Chapter Text
Risking a glance at her aunt Anne, who was enjoying a post-prandial nap in the comfortable armchair of the sitting-room at the Pension Daubigné, Anne tiptoed to the door, which thankfully had been oiled to perfection and did not betray her. She crept down the stairs and was soon out in the busy street, where peddlers, newspaper boys and carriages competed to add to the noise and the bedlam. In her great coat, leather boots and black velvet breeches, with her hair curled and tightly tied back, she made a very convincing young man. She would never have dared at home, of course, and was well aware that if she happened to be discovered in this outfit by a member of the gendarmerie, she would be in deep, deep trouble. The knowledge that what she was doing was quite illegal in Paris did add a little spice to the adventure, though – and Anne had never been one to shy away from adventure. Which was, in fact, why she was going to attend Monsieur Chaussier’s anatomy lecture and dissection session. As a woman, she would be stopped at the gates of the faculty of medecine, but as a man, she could blend in with the crowd of students. It had not been easy to get the outfit, but she had bribed one of the servants of the pension, and the maid had fulfilled her task very adequately.
Three-quarters of an hour later, she arrived rue de l’Ecole de Medecine, joined a group of young men going in and followed them into a large amphitheatre. The benches were occupied by other rather raucous young gentlemen who were disguising their unease by making coarse jokes and laughing loudly at them. The cause of their unease laid on a wooden table below – the corpse of a woman, middle-aged, naked, her abdomen obscenely swollen and marked by a deep hastily sutured red gash. Besides her on the slab, a purple lump of flesh. Anne had never considered herself squeamish, but the sight and the smell of decaying flesh made her reach for her handkerchief, which she had drenched in cologne. She buried her nose in it, hiding her face and inhaling deeply. She did not greatly fear being recognised as a specimen of the same sex as the one laying on the table, but it would not do to be too conspicuous.
She had, Anne reflected, managed not to disgrace herself by fainting, but her face was probably as ashen as the marble pillars of the university and she did not stride quite as fast as usual when she got out of the room. It had been fascinating to see the innards of the woman and to examine the deformities of the stillborn baby, but the stench had grown steadily during the three hours and her stomach revolted. Maybe she ought to eat something. A small glass of spirit would be a good idea too, but harder to obtain. She stopped at a boulangerie and bought four macarons, which she devoured while walking back.
Deep into her thoughts as she neared the pension, she walked straight into a young woman who swayed, stumbled on the uneven cobblestones and fell. Her companion, a nun in black habit and wimple, cried out and bent to offer a hand but Anne was faster. Putting a knee down on the muddy pavement, she extended her hand and helped the young woman up. Their gazes met and Anne smiled in appreciation of the violet eyes and the fresh face. Although her clothes were rather severe – and now very dirty – Anne judged her not over twenty, a few years younger than herself. She mentally cursed the fact that she was wearing breeches – she would not have minded pursuing the acquaintance further. As it was, she made her voice as deep as possible and offered a thousand apologies for her clumsiness. The nun scowled, the young woman blushed and Anne cursed her bad luck again. The girl was really very pretty, but the odds were that she would never see her again. She made her way to the back door of the pension and slipped in unnoticed. After changing into her regular sable skirt and waistcoat with a clean white shirt, she went back to the sitting-room, where she found her aunt in deep conversation with a matronly woman.
“Oh, Anne, there you are – I was wondering where you had been. This is Mrs Winslow. Her daughter was at a convent here in Paris and will be travelling back to England with her. Madame introduced us. Mrs Winslow, this is my niece, Miss Lister.”
Madame is a busy-body, thought Anne, but in this case she did me a good turn. The owner of the pension had probably thought that two British women just had to want to meet. In this instance, the newcomer had kept her aunt busy, and that suited her own purpose. After having greeted Mrs Winslow cordially, Anne rang for a cup of tea and retreated to a corner of the room with the Dictionnaires des sciences médicales de Monsieur Virey, intend on looking up what she had seen at the faculty of medicine. Although she had already managed to see the dissection of an old man the previous week, this one was much more interesting. The way the matrix had been dilated… In the words of Monsieur Virey, “ « tout individu femelle est uniquement créé pour la propagation ; ses organes sexuels sont la racine et la base de toute sa structure : Mulier propter uterum condita est ; tout émane de ce foyer de l’organisation, tout y conspire dans elle. » Every female individual has been solely created for propagation ; her sexual organs are the root and the basis of all her structure; […] everything emanates from this centre of organisation, everything conspires there inside her. Anne strongly disagreed with that. A woman was no broodmare or laying hen. Women had intelligence and wits and principles, sometimes, or even often, more than men. Moreover, she had seen for herself that a woman alone or in companies of other individuals of her sex could enjoy many pleasures of the flesh… Anne was fuming internally and mentally drafting a letter to that Monsieur Virey when someone came into the sitting-room. Hearing the door and Mrs Winslow greeting someone and introducing her to Aunt Anne as “my daughter, Ada Winslow”, Anne turned and stifled a small gasp she turned into a fit of coughing. How was she going to get out of that scrape? Ada Winslow was wearing another rather non-descript grey dress – clean – and by the way she was looking at her, it was obvious it wouldn’t take her long to put two and two together and to say something very compromising. Anne had seen a glimpse of recognition in the violet eyes, which were now full of puzzlement.