Sawbones Read online

  He sealed the envelope with the master’s wax and set it up ready to post.

  One day he would be a surgeon and have his own place with a brass nameplate fixed to the wall. Anna’s family might well look at him differently then. Perhaps Ellen would come and work for him as housekeeper, and he would leave Toms far behind, and good riddance. He would take a house in the newer developments north of Oxford Street, perhaps, where there was a little more space, and he would meet Mr McAdam as an equal at the Company of Surgeons dinners.

  He got up, invigorated with the thought of a future that didn’t include Toms, mystery cadavers and rash, impetuous, red-headed girls.

  Today, Ezra decided, he would clean and sort the museum. He would shine the jars and order their display anew. It would act as an apology for being such an idiot and wanting to leave. It would show Mr McAdam that he was truly grateful – for his training, for his education and for his home – and it would set his own mind at ease to occupy himself with something familiar and certain. He set to work. He would be a credit to the master in every way.

  Ezra worked without break, dusting, cleaning and writing new labels in his best hand for those that had faded. It was hard work but fulfilling: Ezra enjoyed being in the museum and there was a simple pleasure in the quiet, careful organization. When Mrs Boscaven came up with a tray of food as the clock at St Anne’s struck three, he realized it had hardly occurred to him he was hungry.

  “You’ll waste away with no lunch,” she said, setting the tray down. “There’s some cold cuts and the end of the loaf. As it’s quiet, Ellen and I are off to see the new Indian cottons in the Piccadilly warehouse before the dark comes down and supper needs cooking.”

  “Thank you, Mrs B.” Ezra stretched and stepped down off the chair he’d been using to dust the top shelf.

  Mrs Boscaven set her hands on her hips and looked round. “Well, well, you’ve done wonders in here. Though I don’t like to look too closely at whatever it is you and the master keep in all these infernal jars.”

  Ezra smiled. “They’re not infernal, Mrs B, honestly.” He lit the candles and went to close the curtains.

  “Well, here’s to hoping the master’s travelled as far as Islington by now,” Mrs Boscaven said. “With luck, he’ll be home for supper. The street’s almost back to its usual self. I heard a body crying for fresh fruit! Can’t imagine what they meant in this weather – last summer’s apples, I expect.”

  Ezra took the plate with the cold meat and bread, and tucked in. He was hungrier than he thought.

  “How you can eat with all this stuff around, and the smell, heaven knows! I’d better send Toms out for some good cheese before the master gets in.” Mrs Boscaven clucked away downstairs.

  By the time Ezra heard the front door close, he’d finished his lunch and was onto his second cup of tea. He looked around, tired but satisfied. The museum had been transformed – the glass gleamed, the freshly penned labels stood out neat and clear. If only the puzzles of life were as easy to order as so many jars on shelves.

  Ezra put the cup and plate back on the tray and took it downstairs to the kitchen. He helped himself to another couple of slices of cold ham and some of Mrs Boscaven’s chutney. The kitchen windows were below street level and he could see it was already dark outside. But plenty of carts and wagons trundled past, and Ezra hoped Mrs B was right and that the master would be home for supper.

  It was as he sat by the kitchen fire boiling the kettle for a third cup of tea that he heard a different sound. Not the shouts or the rumble of traffic from the street, it was the sound of breaking glass. And it came from above, from somewhere up in the house.

  Ezra stood up, his heart jumping in his chest. He picked up the poker from where it leant against the fireplace. Should he shout? Would his mere presence be enough to scare a cracksman off? He gripped the poker tight.

  He could hear a heavy tread. It sounded as if more than one person was up there. Ezra climbed the stairs from the basement to the ground floor – they were up in the museum. He took a deep breath and went up another flight.

  For a moment he stood silently on the landing, holding the poker in both hands, listening. More breaking glass – and if he wasn’t mistaken, that was the sound of a jar dropping. One of the jars from the most precious anatomical collection in London – possibly the world. All his work today, all the cleaning, all the sorting…

  Ezra could not bring himself to be cautious any longer. He pushed open the door to the museum and swung wildly with the poker.

