by Kat Dunn
‘I can only imagine. We hear of fresh horrors every day, and you must believe I am grateful that you would take such risks to further my – our – work.’ Wickham’s interest in the Revolution drifted rapidly. ‘How much of the papers did you have a chance to study? Edward and I have been working through them – applying electrical stimulation in utero is a fascinating approach, but hardly scalable. A novelty. Nevertheless, I think Aubespine’s theories have given us solutions to some of our problems. I am most eager to test them as soon as is feasible.’
As soon as is feasible. What a polite way to say as soon as he had a fresh corpse. It was the grim reality of the surgical student’s life: corpses brought from gallows to dissection slab the same day. Wickham had never seemed affected by that aspect of his profession, viewing the human body as simply another resource at his disposal. James, on the other hand, struggled not to be affected; he knew it made him a bad surgeon, but perhaps it made him a good man.
There was something else on his mind that James was unable to ignore. ‘What business did you have with my father? Is he still interested in funding your research?’
Wickham’s smile faltered. ‘Unfortunately not.’
James paled. ‘Truly? I was under the impression he thought it significant to the war effort.’
If his father had lost interest, then betraying his mentor had suddenly drained of meaning. His plan wasn’t complicated: deliver Olympe to his father instead of Wickham. He’d thought he was content as Wickham’s favourite, but when he had seen the possibilities Olympe’s power presented, that treacherous thought had crept in. Perhaps he had finally found the thing that would make his father sit up and take notice of him. It might hurt to betray Wickham’s and Edward’s trust – God, and Camille’s trust, for that matter – but it would be worth it. It had to be worth it.
Only, Wickham had just told him it wouldn’t be.
His father wasn’t interested any more.
‘It seems we were both mistaken.’ Wickham tugged his frock coat straight, brushing off invisible specks of dust, then continued before James had a chance to speak. ‘I saw too much death in my time as a naval surgeon. I offered him the commander’s dream, troops who can rise from even the most grievous injuries. If we can harness electrical power, use it to restart that vital spark when it has been snuffed out – why, then England’s enemies would tremble in their boots.’
For a panicked moment, James thought about staying loyal to Wickham after all. His mentor wasn’t so bad an option, was he? Then he thought about the duc in Paris and the dark paths his work had led him down. The same ruthless streak of ambition he saw in Wickham too. He could choose his tutor but Wickham would never choose him. In the end, their work would always come first.
No. James had chosen his father. He was all in, and now the only thing left was to show his hand.
‘What commander would not want such power?’ he said. ‘He will come around.’
Wickham clapped him on the shoulder, a little too hard, and settled his hat on his head. ‘That’s the spirit. With you and Edward working with me, I think we can still give the Frenchies a run for their money, eh? He’s downstairs, by the way. Think your sister has cornered him so I dare say he’ll be glad to see you. We were both worried about you.’
James’s heart sank. Edward.
‘It’ll be good to see him too,’ he said, and he meant it. It had been too long since their last night together in the coffee house by the hospital, sharing lecture notes and planning their brilliant future. Betraying Wickham was difficult; betraying Edward was a gut-punch. He owed his friend far more than making him collateral damage.
Wickham left and the noise of papers being shuffled in the study drew his attention.
Futures changed.
It was time to make a new one with his father.
James shook himself out of his funk and knocked firmly on the open door.
‘Enter.’ The low baritone made the skin on the back of his neck prickle.
Lord Harford was bent over a spread of papers covered in cramped, sloping script. His dispatch box lay open on one side of the desk, the other stacked with unopened correspondence. With a flourish, he signed a document, then looked up, acknowledging James.
His lips thinned.
‘Oh. I see you’ve finally decided to grace us with your presence.’
‘I’m sorry to interrupt you, when I know you must be busy.’
‘And yet you still do.’ James felt his cheeks heat and began to apologise, but his father waved him silent. ‘Never mind that. Clearly you have decided what you want to say is important enough to bother me when I am tasked with the security of the nation.’
