The Corpse Queen

by Heather M. Herrman

  Maeve entered cheerfully with breakfast, but her smile soured immediately when she saw Molly’s splotched face.

  “You’re ill. I’ll tell your aunt you mustn’t get out of bed. A good rest and—”

  “No.” Molly sat up. “Draw me a bath. A cold one.”

  Maeve frowned.

  “Now.”

  The frown disappeared, and Maeve nodded, her face unreadable.

  The hurt had broken open inside of Molly and spilled its icy, numbing poison.

  When Ma had left, something black and ugly had planted itself inside Molly, like a spore, nestling into her heart. She had sworn she’d never open herself to that kind of hurt again. But then came Kitty, and somehow she’d forgotten. Then Tom, for whom even her kiss had not been enough to keep. Then Ginny. Each time, against her better judgment, she’d let them in. But all of them, every one of them, had disappeared from her life when she’d needed them most. Had chewed away a little of her heart to take with them. Like parasites feasting upon a moth.

  They’d all failed her, but it had been Molly’s weakness that had let them in.

  She did not mean to make the mistake again.

  Because this morning, Molly Green understood a new truth—you could not be hurt if you did not feel.

  When she was six, she’d gone out to play by the little stream near their cabin and stumbled upon one of Da’s traps. In it was a fox. The trap’s metal teeth bit deeply into the panting creature’s beautiful red fur, and even from a distance Molly could see the blood bubbling thick from the wound. When she’d reached toward it, the fox had lifted its large yellow eyes and hissed. Frightened, she’d run all the way home to tell Da, but when they came back—Da with his big shotgun over his shoulder—there was no fox, only a small severed leg, the pretty paw still neatly attached.

  She was that fox now.

  And, slitting her eyes, she began to chew.

  Maeve had filled the tub with cool water, but it was not cold enough. Molly made her bring ice from the kitchen. The water shocked her skin to a blue bruise, and by the time she emerged, her lips were white and bloodless but the fever was gone.

  She dressed simply, in a blue linen gown, yanking her hair away from her face in a severe bun. There was no more need for the girlish whims of braids. Her bridegroom was the anatomist’s knife; her chapel, the lecture hall.

  No one would ever hurt her again.

  She arrived early to the church, meaning to go over her notes in silence.

  Instead, she found the rest of the students already there, waiting. Their chattering voices fell to a hush as she entered.

  Molly tensed.

  A whistle sounded, then a cheer.

  “Molly! Molly! Molly!” Peter Brule shouted her name, and others followed, stomping and clapping, then parting to reveal Dr. LaValle at the front of the room. James Chambers was at his side.

  “Molly Green,” the doctor said, “come up here, please.”

  Throat dry, she went. Around her, the room grew still as the boys parted to let her pass.

  “Today is a great day.” The doctor’s voice grew solemn. The boys leaned in eagerly.

  “Thanks to these two”—he motioned to James and Molly—“our school has in its possession the body of an anatomical treasure—a true giant.”

  Cheers rose from the students.

  Dr. LaValle held up his hand, silencing them.

  “With the giant’s body, I will be able to not only build on Dr. Hunter’s freemartin paper, suggesting that all living things are susceptible to environmentally induced change, but to also issue a challenge—we must use our medical knowledge of human anomalies to better understand the hidden possibilities of our world!”

  The boys roared with pleasure, applause drowning out the doctor’s words.

  “But that is the least of it.” The doctor cleared his throat. “On Saturday, I will give a dissection lecture the likes of which has yet to be seen. No less than a senator of this great nation will be present. Provided my lecture is a success, he has promised me the means to continue my research in a manner more fitting its scope. In short—I am to be granted my own hospital.”

  The room exploded. Peter Brule threw his hat in the air, and several of the students tackled one another in battlefield hugs.

  Eventually, the chaos subsided and the room quieted enough for the doctor to continue. “Along with the senator’s legislative support and a generous donation from our benefactress, Mrs. Ava Wickham, we will move our school into a new modern teaching hospital in the center of this great city. The facility, when complete, will rival the best institutions in Europe.” His eyes glowed.

  Eager murmurs followed as the students took in this possibility.

  “And another thing: I will not tolerate the outdated beliefs concerning the sexes and their abilities. In this matter, I believe the Quakers and their Female Medical College have it right.”

  He wrapped an arm around Molly and then James. “These two students, James Chambers and Molly Green, are to be my primary residents, top apprentices at the new Francis Henderson LaValle Hospital of Medicine.”

  Dozens of eyes were on her now, silvery pinpricks of envy and admiration.

  Dr. LaValle took her hand, his touch clammy against her palm. He raised their clasped hands over his head, and together she and James bowed, graciously accepting the cheers that followed.

  Who’s a god now? she thought.

  She let the icy glory wrap around her and did not feel a thing.

  The weather’s too cold for a hanging, they say. Better to wait until spring. People will bring bread and cheese and make themselves a good picnic. Cheer at the sound of my neck snapping.

  Besides, they can’t kill me until after. That’s part of my punishment—keep my body living until I’ve expunged my own sin.

