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Authors: Tessa Harris

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The doctor braced himself, clenching his fists so tightly that he could feel his nails cut through the flesh on his palms. He tried to close his mouth, but the gauze was still jammed between his jaws, preventing movement. The blade came closer. He closed his eyes and felt Dubois’s pincer fingers against his gums and teeth, probing for his tongue. He would wake soon from this nightmare, he told himself. Any moment now.
Suddenly there was a commotion outside. Shouts could be heard in the hallway. The barber retracted his hand and Thomas opened his eyes to see Dubois motioning to Marie to see what was happening. But she did not get far. Before she reached the threshold, the imposing form of Sir Peregrine Crisp appeared, accompanied by five constables.
“Francois Dubois, I arrest you in the name of His Majesty King George!” he cried. The constables surged forward, heading first for Jean-Paul. Releasing his grip from Thomas’s shoulders, he lunged forward, but the constables’ cudgels were more than a match for him and he was felled by a blow to the back of his head. Marie did not put up any resistance, but instead of relinquishing the blade, her father remained rooted to the spot, still hunched over Thomas.
“Come closer and I will give this man a shave he will never forget!” Dubois warned Sir Peregrine.
Thomas darted a look at the coroner, then back to Dubois, his eyes wide with terror as he saw the blade flash once more in the candlelight. Just at that moment, the drunkard, who had been sleeping throughout Thomas’s ordeal, chose to stir. Dubois saw him from out of the corner of his eye and turned. The constables took their chance. One of them knocked the razor out of his hand with a cudgel while the other pinioned his arms behind his back. He struggled momentarily, cussing and oathing in his native tongue. But he was no match for the burly men who soon pushed him out to a waiting wagon.
Another constable came forward to release Thomas. As soon as his hands had been cut free, the doctor took the gauze out of his mouth. He rubbed his aching face as Sir Peregrine approached.
“I thought you were never going to come, sir,” complained Thomas, still clutching his jaw.
“I was in court when I was handed your note, but a moment longer and we would have been deprived of your dulcet tones forever!” replied the coroner, patting Thomas on the back.
“I am most grateful to you, sir,” said Thomas; then, turning toward the drunkard in the corner whose stirrings had distracted Dubois, he called, “And thank you to you, sir, too.”
The man, who still appeared stupefied by liquor and unaware of the dramatic scene just played out before him, raised his disheveled head and stared blankly into the distance, trying to focus. Thomas recognized him instantly. It was Mad Sam.
“O’Shea!” he exclaimed.
The Irishman eased himself back into his chair, shaking the fog of strong drink from his head. “Why, Dr. Silkstone!” he cried, his face splitting into a broad smile. “Will you not join me in a drink?”
Thomas paused for a moment. Seeing O’Shea, he was suddenly reminded of the tragic fate of Charles Byrne. He looked at Sir Peregrine. “Forgive me, sir, but I need to talk with this gentleman. I will come to your office later.”
The coroner raised an eyebrow. “Very good, Silkstone,” he said. “I am sure you could do with a stiff drink.”
Thomas walked toward O’Shea, who was already pouring out gin into a tankard. He took out a chair and sat down beside the Irishman.
“I will join you in a drink, sir,” said Thomas, who never usually touched gin. “And I would propose a toast.”
The young doctor raised his tankard and clinked it against O’Shea’s. “To our dear departed friend, Mr. Charles Byrne,” he toasted. “May his soul rest in peace,” he said, then quietly to himself he added, “even if his body does not.” And with that, the two men gulped down their liquor.
Chapter 52
I
t was mid-June and the sun was high in the sky over Boughton Hall. The red kites soared overhead in the warm thermals and the scent of honeysuckle filled the air. The dissecting rooms of London were a world away and Thomas could at last find the peace he so craved after the past few tumultuous months.
Lydia walked by his side on a path of bleached stones in the gardens. She was fully restored to health and happy to be back at her beloved country home. Yet he noticed she was still quiet, as if something was troubling her. He had not pressed her. He had held off quizzing her since their arrival from London, but now, as they walked arm in arm, surrounded by clipped yew hedges and away from prying eyes and gossiping tongues, he resolved to ask her if anything else troubled her. As they sat on a seat under the shade of a large hornbeam, there was an awkward silence.
