Remarkable Creatures

Then Tray yipped, and the door opened, and Joseph Anning stood in the entrance.

It could have been worse. It could have been Molly Anning, whose initial suspicion of me would have been revived. Of course it could have been Mary, and I would never have been able to justify such an intrusion to her.

It was still terrible, however. People do not enter others' homes unless they are thieves. Not even a harmless spinster can do such a thing. "Joseph, I--I--I am so sorry," I stammered. "I wanted to see what Mary found. I knew I could not come when she was here--it would be too awkward for us both. But I should never have let myself in. It is unforgivable, and I am sorry." I would have rushed out, but he was blocking the doorway, the light behind him throwing his face in shadow so that I could not see his expression--if he had one. Joseph Anning was not known for showing emotion.

He stood very still for a time. When he finally stepped forward he was not frowning or scowling, as one might have expected. Nor was he smiling. However, he was polite. "I've come back for another shawl for Mam. 'Tis cold at Chapel." How strange that Joseph should feel he owed me an explanation for being there. "What do you think of it, then, Miss Philpot?" he added, nodding at the plesiosaurus.

I had not expected him to be so reasonable. "It is truly extraordinary."

"I hate it. It's not natural. I'll be glad when it's gone." That was Joseph through and through.

"Mr Buckland told me he has been in touch with the Duke of Buckingham, who wants to buy it."

"Maybe. Mary has other ideas."

I cleared my throat. "Not--Colonel Birch?" I couldn't bear the answer.

But Joseph surprised me. "No, not him. Mary's let that go- she knows he'll never marry her."

"Oh." I was so relieved I almost laughed. "Who, then?"

"She won't say, not even to Mam. Mary's got a swollen head these days." Joseph shook his head, clearly disapproving. "She sent off a letter and said we've to wait for the answer before we tell Mr Buckland."

"How

odd."

Joseph shifted from one foot to the other. "I have to get back to Chapel, Miss Philpot. Mam'll want her shawl."

"Of course." I glanced at the plesiosaurus once more, then set the paper Mary had copied back down on the pile of rocks in the crate. As I did so my eyes spied the tail of a fish. Then I saw a fin, and another tail, and realised the entire crate was full of fish fossils. A scrap of paper was stuck amongst them with "EP" in Mary's hand. She was saving them for me. She must think that one day we would be friends again, that she would forgive me and want me to forgive her. The thought made my eyes brim.

Joseph stood aside so that I could go. I paused as I passed him. "Joseph, I should be very grateful if you didn't tell Mary or your mother that I have been here. There is no need to upset them, is there?"

Joseph nodded. "I guess I owe you a favour anyway."

"Why?"

"It were you suggested I become an apprentice after we sold the croc. That were the best thing ever happened to me. I thought once I started I wouldn't never have to hunt curies again, but always something pulls me back into it. After this is sold--" he nodded at the plesiosaurus "--I'm done with curies for good. It'll be upholstering and nothing else.

I'll be glad if I never have to go down upon beach again. So I will keep your secret for you, Miss Philpot." Joseph smiled briefly--the only smile I had ever seen on his face. It brought out a touch of his father's handsomeness.

"I hope you will be very happy," I said, using the words I hadn't been able to say to his sister.

The rapping on our front door interrupted us as we were eating. It was so sudden and loud that we all three jumped, and Margaret upset her watercress soup.

Normally we let Bessy go to the door in her own ponderous fashion, but the knocks were so urgent that Louise sprang up and hurried down the passage to answer it.

Margaret and I could not see whom she let in, but we heard low voices in the passage.

Then Louise put her head around the door. "Molly Anning is here to see us," she said.

"She has said she will wait until we have finished eating. I've left her to warm by the fire and will get Bessy to build it up."

Margaret jumped up. "I'll just get Mrs Anning some soup."

I looked down at my own soup. I could not sit and eat it while an Anning waited in the other room. I got up as well, but stood uncertain in the doorway of the parlour.

Louise saved me, as she often does. "Brandy, perhaps," she said as she brushed past with a grumbling Bessy in tow.

"Yes, yes." I went and fetched the bottle and a glass.

Molly Anning was sitting motionless by the fire, the centre of all the activity around her, much as she had been when she came to see us with her letter to Colonel Birch. Bessy was poking the fire and glaring at our visitor's legs, which she perceived to be in the way. Margaret was setting up a small table at her side for the soup, while Louise moved the coal scuttle. I hovered with the brandy bottle, but Molly Anning shook her head when I offered it. She said nothing while she ate her soup, sucking at it as if she didn't like watercress and was eating it only to please us.

As she mopped her bowl with a chunk of bread, I felt my sisters' eyes on me.

They had played their parts with the visitor, and were now expecting me to play mine.

My mouth felt glued shut, however. It had been a very long time since I had spoken either to Mary or to her mother.

I cleared my throat. "Is something wrong, Molly?" I managed at last. "Are Joseph and Mary all right?"

