Cadaver & Queen Read online

  “You are now officially members of a very select group,” Moulsdale continued. “For while there are many fine medical schools in England, there is no place that compares to Ingold. You will receive opportunities here that are available nowhere else.”

  The select group all pressed more tightly together and leaned in, anxious not to miss a single word.

  All right, thought Lizzie. Time to speak up for yourself, my girl.

  “I beg your pardon.” She tapped a medical student on the shoulder. “Could you move over a little, so I can see?”

  “Sorry,” said the student, without bothering to turn around. “There really isn’t room.”

  “You could make room.”

  “Hush!”

  Lizzie had no idea where Americans had gotten the idea that the English were polite. Certainly not from the English. At the other side of the room, she spotted a small opening in the wall of masculine backs and moved to claim it.

  Now she could see that Moulsdale was a tall, stout, middle-aged man with doughy cheeks, small, dark eyes and a trim, salt-and-pepper beard. Tucking his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets, he beamed out at his audience.

  “Everything you have ever done in your lives has led you here, to this moment. Take a minute to savor it.”

  And just like that, Lizzie felt all her anger and upset drain away. She took a deep breath and realized that she hadn’t really permitted herself to enjoy any of this experience. Admittedly, she had read her acceptance letter so many times that she had memorized it, but she had never stopped worrying that something would go wrong. She had pictured herself finally arriving at the school, just to be told that it was all a clerical error and she would have to go back home.

  No one had told her to pack her bags yet, but she hadn’t had one carefree moment since her ship had steamed away from New York harbor.

  Moulsdale had changed all that with a single sentence. Savor it. She found herself smiling at her fellow classmates, barely registering the bemused glances they gave her in return. What did she care if they thought her presence here peculiar? Lizzie just wished her father could have lived long enough to learn that all his years of teaching her biology and chemistry and physics had paid off. Most people thought her desire to study medicine was bizarre enough. The fact that she was interested in designing prosthetic limbs put her in a category reserved for the truly freakish. If she couldn’t find work after graduation, she could probably join a circus and display herself alongside the bearded lady and the world’s smallest man. Her father had been the only person who thought she was wonderful instead of odd.

  But here was Moulsdale, conjuring a future in which she and her fellow classmates would accomplish marvelous things. They would transform the way wars were fought with new and improved Bio-Mechanical soldiers. They would save countless lives. They would, by God’s own grace, conquer death itself.

  It was then, with a showman’s talent for manipulating an audience, that Moulsdale’s tone turned somber. “Some of you, that is. Not all of you. I know, I know, each of you is used to being top of his class at school. But what’s considered exceptional at other institutions is merely a passing grade at Ingold. Look to your right and to your left.” On her right, there was a short, plump boy who looked too young to shave; on her left, a lantern-jawed fellow whose mouth seemed too small for his face. “One of you will either drop out or be dropped before graduation.” Suddenly the air seemed to crackle with invisible currents of ambition and fear.

  “Guess I’m safe,” said the fellow with the heavy jaw, looking right at Lizzie. Before she could even think of a suitable retort, Moulsdale was speaking again.

  “You have chosen a very demanding program. In addition to lectures, you will be expected to observe patients from the very beginning of your education, and every student must do some laboratory research before selecting his specialty. And whether you ultimately choose the School of Medicine, the School of Surgery or the School of Biological Engineering, Ingold will test you as you have never been tested before. If at any time anything seems to come easily, you may rest assured that you are doing it wrong.” Moulsdale clapped his hands. “Right then. Everyone ready? Follow me.”

  2

  There was a frantic jostling for position as the students stampeded after Moulsdale, stepping out into a cloistered hallway that protected them from the rain but not the chill of a Yorkshire morning. Somehow, Lizzie found herself at the end of the line, and as the last boy to enter the surgical building didn’t bother to hold the heavy door for her, she had to pull it open with all her body weight and then dart through the gap before the door slammed shut.

  The new students were already crowding eagerly into the rows between patients’ beds, and Lizzie hurried to join them, earning a disapproving look from a nurse in a starched white cap.

