The Secret Dead (3 page)

I looked at him. How could I resist such flattery? Even so,
in my gut I was deeply troubled by his proposition. In the first place, I did
not believe his story about how he had come by the body. There could be no
doubt that the girl had been murdered, barely an hour ago, and I feared that in
disposing of her corpse — to say nothing of illegally dissecting it — we would be
implicated in her death. More than this, though, it was the brutality of what
he was proposing that disturbed me. I had read Vesalius’s work on anatomy and
understood the value of practical experimentation. But this girl had already
suffered violence at the hands of a man; whatever she may have been in life,
our cutting and probing in the name of scientific enquiry seemed like a further
violation. I did not voice any of this. Instead, I said:

“Does the prior know?”

He allowed a long pause. His gaze slid back to the girl on
the table.

“The prior has, on occasion, given me permission to examine
corpses where it is clear that there would be some greater benefit in doing so.
When old Fra Teofilo died last year in Holy Week — you recall? — I was
permitted to cut him open in order to study the tumor in his gut. And what
could be more beneficial than furthering our knowledge of the female form? You
cannot know how rare it is to find such an ideal specimen.”

The gleam in his eyes as he said this verged on lascivious,
though not for the girl, or at least, not in the usual way. His desire was all
for her interior, for the secrets she might yield up to his knife. From his
studied evasion of my question, I took it that the answer was no. He tapped the
hourglass with a fingernail. The sand was already piling into a small hill in
the lower half.

“Time will not wait for us, Bruno. Go or stay, but make
your mind up now.”

“I will stay,” I said, sounding steadier than I felt.

“Good.” Relief rippled over his face. “And if you think you
are going to faint or vomit, give me plenty of warning. We will have enough to clean
up without that.”

He dipped a cloth in the hot water and wiped it almost
tenderly around the girl’s chest, along the declivities of her clavicle, the
sharp ridges of her collarbones and into the valley between her breasts. “Note
the fullness of the breasts,” he observed, as if he were addressing students in
an anatomy theater, as he marked the place of the first incision in a Y-shape
across each side of her breastbone, “and the enlargement of the areola. If I am
right in my speculation, we may find something of unparalleled interest here.”

I concentrated on holding the lantern steady over the table.
As if I could have failed to notice the girl’s full breasts or large, dark
nipples. Perhaps he had forgotten what it was to be eighteen. In his eyes, she
was simply a specimen, material for experimentation. To me she was too recently
living, breathing, warm, with a head full of thoughts and dreams, for me to regard
her as anything other than a young woman. I did not dare touch her skin; I
almost believed it would still hold some pulse of life. Nor could I look at her
face; the terror in those wild, staring eyes was too vivid. I had heard it said
that when a person was murdered, the image of the killer was fixed in their
death stare. I did not mention this to Fra Gennaro; I did not want him to laugh
at me or take me for a village simpleton.

Any unbidden lustful thoughts shriveled in an instant as he
pushed the blade into her flesh. He made two careful incisions along the
breastbone and joined them in a vertical cut that ran the length of her torso
to her pubis. The sound of the knife tearing through meat was unspeakable, the
smell more so. I recoiled, shocked, at the amount of blood that pooled out.
Gennaro calmly placed containers under the table at strategic points, and I saw
that, like a butcher’s block, the surface had channels cut into it that
diverted the blood into tidy streams of runoff that could be collected
underneath. He folded back the skin on each side of the chest cavity, exposing
the white bones of the ribcage. I clamped my teeth together, fighting the
rising tide of bile churning in my stomach, reminding myself that I was a man
of science. A wave of cold washed over my head and a sudden sunburst exploded
in my vision; the cone of light from the lantern slid queasily up and down the
wall. Gennaro stopped to look at me.

“You’ve gone green.” He didn’t sound greatly sympathetic. “Hang
the lantern on that hook above me and sit down with your head between your
knees. We can do without you passing out on her.”

I did as I was told. I sank to the cold floor at the far
end of the room with my back pressed against the wall, clasped my hands behind
my head, and buried my face in shame. The terrible slicing noises continued,
the determined sawing through resistant muscle and tendon, the sucking sound of
organs being displaced. I closed my eyes and bent the whole force of my will
toward maintaining consciousness and keeping my supper down. I could not tell
how much sand had slipped through the glass by the time I felt able to stand
again, but when I opened my eyes and levered myself to my feet, Fra Gennaro was
bending over the girl’s exposed abdomen with an ardent expression. His eyes
flickered upward to me.