Molly Anning swallowed the last of her bread and ran her tongue around her mouth. "Mary's taken to her bed," she declared.

"Oh dear, is she ill?" Margaret asked.

"No, she's just a fool, is all. Here." Pulling a crumpled letter from her pocket, Molly Anning handed it to me. I opened it and smoothed it out. A glance told me it was from Paris. The words "plesiosaurus" and "Cuvier" popped out at me, but I hesitated to read the contents. However, as Molly seemed to expect me to, I had no choice.Jardin du Roi

Musee National d'Histoire Naturelle

Paris Dear Miss Anning,

Thank you for your letter to Baron Cuvier concerning a possible sale to the museum of the specimen you have discovered at Lyme Regis, and believe to be an almost compete skeleton of a plesiosaurus. Baron Cuvier has studied with interest the sketch you enclosed, and is of the opinon that you have joined together two separate individuals, perhaps that of the head of a sea serpent with the body of an ichthyosaurus. The jumbled state of the vertebrae just below the head seems to indicate the disjuncture between the two specimens. Baron Cuvier holds the view that the structure of the reported plesiosaurus deviates from some of the anatomical laws he has established. In particular, the number of cervical vertebrae is too great for such an individual. Most reptiles have between three and eight neck vertebrae; yet in your sketch the creature appears to have at least thirty.Given Baron Cuvier's concerns over the specimen, we will not consider purchasing it. In future, Mademoiselle, perhaps your family might take more care when collecting and presenting specimens.Yours faithfully,

Joseph Pentland Esq.

Assistant to Baron Cuvier

I threw down the letter. "That is outrageous!"

"What is?" Margaret cried, caught up in the drama.

"Georges Cuvier has seen a drawing of Mary's plesiosaurus and has accused the Annings of forgery. He thinks the anatomy of the animal is impossible, and says that Mary may have put together two different specimens."

"The silly girl's taken it as an insult to her," Molly Anning said. "Says the Frenchman has ruined her reputation as a hunter. She's gone to bed over it, says there's no reason to get up and hunt curies now, as no one'll buy them. She's as bad as when she were waiting for Colonel Birch to write." Molly Anning glanced sideways at me, gauging my reaction. "I come to ask you to help me get her out of bed."

"But--" Why ask me, I wanted to say. Why not someone else? On the other hand, perhaps Mary had no other friends Molly could ask. I had never seen her with other Lyme people of her age and class. "The trouble is," I began, "Mary may well be right. If Baron Cuvier believes the plesiosaurus is a fake, and makes public his view, it could cause people to question other specimens." Molly Anning did not seem to respond to this idea, so I made it plainer. "You may find your sales will fall as people wonder whether Anning fossils are authentic."

At last I got through to her, for Molly Anning glared at me as if I had suggested such a thing myself. "How dare that Frenchman threaten our business! You'll have to sort him out."

"Me?"

"You speak French, don't you? You've had learning. I haven't, you see, so you'll have to write to him."

"But it's nothing to do with me."

Molly Anning just looked at me, as did my sisters.

"Molly," I said, "Mary and I have not had a great deal to do with each other these last few years--"

"What is all that about, then? Mary would never say."

I looked around. Margaret was sitting forward, and Louise was giving me the Philpot gaze, both also waiting for me to explain, for I had never provided a sufficient reason for our break. "Mary and I...we did not see eye to eye on some things."

"Well, you can make it up to her by sorting out this Frenchman," Molly Anning declared.

"I am not sure I can do anything. Cuvier is a powerful, well-respected scientist, whilst you are just--" a poor, working family, I wanted to finish, but didn't. I didn't need to, for Molly Anning understood what I meant. "Anyway, he won't listen to me either, whether I write in French or English. He doesn't know who I am. Indeed, I am nobody to him." To most people, I thought.

"One of the men could write to Cuvier," Margaret suggested. "Mr Buckland, perhaps? He has met Cuvier, hasn't he?"

"Maybe I should write to Colonel Birch and ask him to write," Molly Anning said. "I'm sure he would do it."

"Not Colonel Birch." My tone was so sharp that all three women looked at me.

"Does anyone else know that Mary wrote to Cuvier?"

Molly Anning shook her head.

"And so no one else knows of this response?"

"Only Joe, but he won't say anything."

"Well, that is something."

"But people will find out. Eventually Mr Buckland and Reverend Conybeare and Mr Konig and all those men we sell to will know that the Frenchman thinks the Annings are frauds. The Duke of Buckingham might hear and not pay us!" Molly Anning's mouth started to tremble, and I feared she might actually cry--a sight I didn't think I could bear.

To stop her I said, "Molly, I am going to help you. Don't cry, now. We will manage."

I had no idea what I would do. But I was thinking of the crate full of fossil fish in Mary's workshop, waiting for me to thaw, and knew I had to do something. I thought for a moment. "Where is the plesiosaurus now?"