  “Mind your elbow, you great lummox. You made me spill the patient’s dose!”

  “Sorry,” said Lizzie, hurrying to catch up to the others, who were congregating around one of the patients’ beds.

  Like the others in this sick ward, he was a young man, probably no older than the medical students who surrounded him. Ingold, Moulsdale explained, had a history of caring for soldiers who had undergone battlefield amputations, like this brave boy who was just one of the many unsung heroes of the Second Boer War. Lizzie nodded and hoped no one was going to ask her anything specific about the conflict. Back in New York, she hadn’t even registered that the British were at war, and she had only learned that “the Boer” referred to South Africa when she was on the ocean liner carrying her to England. Even now, she had only the vaguest sense of what the war was about—independence or gold mines or a batch of unruly barbarians rebelling against the queen, depending on whom you asked.

  “Now,” said Moulsdale, picking up a chart, “this is a particularly interesting case. Private Holden here lost his right arm in the battle of Blood River Poort.”

  “Royal Rifle Corps,” Private Holden said cheerily. “I’d salute, but as you can see I’m missing a bit of equipment.” It was difficult to envision the small, wiry man in striped hospital pajamas wearing the dark green uniform of the rifle corps, let alone to picture him on the far side of the world in the South African Republic, fighting Botha’s Boer commandos. “The limb was almost completely severed and badly mangled, and our surgeons amputated and closed the wound with a skin flap.” Moulsdale pointed to the man’s right sleeve, which had been pinned back to reveal a bandaged arm that ended just above the elbow.

  “Amputation is such an insufferably ordinary injury,” whispered Byram. “I was rather hoping we were going to see a Bio-Mechanical.”

  Moulsdale, apparently not one of those teachers with bat-like hearing, kept right on talking. “Private Holden is well aware that he is no longer in possession of his right hand. In addition, he has the evidence of his own eyes to confirm the fact that he is now an amputee.”

  “I knows what I am,” said Holden, sounding defensive. “A useless cripple.”

  Moulsdale did not correct him. “Yet Private Holden persists in telling us that he suffers from severe pain in his right hand, even though it is no longer attached to his person.”

  Phantom limb pain, thought Lizzie with excitement. Phantom limb pain fascinated her. She had been studying up on it for the past two years.

  “I ain’t claimin’ nuffink,” said Holden. “It’s true.”

  There was a low buzz of speculation from the assembled students.

  “And there you have it,” said Moulsdale. “What, then, would you suggest as a treatment for Private Holden?”

  One boy raised his hand. “Perhaps the wound requires cauterization?”

  Moulsdale shook his head. “A sound treatment for infection, but there is no sign of sepsis in or around the wound site. Anyone else?” He turned to Will, who was not raising his hand. “How about you? No ideas at all?”

  “Er,” said Will.

  “Yes?”

  Everyone looked at Will, who was watching Moulsdale the way a rabbit watches a cat. “Um. P-perhaps...”

  “Go on.”

  Will took a deep breath. “Perhaps a resectioning of the arm? The scar tissue might be causing pressure on the nerves.”

  “Ah.” Moulsdale put his thumbs in the pockets of his waistcoat. “An interesting suggestion. Yet a more observant person might notice the presence of a bandage, which implies recent surgery. Recent surgery, of course, implies an absence of scar tissue.” Moulsdale shook his head. “I must say, I expected a bit more from a Frankenstein.”

  Will looked as though he’d been slapped.

  “Your brother was a fine young man, and an outstanding student. A loss to us all, my boy. A tragic loss.” Moulsdale’s supple voice grew hoarse with suppressed emotion, but his small, dark eyes did not reflect much feeling. “Let us hope that you can live up to his example.” Moulsdale turned back to the group. “Any other suggestions? Come on, lads, this is your chance to impress me.”

  No one volunteered. They don’t know the answer, she realized, but I do—recalibrate the electromagnetic fields. Stuck in the back, Lizzie raised her hand, but of course Moulsdale couldn’t see her.

  “No one at all? Ah, yes, you, young man. What is your name?”

