The Bone Garden: A Novel (10 page)

“You don’t deserve one fine hair from her head.”

“Where is it?”

“I pawned it. How do you think I paid for her burial?”

“It was worth far more than
this,
” he retorted, pointing at the grave.

“It’s gone, Eben. I paid for this grave, and you’re not welcome here. You gave my sister no peace while she was alive. The least you can do is allow her to rest in peace now.”

He glanced at the old gravedigger, who was glowering at him. Oh, Eben was quick to hit a woman when no one was looking, but now he had to struggle to keep his fists at his sides, his abusive tongue in check. All he said was, “You’ll hear more about this later, Rose.” Then he turned and walked away.

“Miss? Miss?”

Rose turned to the old digger, who met her gaze with a look of sympathy. “You already paid us. I expect you’ll want this. It should keep you and the baby fed for a time.”

She stared at the coins that he’d placed in her hand. And she thought: For a while, this will hold off our hunger. It will pay for a wet nurse.

The two laborers gathered up their tools and left Rose standing beside the fresh mound of Aurnia’s grave. Once the dirt settles, she thought, I will buy you a stone marker. Perhaps I can save enough to engrave more than just your name, darling. A carving of an angel, or a few lines of a poem to tell the world how much emptier it is for having lost you.

She heard muffled sobs as the mourners from the other funeral now began to file out of the cemetery. She watched pallid faces swaddled in black wool float by in the mist. So many here to mourn the loss of a child.
Where are your mourners, Aurnia?

Only then did she remember Mary Robinson. She glanced around, but did not see the nurse anywhere. The arrival of Eben, spoiling for a fight, must have driven her off. Yet another grudge Rose would always carry against him.

Drops of rain splashed her face. The other mourners, heads bent, filed from the cemetery toward waiting carriages and warm suppers. Only Rose lingered, clutching Meggie as rain muddied the earth.

“Sleep well, darling,” she whispered.

She picked up her satchel and Aurnia’s scattered belongings. Then she and Meggie left St. Augustine’s and headed toward the slums of South Boston.

Ten

“M
IDWIFERY IS
the branch of medicine which treats of conception and its consequences. And today, you have heard some of those consequences. Many of them, alas, tragic…”

Even from the grand stairway outside the auditorium, Norris could hear the booming voice of Dr. Crouch, and he hastened up the steps, vexed that he had arrived so late for morning lectures. But last night he had once again spent in the gruff company of Wall-eyed Jack, an expedition that had taken them south to Quincy. The whole way, Jack had complained about his back, which was the only reason he had asked Norris to accompany him on this latest run. They had returned to Boston well after midnight, carting only one specimen in such poor shape that Dr. Sewall, upon peeling back the tarp, had grimaced at the smell. “This one has been in the ground for days,” Sewall had complained. “Could you not use your noses? The stink alone should have told you!”

Norris could still smell that stink on his hair, his clothes. It did not ever leave you, but wormed its way like maggots under your skin, until every breath you inhaled was infused with it, and you could not tell living flesh from dead. He smelled it now as he climbed the stairs to the auditorium, like a walking corpse trailing its own scent of decay. He pulled open the door and quietly slipped into the lecture hall, where Dr. Crouch was now pacing the stage as he spoke.

“…though a branch of medicine distinct from surgery and physic, the practice of midwifery requires knowledge of anatomy and physiology, pathology and…” Dr. Crouch paused, his gaze fixed on Norris, who had made it only a few paces down the aisle, in search of an empty seat. The sudden silence snagged the attention of everyone in the room more dramatically than any shout could have. The audience turned like a many-eyed beast and looked at Norris, who was pinned in place by all the stares.

“Mr. Marshall,” said Crouch. “We’re honored you’ve chosen to join us.”

“I’m sorry, sir! I have no excuse.”

“Indeed. Well, find a seat!”

Norris spotted an empty chair and quickly sat down, in the row just ahead of Wendell and his two friends.

On stage, Crouch cleared his throat and continued. “And so to conclude, gentlemen, I leave you with this thought: The physician is sometimes all that stands in the way of darkness. When we enter the gloomy chambers of sickness, we are there to do battle, to offer divine hope and courage to those pitiful souls whose very lives hang in the balance. So remember that sacred trust, which may soon be placed on your shoulders.” Crouch planted his short legs on center stage, and his voice rang out like a call to war. “Be true to the calling! Be true to those who place their lives in your most worthy hands.”

Crouch gazed up expectantly at his audience, which for a few seconds sat utterly silent. Then Edward Kingston rose to clap, loudly and conspicuously, a gesture that was not unnoticed by Crouch. Others quickly joined, until the whole hall echoed with applause.

“Well. I’d call that a Hamlet-worthy performance,” said Wendell, his dry appraisal lost in the din of clapping hands. “When does he roll around on the floor and perform the death scene?”

“Hush, Wendell,” cautioned Charles. “Do you want to get us all into trouble?”

