PROLOGUE

November 1848, near Mitchelstown, County Cork, Ireland

A white frost had settled. The earth was frozen like iron. Inside the cottage the family slept in each other’s warmth. The fire had burnt down in the hearth, the bit of turf nearly gone. Orla woke up curled around her little sister Bríd on a paillasse filled with heather, her nose making a warm spot in Bríd’s hair as she breathed through it. Bríd was still fast asleep, the curve of her brow and cheek faintly visible in the pink light that came between the shutters. On the other side of the hearth Daddy lay on his back, Mammy nestled up against his armpit. Nana, who never got herself comfortable, dozed in a chair with a feather cushion, wrapped from head to toe in her shawls.

The crows were calling out, waking them early. Mam whimpered as she opened her eyes from a deep sleep. Daddy was straight awake, his body bending up like a grasshopper’s leg.

Orla heard a horse’s hoof clop against a stone, outside in the lane. The softer thud of hooves on mud. Boots on the path. Then someone beating on their door, as though with a cudgel.

‘Open up!’ A man’s booming voice.

Cursing him, Daddy went to the door and shouted back: ‘Be away wit’ ya, Morrissey!’ Instead of opening it, he braced it with his shoulder.

The door held, but its iron latch bent as a heavy-booted foot wedged in at the base of the doorjamb. Then an iron hook clawed and splintered its edge until a plank broke away.

‘The guvnor wants ye out!’ Morrissey was roaring through the gap. ‘Time’s up!’

‘Yeh well know my rent is paid, though it’s starved us to do it!’

‘Ye’ve had yeer notice! Ye should be gone by now!’

‘Where else should we go? We’ve nowhere but the road!’ Mammy was at Daddy’s shoulder. ‘What right have yeh to come here like this?’

Orla cuddled Bríd to hush her cries. Surely the man was wrong?

Something thumped above their heads, sprinkling bits of thatch across the floor. The door crashed open.

‘Yer tenancy’s after endin’.’

‘Me tenancy?’ Facing up against the giant man, Daddy looked thin and weak. ‘Me, and me brother, and me father, and me grandfather have worked this land up from no more than a hape o’stones!’

‘Out wit’ ye, now!’ Morrissey wrenched Daddy’s arm and raised the cudgel to him.

Daddy hadn’t even got his boots on. He clung in vain to the doorjamb, cursing.

There was a horrible sound, a groaning noise as if the cottage itself was being wrenched, a ripping and splintering.

Now Mammy was rushing to bundle up their things, telling Orla ‘Move, get yer blanket, help yer nana, I don’t know what to bring!’ – crying at Daddy, who was dragged outside now, panicked fear in her voice: ‘Please God it has not come to this!’

But it had. More thatch scattered down, then a long pole of wood slid to the floor, raising a cloud of dust. A horse whinnied outside and stamped the ground. Then came a strange thunderous noise, like the crumbling of the world.

‘The roof!’ Mam grabbed Orla, hoisted Bríd up and got them out the door, Nana hobbling behind.

The cold of the air was like a slap in the face, while the frosted ground stung her feet. Nana was wailing. A gang of men were pulling down the roof with long hooks.

Morrissey bellowed an order. They stepped back to let a rider through. A man in blue and gold, with a spear of flame, on a pure white horse.

She must be brave. She ran to him. He hauled in the reins.

She would not cry.

‘Help us!’ She saw a riding boot with a brass spur. The pale gleam of the horse’s flank. ‘Sir! Please, it’s not fair … sir…’

He glared at her, his eyes intense, then seemed to laugh. His white teeth shone below his brown moustache. He cursed and spurred the stallion on. The other men made to leave. He stood up in the stirrups, threw the burning torch upon the broken roof, then turned and rode away.

1

IN THE DEAD HOUSE

April 1854, Manhattan

‘Why will you not invite me to meet Jane’s friend?’ Joseph Murphy shot a glance at William’s profile as they went along the upper corridor of Bellevue Hospital.

William had a habit of pushing his wavy black forelock back from his forehead. As usual, the dark eyebrow curved down, and he had thrust forth his nose and clean-shaven jaw, as if that would help him arrive at the Dead House more quickly. Not that it would make any difference, Joseph thought. Once the dead were dead, they generally remained so, and there was no longer any urgency about their treatment.

‘Anna’s not here yet.’ William lengthened his stride.

It was difficult these days, since he’d started work on the textbook, to engage him in small talk. As Assistant Professor of Surgery, Joseph now outranked him yet Dr William Doughty, Temporary Physician and Pathologist – he had been ‘temporary’ for the last four and a half years – still seemed to view him as his junior. It was as if they were still back in Dublin and working at the Cork Street Fever Hospital.

