Jack shouldn’t even have been lingering around the Anatomists’ Society that late, that time of morning. He had already made his sale to Straine. Resurrection men were supposed to disappear in sunlight, the vampires who fed the medical students of the city. The delivery took longer than he’d thought it would—Straine had refused to pay the last guinea because the body was a week old. It was, but that wasn’t Jack’s fault. Bodies were harder and harder to come by: the night watchmen were tightening their fists around the kirkyards of Edinburgh. But there was no use haggling with Straine, with his rolling black eye and waxy skin and greasy hair. No wonder the Society designated him as the one to buy corpses; he practically looked like a corpse himself.
Anyway, helping the girl—it was done. It hadn’t taken long, for what that was worth, and Jack wasn’t going to linger. He had already made his sale for the day—in the end, the assistant begrudgingly paid the full price—and the silver jingled happily in his pocket. And now he had to get back to his job at Le Grand Leon—the theater at the heart of the city, where he swept the stage and washed the costumes and built the sets and did whatever else Mr. Anthony asked of him. Tonight, after the evening performance, after Isabella got offstage and wiped off her powdery white makeup, he was going to ask her to go for a pint—and maybe, just maybe, she would say yes.
7
THE SURGICAL THEATER WAS DARK, LIT ONLY by candles surrounding the stage and a few torches sputtering along the walls. The stage was set lower than the seating for the audience to ensure everyone would have a full view of the proceedings. Underneath the lifted benches, cast in shadows, Hazel was all but invisible. Through the smoke and the pairs of impatient legs, Hazel saw Dr. Beecham onstage, selecting a knife from a tray held by a nervous-looking assistant.
Beecham was a handsome man who looked to be in his midforties, with just a streak of gray peppering his blondish hair. The air in the theater was oppressive and stuffy, but he wore a long shirt and jacket with a collar that went up to his chin, and he wore gloves of black leather.
“Apparently he never takes them off,” whispered a man sitting on the bench above Hazel to his fellow beside him. “Never without his gloves.”
“Think he’s scared of blood on his hands?” whispered the other man back.
Whatever the reason, Beecham’s gloves remained on even as he selected a knife from the tray, a long blade with a serrated edge, with a handle of polished silver. Beecham smiled at it, taking his time to examine the way the firelight almost caused it to glow before placing it gently back onto the tray. It seemed as though he forgot there was a theater full of men watching his every move. Hazel was so taken by watching him that it was a few minutes before she realized there was a patient behind him, a middle-aged man lying on a table with his leg covered by a sheet.
Finally, Beecham spoke. “I promised you something extraordinary, gentlemen, and something extraordinary is what I will provide. My grandfather founded this society to be a place where distinguished men of science come together to share their works and discoveries. Today, I shall bring Edinburgh into the nineteenth century.” As he spoke, he turned his attention to the patient on the table and, with a flourish, whipped off the sheet covering his leg.
The audience collectively recoiled. Hazel, too, drew a sharp breath, which fortunately no one seemed to hear. The man’s leg was a nightmarish thing, swollen and greenish in some parts, reddish in others, twice the thickness of a normal leg and lined with bulging purple veins.
Dr. Beecham selected another weapon from his assistant’s tray: a saw. He held it aloft, almost playfully, and now the patient winced. “Now, now, Mr. Butcher. Now is not the time to be frightened.”
Mr. Butcher was not capable of taking that advice. He wriggled like a worm on a hook, kicking with his good leg and thumping with his bad leg and shaking his head from side to side. Beecham dropped the hand holding his knife and sighed. “Gentlemen, if you would.”
From the shadows came two men, one with a tall top hat and the other with a thick red mustache. They stood on either side of the patient’s table and each put a hand on one of Mr. Butcher’s shoulders.
“I assured Mr. Butcher before he came in today that our procedure would be quite painless, but he doesn’t appear to believe me!” Beecham said. The gentlemen in the audience chuckled. “But I would never lie. Gentlemen!”
From within his jacket, Beecham pulled a small bottle of milky bluish liquid. The bottle was no taller than a playing card. Beecham held it high above his head so everyone in the crowd could see.