Chapter 47
Howison, Pertwee, Crouch, and Hartnett traveled through the night. They reached Castle Street just before dawn. John Hunter was there to receive them. Without ceremony they brushed away the few stinking cabbages that had covered the coffin during the journey from Kent and prized open the lid.
There it lay. The most sought-after corpse in London, nay, in England, and now it belonged to John Hunter. But they must make haste. It was turning. The other men gagged on the familiar stench. Besides, there was no time to gloat over those who so desperately wanted to get their knives into this precious flesh. It would soon be light and the news, once uncovered, would travel fast.
They hauled the carcass, wearing only its funeral shroud, onto a smaller wagon that waited, already harnessed to three water buffalo. Howison climbed on board.
“Thank you, gentlemen,” called Hunter to Pertwee, Crouch, and Hartnett as he cracked the whip. They did not wave back. They were too busy counting their money.
Westward they drove, to Earls Court, all the time looking over their shoulder. Were they being followed? What was that in the shadows? A horse? Who was the rider? Would they take word to others of his kind? Would they say “John Hunter is on the move! John Hunter has the giant! Ambush him! Steal the corpse!” But no. They reached their destination just as the sun was rising behind them and made sure the great drawbridge was lifted to make them secure.
Together they heaved the gigantic corpse off the wagon and put it ignominiously into a handcart, trundling it with great difficulty along the path and into the laboratory underground.
The anatomist had lit the fire under the copper vat before he had left for Castle Street, and the room was now filled with steam from the boiling water.
“You want him on the table?” asked Howison.
Hunter nodded and together they lugged the great carcass up onto the dissecting slab. Rigor mortis had set in, but that did not bother the doctor. There was no time for his usual practices: Meticulous anatomization was out of the question.
“Guard the door,” he barked to Howison. Aware that his fellow anatomists would be capable of scaling even high walls to steal his booty, he was afraid they would be besieged at any moment.
Quickly he unwrapped the shroud and allowed himself the luxury of marveling at his prize. Charles Byrne’s great hulk was as extraordinary in death as it had been in life. “You are wondrous,” he muttered to himself before reaching for a cleaver.
Taking a deep breath, he let the blade first fall on Charles’s left leg. The blow sprayed his topcoat with fluids and, evidently irked by the inconvenience of this, he flung it off to the ground and carried on in his shirtsleeves. Next he sliced through the bone with a saw, drawing it across like the bow of a cello. He repeated the procedure with the right leg as Howison looked on from the doorway in admiration. There was sweat on his forehead, and he wiped it away with the bloodied sleeve of his shirt. More sawing. He was playing arpeggio: up and down, across, backward and forward. His muscles ached from the pressure.
Out of breath from his considerable exertions, and wet with the steam, Hunter next chopped off the arms. They put up less resistance, the bones of the humerus capitulating sooner than the femurs. Gathering the limbs together he tossed them, one by one, and without the slightest ceremony, into the boiling vat. How he would have loved to explore those muscles and tease out those sinews. But there was no time.
Returning to the corpse, he was left with the torso and the head. Ah, the head, he said to himself, gazing at the giant’s face, framed by his flowing black hair. Eyes, thankfully, closed. What mysteries did this skull hold? What explanation could it give for this Goliath of a man? Just why had he grown so tall? Sadly, he would never know. There was no room for sentimentality. The cranium had to be severed. He called over to Howison. “Help me pull the corpse.” Together they heaved the giant up the table so that while his body was supported, his head dropped down over the side, exposing his neck and throat. “Put a basket down there,” he ordered and Howison obliged. And now Hunter stood, both anatomist and executioner, and taking a deep breath, he lifted the cleaver above his own head and brought it down again deftly. There was a splintery, cracking sound that lasted only a split second. With one fell swoop Charles Byrne’s head was off, dropping into the waiting basket like a rotten cabbage, and without hesitation John Hunter picked it up and flung it into the seething copper to be boiled away with the rest of the large chunks of human meat.