Anatomy: A Love Story(10)
Jack watched her from the corner of his eye, the way a thin line of the bare back of her neck, so white it was almost translucent, became visible as she leaned down, the gap in the armor of her frock and her hair.
Jeanette cleared her throat. “You do want it, don’t you? ’Cause if you don’t, I got plenty of resurrection men who’d be happy to get a double order like this. I do, Jack Currer, don’t think I don’t!” She pronounced every syllable of his name with a roll of her tongue: Curr-er.
“No, no, I want it, course I do.” He snatched the paper Jeanette was offering him, and then fished in his pocket for the coins.
Jeanette talked out loud as she counted her payment. “One little ’un. Dead of something. Wasn’t sick, so I think it must have been a wet nurse overlaying him. Fancy that. Happens all the time. These little heirs all done up proper in their nightgowns and skirts getting a feeding from a woman who nods off to sleep. Other ’un is a man. Careful with that ’un, Jack—heard a groom say he thought it was the sickness.”
Jack looked down at the names and hastily drawn cemetery map in his hand. “It’s not the Roman fever, Jeanette, and you’d mind yourself not to be spreading those rumors. Gets people scared.”
“You’re not scared?” Jeanette shot back.
Jack drummed his fingers against the side of his leg. He had worked as a resurrection man for years, lifted bodies decomposing with rot and disease, but somehow always maintained his health. He didn’t know whether it was a god giving him mercy he certainly didn’t deserve or blind luck, but he was inclined to believe the latter. “No,” he said, “I’m not scared.”
Jeanette just shrugged, and then scampered off to the house’s back gardens, where she could sneak back in the servants’ entrance and pretend she had never left.
Jack folded the paper and put it in the pocket of his trousers, and then looked up again, back at the woman who had been looking at the roses. She was staring at him, with narrow brown eyes so dark they almost looked black. She was pretty, in the way that all wealthy girls are, with their faces clean and hair combed. Her hair was light, reddish and thick and wavy beneath her hat. Her nose was long and straight, her lips curled up on one side. Jack suddenly felt naked, and a prickling heat crept up the back of his neck. He couldn’t look away from her. It was like she was accusing him of something. Or conspiring with him. Was she smiling, or was that just the natural tilt of her bruise-colored lips?
Finally, to Jack’s relief, the woman’s eyes pulled away, and she lifted a dainty slipper to enter a handsome carriage.
Her gloves were white, and as she disappeared, Jack could just make out a spot of red blossoming at the tip of a finger on her left hand, where she had been holding the stem of a rose to pull it closer. Blood. A thorn had pierced the thin fabric, and the girl hadn’t noticed. A thimble-sized crimson bloom on her ivory hands.
From the Encyclopaedia Caledonia (29th Edition, 1817):
William Beecham, in full William Beecham, Baron Beecham of Meershire, also called Sir William Beecham, Baronet (born 5 April 1736, Glasgow, Scotland; died 7 January 1801, Portree, Isle of Skye, Scotland). Scottish surgeon and medical scientist, president and founder of the Royal Edinburgh Anatomists’ Society, best known for his study of anatomy and the publication of Dr. Beecham’s Treatise on Anatomy: or, The Prevention and Cure of Modern Diseases. The Treatise, with its detailed anatomical diagrams and updated log of maladies, provided the foundation for the next generation of medical students. It has since been re-published over a dozen times in updated editions. A rumored Scottish nationalist, Beecham is said to have refused a post as King George III’s personal physician, after which he was never permitted to return to London.
In his later years, Beecham became famously reclusive, refusing patients or public lectures, and devoting his energy to the study of alchemy and the occult. Beecham’s stated purpose was the quest for eternal life. Beecham succumbed to poisoning from the effects of experimental consumption of gold, mercury, and lead in high doses. Dr. Beecham’s Treatise continues to be revised and re-published after his death by his grandson, William Beecham III.
Married to: Eloise Carver Beecham of Essex (born 1742, died 1764). Issue: John (b. 1760), Philip (b. 1762), Dorothea (b. 1764).
See: grandson William Beecham III
5
SHE COULD DO IT WITHOUT BERNARD, she was sure of it. It was just a matter of making certain she timed it right—she would leave after breakfast, and tell her mother she was going on a long walk in the fields beyond the house. From there, she would need to borrow one of her father’s long overcoats and head out to the stables without being seen. Percy wouldn’t be a problem—he had lessons all morning. And her mother’s bedroom faced the eastern side of the building, so even if she glanced out the window while she was finishing her letters, she wouldn’t see Hazel escaping up the drive.
A carriage was out of the question. Too noisy, too conspicuous. Someone would see her and recognize the carriage between their house and Edinburgh. No, much safer just to ride, and pull the collar of her father’s winter jacket as high over her neck as it would go, and keep her head down.
Hazel had never been to the Old Town unescorted before, but she was confident she wouldn’t get lost. It was all organized like a fish’s skeleton—the spine of High Street from up at Edinburgh Castle down to the Palace of Holyrood below, and alleys and closes branching off from either side. She knew what the outside of the Royal Edinburgh Anatomists’ Society looked like—her uncle had pointed it out once: dark wooden beams and stone, a gilded plaque next to the door. It couldn’t be hard to find. She had the sixpence for the entrance fee growing warm in her pocket, thanks to her nervous habit of rubbing her fingers against the coins, but if everything went to plan, she wouldn’t need them.