halls. There was a darkness there that had worked its way into the hollow spaces between my bones. A darkness that clung to the hallways like my father’s shadow, smelling of formaldehyde and his favorite apricot preserves. Tonight was supposed to be about escaping the darkness – if not in the arms of a future husband, at least in a few lighthearted moments.
I shook my head.
But the boys had made up their minds, and there was no convincing them otherwise. ‘Are you trying to get out of a kiss?’ Adam teased.
I didn’t respond. My desire for flirtation had evaporated at the mention of the university basements. But if Lucy didn’t balk at the idea of seeing a skeleton, surely I shouldn’t. I cleaned the cobwebs from their creaky bones every night. So what was holding me back?
Lucy leaned in and whispered in my ear. ‘Adam wants to impress you with how brave he is, you idiot. Swoon when you see the skeleton and fall into his arms. Men love that sort of thing.’
My stomach tightened. God, was this what normal girls did? Feign weakness? I could never imagine Mother, with all her strict morals, doing something so scandalous as slipping into forbidden hallways on a dare. But Father – he wouldn’t have hesitated. He would have been the one egging them on.
Dash it. I snatched the rum and poured the last few swallows down my throat. The boys cheered. I ignored the queasy feeling in my stomach – not from the rum, but from the thought of those dark hallways we were soon to enter.
We bundled into our coats and slipped into the cold night, crossing the Strand toward the university’s brick archway. This late only a few lanterns shone in the upper windows. The boys passed a bottle around with hushed laughter at being on school grounds after hours. I wrapped my arm around Lucy’s and tried to join the mirth, but the warmth didn’t spread below my smile. For the boys, this taste of mild scandal was titillating. They’d never known real scandal or how it could tear a person apart.
Adam led us to the side of the building, through a row of hedges to a small black door I’d used only once or twice. He unlocked it and held it open. Hesitation rooted my feet to the ground, but a gentle tug from Lucy led me inside. The door closed, plunging us into darkness broken only by the moonlight from one high window.
The hallway filled with the eerie silence of unused rooms. My hands itched for a rag and brush as a legitimate reason to be here. Coming on a lark to settle a silly wager, risking my job – it didn’t feel right.
Lucy squinted into the darkness, but I kept my eyes on the tile floor. I already knew what lay at the end of the hall.
‘Well?’ Adam asked. ‘Which way to the skeletons, Mademoiselle Guillotine?’
I started to head for the small door to the storage chambers, but a light at the opposite end of the corridor caught my eye. The operating theater. Odd; no one should have been there this late. Something about that light chilled my blood – it could only mean trouble.
‘We’re not alone,’ I said, nodding toward the door. The boys followed my gaze and grew quiet. Lucy slid off her glove and found my hand in the dark.
Adam started toward the operating theater, but I grabbed the fabric of his cuff to hold him back. The hallways were filled with the normal smells – chemicals and rotten things. Usually it didn’t bother me, but tonight it felt so overpower-ing that my head started to spin. A wave of weakness hit me and I grabbed his wrist harder.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
I waited a few seconds for the spell to pass. These spells were not uncommon, coming upon me suddenly, usually in the late evening, though I wasn’t about to explain their source to him. ‘The skeletons are the other way,’ I said.
‘Someone’s in the theater after hours. Whatever they’re doing, it has to be good. The skeletons can wait.’ His voice was charged. This was a game to them, I realized. If they got caught, the dean might give them a stern talking-to. I would lose my livelihood.
He cocked his head. ‘You aren’t scared, are you?’
I scowled and let go of his cuff. Of course I wasn’t scared. We made our way silently down the hall. As we approached the closed door, a sound began to gnaw at my ears. It took me back to my childhood, when I would hide outside the door to Father’s laboratory, listening, trying to imagine what was happening within before the servants chased me off.
The sound grew louder, a scrape-tap, scrape-tap. Unaccustomed to being in a laboratory, Lucy threw me a puzzled look. But I knew that sound. The scrape of scalpel on stone. A gesture surgeons made to clean the flesh from the blade between cuts.
Adam threw open the door. A half-dozen students huddled around a table in the center of the room, over which a single lamp formed an island of light. They looked up when we entered, and then after a few seconds their faces relaxed with recognition.
‘Adam, you cad, get in and close the door,’ said one of the students. He threw Lucy and me an annoyed look. ‘What are they doing here?’
‘They’ll be no trouble. Right, ladies?’ Adam raised his eyebrow, but I didn’t answer. A good part of me contemplated bolting out the door and leaving them to their sick lark. Yet I didn’t. As we drifted closer with hesitant steps, I could feel the stiffness in my bones easing, as though releasing some pent-up, slippery curiosity from between my joints.
Why were they in the operating theater after dark?
Adam peered over the surgeon’s shoulder. Their bodies blocked the table, but the metallic smell of fresh blood reached me, making my head spin. Lucy pressed a handkerchief to her mouth. Memories of my father flooded me. As a surgeon, blood had been his medium like ink to a writer. Our fortune had been built on blood, the acrid odor infused into the very bricks of our house, the clothes that we wore.
To me, blood smelled like home.
I shook away the feeling. Father left us, I reminded myself. Betrayed us. But I still couldn’t help missing him.
‘They shouldn’t be here,’ I murmured. ‘This building’s closed to students at night.’
But before Lucy could answer, the scrape of the scalpel sounded again, drawing my gaze irresistibly to the table. We stepped forward. The boys paid us little attention, except Adam, who moved aside to make room. My breath caught. On the table lay a dead rabbit, its fur white as snow and spotted with blood. Its belly had been sliced open, and several organs lay on the table. Lucy gasped and covered her eyes.
My eyes were wide. I felt vaguely sorry for the dead rabbit, but it was a far-off sort of thought, something Mother might have felt. I wasn’t naive. Dissection was a necessary part of science. It was how doctors were able to develop medicine and how surgeons saved lives. I’d only ever glimpsed dissections a handful of times – peeking through the keyhole of Father’s laboratory or cleaning up after medical students. After work, in my small room at the lodging house, I’d studied the diagrams in my father’s old copy of Longman’s Anatomical Reference, but black-and-white illustrations were a poor substitute for the real thing.
Now my eyes devoured the rabbit’s body, trying to match the fleshy bits of organ and bone to the
