he almost collapsed when he leaned forward to take the bills Fergusson offered, making an incomprehensible joke of it and laughing to himself as his weasely companion led him away. Fergusson could scarce blame the pair for their intoxication. To be able to find and capture these creatures on so regular a basis--three more since they first approached the school--they must be walking some very dark paths indeed. It was something he urgently wanted to talk to the doctor about, but the time never seemed right.
When his mentor joined him not long after midnight he had been delighted with the freshness of his new subject. The revenan
t was male (if such a concept as gender still usefully applied to the dead), a dark-haired specimen in strong condition, with the appearance of a man in his forties. The manner of death was impossible to ascertain on examination. There was a jaundiced look to the corpse, which could not have been more than twenty-four hours dead, but nothing that could have struck down a robust man. The previous revenants had been older, more clearly diseased. This one ...
It raised uncomfortable questions.
Yet Knox's enthusiasm had swept him up, and his attention had been turned to the business of cutting and exploring. They had worked until the small hours, stopping only so they could each return to their homes to freshen up for the day. A few hours later they were back at the school, guiding new students through the wonders of the human body in two of the dissection rooms, while their subject struggled against its bonds in a third.
Now it was the afternoon, and the doctor was lecturing. How he kept up so relentless a pace was a mystery, though if all men of science pursued their goals with such energy and zeal it might go some way to explaining why they seemed ever to be at war with one another. A lack of sleep fuelled the temper.
Fergusson had been tempted to retreat for a few hours back to his brother's accommodation, but feared that if he were to put his head to a pillow it would not rise again in time to continue the dissection of the creature that evening. He had visited the library, but found the numbing silence soporific. Words had begun to swim in front of his eyes, and he abandoned the books before disaster could strike.
As a last ditch attempt to occupy himself, he hurried through the spring rains to the Infirmary. The ward operated for the benefit of the students and the city. Treatment and care was free to all, but the assistance offered was more likely to be offered from experimenting students than experienced surgeons. The wards were the crucible in which medical men were forged. In light of the city's size, the many thousands among the poor who could no doubt benefit from some form of medical care, the intake at the Infirmary was comparably modest. Those that knew they could seek treatment there also knew the gamble they were asked to take. To Fergusson's mind, that risk seemed tiny when the alternatives were folk remedies and superstition, but in the absence of education too many who could be served hewed instead to the things they knew.
"Your opinion, young man?" The nun's shrill demand seized his attention, and he smiled an apology. She was a hard-looking woman, this one, and fiercely protective of her charges. The Magdalene Asylum made frequent use of the hospital's proffered care, and three of the young women who lived and laboured under the watchful gaze of the sisters were currently on the ward. He tried to remember the name of the young woman in the bed before him. Mary, he thought. Mary Mitchell. Or Paterson? One or the other.
The nun, whose name he had little interest in, was at the foot of the bed, watching him closely. The Asylum gave sanctuary and new purpose to young ladies who had gone astray, turning to prostitution and other insalubrious means of making their way in life. The sisters took extreme care that their charges were not tempted to return to the sins of the flesh, and that others did not seek to lead them from the righteous path. Fergusson could not fault their intentions, but found their attention to detail an irritating distraction. "Rheumatic fever I suspect, as with the other two." The girl was running an abominably high temperature. He lifted back the blanket, and her eyes widened. "Shhh, Mary. I need to see your legs."
The sister sucked in breath as his hands slid the patient's nightdress up to the knee. "Are you absolutely certain this is a requirement?"
"I am. Nurse?" An older woman in a hospital shift crossed from one of the twenty other beds abutting the aged and cracking plastered walls, pausing at the old table in the centre to splash her hands in a pail of water. "Please assure the sister that I am not taking advantage of this young woman." The nurse nodded, taking the sister a step or two aside and speaking to her in hushed, reassuring tones.
That left William free to continue his examination. "Now, just relax Mary. It is Mary, isn't it?" She gave a nervous nod, and he could tell how hard she was fighting not to slump back and let delirium have her. "You're safe here, Mary. The nurses keep a good eye on the doctors, don't you fret. I'm only examining your ankles and knees, see?" She kept her eyes on his while his hands found her joints. "They're inflamed." He drew the covers over her again and stood up. Mary was prettier by far than most who qualified for the assistance of the Magdalenes. She had a bonny, open face of soft unspoiled skin. The women of the street he had seen elsewhere were harder. Perhaps, for once, the sisters had caught one early enough in her fall from grace to truly abort it. "You can sleep now, if it pleases you. I'm going to ask your bodyguard to leave you and your friends with us for another day or two. You're not at all well, but a few days recovery should put you right."
