Bill climbed down, pulling his white neck cloth tighter. After so long shackled, it was a strange, light feeling to be able to walk free. From the ground, so long as he remembered not to look up at the buildings, the sight was less overwhelming. He could see only the near edges of the crowd, could pretend for a moment that they were the full extent of it. He noticed one ratty hawker holding a pile of engravings. They showed a distant view of the gallows. A man stood there with a white bag on his head, and hundreds of people gathered to watch him die. An artist's impression of what was to come, a souvenir for those who wanted to remember the day into their dotage. He wondered how much they were selling for.
An officer had fallen in on either side of him. "Time to go, Mr Burke. Keep your eyes on the platform if it helps." Bill did so. It seemed very far away. He started to walk. A gull screamed somewhere far above, but he did not look to find it.
When he had crossed half of the distance, church bells began a sonorous count to eight o'clock. The sound stirred the crowd, shattering their solemn deportment, and the first cry went up. "The murderer! Burke him! Choke him, hangie!"
The officers accompanying him tensed, and one touched a hand to his elbow, urging a better pace. Those holding his way open ahead quietly braced, and he watched the little ripple of tension run along their line. The crowd began to stir. "Aye, burke the bastard dead!"
"Burking for Burke!"
"Burke him!"
Between one pace and the next, individual voices vanished and there was only one many-headed beast a-roaring. Bill kept his eyes forward, his head high, and forgave his hands their shaking. Shuffling became jostling, and the police officers had to push back hard to hold their positions. Many in the front line were only being shoved from behind, but enough were making sincere efforts to get to him that he thought he would be torn apart if the officers faltered. Here and there, truncheons came down hard on outstretched arms, shattering bone. Bill walked faster, the noise making him dizzy, and they reached the steps. He wanted to pause at the bottom, to summon what strength he could for the final display, but his escorts wanted him off the ground and forced him on.
The crowd stilled a little as he rose into view, as though seeing him with their own eyes was enough to sate their lust. It became real for them that he was really there, and they were going to stand witness to his death. His breath caught as he looked across them. Some wept, but he did not think it was grief for his fate. They cried either for his victims, or through simple, overwhelming excitement. Others stared at him with such vicious eyes that he wondered whether the world might not be a better place if he traded places with them and let them hang. During his twelve months as a killer, he had not once lusted for the death of another. It had ever been an abhorrent thing.
At the top of the steps he choked at the sight of the gallows and the waiting executioner. A priest came over to him, muttering platitudes about eternal souls and life everlasting. Bill knew it for a nonsense. There were no angels waiting to usher him into Heaven. That was not his destination. He nodded along anyway, scanning the windows, examining what faces he could make out. He didn't think Nelly was out there, not really, but that had not killed his hope. He wanted to see her, one more time. He wanted to know if freedom had wiped that idiot smile from her face. He didn't see her, but there were so many shawls and bonnets among them that he did not know if he would ever be able to find her. As he searched, he thought he glimpsed Merry Andrew standing solemn, but when he glanced back to where he thought the man had been he was there no longer. Perhaps it had not been Merry Andrew. Perhaps it had been the Reaper come to collect. They looked much alike.
The priest guided him to the trapdoor, and the din smashed over him again, erasing all else. The priest was talking, as was a solemn official-looking man reading from a page he held between his hands. None of it registered, and Bill wanted to explain that the smash of the crowd had made him deaf. They had stolen his voice too, and he had no words left. He looked down at the trapdoor, saw its well-worn edges, and was absurdly frightened that it might pop open and send him crashing down. That was the point, of course, but he didn't want it to happen early. The executioner, a thin man with odd and friendly eyes, placed hands on his shoulders and made him turn so that the crowd had only his back to abuse. They hated that. Some screamed in rage. "Turn him around," he heard. "Stand out the way!"
The priest wrapped his hand in skinny, cold fingers and prayed. Bill tilted his head back, taking a last look at the sky, and then the executioner was there, the noose in his hand. Bill tried to smile, but could not. He felt tears coming, of self-pity and fear. His bladder was full, but held it in. The noose went over his head, the rough cold rope scraping at his skin. The hangman played with it, but wasn't happy. The knot, so carefully placed to break his neck when he reached the end of his fall, would not sit right over his neck scarf. "The knot's behind," he tried to say, but the executioner had found the problem. He murmured something that Bill had no chance of hearing, an apology perhaps, then pulled the scarf away. With his neck exposed, his remaining warmth leached away. He began to shake. "Tell them," he beseeched of the priest. "It's cold, not fear, that does for me." The priest smiled and nodded, then stepped away. Bill could not tell whether he had been heard and understood, or merely humoured.
The official with the paper stepped back too, and it was only he and his executioner. The man nodded, and placed the white bag over his head.
The world vanished, replaced by a blissful blank void.
Dead faces danced through his memory. It was his weakness that had done for them. He wanted to make recompense, and hoped that death and damnation would appease them.
