Remarkable Creatures

by Tracy Chevalier

  However, I would put up with a great deal of dirt and confusion in order to see what had been laid out on a table in the middle of the room and surrounded by candles, like a pagan offering. There were not enough candles to light it properly, though. I vowed to have Bessy drop off some the next time she came down the hill.

  On the beach, with so many others about, I’d not had much chance to study the skull. Now, seen in full rather than in silhouette, it looked like a craggy, knobbly model of a mountainous landscape, with two hillocks bulging out like Bronze Age tumuli. The crocodile’s grin, now that I could see all of it, seemed other-worldly, especially in the flickering candlelight. It made me feel I was peering through a window into a deep past where such alien creatures lurked.

  I looked for a long time in silence, circling the table to inspect the skull from every angle. It was still entrapped in stone, and would need much attention from Mary’s blades, needles, and brushes—and a good bit of hammering too. “Take care you don’t break it when you clean it, Mary,” I said, to remind myself that this was work, not a scene from one of the gothic novels Margaret enjoyed scaring herself with.

  Mary twisted her face up in indignation. “Course I won’t, ma’am.” Her confidence was just for show, however, for she hesitated. “It’ll be a long job, though, and I don’t know how best to go about it. I wish Pa were here to tell me what to do.” The importance of the task seemed to overwhelm her.

  “I’ve brought you Cuvier as a guide, though I am not sure how much it will help.” I opened the book to the page with the drawing of a crocodile. I had studied it earlier, but now, standing next to the skull with the picture in hand, it was clear to me that this could be no crocodile—or not a species we were aware of. A crocodile’s snout is blunt, its jawline bumpy, its teeth many different sizes, its eye a mere bead. This skull had a long, smooth jaw and uniform teeth. The eye sockets reminded me of pineapple rings I was served at the dinner at Lord Henley’s when I discovered how little he knew about fossils. The Henleys grew pineapples in their glass house, and it was a rare treat for me, which even my host’s ignorance could not sour.

  If it was not a crocodile, what was it? I did not share my concern about the animal with Mary, however, as I had begun to on the beach, before thinking the better of it. She was too young for such uneasy questions. I had discovered from conversations I’d had about fossils with the people of Lyme that few wanted to delve into unknown territory, preferring to hold on to their superstitions and leave unanswerable questions to God’s will rather than find a reasonable explanation that might challenge previous thinking. Hence they would rather call this animal a crocodile than consider the alternative: that it was the body of a creature that no longer existed in the world.

  This idea was too radical for most to contemplate. Even I, who considered myself open-minded, was a little shocked to be thinking it, for it implied that God did not plan out what He would do with all of the animals He created. If He was willing to sit back and let creatures die out, what did that mean for us? Were we going to die out too? Looking at that skull with its huge, ringed eyes, I felt as if I were standing on the edge of a cliff. It was not fair to bring Mary to the edge with me.

  I laid the book down next to the skull. “Did you have a look for the body this morning? Did you find anything?”

  Mary shook her head. “Captain Cury was nosing about. Not for long, though—there was a landslip!” She shivered, and I noted that her hands were trembling. She picked up her hammer as if to give them something to do.

  “Is he all right?” Although I did not care for William Lock, I would not have him killed, especially by the falling rocks that terrified me and other hunters.

  Mary grunted. “Nothing wrong with him, but the croc’s body’s buried under a pile of rubble. We’ll be a time waiting for it.”

  “That is a shame.” Behind this understatement I hid my disappointment. I had wanted to see the body of such a creature. It might provide some answers.

  Mary tapped at the edge of the rock with her hammer, knocking off a sliver attached to the jaw. She seemed less bothered about this delay, perhaps because she was more used to having to wait to get even the most basic things: food, warmth, light.

  “Mary, Lord Henley has paid me a visit and inquired after the skull,” I said. “He would like to see it, with a view to paying you for it.”

  She looked up, her eyes bright. “He would? What will he pay?”

  “I expect you could get five pounds for it. I can agree the terms for you. I think he rather expects me to. But . . .”