Dr. Crouch left the stage and sat down in the front row with the other faculty members. Now Dr. Aldous Grenville, who was both dean of the medical college and Charles’s uncle, stood to address the students. Though his hair was already silver, Dr. Grenville stood tall and unstooped, a striking figure who commanded the room with just one look.

“Thank you, Dr. Crouch, for a most illuminating and inspiring lecture on the art and science of midwifery. We move on to the final segment of today’s program, an anatomical dissection presented by Dr. Erastus Sewall, our distinguished professor of surgery.”

In the front row, portly Dr. Sewall rose heavily to his feet and strode onstage. There the two gentlemen heartily shook hands; Dr. Grenville once again sat down, granting Sewall the limelight.

“Before I proceed,” said Sewall, “I wish to call on a volunteer. Perhaps a gentleman from among the first-year students would be bold enough to assist me as prosector?”

There was a silence as five rows of young men discreetly stared down at their own shoes.

“Come now, you must get your hands bloody if you’re to understand the human machine. You’ve only just begun your medical studies, so you are strangers to the dissecting room. Today, I’ll help you make the acquaintance of this marvelous mechanism, this intricate and noble fabric. If one of you will just be bold enough?”

“I will,” said Edward, and he stood.

Professor Grenville said, “Mr. Edward Kingston has volunteered. Please join Dr. Sewall on the stage.”

As Edward headed up the aisle, he shot a cocksure grin at his classmates. A look that said:
I’m no coward like the rest of you.

“Where does he get his nerve?” Charles murmured.

“We will all get our turn up there,” said Wendell.

“Look at how he drinks up the attention. I swear, I’d be trembling like a sinner.”

Wheels rumbled across the wooden stage as a table was rolled out from the wings, propelled by an assistant. Dr. Sewall shed his coat and rolled up his sleeves as the assistant next brought out a small table with a tray of instruments. “Each one of you,” he said, “will have a chance to wield the knife in the dissecting room. But even so, your exposure will be far too brief. With such a shortage of anatomical specimens, you must not let a single opportunity go to waste. Whenever a subject becomes available, I hope you will seize the chance to further your knowledge. Today, to our great good fortune, such an opportunity has presented itself.” He paused to slip on an apron. “The art of dissection,” he said as he tied it behind his waist, “is exactly that—an art. Today, I will show you how it should be done. Not like a knacker butchering a carcass, but like a sculptor, coaxing a work of art from a block of marble. That’s what I intend to do today—not merely dissect a body, but reveal the beauty of every muscle and every organ, every nerve and blood vessel.” He turned to the table where the body lay, still draped. “Let us reveal today’s subject.”

Norris felt anticipatory nausea as Dr. Sewall reached for the shroud. Already he had guessed who lay beneath it, and he dreaded the unveiling of the half-rotten corpse he and Wall-eyed Jack had unearthed last night. But when Sewall swept off the sheet, it was not the stinking man.

It was a female. And even from his seat in the auditorium, Norris recognized her.

Curly red hair cascaded over the edge of the table. Her head was turned slightly, so that she faced the audience with half-closed eyes and parted lips. The lecture hall had fallen so quiet that Norris could hear his own heartbeat pounding in his ears.
That corpse is Rose Connolly’s sister. The sister she adored.
How in God’s name had the girl’s beloved sister ended up on the anatomist’s table?

Dr. Sewall calmly picked up a knife from the tray and moved to the corpse’s side. He seemed oblivious to the shocked silence that had fallen over the room, and when he regarded his subject, he might have been any tradesman, about to set to work. He looked at Edward, who stood frozen at the foot of the table. No doubt Edward, too, had recognized the body.

“I advise you to slip on an apron.”

Edward did not seem to hear him.

“Mr. Kingston, unless you wish to soil that very fine coat you’re wearing, I suggest you remove your jacket and put on an apron. Then come assist me.”

Even arrogant Eddie, it appeared, had lost his nerve, and he swallowed hard as he donned the neck-to-ankle apron and rolled up his shirtsleeves.

Dr. Sewall made the first cut. It was a brutal slash, from breastbone to pelvis. As the skin parted, the abdomen released its contents and loops of bowel spilled out, pouring forth from the open belly to hang in dripping streamers over the side of the table.

“The bucket,” said Sewall. He looked up at Edward, who was staring down in horror at the gaping wound. “Will
somebody
position the bucket? Since my assistant here seems incapable of any purposeful movement whatsoever.”

Uneasy laughter rippled through the audience at the spectacle of their overbearing classmate being so publicly yanked down a few notches. Flushing, Edward snatched up the wooden bucket from the instrument table and set it down on the floor, to catch the loops of dripping intestine as they slithered from the belly.

