The Anatomist's Wife (33 page)

The jangle of a harness broke the silence around us, and I blinked. The coachman called
out to the horses, scolding their impatience. I glanced to the open door and then
back to Gage, who was still watching me with an expression that was as unreadable
as it was intense.

“I have to go.”

My chest tightened, and the world around me seemed to darken. “I know.”

I wanted to tell him to stay, to beg him not to leave. But I couldn’t. Not when I
knew he would go anyway. That, no matter what I protested, he would choose to climb
aboard that coach and journey to Edinburgh. And I would be left standing there watching
the distance grow farther and farther between us. My pride couldn’t handle it.

So I swallowed the words, though they stuck in my throat like a prayer left unsaid.

“Well, then,” he murmured, and my stomach dipped. “I guess this is good-bye.”

“Yes,” I whispered.

His eyes searched mine, asking for something I did not understand, for something I
could not give. Then he leaned forward to kiss my cheek. The sensation was at once
sweet and bitterly painful. I closed my eyes and leaned into the warmth of his body,
pressing my cheek against the softness of his freshly shaven face. His hands reached
out to grip my upper arms, steadying me, holding me in place so that I could not retreat.
We lingered there in that loose embrace for a timeless moment, cheek to cheek, and
I breathed in deeply the scent of him, trying to capture the memory of his husky voice,
the musky mix of his sweat and cologne, the tickle of his breath in my ear. It swelled
my heart until I thought it must burst. His callused fingers pressed into the skin
of my arms, and then it was over.

He stepped back and I opened my eyes to find his pale blue ones brilliant with longing.
He lifted his hands from my body, leaving a chill in their wake and turned to go.
The hollowness in my chest grew with each step he took away from me, until I feared
there might be nothing left inside me but this sense of loss. He climbed into his
carriage, and the door slammed behind him. The curtains twitched once as the coach
made the turn and slowly rolled down the drive, picking up speed as it curved past
the loch and around the bend toward the main road.

A shaky breath shivered through me. He was gone.

Blindly, I closed the door and retreated into the depths of the castle.

In that moment, I think I honestly believed whatever had been between us was at an
end. That whatever twist of fate that had brought us together had played itself out.
And someday I would be able to look back on this and smile, and appreciate it for
the turning point it had been in my life, the chance to redeem my reputation and break
through the shell of fear I had wrapped myself in. To lay my shadows to rest. But,
although nearly all of this would prove true, I was mistaken to think that fate was
finished with us yet.

For as it happened, trouble was brewing near Edinburgh, and it would once again bring
Gage and me together, far sooner than either of us could have predicted, and with
unexpected consequences.

HISTORICAL NOTE

The Anatomist’s Wife
was crafted using many interesting historical facts and tidbits. I would like to
share just a few of the most fascinating.

Prior to the Anatomy Act of 1832, British medical schools had difficulty procuring
cadavers for their anatomy classes, because only the bodies of executed criminals
could be used for this purpose, which amounted to only about two to three bodies annually
per school. This led to the practice of body-snatching, where recently buried bodies
were stolen from their graves and sold to medical schools. It was a lucrative trade,
and Burke and Hare, two laborers in Edinburgh, sought to take advantage of the practice.
Rather than risk being caught while performing the difficult labor of disinterring
bodies from the local cemeteries, they began inviting victims to their lodging house,
plying them with alcohol, and smothering them to death. They then sold the bodies
to the Surgeons’ Hall at the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, namely to well-known
anatomist and lecturer Dr. Robert Knox.

Burke and Hare were caught in November of 1828, but not before they murdered sixteen
people. The case lacked sufficient evidence, so Hare was convinced to testify against
his partner, and escaped prosecution. Burke was hanged on January 28, 1829, and afterward
his body was transported to the University of Edinburgh to be publicly dissected.
His death mask, skeleton, and several articles made from his tanned skin, including
a book cover, are on display at the university’s Surgeons’ Hall Museum. Dr. Knox escaped
prosecution, but public opinion turned sharply against him for his part in providing
incentive for the murders.

Body snatchers, or resurrectionists, worked all over Great Britain. When security
in cemeteries near the medical schools in London and Edinburgh became too tight, bodies
robbed from other parts of Britain, and as far away as Ireland, were transported to
the schools for use. After the trial of Burke and Hare, citizens in London and Edinburgh
were panicked by the idea that similar enterprising criminals might be at work, murdering
hapless citizens and selling their bodies to anatomists and medical schools. Medical
schools were forced to pay closer attention to where their bodies were procured, and
legislation reform became a necessity.

Prior to 1858, there was no inexpensive, definitive anatomy textbook widely available
to medical students. British anatomist Henry Gray and his colleague, surgeon and anatomical
artist Henry Vandyke Carter, changed that with their now-famous book,
Anatomy: Descriptive and Surgical
, or as it is more commonly known,
Gray’s Anatomy
.

Procurator fiscals are public prosecutors in Scotland, similar to a coroner, who investigate
all sudden or suspicious deaths. The position originated as a legal office with financial
(fiscal) responsibilities, namely collecting fines. Their duties evolved over time,
so that by 1701, when the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act was passed, they were
prosecutors on the Crown’s behalf. Since 1728, there have also been three types of
verdicts for criminal trials in Scotland—proven, not proven, and not guilty. The “not
proven” verdict has sometimes been referred to as the Scottish verdict or, colloquially
in Scotland itself, as the “bastard verdict,” a term fashioned by Sir Walter Scott.

Chasteberry, red raspberry leaf, and the garnet gemstone are, indeed, all supposed
cures for barrenness, and are still utilized in some holistic and alternative-medicine
remedies.

Oil painting was an often dangerous undertaking, and more than one artist over the
centuries accidentally poisoned themselves to death. Prior to the late nineteenth
century, artists were forced to mix their pigments themselves, often from highly toxic
raw ingredients made from assorted plants, gemstones, and minerals, and even the ground-up
remains of dead humans. It was absolutely necessary for the mixing process to be done
with a mortar and pestle while wearing gloves and with proper ventilation. Artists
also had to be careful not to chew on their fingernails or brush handles to avoid
unintentionally ingesting the remnants of the pigments. Some poisonous pigments include
king’s yellow and red orpiment, which contain arsenic, and Naples yellow, which contains
lead and antimony.

John Spilsbury, a London engraver and mapmaker, created the first jigsaw puzzle in
1750 by affixing one of his maps to a sheet of hardwood and then cutting around the
borders of the countries. This production resulted in an educational tool used to
teach British children their geography, and until about 1820, jigsaw puzzles were
used almost exclusively for this purpose. However, jigsaw puzzles were not known as
such until the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, when the treadle saw, a
type of jigsaw, began to be used to cut out the pieces. Until that time, jigsaw puzzles
were known ironically, at least for Lady Darby, as dissections. I stumbled across
this absurd bit of knowledge after I decided to give my heroine this hobby, and elected
not to call the jigsaw puzzle by its early nineteenth century title to avoid confusion.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Anna Lee Huber
is a summa cum laude graduate of Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee, where
she majored in music and minored in psychology. She currently resides in Indiana with
her family and is hard at work on the next novel in the Lady Darby series. Visit her
online at facebook.com/AuthorAnnaLeeHuber, twitter .com/AnnaLeeHuber, and at www.annaleehuber.com.