Young Writers Society

TWO

I finished my anatomy lecture at St Bart’s a little after one, but was kept behind by a student wishing to discuss the merits of Paracelsus over Galen. Swift was a pleasant man some years older than myself, and he was a regular attendee at my lectures. He scribbled a note on his cuff and said, ‘So you do hold to Aristotle’s theory of dualism?’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘The mind and the body are two separate spheres. A body is just flesh powered by the soul, but the soul isn’t something irrevocably tied to the body. Death is proof of that.’

‘But could the soul still reside in the body? If one could reanimate the flesh, would the soul remain, or could one harvest the soul from the dead body?’

‘No,’ I said, a little too quickly. ‘A dead body is just flesh. Building blocks. An empty house. I mean, as far as we know. I’m not sure we’ll ever gain a definite answer.’

Swift nodded. ‘No, I suppose not.’

‘If you’re really interested, I think Professor Waldman wrote a paper on dualism and Descartes that was published last year. I can’t remember which journal it was in, but if you ask him, he’ll probably be more than happy to show you. And talk your ears off about Descartes and immaterial spirit while you wait.’ Swift grinned, and I added, ‘I’m seeing a client this afternoon so I must hurry. But talk to Professor Waldman.’

‘Yes, of course. Good afternoon, Monsieur Roussel.’

‘Good afternoon, Swift, see you next week.’ I gathered together my books and papers and put them carefully in my satchel, then went to drop off a folder of da Vinci’s drawings in my office.

The white-washed halls of the hospital were thronging with students and doctors going to lunch, and I exchanged greetings with familiar faces, calling halloos to acquaintancesand colleagues and pausing to have a few words with a student about supervising a dissection study. I ran into Renton on the stairs and he waved a copy of Journal de l’Empire in my face. ‘Victor, hello! I picked this up from one of the fellows in surgery—didn’t know if you’d already seen it? I don’t think there’s anything about Switzerland in it, but you know how bad my French is.’

‘Oh thanks Renton!’ I scanned it eagerly, but most of the debates recorded were about Paris and the immediate state of the revolution. I sighed.

‘Nothing?’ Renton tutted sympathetically. ‘Ah well.’

‘Ah well,’ I agreed. ‘Never mind. Thanks anyway, Renton.’

I opened my satchel as I walked and tried to fold the paper one-handed and fit it in, but the folder of drawings kept slipping under my arm. I held the folder between my teeth and as I reached my office, finally managed to squeeze in the paper between the books. I fastened the buckles on my satchel, looked up and realised there was a man standing outside my office. He was tapping his fingers impatiently against the doorframe, and he looked as though he’d been there a while.

I took the folder out of my mouth and said, ‘Yes?’

‘Monsieur Russell?’ he said.

‘Roussel,’ I said automatically. ‘Victor Roussel. Don’t worry, a lot of people get it wrong.’

His mouth tightened in annoyance. ‘Roussel, then.’ He made it sound as though I were being unreasonable. ‘I am Constable Thomas Newman. Did you get my letter?’

‘Oh! Yes, yes I did.’ I tried to squint down at my pocket watch but it was too deep inside my pocket. ‘I’m sorry, am I late? I had a discussion with one of my students. Just let me put this folder inside and I’ll be with you in a second.’

I elbowed open the door, dumped the folder on my desk and hurriedly returned back to Constable Newman. He was adjusting the cuffs of his immaculate black jacket. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘are you ready?’

‘Yes I—’

‘Then perhaps we may finally talk?’

‘Yes—’

‘Let us take a walk in the park. I believe the crocuses are in flower.’

‘Erm—’

‘Excellent.’

He led the way down the stairs, and I trailed after him feeling rather confused. This was not at all like the picture of Constable Newman that I had built up in my head. I had imagined a small man, shy and quiet and ill-at-ease. I would have had to speak firmly but soothingly about the impossibilities of expecting love from a creature of cogs and chemicals, perhaps putting a soothing hand on his shoulder and offering to buy him a drink. At first he would have been crushed and disappointed, but then would have taken heart and, stiffened with resolve, sallied forth into the world to finally live the life he had been too afraid to before. Thank you Monsieur, he would have said. You have truly opened my eyes; I see now where I went wrong. I shall go and meet people, I shall attend anniversary dinners and auctions and meet a nice young lady with eyes like cornflowers and we shall be very happy together.

The man striding ahead of me didn’t look as though he had any time for young ladies with eyes like cornflowers. He was tall, almost as tall as I was, but with broader shoulders. He had thick black hair cut in a Bedford crop and waxed into a rigid side-parting. His eyebrows were thick, his sideburns long and luxuriant; and his chin had the firm outline of someone used to clenching his jaw and having everyone around him snap to attention. Looking at his rigid shoulders, I suddenly remembered the ink stains on my trousers and tugged self-consciously at my coat tails.

