“Sort that lives with a dead mage,” another voice called.
Wycliff narrowed his gaze at the assembled people. Was someone trying to implicate Sir Hugh Miles? They spoke out of fear and ignorance. The physician had his own laboratory and didn’t dump bodies in open fields. Not that Wycliff had observed in his time under the doctor’s roof, in any event.
“She was alive when I found her, poor mite.” A scrawny man stepped forward, his cloth cap held in his hands and his vest hanging from too-thin shoulders.
“Are you sure?” Wycliff found the man’s words hard to believe. The woman looked as though she had been dead for a period of days, given the mottling under her skin. Or she might be one of the few Afflicted who were ambulatory for a period of time and then inexplicably fell permanently dead.
The man nodded and swallowed. “She were muttering, but I couldn’t catch what she said. Then she pointed over that way, toward the Physic Garden.”
Wycliff glanced in the direction the man indicated, but nothing struck him as noteworthy. The field ran up to the hedge that encircled the apothecary garden.
“She might have lived if I had found her last night, but I’m a little fellow and I wasn’t going to search out here with that monster lurking in the dark.” He twisted the cap in his hands, making the cloth do penance for his shortcomings.
“From the state of her wounds, I doubt she would have survived.” Wycliff now had two bodies that had been stitched together. What was going on out here?
“What do you want done with her, sir?” the Bow Street Runner asked.
Wycliff dropped the sheet back over the woman. “Move her to the Royal Hospital—that’s the closest place. Sir Hugh is otherwise engaged today, but there is another doctor who may be able to examine her.”
At least the Runner was of some use—he had commandeered a cart to transport the woman. The body was lifted in, and with nothing more to see, the crowd dispersed. Wycliff mounted his horse and followed the cart on its short journey to the Royal Hospital.
The driver pointed the horse toward the wing that held the small infirmary and lecture room used for the SUSS meeting. As luck would have it, Wycliff spotted Doctor Husom as he dismounted. The doctor crossed the courtyard with two more men at his side.
Wycliff hailed him. “Doctor Husom, I require your expertise if you have a moment to spare.”
The doctor looked up and handed the papers in his hand to a younger man at his side. “Of course. How can I help, Lord Wycliff?”
“A woman was found this morning not far from here. I need her to be examined, as there are peculiarities about her condition. Sir Hugh is unavailable at present and I believe it requires a surgeon somewhat familiar with Unnaturals.” Wycliff kept silent on the rest. Better the doctor saw for himself.
“Peculiarities and Unnaturals? I am intrigued.” A faint smile flicked over his lips. “My man will bring her to my examining room.”
The much brawnier of the two assistants picked up the sheet-covered bundle from the cart and then trod behind the doctor. Wycliff followed them into the building and along a corridor. Doctor Husom opened the door to a room with a long, narrow window placed high on one wall. The sunlight illuminated the grey walls but didn’t allow a view in or out.
A bench ran the length of one wall and another wall was taken up by white painted shelving. A large table dominated the middle of the room. The top appeared similar to marble in shades of grey and green.
“Marble?” Wycliff asked as he ran a finger along the cool surface.
“Slate. Unusual, I know, but it is waterproof and as such is much easier to clean. Neither does it stain. Not to mention its durability. Slate will last a lifetime.” Doctor Husom collected an apron from a hook behind the door and slipped it over his head, before tying the ends behind his back.
The assistant laid out the woman and adjusted the sheet to fully cover her body. “Do you require my assistance, Doctor Husom?”
The doctor glanced at Wycliff. “No, thank you. I’m sure Lord Wycliff can assist if necessary. I assume you’re not squeamish, sir, since you observed the meeting this week.”
Wycliff nodded and waited until the young man was dismissed with a wave and had pulled the door shut behind him.
“Let us see what you have discovered.” Husom removed the sheet and tossed it to the bench.
The woman’s shift was dirty and torn, as though she had run through brambles and fallen to the ground. Perhaps she had fled from somewhere, which would account for the state of her hair and dress. Her long hair was tangled and matted and could have been dark brown or a paler shade under the filth.
The doctor cut the fabric away from her form with large scissors, then tugged the ends free of her body. The ruined garment joined the sheet in a pile.
Once naked, her sad state was more evident. The woman’s age was difficult to determine, even exposed as she was with all her faults and blessings laid bare. She could have been anywhere from her early twenties to late thirties. Her limbs appeared straight and well nourished, if one ignored the raised stitches made with large crosses.
Her skin was mottled much like the slate upon which she lay. She bore several wounds, all crudely stitched and none symmetrical. Her right arm was stitched at the shoulder, the left below the elbow. A red line of stitches encircled her left ankle and another the knee, but her right leg had only the one line of stitches at mid-thigh.
Wycliff stood at the end of the table by the woman’s feet, the light coming in to the side. She resembled a painting or perhaps a sculpture—one depicting the horrors that awaited sinners in Hell. He drew shallow breaths as the sharp odour of death caressed his nostrils and demanded admittance.
Doctor Husom began his examination, working from head to toe. “Hmm…she appears to have been used for surgical practice.”