“You’re back with us, are you? Come and look at this.” He
prodded with the tip of his knife. He was indicating a swollen organ about the
size of a small grapefruit, mottled crimson. “The greatest anatomy theaters in
Europe would pay dearly to get their hands on this. It is an opportunity
granted to very few anatomists. Providence has smiled on us tonight. Do you
know what it is?”

I considered replying that Providence had been less kind to
the girl, but I merely shook my head.

“This is the womb, Bruno. The cradle of life. Locus of the
mystery of generation. The source, it is believed, of all female irrationality.”
He reached in with bloody fingers and tugged, frowning. “Hippocrates said it
had the power to detach itself and wander about the body, but I do not see how
that could occur. This one seems firmly attached to the birth canal.”

He parted the girl’s legs and quite perfunctorily inserted
two fingers into her vagina, pushing up until he could feel the pressure with
his other hand. “Interesting,” he murmured. “It seems to me that Vesalius’s
drawing of the female reproductive organs is seriously flawed …”

“And now,” he continued, lifting the girl’s womb toward him
as if he were a street conjurer about to reveal his greatest trick, “watch
closely and learn. For if my guess is correct, you are about to witness a
secret that some of the most renowned anatomists in Leiden or Paris have yet to
see in the flesh.”

He took a smaller knife and made a precise cut in the outer
skin. As it ruptured, a clear, viscous fluid spilled out over his hands along with
the blood. Gennaro peeled back the skin and extracted from within the womb a
tiny homunculus, no bigger than the span of my hand, but already recognizably
human. He laid it in his palm, his eyes bright with wonder.

“Is it alive?” I breathed.

“Not now. You see this?” He nudged with the knifepoint to
the twisted white tube that still connected its abdomen with the interior of
the womb. “It can’t live without the mother. This is very early gestation, see?
A matter of weeks, I would say. But note how you can already make out the
fingers and toes.”

The creature had the translucent sheen of an amphibious
animal, its half-formed limbs and curved spine so delicate as to seem
insubstantial. Perhaps it was his casual use of the word “mother,” but I felt a
sudden terrible emptiness, a hollowing-out, as if it were my insides that had been
torn away. This homunculus would have grown into a child, if the girl’s life
had not been cut short by those hands around her throat. I wished fervently
that I had never followed Gennaro. I began to fear I lacked the detachment to
make a man of science.

Fra Gennaro carefully excised the womb and the tiny fetus,
severed the cord that bound them, and placed each into a large glass jar he had
brought in his bag. “But where does it
come
from?” he muttered, as he
sealed the jars.

“From the man’s seed.” I was unsure if he was addressing
the question to me, nor even if my answer was correct, but I needed the
distraction.

“Ah, but does it?” He looked at me, seemingly pleased. His
cheek was streaked with blood where he had touched it. “Opinion is divided.
There are those who say the womb is merely the field of Nature in which the
seed is planted, and others who think there is some additional element
contributed by the woman, without which the seed cannot germinate. What think
you?”

“I imagine these elements are so small as to be invisible.
So that we can only study the effects and must work backward to infer the
cause.”

He nodded and wiped his hands on his apron. “It may be that
we will never unravel the mystery of conception. But that does not mean we
should not try, eh? I shall study this further.” He patted the sealed lid of
the jar containing the fetus. I had to look away.

From somewhere beyond the thick stone walls of our
underground mortuary came the distant tolling of a bell. My head snapped round,
and I met Fra Gennaro’s eye. Neither of us had noticed how long ago the sand
had run through the hourglass. I glanced down at myself; my habit was daubed with
the girl’s blood and God knows what else.

Gennaro pulled his apron over his head. “I need fresh water
and new candles,” he said, decisive. “I will tell the prior you are taken sick
and unable to attend Matins. Close the hatch and draw the bolt after me and do
not open the door to anyone until I return. I will give three sharp knocks.”