It seemed an age since he had been hooded. He pissed himself, unable to hold it any longer.
He could hear individual cries now, as though the hood had filtered them out for him.
"Burke him!" That was his legacy. What he left behind. There had been no burking before he squeezed for the first time, or no word to match the deed at any rate. It was a poor thing to gift the world.
"You'll see Daft Jamie in a minute!" Not likely. He remembered the man's beatific smile, even as he died. They would not be sharing the same lodgings in the next world.
"Where is Hare? Rope for Hare!" And there was something achieved. If William escaped the law a second time, there was hardly a corner of the civilised world where his name and deeds were not known.
All the drinking he had done with the man. All the cups and jars of whisky he had taken from his hand. He knew what must come next. Would he be aware of it, when his body rose in search of food?
"Burke him!"
There was nothing beneath him. His feet twitched as he started to fall, searching on instinct for the trap that he knew was gone, and then William Burke reached the end of his rope.
Chapter 36
William Fergusson
Wednesday, January 28th, 1829
Fergusson had been present at the hanging, crushed against the wall of a building sixty feet back from the platform, and did not believe he had seen a more pitiable sight than that vast mob baying for blood. It had felt at times as though the city shook beneath his feet, and he had been filled with nausea at so primal a display. For a moment he doubted his own great desire to become a surgeon and work for the benefit of all mankind, for he no longer believed himself part of a species worth prolonging.
After watching the corpse swing for a moment or two, caught in some breeze that he could not himself feel, he had pushed back through the crowds. A persistent, icy rain began to fall, soaking him through, though it was insufficient to make him feel clean again. The weather took some of the fire from the crowd, which was still gathered several streets back from the main event. There were none in the city who did not feel touched by the murders. Burke and Hare could have taken any of them, they now knew, and if the interviews with Burke that were being published over and again in the Caledonian Mercury could be believed, they would have come back as slavering, hungry fien
ds.
Anticipating the crowd's next move, he had made all haste to the university's own anatomical theatre, beating the dense masses and assuring his place in the main lecture hall. Although the dissection was ostensibly public, preference was given to those with a demonstrated interest in scientific inquiry. It was still standing room only, and he wondered how many of the smartly attired men so gathered could really claim a practical involvement in the human body and its workings. While it was a more civilised affair than the gallows, beneath the mannered patience they were all there for spectacle and blood.
It took two hours for them to bring Burke's body through the streets, and the crowds followed like some twisted version of a funeral procession. When the body was brought in the crowd had tried to follow, and when access was denied them the police had to intervene. They all heard the ruckus outside, and many of the older attendees had patted their brows nervously at the thought of a street riot pouring through the doors and devouring them. In the end, a university official was given the unpleasant task of informing the gathering that in the interest of public safety, the dissection was to be rescheduled for early the following morning. It was hoped that a day's grace might dull the ardour of the mob, and announcements were made that the doors would be opened to the general public to see the dissected body the day after Monro was done with it. Fergusson did not think that many of those who would troop past the remains would be doing so in the spirit of scientific wonderment, but if it meant that they could be left in peace for the dissection it was probably worth it.
By the time he arrived at nine, the body was already laid out on a dissecting table, and the room was full. Nobody wanted to arrive late and miss the chance to say they had been there when Burke fell to natural justice. A small gathering of students had formed outside the hall, hooting and pushing in protest that there was no room for them despite their being actual students at the university. Professor Christison calmed them down with the promise that they could be allowed access to the body after the event in small groups if they promised to behave. A lucky few had already been allowed in, and they gathered around the body with sketchpads, keen to take what learning they could from the corpse. One industrious soul was attempting a sculpture of the head.
Fergusson stood at the very rear of the hall, standing with his back pressed to the wall. While he felt compelled to be present, he did not desire to draw attention to himself. His name had been in the papers, and he had more than once been hounded through the streets by belligerent reporters trying to get close to the story. Having already lied to the police, denying even a suspicion that Burke and Hare might be engaged in illegal practises, he felt no compulsion to compound the falsehood in the press. To his shock and shame, that had not prevented the newspapers from printing his name and speculating about his doings. Somebody had spoken out, told them how he recognised the Paterson girl when she was delivered, but the details had been twisted up. According to the press, who knew that she had once lived a more dissolute life but had somehow neglected to note that she had spent time with the Magdalenes attempting to reform, he could only have known her as a whore. He had been painted as some sort of upper class deviant, and had no wish to be noticed by the pressmen scattered among the assorted scientists and doctors.
