Corpse & Crown

by Alisa Kwitney

  “She is a soulless machine,” said Salisbury, “given a semblance of life by your infernal medicines and devices. And it is my fault that she has come to this sad end.” Rising painfully to his feet, the elderly prime minister looked down at his Queen. “May God forgive me, but I thought I was doing the right thing. When Her Majesty died last January, I panicked, thinking there would be nothing to deter the kaiser from challenging Great Britain’s power. Now I see I was wrong to try to change the course of fate.”

  Turning off the power to the violet wand, Lizzie leaned over to whisper in Aggie’s ear. “So Germany’s kaiser is afraid of Queen Victoria?”

  Americans. “Not afraid of—fond of. Kaiser Willy is the queen’s first and favorite grandson,” she whispered back. It was also common knowledge that the kaiser disliked his cousin Bertie—the next in line to the British throne. According to the newspapers, the kaiser’s lingering affection for his British granny was the only thing keeping the impulsive, insecure head of the German empire from plunging the two nations into war. So this was the reason for keeping Queen Victoria alive—to keep the kaiser from declaring war on Great Britain.

  The more sensational papers ran stories of undercover German agents and suspicious boats running military exercises along deserted shorelines. Of course, the tabloids also ran headlines about amorous octopus attacks and flesh-eating Bio-Mechanicals roaming the streets, so one could hardly believe everything they printed.

  “My dear man,” said Moulsdale, “trying to prevent a war is not cowardice. And there is no need to change our course.”

  As Moulsdale and Salisbury argued, Aggie became aware of a faint, scrabbling sound coming from the wardrobe. She had been hearing it on and off for the past few minutes, she realized. Could the royal bedchamber be infested by a mouse?

  Then it hit her: the overwhelming odor of dog. Walking over to the wardrobe, she opened the door, revealing an anxious white Pomeranian.

  Shiercliffe drew herself up as if confronted by a rat. “What on earth is that?”

  “That’s the queen’s lapdog, Turi,” said Salisbury, as Turi jumped onto a footstool and then up onto the queen’s bed, where she yapped anxiously at her mistress.

  “Someone get it off!” exclaimed Shiercliffe, who was clearly not a dog lover.

  Before anyone could move, Queen Victoria startled them all by blinking and then breaking into a smile. “Absentia transformative?” she asked the little dog.

  Turi barked again, then scampered back down to the wardrobe.

  Kneeling down, Aggie saw that the dog had made itself a nest of silky garments. On closer look, she saw tiny white bodies nestled inside the silk. “Why, she’s had puppies!”

  The Queen nodded, looking quite pleased with this development. “Is the invention of the mother necessary?”

  “You see?” Moulsdale tucked his thumbs into his waistcoat as if he were personally responsible for the queen’s recovery. “Her Majesty was just worried about her dog.”

  “She’s back to abnormal, I suppose,” said Salisbury, lumbering over to the chair he had vacated. “But that’s hardly good enough. The kaiser has announced his intention to visit his granny this spring, and a date has been set for mid-May. What are we going to do if she malfunctions while he is talking to her? He’s not a fool.”

  “Leave it to me,” said Moulsdale. “That gives us three months. I’ll make certain that Her Majesty is in tip-top shape by then. The kaiser will never suspect a thing.”

  “How can you be so certain?” Salisbury sank into his chair as if returning from an arduous journey. “Even if you repair the queen in time, what about the rest of it? Wilhelm is obsessed with Bio-Mechanicals. According to the latest military intelligence, his program is more advanced than ours.”

  “Utter rubbish,” said Moulsdale, visibly bristling. “We have made recent advancements, and our new Dreadnaught model is state-of-the-art military technology.”

  “Excellent news,” said Salisbury, in a tone that implied that he did not believe a word of it. “When can I see this marvel of engineering?”

  Moulsdale did not blink. “Once the testing is complete. I always defer to the engineering and surgical departments as to the official rollout of new technology.”

