“You don’t believe she died of the fever, do you?” Davey whispered. The woman’s skin wasn’t pocked or bloody, but the rumors these days were impossible to ignore. If the Roman fever really was back in Edinburgh …
“Course not,” Munro said with certainty. “Don’t be daft.”
Davey exhaled and smiled weakly in the dark. Munro always knew how to make him feel better, to cast away the fears that crept into his brain like rodents in the walls.
Silently, the boys finished their task. The grave was as well covered with soil and weeds as it had been that morning, and the body, stiff with rigor mortis, was in their wheelbarrow, covered by a gray cloak.
Something was moving at the edge of the cemetery, along the low stone wall that ran the kirkyard’s entire east side. Davey and Munro both saw it, and they whipped their heads around to follow its motion, but as soon as their eyes adjusted in the darkness, it was gone.
“Just a dog,” Munro said more confidently than he felt. “Come on. The doctor likes us out back before dawn.”
Davey pushed the cart, and Munro walked alongside him, gripping the handle of his spade tighter than usual. They had almost made it out of the cemetery when three men in cloaks stepped in their path.
“Hello,” the first man said. He was the tallest of the three, and looked even taller because he wore a stovepipe hat.
“Lovely evening,” said the second, a bald man, shorter than the others.
“Perfect for a stroll,” said the third, whose yellow grin was visible behind his mustache even in the darkness.
They weren’t night watchmen, Davey saw. Maybe they were fellow resurrection men.
Munro clearly had the same idea. “Out of our way. She’s ours, get yer own doornail,” he said, stepping in front of Davey and their wheelbarrow. His voice shook only a little.
Davey looked down and saw the gentlemen were all wearing fine leather shoes. No resurrection man wore shoes like that.
The three men laughed together in near unison. “You’re quite right,” said the short man. “And, of course, we wouldn’t dream of calling the night watchmen.” He took a step closer, and Davey saw a length of rope under the sleeve of his cloak.
The next moment was impossibly quick: the three men advanced, and Munro leapt around them and ran at full tilt up the path and toward the city. “Davey!” he shouted, “Davey, run!”
But Davey was frozen, still behind the wheelbarrow, forced to hesitate at that moment by the choice of whether to abandon Penelope Harkness while he watched Munro sprint into a close and disappear. By the time his feet allowed him to follow his friend, it was too late.
“Gotcha,” said the tall man in the hat as he wrapped his meaty hand around Davey’s wrist. “Now, this won’t hurt a bit.” The man took a blade from his pocket.
Davey struggled against his grip, but no matter how he tugged or twisted, he was unable to pull away.
The man with the blade ran it delicately along Davey’s forearm, revealing a trail of crimson blood that looked almost black in the darkness.
Davey was too frightened to scream. He watched in silence, with unblinking panicked eyes, as the bald man pulled out a vial filled with something purple and viscous. The man uncorked the vial and extended his arm.
The man with the hat shook his knife over the vial until a single drop of Davey’s blood fell into liquid within. The liquid became dark and then changed color to a brilliant, glowing golden yellow. It illuminated the faces of the three men, who were all smiling now.
“Lovely,” the one with the mustache said.
* * *
THE NEXT DAY, WHILE OUT ON his morning constitutional, the priest found an abandoned wheelbarrow containing the stiff body of a woman he had buried the day before. He shook his head. Resurrection men in this city were becoming bolder—and more dangerous. What was Edinburgh coming to?
From Dr. Beecham’s Treatise on Anatomy: or, The Prevention and Cure of Modern Diseases （17th Edition, 1791） by Dr. William R. Beecham:
Any physician who wishes to effectively treat either disease or any variety of common household injury must first understand anatomy. An understanding of the human body and all of its component parts is elemental to our profession.
In this treatise, I will outline the fundamentals of anatomy I have discovered in my decades of study alongside illustrations of my own design. However, illustrations are no replacement for the active, first-hand discovery of anatomy through dissection, and no prospective physician will ever hope to be a service to our profession without first effectuating at least a dozen bodies and studying their component parts.