  “Outhwaite, sir,” said Lantern-jaw. “Why not take some of those special photographs that see through the body and show the bones?”

  “Not a bad idea at all. In fact, we have already taken an image using Röntgen rays. The film showed nothing amiss.” Moulsdale looked around. “Anyone else?”

  “Pardon me, Professor Moulsdale.” Lizzie’s voice seemed to echo in the big room,
too loud, too American, too female.

  Moulsdale raised his eyebrows. “I’m afraid that we do not solicit the opinions of our nursing students.”

  “I’m not a nursing student, Professor.” Her heart was pounding too quickly, making it difficult to speak. “I’m a medical student.”

  Moulsdale frowned at her. “Are you indeed?”

  “Yes, sir. And I have an idea. First, may I inquire as to the current whereabouts of Mr. Holden’s missing arm?”

  “It has been disposed of,” said Moulsdale. “Why, what do you suggest? It cannot be reattached. The nerve endings were completely severed.”

  Her pulse steadied; she was on familiar ground here. “Yes, I understand that the physical connections were broken. But there is also the etheric body, composed of subtle, vital and electromagnetic energies. In Private Holden’s case, his physical arm was amputated, but his etheric arm was not.”

  Moulsdale stroked his beard and then nodded. “That is correct, Miss...”

  “Lavenza. Elizabeth Lavenza.”

  Moulsdale raised his eyebrows; clearly, he recognized her name. “As Miss Lavenza explained, the patient’s pain arises from electromagnetic currents, invisible to the eye, impervious to the scalpel and to all our modern medicines. In such cases, all a physician can do is alleviate discomfort with the use of opiates.” Turning to the rest of the students, he added, “The lesson here, you see, is that we must know our limitations.”

  “Begging your pardon,” said Lizzie, amazed at her own audacity, “but my father believed there was a treatment for phantom limb pain.”

  “My father believed in garden fairies,” quipped Byram. “Particularly when he’d been nipping at the gin.”

  “Your father, however, was not one of the most brilliant scientists of his generation,” said Moulsdale, who appeared to only enjoy jokes when he was the one making them. “He was in my class at school, you know. Always tinkering, even then. I was very sad to hear about his passing. Great man, Lavenza. Never got the appreciation he deserved.”

  All eyes turned to Lizzie again, but she could feel the change in attitude as if it were a wind blowing from a new direction. Her new classmates might not like her any better, but now they couldn’t just dismiss her.

  “Sorry, Professor,” said Byram, not sounding in the least repentant. With his curly dark hair and arched eyebrows, he looked a bit like the naughty, nymph-fondling satyr she had seen in an oil painting at the Hoffman House hotel in New York City.

  Moulsdale looked smug rather than irritated as he addressed the group. “Let this be a lesson, gentlemen. Do not make assumptions. Now, as for you, young lady—just what would the estimable Dr. Lavenza have suggested?”

  “Well, the problem is that the etheric body and the physical body are not in alignment. The answer is to recalibrate the electromagnetic fields. It would be easier to do if we still had the severed limb, but it’s still possible.”

  “You mean, galvanize the man with electrical current?” Moulsdale stroked his double chins.

  “In essence,” said Lizzie, “yes.”

  “Sir?” It was Outhwaite, of course, ready with an objection. “Wouldn’t there be a risk of electrocuting the patient?”

  “A fair objection,” said Moulsdale. “Though perhaps, if Professor Makepiece set the Galvanic Reanimator to its lowest setting, and concentrated the galvanic current in the area of the missing limb...”

  The Galvanic Reanimator was the device used to create Bio-Mechanicals. The school’s literature proclaimed it “the newest, most powerful and scientifically advanced model in the world!” From what Lizzie had read, its lowest setting would probably reduce Private Holden’s stump to a knob of broiled flesh.

  “I don’t really think—” she began, but Private Holden’s shout of “Oi!” drowned her out.

  “’Ang on a sec!” Holden sat up straighter in his bed. “Don’t I get a say in this? I don’t fancy bein’ done like a Sunday roast.”

