And with that, she turned and set off for home. Good riddance! This was my domain, not hers. Mine and Father’s.
I suddenly felt very alone. As a rule, I like to be alone. I was glad that Joseph was not with me, not because I did not want him to find any further pieces of the monster... well, maybe a bit because of that... but because I could concentrate without distraction. Yet under the dark grey sky, in the cutting wind, on the beach beside all the mud and rubble, I felt utterly alone.
A pain shot through my chest. Father! I wanted my father. I wanted him to be there, to tell me what to do next, to protect me and, yes, to praise me and encourage me. After all, I was only here because of him. If he had made me bide at home with Mother when I was a young child, I might have been sewing or cooking now. I might have been looking after the babies. I laughed to myself at this notion. I knew well enough that that would never have happened. One way or another, I would have been here, Father or no Father.
But could I really do this all alone?
I did not like this feeling of doubt. I had never felt I could not do something. I always, always believed I could. Mother called that being stubborn. Father said it was just me being his little Lightning Mary. Where was my lightning now?
I sat on one of the slabs and took the book out of my bag. Why it was called ‘Illustrations’ I could not fathom, because there weren’t any, only hundreds and thousands of difficult words. It seemed the book was about another book which had been so difficult for anyone to understand that Mr Playfair had tried to make it simpler. It was far from simple to me and I doubted I should ever read it all, but I realised that it was enough just to have it with me. It was a scientific work and I was a scientist. Henry believed that. I must believe that. I put it back in my bag.
The creature must have died where it lay for its jaws were complete. By rights, the whole skeleton should be close by. I’d found a rat last winter, frozen to death in the snow, and had hidden it in the graveyard on an untended grave so that I could observe how long it took to turn into a skeleton.
It took much longer than I expected. No other creature seemed to want to eat it and it only really began to decay when the weather got warmer and the flies and maggots came. The skeleton was not picked clean until July. The jaw fell off and all the little bones separated, but it still looked just like a rat. Its teeth and claws and tail were almost the same as in life and even though birds and mice and other rats came and went, it had not been moved. I remembered that Mrs Stock had told me that her cat (the nasty Zebediah) bit the heads off mice, ate all of the body except the stomach and crunched up their little bones as if they were no more than blades of grass. Mrs Stock would come down in the morning to find a head in the scullery, feet in the kitchen and a tiny, nasty, green stomach in the hall.
The monster, the crocodile, had been dead for much, much longer than my rat or any of Zebediah’s mice. I could only hope that it had not been killed by something in the way Zebediah killed his prey, or who knows where the bones might be scattered. I shivered to think how big a beast would have to be to behead mine. Zebediah was five times the size of a mouse! No use in imagining that monster, though. I had to concentrate on the job in front of me and hope that the body was close by. I needed something to prove that there would be more to find.
I started work on the slab where Joseph had found the head, painstakingly scraping at the mud and rock, chiselling in to lever off the slices. It was slow progress. How had Joseph been so lucky? He had barely had to work at all!
My hands were beginning to numb, but I worked on until I could no longer hold my tools, then I used my fingers, gritting my teeth at the pain as my nails broke and one even tore off. It must be here! It must! Otherwise . . .
The cliff seemed to lean towards me, blotting out the light. The sea was dark and restless, the tide creeping in.
I just needed a sign that I was looking in the right place, but no. All I found was mud, shale, oyster and mussel shells, roots from a tree torn down long ago.
I was exhausted and my hands were bleeding and filthy. I dabbled them in the shallows and felt the salty water sting my fingertips and sear into the flesh where the nail had been. ‘Be brave, Mary,’ I told myself. ‘It will all be worthwhile in the end.’
I decided to make one last attempt before setting off for home and the explanation that must be made for my failure.
I tugged a section of slab loose and struck it hard along a seam. It fell in two.
At first it seemed there was nothing – but then I saw it. A dull little piece of grey matter. I thought at first that it might be a tooth but when I pulled it out, it was something very different. A round bone, like an apple with the middle spooned out with three pieces coming off one side of it – two like a stubby wing and one pointing straight up like a fin with a hole through the point where they joined. My back ached as I stood up and I rubbed the nape of my neck. My fingers ran over the nobbled bone and I smiled. The head had been attached when it died, for here was the start of its neck.
Where there was a head and a neck, a body should soon follow. There was one difficulty, though. The unexamined slab was no more than a foot long. It was impossible that it contained the whole creature. That meant only one thing.
I looked up at the cliff. It was going to be very difficult to get to the place whence the landfall had come. Difficult and dangerous. The slide had created an overhang but it was that overhang which almost certainly shielded the rest of the beast. How to reach it? If I worked under it and it came loose, I would be crushed. If I worked above it, it would surely collapse even under my small weight and I would fall twenty or thirty feet. Such a fall would most likely maim me. Or kill me.
Well. That was a problem for tomorrow. I had one final task before the sun sank too low.
I had tucked my last piece of paper into the pages of the geology book. I laid the neck bone next to the head and began to make a careful drawing, just as Henry had shown me. Then I wrote ‘Skull of a monstrous crocodile found by Joseph Anning under my instruction and verteberry found by me. Sorry about the blood ’, folded it up neatly and addressed it to Henry. I put the neck bone in my bag and headed for the town.
