Chapter 1

London, England,
in the Year of Our Lord 1782

 

Death was not sleeping in St. Bride’s churchyard that night. She was wide awake and watching, in readiness. She knew her peace was about to be disturbed. She had only claimed what was rightfully hers. Dust to dust, was it not written? But there were those who wished to rob her of her precious new treasure. Fresh flowers had been laid on one of her graves, snowdrops and primroses, and she understood the prospect of new flesh was too much of a temptation for some. So she watched and she waited.

Dr. Thomas Silkstone had been there only a few hours before. The child they had laid to rest was one of his patients. Just eight years old, Evelina had suffered corruption of the flesh. A bad fall meant that a surgeon had no choice but to amputate her leg, but infection had already crept in and invaded her whole body when her distraught parents had brought their rag of a daughter to him. In life her pretty face had been twisted with pain and her flaxen hair soaked with sweat. But now that the peace of death had descended on her, it seemed as though she was merely asleep. She looked just as his own dear sister had looked when she passed at a similar age all those years ago in his native Philadelphia.

Evelina’s parents, Mary and Peter Chepp, were good, honest citizens. Evelina was their third daughter, and their second child to die before the age of ten. They had brought her to him when her blood was already poisoned. All he could do was dress the bloodied stump, clean it with oil of thyme and alum, and keep down the girl’s fever. But to no avail. The passing of any of his patients always affected Thomas, even though he knew it should not. It was all part of the circle, the endless round of birth and death that physicians dealt with daily. But when it was a child called before its time, it was all the more heartrending.

As Thomas watched the couple, standing forlornly together, overseeing the gravediggers lower the little coffin into the earth, his thoughts turned to another funeral. He recalled Lady Lydia Farrell at her mother’s interment. It had been a long and lonely winter without his beloved, with only her letters for comfort. Now that the weather was turning and spring was on its way, the coaches from London to Oxford would soon be running their daily service and he would return to Boughton to see her. He was just waiting for her word and he would be with her. Both of them agreed that it was best, out of respect for the dead and for the sake of their reputations, to keep their plans secret for the time being. If they were to announce their betrothal so soon after her late husband’s death, vicious tongues would wag once again. Thomas did not want Lydia to suffer more than she already had.

“We have paid both the undertaker and the sexton well,” Mr. and Mrs. Chepp told Thomas as the gravediggers smoothed over shovelfuls of soil, patting them into a mound. The doctor smiled and nodded reassuringly. He hoped that their monetary incentives were enough to keep the grave robbers at bay. All the same, he feared for their daughter’s safety even more than his own that night.

Now that winter had loosened its icy grip on the earth, the sack ’em up men could work with impunity. No corpse was safe. The dissecting rooms of London needed cadavers, and the anatomists did not care how they came by them or who they were. Feeding this insatiable appetite for the dead was a lucrative business for those with low enough morals and strong stomachs—and there were plenty of those—as Thomas knew only too well. He had been approached many times by such scoundrels, but had always sent them away. Once you did business with them, it was hard to break free. He had even heard of a surgeon who refused to play by their rules and woke to a rotting corpse on his doorstep the next day.

“Our Evelina will be safe,” repeated Mr. and Mrs. Chepp to Thomas as they left the graveside. “No one will steal our child.”

Now it was a late hour. The spring-guns were set around the churchyard wall, or so the sexton said. The night was moonless. A dog barked and the men appeared. There were four of them and they knuckled down to work as if they were smithies in a forge or infantrymen loading their rifles. Each knew his task and performed it efficiently. Two dug a hole down to the coffin where the head lay while the other two stretched out a canvas sheet to receive the displaced earth. They dug with short, flat, dagger-shaped pieces of wood so that the sound of iron striking stone did not alert anyone.

Within half an hour they had reached the small coffin. The lid came off effortlessly—the undertaker had seen to that—and they pulled out the girl’s body with ease. And there she was, pure and delicate, dressed in a flowing white shroud and with a garland of fresh flowers wreathed around her pretty head. Still they stripped her. Their own lives were worth more than a few grave-clothes and faded petals. They would not swing for stealing a shroud. So they bundled her, naked, into a sack. Carefully they reburied her grave-clothes and lowered the coffin back down, taking great care to smooth the surface all around. No one must know that the earth had already given up one of its newest and sweetest secrets.

The sexton, who had been watching proceedings, keeping lookout by the spring-guns which he had previously disarmed, nodded at the men. He saw them slip the sack over the wall and he knew his work was done.

All that remained was to take the booty—there were two other corpses on the cart—to Castle Street in Leicester Fields. The moon that had been so obligingly absent earlier now reappeared from behind a blanket of cloud, so that the road was easier to trace.

The cart pulled up in front of a large town house and one of the men alighted by a wooden gate. He tapped on it and a few moments later there came the sound of locks being unbolted before it creaked open. A swarthy guard appeared, lantern in hand, and nodded to the men, who were clearly expected. He returned inside and a few seconds later a drawbridge was lowered into the street and the cart was driven through. Once it was inside, the guard climbed on board. Bending down, he took a tape from around his neck and measured the length of each sack from top to bottom before opening all three of them, one after the other. Seemingly satisfied with their contents, he counted out a number of coins and handed them to the man, who signaled to the others to begin lugging the cargo off the cart and through the gate.

A few minutes later, their transaction complete, the men drove off. The guard looked up and down the street once more, making sure that no one had been privy to these unconventional business dealings, then cranked up the drawbridge once more.