Newes from the Dead

by Mary Hooper

  Now I am dead.

  But I try nonetheless, and vow that I will keep on trying until the darkness consumes me . . .

  Chapter ~ 10

  Robert’s heart thumped. That other corpse. Had it been a dream? It seemed very like one, a dream that faded as fast as recalled, drifting away as cloudy and insubstantial as chimney smoke. He closed his eyes. Think. A room, a coffin, and he there—yes, he—but as a child. Where had he been, though? And who was the corpse?

  Dr. Willis glanced about the room. Two years older than Dr. Petty, he was, it seemed, going to take overall charge of proceedings. “I agree we should begin,” he declared. “Would you take the pointer,” he said, handing the rod to Norreys, “and as I cut into the corpse and locate the organs, point to where they are on the wall chart for the benefit of those unsure as to their whereabouts.”

  Norreys gave a short bow and went to the other side of the coffin, where he smirked around at the rest of the scholars, pleased to have been chosen. Robert nodded back to him, thinking that Wilton was more his sort of fellow; someone with whom one might go for a row on the river, play cards, down ale, or snort over the latest college gossip. But why would a fellow like Wilton bother with someone like him? Someone who couldn’t even speak properly?

  “Wren will make accurate drawings for us,” Dr. Petty said, and Wren, who had taken up his drawing pad, nodded.

  The scholars pressed together, closer to the coffin, and Robert found himself so near Sir Thomas Reade that he was able to feel the big man twitching, fuming, and bristling with impatience. But they could not begin cutting yet, Robert knew, for it was usual for the leading doctor to quote some words from Galen before he started to open the body, making the claim that human dissection might be unpalatable to some, but was essential for the furtherance of medical knowledge.

  Accordingly, with silence in the room apart from the bronchial breathing of Sir Thomas and an occasional shout from the crowd outside, Dr. Willis began: “The work of this day is to open the way into the Practice of Anatomy and into the knowledge of man’s body . . . to care and ease the distempers that befall it, and to show proud man that his most mysterious and complicated energy is nothing to the compounded mysteries within the very fabric of man itself.”

  The scholars nodded sagely, taking in every word, for Dr. Willis was an excellent orator. As the doctor spoke, Robert stared at the woman lying before them, trying to forget her similarity to another figure at another time. He tried instead to view her as a practice piece, someone who hadn’t actually lived at all, so that the shock of seeing her dissected wouldn’t be too great. He’d been told what to expect and braced himself for that first cut to the stomach, the stink of viscera, the tumbling out of the guts, and the strange and unnatural sight and sounds of a body’s inner organs being pulled into view. To think that this woman, just a few hours ago, had been a cogent human being: living, breathing, loving, hating. To think that those arms had clasped her mother in a final embrace, that that mouth had spoken, bidding goodbye to the cold world, and her eyes had looked upon the same doleful scene of hangman, tree, and noose as he had. Now she was just a lump of flesh.

  So where had the part that animated Anne Green gone? Was it still somewhere inside her body, or had it left for a higher plane? If still within, would it escape and fly away when the doctors cut into her? Should the window be opened for such a purpose?

  Robert had seen four deaths at close quarters, although in three of these he’d arrived just too late and the only duty he’d been able to perform was the closing of the corpse’s eyelids. At no time, however, had he noticed any sort of spirit or presence coming from the body. Was the soul something one could see? he wondered.

  There was a sudden and very loud scream from outside. “I want to see her!” came the cry, and it was repeated twice more.

  Robert started. I want to see her. I want to see her.

  And of a sudden he remembered. Twenty big steps down the stairs at home, on each step a word, a comforting echo in his head.

  I

  want

  to

  see

  her.

  These words, repeated four times each, had brought him down to stand outside the drawing room of their home in Somerset.

  I want to see her. He knew that, as a small child, he’d been saying these words a long time. Two or three days or more, for he could almost taste them in his mouth.

  I want to see her. But he wasn’t allowed to see her because she was busy. She was resting. She had gone out. She was sleeping.

  His mother.