"On board the Dispatch, heading for London, if it ain't already arrived. Mr Buckland saw her off. And Reverend Conybeare is meeting it at the other end. He's addressing the Geological Society later this month at their annual dinner."

"Ah." So it was gone already. The men had charge of it now. I would have to go to them.

Margaret and Louise thought I was mad. It was bad enough that I wanted to travel to London rather than simply write a forceful letter. But to go in winter, and by ship, was folly. However, the weather was so foul, the roads so muddy, that only mail coaches were getting through to London, and even they were being delayed, and were full besides. A ship might be quicker, and the weekly one was leaving when I needed it.

I knew too that the men I wanted to see would be blinded by their interest in the plesiosaurus and would not attend to my letter, no matter how eloquent or urgent. I must see them in person to convince them to help Mary immediately.

What I did not tell my sisters was that I was excited to go. Yes, I was fearful of the ship and of what the sea might do. It would be cold and rough, and I might feel sick much of the time, despite a tonic for seasickness that Margaret had concocted for me. As the only lady on board, I could not be sure of sympathy or comfort from the crew or other passengers.

I also had no idea if I could make any difference to Mary's predicament. I only knew that when I read Joseph Pentland's letter, I was consumed with anger. Mary had been so generous for so long, to so little gain--apart from Colonel Birch's sudden, madcap auction--while others took what she found and made their names from it as natural philosophers. William Buckland lectured on the creatures at Oxford, Charles Konig brought them into the British Museum to acclaim, Reverend Conybeare and even our dear Henry De La Beche addressed the Geological Society and published papers about them. Konig had had the privilege of naming the ichthyosaurus, and Conybeare the plesiosaurus. Neither would have had anything to name without Mary. I could not stand by and watch suspicions grow about her skills when the men knew she outstripped them all in her abilities.

I was also making amends to Mary. I was at last asking her to forgive me my jealousy and disdain.

There was something else, though. This was also my chance for an adventure in an unadventurous life. I had never travelled alone, but was always with my sisters or brother or other relatives, or with friends. As secure as that had felt, it was a bind as well that sometimes threatened to smother me. I was rather proud now as I stood on the deck of the Unity--the same ship that had taken Colonel Birch's ichthyosaurus to London--and watched Lyme and my sisters grow smaller until they disappeared and I was alone.

We sailed straight out to sea rather than hug the coast, for we had to clear the tricky isle of Portland. So I did not get to see up close the places I knew well--Golden Cap, Bridport, Chesil Beach, Weymouth. Once past Portland we remained out at sea until we had gone around the Isle of Wight, before finally coming closer to shore.

A sea voyage is very different from a coach trip to London, where Margaret, Louise and I were packed with several strangers into a stuffy, rattling, jolting box that stopped constantly to change horses. That was a communal event, uncomfortable in ways that as I grew older took days to recover from.

Being on board the Unity was much more solitary. I would sit on deck, tucked out of the way on a small keg, and watch the crew at work with their ropes and sails. I had no idea what they were doing, but their shouts to one another and their confident routines soothed my fears of being at sea. Moreover, the cares of daily life were taken out of my hands, and nothing was expected of me but to stay out of the men's way. Not only did I not feel ill on board, even when it was rough; I was actually enjoying myself.

I had been anxious about being the only lady on the ship--the three other passengers were all men with business in London--but I was mostly ignored, though the Captain was kind enough, if taciturn, when I joined him to dine each night. No one seemed at all curious about me, though one of the passengers--a man from Honiton--was happy to talk about fossils when he heard of my interest. I did not tell him about the plesiosaurus, however, or of my intended visit to the Geological Society. He knew only about the obvious--ammonites, belemnites, crinoids, gryphaea--and had little of use to say, though he made sure to say every word of it. Luckily he could not bear the cold, and most often stayed belowdecks.

Until I boarded the Unity, I had always thought of the sea as a boundary keeping me in my place on land. Now, though, it became an opening. As I sat I occasionally saw another vessel, but most of the time there was nothing but sky and moving water. I often looked to the horizon, lulled into a wordless calm by the rhythm of the sea and by ship life. It was oddly satisfying to study that far-off line, reminding me that I spent much of my life in Lyme with my eyes fixed to the ground in search of fossils. Such hunting can limit a person's perspective. On board the Unity I had no choice but to see the greater world, and my place in it. Sometimes I imagined being on shore and looking out at the ship, and seeing on deck a small, mauve figure caught between the light grey sky and dark grey sea, watching the world pass before her, alone and sturdy. I did not expect it, but I had never been so happy.

The winds were light, but we made steady if slow progress. The first I saw of land was on the second day when the chalk cliffs to the east of Brighton came blinking into view. When we made a brief stop there to unload cloth from Lyme's factory, I considered asking Captain Pearce if I might go ashore to see my sister Frances. However, rather to my surprise, I felt no real urge to do so, or to send her a note saying I was there, but was content to remain on board and watch the residents of Brighton on land walking back and forth along the promenade. Even if Frances herself had appeared, I am not sure I would have called out to her. I preferred not to disturb the delicious anonymity of standing on deck with no one looking for me.

