Chapter 44
Nora doubted the efficacy of closing the front door between visitors; they knocked urgently every thirty seconds, demanding entry from the wet, frozen wind.
But it wasn’t the weather that made them rap so eagerly.
Daniel had two new cadavers—one with a malformed heart and another withered from cholera.
He’d promised to reveal their newest cholera treatment and planned to have Nora lecture on the particulars of transfusing Latta’s solution into patients’ veins.
Nora had known the lecture would be popular, but not to this extent.
She stood at the front door, politely greeting the old doctors who at least pretended decorum and laughing at the students who paid their entry fee by shoving wrinkled notes into her hand and raced each other through the great hall to the surgical theater.
She watched in amusement as one young man nearly slipped on the marble floor and wheeled his arms in erratic circles to stay upright while his fellows mocked him. She was about to call out in pretended sternness to slow down when a sound behind her made her turn back to the cold, open door.
Aunt stood pink-cheeked in the cold, her back stiff and erect as she tapped her cane over the threshold. Nora swore she used it only emphasis, not balance.
“Aunt!” It was too late for society calls with the sun sinking toward the rooftops. “What a surprise.” Her handsome carriage decorated the plain street, the driver bundled in a ridiculous amount of fur.
“I was going to check on the child,” Aunt announced, “but I saw the advertisement for the lecture in the paper this morning, and I thought I’d look into that as well. I never endorse a program until I have fully inspected it.”
Nora squinted, taking in Aunt’s silk gloves and fine dress. “I don’t think you understand. It’s a dissection,” Nora warned. “Not simply an academic discussion like at Marylebone.”
“I know,” Aunt said, stepping inside and closing her umbrella with a snap.
“I’ve toured every prison in London and many more besides.
I think I can manage one doctor’s lecture.
The notice never said ‘doctors only.’ It said you and Daniel would both be speaking.
” Aunt looked in vain for a maid or footman to take her cane and coat.
Nora quickly took her fur and hung it beside Daniel’s finest. “But I’m sure you wouldn’t enjoy this—”
“I’ve sent you money for six students, and I would like to see how you will educate them,” Aunt repeated, undeterred. “It seems those young people are looking forward to it.” The excited cries of the running students echoed against the tile floors and high ceiling.
Nora grimaced. “Daniel wouldn’t want you to—”
Aunt waved his name away. “I paid for his schooling as well. It’s time I saw what I got him into.”
“Aunt, wait.” Nora quickened her steps through the grand hall, trying to stay in front of the determined woman. “Couldn’t I arrange a different lecture for you? Please?”
“Nora, if you want my money, you must endure my presence occasionally.”
“No. It’s not that. I love your company.” They both paused. She’d gone too far. “Only, please feel free to leave if it disturbs you,” Nora ended feebly. “The students can be a raucous bunch.”
The edgy flock of medical men moaned as Nora elbowed them aside to make room for Aunt as she escorted her to the front row, where Ruth and the other midwives waited with notepads and pencils.
“We came an hour early for these places,” one student protested as Nora motioned him to move back a row, his face too young for anything but scraggly tufts of an incomplete beard.
“And I run this hospital,” Nora shot back. “If you’d like a place at all, I suggest you show some manners and move back a row.”
An older man jabbed a finger toward Aunt Wilcox. “I can’t see over the peacock tail on her head.”
Before Nora could warn the man who he’d just insulted, Aunt turned, her face a good six inches beneath his but void of any fear.
She reached up and unpinned her hat. “I am happy to remove my peacock tail, sir.” The man’s expression grew sheepish and embarrassed as she continued, “Perhaps next lecture, you will cut your curly mop shorter for those behind you.”
Several of the students laughed as the man ran a self-conscious hand through his hair.
Daniel hurried over, alarmed by the disturbance. “Aunt? This is a surprise.”
Nora caught his sleeve, turning him toward the marble-topped demonstration table so she could murmur to him without being overheard. “She showed up and insisted on watching the lecture since she’s paying for the new students.”
Daniel blinked twice. “I suppose there’s that. Did you—”
“I warned her,” Nora affirmed. “She won’t be dissuaded.”
“I’ll speak to her.” Daniel shot his cuffs and made his way to his aunt’s side. Nora thought he might have better luck changing Aunt Wilcox’s mind—but she wasn’t counting on it.
Time to begin. Tucking away her watch, Nora walked to the center of the theater floor.