James collected himself. ‘Did you receive the letters I sent?’
Lord Harford snorted. ‘I received something resembling letters, but they seemed more like the novels your younger sister wastes her time on.’ He put down his pen. ‘What did catch my attention is that you took the astronomically foolish decision to travel to France – a country with which apparently I must remind you we are at war – in pursuit of some fantastical creature you believe to be imbued with the powers of electricity?’
Well, when he put it like that, it didn’t sound good.
‘Respectfully, sir, it’s not a fantasy but the result of rigorous scientific research – the same research that Mr Wickham has been pursuing in England—’
‘As you say in your letters. Don’t worry, I didn’t tell your mother. A shock like that with her health in the state it is… I would have thought you would have more consideration of your own family. Frankly, James, I am disappointed.’
There it was.
‘First, you insist on embarrassing us by pursuing this ghoulish profession and neglecting your role as heir to the estate, and now you have been taken in by Wickham’s lunatic nonsense. Do not mistake me, he is a clever, charismatic man, has been since I first met him, but he has a tendency to believe his own myth-making, to concoct grandiose ideas of saving the world. Resurrecting dead soldiers, I believe it is this time.’ Lord Harford sighed. ‘I had hoped you clever enough not to be taken in.’
‘You believed it too, didn’t you?’ said James. ‘You were going to fund his research.’
‘A good politician entertains all the options available to him. If Wickham had presented me a genuine, rational proposal I would have been more than ready to back it. But he didn’t. He came here today to berate me about my foolish decision, just as you do. Electricity may well provide opportunities one day, but Wickham’s “research” is the delusion of a man rapidly losing grip on reality.’
James bristled. Why did his father have to be so stubborn? So convinced anything he didn’t know wasn’t worth knowing? James had Olympe. He had proof the science was real. He only needed to force his father to see the truth.
‘The science is evolving every day,’ he said. ‘There are things we know now that would have seemed like fantasy merely a few years ago. I know it may be hard to understand as an unscientific man, but the foundations all point to this very possibility—’ James saw his misstep as he made it. His father’s face soured and he leaned back in his chair, hands steepled.
‘I am an unscientific man?’
‘I beg your pardon, I meant only that your specialism lies elsewhere—’
‘Do you know the going rate for gunpowder? How much food it takes to feed an army? How to supply them as they move?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Do not assume that because I do not interest myself in the same grisly work as you that I am simple; I readily grasp reality, which I fear you do not. Do you know how many rumours and lies come out of France every day? If I believed them all I would be the biggest fool in Westminster.’
James clenched his teeth. He was too old for his father to cane, but it didn’t stop the anxiety that flooded through him when his father got angry. Now, it was easier to turn that fear into anger, and they had become embroiled in more than one explosive fight over t
he years.
‘I don’t mean to make you a fool. Indeed, quite the opposite.’
Lord Harford held up a hand. ‘Stop. I have heard this all from Wickham; I have no need to hear it again. You cannot help the war effort with fairy tales and delusions; I have told him no and I am telling you the same.’ He picked up his pen and returned to his letter-writing. ‘Say hello to your mother before you leave.’
It was as if James had ceased to exist the moment Lord Harford was no longer interested in him. He had always done this, since James was a child. Their relationship was dictated entirely by his father’s terms, and James knew that to push now would only cause his father to dig in further.
Quietly, James let himself out of the study, steps sinking silently into the thick rugs. So much for things being different this time.
Shame was too simple a word for what he felt. He was ashamed of disappointing his father, and ashamed of his own stupidity for misjudging things again. Of course his father wouldn’t believe Olympe’s powers; they had sounded like fiction even to James at first. If he hadn’t seen everything that Olympe could do, he would have doubted it too.
Nearly nineteen years of learning how to navigate his father’s expectations and he was no nearer to understanding him.