On the third day we had passed Dover with its stark white cliffs, and were coming around the headland by Ramsgate when we saw a ship off our port side run aground on a sandbar. As we drew nearer I heard one of the crew name it as the Dispatch, the ship carrying Mary's plesiosaurus.

I sought out the Captain. "Oh yes, that be the Dispatch," he confirmed, "run aground on Goodwin Sands. They'll have tried to turn too sharp." He sounded disgusted and entirely without sympathy, even as he called for the men to cast anchor. Soon two sailors set out in a boat to cross over to the listing vessel, where they met with a few men who had by now appeared on deck. The sailors talked to them for just a few minutes before rowing back. I leaned forward and strained to hear what they shouted to the Captain. "Cargo was taken to shore yesterday!" one called. "They're taking it overland to London."

At this the crew jeered, for they had little respect for travel by land, I had learned during the trip. They saw it as slow, rough and muddy. Others--coachmen, for instance--might retort that the sea was slow, rough and wet.

Whoever was right, Mary's plesiosaurus was now somewhere in a long, slow train of carts grinding through Kent towards London. Having left a week before me, the specimen would now probably arrive in London after me, too late for the Geological Society meeting.

We reached London in the early hours of the fourth day, docking at a wharf on Tooley Street. After the relative calm on board, all now became a chaos of unloading by torchlight, of shouts and whistles, of coaches and carts clattering away full of people and cargo. It was a shock to the senses after four days of Nature providing her own constant rhythms. The people and the noise and the lights reminded me too that I had come to London for a reason, not to enjoy anonymity and solitude whilst eyeing the wider horizon.

I stood on deck and looked out for my brother at the quayside, but he was not there. The letter I had posted at the same time as I left must have got stuck in the mud en route and lost its race with me. Though I had never been before, I had heard about London's docks, how crowded and dirty and dangerous they were, especially for a lady on her own with no one expecting her. Perhaps it was because the darkness made everything more mysterious, but the men unloading the Unity, even the sailors I had got to know on board, now appeared much rougher and harder.

I hesitated to disembark. There was no one to turn to for help, though: the other passengers--even the cocksure man from Honiton--had hurried away in ungentleman-like haste. I could have panicked. Before the journey I might have. But something had shifted in me while I spent all that time on deck watching the horizon: I was responsible for myself. I was Elizabeth Philpot, and I collected fossil fish. Fish are not always beautiful, but they have pleasing shapes, they are practical, and they lead with their eyes. There is nothing shamful about them

I picked up my bag and stepped off the boat amidst a score of bustling men, many of whom whistled and shouted at me. Before anyone could do more than call out, I walked quickly to the Customs House, despite swaying with the shock of being on land again. "I would like a cab, please," I said to a surprised clerk, interrupting him as he ticked items on a list. He had a moustache that fluttered like a moth over his mouth. "I shall wait here until you fetch me one," I added, setting down my bag. I did not stick out my chin and sharpen my jaw, but gazed steadily at him with my Philpot eyes.

He found me a cab.

The Geological Society's offices in Covent Garden were not far from my brother's house, but to get there one had to pass through St Giles and Seven Dials, with its beggars and thieves, and I was not keen to do so on foot. Thus on the evening of the 20th February, 1824, I waited in a cab across from 20 Bedford Street, my nephew Johnny beside me. There was snow on the street, and we huddled under our cloaks against the cold.

My brother was horrified that I had come all the way to London on a ship because of Mary. When he was woken in the middle of the night to find me at the door, he looked so ill with surprise that I almost regretted I had come. Being quietly tucked away in Lyme, my sisters and I had rarely given him cause to worry, and I did not like to do so now.

John did everything he could to persuade me not to go to the Geological Society, bar expressly forbidding me. It seemed he was only willing to indulge me in unusual behaviour just the once, when he had escorted me to Bullock's to view Colonel Birch's auction preview. Mercifully he had never found out I attended the auction itself. He would not help me with something so odd and risky again. "They will not let you in, for you are a lady, and their charter does not allow it," he began, using first the legal argument. We were in his study, the door closed, as if John were trying to protect his family from me, his erratic sister. "Even if they let you in they would not listen to you, for you are not a member. Then," he added, holding up a hand as I tried to interrupt, "you have no business discussing and defending Mary. It is not your place to."

"She is my friend," I replied, "and no one else will take her part if I don't."

John looked at me as if I were a small child trying to convince my nurse I could have another helping of pudding. "You have been very foolish, Elizabeth. You have come all this way, making yourself ill en route--"

"It is just a cold, nothing more."

"--ill

en route, and worrying us unnecessarily." Now he was using guilt. "And to no purpose, for you will gain no audience."