Constable Newman led the way out of the main doors and into the busy bustling streets outside St Bart’s where he paused impatiently to let me catch up with him. He adjusted the brim of his spotless black hat, and a withered old woman with a tray of bootlaces around her neck shot him a filthy look as she was forced to steer around him. I stood aside to let her pass and asked the constable, ‘Did you have somewhere in mind? A coffeehouse, perhaps?’

‘Coffeehouses are filthy places. There is a small stretch of green a few streets away where the quiet is more conducive to private conversation.’

‘Where the crocuses are in flower?’

‘What?’ He stared at me as though I’d made a dirty joke.

‘Nothing,’ I mumbled.

The stretch of green was a small circle of clipped grass slipped between Long Lane and The Butcher’s Hook. There were no crocuses, but the grass under the few straggly trees was starred with late snowdrops. The faint mumble of traffic in the streets beyond, the squelch of the muddy path under our boots and the sweet warble of a blackbird were the only sounds. Constable Newman shortened his stride, adjusted his hat and waited for me to catch up with him.

I was a little out of breath. ‘Constable Newman, do you want to explain—’

‘Yes.’

I waited. ‘Yes?’ I prodded.

He exhaled sharply. ‘Monsieur Roussel. As I mentioned in my letter, I am a constable in the organisation that the public usually refers to as the Bow Street Runners.’

‘I don’t,’ I said untruthfully, but anxious to make a good impression. ‘You call yourselves Mr Fielding’s People, don’t you?’

He ignored me. ‘Last month I was making a patrol along Lambeth Hill. It was very late. Pitch black, thundering with rain, no one about. I saw a man coming along the street with a cart piled high with something that I couldn’t quite make out, so I stopped the cart and had a look under the cover. It was full of bodies. The man was a gravedigger. He said he’d just come from St Bartholomew’s Hospital and was taking the rubbish to Cross Bones Cemetery across the river. How do bodies constitute rubbish? I asked him. He was a very uncouth fellow. He cursed and spat and said that they were rubbish because they were poor, because nobody cared that they were dead, and because nobody could bother to do anything with them.’

My hands were clammy. I shoved them into my pockets and clenched the lining, but my fingers felt cold.

‘That made enough sense to let him go on his way. However, after he left, it occurred to me that perhaps he might need assistance loading his boat to take the bodies across, so I hurried after him. When I arrived at the water’s edge, his boat was already well away from the dock, but oddly enough, it was not heading south, but west along the river. Well, there was nothing wrong with that. Maybe he was taking an alternate route across. But at so late an hour in such foul weather? It piqued my curiosity, and I followed him by the light of his boat’s lantern along Castle Baynard Street and along Dowgate Hill and finally to Allhallows Lane, where he bought his boat in to the steps leading up to the back of one of the houses.’

‘Yes.’ I cleared my throat too loudly. ‘Yes, there are many houses along that road.’

‘But not too many to mistake the number of the house where the gravedigger stopped to unload the bodies. And I was close enough to see the man who was waiting at those steps to help him bring them up into the house.’

There was a long pause.

‘It was you, Monsieur Roussel,’ he said.

I stopped in the middle of the path. ‘No.’

‘Yes.’

‘No. No, it wasn’t. You’re mistaken.’

‘You have been bodysnatching, Monsieur Roussel. Stealing the bodies from the hospital and—what? Using them in your business? Mingling man and machine?’

‘It’s not like that!’

‘Really?’ He swung to face me. His eyes were like black diamonds. ‘Then what is it like?’

My heart was thudding painfully in my chest. ‘It’s just flesh.’

‘People,’ he said ruthlessly. ‘People who were meant to be buried.’

‘What good are they buried? Nobody cares! That’s what Kettlesing meant—nobody cares about them, they’re the people who died alone in the poor wards without any family to bother about them. And now they’re just bodies. They’re building blocks. Empty houses. They’re just flesh!’

‘You fool, keep your voice down.’ He grabbed my arm and dragged me under one of the budding trees. ‘Although I find your actions despicable, that is not why I am here.’

‘It’s not?’ I repeated stupidly.

‘No. I did not report the matter. When I came to find out who you are and what you do, it seemed that more good could be done through keeping this out of the magistrates court. I have told no one about your midnight activities, but if you wish to keep it that way, I suggest you listen very carefully to what I say next.’

‘What?’

He reached into his pocket and brought out a small leather-bound notebook tied with a fraying red ribbon. I recognised it at once, and bile rushed up my throat.

‘This is your notebook, I believe, Monsieur Roussel.’ He flipped it open to the first page and on the white paper I saw my handwriting: This book is the property of Victor Guy Roussel, 1 January 1791. Ce livre appartient à Victor Guy Roussel, le 1 Janvier 1791.