Before I could object, he was gone. I climbed the stairs and
slid the bolt across, shutting myself in with the girl. She lay splayed out
like a carcass at the butcher’s, yellow fat and livid red organs bright against
her pale skin. I drew closer to the table, torn between fascination and fear.
In Gennaro’s absence, I felt emboldened to test the theory of the killer’s
image by looking into her eyes, but all I saw was naked terror and my own
reflection. It seemed apt, in a twisted way; I could not escape the feeling
that we were as guilty of her destruction as the man whose fingers were
imprinted around her slender neck. I backed away, chilled by an irrational fear
that she might suddenly turn her head and fix me with those eyes. I tried to
intone the psalms, but the words stuck in my throat. Instead, I turned over the
hourglass and watched the sand drain through in a fine dust. The minutes that
passed until I heard Gennaro’s knock were some of the longest of my life.

“We need to dispose of her before first light,” he said,
brisk again. “I will need your help.”

“How?”

“We must take her to Fontanelle.”

“But the city gates will be locked until dawn.”

He slid me a sidelong look. “They can be opened.”

He crossed to the far side of the room and unlocked a
wooden door in the back wall. I had been so intent on the girl I had not
noticed it before. A breath of cleaner air filtered through, and I saw that the
door opened on to an underground passageway.

“Part of the network of tunnels and cisterns belonging to
the old Roman aqueduct,” Gennaro explained. “It links to another tunnel beyond
the boundary wall and comes out on the other side of Via Toledo. Here — help me
with this.”

From the passageway Gennaro dragged a cheap wooden casket
into the room. I grabbed the other end and helped him position it alongside the
table. When he opened the lid, I saw that it was lined in oilcloth, and the
inside was already bloodstained. He drew out a coarsely woven cloak from
beneath the lining, such as the poorest wear in winter. It smelled thickly of
decay.

“There is one thing I need to do before we transport her,”
he said, draping the cloak over the casket and turning to face me with a stern
look. “You may prefer not to watch this, Bruno. I have to skin her.” He turned
back to the table and selected a knife with a thin, cruel blade.

Again, that strange lurch in my gut, as if I had missed a
stair. “Why?”

“So that she cannot be recognized. People may be looking
for her.”

“You said there was no one to mourn her.” I heard the
accusation in my voice.

“Mourn her, no. But if she was a whore in this neighborhood,
her face will be known. The remains we send to Fontanelle must not be
identifiable.”

“It’s barbaric.”

He made an impatient noise with his tongue. “Perhaps. But
it is also prudent. What we have done here tonight would be hard to explain to
the city authorities. I think you see that.”

I bowed my head. “Then no one will ever be brought to
justice for her murder.”

He laid down his knife and looked at me with an air of
incomprehension. “You think they would otherwise? A street whore?” He shook his
head. “I admire your fervor for justice on behalf of the weak. It is, after
all, part of our Christian duty,” he added, as if he had only just remembered. “But
it is not our concern here, Bruno. There will be no justice for her in this
life. Pray God grant her mercy, and retribution to those who wronged her in the
next.”

With this, he grasped a hank of her lush hair and sliced it
through cleanly at the roots, as I turned my face away.

* * *

All through the long journey to the Fontanelle cavern, he
did not say a word to me, except once, to ask if I carried a dagger. When I
said yes, he gave a dry laugh. “Of course you do. This is Naples. Even novice
nuns carry a blade beneath their habits.” I wondered if he was afraid the girl’s
killer might still be lurking nearby. I tried to shut out the thought that Gennaro
knew more about the murderer than he was letting on.

We took turns pushing the cart with the makeshift coffin,
the two of us wearing old servants’ cloaks with the hoods pulled up close
around our faces, despite the warm night, so that we would not be recognized as
friars. I could not tell if Gennaro was angry with me for questioning him, or
for my squeamishness, or if he was just tired. Reducing the girl to hunks of
bloodied meat had not been an easy task. The human body is tougher than it
looks; limbs need to be wrenched from sockets, bones sawed through, joints
separated with a hammer. Gennaro must have been exhausted, but he did it all
alone, while I sat with my back against the wall and my head in my hands,
trying to shut out the sounds. What he packed into that box, wrapped carefully
in oilcloth to stop the blood from dripping through the wood, was no longer
human. I stole glances at the casket as he led us through the twisting back
streets in the dark, his face dogged and clenched in the light of my lantern.