"I can at least try. It is truly foolish to come all this way and then not even try."

"What exactly do you want from these men?"

"I want to remind them of Mary's careful methods of finding and preserving fossils, and to convince them to agree to defend her publicly against Cuvier's attack on her character."

"They will never do that," John said, running his finger along the spiral of his nautilus paperweight. "Though they may defend the plesiosaurus, they will not discuss Mary. She is only the hunter."

"Only the hunter!" I stopped myself. John was a London solicitor, with a certain way of thinking. I was a stubborn Lyme spinster, with my own mind. We were not going to agree, nor either of us convince the other. And he was not my target anyway; I must save my words for more important men.

John would not agree to accompany me to the meeting, and so I did not ask, but turned to an alternative--my nephew. Johnny was now a tall, lanky youth who led with his feet, had a residual fondness for his aunt and an active fondness for mischief. He had never told his parents about discovering me sneaking out of the house to go to the auction at Bullock's, and this shared secret bound us. It was this closeness I now relied on to help me.

I was lucky, for John and my sister-in-law were dining out on the Friday evening of the Geological Society meeting. I had not told him when the meeting was to take place, but allowed him to believe it was the following week. The afternoon of the supper I took to bed, saying my cold was worse. My sister-in-law pursed her lips in clear disapproval of my folly. She did not like unexpected visitors, or the sort of problems that, for all my quiet life at Lyme, I seemed to trail behind me. She hated fossils, and disorder, and unanswered questions. Whenever I brought up topics like the possible age of the earth, she twisted her hands in her lap and changed the subject as soon as it was polite to.

When she and my brother had gone out for the evening, I crept from my room and went to find Johnny and explain what I needed from him. He rose to the occasion admirably, coming up with an excuse for his departure to satisfy the servants, fetching a cab and hurrying me into it without anyone in the house discovering. It was absurd that I had to go to such lengths to take any sort of action out of the ordinary.

However, it was also a relief to have company. Now we sat in the cab on Bedford Street across from the Geological Society house, Johnny having gone in to check and found that the members were still dining in rooms on the first floor. Through the front windows we could see lights there and the occasional head bobbing about. The formal meeting would begin in half an hour or so.

"What shall we do, Aunt Elizabeth?" he demanded. "Storm the citadel?"

"No, we wait. They will all stand so that the meal can be cleared away. At that moment I will go in and seek out Mr Buckland. He is about to become President of the Society, and I am sure he will listen to me."

Johnny sat back and propped his feet up on the seat across from him. If I had been his mother I would have told him to put his feet down, but the pleasure of being an aunt is that you can enjoy your nephew's company without having to concern yourself with his behaviour. "Aunt Elizabeth, you haven't said why this plesiosaur is so important," he began. "That is, I understand that you want to defend Miss Anning. But why is everyone so excited about the creature itself?"

I straightened my gloves and rearranged my cloak around me. "Do you remember when you were a small boy and we took you to the Egyptian Hall to see all the animals?"

"Yes, I recall the elephant and the hippo."

"Do you remember the stone crocodile you found, and I was so upset by? The one that is now in the British Museum and they call an ichthyosaurus?"

"I've seen it at the British Museum, of course, and you've told me about it,"

Johnny answered. "But I confess I remember the elephant better. Why?"

"Well, when Mary discovered that ichthyosaurus, she did not know it at the time, but she was contributing to a new way of thinking about the world. Here was a creature that had never been seen before, that did not seem to exist any longer, but was extinct--the species had died out. Such a phenomenon made people think that perhaps the world is changing, however slowly, rather than being a constant, as had been previously thought.

"At the same time, geologists were studying the different layers of rock, and thinking about how the world was formed, and wondering about its age. For some time now men have wondered if the world isn't older than the 6000 years calculated by Bishop Ussher. A learned Scotsman called James Hutton even suggested that the world is so old it has 'neither a beginning nor an end,' and that it is impossible for us to measure it." I paused. "Perhaps it would be best if you didn't mention any of what I'm saying to your mother. She doesn't like to hear me talk of such things."

"I won't. Carry on."

"Hutton thought the world is being sculpted by volcanic action. Others have suggested it has been formed by water. Lately some geologists have taken elements of both and said a series of catastrophes has shaped the world, with Noah's Flood being the latest."

"What does this have to do with the plesiosaurus?"

"It is concrete evidence that the ichthyosaurus was not a unique instance of extinction, but that there are others--maybe many extinct creatures. That in turn supports the argument that the earth is in flux." I looked at my nephew. Johnny was frowning at the light snowflakes swirling about outside. Perhaps he was more like his mother than I realised. "I'm sorry--I didn't mean to upset you with such talk."

He shook his head. "No, it's fascinating. I was just wondering why none of my tutors discuss this in lessons."

"It is too frightening for many, for it challenges our belief in an all-knowing, all-powerful God, and raises questions about His intentions."