‘You told me she was staying with you for the whole of this week?’ Joseph was not minded to give up, even though it seemed hopeless. He kept pace with William as they passed the wards. ‘I could easily join you for Sunday dinner, either this weekend or the next. I won’t be called in. Prof Wood’s on the roster, and you know how industrious he is.’

‘Not a good idea. I’m sorry.’

‘We could talk about the auld times in Dublin,’ Joseph wheedled with a grin.

‘But you know perfectly well that’s the last thing we should mention!’ William halted. The frown was etched into the lines of his face.

They stepped aside to make way for a pair of orderlies supporting a patient.

‘To be frank,’ William then continued, ‘Jane told me to tell you not to come. In any case, Anna’s going to be fully occupied with Orla. You know how impossible the girl can be. As I’ve told you, we’ve obtained a place for her at Flaxfield Ladies’ Seminary and Anna’s a schoolmistress there. So it isn’t purely a social call. Anna’s going to take Orla back with her. We’re praying that she’ll make a good impression.

They walked on.

‘But, sure, what objection could Anna have to myself?’ Joseph knew that William would not spell out the answer. ‘My distinguished career in the hospitals of Dublin and Paris, my position here in New York, a highly regarded private practice, indeed a national expert on disorders of the ear, nose and throat, and not yet thirty-one years of age?’ He did not add that he believed he was considered handsome, with his tall lean figure and thick red hair. Modest to a fault, he thought, suppressing a smile.

‘Your curriculum vitae is admirable.’ A note of regret had entered William’s voice. His work as a pathologist had not the same prestige.

Joseph pressed on. ‘While I’ve devoted my spare time to raising funds for the Sisters of Charity. In fact, we’re collecting for–’

‘Now, if you’ll please excuse me?’

‘Truly, it’s five years since I had any involvement at all in–’

‘I must go across to the pathology department. They’re waiting for me.’

‘I’m going that way myself.’ Joseph caught William’s sardonic glance midstride. Perhaps it was better not to pursue the argument: after all, the move from Dublin to Paris had been made to escape the British authorities, not to advance his career.

They reached the main staircase, where portraits of eminent physicians stared down. William loped down two steps at a time, Joseph keeping close behind, noticing how his old friend’s coat hung loose from his once muscular frame.

‘Could you at least check if you’ve any specimens for me?’ Joseph asked. ‘I’ve Prof Wood’s class to teach tomorrow morning, in the Anatomy Building.’

‘You’ll have to do it yourself. Come with me and speak to Mr Phelan.’ William was scowling now. ‘Though I don’t think we’ve anything suitable.’

Joseph checked his fob watch. There was still time before he had to attend his clinic. He followed William down the stairs and out of the building; a brief escape into the morning air from the lime-washed corridors that carried the gasps of the dying. With its iron gates and towering walls, Bellevue Hospital was a formidable place, even on a spring day when the multitude of patients who had been admitted in the grip of the winter fever were, one way or another, no longer in the building.

‘Maybe you could even be kind enough to help me teach my class?’ Joseph followed William down the curved stone steps.

‘I simply don’t have the time.’ William’s frown deepened further.

They crossed the grounds towards the riverbank. The trees were budding into life. Across glittering water, the far shore was green. The sun lit the seagulls’ wings white. A huge paddle steamer, its twin chimneys ribboning smoke, was passing. The Stars and Stripes streamed out from its stern and smaller sailboats swayed in its wake. The smell of burning coal cut through the animal reek from the nearby stables and slaughterhouses.

‘I’ve got to work on Prof Charles’s textbook,’ William said. ‘Forty-five chapters. He keeps asking me when it will ready.’

‘You ought to tell him to write his wretched book himself.’

‘How can I?’ William was hunching his shoulders. ‘You agreed to take Prof Wood’s class – what’s the difference?’

Joseph didn’t reply. The difference was that while Prof Wood was genuinely busy, Prof Charles had a reputation for enjoying his own fireside. Professor Charles was the chief coroners’ physician, but delegated the autopsy requests to William and collected the fees for the work. William had arrived at Bellevue late in his career, and it seemed that his sole ambition now was to preserve his position by diligence.

Facing them, beside a boiler-room that drizzled soot from its tall chimney, was the Dead House that contained the Department of Pathology. It had only been built a few years before, yet oozed with damp, green algae growing on the outside walls and black mould within.

‘Another unfortunate,’ William said.

The police carriage stood outside. Joseph’s hopes rose. Under a new law, any corpse unclaimed for twenty-four hours could be dissected by the medical students before being ferried across the river to the Calvary Cemetery.