  “Incendiary wench!” The Queen, propped up in her four-poster bed like a little doll, raised one plump, heavily beringed hand and pointed at Aggie. “Reconnoiter me with the nascent citizenry.”

  Salisbury frowned. “What is she on about?”

  Shiercliffe approached the ancient monarch with a thermometer. “Feverish, I suspect.”

  “No, no, no,” said the queen, becoming agitated as she flinched away from Shiercliffe’s thermometer. “Full court dress! Present the debutantes!”

  “I think she just wants to see one of the puppies,” said Aggie. Lifting a sturdy little female, she brought it over to the queen. “Look how sweet it is,” she said, stroking the puff of white fur above the gleaming, dark button eyes. “Did you know she was expecting?”

  “More things than meet the eye in your philosophy,” said Queen Victoria, looking at Aggie in a way that left her uncertain if this was a response to her question or merely the random association of a fractured mind.

  It was only later that another possibility occurred to her: the queen might have been confiding something about herself.

  2

  It was only a few minutes past nine in the morning, and already the Royal Victoria Hospital’s receiving room was packed. On the front row of wooden benches, an elderly man leaned on his cane for support as he coughed prodigiously into a filthy handkerchief, while the workman sitting beside him scowled his disapproval. An old woman in a black kerchief was shielding her eyes from the weak winter sunlight streaming in the tall windows, while the heavily made-up girl at her side had fallen asleep, worn coat falling open to reveal a stained silk evening gown far too thin for the blustery winds outside. A young mother held her flushed toddler on her lap, telling him something as he watched her face with rapt attention, while the woman on her left sat clutching her purse over her belly, apparently oblivious to the two small children who tugged at her sleeves and then raced around her, screaming and laughing.

  Still exhausted from last night’s unexpected visit to the palace, Aggie approached the elderly man. “Name and nature of complaint, sir?”

  The old man opened his mouth and then promptly resumed his phlegmy coughing, his thin frame shaking with the effort.

  “Ah, terrific. I can tell you what the old geezer’s got,” said the scowling workman, leaning away from his seatmate. “Consumption. And with my luck, I’m going to bloody have it, too. Why’d I even come to this death shop?”

  “So you could complain to someone new, I expect,” said Aggie. “But I can’t listen to your list of grievances till I attend to this gentleman, so you might as well let me get on with it.”

  The workman shrugged, clearly more amused than affronted. “Right, then, least that’s some kind of answer.”

  She turned to the old man again, who appeared to have recovered his breath. “Now, sir,” she began, but before she could finish, he was off again, making what sounded like a concerted effort to expel a lung.

  “Here, take this,” she said, pulling a freshly laundered white linen handkerchief from her apron pocket. His attempt to thank her turned into a great crescendo of a hacking retch, which ended when he disgorged a wad of something bloody into the white fabric. “Ta,” he said, folding the fabric over and offering it to her.

  “No, no, you keep it,” she said, then belatedly wondered if she was going to get in trouble if she did not turn the used handkerchief into laundry by the end of the day. Sometimes she felt as though she were impersonating a nurse rather than studying to become one. “Now, sir, if you can just tell me your full name and what brings you into the Royal Victoria today?”

  “Wel
l,” said the old man, “it’s a bit embarrassing, but I ’aven’t moved me bowels in a week.”

  Aggie looked at him in surprise. “But your cough...”

  “Agh,” said the man with a dismissive wave, “I’ve ’ad that for years.”

  Suddenly, the clanging of a cowbell cut through the cacophony of muted conversations, hacking coughs and high-pitched squeals.

  “All right, everyone, listen up,” said a booming voice from the back of the room. “We have sixteen burn victims coming in from an explosion at the match factory. They should be arriving in the next five to ten minutes and will need to be taken immediately into the operating theater.”

  There was a ripple of sound as patients and staff reacted, but the head of medicine clapped his hands. “Enough chatter! Time is of the essence!” He rang the cowbell again, and the room exploded into action.

