Chapter 1
September 1764 (five years later)
Thud.
Something solid hit the floor. It didn’t bounce. Thea craned upwards from her back-row seat to try to see. At the slightest nod from Dr William Hunter a student dipped behind the solid stone slab to retrieve whatever had fallen.
The hand appeared first, waving around with a grotesque heaviness as if greeting every one of the hundred souls in the auditorium. The rest of the arm followed, but no shoulder. Thea felt the beginnings of a smile quirk her lips. She had learned early on in this lecture series that a dark humour was necessary to offset the subject matter. The cadaver on the central table as students watched in the round from tiered oak seating. The easy slice of a scalpel through delicate flesh, the bits that should, by rights, remain inside a person paraded on the outside, their route accompanied by effervescent explanations of their anatomy and function. But what made the need for a wry smile particularly necessary was the smell. Thinking about that olfactory sensation too seriously never ended well for the mind or the stomach. Although the doctor kept his freshest bodies forhis public lectures, even a couple of days was enough to remind an observer that all people are, at the end of the day, little more than meat with thoughts.
Dr Hunter began to stride around the table, taking with him the dismembered arm and the associated opportunity.
‘Remember our classes on musculature and the skeleton in weeks one and two,’ he projected in his gentle Scottish twang as candlelight flickered from high in the ceiling. ‘An arm is made of what?’
‘Bones, muscles, blood vessels, ligaments and cartilage,’ came a muffled response from the second row.
Thea closed her eyes, settled back onto the wooden bench, and felt a smile tug at her lips as she felt the knowledge seep through her. This was what she needed. Stimulation. Illumination. It seemed to nourish her from her thoughts to her bones – although they hadn’t yet reached the part of the lecture series where she would learn whether or not that was technically possible. Either way, she knew that something inside her shrivelled at every insipid social engagement, but swelled once again in these small slices of time she carved out for herself once a week in Piccadilly.
A slither and a muffled thump came from the third row, quite near the waving, dismembered arm. That would be Martin again, thought Thea. Poor man. Anatomical knowledge did not nourish his soul. On the contrary, it made his head shut down in such a way that barely a lecture went by when he didn’t end up in a faint. Familial expectations of a career in physic may not come to fruition for him, she feared. Remaining upright in the presence of blood and ragged flesh was high on the list of necessities for a medical man.
A student on the front row glanced back, hopped over the rows of seats and arranged Martin into a safe position on the floor. He was so practised at it after eight weeks of lectures that it onlytook around ten seconds out of his incessant note taking. He was there every week, frantically scribbling. Thea always thought he looked the friendliest in the room. Occasionally she was tempted to engage one of her fellow lecture-goers in conversation, simply for the joy of discussion about what they had learned, but her voice would give her away and it was too risky. So, she kept herself to herself and all her new knowledge in her head.
‘Exactly,’ said Dr Hunter, pleased as he flapped the grey hand back and forth. ‘The workmanship of nature is inexorably demonstrated in the complexity of the human body. In lecture nine we will cover the structure and disease of articulating cartilages, but for now, back to the liver. The arm thudded back onto the table, followed by a squelching noise as he reached into the stomach cavity. Martha would love this, Thea thought, but quickly shook it away. She had promised herself that she wouldn’t dwell, but it was hard. Martha’s absence and her new life had made her reflective, and not always in a good way.
An inconvenient thought had nagged at Thea from the first time Dr Hunter had held up a spleen, and she couldn’t shake it. That really, everyone was the same kind of meat, on the inside. Minds were different – take hers and Martin’s, for example – but the bits that held minds in were monotonously similar, whether bodies were male, female, black, white, big, small, rich or poor. Then, if it was only thoughts that differentiated one sentient carcass from another, she was almost certain that her thoughts weren’t any more advanced than those she purportedly sat above in society. Of course, she had had more education and therefore more knowledge, but that was situational, not somatic. Only last month her housekeeper, Mrs Phibbs, had posited that Hooke might have been incorrect about how light travelled and Thea could do nothing but agree. Her brain meat then came to the only viable conclusion that they were all the same and ‘society’was really some kind of charade they all played – and as long as most people played along, the ruse remained.
Not that it made her feel any better about the endless parade of societal events she was required to attend.
People who studied anatomy knew, she thought. They understood that people were pretty much the same on the inside and knew that they were probably cleverer than most of the people they treated, but they went along with it because there was money in it and not much else to do. It made them cocky though. Particularly the chap who always sat at the back on the opposite side of the auditorium to her. He had a shock of ginger hair underneath a dusty felt cap and a suit that had definitely not been made for him. He looked like he must have spent his last shilling on the cost of these lectures, either that or he snuck in. She knew she was judging him on his looks and hated that the company she kept made her think that way.
Because, in honesty, she wasn’t really supposed to be here either. Medical lectures were not for ladies – unless they were the sensational ones designed to leave the corseted in a swoon and the contents of their pockets in the hands of the ‘doctor’. She was here half to sate her curiosity for another branch of science, and half to be someone else, just for an hour or two, once a week. Not that her life wasn’t comfortable. She had everything she could possibly need, technically. But the relief she felt in donning Lord Foxmore’s attire, slipping out of the back door as she always had and paying a shilling for a course of lectures was unmatched. Still, in marriage, being someone else was often more comfortable than being herself.
‘And that’s all for today,’ Dr Hunter’s gentle tones filtered into her ear. ‘Next week, the digestive system.’
Thea snapped to attention. She hadn’t stayed until the end, had she? She flipped open her pocket watch. It was a habit she had picked up from Martha, and she was glad she had. Knowingthe time without having to ask for it was liberating. It was, indeed, eight of the clock. Blast – she hadn’t meant to stay so long – she couldn’t risk being late for tonight’s drawing room. The plan had been to slip out half an hour early, but she had clearly lost track of time.
‘Home, Sanders!’ she shouted to the footman as she jumped into the carriage waiting outside. They lurched into action, the rattling of the London cobbles shaking away her hour’s peace. That hour was only ever a short respite from the incessant thought that whatever was meant to be her place in society, she was failing at it.
Chapter 2
Thud.
This time it was the Lord Chamberlain’s staff thumping on the floor of the St James’ Palace Drawing Room. It echoed off the high ceiling and signalled the entrance of the king and queen. At once, the countless occupants of the room stepped to the sides, jostling as they eased into a long line around the walls. Thea sighed inwardly and eased herself into the back of the room, where she would usually avoid a royal address and where she suspected she might find…
‘What a bloody palaver.’
She smiled. Harriet Henry.
‘You really must curb your expletives,’ she whispered sideways as the room began to quieten.
‘It is though,’ Harriet whispered back, wiggling her ample frame into position and displacing a gangly gentleman to her right. ‘So much bloody ceremony and they do it twice a week.’
‘And you’re here to see it every other week.’
‘Only to enjoy the drinks and to support my best friend whose husband makes her attend despite her hating formal social situations.’
The room was now silent apart from the mutterings of the king and queen and the eager replies of their subjects as the royal couple made their way around the line – the king from the left and the queen from the right. The sound was tinny in the cavernous space, despite the long, plush curtains, chandeliers and open fireplace. Thea looked sideways at Harriet.
‘I appreciate it,’ she muttered. Her friend smiled back.