“There is something you wish to tell me, is there not?” he said, taking her hand in his.
She looked at him with her large, doleful eyes. “You know me so well.” She smiled. “Yes. Yes, there is.”
“So?” He lifted her hand and kissed it. “I am listening.”
Sighing deeply, she turned her head away, looking into the distance. “You know I told you about Hunter—” She broke off, as if uttering his very name was too much for her. Thomas put his arm around her. “How he tried to kill my baby.”
“Yes.” Thomas nodded.
She turned abruptly, looking him in the eye. “He did not succeed.”
The doctor swallowed hard in amazement. “Go on,” he urged.
“Afterward my belly still grew, and four months later I gave birth to a boy.”
Thomas looked at her in disbelief. “You have a son?”
She nodded. “He was beautiful. Perfect in every way, apart from his arm.” Her voice was now choking with emotion. “It was withered.” Thomas thought of Hunter’s long needle piercing the uterus. Instead of penetrating the fetus’s heart, brain, or lungs to kill it immediately, it must have gone straight through its arm, severing vital arteries. “We called him Richard, after my father, and all was well until the fifth day, when Michael came into the bedroom to tell me he was dead.” She wiped away a tear from her cheek. “He said the nurse found him in his cradle. He would not let me hold him, but I could see no sign of life. He was so pale and limp. He called the undertaker and we buried him in Bath.”
Thomas held her close. “ ’Tis a terrible thing to lose a child,” he comforted, but she pulled away. “Michael said nothing. ’Twas as if the babe was never born. I wasn’t allowed to say his name. Then, a few weeks later, we made our peace with my mother. Michael renounced all claim to my inheritance and we were married.”
The familiar look of hurt and pain had returned to her face once more. No wonder her soul was so tortured, thought Thomas.
She continued: “Nothing was ever said again about Richard, even though I remembered him in my thoughts and prayers every day and longed for another child. But although I was a dutiful wife, I did not conceive.” Thomas feared that because of the attempted abortion, she might never be able to bear a child again. He was sure she was aware of that, but he suspected there was more.
She took a deep breath and carried on: “Then, one day, after Michael’s death, I was looking through some of his private papers and I came across some bills.”
“What sort of bills?” urged Thomas.
“They were from a wet nurse, and they were for the care of Richard Michael Farrell.”
Thomas did not try to hide his shock. “So you think the child lives?”
“I wrote a letter to her, but she replied saying that because no one had paid the bills for a while and letters to Michael had gone unanswered, she had given Richard’s care over to a workhouse.” Her tears were flowing freely now, but Thomas wiped them away and smiled. Finally he had found that source of the deep, terrible pain that had caused Lydia so much suffering. For a long time he had suspected that despite everything that she had endured since the death of her brother, there was something else, something more, that had been eating away like a cancer. Now he knew what it was he could try, like any good physician, to devise a remedy for it. The treatment might prove painful, but he would endeavor to heal her the only way he knew how. He slipped his hands in hers and held them tight. “I promise you,” he told her, fully understanding her pain for the first time, “if your son lives, we shall find him, as God is my witness.”
 
Back in London, five men met in an upper room. One of their number was absent. They were in a black humor as they sat ’round a large table.
“Gentlemen, I am afraid I have bad news to report,” announced Sir Oliver De Vere. “Our plans seem to have received a setback.”
They mumbled and murmured over their claret; Keate, Gunning, Walker, and Home. Their master explained: “You may have heard that Giles Carrington died in Margate; a most unfortunate accident.”
“Or fortunate,” piped up Keate.
“How so, sir?” pressed Walker.
“At least he could not reveal that he was on our mission.”
General agreement was voiced at this remark, but Sir Oliver continued: “As for Monsieur Dubois, the bitter and twisted Frenchman so anxious to join our ranks on completion of his task, he was arrested for the castrato’s murder, and his son sent to Bedlam.”