“Is that common?” Wycliff wondered who would let student surgeons practice such deep cuts and sloppy stitching. What level of desperation drove a person to such extremes, or what amount of money?
The doctor shook his head as he ran his hands down the woman’s arm and splayed her hand to inspect her fingers. “No, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.”
“Is the patient or her family compensated for volunteering for such practice?” He stared bankruptcy in the face, but no matter the amount of coin offered, he would choose life under a bridge to being strapped to a table while men sliced into his body.
Doctor Husom said, “That would be pointless, since it is conducted on the poor dead with no relatives to care what happens to their bodies.”
Wycliff thought such deceased usually went through the doors of Unwin and Alder, but this woman’s hairline was intact, with no evidence that her skull had been cracked open and her brain removed. There was also another niggling fact. “This woman was alive when she was found this morning.”
Doctor Husom peered over the tops of his spectacles and three deep frown lines dug trenches from hairline to brows. “Impossible. Quite apart from the fact that no one could survive this, her skin shows the distinctive mottling of decay. She has been dead for some days.”
War had proved one thing to Wycliff, and that was that men often survived impossible injuries while others succumbed to what appeared to be minor complaints. A person’s determination to remain alive often played a bigger part than the extent of the injury. “The man with her said she was alive and whispering when he found her.”
The doctor huffed. “He probably mistook air escaping her lungs from decomposition for whispered words.”
Wycliff hoped the answer was that simple. London was becoming overrun with deceased individuals who refused to go quietly to their graves. “He was most adamant that she had spoken, and also raised her arm to point to the Physic Garden.”
The doctor rested both hands on the slate and stared at the woman’s abused body. “I say again, impossible. You have observed my work in making a corpse raise and lower a limb, but that did not mean the man was alive.”
The doctor raised a valid point. Except the woman hadn’t been attached to some galvanism device that used electricity to force a muscle contraction. She had been lying in a field. “Why are you so sure she couldn’t have survived the surgery?” This was a doctor who pursued the study of the Afflicted and other Unnaturals. Why did he dismiss with such certainty the possibility of the dead talking?
The doctor picked up the corpse’s left arm and held it on either side of the stitches that encircled the flesh just below the elbow. “These aren’t just practice incisions and stitches. These are full amputations with a subsequent attempt to reattach the limb. Watch when I wiggle the arm.” He twisted, and the bones on either side of the incision moved in different directions. “The bone is severed. Even if she survived one amputation, do you know many people who survive all four limbs being sawn off and reattached?”
Wycliff thought of the Afflicted hand that tried to escape its cage and the forearm someone had stitched to it. “Do all the limbs belong to her?”
The doctor’s eyes narrowed. “What are you suggesting? That someone took pieces from several women and stitched them into one being?”
An exasperated sigh tried to worm up Wycliff’s chest, but he held it in. For a doctor, Husom seemed distinctly lacking in imagination. “Yes. I believe that might be exactly the case. Is there any way to tell?”
Husom walked around the woman’s body and lifted her arm, resting his other hand on her shoulder as he tested the limb. “I will need to conduct a thorough examination, including detaching the stitched limbs and measuring the bones to see if they match. I find your hypothesis most implausible, though.”
What bothered Wycliff more was the smell of death rising from the woman. It was obvious she had died a few days ago, yet it was clear she had been running through fields and whispering to the living. “And yet I saw you use electricity to make a dead man raise his arm.”
The doctor was silent for several long seconds with his head bowed, as though he prayed over the woman, or women, on his table. “It is one thing to bring an intact man back from death so he might return to his family. It is quite another to play God and butcher people to create a new whole from several pieces.”
“An odd distinction to draw, is it not?” Wycliff studied the doctor and the play of emotion across the man’s face.
He seemed to wrestle with some internal beast before whispering, “We all have lines we will not cross.”
At least that was something both men could agree upon. Whoever had created such an abomination had crossed a line, and Wycliff would find him and bring him to justice.
“There is a possibility she was not the first. In the last month, have you seen a man pass through the medical school who was missing a substantial part of his head?” There was a chance the medical man who had taken possession of Barnes was standing in this room. Yet his reaction to cobbling together a human made Wycliff doubt he had had any part in it.
Doctor Husom walked to his bench and selected a blade and pair of tweezers. “We don’t see many fatal injuries here.”
The woman before them didn’t appear to have any accidental injuries. What had been done to her had the look of cold deliberation. “Where do you procure your corpses for lectures?”
The doctor waved the scalpel toward the door. “The Chelsea pensioners. Those without families often bequeath their mortal remains to us, so that we might advance man’s understanding of himself.”
Wycliff needed a direction for his enquiry. He would start with trying to identify the woman. Then at least he could trace her last few days and see if anything matched what he knew of Barnes. “Is there someone here who can draw? I would like a sketch made of her face.”
“There are a handful of artists among the retired soldiers here. Peters, the man who brought her in, will be able to find one up to the task.”
“Have someone draw her face before you…disassemble her.” The hospital was full of retired soldiers who would gossip like washerwomen if they knew what would occur in this room. Rumour already reached for Sir Hugh, and Wycliff would rather deal in facts than fear-mongering.
