Anatomy: A Love Story(26)

Initially, Hazel worried that her disguise wouldn’t hold, that experts of the human body would see her—in an oversized hat and trousers that even Iona’s hemming couldn’t get to sit quite right—and easily identify her for what she was: a young woman in her brother’s clothes. But the classroom was dim, lit by torches and candles, and her fellow students were so focused on their own notebooks, frantically scribbling to keep up with Beecham’s words, that no one paid her much mind.

Well, no one but Thrupp, the boy with moles and a smirk like that of a boar ready to charge. When it became clear that Hazel (or rather, George Hazelton) was the best in the class by far, Thrupp delighted in taking every opportunity to torment her. One morning, Hazel found her ink replaced with a small pool of blood. The next, there was a piece of brain pinned to her desk with a penknife. But even he couldn’t muster enough energy to really make Hazel’s life difficult, when he needed to be focused enough to keep up with the material.

The Physician’s Exams loomed, but there was another, more immediate threat: for all his welcoming bravado, Beecham was fanatical about culling the class if anyone fell behind. On day two, one poor boy forgot his quill and was kicked out. On day four, two boys were dropped from the course without ceremony because they were unable to identify the major systems of the body.

“You there! With the blue vest. Name me the symptoms of the Roman fever, Plaga Romanus. Nom de guerre, ‘the bricklayer’s fever,’ or ‘the sickness.’ Well?” Beecham had shouted the question at one of the students the previous week. The boy’s face went blank with terror. Hazel imagined it was exactly the same face one would make if they just happened to notice a lion running toward them full speed.

“Uh—er—well. Fever?” the boy had squeaked out. Thrupp snickered. Dr. Beecham waited for the boy to continue, his eyebrow raised expectantly. The boy looked desperately around the room for help. When none came, the unfortunate boy rose from his seat, bowed deeply to Dr. Beecham, and then sprinted from the room.

As they moved into their second month of classes, the room—once overflowing with boys jostling and elbowing each other for room at the desks—contained only a dozen students.

Beecham seemed pleased by the development. “Good morning,” he said, smiling, as he arrived. “The crème de la crème remains. We shall have some fine physicians among you, there’s no doubt about that.” Under her hat, Hazel couldn’t help but smile herself.

Beecham taught the day’s lecture (on setting broken bones and the ligaments of the legs), but as the students were packing up their notes, he raised a hand to keep them in their seats. “Tomorrow will be a little different. A hanging in Grassmarket occurred last night—some poor murderess—and we have been lucky enough to secure the specimen.” There was chattering of excitement. Thrupp punched his companion jovially in the arm. “Though usually I would wait until a little later in our seminar for human dissection, fresh meat follows no man’s schedule!”



* * *



TOO IMPATIENT AND EAGER TO SLEEP, Hazel arrived the next day to the classroom nearly an hour early and found it empty. Dr. Beecham’s lectern was replaced with a long table. Hazel prepared her quill pen and blotter and waited. The other students gradually filed in, some politely smiling at Hazel, most ignoring her. Ten minutes before class was scheduled to begin, two assistants came in through a door on the side of the classroom, carrying a mass under a sheet. They placed it gingerly on the table and pulled the sheet back.

There it was. A dead body. A woman who could have been around fifty, but might have been as young as thirty—it was hard to say. Gray curled at her temples, and her face was heavily lined, puffy but still, somehow, serene. Beecham had said she was a murderess, but nothing about her face looked like someone who had killed. There she was: a strange, naked, alien thing, waiting for a knife to split her as final punishment for her sins.

From outside the room came the echoing clang of the church bells on the hour: class was supposed to start. But Beecham, who every morning had been there before Hazel arrived, wasn’t there. The students became restless in their seats.

“Maybe it’s a test,” said Gilbert Burgess, a nervous boy with a flop of blond hair who could never remember the bones of the hand. “Maybe we’re supposed to dissect the body. And the Doc is watching somewhere! Waiting to see what we do!”

Thrupp sucked air in through his teeth. “And maybe you’re supposed to stuff your fat face with cotton, Burgess.”

Burgess slinked back into his seat.

Hazel cleared her throat. “At least we can see Burgess’s face. Is there a nose beneath those pockmarks, Thrupp?”

Even Thrupp’s cronies laughed at that one, until he elbowed one of them hard in the ribs. Burgess gave Hazel a small, grateful smile.

“Oi,” Thrupp barked at Burgess. “You’re lucky you have this pretty boy to protect you. You fancy yourself some sort of gentleman with those lined coats, Hazleton?”

“Yeah,” Hazel responded with the most masculine swagger she could manage. “I do. And the ladies seem to like it just fine.” Burgess laughed at that, a full throaty laugh, and Thrupp retreated with an eye roll.

It did seem as though they were supposed to do something. The clock struck ten minutes after, and then fifteen. Hazel was just about to go to the Anatomists’ Society headquarters at the end of the block to ask if Dr. Beecham had been held up when the back door swung open. But it wasn’t Dr. Beecham standing there. Hazel knew who it was by his bearing and cape and the bump of his cane on the wooden floor, before she even saw his eye patch.