  I want to see her. He’d slept at last with those words on his lips and in his head, and woken when the rest of the household was asleep. And then he’d climbed out of the bed he shared with his nurse and come down the stairs to the library, somehow knowing—had he heard a whisper of it during the day?—that this was where she would be.

  He remembered now the way he’d pushed open the door to flickering candlelight and a table bearing a cherry-wood coffin. He recalled now how tall wax candles had stood guarding each corner of the coffin, their light reflected off its polished wood. He saw again the mirror, portraits, and tapestries hung about with black drapes, and his family’s coat of arms, proud with lions and castles, draped across the window shutters.

  He remembered staring at the scene for some moments, trying to work out in his child’s mind what it meant, and then pulling a chair across the room and clambering onto the table to see inside the box.

  And there was the woman he’d so much wanted to see. There was his mother, her face ivory, her dark hair waxed, wearing a gown and cap of frothy white lace. Her eyes were closed, and her hands clasped at her breast with a Bible placed between them.

  I want to see her! He gave an involuntary gasp and was aware of Dr. Petty turning to glance at him, no doubt thinking he was feeling nervous about the dissection.

  My father hadn’t told me, he thought. When I asked to see her, they said she was busy at some household task or was resting or unwell, and all the time she was a dead corpse in her coffin.

  And when he’d discovered her that night in the drawing room, what happened next? He couldn’t quite say. He remembered touching her cheek and feeling it cold, and then could remember no more. But later, when he was a little older and had asked his father about the death of his mother, he’d been told that she’d died abroad, of a strange disease. And then, very quickly, his father had married again and his mother had been talked of no more.

  Dr. Willis’s voice rose again. “For the end of anatomy is knowledge of each part, why it exists, for what purpose is it necessary and what is its use.”

  Sir Thomas Reade sighed impatiently, and Wilton looked at Robert and raised his eyebrows. Robert gave a slight smile back.

  They had thought to protect him, perhaps. Or maybe his stepmother was jealous of the other woman’s memory. He would ask his father again, now. Ask him for the truth about the death of his mother.

  Taking a deep breath, he tried to dismiss the matter from his mind, and concentrated once more upon the body of Anne Green, his eyes taking in each part of her. From healthy peasant stock, she was of excellent stature, her legs long, her body shapely, her arms full and muscular. Her face was fair: a curved, full-lipped mouth, a straight nose, her eyelids now a translucent violet. She was fair and she was dead—and her death had been untimely. She should, he thought, have lived to provide a home for a man who loved her, and together they should have bred a houseful of milkmaids and sheep farmers. Her last view should not have been of a hangman, but of her cottage fire sixty years hence. Those eyes of hers should have finally closed on—

  Those eyes! As Robert’s gaze rested on Anne’s face, his reverie ceased and he became shocked and fearful, for her eyelids had seemed to flicker, as if there was life still within her body.

  Shaken, his belly churning, he stared at Anne’s face until his gaze blurred—but did not see movement again. Should he say something? He almost smile
d at this. What was the point of trying to speak? By the time he got his words out, Anne would be in pieces.

  Robert nudged Wilton to signal to him that he should look at Anne. If there was anything amiss, let him see it too. Only let someone else see it! Robert frowned, nodded, indicated with little jerky movements what he was trying to convey, but Wilton just looked at him, puzzled, and then turned back to gaze reverently at the two doctors.

  There!

  Robert had seen the eye movement again; the smallest flicker from within her, like a hearth fire which, although put out hours before, suddenly gleams within with a tiny glow-worm brightness. Oh, he must speak! He must speak now or die in the attempt. Before he could consider its delivery, the word “Sir!” came from him fast as the retort of a gun. Every eye in the room turned to stare at him, and his face grew hot.

  “What is it?” Dr. Willis asked, frowning.

  Dr. Petty looked at Robert with concern. “Are you feeling unwell?”

  Robert shook his head. He stepped forward and pointed to Anne’s face; to her left eyelid. “Moo . . . moo . . .”

  There was a snigger behind him. He heard someone say in a low voice, “’Tis Buttercup the cow,” and there was some stifled laughter.