  “Mr Ezra McAdam. Oh, please, put it away for God’s sake.” A thin man stood leaning against the mantelpiece. He was dressed in a fine wool jacket, expensive, pale grey, with a modern tall hat covering his hair, his skin a few shades lighter than Ezra’s own. The man wore a small neat pointed beard, greying in places, and would not have looked out of place in one of the smarter arcades in Mayfair.

  “Meet my friend Oleg,” the man said. “You may have seen him … around.”

  Ezra turned. Standing in front of the broken first-floor window was the man he’d thought was a drover, wrapped in his sheepskin. He was holding a jar – the double-skulled foetus, a rare specimen that any surgeon would have been lucky to witness, never mind acquire perfectly preserved.

  Ezra balked as it slipped through the man’s fingers and smashed on the floor sending up a spray of foul-smelling embalming fluid.

  “Oops,” the man said. “Do be more careful, Oleg.”

  Ezra tried to make out his accent. Was it Turkish?

  Oleg grinned and went to pick up another jar. Ezra swung the poker against his arm but the man brushed it away as if the iron rod smashing into his bone was no more than the flutter of a moth’s wings.

  Ezra hit again. Oleg moved slowly, looked at his arm then at Ezra. His eyes narrowed very slightly but otherwise he didn’t even flinch.

  The thin man had pulled something from his jacket. Ezra heard the snap and clack of a catch engaging. Very slowly, he turned to look.

  The pistol was aimed at his heart.

  He dropped the poker and watched it roll away under the cabinet of hands and feet.

  Oleg suddenly swept his arm along the first row of jars, breaking ten, fifteen at once.

  “No!” Ezra jerked forward, for a moment forgetting the gun.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” The man had pulled the trigger back. Ezra put his hands up and retreated again, powerless to do anything but watch as years of work, hour upon hour of study, smashed and broke on the floor.

  “Please! No more!” Ezra tried to keep his voice level but he could have wept; he could see the specimens all over the Turkish runner, formless like so many beached jellyfish, the liquid seeping away through the carpet and down between the floorboards.

  “Now now, young Mr McAdam, there’s still plenty more jars left for Oleg to break, and there’s always your bones, too. I’m sure that he would oblige.”

  “With pleasure, Mr—” Oleg coughed, his voice was thicker, deeper – also foreign, but not Turkish. He nodded at the smarter man. “Mr Ahmat.”

  Ezra breathed deeply, trying to stay calm. The cold and rain were blowing in through the broken window, water spotting the books on the higher shelves.

  “What is it you want?” he asked. “Anything. Take it and get out – the Irish Giant? Take it!” If only he could make them leave.

  “In good time, boy,” Mr Ahmat said coldly. Ezra watched as he removed his hat, bent down and lit his pipe with a taper lit from the fire. “And I think you know what we want. Clever boy like you. Apprentice surgeon, I heard. Not bad for a black, don’t you reckon, Oleg?” Mr Ahmat smiled. It was the smile of a lipless man, flat and thin, showing teeth.

  Oleg shrugged, his big hand reaching for another jar. Ezra tried not to look; he didn’t want to know what it was.

  “It’s the tongueless cadaver, isn’t it?” he said. The man was impassive. “The tongueless corpse. It’s all about the bloody corpse. I knew it would b
ring trouble—”

  “Corpses,” the man said, taking a pull on his clay pipe. “There were two.”

  Ezra frowned. “No, there was one – one man, a Negro, without a tongue – that’s what you’re talking about, and he’s dead. You smashing this place up won’t change that!”

  “Corpses,” the man said again.

  Ezra tried to think. What did he mean? “We see many, many corpses. Every week…”

  “But there were two at the last lecture. My sources aren’t wrong.”

  “Yes, there were two.”

  “See? That was not hard. And was there anything else? Any jewellery?”

  “Of course not!” Ezra exclaimed. “No clothes, no jewellery, nothing. By the time they come to us we’re lucky if they have their teeth. You must know that!” He looked from one man to the other. “They’re bodies, cold meat. Things. No one bothers with them.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” the man said. “We know there was a boy. And the boy had something we need. Some rubies.”

  “How? He had nothing!” Ezra could not think for the life of him why these men would have any interest in some workhouse boy with rickets; they were almost two a penny. “He had drowned.”