"What

do

you believe, Aunt Elizabeth?"

"I believe..." Few had ever asked me what I believed. It was refreshing. "I am comfortable with reading the Bible figuratively rather than literally. For instance, I think the six days in Genesis are not literal days, but different periods of creation, so that it took many thousands--or hundreds of thousands of years--to create. It does not demean God; it simply gives Him more time to build this extraordinary world."

"And the ichthyosaurus and plesiosaurus?"

"They are creatures from long, long ago. They remind us that the world is changing. Of course it is. I can see it change when there are landslips at Lyme that alter the shoreline. It changes when there are earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and floods.

And why shouldn't it?"

Johnny nodded. It was a relief to say such things to a sympathetic ear and not be judged either ignorant or blasphemous. Perhaps he could be so open-minded because he was young.

"Look." He pointed at the windows of the Geological Society house. Figures were blocking the light as the men got up from their tables. It was time for me to lead with my eyes. I took a deep breath and opened the cab door. Johnny leaped out and helped me down, excited to be acting at last. He strode to the door and knocked boldly. The same man answered as had the first time, but Johnny treated him as if he had never spoken to him before. "Miss Philpot here to see Professor Buckland," he announced. Perhaps he thought such confidence would open all doors.

The doorman, however, was not taken in by youthful assuredness. "Women are not allowed in the Society," he replied, not even glancing at me. It was as if I did not exist.

He began to shut the door, but Johnny stuck his foot on the jamb so that it wouldn't close. "Well, then, John Philpot Esquire here to see Professor Buckland."

The doorman looked him up and down. "What business?"

"It's to do with the plesiosaurus."

The doorman frowned. The word meant nothing to him, but it sounded complicated and possibly important. "I'll take up a message."

"I can only speak to Professor Buckland," Johnny replied in a haughty tone, enjoying every moment.

The doorman appeared unmoved. I had to step forward, forcing him at last to look at me and acknowledge my presence. "As it is to do with the very subject of the meeting that is about to start, it would be wise of you to inform Professor Buckland that we are waiting to speak to him." I looked him straight in the eye, with all of the steadiness and resolve I had discovered in myself on board the Unity.

It had its effect: after a moment the doorman dropped his eyes and gave me the briefest of nods. "Wait here," he said, and shut the door in our faces. Clearly my success was limited, for it did not overcome the rule that women were not allowed inside, but must stand out in the cold. As we waited, snowflakes dusted my hat and cloak.

A few minutes later we heard footsteps clattering down the stairs, and the door opened to reveal the excited faces of Mr Buckland and Reverend Conybeare. I was disappointed to see the latter; Reverend Conybeare was not nearly as easy and welcoming as Mr Buckland.

I think they were a little disappointed to see us as well. "Miss Philpot!" Mr Buckland cried. "What a surprise. I did not know you were in town."

"I only arrived two days ago, Mr Buckland. Reverend Conybeare." I nodded at them both. "This is my nephew, John. May we come in? It is very cold outside."

"Of course, of course!" As Mr Buckland ushered us in, Reverend Conybeare pursed his lips, clearly unhappy that a lady was being allowed across the threshold of the Geological Society. But he was not President--Mr Buckland would become so in a moment--and so he said nothing, but bowed to us both. His long narrow nose was red, whether from wine, a seat close to the fire, or temper, I couldn't guess.

The entrance to the house was simple, with an elegant black-and-white tiled floor and solemn portraits hanging of George Greenough, John MacCulloch, and other Society Presidents. Soon a portrait of William Babington, the retiring President, would join the others. I expected to see something displayed that would indicate the Society's interest: fossils, of course, or rocks. But there was nothing. The interesting things were hidden away.

"Tell me, Miss Philpot, do you have news of the plesiosaurus?" Reverend Conybeare asked. "The doorman said you might. Will its presence yet grace our meeting?"

Now I understood their excitement: it was not the Philpot name but mention of the missing specimen that had brought them racing down the stairs.

"I passed the grounded Dispatch three days ago." I tried to sound knowledgeable.

"Its cargo is now being brought by land, and will arrive as quickly as the roads allow."

Both men looked discouraged at hearing what was not news to them. "Why, then, Miss Philpot, are you here?" Reverend Conybeare said. For a vicar he was quite tart.

I drew myself up straight and tried to look them in the eye as confidently as I had the clerk at the wharf and the Geological Society's doorman. It was more difficult, however, as there were two of them gazing at me--and Johnny too. Then, too, they were more learned, and con?dent. I might hold some power over a clerk and a doorman, but not over one of my own class. Instead of fixing my attention on Mr Buckland--who as future President of the Society was the more important of the two--I stupidly looked at my nephew as I said, "I wanted to discuss Miss Anning with you."

"Has something happened to Mary?" William Buckland asked.

"No, no, she is well."