But James had pulled off something his father would never have thought him capable of: he had got hold of the most valuable scientific discovery of the era, delivering it into England’s hands while depriving France of its newest weapon. He was helping the war, helping England – helping his father. If only he wasn’t too stubborn to believe it.
James cracked his knuckles, flexing his fingers.
Fine. He would drop the matter – for now. He wouldn’t let himself wallow. The task ahead was clear: he must give his father a demonstration of the science no one could not deny.
Then they would see who was a disappointment.
3
A Slum Near Rue St Denis
Guil vomited violently into the gutter. Thin, acrid liquid, little more than bile and the salt water Ada had prepared for him to swallow. She kneeled in front of him in a threadbare skirt and chemise stained with sweat and urine and the splashes of his vomit.
As he retched again, she unlaced his shoes and hid them in her bag before rubbing dirt into his toes and the ragged hems of his trousers. If this was going to work, they both needed to look like they belonged in the slums.
Guil slumped against the whitewashed wall, breathing heavily through his nose.
‘That was disgusting,’ he rasped.
‘Shush. Corpses don’t talk.’
But the salt water had done its job. He looked shaky and weak, and he stank of the sewer. From along the street, Ada heard the creak of cartwheels, the mutter of low voices. The resurrection men would pass at any moment.
From the bag she pulled her next trick: a small twist of paper holding cantharides powder made from crushed insects, mostly in the preparation of aphrodisiac sweets nicknamed ‘pastilles de Richelieu’ after the Maréchal-Duc de Richelieu, a notorious womaniser of the Ancien Régime. Tonight, they would serve a very different purpose.
‘This is going to hurt,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’
He nodded and gritted his teeth.
Carefully she shook the powder over his neck and armpits; in seconds his skin began to bubble up in putrid blisters. Guil screwed his eyes shut tight, letting out only a short grunt of pain.
The noise of the cart was drawing closer. There was no time to let Guil recover. Now, she drew a bottle of ink from the bag, took his fingers and dipped them, one by one, into it so the tips looked gangrenous and rotten. Finally she took out another twist of paper, this one filled with ashes which she mixed with the last of the salt water to make a paste that she rubbed into his face and arms so his brown skin began to look grey and sickly.
The creaking wheels had been joined by horseshoes against cobbles, and the soft tones of subdued voices; she rammed everything back in the bag and hid it under the smashed remains of a beer barrel.
‘Done.’ She rested a hand on his knee as much to comfort herself as him. ‘We’re on.’
He made no response, but slumped further against the wall, head hanging at an unnatural angle.
Perfect.
Ada took a breath, steadying herself.
Then let out a wail.
‘No! Oh God above, no.’ She shook Guil by his shoulders then threw herself into his lap, sobbing. ‘Emile, please wake up.’
She heard the cart stop. The voices hush.
‘Please don’t leave me,’ she cried into his shirt. ‘Please don’t die.’
A little on the nose, but she couldn’t let this opportunity slip. For a moment, nothing happened. Maybe they’d got it wrong, these weren’t the body snatchers passing – or maybe it was but they didn’t want to take a risk on a corpse so fresh.
Then behind her, footsteps on the cobbles.
Ada pressed her face closer into Guil’s shirt. She could feel the imperceptible rise and fall of his lungs, and prayed the night was dark enough to hide it.
‘Miss? Citoyenne?’
She only sobbed harder, twisting her fingers in Guil’s shirt.
‘Is everything all right? Can we fetch a doctor?’
Blinking away tears, she looked up at the man who had approached her. He was short, with expensive boots and a little dirt crusted under his fingernails.
‘It’s too late. My brother is dead and gone with the angels, citoyen.’
The man took his hat off in a show of respect. ‘My deepest condolences.’