It felt a bit more like a gladiators’ arena this afternoon, ringed with a crowd of rowdy faces.
She had to start her sentence three times before everyone settled enough to listen.
“I believe I can trust everyone to behave decorously, with Mrs. Wilcox attending as a special guest and patron of the hospital.” She gestured to Aunt, and the men who’d complained shifted in their places, abashed. “I believe we are ready.”
The men leaned forward, eyes fastened on the sheet-draped cadaver. Behind it, Horace smiled benignly, laying out his tools. Only Nora caught the amused gleam in his eyes as he winked at her.
She swallowed a groan and exchanged a nervous glance with Daniel. She knew already they were in for a spectacle, but Horace was clearly indicating that he planned to show off for their unexpected guest.
He did just that, embellishing his dissection with stories that sent a chilled silence over the room.
When Aunt finally left—she stayed to the bloody end—she fanned her pale face and stated baldly, “I don’t believe I will attend anymore,” with one hand fumbling at her poised throat. “But I will send the money this week.”
***
The library felt smaller when crowded with five, the low flames of the fireplace casting a pleasant glow over the eclectic assembly. Julia sat in her customary pose, elegant and upright in the corner of the sofa, with Harry’s sleeping head in her lap.
Nora occupied Horace’s favorite wing chair, a pile of forgotten papers and books tottering on the floor beside her.
Even though the lecture had finished hours ago, she was too jittery to read.
Mrs. Phipps filled another armchair, sewing spilling over her lap.
Even the zebra wore a particularly satisfied expression.
Only Daniel paced aimlessly, as usual, the same way a seabird spins in widening circles when searching for land.
“That was the largest lecture we’ve ever held,” Mrs. Phipps ventured into the silence. “Eighty-eight pounds in one day.”
Harry’s eyes opened as he gave a low whistle. “Eighty-eight attendees? Absolute mayhem. Were there really that many doctors?”
“Mostly students,” Nora corrected. Not doctors yet. “You saw the lecture hall. It looked like a crowd at a boxing match.”
“Heart dissection and a new cholera treatment both in one afternoon. They got their pound’s worth.” Daniel thumbed some of Nora’s Italian books as he passed the shelves. “That show with Aunt Wilcox was worth the entrance fee alone.”
The tired circle of friends smiled simultaneously—small, secret grins of relished memory.
Empty champagne glasses littered the library now, as they all drank in the memory of the day’s victories.
The only one missing from their rare quiet evening together was Horace.
He’d stayed in the lecture hall, refusing to join them until he’d prepared the half-dissected cadaver for day two of his demonstration.
After word traveled in taverns and clubs tonight, they’d have to turn people away tomorrow.
Nora pictured the open, lifeless body on the table as Horace carefully unsealed the pages of the human tome, reading in the flesh the story of organs and arteries—of life.
She wondered what he was saying to the corpse as he toiled on, now that she knew he spoke to them.
Perhaps something about hollyhocks or poison ivy.
“They have to close the charity cemetery soon,” Daniel mentioned as he nursed his glass of wine. “It was supposed to last another decade, but the cholera filled it prematurely.”
“We’re still in the thick of it, with no signs of slowing.
They’ll stack the bodies two deep and make it stretch a bit farther,” Harry said with forced indifference, but Nora knew that many of his own patients rested there, and the thought of bodies discarded unceremoniously on top of their resting places bothered him more than he’d ever admit.
“I’ve said for months we should relocate. You know Horace is itching to take that offer from Kew Botanical Gardens,” Mrs. Phipps grumbled. “Richmond has very little cholera.”
“Impossible,” Julia pronounced. “Horace would never leave London, or this hospital.” For a woman who’d been horrified by Horace when she first met him, she sounded relieved to keep him now.
“Thousands of botanical specimens from every jungle and mountaintop in the world?” Daniel rolled and stretched his shoulders. “If anything could tempt him, it’s that.”
“Not to mention every odd creature the Linnean Society drags in,” Nora added.
“Good heavens, he’d try to get his hands on everything venomous and toxic.
He’s still begging for electric eels.” No one in Richmond would practice enough restraint with Horace.
The brilliant man still needed help not killing himself in his scientific excitement.
“Poison frogs or not, it would be slower paced than what he does here,” Mrs. Phipps argued. “And whatever he says, his heart is still weak.”