The Resurrectionists

The Resurrectionists
A dark historical romance by KV Taylor

In the spring of 1826, a swaggering medical student called Tom Brandon mortified his family; he spent a night on the floor of a country cell after being caught out grave-robbing. It’s not his fault there’s a dearth of legally obtainable corpses in London, though. Don’t blame the anatomist, blame the superstitious masses. His social climbing siblings threatened to send him both to India and to Hell, but finally settled on Philadelphia as the place of exile for their inconvenient brother.

The Resurrectionists follows Tom’s first six months in his adopted home. His unexpected friendship for Dr. Appleby’s artistic son Paul. His accidental romance with the witty Rebecca Appleby. His verbal boxing matches with their self-righteous sister Hannah. His rivalry with their loyal childhood friend Dartmoor. Their ventures into Philadelphia’s underbelly, their nighttime trips to graveyards, their society parties, covert experiments, stolen moments, studies, ambitions, affections, and dark secrets.

And the inevitable collision of all these things with a resurrection they’ll never forget.

Tom Brandon and Paul Appleby drawn by S.A. van Muijden

“When did you draw this?” Tom asked.

“Some years ago. My hand is hardly perfect now, but it is, at least, less imperfect. It was before I’d properly begun my studies, but we had a few cadavers injected with tallow colored with–”

“Vermillion.” Tom scrubbed at his face again. “And Prussian blue.”

Paul nodded. “I’m the usual maker of pigments now, but at the time I had never seen the like.”

“I’ve seen it done, but I never before thought it spectacularly lovely.”

Paul, expecting some joke at his own expense, smiled. “And you do now?”

“I do. I daresay you rival Cloquet, my dear.”

Paul–who had pored over the first few of M. Cloquet’s folios in the library day and night, and awaited the publication of the rest with bated breath–flushed. “You flatter me.”

Tom fixed him with a sharp look. “Do I seem a flatterer?”

The flush deepened. “Then I’m only happy I could convince you to see what I see. It’s all any artist could ask.”

Tom looked at him from hair to boots and then back again before turning his attention to the shrouded cadaver in the center of the room.

Paul was relieved. He’d begun to feel as if Tom were inspecting his veins and arteries.

Tom tugged at the shroud, revealing a white face marbled by an incomplete spider-web of blood vessels. He poked at a broken vein and sighed. “We must take more care with the injections next time. He’s shockingly mangled.”

“We took great care, I thank you, and Dart is an expert at Spalding’s Cold Injection–it’s quite as close to perfect as it can be. There is no procedure that will keep every capillary intact.”

“How you defend this Dartmoor’s genius. Does that mean we ought to give up improving our technique and practice, because Dartmoor has mastered some Philadelphian trick?”

Paul smiled, but refrained from laughing. Tom had been annoyed to find that the good doctors of the University of Pennsylvania had techniques to which he had not been privy. More than that, that Francis Dartmoor was rather an expert with them.

Tom went on, “Hopkinson insisted on adding his own injection–Dr. Physick swears by it, and so he must impress its value upon us all, it seems. His chloride of zinc is responsible for this appalling color. It’s all well and good with the usual cadavers–the poor bastards needn’t outlast the week–but I think we can do better than that.” He reached beneath the shroud and pulled into view a similarly marbled, waxy-pale forearm–

Then paused, holding the grisly appendage in mid-air. His eyes narrowed; he glanced at the rigid face, expressive brows drawing down and together.

“Tom?” Paul, though rather at home in the operating theater, experienced a chill. Something in the shifting light, bright though it was, combined with Tom’s alarming posture and expression–

“Paul, will you have the kindness to come here?”

He approached the table from the other side.

Tom glanced up, still holding the arm aloft as if he’d forgotten it. “Is this corpse warm?”