The Anatomy Lesson Read online

  The crowd would’ve been more than happy to see the hangman swap the rope from Joep’s neck to Trijntje’s. Soon enough the whole of Dam Square was chanting for his acquittal, and her damnation.

  The cry went up as they were hauling her out of the square toward town hall: “Cut him down, cut him down! String her up! String her up!” Even I got swept up in foment. Waving my fist in the air, I chanted, “Joep, Joep! Free the innocent! Kill the damned!” I shouted and cheered, too, when the hangman started to cut Joep down from the rope, and even raised a child on my shoulders to give the lad a better view.

  It was only moments later that I realized what had transpired: my cadaver—the one I’d spent so many months cultivating—was not going to die. Though the crowd demanded that crazy Trijntje be dangled from Joep’s intended rope, the hangman wouldn’t take action until the magistrates had a say, he said. What cowardice! She was clearly the murderess! She’d be a perfect Joep substitute, too. With the body of a woman for dissection, I could charge six or even seven stivers a head for door admission, and certainly her organs would be full of evidence of her ignominy.

  I cried out, “Don’t waste another moment!” with such fury a few people around me turned in amazement. The hangman didn’t heed me. Trijntje was put in irons and dragged off to the Sint Ursula’s spinhuis instead. As she was being led away in front of the chanting crowd, I climbed the scaffold myself and begged the hangman.

  He shook his head at me. “Won’t hang a witch,” he said bluntly. “You never know what’ll come of that.”

  So instead, this witch would sit in the spinhuis, sewing and knitting her days away rather than serve the noble purpose of scientia. It was a scandal.

  My troubles were now grave, if you’ll forgive me a pun, one obvious pitfall of this profession. What a day! Everything was turning against me.

  “But what about my body?” I said to the executioner. “The papers are all signed! The fee paid! The annual anatomical lesson is this very night!”

  “There’s yet another hanging,” said the hangman. “Talk to the magistrate.”

  That barge finally got to the Haarlemmer Port, and the gates there were still open, thank the Lord. But now they said we were far from the Dam and the streets were too full of carts to pass. We’d need a skiff to get to the square, and even so, the canals were clogged to bursting. It were getting closer and closer to noon, and my heart were jumping.

  The boy said he’d find us a boatman, and before the barge were even docked, he’d jumped across onto land and gone to find one. I watched him run the shore while the barge slid into the berth.

  I had to get to the Dam, but the city made me afraid. It were noisy and crowded and the stench of garbage were heavy like a mist. That port were full of sailors, tradesmen, militiamen, scavengers, vagabonds, and all kinds of foreigners in silks and velvets and turbans. Whoever weren’t shoving down the lane were standing in the way, trying to sell something. This side, a toothless beggar barking out handmade wares; there a little lass no more than six selling caps and collars; here a bawdy lady tugging down her bodice, selling herself. Men pushing barrels of beer onto carts; boys handing out oysters still wobbling in their half shells. I were afraid in this city like I never were in Leiden.

  Guus came back with a big burly fellow in clothes so tattered I took him for a galley slave. “I found him,” the boy said breathlessly. “He’s got a rowboat.”

  I could see there weren’t no others who would take our fare.

  “We must go quickly to Dam Square to stop the hanging,” I said. I took one coin out of Father van Thijn’s purse and pushed it to him. “We are already late.”

  The man nodded like he knew all about it. “Keep your money hid,” he said. “These streets are teeming with thieves.” He smiled a strange smile.

  His skiff were close by. He offered me his hand to help me down, and I sat on the seat behind his. Then he climbed down into the boat himself, nearly tipping us all over, and took up his oars. “Are you ready?” he asked.

  “Go as fast as you can,” I said. “Please.”

  “We’ll have to go around into the harbor,” he said. “The canals off the port aren’t passable. It’ll take till sundown to get through.”

  “Take us so we get there,” I said.