  “Drowned?” The gunman was suddenly interested. He looked across to Oleg. Oleg raised his eyebrows.

  “You’re sure?” The man’s voice was clear and knife-sharp. Definitely foreign. Eastern, he was certain of it.

  “Yes,” Ezra replied. He was trembling, but the hand that held the gun, still pointing straight at him, was as steady as a rock. Ezra wondered if it was the same piece that had shot the tongueless man fatally in the back. One shot, that’s all it would take, and he’d be bleeding out on the runner, slap-bang in the middle of the museum. He’d be snuffed out; finished. Ezra swallowed.

  “Did you cut the boy open?” Mr Ahmat asked.

  “Of course.” Why weren’t they interested in the Negro?

  “Show me,” said Ahmat. “Show me the body.”

  Ezra shook his head. “We don’t keep the things here.”

  Mr Ahmat looked around at the jars lining the room. “It seems to me that you do.”

  “The remains are long gone.” Ezra noticed the briefest flicker of regret on the man’s face. He didn’t think he’d be happy with one remaining thigh bone. “The cadavers are removed after the lectures,” he continued. “It’s probably three foot down in the St Pancras boneyard, or St Giles’s – sometimes they use St Giles.”

  “Did you open him up?” The man was getting agitated. “Right up?”

  “Stem to stern.” Ezra drew a line from his collarbone to his stomach.

  “Was there anything … anything odd? Describe him. Paint me a picture.”

  “There was nothing I’d not seen before.” Ezra struggled to find words. “He’d have been nine, ten, hard to tell, he’d been in the water—”

  “Could you tell how long, just from looking at him?”

  “If I had my notebook. It’s over there, in the laboratory.”

  Mr Ahmat nodded but kept his gun trained on Ezra as he fetched his book. Ezra made a show of looking for it, his mind racing all the while, wondering what he could do – if there was a way of disarming the gunman, getting hold of the gun, of dodging the man mountain that was Oleg and escaping to call the watch.

  Mrs Boscaven and Ellen would be back soon; they might get hurt. He had to do something. Shout out of the window, yell for help?

  There was a dissecting knife on the laboratory bench. It might be his only hope. With a quick glance at Mr Ahmat, Ezra palmed the blade and tucked it up his sleeve. Neither Ahmat nor Oleg seemed to have noticed. He could feel the cold metal hard against his skin as he walked back.

  “Give it here.” The man waved the gun again. Ezra passed the notebook over.

  This was his chance. As Ahmat took the book from him Ezra lunged and stuck the knife into the soft flesh of his forearm. Ezra jumped back, the knife still in his hand.Blood gushed from the man’s arm and the gun fell to the floor. Ahmat’s eyes were flashing fury.

  “Oleg!” he yelled.

  Ezra felt Oleg jump him before he could even look round; he fell into the cabinet with the skeleton of the Irish Giant, glass, wood and bone splintering everywhere.

  Ahmat held his bleeding hand. The curses that flew from his mouth weren’t English.

  Ezra tried to get up but was stopped by a sharp pain in his back. He swore under his breath. Above him, Oleg lifted a heavy boot and slammed it down towards his face. Ezra hardly had time to think. He took a piece of glass in his hand, twisted away from the boot just in time and plunged the glass through thick fabric into the flesh of his calf. Oleg screamed.

  The gun lay on the floor. Ezra couldn’t reach it; it was too far away. But he could get to the door. Get away.

  He tried to stand up but the pain in his back was growing so he crawled, pulling himself inch by inch towards the door.

  There was the crack of a gunshot. The ball whistled so close to his face he could feel the heat of it on his cheek. It thudded into the door, wood splintering. The smell of gunpowder and burnt wood joined the reek of blood and preserving fluid.

  Ezra looked back. Mr Ahmat had picked up the pistol and he sat up, grey coat stained with red blood. He was swearing at Oleg – Ezra didn’t understand the language but he knew curses when he heard them. He had to get up, had to run.

  Ahead of him the door flew open. “Ezra! My God!” The master stood in the doorway holding a broom handle, taking in the scene with a look of horror, the floor awash with fluid and sparkling with a thousand shards of broken glass.