“I will cover her with the sheet while the man works. Let us do that first.” The doctor put down his implements and fetched the discarded sheet.
Wycliff helped drape it over her form and up to her chin, to cover the scar around her neck. “Good. Once I have a drawing, I can leave her in your care while I attempt to discover who she was.”
13
Sir Hugh Miles the Chelsea Monster?
Woman Mutilated by Surgeon Found in Field.
Hannah read the headlines aloud and then tossed the paper far away from her in disgust. “What a load of tripe! Can you not do something about such outrageous lies, Mother? Surely it is libel to say Papa could commit such a terrible act.”
Seraphina waved a hand and the newspaper scuttled along the carpet to jump up into her lap. “Perhaps a spell that would stitch each wagging tongue to the roof of the owner’s mouth?”
Hannah screwed up her nose. That sounded painful, to say nothing of the fact that a person would starve, or die of thirst, if their tongue were sewn to the roof of their mouth. She certainly wouldn’t wish death on those ill-informed people pointing the finger at her father. “It doesn’t have to be that extreme. You diverted attention when that horrid murder nearly ruined Lizzie’s engagement ball.”
Her mother waved her hands. The newspaper rose into the air and then burst into a ball of flames. The falling ash vanished before it could stain the white tablecloth. “Some rumours are strong, unfortunately, especially those fuelled by fear. But I will set something free to distract attention. Perhaps concerning the upcoming royal marriage of Princess Charlotte.”
All through breakfast, thoughts swirled in Hannah’s mind like hot desert sand caught by the wind. Egypt whispered through her head and became the buzz of locusts that would not be ignored. She excused herself from the dining room and let the noise be her guide. Hannah stood in the middle of the library and revolved slowly until a tug that was half physical, half mental pulled her toward a shelf.
“Aha!” Her hand rested on a heavy tome. The Sacred Rites of Mummification in Egypt. Perfect.
Hannah eased the book from the shelf and carried it to her favourite plush rug close to her mother’s desk. Gathering her skirts under her, she sat cross-legged in front of the book.
Expectation built in her stomach as she opened the cover and leafed through the first few pages. Then disappointment doused the excitement in cold water. She couldn’t read a word of the text, it being written in some cursive form of hieroglyphics. At least she could look at the pictures.
“Oh, I say,” she whispered as another turn of the page revealed a mummy in the process of being wrapped in linen.
The dry, tight skin over bones echoed the image of Lady Jessope and her devout fellow Afflicted. They were so like the image, only separated by thousands of years.
“What are you studying, Hannah?” her mother asked as she entered the library.
“Egyptian mummification. There is a startling resemblance between mummies and the most devout Afflicted who have denied themselves sustenance.” Hannah turned another page where the priests placed herbs between the folds of linen as the body was wrapped.
Her mother stopped by her side and stroked Hannah’s hair. “I believe your intuition has pointed our efforts in the right direction at last. I have been studying Egyptian beliefs. Did you know that during mummification the organs were removed and the stomach, intestines, lungs, and liver were all placed in canopic urns?”
“What of the heart?” Hannah recognised the organ missing from her mother’s list.
“Ah. The heart of the matter.” Seraphina waggled a finger at her. “The Egyptians believed the heart was the seat of the soul, and as such, it was always returned to the body.”
Seraphina wheeled past her daughter to the large desk. She waved her hand and the scattered papers rearranged thems
elves. One drifted to her outstretched hand.
“The heart is the seat of the soul,” Hannah repeated to herself. As she traced the detail on the drawing with a finger, she imagined a ceremony long ago to preserve a pharaoh. “Mummification was the process of preserving the body for life after death, which describes the Afflicted, for they live on after death. Oh, Mother. Does it not all seem too similar to be mere coincidence?”
Laughter drifted from her mother. “I keep telling you that you possess your own kind of magic. Your enquiring mind has put the answer within our reach at last. I can feel it. I will study what herbs were used in mummification. It is possible that the foundation of the spell used to create this dreaded curse will be found in that ceremony.”
“I cannot even fathom why the French would create such an evil curse. It has spread death, misery, and suffering to many innocents.” In the drawing under Hannah’s fingers, the person being wrapped wore a serene expression, eerily similar to that of Lady Jessope.
“War drives people to do horrid things. Do not forget its first purpose was to assassinate me and remove me from the battlefield. Who knows—perhaps that in itself was retaliation for the French mage killed by our navy. In the months that followed my death, the French mage changed how the curse functioned. I and my two companions were poisoned via our tea and it worked quickly, for we all fell ill within two hours. The face powder took a few weeks before it claimed its victims.”
Hannah considered the difference in how quickly the two poisonous potions worked. “Why do you think they changed it to have a delayed effect?”
“To give them more time to infect as many people as possible. A fast-acting epidemic would have seen us react quickly, and people would have been warned how it was spreading.”
Hannah abandoned the book and drew her knees up to her chest. Her mother recounted a nightmare that, thankfully, had never fully been unleashed upon the population of England. “We are fortunate it was limited to two or three hundred of the ton.”
Galvanism and Ghouls Page 11