‘Your brother is going with Nathaniel to fetch the monster,’ Mother told me when I got home. ‘We cannot risk anyone else finding it. Besides, if it is to take you so long to make it ready for sale, it’s better that you do so here. And, no, Mary, I won’t touch it! You have made it perfectly plain that I am not as skilled as you.’
Joseph and his friend Nathaniel must have had quite some labours to fetch it from the cliff, for they were red in the face and sweating when they arrived at Cockmoile Square with Nathaniel’s wheelbarrow groaning under its load. It took all four of us to manhandle it up the steps into the house where we set it down in the middle of the kitchen floor.
That night, Mother gave us a bit of tallow so that we could have some light as we started the long task of removing all the stone from around the skull and she gave it to us so willingly that I understood her reasoning only too well. I made heavy weather of the task, for the longer I could delay the selling of the skull, the more chance I had of finding the rest of the creature in the cliff.
Mother was not so easily fooled. ‘Seems to me, Mary, that you are in no great haste to free that beast,’ she remarked, one eyebrow raised.
‘I have my reasons,’ I replied stoutly. ‘See this?’ I showed her the neck bone.
‘That does not look much like a treasure to me,’ she said, turning it over to examine it.
‘That, Mother, is proof that the rest of the body is there and I mean to find it. I must find it. You must be patient.’
And I must fathom out a way to find it even though it was in a place I could barely see, much less reach. I could not tell her that.
19
NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE
I returned to ‘Joseph’s’ slab and found nine more verteberries, and then eight great curved
rib bones, thin as a whip, curved at the top. I thought of the horse and how its ribs bowed out to protect its heart and lungs. I felt the length of my own ribs, an easy task as I had little meat on my bones. The creature must have been two or three times as broad as me.
I drew each piece as faithfully as I could and numbered them so I could remember the order in which I had found each item. Much to my pleasure, Henry wrote that I was nearly as good as he at a likeness! I am not one for flattery, but I was pleased by his good opinion of my drawing, which was much improved through practice.
I had also found some curious strands of bone and little square pieces like tiles. At first, I thought they might be broken pieces of a larger bone but they were so well-formed and rounded that they must surely have some purpose of their own. It was like having very few pieces of a puzzle. There weren’t enough to be able to guess what the finished picture would be like. Only when I had the whole creature could I really solve the puzzle. I needed a miracle but a miracle would not come for the asking, it seemed.
I spent many hours staring up at the cliff, willing it to come crashing down at my feet, but it was as stubborn as I was and remained unmoved, unchanged. I started praying for rain, for storms, but none came. There was nothing to be done, it seemed, and that made me boil with frustration. I persuaded Mother to let me keep the skull a while longer, at least until my birthday in May, but that came and went and I felt I would have nothing to celebrate until the whole cliff collapsed.
Reluctantly I returned to my ‘bread and butter’ work, for I had to make sure we had enough curiosities to sell to the visitors. We also sold snakestones to farmers, only they called them crampstones. They used them to treat beasts with the colic by soaking the stones in water and then giving the water to the beast to drink. Some folk believed a snakestone could cure a snakebite but Mrs Stock said that was nonsense and she’d heard tell of a shepherd who got bitten by an adder when out on the heath and was found all swollen up like a cow with bloat and a snakestone clutched in his dead hand and it hadn’t saved him. Still, people will pay good money for them and it is not any of my business if they choose to believe nonsense. I make no such promises. Nor do I paint serpent heads or eyes on the stones to trick people, as some do.
Mother seemed to have forgotten how I had berated her for her clumsy attempts with a chisel and came out with me on these expeditions all through that long spring. At first I could not abide to have her near me. I showed her what to look for and left her to it. It was strange to have her call to me to come and praise her for some small thing she had found and I could not pretend to be impressed when she showed me her pitiful pile of fish bones. In the end, I told her to confine herself to finding pretty shells since there were always ladies who took a fancy to those. Mother was happy enough to do so and it meant that I was free from her eternally asking me whether she had found part of the monster or something rare when all she had was some odd-shaped stone or a bit of sea glass. She did one day tap a rock and reveal a very fine snakestone, but she was so noisy in her celebration that I prayed heartily that she would never find one again.
We were a force to be reckoned with when it came to selling, though, and there was no mistake that two women were better at getting money out of a customer than any man. Maybe I did get my trading skills from her, for Mother was a demon for driving a hard bargain. Sometimes I think folk came to our table of treasures just to gawp at Mother and me. It was a shame we could not charge them to stare at us. We would have cleared our debts the faster.
Most of our customers were just looking for some cheap keepsake from their holiday, but one visitor to our stall was different. She spent some time examining each piece and she seemed to know which the most interesting specimens were.
I found myself staring at her and then I remembered where I had seen her. She had bought that ram’s horn from me, more than two years back, in the graveyard. She stared at me too and smiled.
‘I see you remember me, Miss Anning. Do you know what you started that day you sold me the ammonite?’