  “What, Miss Elizabeth?”

  “I know you need the money now. But if you wait until you find the body, and unite it with the head, I think you’ll be able to sell the whole specimen for more than if it’s in two parts. The skull is unusual as it is, but it would be spectacular if united with its body.” Even as I said it I knew this was too difficult a decision for Mary to make. What child can look beyond the bread that will fill her stomach now to the fields of wheat that may feed her for years to come? I would have to sit her mother down and discuss the matter.

  “Mary, Mr. Blackmore wants to see the croc!” Molly Anning shouted down the stairs.

  “Tell him to come back in half an hour!” Mary called back. “Miss Philpot ain’t done yet.” She turned to me. “People been stopping by all day to see it,” she added proudly.

  Molly’s feet appeared on the stairs. “Reverend Gleed from chapel is waiting too. Tell your Miss Whatsit there be other folk wants a look. Anyone would think this were a shop with new frocks just come in,” she muttered.

  That gave me an idea for a way the crocodile head could bring in a bit of money to the Annings if they were prepared to wait for the body. And they would not have to take the skull up to Colway Manor for Lord Henley to see it.

  The next morning Mary and Joseph and two of his stronger friends carried the skull over to the Assembly Rooms in the main square, just around the corner from the Annings. The rooms were used little for much of the winter, to Margaret’s lasting despair. The main room had a large bay window that looked south out to sea and let in sufficient light for the specimen to be clearly displayed. A steady stream of visitors paid a penny to look at it. When Lord Henley arrived—I had sent a boy with a message to invite him—Mary wanted to charge him a penny too, but I frowned at her and she lapsed into a sullen silence I fretted might put Lord Henley off an eventual sale.

  I need not have worried. Lord Henley cared nothing about what Mary thought. Indeed, he hardly noticed her, instead making a show of examining the skull with a magnifying glass he had brought with him. Mary was so curious to use the glass herself that she came out of her sulk and hovered at Lord Henley’s shoulder. She did not dare ask him for the glass, but when he handed it to me to use I let her have a turn. Similarly, he directed questions about where the skull was found and how it was extracted to me, and I answered for Mary.

  Only when he asked about the whereabouts of the body did she respond before I could. “We don’t know, sir. There were a landslip at the site, and if it’s there, it’s buried. I’ll be watching for it. It just needs a good storm to wash it out.”

  Lord Henley stared at Mary. I suppose he wondered why she was speaking; he had already forgotten she was involved. Then, too, she was not very presentable, to a gentleman or to anyone: Her dark hair was matted from all of her time outdoors and the lack of a brush; her nails were ragged and rimmed with clay; and her shoes were caked with mud. She had grown tall in the last year without having a new dress, and the hem of her skirt was too high, and her wrists and hands shot out from her sleeves. At least her face was bright and keen, despite her wind-burnt cheeks and the grubbiness of her skin. I was used to her looks, but seeing her from Lord Henley’s eyes made me flush with shame for her. If this was who was responsible for the specimen he was already claiming for his own, Lord Henley would indeed be concerned for its well-being.

  “It is a splendid specimen, is it not
, Lord Henley?” I interjected. “It just needs cleaning and preparing—which I shall oversee, of course. But think how striking it will look when reunited with its body one day!”

  “How long will you require for the cleaning?”

  I glanced at Mary. “A month at least,” I guessed. “Perhaps longer. No one has dealt with such a large creature before.”

  Lord Henley grunted. He was eyeing the skull as if it were a haunch of venison dressed in port sauce. It was clear he wanted to take it back to Colway Manor immediately—he was the sort of man who made a decision and did not like to wait for the results. However, even he could see that the specimen needed attention—partly to present it in its best light, but also to preserve it. The skull had been pressed between layers of rock in the cliff, protecting it from exposure to air and keeping it damp. Now that it was free, it would soon dry out and begin to crack as it shrank, unless Mary sealed it with the varnish her father had used on his cabinets. “All right, then,” he said. “A month to clean it, then bring it to me.”