Reverend Conybeare frowned, and even Mr Buckland, who was not a frowner, wrinkled his brow. "Miss Philpot," Reverend Conybeare began, "we are about to hold our meeting at which both Mr Buckland and I will be giving important--nay, even history-making--addresses to the Society. Surely your query about Miss Anning can wait until another day while we concentrate on these more pressing matters. Now, if you will excuse me, I am just going to review my notes." Without waiting to hear my response, he turned and padded up the carpeted stairs.

Mr Buckland looked as if he might do the same, but he was slower and kinder, and he took a moment to say, "I should be delighted to talk with you another time, Miss Philpot. Perhaps I could call around one day next week?"

"But sir," Johnny broke in, "Monsieur Cuvier thinks the plesiosaurus is a fake!"

That stopped Reverend Conybeare's retreating back. He turned on the stairs.

"What did you say?"

Johnny, the clever boy, had said just the right thing. Of course the men did not want to hear about Mary. It was Cuvier's opinion of the plesiosaurus that would concern them.

"Baron Cuvier believes that the plesiosaurus Mary found cannot be real," I explained as Reverend Conybeare descended the stairs and rejoined us, his face grim.

"The neck has too many vertebrae, and he believes it violates the fundamental laws that govern the anatomy of vertebrates."

Reverend Conybeare and Mr Buckland exchanged glances.

"Cuvier has suggested the Annings created a false animal by adding a sea serpent's skull to the body of an ichthyosaurus. He claims they are forgers," I added, bringing the discussion to what concerned me most.

Then I wished I hadn't, for seeing the expressions my words ignited on the men's faces. Both registered surprise, giving way to a degree of suspicion, more prominent in Reverend Conybeare's case, but also apparent even in Mr Buckland's benign features.

"Of course you know that Mary would never do such a thing," I reminded them.

"She is an honest soul, and trained--by your good selves, I might add--in the importance of preserving specimens as they are found. She knows they are of little use if tampered with."

"Of course," Mr Buckland agreed, his face clearing, as if all he needed was a prompt from a sensible mind.

Reverend Conybeare was still frowning, however. Clearly my reminder had tapped into a seam of doubt. "Who told Cuvier about the specimen?" he demanded.

I hesitated, but there was no way around revealing the truth. "Mary herself wrote to him. I believe she sent along a drawing."

Reverend Conybeare snorted. " Mary wrote? I dread to think what such a letter would be like. The girl is practically illiterate! It would have been much better if Cuvier had learned of it after tonight's lecture. Buckland, we must present our case to him ourselves, with drawings and a detailed description. You and I should write, and perhaps someone else as well, so Cuvier will hear about it from several angles. Johnson in Bristol, perhaps. He was very keen when I mentioned the plesiosaurus at the Institution at the beginning of the month, and I know he has corresponded with Cuvier in the past." As he spoke, Reverend Conybeare ran his hand up and down the mahogany banister, still rattled by the news. If he hadn't irritated me with his suspicion of Mary, I might have felt sorry for him.

Mr Buckland also noted his friend's nerves. "Conybeare, you are not going to withdraw your address now, are you? Many guests have come expressly to hear you: Babbage, Gordon, Drummond, Rudge, even McDownell. You've seen the room: it's packed, the best attendance I've ever seen. Of course I can entertain them with my musings on the megalosaurus, but how much more powerful if we both speak of these creatures of the past. Together we will give them an evening they will never forget!"

I tutted. "This is not the theatre, Mr Buckland."

"Ah, but in a way it is, Miss Philpot. And what wonderful entertainment we have prepared for them! We are in the midst of opening their eyes to incontrovertible evidence of a wondrous past world, to the most magnificent creatures God has created--apart from man, of course." Mr Buckland was warming to his theme.

"Perhaps you should save your thoughts for the meeting," I suggested.

"Of course, of course. Now, Conybeare, are you with me?"

"Yes." Reverend Conybeare visibly donned a more confident air. "In my paper I have already addressed some of Cuvier's concerns about the number of vertebrae.

Besides, you have seen the creature, Buckland. You believe in it."

Mr Buckland nodded.

"Then you believe in Mary Anning as well," I interjected. "And you will defend her from Cuvier's unjust charges."

"I do not see what that has to do with this meeting," Reverend Conybeare countered. "I mentioned Mary when I spoke about the plesiosaurus at the Bristol Institution. Buckland and I will write to Cuvier. Is that not enough?"

"Every geologist of note as well as other interested parties are upstairs in that room right now. One announcement from you, that you have complete confidence in Mary's abilities as a fossil hunter, will counter any comments from Baron Cuvier that they might hear of later."

"Why should I want to cast doubt in public on Miss Anning's abilities, and indeed--and more importantly, I might add--doubt on the very specimen I am just preparing to speak about?"

"A woman's good name is at stake, as well as her livelihood--a livelihood that provides you with the specimens you need to further your theories and your own good name. Surely that must matter to you enough to speak out?"