  The young doctor comes again today. He’s studying to be a surgeon, and at first I think that is why he is here.

  “Cut it out,” I say. “I don’t want it.”

  But he just stares at me as if I’m mad, and then the hungry look returns to his eyes. “What kind of woman would commit such a sin?”

  “What kind of woman wants to grow a poison?”

  He moves to sit beside me on the bed, slipping off his gloves. Gently, he raises his hand to touch my forehead. His skin is cool, as if he’s got no blood in those hands.

  “There’s a spot,” he says, tapping at my forehead. “Just here. If we remove it, it might make your time more pleasant. Calm you. It’s a little theory I have.”

  I jerk away, but I can’t escape the gleam in his eyes.

  “You want to cut out a piece of me while they wait to kill me?” I say. “Just to be certain I understand you.”

  He’s hardly listening, just staring at my forehead like he wants to dig a scalpel into it right now, like a kid eager to pick the meat out of a walnut. “It might make you more comfortable.”

  I know what they’ve told him. The whispers travel here, even beyond the walls.

  That I’ve no conscience.

  That I’ve eaten the flesh of the dead.

  That when they found me, I’d wiped your blood in a pretty smear about my lips.

  I lean in close and whisper in his ear. Thank God he can’t hear my heart, beating like mad with fear.

  “Do you want to know what it looked like?” I whisper. “When the knife went through his neck?”

  Now it’s my hands again he’s watching. I slip one into his. Hold it. Warm his bloodless veins with it as I tell him more lies.

  Part IV

  35

  Ava roamed the house like a tigress in a high state of triumph and nerves. Word had gotten around about the lecture, and the highest members of Philadelphia society were vying for an invitation. That she sometimes hosted public anatomy lectures was an open secret, spoken of i
n polite company only at night and after several tongue-loosening drinks. The fact that such a monumental event as the giant’s dissection could only be whispered about made the fruit’s forbidden juices even sweeter. Not an hour went by without some bribe arriving at the house—flowers, candy, even a new carriage horse. To ensure that the event lived up to expectations, Molly’s aunt had hired an unusually large number of staff, who descended like locusts, furiously preparing arranged flowers, planning the menu, and sumptuously redecorating both the house and the church, where the lecture was to be held.

  “And order more of the arsenic, Maeve!” Ava said, catching the maid as she scurried through the kitchen. “For God’s sake, we don’t want rats eating the hors d’oeuvres!”

  For her part, Molly tried to stay out of the way.

  The giant’s burial was to take place tomorrow, the same day as the party and lecture. The boy had been dead since Tuesday, and while Ava had to allow time for the senator’s arrival, to wait any longer risked the condition of his corpse. She’d arranged to have the undertaker use her carefully formulated solution to at least partially preserve the giant’s body, but the boy’s mother had refused to fully part with her son until the last possible moment.

  In this one thing, at least, Ava had been unable to triumph.

  Molly was to collect the body in secret tonight. Under the cover of dark, the undertaker would replace its heavy weight in the coffin with stones. With a closed casket at the next day’s funeral, no one would know the difference.

  Except the mother, Molly thought, but she brushed the idea away. It didn’t matter. What mattered was tonight. If all went well, she would be assured, finally, of something that could not be taken away. A doctor’s education unrivaled by any in the world.

  If she failed, she could not hope to even be admitted to the Quakers’ fledgling women’s medical college. Male students mocked it, but according to James, acceptance was so competitive that only half a dozen applicants with years of the highest formative education from private institutions were admitted each year. Molly thought of her own spotty schooling at the orphanage and cringed.

  Studying with LaValle was her only chance. Tonight would be perfect—she would make sure of it.

  Friday harbored no lectures, and so she was left to do as she pleased until nightfall.

  Molly woke early, planning to study, but the comings and goings of servants and their never-ending party preparations made any sort of quiet impossible. After her third interruption in the library by a young girl she’d never seen before dusting a bookshelf that had already been dusted twice, Molly gave up and decided to pass the rest of her morning outdoors.

  She wandered listlessly amongst the dead gardens. The frigid March air was brutal for this time of year, and the tender shoots that had dared show themselves had been quashed by yet another freeze. To supplement them, Ava had ordered as many greenhouse flowers as could be bought and had crowded them into marble planters so numerous that Molly had trouble making her way down the paths without tripping over them. Muscled gardeners struggled to move them into position and fill them with soil, a few of them giving terrified glances at the unusual statues beside them.

  Molly made her way past a boy of no more than twelve who’d been hired on somebody’s recommendation as a coat-check lad and then wrangled into assisting with the rest of the preparations. He stood out against the strong men working in the garden. His eager face strained under the weight of a large vase with an elephant’s head carved into its side as he tried to help a man lift it. A snake-haired Medusa looked on. When Molly passed, the boy nearly dropped it out of nerves, thinking she was Ava, and then, seeing that she wasn’t, dared shoot her a wink.

  His face was freckled and mischievous, and immediately she wondered if it was how Tom had looked as a boy.

  Tom.

  She swallowed the name down, fighting against it as if it were bile.

  She skirted deftly past another enormous vase—this one half her height and twice as wide—before returning to the house.