  “We ain’t giving up the skull till the body turns up,” Mary declared.

  I frowned and shook my head at her. I was trying to lead Lord Henley gently to the notion of paying for the skull and body together, and Mary was blundering into my delicate negotiations. She ignored me, however, and added, “We’re keeping the head at Cockmoile Square.”

  Lord Henley gazed at me. “Miss Philpot, why should this child have any say over what happens to the specimen?”

  I coughed into my handkerchief. “Well, sir, she did find it—she and her brother—so I suppose her family has some claim on it.”

  “Where is the father, then? I should be talking to him, not to a—” Lord Henley paused, as if saying “woman” or “girl” were too undignified for him.

  “He died a few months ago.”

  “The mother, then. Bring the mother here.” Lord Henley spoke as if commanding a groom to bring his horse.

  It was hard to picture Molly Anning bargaining with Lord Henley. The day before she had agreed that I would try to convince Lord Henley to wait for a complete specimen. We had not discussed her doing the business dealings herself. I sighed. “Run and fetch your mother, Mary.”

  We waited in awkward silence for them to come back, taking refuge in studying the skull. “Its eyes are rather large for a crocodile, do you not think, Lord Henley?” I ventured.

  Lord Henley scuffed his boots on the floor. “It’s simple, Miss Philpot. This is one of God’s early models, and He decided to give the subsequent ones smaller eyes.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Do you mean God rejected it?”

  “I mean God wanted a better version—the crocodile we know now—and replaced it.”

  I had never heard of such a thing. I wanted to ask Lord Henley more about this idea, but he always stated things so baldly that there was no room for questions. He made me feel an idiot, even when I knew he was a bigger one than I.

  It was just as well that we were interrupted by Molly Anning. Mercifully she did not bring the crying baby, but arrived trailing Mary and the smell of cabbage. “I’m Molly Anning, sir,” she said, wiping her hands on her apron and looking around her, for she would never have been inside the Assembly Rooms. “I run our fossil shop. What was it you wanted?” She was the same height as Lord Henley, and her level gaze seemed to subdue him a little. She surprised me too. I had never heard of the workshop being called a shop, or of her having anything to do with it. But then, without a husband, she had to take on new tasks. Running a business appeared to be one of them.

  “I want to take this specimen, Mrs. Anning. If your daughter will allow it,” Lord Henley added with a touch of sarcasm. “But then, your daughter answers to you, does she not?”

  “Course.” Molly Anning barely glanced at the skull. “How much you want to pay, then?”

  “Three pounds.”

  “That—” I began.

  “I expect there be plenty of gentlemen prepared to pay more,” Molly Anning talked over me. “But we’ll take your money, if you like, as a deposit for the whole creature once Mary finds it.”

  “And if she doesn’t?”

  “Oh, she’ll find it all right. My Mary always finds things. She’s special like that—always has been, since she was struck by lightning. That were in your field, weren’t it, Lord Henley, where she was struck?”

  Several things astonished me: that Molly Anning was talking so confidently to a member of the gentry; that she had rather cleverly allowed him to name his price, throwing him off balance and getting an idea of the worth of an object whose value she didn’t know; that she had the cunning to make the lightning strike seem to be his responsibility. Most surprising, though, she had actually complimented her daughter just when Mary needed it. I’d heard people say that Molly Anning was an original; now I understood what they meant.

  Lord Henley hardly knew how to respond. I stepped in to help him out. “Of course, the Annings will give you the head for three pounds if the body isn’t found within, shall we say, two years?”

  Lord Henley glanced from Molly Anning to me. “All right,” he replied at length, placing his hand again on his prize.

  AFTER ENCOUNTERING THE SKULL, I found it difficult to sleep, dreaming of the eyes of animals I had looked into: horses, cats, seagulls, dogs. There was a flatness in them, the lack of a God-given spark that frightened me into wakefulness.