“Lying atop the bowel,” said Dr. Sewall, “is a caul of tissue called the omentum. I have just sliced through it, releasing the intestines, which you now see cascading from the abdomen. In older gentlemen, especially those who have indulged too heartily in the pleasures of the table, this caul can be quite dense with fat. But in this young female subject, I find rather sparse deposits.” He lifted the sheet of almost transparent omentum and held it up in bloodied hands for the audience to see. Then he leaned over the table and tossed the mass of tissue into the waiting bucket. It landed with a wet plop.

“Next, I shall clear away this bowel, which so thoroughly obstructs our view of the organs beneath. While any knacker who’s butchered a cow or horse is well acquainted with the voluminous mass of intestine, new students attending their first dissection are frequently astonished when they encounter it for the first time. First I shall resect the small intestine, slicing it free at the level of the pyloric junction, where the stomach ends…”

He leaned in with his knife, and his hand came up holding one severed end of the bowel. He let it slither over the side of the table, and Edward caught it with his bare hand before it could splatter onto the floor. In disgust, he quickly dropped it into the bucket.

“Now I shall free it at the other end, where the small bowel becomes large bowel, at the ileocecal junction.”

Again he reached in with his knife. He straightened, holding up the other severed end.

“To illustrate the marvels of the human digestive system, I should like my assistant to grasp that end of the small bowel and walk up the aisle, as far as he can go.”

Edward hesitated, staring down in disgust at the bucket. Grimacing, he reached into the mass of entrails and came up holding the severed end.

“Go on, Mr. Kingston. Toward the back of the hall.” Edward started up the center aisle, pulling his end of the bowel. Norris caught a foul whiff of offal and saw the student across the aisle clap his hand over his nose to mask the stench. And still Edward kept walking, dragging a coil of intestine behind him like a stinking rope until it finally lifted from the floor and stretched taut, dripping onto the floor.

“Behold the length,” said Dr. Sewall. “We are looking at perhaps twenty feet of bowel.
Twenty feet,
gentlemen! And this is only the small intestine. I have left the large bowel in situ. Contained within the belly of every single one of you is this most marvelous of organs. Think of it as you sit there, digesting your breakfasts. No matter your station in life, rich or poor, old or young, within the cavity of your belly you are like every other man.”

Or woman, thought Norris, his gaze not on the organ but on the gutted subject lying on the table. Even one so beautiful can be dissected down to a bucket of offal. Where was the soul in all this? Where was the woman who once inhabited that body?

“Mr. Kingston, you may come back to the stage, and the bowel can go back into the bucket. Next, we shall see what the heart and lungs look like, nestled within the chest.” Dr. Sewall reached for an ugly-looking instrument and clamped its jaws around a rib. The sound of snapping bone echoed through the hall. He looked up at the audience. “You cannot get a good view of the thorax unless you look straight into the cavity. I believe it might be best if the first-year students rise from their seats and move closer for the rest of the dissection. Come, gather around the table.”

Norris rose to his feet. He was closest to the aisle, so he was one of the first to reach the table. He stared down, not at the open thorax, but at the face of the woman whose innermost secrets were now being revealed to a room full of strangers. She was so lovely, he thought. Aurnia Tate had been in the full bloom of womanhood.

“If you’ll gather ’round,” said Dr. Sewall, “I should first like to point out an interesting finding in her pelvis. Based on the size of the uterus, which I can easily palpate right here, I would conclude that this subject has quite recently given birth. Despite the relative freshness of this corpse, you will note the particularly foul odor of the abdominal cavity, and the obvious inflammation of the peritoneum. Taking all these findings into account, I’m willing to offer a conjecture as to the likely cause of her death.”

There was a loud thud in the aisle. One of the students said, alarmed: “Is he breathing? Check if he’s breathing!”

Dr. Sewall called out: “What is the problem?”

“It’s Dr. Grenville’s nephew, sir!” said Wendell. “Charles has fainted!”

In the front row, Professor Grenville rose to his feet, looking stunned at the news. Quickly he made his way up the aisle toward Charles, pushing through the students crowded in the aisle.

“He’s all right, sir,” Wendell announced. “Charles is coming around now.”

On stage, Dr. Sewall sighed. “A weak stomach is not a recommendation for someone who wishes to study medicine.”

Grenville knelt at his nephew’s side and patted Charles on the face. “Come come, boy. You’ve just gone a bit light-headed. It hasn’t been an easy morning.”

Groaning, Charles sat up and clutched his head. “I feel sick.”

“I’ll take him outside, sir,” said Wendell. “He could probably use the fresh air.”

“Thank you, Mr. Holmes,” said Grenville. As he stood up, he himself looked none too steady.

We are all unnerved, even the most seasoned among us
.

With Wendell’s help, Charles rose shakily to his feet and was helped up the aisle. Norris heard one of the students snicker, “It would have to be Charlie, of course. Leave it to him to faint!”

But it could have happened to any one of us, thought Norris, looking around the auditorium at the ashen faces. What normal human being could watch this morning’s butchery and not be appalled?