  Ahmat and Oleg struggled to stand.

  “Get out of my house! This instant!” Mr McAdam yelled, putting out a hand to Ezra and pulling him up.

  “Get back, sir,” Ezra shouted, “get back! There is a pistol!”

  “The damned man wouldn’t dare—”

  At that moment the gun exploded again. Ezra watched the master step in front of him then falter and fall, like a felled tree, onto the soaked carpet. He saw his face register confusion, anger, then pain.

  “Master!”

  Oleg dragged himself to the open window and jumped. Ezra took the broom handle the master had dropped, but the gunman had stepped over him and was out of the room and down the stairs. Ezra heard another shot, and Toms shouting; then whistles in the street and cries for the watch.

  Ezra turned back to Mr McAdam. He was face down, eye to eye with the double-skulled foetus.

  “Ezra, lad,” he said, and his eyes began to flutter shut.

  “Keep still, sir. It will be all right.”

  “I am going, Ez.”

  “No, sir. It’s a graze, surely!” Ezra cried and rolled him over. Blood blossomed on his master’s shirt, the deep crimson stain spreading outward against the white linen. Ezra tore it open, the damp fabric shredding easily, and tried not to think of the wound in the chest of the tongueless man.

  “I’ll get the ball out, sir,” he sniffed, “and you’ll be as right as rain. No doubt, sir.”

  “It’s too late…”

  “I’ll not hear of it. No, sir!” Ezra insisted, but he could feel the tears prickling behind his eyes. He was being a fool; there was no cause for distress. Of course he would save him. The master had taught him everything he knew – what good had all that instruction been if he could not save him now?

  Ezra took off his own jacket to use that to stop the bleeding, but even in the surgeries at Bart’s he had never seen so much blood; he could not keep his hands from fumbling.

  “I can stop it, sir, don’t you worry. Compression will staunch the blood flow…”

  The master put out his hand and took one of Ezra’s. His grip was firm. That was a good sign.

  “There, you will be all right,” Ezra said, and sniffed again. “I am sorry about everything,” he added. “Everything. I was never grateful enough.” It was difficult to see, his eyes seemed to be somehow blurry.

&
nbsp; “Ez, lad, shush.” The master’s voice was low. “Don’t you fret.”

  Suddenly Mr McAdam’s grip failed and his arm fell limp in Ezra’s grasp. There was a noise from his throat, a kind of gurgling, coughing sound. Ezra had heard it before – it was the sound of the soul leaving the body. The death rattle.

  The master had gone.

  Chapter Eight

  The Burial Ground of St George the Martyr

  Bloomsbury

  London

  November 1792

  On the morning of the funeral Ezra swept the anatomy room as usual, although he had no idea if the place would ever be in use again. But he had to keep busy, do something, anything so as not to think. He almost smiled. Wasn’t that what Miss Finch had said?

  When he opened the door into the yard he saw a girl wearing a travelling cloak, her pale face solemn.

  “Anna! I thought you had gone!”

  “Tomorrow,” she said. Her eyes were red. “They do not know I am here, but when I heard about Mr McAdam… I was so sorry to hear of it. I could not leave without seeing you. I could not!”

  “Don’t cry, please.” Ezra blinked. He could not bear this. “Will you write?”

  “I will try. You know David.”

  Ezra threw the broom down onto the floor. “This is not right! This is not how it should be, the master dead and you going away!”

  “Ezra, we cannot change this.”

  Ezra shrugged. “Who knows, I may be a free agent. I could travel anywhere, do whatever I want, now the master…”

  Anna smiled. “Mr McAdam will look after you even in death. I do not doubt it.”

  “I could follow you, Anna, when things are settled.”

  “I must go. David is expecting me back,” she said. She took something from inside her cloak. “This is yours, the book you lent me.” It was the Tom Paine. “You never did quite rationalize me.” She suddenly stepped towards him and threw her arms around his neck. Ezra had never felt her so close, warm and alive, and he hugged her back, tighter. He wanted to shout at her to tell her not to go, to stay with him and … and what? He didn’t know his own future, how could he promise her anything at all? He pulled away, his eyes stinging, smarting.