“I hear we have that colonist, Silkstone, with his newfangled science to thank for scuppering our plans,” ventured Gunning.
At the mention of Thomas’s name there was a collective jeer. “Yes, Silkstone is a thorn in our side.”
“Was it not he who Charlesworth was about to consult over his reforms?” interrupted Gunning.
“Yes, he and Hunter,” replied Sir Oliver.
“So how did Silkstone uncover our barber?” asked Keate.
“He traced the castrato’s alum block back to the salon,” revealed Sir Oliver. “There was a lock of the boy’s hair at the murder scene, too. The daughter broke under questioning.”
“The girl at the inn?” asked Home.
“The very same. She confessed to letting her father and brother into the room.”
“And the prizefighter?” asked Gunning. “Was he not charged, as we planned?”
“No. The girl blabbed that she was put up to it by her father. There was no evidence against Crouch.”
“Will the Frenchman talk?” asked Walker.
Sir Oliver smiled. “There is no fear of that, gentlemen.” He smirked. “He slit his own throat before he said any more. Rather apt, don’t you think?”
Gunning huffed. “I did not think he had the wit to do such a thing after what we saw. Eh, Keate?” He glanced over to his colleague. “Well, I hope his corpse ended up at St. George’s.”
“Like the carter’s.” His colleague chuckled.
Nervous laughter rippled ’round the room.
“And the sodomite has gone free?” queried Home.
“Sadly, yes. There is no justice, gentlemen,” mocked Sir Oliver.
“So now we will renew our efforts to destroy Hunter’s name?” asked Gunning.
“Indeed,” replied Sir Oliver, stroking his chin enigmatically. The other men leaned forward, elbows on the table, their interest piqued. “I have devised another, more subtle plan,” he told them and, gesturing toward the door, he called out: “Mr. Foot.”
At this bidding a dapper little gentleman with a haughty air entered the room, a bundle of papers under his arm. He bowed graciously.
The master introduced him. “Mr. Foot is known to you all, gentlemen, as a surgeon of impeccable integrity,” he began. “He has been gathering evidence against the Scotch heathen for a number of years now and he plans to write the man’s biography. I put it to you, sirs, that the quill is mightier than the sword. So, from now on, instead of the cutthroat razor, the pen will be our weapon with which to slay this scourge of our sacred profession.” And with that the surgeons raised their glasses in a toast. “To Galen,” they cried, “and the destruction of Dr. John Hunter, the most reviled anatomist that ever lived.”
Postscript
D
r. John Hunter waited two years to reveal the existence of Charles Byrne’s skeleton, and then only to close associates. It can be seen to this day hanging at the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons in London. In 1909, a postmortem examination revealed Charles Byrne suffered from a tumor in his pituitary, the gland responsible for producing a growth hormone. In 2010 the results of tests carried out on his bones by Professor Márta Korbonits of Barts Hospital, London, were published in the
New England Journal of Medicine
. They revealed that Byrne and up to 300 living patients inherited their genetic variant from the same common ancestor and that this mutation is some 1,500 years old. The study of Charles Byrne’s bones makes it possible to trace carriers of this gene and treat patients before they grow to be giants.
John Hunter died in 1793 after an attack of angina, brought on by a particularly heated meeting with the board of St. George’s Hospital regarding various reforms he wished implemented. He was also betrayed by his brother-in-law, another surgeon, named Everard Home, who either plagiarized or destroyed much of his writing. Jesse Foot published his scurrilous biography in 1794.
Hunter’s remains lay forgotten in the vaults of the church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, off what is now Trafalgar Square, London, until a young army surgeon discovered them in 1859 and had them reinterred to the north nave of Westminster Abbey. Three years later the Royal College of Surgeons affixed a plaque. Part of the inscription reads:
The Royal College of Surgeons of England has placed this tablet on the grave of Hunter to record admiration of his genius, as a gifted interpreter of the Divine power and wisdom at work in the laws of organic life and its grateful veneration for his services to mankind as the founder of scientific surgery.

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