Were it not for the majority of comment obsessing over the doctor, then Fergusson knew the mob might as easily have turned on him. Fortunately Knox was so dismissive of the matter that it had been easy for the press to turn him into an arrogant monster, happy to buy death for his evil experiments. No amount of common sense explanation would recast him as a good man, working to exhaustion to rid the world of something evil, and so he had simply stopped talking to the press. He had strongly advised that they did too, but it was difficult watching the great man being pilloried. There had even been calls for a full investigation into their connection with the Irishmen, and whether they had been the true instigators of the murders. Nobody believed that Burke could have stumbled across his preferred method of execution alone. Compressing the chest to disrupt the functioning of the diaphragm, and so create a corpse with no evident cause of death? It sounded too much as though he had been schooled by men who knew the human body well.
Around ten o'clock a polite murmur of interest spread through the crowd, and he straightened up and looked about. Alex was at the front of the room, more comfortable with notoriety than he, and was staring towards the door at the back of the room. It had cracked open, and a moment later Professor Alexander Monro, third of his name, waddled into the room. The old man looked across the gathered with something akin to a sneer, then dismissed them all as he shuffled to the body. The sketching students scurried to the edges of the hall, though once there they took up their pencils again and kept working. The brave sculptor found himself trapped, and bustled about in embarrassment as he tried to move his materials and the half-formed head out of the way under Monro's baleful gaze.
Fergusson had seen Tertius lecture before, and it surprised him that he had gone to some lengths to present a more professional image than usual. He wore a clean, though ill-fitting, black suit beneath his apron, which he had clearly tasked somebody with the chore of washing down. Although it was not caked with old, dry gore, it was still irreparably stained. Monro was the reason for Knox's absence. Although the court could not have intended it, for all murderers were ultimately bequeathed to Monro for dissection by public statute, the media at large had framed it as a deliberate snub that a body so closely connected to Doctor Knox would be examined by a man he had made public war with over the legal use of cadavers and revenants.
The professor snarled something at the young sculptor, who nodded in fright and scurried off without the bust he had been working on, then turned to the crowd. "Gentlemen," he said, "we have gathered here to turn an evil to a good. The body laid out before you was, I'm certain you are aware, one William Burke. Liam de Burca in his own land. More than any other before him, this man has brought our science into disrepute. He is not alone. Others made his crimes possible, and it horrifies me to admit that among them are both current and prospective members of the Royal College of Surgeons." Fergusson's stomach tightened as Monro gazed up at him. He wanted to shrivel as the room turned, but a knot of hard anger stopped him doing so. Instead he stared back, impassive, not at that moment caring what damage he might be doing to his own future. Monro snorted, and his attention returned to the body. "It is only fitting that, after calling our very profession into question, William Burke has been passed to this august institution. Let him offer up insights to the public at large about why we pursue truth in acts which many still hold to be unholy. We will begin at the skull, of particular interest to those of you engaged in the nascent science of phrenology, and expose the muscles of the head before excavating the brain."
There was no flair or delicacy to his work, but for a large scale demonstration such as this, none was really required. He took the scalp away with a few quick, mean strokes, and cast it onto a second small table alongside the body. A few turned to look away, and a door far to his right opened and closed as somebody made quick egress. The reality of the human body was enough to enable him to pick out those who were truly interested in what was happening from others who had thought this some festival performance. Monro's brutal manner was appropriate in this case, where Knox's may have been in poorer taste. While Monro treated a body as offal that must be studied in order to pass an exam, Knox revelled in the complexities and wonder of the human form and wanted to make a contagion of his enthusiasm.
William Burke did not deserve to be celebrated.
Monro stood back for a moment, wiping dripping hands across his apron, and let the room take in the sight of the muscles clinging to the skull. Blood oozed across the table, dripping on to the floor. Several people across the room made a show of lifting handkerchiefs or sleeves to their noses, though Fergusson smelled nothing. Perhaps he had grown so accustomed to the scents of death and decomposition that they no longer regis
tered.
Monro lifted a bone saw, and made brisk work cutting around the crown. The rasp of blade on bone made several in the crowd moan and sit, but nobody else departed. Shoving his fingers around the revealed edges, the professor clasped both the brain and its membranous covering, and yanked them free like he was pulling giblets from a chicken. He held them aloft as blood spilled out of the corpse's head. All eyes were on Monro, who just stood there allowing all to see the mess in his hands. The corpse's own dead eyes seemed to be staring too, as though in wonderment at what it was seeing.
Monro paced along the front row, allowing any who could stomach it to observe the brain closely. Many leaned back as he approached, the thrill of the event having turned to a squeamish horror.
Fergusson stopped, and looked back at the corpse.
Burke's eyes had been closed at the beginning of the procedure.
Now they were open.
Monro returned to the body, raising the brain aloft one more time for all to see, heedless of the fluids dripping into his hair and onto his shoulders.
Burke's eyes swivelled.
Fergusson leaned forward. The corpse was not manacled. He had grown so accustomed to their practise of binding the things before doing any work on them that he had not even considered that Monro might not do the same. Even as he drew in breath to shout a warning, he was making notes to himself so that he might jot them down later. The eyes swivelled, but in the absence of the brain what were they communicating their images to? The doctor would be interested in that, if he had not already noted it from his other tests.
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