Iain Pears - An Instance of the Fingerpost

The hangman assured him that he had seen many gruesome sights in his time, and this would not bother him. “I was thinking of the crowd,” Lower said as he disappeared up the stairs. He followed, and, as there was no one to stop me, I followed Lower.

One glance, and the hangman changed his mind; indeed, he turned ashen white at the sight. For Lower had abandoned the delicate workmanship which normally characterized his dissections. In his haste to take the organs he wanted for his work, he had quartered the body, and ripped it open with savagery; removed the head, and sawn it open to take the brain, tearing off the face in his haste, and then tossed the pieces on an oilcloth on the floor. Those fine, beautiful eyes, which had so captivated me the first time I saw her, had been torn from their sockets; tendons and muscles hung from the arms as though savaged by a wild beast. Bloody knives and saws lay all around, along with the piles of the long, dark, lustrous hair which he had hacked off to attack the skull. There was blood everywhere, and the stink of blood filled the room. A large bucketful which he had drained from her stood in another corner, next to glass jars full of his trophies. And the smell was indescribable. In a corner, in a small pile, was the cotton shift she had worn, stained and soiled from her last ordeal.

“Dear God,” the hangman exclaimed, looking at Lower with horror, “I should take this out and show it to the crowd.

Then you would join her on the pyre, which is no more than you deserve.”

Lower shrugged with exhaustion and unconcern. “It is for the common good,” he said. “I feel no need to apologize, to you or anyone else. It is you, and that ignorant magistrate, who should apologize. Not me. If I had had more time…”

I stood in the corner and felt the tears welling up in me, so tired and sad to see all my hopes and faith shattered. I could not believe that this man whom I had called my friend could act in such a callous way to me, show such a side of himself that previously had been so well hidden. I have no sentimental notions about the body once the soul has departed; I believe it is fitting and honorable to use them for the purposes of science. But it must be done with humility, in honor of something which was made in God’s image. To advance himself, Lower had descended to the level of a butcher.

“Well,” he said, looking at me for the first time. “What are you doing here?”

“The mother is dead,” I said.

“I am grieved to hear it.”

“So you should be, as it was your doing. Where were you last night? Why did you not come?”

“It would not have done any good.”

“It would have,” I said, “if she’d enough spirit to dilute the daughter’s. She died the moment her child was hanged.”

“Nonsense. Pure, unscientific superstitious nonsense,” he said, rattled by my willingness to confront him with what he had done. “I know it is.”

“You do not. It is the only explanation. You are responsible for her death and I cannot forgive you.”

“Then do not,” he said brusquely. “Hold to your explanation, and to my responsibility if you wish. But do not trouble me at the moment.”

“I demand to know your reasons.”

“Go away,’’ he said. “I will give you no reasons, and no explanations. You are no longer welcome here, sir. Go away, I say. Mr. Crosse. Will you escort this foreign gentleman out?”

The exchange went on a little longer than this, but in essence those were the last words he ever spoke to me. Since then, I have heard nothing from him at all, and so I still am unable to explain why his friendliness turned to malice and his generosity to the most extreme cruelty. Was the prize so great? Was his feeling of disgust with his deeds turned on me so that he could avoid owning his own fault? But one thing I soon became certain of. His failure to help me with Mrs. Blundy was deliberate. He wanted my experiment to fail, because I could not then claim success.

I am fairly certain now that he already knew what he was going to do. Perhaps he had already started writing that communication which, a year later, appeared in the Transactions of the Royal Society. An account of the Transfusion of the Blood by Richard Lower, detailing his experiments on dogs conducted with Wren, and followed up with another which described transfusion between two individuals. So generous he was in acknowledging Wren’s help. So open in admitting his debt to Locke. Such a gentleman.

But not a word about myself, and I am sure now that Lower had already determined that I would have no acknowledgment. All he had said in the past about others beating him to recognition, about foreigners and his distaste for all of them came back to me and I realized that anyone less naïve than myself would have been on his guard long before.

But I am still shocked by how far he was prepared to go to steal my fame, for, in order to make sure my claims were not entertained, he spread wicked stories about me among his friends, saying I was a charlatan, a thief and worse. He had narrowly, it was believed, stopped me from stealing his idea, rather than the other way around, and only good fortune exposed my duplicity at the last moment.

I left Oxford that same day, traveled to London and, after a week, took ship on an English merchantman headed for Antwerp, then found another to take me to Livorno. I was back in my home by June. I have never left my country again, and have long since abandoned philosophy for the more respectable activities of the gentleman; it pains me to return, even in memory, to those dark, sad days.

One last thing I did before I left, however. I could not ask Lower, so I went to see Wood, who was still willing to receive me. He told me that Sarah’s remains had burned that same afternoon, as I was packing my bags, and that all was finally over. There was no one but himself and the hangman at the pyre, and it had burned ferociously. It grieved him to attend, but he felt he had owed her that last attendance.

I gave him a pound, and asked him to see to Mrs. Blundy’s funeral, so that she might avoid a pauper’s grave.

He agreed to take care of it for me. I do not know whether he kept his word.

It is something of a surprise, and even an embarrassment, to have scarce remembered faces and facts summoned from the gloom of antiquity like so many ghosts. This has been my experience while perusing the manuscript written by that strange little Venetian, Marco da Cola, lately sent to me by Richard Lower. I never imagined he had such a formidable, if selective, memory. Perhaps he took notes as he went along, expecting to entertain his countrymen on his return. Such travelers’ memoirs are popular enough here; it is possible the same is true in Venice, although I am told the inhabitants are a narrow-minded people, convinced nothing is worthwhile if it lies more than ten leagues from their city. As I say, the manuscript was a surprise; its arrival as much as its contents, for I had not heard from Lower for some time. We were somewhat in company, he and I, when we were both making our way in London; but then our paths diverged. I married well, to a woman who brought me a good addition to my estate, and began to associate with men of the very highest rank. Whereas Lower somehow missed, failing to endear himself to those most able to do him good. I do not know why this was. He did, certainly, have an irritability about him which never sits well in a doctor, and was perhaps too mindful of his philosophy and not enough of his pocket to make a mark in the world. But my loyalty and forbearance mean that at least he still numbers the Prestcott family among his few patients.