  Once we were out of the port, the boatman got into a rhythm with his rowing. I could see he were strong and able, and that he were sure at the oars. He were facing us, his back to the open water, but he knew where he were going. He looked me up and down for a while, and I were sure he were judging me when his eyes fixed on my belly.

  “You married to Aris the Kid?” he asked. I knew who he meant. My Adriaen. “The Kid” were his nickname. The boy had told him our story.

  “We never married,” were all I said.

  “I knew your man,” the boatman said. “We were in the same house of corrections in Utrecht.”

  “Adriaen?” I didn’t believe him.

  “I got the brand of Utrecht,” he said. Holding both oars with one hand, he loosened the strings on his shirt to show me a marking on his neck. His skin were paler than Adriaen’s, and his neck were strong and wide. It weren’t like Adriaen’s branding. It looked longer and twisted, like he’d pulled away when they’d burned him.

  Guus watched with an open mouth.

  “You want to see it?” the boatman asked, motioning for the boy to get a closer look.

  Guus slid forward in the boat. “Wow,” he said.

  I waited until the boatman tied his shirt. “You must’ve been saved, then. Because here you are a freeman and a workingman, and Adriaen is being readied for the noose.” I felt a sudden chill in me. “Will we be there soon?”

  The harbor of Amsterdam must be the busiest place in the Lord’s kingdom. It were like a forest where the trees were masts and the birds were flags and ribbons whipping in the wind of ivory sails. Everywhere around us were giant galleons carved with wooden ladies and imperial crests. Sloops ferried men out from the shore, their shoulders burdened with trunks.

  Ours were a small vessel, and we tossed side to side in the wakes of them bigger boats. I asked the boatman if we were to die out there. “Don’t be afraid, lass,” he said. “She’s a small but sure craft.”

  That’s when I saw it. There on the other side of the IJ waterfront. The gallows field where there were crosses lined up and bodies hung from them, they call the Volewijk. That’s where they take the dead to let their bodies rot after a hanging. They were like a small orchard of weird trees. The bodies looked like black rags half fallen off the clothesline except when you looked longer they started to round out as they swayed in the wind. My heart started to race, and I could hear the blood come into my ears. I imagined Adriaen there among them, another drooping bundle of black rags, beaten by the sun, sinking in his flesh, the buzzards circling.

  The boy at my elbow by the rail said, “He out there?”

  I told Guus that Adriaen weren’t to hang.

  The boatman looked over his shoulder and saw what we saw. “Better close your eyes, then,” he said. “No need for you to see such things now.”

  We followed the big ships down the main canal from the IJ they call the Damrak. The boatman were right. I could see that the smaller canals were all jammed up with skiffs and rowboats, and the banks were full to overflowing. We were just one boat in a sea of ships trying to get to the Dam. We clung close to the canal wall, and sometimes the bigger boats banged against us. The boatman put his oars into the boat and used his hands to push up along through the vessels. We held on to each other, the boy and me, as the boatmen all around us shouted and cursed, seeing who could get farthest.

  If that were not enough, on all sides were those street vendors. Hands came reaching down at me as we moved through the stinking canals: smoked fish and cobbed corn and toys for the boy. Harlots raised their skirts to the boatman. Street vendors cried, “East Indies sugar and spices! Sugar from the New World. Spices from the Far East!”

&nbs
p; I wanted to be there. We were late. We would not get to Adriaen in time. The boatman knew my thoughts. He saw the fear in my eyes and said, “Lass, we’re closer than you think.”

  The buildings grew bigger and bigger as we passed through the Damrak. They were grand and tall, twice as high as buildings in Leiden. It looked like they were built one on top of the other, not even a garden or a simple path between them, and doors right on the street, so you step from your own rooms right into public, everyone on top of everyone else.

  “I’ll stop here,” he said at last, “and walk you to the square. It’s not far, but the Damrak’s too crowded and we’ll get there faster on foot.” He turned and looked at my belly. “You okay to walk?”