‘Ram’s horn,’ I corrected. Lord knows what an ammonite was. ‘What did I start?’
‘A collection. I have followed in your footsteps. Not literally, I hasten to add, for I am not so intrepid a collector as you, but I have found, and purchased, some treasures. You may care to come and see them?’ She held out a gloved hand. ‘I’m Elizabeth Philpot and—’
‘Ha! The same Philpots as make Philpot’s Salve?’ interrupted Mother. ‘You must make a pretty penny from that.’
Miss Philpot smiled again. ‘The very same. Have you ever used it, Mrs Anning?’
Mother snorted. ‘Not I! There’s no money for fancy ointments for the likes of us!’
‘I would like to see what you have got,’ I said, before Mother could waste any more time talking about ointment. ‘Now. If you please.’
She nodded her assent and before Mother could complain, we set off to climb the hill to her house – a long, low, rambling building with a thatch and painted the same pink as a boiled crab.
She took me into a room lined from floor to ceiling with books and there, in the centre, stood a great wooden case with a glass lid. She took a key from a drawer in the desk and opened the case.
‘Come. Please. Examine the pieces, if you wish. You will see that your “ram’s horn” is in pride of place.’
She had quite an assembly of treasures: delicate fish skeletons sunk into slate, a starfish, one of the best scuttles I had ever seen and a number of very good snakestones and rams’ horns, of which mine was, I had to say, quite clearly the best.
‘I’ve never seen you on the beach and you did not buy all of these from us. How did you come by them?’ I asked.
‘Oh, I found most of them myself. I am a fair weather treasure-hunter, though, it’s true. Not out in all weathers like you. Perhaps I might accompany you one day? Would you consider that? I know I would like it very much!’
‘Well, I wouldn’t. What name did you give my ram’s horn?’
‘It’s a type of ammonite. Named for the Greek ram-headed god, Ammon, so you were on the right lines. It’s the name collectors give them, scientific collectors. I could lend you a book, if you like. Or several. On the science behind these creatures. This is a favourite of mine.’ She held out a slim volume.
‘I’ve got a book on geology already,’ I said. ‘But there are no pictures. Does this one have pictures?’
She looked shamefaced. ‘Of course! How foolish of me! I could teach you to read, though, then you could profit from this library!’
‘I can read perfectly well, thank you very much. Just because we are poor does not mean we are stupid. I just wish to see proper illustrations, correctly labelled so that I may compare my finds and observations more readily.’ I took the book from her, a little roughly I must admit.
‘Oh dear! We have got off on the wrong foot. Please forgive me. I hoped we might be friends!’
‘I’ve got a friend,’ I said. ‘He’s away being a soldier but he will come back and be a scientist with me soon enough.’
It was good to be able to tell her about being a scientist but I rather hoped she did not think she was one herself.
‘It’s lovely that you have a friend,’ she responded, smiling all the while. ‘I am happy for you, Mary, but might you not have time for another friend in the meantime? I promise not to inconvenience you or irritate you. You can borrow my books and perhaps we could visit the beach together? Oh, and I can introduce you to some people who would be very interested to meet you and might help you in your endeavours?’
I studied her face for a moment. She seemed sincere. Maybe I had been too hasty.
‘You know, Mary, I get a tingling feeling when I find a creature in the rocks. To think that it might have lived untold years ago! It is quite a thought, isn’t it? It makes me feel so insignificant! We are here such a short time. How do we make our mark? Do I want to be known only for a salve? Or d
o I want to leave some legacy behind me that means I will be remembered for ever? I think you know that feeling, Mary, even though you are so young. I think you are like me. On a quest. A quest for truth and knowledge. I am not interested in trinkets or gewgaws or baubles. I want to have a collection as good as any in London, and why shouldn’t I? What is to stop us, Mary, from doing whatever we wish?’
I was struck by her mention of ‘untold years’! Did she mean she shared Mr Hutton’s ideas? She had not hesitated to speak those words so she did not seem at all afraid of my reaction. It would be good to be able to discuss such things with one as bold as she and to do so in safety.
And maybe we were alike, I thought, even though she was older and richer and more learned. I wondered if I should tell her about the monster but I bit my tongue. It was too soon to give her so much trust, and yet I felt deep in my bones that I might like her before too long and maybe she could help me understand more about geology.
I held her gaze for a moment and, thanking her for the book, added, ‘I shall be seeking shells on the seashore this evening. We could go together if you wish?’
‘I do wish!’ she replied, clapping her hands. ‘I do indeed!’
Miss Philpot and I spent many evenings hunting for shells and she was a pleasant and knowledgeable companion. She knew the scientific names for things that I found and soon I knew them all too, and that was very useful. At first, I did not ask her outright what she thought about God and the Creation but I felt I might soon trust her enough to do so and, sure enough, within a few days we were discussing all manner of ideas and notions.
One day, as we walked up Silver Street to her house for tea, Elizabeth (as I now called her) stopped by the forge and together we watched as the horseshoes were heated red hot in the furnace, hammered into shape on the forge and plunged into buckets of water, which boiled and hissed like a wild creature.
Lightning Mary Page 13