  On Sunday I remained behind after the service at St. Michael’s, waving on Bessy and my sisters. “I will catch you up,” I said, and stood at the back of the church, waiting for the vicar to finish his good-byes to the other parishioners. Reverend Jones was a plain man, with a boxy head and close-cropped hair, whose thin lips twisted and turned even when every other part of him was still. I had not spoken with him except to mouth pleasantries, for he was uninspiring during services, his voice reedy, his sermons lackluster. However, he was a man of God, and I hoped he might be able to give me guidance.

  At last only a girl remained behind, sweeping the floor. Reverend Jones was going up and down the pews, picking up hymn sheets and checking for gloves or prayer books left behind. He did not see me. Indeed, it felt as if he did not want to see me. His pastoral duties over for the day, he was doubtless thinking about the dinner he would soon sit down to and the sleep by the fire afterwards. When I cleared my throat and he looked up, he could not stop his mouth tightening into a brief grimace. “Miss Philpot, is this handkerchief yours?” He held out a ball of white cloth, probably hopeful that I could be easily dismissed.

  “I’m afraid not, Reverend Jones.”

  “Ah. You are looking for something else, perhaps? A purse? A button? A hairpin?”

  “No, I wished to discuss a matter with you.”

  “I see.” Reverend Jones pushed out his lips. “My dinner will be ready soon and I need to finish up here. You don’t mind . . . ?” He continued along the pews, straightening cushions as I trailed behind. All the while I could hear the scratch of the girl’s broom on the floor.

  “I wanted to ask you what you thought of fossils.” In trying to hold his attention, my voice came out louder than I had intended in the empty church.

  The sweeping stopped, but Reverend Jones continued up the aisle to the oak pulpit, where he picked up his own handkerchief and put it in his pocket.

  “What do I think of fossils, Miss Philpot? I do not think of them.”

  “But do you know what they are?”

  “They are skeletons that have been compressed by rock over time to become stone themselves. Most educated people know that.”

  “But the skeletons—are they of creatures that still exist today?”

  Reverend Jones hurried to the altar and gathered up a set of candlesticks and the altar cloth. I felt like an idiot following him about.

  “Of course they exist,” he said. “All of the creatures God made exist.” He opened a door in the aisle to the left of the altar, which led to a small back room where church bits and
pieces were stored. Over his shoulder I spied a jug labeled HOLY WATER sitting on a table. I remained in the doorway while Reverend Jones shut the candlesticks and cloth in a cupboard. “I’m afraid I don’t understand your question, Miss Philpot,” he called over his shoulder.

  I opened my purse and poured into my palm a few bits of fossils that had found their way there. Most of my pockets and purses held fossil pieces. Reverend Jones’s mouth twisted in disgust as he glanced at the contents: ammonites, belemnite shafts, a chunk of fossilized wood, a length of crinoid stem. He reacted as if I had trailed horse dung into the church on my shoes. “Why on earth are you carrying those about?”

  Ignoring his question, I held out an ammonite. “I should like to know where the live versions of these are, Reverend Jones, for I have never seen one.” As we gazed at the fossil, I felt for a moment that I was being sucked into its spiral, farther and farther back in time, until the past was lost in the center.

  Reverend Jones’s response to the ammonite was more prosaic. “Perhaps you haven’t seen them because they live out at sea, and their bodies only wash up after they die.” He turned away and, pulling the door shut, locked it with the deft turn of a key, a gesture he seemed to enjoy.

  I stepped in front of him so that he could not hurry off to his dinner. Indeed, he could not move at all, but was pinned in the corner. Not being able to get away from me and my awkward questions seemed to disturb Reverend Jones even more than my bringing out the ammonite had. He whipped his head from side to side. “Fanny, have you done yet?” he called. There was no response, however. She must have gone outside to dump the sweepings.

  “Have you heard about the crocodile head the Annings have found in the cliffs and are showing at the Assembly Rooms?” I asked.

  Reverend Jones forced himself to look straight at me. He had narrow eyes that seemed to be seeking out a horizon even when they were set on mine. “I know of it, yes.”