  I told him I were. He turned into a narrow canal, tied up the skiff, and we got out. I tried to hand him my coins again but he would not take them. He took me by the arm and the boy came to my other side. We went into a narrow alley and I could hear the crowds nearby. He were doing what he’d promised. He were tattered and hard, but I could tell he were a good man.

  “I need to see the magistrate,” I said.

  But soon as the narrow alley opened into the huge square I feared we were too late. Everyone were already there and the scaffold were readied, waiting. I saw them drag a woman up the gallows in chains, and thought: If Amsterdam hangs a woman it’ll hang a thief just the same.

  The boatman said to keep our chins low and go direct to town hall. It were not far, just right there on the square. There were a posting on the door I could not read and the room were dark inside. I thought I’d missed the magistrate, but the boatman told me there were men inside. A man pushed open the door, almost hitting us with it as he went out, waving a scroll of paper in one hand. He were a short man carrying a burlap sack.

  It were the boatman who opened the door for us. We stepped onto a marble floor and the heavy wood slammed it shut. A clerk came in and without asking who we were told us to wait. They sat us down in high-backed chairs covered in red velvet. They made that room for important men, and I felt small and dirty in there, like a field mouse sneaking in for cheese.

  We waited a long time and I could hear the crowd outside the door get loud again before the magistrate’s clerk called us in. He were a thin man with a long chin and bulging eyes. He wore a long white collar and a tall black hat. His face had small lines etched from his eyes to his lips.

  The boy came with me to his desk. I did as Father van Thijn had told me. I said my name and showed my belly and told him I were Adriaen’s “betrothed.”

  “Marriage papers?”

  I shook my head. “We didn’t marry yet.”

  He nodded in silence. “Birth record?”

  I shook my head again. Adriaen were born around when I were born, too.

  “Any papers at all?”

  The boy stepped forward and put Father van Thijn’s letter on the desk.

  “What’s this?” The clerk opened the letter and read it through one time. Then he eyed the boy. “Who are you?”

  “Father van Thijn sent me,” he said proudly. “I’m an orphan in our church.”

  Until then, I hadn’t even thought on who the boy’s parents might be.

  The clerk looked at both of us. “Your intentions are noble, but I’m afraid you’ve come too late. There’s only two men to hang today and the first one just got taken off the noose. Next one is condemned. I’ve just signed his body over to the Amsterdam Surgeons’ Guild.”

  “Signed his body …?” I said.

  “They use convicts for the annual anatomical lesson.”

  “To the skinners?” the boy said.

  “They’ve paid a goodly sum for his flesh.” The clerk straightened and glanced at my face. “He’s to serve medicine. His body will be used for public good.”

  “For public good?” I said. “But he doesn’t need to die. He’s not a murderer. He’s only a thief.”

  The clerk looked down at a book in front of him where words were written and looked back up at me. “Yes, that’s what it says here. A thief.”

  He read to me from his book: “Early in the morning about five or six o’clock, on the Heren Sluis in this town he joined two others to attack a certain person with the intent to snatch away his cloak and whom they threw to the ground while all the three pounced upon him and as this man, this victim, tried to cry for help, they gagged him, preventing him from making a noise. If the night watch had not discovered them in time, they certainly would have killed him.”

  He had put Father van Thijn’s letter away, shaking his head. “All these evil facts and their serious consequences are not to be tolerated in a town of justice and honesty.”

  “But Adriaen. Adriaen loved …” I knew my speech would not be heard.

  I pulled out Father van Thijn’s purse and poured the coins out onto his desk. They made a sound like heavy rain. “What did they pay for his body? We will pay more.” I did not know how many coins were there or what they were worth.

  The clerk stood, pulling his hat tighter on his head. “There’s nothing I can do for you now. The sentence was sealed four days ago. The hangman already pardoned the other convict on the word of his wench. And the Surgeons’ Guild must have its anatomy.”

  “Adriaen weren’t never cruel,” I said. “Never violent …”

  He had some pity in his eyes. “You should have come earlier. There’s to be no more pardons on this Justice Day.”

  He stood and his chair screeched against the marble floor.