‘Where did you get that?’ I croaked.

‘It was sent to me not long after I began making enquiries about your business. I think someone had an idea of what I was planning and decided to help me finally make up my mind. Several of the choicest passages have been helpfully translated into English, and after reading this... Well, I am no longer in any doubt about your ability to carry out my commission.’

‘Commission? What commission?’

‘My wife and I have only one child. A daughter. Lenore. She is twelve years old, and she is dying. She has consumption of the worst kind, and the doctors cannot help us any longer. We have tried everything—everything, Monsieur—but she is still dying. She will not last another month.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Lenore will die very soon, Monsieur Roussel. When she does, my wife and I wish you to resurrect her.’

‘What? No I—’

‘If you do not bring her back, I will tell the Magistrate’s Court everything. The bodysnatching would only give you a few years in prison, but combined with the publication of your notebook, it will make a scandal that will destroy you. Switzerland was annexed last year. Officially, you are now French. How lenient do you think the public will be when they learn they’ve been doing business with a bodysnatching French revolutionary?’

‘I am not French!’ I said desperately. ‘And I’m hardly a revolutionary. People know that; they won’t suddenly forget it just because you publish a few university notes.’

Newman turned over a few pages in the book and read aloud, ‘8 June 1791. The study is progressing better than I dared hope. The experiments with the frogs have given me much to think about, and I hope that I can successfully replicate the results on human flesh.’

I felt ill. ‘Stop it.’

‘17 March 1792. I took another body from the streets tonight, an old man who had died from severe malnutrition. His limbs were too wasted to salvage, but I saved his tongue and scalp, and have preserved them in jars of ice.’

‘Stop it!’

He closed the book. ‘There is more than enough in this book to devastate your business and reputation. How are your clients going to look at the companions and nurses you have provided them with? Fuelled by the dead meat of suicides and prostitutes and vagrants, created by a foreign maniac who even in his university days was stealing bodies from the streets of Paris.’

‘It’s not like that!’

‘I think it’s exactly like that. So. Tell me. What is your answer?’

This was lunacy. I could not repeat what I had done in Paris, could not.Paris was an evil nightmare that I thought I had left behind me when I came to England; there was no way that repeating those mistakes could lead to anything but evil. I couldn’t go through it again.

‘The study was not a success.’ My voice sounded feeble, like a child’s.

‘I think it was success enough.’ Newman’s face and voice were implacable. Nothing I could say would reach him, and I felt suddenly as though all my efforts were only as waves beating against a rock. No matter how hard I tried to wear him down, he still stood upright and unaffected. I couldn’t win against him, and it made me recognise my weakness even as I despised myself for it. I couldn’t have a scandal. I couldn’t go to prison. Despite Paris, despite everything, if I couldn’t work and do what I loved, I might as well be dead.

‘Monsieur Roussel?’

‘I’ll do it,’ I muttered.

‘Good.’ He took a deep breath as though breaking water. ‘Good. Thank you.’

‘I’ll need—I’ll need bodies. I’ll need to tell Kettlesing.’

‘Kettlesing is the gravedigger with the cart?’

‘Yes. He’s a friend. He’ll be discreet.’

‘I certainly hope so. It’s his job you’re risking as much as your own.’ He put my notebook back into his pocket and took out a packet of papers. ‘I have written down certain particulars that I think you will need. The details of Lenore’s illness and physical condition, the physicians’ opinions and observations.’

I took the packet. It felt very light in my hands. I put it in my satchel, and felt in my pocket. ‘Here. I suppose I should give you my card. It has my address on.’

The card was creased from being in my pocket and flecked with crumbs and bits of blue fluff. Newman took it with a faint smile. ‘I know your address, Monsieur Roussel.’

I stared at him dumbly.

‘I trust you will have made yourself familiar with the contents of those papers by tomorrow morning. I shall call for you at nine and we shall travel to my house where you will examine Lenore and make your preparations.’

‘You don’t need to call. If you tell me your address I can make my own arrangements.’

‘I prefer to call.’ He straightened his coat. ‘Nine o’clock. Please be ready on time.’

‘I will.’

‘In that case, I think that is everything.’ He held out his hand. ‘It was a pleasure meeting you, Monsieur. I hope that our business together will be concluded to the satisfaction of both parties.’

I shook his hand, and he turned and strode along the path back to the street. One of the snowdrops had been crushed under Newman’s boot, and it lay bent against the grass, the white petals broken and smeared with mud. I began to walk back along the path, but had not gone six feet before my nerve broke. I shoved aside a drunk coming out of The Butcher’s Hook and ran pell-mell through the streets to find Kettlesing.