  Two nursing sisters grabbed the handles on a large metal washbasin and carried it out between them, while the attending doctor lifted an IV stand and barked an order for someone to find more. As other doctors and nurses raced to get to the operating theater, Aggie realized she was going to be on her own in the receiving room, with roughly thirty sick or injured patients in various stages of distress.

  There was a piercing shriek—one of the children, thank God, and not a new catastrophe.

  “Johnny bit me,” wailed the little girl, tugging at her mother’s sleeve. Aggie was about to turn back to the possible case of consumption when she realized that the child’s mother was not responding to her girl’s tugs. The head of nursing often complained about the dubious parenting skills of some patients: Those people, she would say, are scarcely better than animals. Yet even the worst parent would hardly ignore a screaming child who was hauling on her sleeve.

  Something was very wrong.

  Aggie leaned over the gaunt, dark-haired woman slumped against the bench. Underneath the brim of her black straw hat, her eyes were shut.

  “Hello, ma’am? Are you all right?”

  “Oi,” said the workman, “I’m meant to be next!”

  Aggie ignored him. “Ma’am? Can you hear me?”

  The woman’s eyes fluttered open. “I’m having some pain,” she said softly. Her face was chalk white, but her lips were surprisingly dark. At first, Aggie thought it might be a cosmetic, but then she looked more closely. Blue lips—not a good sign.

  Aggie took the woman’s ungloved hand in hers. Cold. “Are you bleeding, ma’am?”

  The woman took a moment to answer. “Yes,” she said, as if confessing a shameful secret. “I wouldn’t have bothered coming in, but it’s been going on for a while.”

  Possible hemorrhage, then. Aggie suspected she already knew the answer to the next question, but she asked it anyway. “Are you expecting a child?”

  The woman met Aggie’s eyes directly. “Not anymore,” she said flatly.

  That was not the answer she’d been expecting. “Wait here,” she told the children, “quietly now. Your mother is sick, and she needs you to behave yourselves.” The siblings watched her leave, wide-eyed. Even if their mother survived this, they would remember this day as the end of a certain kind of innocence. From this moment on, these children would know that death can come suddenly and unexpectedly, on a perfectly ordinary morning, and snatch away the ones you love the most.

  But death would not claim the children’s mother that morning—at least, not if Aggie could help it. All she had to do was convince Dr. Moulsdale that the woman needed to be seen right away. The head of medicine was standing at the back of the room, speaking with Victor Frankenstein, the school’s top surgical student and Lizzie’s fiancé. Tall, dark-haired and athletic, Victor looked every inch a well-born gentleman, but his high, starched collar and specially designed left glove hid the fact that he was also a Bio-Mechanical. His enhanced left hand gave him remarkable strength, and Victor would have been the perfect prototype of a superior soldier to show the kaiser—except that his reinstatement as a student was the price of Lizzie’s silence about the queen.

  “Of course, my boy, of course,” Moulsdale was saying to Victor, “the first goal is to save these men.” He pointed to a parade of stretchers being carried in by men with ash-covered faces. Some of the bodies on the stretchers were ominously still. In a lower voice, he added, “But it is equally vital that any unfortunate victims who cannot be saved be procured for our Bio-Mechanical program.”

  “I understand, Professor,” Victor replied. “But we haven’t been able to locate two of the families, and the other two have wives who want to bury their men.” Now he nodded to a couple of sobbing women huddled together near the door.

  “I see, I see.” Moulsdale stroked his neat, pointed salt-and-pepper beard. “You haven’t released the bodies to them, have you?”

  “Not yet, sir.”

  “Very good. Here’s what you do, then—tell the wives you need to perform an autopsy, for legal reasons, then send the bodies down to the morgue.”

  Victor looked as though he were about to object, but Aggie reminded herself that the needs of the living outweighed those of the dead. Summoning her nerve, she stepped forward. “Begging your pardon, Professor Moulsdale, but I have a bit of a problem.”

  Mousldale scowled at her. “It had better be urgent.”

  Victor, who knew her well enough to know she didn’t usually ask for help, looked concerned. “What’s wrong, Aggie?”

