The young one-not much older than me, and handsome, with deep-set blue eyes, a long nose, and a fine chin-recovered himself first. “Miss Anning, I am Charles Lyell,” he said with a smile, “and I bring with me Monsieur Constant Prévost, from Paris.”
“ Paris?” I cried. I could not contain the panic in my voice.
The Frenchman gazed at the riot of stone on the floor, and then at me. “Enchanté, mademoiselle,” he said, bowing. Though he looked kindly, with curly hair and long sideburns and wrinkles round his eyes, his voice was serious.
“Oh!” He was a spy. A spy for Monsieur Cuvier, come to see what I was up to. I stared at the floor, looking at it as he must see it. Laid out side by side were two specimens-an ichie without a tail and a plesie without a head. The plesie’s tail was detached from its pelvis and could easily be moved to complete the ichie. Or, I could take the ichie’s head, remove some vertebrae from the neck of the plesie, and attach the head. Those who knew the two creatures well wouldn’t be fooled, but idiots might buy them. From the evidence in front of him, it was easy enough for Monsieur Prévost to reach the conclusion I was about to join the two incomplete monsters together to create one whole, third monster.
I wanted to sit down with the suddenness of it all, but I couldn’t in front of the men.
“I bring greetings from the Reverends Buckland and Conybeare,” Charles Lyell went on, oblivious that he was adding fuel to the fire by mentioning their names. “I was Professor Buckland’s student at Oxford, and-”
“Mr Lyell, sir, Monsieur Prévost,” I interrupted, “I can tell you now I’m an honest woman. I would never fiddle with a specimen, whatever Baron Cuvier thinks! And I will swear on a Bible to it, sirs, that I will! We don’t have a Bible here-we had one once for a bit but had to sell it. But I can take you to the Chapel right now and Reverend Gleed will hear me swear on it, if that will do any good. Or we can go to St Michael’s, if you prefer. The vicar there don’t know me well, but he’ll provide a Bible.”
Charles Lyell tried to interrupt me, but I could not stop. “I know these specimens here ain’t whole, and I swear to you I will set them as I see them, and never try to swap parts. A plesiosaurus’ tail might fit onto an ichthyosaurus, but I would never do that. And of course an ichie’s head is far too big to fit onto the end of the plesie’s neck. It would-n’t work at all.” I was babbling, and the Frenchman in particular was looking perplexed.
Then it all started to come down on me, and I had to sit, gentlemen or no. Truly I was ruined. Right there, in front of strangers, I begun to cry.
This upset the Frenchman more than any words could have done. He begun rattling away in French, with Mr Lyell interrupting him and speaking his own slow French, while all I could think of was that I wanted to call out to Mam to pay the Days just a pound, as I’d been too generous and we would need the extra shillings since I would no longer be able to hunt and sell monsters. I would have to go back to the piddling curies, the ammos and bellies and gryphies of my youth. Even then I wouldn’t sell so many, as there were that many more hunters selling such things themselves. We would grow poor again, and Joe would never get to set up his own business, and Mam and I would always be stuck on Cockmoile Square and not move up the hill to a better shop. I let myself cry over my future until my tears were spent and the men were silent.
When they were sure I was done crying, Monsieur Prévost pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. Leaning across the slabs so that he wouldn’t step on the specimens, he held out the hankie to me like a white flag over a battlefield of stone. When I hesitated, he gestured with it to encourage me, and gave me a little smile that dug deep dimples in his cheeks. So I took it, and wiped my eyes on the softest, whitest cloth I’d ever touched. It smelled of tobacco and made me shiver and smile, for the lightning struck again, just a little. I made to hand it back, now smeared with Blue Lias clay, but he would not take it, indicating that I should keep it. It was then I begun to think maybe Monsieur Prévost were not a spy after all. I folded the handkerchief and tucked it away under my cap, for that was the only place in the room not filthy.
“Miss Anning, please let me speak,” Charles Lyell begun tentatively, perhaps fearful I would burst out crying again. I did not; I was done. I noticed then that he was calling me Miss Anning rather than Mary.
“Perhaps I should explain to you what we are doing here. Monsieur Prévost kindly hosted me last year when I visited Paris, introducing me to Baron Cuvier at the Museum of Natural History and accompanying me on geological expeditions in the area. Thus when he wrote to say he was coming to England, I offered to take him to some of the most important geological sites in the southern parts of the country. We have been to Oxford, Birmingham and Bristol, and down to Cornwall and back, via Exeter and Plymouth. Naturally we were keen to come to Lyme Regis and visit you, to go out on the beaches where you collect fossils and to see your workshop. Indeed, Monsieur Prévost has just said he is most impressed by what he sees here. He would tell you himself, but alas, he speaks no English.”
As Mr Lyell was speaking, the Frenchman squatted by the ichthyosaurus and run a finger up and down its ribs, which were almost complete and beautifully spaced like iron railings. I could no longer just sit while he was crouching with his thighs so near to me. I picked up a blade, kneeled by the ichie’s jaw and begun to scrape at the shale clinging to it.
“We should like to examine the specimens you have found more closely, if we might, Miss Anning,” Mr Lyell said. “We would like also to see where they have come from on the beach-they, and the plesiosaurus you found last December. A most remarkable specimen, with its extraordinary neck and head.”
I froze. His bringing up the most worrying part of the plesie sounded suspicious. “You seen it?”
“Of course. I was there when it arrived at the Geological Society offices. Did you not hear of the drama of it?”
“I heard nothing. Sometimes I feel I could be the man in the moon, for the little I hear of what’s happening in the scientific world. I had someone who was going to keep me informed, but-Mr Lyell, do you know of Elizabeth Philpot?”
“Philpot? No, I have not heard that name, I’m sorry. Should I know her?”
“No, no.” Yes, I thought. Yes, you should. “What was it you was saying-about the drama?”
“The plesiosaurus was delayed in its arrival,” Mr Lyell explained, “and did not reach London until almost two weeks after the Society meeting at which Reverend Conybeare was speaking of it. You know, Miss Anning, at the meeting Reverend Buckland was very complimentary of your collecting skills.”
“He was?”
“Yes, indeed. Now, when the plesiosaurus arrived at last, the men could not get it up the stairs, for it was too wide.”
“Six feet wide, the frame round it was. I know, for I built it. We had to turn it sideways to get it out this door.”
“Of course. They tried the better part of a day to get it up to the meeting rooms. Finally, though, it had to be left in the entranceway, where many Society members came to look at it.”
I watched the Frenchman crawl between the ichie and plesie to get round to the plesie’s front paddle. I gestured with my head. “Did he see it?”
“Not in London, but when we went to Birmingham from Oxford, we stopped en route at Stowe House, where the Duke of Buckingham has taken it.” Mr Lyell, though polite as a gentleman ought to be, made a little face. “It is a splendid specimen, but rather swamped by the Duke’s extensive collection of glittering objects.”
I paused, my hand on the ichie’s jaw. So this poor specimen would go to a rich man’s house, to be ignored amongst all the silver and gold. I could have wept. “So is he-” I nodded at Monsieur Prévost “-going to tell Monsieur Cuvier that the plesiosaurus isn’t a fake? That it really does have a small head and a long neck and I weren’t just putting two animals together?”