  Locking her door against further intrusions, she spent the rest of the day ignoring the noise and preparing for tomorrow’s lecture as best she could, going over every case of giantism in the library’s medical texts and familiarizing herself with suspected causes—most to do with tumors of the thyroid.

  By nightfall, she was more than ready to get away. Hurrying over dinner, Molly felt her nerves jangling with adrenaline. She managed only a small bite of ham and a drink of watered-down wine before giving up.

  The cold night air was thick and heavy, and when she stepped outside, her breath fogged up in little clouds.

  Because of its sensitive nature, her aunt had insisted that Molly go alone to collect the body. Once there, the undertaker would help her load it. Ava herself would prepare the giant when he arrived. Molly was to take the usual delivery wagon, an extra two-foot panel added for length. Disguised as a poor delivery boy, she was to drive it herself.

  She wore a servant’s outfit of worn trousers and a white shirt, then covered her hair beneath a sensible hat, pinning her tresses underneath. She might have been any lad, in from the country to sell his wares. Only Ma’s jacket, deemed shabby and masculine enough for the occasion, remained of her old life.

  Driving through the city alone, Molly felt a small pleasure in being completely in charge of her direction. The horses moved at an easy gait beneath her. Twenty minutes later, she pulled to a halt in front of the funeral home and climbed down to hitch the horses. With the wagon secured, she tucked her hands inside her coat and hurried inside.

  The place smelled of flowers and mothballs.

  A man with a rabbity face and small spectacles perched on his nose sat behind a desk. He leapt up when she entered.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m here for the body. You’re expecting me?”

  “Yes, yes.” The man pulled nervously at his jacket, tugging the already worn edges. “The, um . . . large boy, correct?”

  Small beads of sweat had popped up on his brow, and Molly noticed that his hands were twitching with nerves. Perhaps it was his first time dealing with buying and selling the dead. She studied his small frame and wondered if they’d have enough strength between the two of them to lift the corpse.

  “Here.” Molly handed over the money she’d been authorized to give as a bribe. The giant’s family had already been paid, and she was glad she did not have to see them again.

  The man took the envelope without opening it and stuffed it, along with his shaking hand, into a pocket. “Right this way.” He moved from behind his desk and led her down the hallway to a room in the back. He did not wait for her to enter before scurrying away.

  Molly pushed open the door.

  The giant lay stretched across two tables, his partially preserved flesh still looking lifelike. A small candle flickered beside him.

  The room was strangely quiet. Even in death, a space usually talked—floors cracked, and air whispered. But this room was a tomb, as silent as a forest when a predator passes by.

  Then, from the dark came a familiar tinkling.

  “Hello, lovely.” A large figure stepped from the shadows, a bone-white ring encircling his neck.

  He came at her before she could so much as scream, lifting his hand and clenching it around her throat. Her shoes dangled in a frantic dance against gravity as he lifted her off the floor.

  “Can’t talk your way out of this one, can you?” The Tooth Fairy’s fetid breath broke across her face in a wave.

  Her body fought to inhale but caught only darkness. Each shuddered gasp burned her chest. Agony, such as she’d never felt before, filled her, and she wondered if it was what the rabid dog had felt in its last spasms after she’d plunged the needle into its heart.

  The room spun, then faded.

  He wasn’t in jail. The Knifeman was here now—and she w
as to be his seventh body. He was going to kill her.

  The Tooth Fairy let go.

  Her body crashed to the floor, her skull smacking against the wood. Molly gasped for air, each inhalation a knife blade piercing her lungs.

  With the last of her strength, she lifted her head.

  “You’re a coward.” She spit the words, each one a whispered scream against her raw throat. Reaching into her pocket, she found the knife.

  The Tooth Fairy grinned, his lips curling in amusement. He studied her crawling figure like a bug he intended to smash.

  If she was going to die, she would not go quietly. “What kind of man murders and butchers women?”

  For a moment, a shadow flicked across his face, and then he laughed.

  “Your aunt thinks she’s clever, telling the coppers that. Well, I’ve got friends there too.”

  “What are you talking about?” Molly whispered.

  The Tooth Fairy turned from her, his heavy boots crossing the floor to the body. “Ain’t nobody will buy from me now. She ruined me, now I’ll ruin her.”

  Molly smelled kerosene as he tilted a jug and began to pour it over the giant’s legs.

  “No!” Her voice came out in a deep, choked rasp, and the realization of what he was about to do drove her to her feet. She ran at him with the knife, but he plucked it from her as easily as a man picking lint from his suit, shoving her back to the floor.

  “This body were mine. I saw him first and sent the telegram. Had rich men from all over the country ready to buy him and give me my cut.” Rage filled his face. “I don’t know what you did to make that woman give you her boy, but he weren’t yours to take!”

  The Tooth Fairy grabbed the nub of a candle from the table and flung it onto the giant’s body.

  “If I can’t have him, nobody will.”

  Flames exploded across the large swath of flesh. Staggering to her feet, Molly threw herself at the burning corpse, but the Tooth Fairy caught her before she could reach it, his fingers digging painfully into her arm.