  “That woman over there—front row, straw hat—I think she’s hemorrhaging. I don’t suppose you could take a look?”

  Moulsdale glanced at his pocket watch. “Mr. Frankenstein needs to go back to the operating theater to handle the transfer of the bodies, and I need to check on the other victims. Where is the nurse who is supposed to be in charge?”

  “Tending the burn victims,” said Aggie.

  “Well, then, go speak to the staff nurse.”

  “I’m afraid she’s gone, as well.”

  “Botheration.” Clearly, one poor woman bleeding to death could not compete with the possibility of fresh cadavers for the Bio-Mechanical program. “Well, make her comfortable and I shall send someone back here as soon as I can,” Moulsdale said.

  Here was the problem when death held as much appeal as life to a doctor—cures and healing procedures became weighed against other outcomes.

  On the other side of the room, the woman had slumped lower in her chair. Her two children were trying to shake her.

  “Forgive me, Professor,” said Aggie, “but soon may be too late. My mother’s a midwife, and I’ve seen these symptoms before. I think she’s having complications from a miscarriage.” She did not mention the other possibility, but it was there in the air between them: a back alley, dirty equipment, possible internal puncture and sepsis. Yet another reason a woman needed to safeguard her heart. Nothing but trouble came from being too close to a man, even a good one.

  Moulsdale, clearly unmoved, was already heading toward the door. “I’m sure one of the other doctors or nurses will be back presently.”

  “But, Doctor, she needs help now. If you’d just—” Too late, she realized her mistake.

  He spun to face her, nostrils flaring. “Enough! Need I remind you that you are here to learn, not to teach? Make the woman comfortable and do nothing until someone qualified returns.” Turning to Victor, he said, “Now, come with me and fill me in on the condition of the surviving victims.”

  Victor gave Aggie an apologetic look over his shoulder before walking away.

  Damn it. Aggie forced herself not to think about possible repercussions. Right now, she had other priorities. When she got back to the woman in the black straw hat, she found her breathing was more labored than before. Her children were no longer racing around or arguing, but were staring at Aggie as if she were truly in charge and about to do something to save their mother.

  “All right,” s
he said, looking over the other occupants of the bench. “You, there.” She gave the sleeping dollymop in the silk dress a little shake.

  The girl yawned. “What’s happening? Is it my turn to be seen?”

  “This woman is going to bleed to death if we can’t help her now.” Aggie turned to the surly workman and pointed to a small examining room that opened off the main hall. “I need to carry her over there. Can you lift her with us? If your condition won’t allow it, just tell me.”

  “Bloody ridiculous way to run a hospital,” said the workman, getting to his feet and lifting the unconscious woman into his arms. “Where d’you want her, then?”

  Aggie led the way, then helped position the now-unconscious woman on a cot. She thanked the man and then went to work without allowing herself the luxury of self-doubt or hesitation.

  Twenty minutes later, Aggie had done what she could. She had used a vinegar solution to clean and disinfect internally and had used catgut ligatures to sew up the torn tissues visible to the eye. She would have given anything for some tincture of agrimony or yarrow to make a compress, but she had no idea where the doctors kept their compounding medicines. At least the bleeding appeared to have stopped, but there was no way to be certain that she hadn’t missed some internal injury.

  At least now she’s got a chance. Aggie was just washing the blood off her hands in a basin by the patient’s cot when she heard a familiar, disapproving voice behind her.

  “What on earth do you think you are doing, probationer?”

  3

  Aggie dried her hands on a towel and took a moment to collect herself before turning to face the head of nursing. “I can explain, Matron.”

  “Don’t bother.” In her expertly tailored black silk dress, Ursula Shiercliffe looked more like the queen of witches than the head of nursing, but Hecate was probably more forgiving of her apprentices. “I would have thought that after last night you would realize that we have a unique responsibility—and a vital duty to perform for our nation. Yet Professor Moulsdale tells me that you were challenging his decisions.”