  “Begging your pardon,” Lizzie said, “but the levels of electricity required are extremely mild. There would be no need to use the Galvanic Reanimator. My father invented a device he called an etheric magnetometer, which can deliver a very mild voltage along with a pure violet light, that helps destroy harmful bacterial growth.” She didn’t bat an eyelash as she lied. Someday, she hoped, she would be able to take credit for her own work, but she was a realist. If people knew the invention was hers, they would dismiss it out of hand.

  “An’ it really don’t ’urt none?” It was hard to believe the man was a wounded veteran. He sounded more like a nervous child.

  “I have it in my room, if you’d like to test it out,” she said without thinking.

  “Miss Lavenza.” No tolerant amusement in Moulsdale’s voice now. “I asked for suggestions. I did not hand over the case to a first year student on her first day. We have our own equipment, and thus far, it has proved extremely effective.”

  The back of her neck went cold. “Sorry, sir.”

  “Well, I likes the li’l lady’s plan.” Holden gave Lizzie a wink. “I wants to try the ether whatnotemer. If you give us your word it don’t ’urt none, that is.” He looked at her inquiringly.

  “It doesn’t hurt.” She looked at Moulsdale apologetically. “I’ll stop speaking now.”

  Moulsdale regarded her for a moment. It struck Lizzie, too late, that the head of medicine hadn’t really wanted the first years to impress him. He had wanted to set them up to realize their own vast ignorance, so that he could dazzle them with his great expertise.

  She had gotten this first lesson wrong. Totally, horribly wrong.

  There were murmurs from the other students. Lizzie took a deep breath and waited for Moulsdale to tell her to pack her bags.

  “Very well, then.” To Lizzie’s astonishment, Moulsdale pulled a gold pocket watch out of his vest and examined it. “You may go fetch the magnetometer from your room. We’ll continue on rounds and meet you back here at ten o’clock.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  “Frankenstein, Byram, you two may accompany Miss Lavenza and render her any assistance she requires.” Before Lizzie could say anything, he added, “I know you two won’t mind missing out on rounds, since we’re only going to look at more insufferably ordinary cases.” It seemed that Moulsdale did, in fact, possess bat-like hearing. With a brusque nod, he moved briskly toward the next patient, while the rest of the group scrambled to follow.

  How clever, and how cruel. In punishing them, Moulsdale had found a way to punish her as well, by turning Byram and Will against her. “I don’t actually require your assistance,” she said. “The magnetometer is quite manageable.”

  “I’ll stick around, if it’s all the same to you,” said Byram, with a little shrug. “I’m sure this will be a sight more diverting than traipsing around after old Moulsdale.”

  “I was actually going to offer to come along,” Will said quickly.

  “And why would you have done that?”

  “Wouldn’t want you to think I was as rude as Oafwaite the Dim.”

  “Who?”

  “Outhwaite,” said Byram. “The inbred fellow with the long chin and the pronounced under bite.”

  “Ah, you mean Lantern-jaw.”

  “Horrible fellow,” said Will. “We knew him at Eton. Stole my favorite pen nib when we were thirteen, and kept short-sheeting my bed.” He paused. “It’s all right to smile, you know.”

  She smiled at him cautiously.

  “Come along, you two. Moulsdale’s sure to kick up a fuss if we show up even five minutes past the hour.” Byram began walking down the hall, and Lizzie saw that he had a slight limp. “Well? What are you waiting for?”

  Lizzie hesitated. She didn’t really trust Byram. Will seemed genuinely kind, though. Perhaps they’re just being friendly. It wasn’t entirely out of the question, although it would be a first.

  In the end, she let her feet decide for her and followed Byram out of the sick ward and onto the cloistered walkway that led to her room.

  3

  He woke to the sound of his own breathing, rapid and shallow. He did not know where he was; the room was pitch black. More frightening still, he did not instantly know who he was. He felt the icy rush of panic coursing through his veins, and then forced himself to take a deep breath and assess what he did know. He had been dreaming, he recalled. He tried to recapture the details. He had been standing in his room, arguing with a round-faced young man with receding ginger hair and wire-framed spectacles.