He turned to the nun, who was still talking to the ward nurse. Mary's hand on his leg stopped him. "Thank you, sir," she said. "Men are half the devil's work, the sisters say. No decency in them. I will remember that they are not always correct."
Fergusson didn't want to dwell too hard on the circumstances that would cause a girl such as this to seek the bleak solace of the Asylum, with its regimented worship a hard labour. "I won't say that the sisters are entirely wrong, but nor are they entirely right. Let them save you, but don't stay away from the world too long."
She tried to smile. "I have thought to leave, sir, one day. I have wondered what might be waiting."
"What stops you from finding out?"
She sank back into her pillow as the fevered lethargy dissolved her brief energy. "Fear, sir. I am afraid that all the things that made me are still there, waiting for my return."
Fergusson wiped a cool cloth across her brow, then placed it in her hand so that she could tend herself. "That you know them by sight steals their power, I think. You will do just fine."
#
"The subject has broken free," Knox called up at him as he entered the cavernous lecture hall. The older man stood at the door to the dissecting corridor, his bright lamp swinging back and forth like a mesmerist's charm, washing light like a gentle tide across the room.
Fergusson stared, too tired to let the news sink in. He felt an unpleasant tingle of nausea in his throat. He had never been aboard a ship, but imagined that seasickness must feel very much like that. He averted his eyes. "Are you certain sir? Could it not be ..." your imagination, he almost said. The school was full of mysterious creaks and rattles that vanished during the tumult of the day's lectures and demonstrations, but became palpable at night. The combination of suggestive sounds and imagination often had him looking over his shoulder while he waited to receive subjects on the doctor's behalf. It was easy to imagine devils in the shadows.
Yet while exhaustion might weigh down his limbs and tickle his mind with paranoia, not so the doctor. By day he was as commanding as ever, whether casting his spell on the student hordes or writing out missives for the local press to make clear his case for a legal supply of revenants. At night, in the dissecting room, his focus narrowed down to the scalpel's blade, to his notes and observations. He did not tire. He did not flag. He did not jump at phantoms. The doctor's vast imagination was full to capacity with the mystery of the revenants. The quest to understand these creatures, to bring their mysteries to heel, was a furnace in him. To suggest for a moment that he might allow an iota of his creativity to devise phantoms from stray night noises was absurd. Suggesting as much would be all it took to trigger his mentor's scorn, and Fergusson could not risk that. To fall from favour and have another take his place as the doctor's right arm would be more than he could bear.
"It is free," Knox repeated, and the note of warning confirmed that he had been right not to finish his sentence.
"My apologies sir. I am ... I have not slept."
A sniff. "I have heard it said that youth is wasted on the young. There will be plenty of time for sleeping when you are dead, Fergusson. For now, time is a villain and our s
ubject becomes ever more denuded by the second." Decomposition was their great frustration. In order to identify what it was that caused these hungry bodies to rise they had fixated on the earliest parts of the process, attempting to find reactions in the revenant that were not observed in the truly deceased. There were two corpses in the dissecting room. The first was the revenant brought in by the Irishmen the night before. Alongside it a properly dead body delivered by Merry Andrew three days earlier. While the corpse knew its place and looked the part of a rotting cadaver, the revenant was so fresh that, animated as it was, it had appeared more akin to a raving lunatic than a walking dead man.
They were always fresh, the revenants the Irish found. So very fresh.
He followed Knox into the corridor, and the two of them ducked into the dissecting room opposite the one in which they had left the creature strapped down the night before. Several lanterns cast a warm glow, and the table had been wiped down from the day's student hackings. He and Knox had left their aprons hanging from hooks on the wall, and as he pulled his on he heard a clank and clatter from the revenant room. Instruments, falling on the floor. It was free all right, roaming back and forth.
It was not the first time one had broken free. They were capable of what appeared to be impossible feats of strength, though Fergusson knew that they were no more powerful than they had been in life. What they lacked was a sense of self-preservation. Where he might cease an effort due to pain, or the tearing of a muscle, or the snapping of a bone, a revenant was not even aware that it had been hurt. They were not unstoppable. They just did not know that. When they pulled against a binding, they did not stop until either the strap broke or something distracted them. Their instinct was to roam, and the doctor had noted that only by constant movement could they increase their chances of encountering new prey. It was not in their nature to remain in one place.
Without further ado, Knox snatched a lantern, crossed the corridor, and threw open the door. "Not so very fast, my dear," he said. "We have business with you yet." He was almost jovial, in better fettle by far than most would have been if asked to walk unarmed into a dark room with the walking, ravenous dead.
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