  “But we have come from Leiden. The church …” the boy said.

  “If you want to claim that body, I’m afraid you’ll have to wrestle it from the surgeons.” He were already walking out of the room.

  “That man …” I said. “The one who just left? He’s the one bought Adriaen’s body?”

  He didn’t answer my question. “After the execution, you’ll have to go to the guild, to the tower in the Waag. Dissections begin at sundown. I suggest you get there first.”

  I ran out of the town hall and into the crowd, looking for that short man, the one with the scroll. If he’d paid for Adriaen’s body, he’d take my money instead, wouldn’t he? He’d let them leave Adriaen alive. He’d let them hear me.

  I ran through the square, and the boatman and the boy followed me. But I saw none of that short man and all of the other people. It were like wading into a river, the current against us, the tall grass grabbing at our ankles. It all went too fast. I lost so much so fast, so deep I were in sorrow. I could do nothing to stop them hauling him up on that rope. I nearly drowned in that square.

  “I’m real sorry you have to see this,” were the last thing the boatman said when we got to the center of that square.

  The voices and the noise and the smells and the sounds were more than I could bear. I did not move forward but there I were right in front. I stood and I watched and I saw. Adriaen were bruised and cut and his right hand were gone.

  The people parted and he walked toward the hangman’s scaffold. His face were pale, sunken. His eyes were red and wild. He didn’t seem to see anything, though he looked straight ahead. His legs were in chains that rattled against the ground, his arms held behind him in irons. There were a guard on each side of him, shoving, making him shuffle and clank. They were as rough as if he were a mule.

  He did not resist them. He would not resist. He were trying to walk tall. He puffed out his chest and kept his chin high. But they shoved him through the crowd, and the people shouted his name, then the guards pushed and pushed.

  He were beaten and weak but he did not let them see it. The hangman unlocked the irons, and they fell to the scaffold with a clank. Then the hangman asked him if he had any last words. He asked only if he could take off his jerkin and shirt. He stood there, in the whipping wind, his body cut and scarred and beaten, his lips dry and bloody, his pant legs torn. He raised his free arms into the sky and flexed them like a strongman.

  “I’m not afraid,” he cried. “I’ve been wa
iting for a long time. Death, I welcome your embrace. I do not fear you.”

  I looked up for some sign of mercy, but the sky were dull and dark and threatening. There it were, right before me, the dangling noose, readied for my Adriaen.

  The boy’s small fingers crept into my hand and I were glad, at least, for that. It made me think on Carel and how I had to live for him.

  Then the bells began to ring. The church bells ringing out the hour. The deathly hour. The sound were hard and cruel. Bong, bong, bong, like a demand. Like the devil himself instructing the hangman to do his work. I felt every ring of that bell like I were on the end of the cord that rang it.

  The hangman stepped forward and put the noose around Adriaen’s neck. “Aris! Aris! Aris Kindt! Aris Kindt!” the people cried in time to the sound of the bells. It were not music. It were not chanting or singing. It were not the sound of God or Jesus or love or prayer. It were thunder crashing in your ears before a coming storm.

  I felt the whole square close around me. They were all moving up to see it done. Now it were time. The bells rang, and it were to be done. It were so tight. There were nowhere to move, no air to breathe. I were ready to drown. The hangman stepped toward Adriaen. He were not a human but a devil with black holes for eyes inside his mask. I closed my eyes and kept them shut. My head pounded with every chime, every bong. I breathed in the foul smell of Amsterdam. The people, the square, the black sky. All of Amsterdam were roaring. They roared his name with a loud, wide throat. “Aris!”

  Then there were silence. The moment that they put the noose around his neck, Adriaen stopped and stood still. It were only then, the moment before they hauled him up, that he saw me. Somehow he saw me.

  He stopped looking proud. He stopped looking strong. The noose were on his neck and he looked down. That’s where we were standing, right there, straight ahead. His eyes fixed on my face, but he saw my belly, too. He saw me and he saw his babe.

  “Flora.” He said my name.