  “Movement?” Dr. Petty asked. “Eye movement?”

  Robert nodded violently, then pointed at his face and made twitching movements with his own eyelid much more violent than those Anne had made. “Eye moo . . . moo . . . movement!” he confirmed.

  Gasps broke out around the room, a chorus of disbelief. Robert heard the singing scholar say, “The fellow’s been drinking for sure.”

  “Either that or he’s fallen in love with the wench and doesn’t want her touched,” came the reply.

  There was a bellow from Sir Thomas Reade. “What is all this? What the devil’s happening now?”

  “Has anyone got a hand mirror?” Dr. Petty asked. He turned to Mr. Clarke. “You, sir?”

  The apothecary shook his head. “There’s one in the hall, but ’tis the size of a door.”

  Dr. Petty bent over Anne. “We need a small mirror to see if she breathes.”

  “There’s not such an object in the house!”

  Dr. Willis edged around the table, frowning down at the corpse and bending low over her. “There’s no need for any mirror, surely. Her chest is not rising and falling. She does not breathe.”

  Mr. Clarke took up Anne’s limp wrist and felt around it. “No. And I feel no pulse,” he said. He replaced her arm and it fell off the table, dangling, blue-tinged white.

  The three doctors turned to look at Robert, who was still watching Anne’s face intently. “Are you absolutely sure you saw movement?” Dr. Willis asked.

  Robert nodded vehemently, his mouth forming the word yes several times over. Already he doubted himself, though. Had he imagined it? It was snowing quite hard now, and the light in the room was thin and pale; the beer he’d taken had been strong, and he’d stayed up late the night before writing detailed comments and suppositions concerning the contents of Scarlett’s latest eggs. Perhaps, feeling pity for the girl . . . perhaps, being confused with the wonder of that other, newly remembered, corpse, he’d allowed himself to be deceived into thinking there were still signs of life within Anne Green.

  “Carry on, sir!” Sir Thomas roared.

  “This is most unusual. But we must be completely sure,” said Dr. Petty, sounding a trace distracted.

  “Just put her out of her misery!” said Sir Thomas. He gestured to the fellow who had stamped on Anne’s chest before. “Come,” he invited, nodding toward the corpse. “Help her on her way again. Let’s dispel any argument about whether she lives or no.”

  The fellow hesitated. His lips twitched nervously as he looked to the physicians for guidance.

  “No, you will not!” Dr. Willis said. “Stay where you are, sir!”

  “Doctor Willis and I are in charge of this dissection,” Dr. Petty reminded Sir Thomas.

  “So what in the devil’s name is the matter with all of you?” Sir Thomas asked, exasperated. “She has departed this mortal life. She was dead when she was cut down and she’s dead still. Just look at her lying there and then tell me there’s any doubt about it.”

  The students shuffled their feet, exchanging alarmed and excited glances. What a thing it would be to talk about later, Robert thought. To discuss—if one was able—with fellow scholars in taverns.

  “You doctors make a fuss about obtaining cadavers to cut up, and now that you’ve got one, you’re treating it with as much reverence as you would your own mother!” Sir Thomas bristled.

  “Just a few moments longer, sir,” said Dr. Petty calmly.

  “You’ve had your moments—now get on with the job you’re here for!”

  No one responded to this, but on an impulse, thinking it looked uncomfortable, Robert stepped off the bench, leaned over for Anne’s dangling arm, and replaced it gently on the table across her breast. It was icy cold to his touch, and he shuddered at it. He must have been mistaken. There could not still be life within this cadaver. She was a dead thing, all animation gone and as cold as stone.

  Dr. Petty stared at the corpse for a long moment, puzzled, shaking his head. “We should, perhaps, ask Dr. Bathurst for his opinion.”

  “Someone could go to Brasenose for him,” said Mr. Clarke. But no one offered.

  Suddenly Wilton shouted out. “God’s teeth! Her eye did move. I just saw it!”

  Sir Thomas Reade gave a cry of anger, and there was a thud as the body of Nathaniel Frisk, the surgeon, slumped to the ground in a faint.