‘If we’d had money for a doctor a week ago maybe – but how could we afford a doctor, if we can’t even afford bread?’ She let her eyes well with tears again as she looked at Guil. ‘We can’t even afford a burial. My poor brother will end up in the paupers’ pit and without him working I fear our whole family will soon follow.’
She held herself still, the picture of mourning and despair. Another set of footsteps arrived and a new voice joined the hushed conversation.
‘Come on, Didier, our passengers aren’t getting any fresher.’
‘I think we’ve found another.’
‘No. No more risks.’
‘Look, he’s perfectly fresh.’
‘Didier—’
‘My dear.’ Didier came to crouch beside her. ‘I can’t begin to imagine your pain; a good burial is the last thing we can offer our loved ones. A paupers’ pit is an insult.’
‘It is, citoyen. I would do anything to save my brother from that indignity.’
Guil’s hand had slipped from his lap and landed in some sort of excrement in the gutter.
Didier left a careful silence. Ada wondered if she’d overdone it with the blisters on Guil’s neck. Would they take a body if it seemed too diseased?
‘There may be something I can—’ he started. ‘No. I’m sorry. Forget I spoke.’
‘What was it?’
‘No – you might think I was taking advantage of you.’
‘I’m sure I wouldn’t.’
He tapped his knees where he crouched beside her. ‘My friend and I, we … help people in your circumstances. Those who cannot secure a decent burial through no fault of their own.’
‘I am not sure I understand…’
‘It’s a little unconventional, I’ll admit, but there is a place we know that will take the dead and give them the proper rest they deserve. Like the religious orders used to take in the destitute sick before they were closed – except this is a temple of science.’
Ada drew back in horror. ‘You can’t mean the medical schools? Dissection?’
‘No! Not at all. There are no students at this place, no gawping spectators. Only a man of good, respectful conscience with a scientific interest in the human body and how we might prevent tragic deaths like your poor brother’s.’
‘It is not godly, sir.’
‘What is more ungodly is the poor unfortunates thrown into unconsecrated ground like re
fuse. That, citoyenne, is the true evil. Will you not save your brother from that?’ Ada stroked the side of Guil’s face.
‘Perhaps you’re right…’
‘What was wrong with him?’ the other man interrupted. He had a rattish face with long blond hair tied back in a cue. ‘What’s that on his neck?’
Ada sniffed, hiccupping around the end of a sob. ‘I – I don’t know. There wasn’t time for a doctor. We thought maybe the plague—’
‘Plague!’ He took a sharp step back. ‘Are you sure?’
Ada bit her lip. There was only a fine line she could walk between success and disaster. ‘Maybe – maybe not…’
‘Let’s go.’
He pulled at Didier’s elbow, but he shook him off.
‘Don’t be a coward. Get his feet.’
‘But the plague, Didier. Will he even want this one?’
‘Of course he’ll want the body. You think he can afford to be picky?’
Ada sniffed again, smoothing Guil’s short curls from his forehead. ‘And you promise he’ll be buried?’
‘Yes, not a sou’s fee. In fact, here’s one just for you. Get something filling to eat.’
She gave Guil’s face a final, mournful stroke – then snatched the money from the man’s hand and backed away with another wail.
‘Take him. Do it now. Please, I cannot bear to think of him lying in the gutter any longer.’
The men exchanged a glance, the light of greed in their eyes. They hoisted Guil’s limp body between them, hands hooked under his knees and armpits, and loaded him onto the cart. He tumbled into a gap between corpses hiding his face from view. Her heart raced, the coin hot in her sweaty hands. Didier mounted the cart and took the reins, while the rattish man hoisted himself up at the back. He tipped his hat to Ada as they pulled away.
Kneeling in the dirt, she watched as Guil joined the ranks of the dead.
4
Henley House
All the windows had been flung open to let in morning light and the tiled entrance hall was cool and smelled of the freshly cut flowers scattered across end tables. The morning room was empty, needlepoint abandoned on the low sofas, and a maid bent to gather up half-drunk china cups of tea.