  The two doctors exchanged glances. “Was it a nervous twitch you saw,” Dr. Willis asked, “like that of a chicken when its throat’s cut?”

  “I’ve seen a headless chicken run across the common, sir!” one of the scholars said, and there was some uneasy laughter.

  “Dammit, the girl was hanging in the prison yard from seven-thirty until eight of the clock!” Sir Thomas said in an explosion of rage. “She was hanged by the neck until dead, as the law required. A doctor certified her dead.”

  Robert shouted something unintelligible. It was meant to be the word Again! but that didn’t matter, for this time everyone could see Anne’s eyelids trembling, both of them; the thin, lilac-hued skin quivering as if straining to open upon the world.

  There were loud cries, gasps, and a general consternation in the room; Robert found that his whole body was shaking with fear and excitement. Sir Thomas gave a roar and stepped toward Anne’s body, his hands raised as if he would strangle her himself. Norreys, whom Robert had heard was secretly a Catholic, fell to his knees and made the sign of the cross. “Oh, glory!” he cried. “She lives!”

  At any other time the scholars would have been aghast at this flagrant display of popery; now they scarcely noticed. Everyone looked to the two doctors.

  Dr. Willis said, “There is the hand of God in this.”

  And he and Dr. Petty put down their dissection instruments.

  Chapter ~ 11

  The morning after the announcement of Master Geoffrey’s betrothal, I went over to Home Farm to collect some duck eggs. I was crossing the driveway on my way back, my basket full, when I heard the sound of horses’ hooves and wheels on the road outside and turned to see a pretty blue and white carriage coming through the gates with two bay horses afront, lifting their legs in an elegant trot.

  I knew who must be inside the carriage and could easily have slipped around the house and gone in through one of the back doors, but was caught by an intense longing to see the person who alighted. Hesitating too long, I then had to move behind the laurel hedge and conceal myself from the arrivals.

  The coach circled the drive and stopped at the front door, then the footman jumped down and lowered the steps. Master Geoffrey got out and turned to help someone else down, and I held my breath, fixed and staring as if my life depended on it. In a moment Miss Clementine de Millet appeared. I had some small comfort in seeing that
she wasn’t beautiful, for she had an olive skin and a long thin nose, which was pushed into the air as if she detected a bad smell. She was small and delicate, however, and dressed very finely in a blue flowered dress and, over it, a yellow taffeta cloak lined in the same blue. Her dress was of a design I’d seen in Woodstock, with a ruching at the front showing an abundance of yellow petticoats, and as she lifted it slightly in order to climb down the steps I saw that she had dainty blue-leather mules.

  Master Geoffrey made a great show of helping her from the carriage and offering her his arm to walk to the house, as if she was a wisp of a creature who could not proceed unsupported. As they strolled across the drive, I saw him point in a genteel manner to various things, such as the huge maple tree, the herd of dairy cows, and the pretty aspect of the church spire between the poplar trees, and I dare say he was speaking of his family’s wealth in the owning of such an estate. He also pointed to the dovecote, and I wondered what he was saying about it. Not, I determined, that it was a place in which he’d begged and implored a housemaid to give up her chaste ways and lie with him.

  The two of them hesitated a moment at the foot of the marble steps that led into the house and looked over to the farm, and I felt a moment’s fear that they would take a turn around the grounds and discover me behind the hedge, but Miss de Millet’s lady-in-waiting was close behind them, and the footman with her luggage, and so they went in.

  I stayed behind the hedge for some while, trying to compose myself and still the thumping of my heart. It was true, then. He really was betrothed. And it was then that I knew myself to be as stupid as a quince pudding, for in spite of what Ma and Jane had said, in spite of every sensible part of me knowing it could not be true, all this time I’d been secretly telling myself that Master Geoffrey might have played fair; that he loved me and in time would raise me.

  I, mistress of Dun’s Tew? I thought of the dainty girl I’d just seen in her elegant gown and blue-leather mules, then looked down at my sturdy feet in their wooden pattens, at my stained apron, at my chapped and begrimed hands with their bitten nails. No, of course I would never be a mistress, no, not even of a rag shop or a brewhouse!