Reverend Conybeare and I glared at each other, our eyes locked. We might have remained like that all evening if it weren't for Johnny, who had become impatient with all of the talk and wanted more action. He ducked behind Reverend Conybeare and leapt onto the stairs above him. "If you don't agree to clear Miss Anning's name, I shall go and tell the roomful of gentlemen upstairs what Cuvier has said," he called down to us. "How would you like that?"

Reverend Conybeare made a move to grab him, but Johnny leaped up several more steps to remain out of reach. I should have scolded my nephew for his bad behaviour, but instead found myself snorting to hide laughter. I turned to Mr Buckland, the more reasonable of the two. "Mr Buckland, I know how fond you are of Mary, and that you recognise how much in debt we all are to her for her immense skill in finding fossils. I understand too that this evening is very important to you, and I would not want to ruin that. But surely somewhere in the meeting there is room for you to express your support of Mary? Perhaps you could simply acknowledge her efforts without mentioning Baron Cuvier specifically. And when his remarks are at last made public, the men upstairs will understand the deeper meaning of your declaration of confidence. That way we will all be satisfied. Would that be acceptable?"

Mr Buckland pondered this suggestion. "It could not be recorded in the Society's minutes," he said at last, "but I am certainly willing to say something off the record if that will please you, Miss Philpot."

"It will, thank you."

He and Reverend Conybeare looked up at Johnny. "That will do, lad," Reverend Conybeare muttered. "Come down, now."

"Is that all, Aunt Elizabeth? Shall I come down?" Johnny seemed disappointed that he could not carry out his threat.

"There is one more thing," I said. Reverend Conybeare groaned. "I should like to hear what you have to say at the meeting about the plesiosaurus."

"I'm afraid women are not allowed in to the Society meetings." Mr Buckland sounded almost sorry.

"Perhaps I could sit out in the corridor to listen? No one but you need know I am there."

Mr Buckland thought for a moment. "There is a staircase at the back of the room leading down to one of the kitchens. The servants use it to bring dishes and food and such up and down. You might sit out on the landing. From there you should be able to hear us without being seen."

"That would be very kind, thank you."

Mr Buckland gestured to the doorman, who had been listening impassively.

"Would you show this lady and young man up to the landing at the back, please. Come, Conybeare, we have kept them waiting long enough. They'll think we've gone to Lyme and back!"

The two men hurried up the stairs, leaving Johnny and me with the doorman. I will not forget the venomous look Reverend Conybeare threw me over his shoulder as he reached the top and turned to go into the meeting room.

Johnny chuckled. "You have not made a friend there, Aunt Elizabeth!"

"It doesn't matter to me, but I fear I have put him off his stride. Well, we shall hear in a moment."

I did not put off Reverend Conybeare. As a vicar he was used to speaking in public, and he was able to draw on that well of experience to recover his equanimity. By the time William Buckland had got through the procedural parts of the meeting--approving the minutes of the previous meeting, proposing new members, enumerating the various journals and specimens donated to the Society since the last meeting--Reverend Conybeare would have looked over his notes and reassured himself about the particulars of his claims, and when he began speaking his voice was steady and grounded in authority.

I could only judge his delivery by his voice. Johnny and I were tucked away on chairs on the landing, which led off of the back of the room. Although we kept the door ajar so that we could hear, we could not see beyond the gentlemen standing in front of the door in the crowded room. I felt trapped behind a wall of men that separated me from the main event.

Luckily Reverend Conybeare's public speaking voice penetrated even to us. "I am highly gratified," he began, "in being able to lay before the Society an account of an almost perfect skeleton of Plesiosaurus, a new fossil genus, which, from the consideration of several fragments found only in a disjointed state, I felt myself authorised to propound in the year 1821. It is through the kind liberality of its possessor, the Duke of Buckingham, that this new specimen has been placed for a time at the disposal of my friend Professor Buckland for the purpose of scientific investigation. The magnificent specimen recently discovered at Lyme has confirmed the justice of my former conclusions in every essential point connected with the organisation of the skeleton."

While the men were warmed by two coal fires and the collective bodily heat of sixty souls, Johnny and I sat frozen on the landing. I pulled my woollen cloak close about me, but I knew sitting back there was doing my weakened chest no good. Still, I could not leave at such an important moment.

Reverend Conybeare immediately addressed the plesiosaurus' most surprising feature--its extremely long neck. "The neck is fully equal in length to the body and tail united," he explained. "Surpassing in the number of its vertebrae that of the longest necked birds, even the swan, it deviates from the laws which were heretofore regarded as universal in quadrupedal animals. I mention this circumstance thus early, as forming the most prominent and interesting feature of the recent discovery, and that which in effect renders this animal one of the most curious and important additions which geology has yet made to comparative anatomy."

He then went on to describe the beast in detail. By this point I was stifling coughs, and Johnny went down to the kitchen to fetch me some wine. He must have liked what he saw down there better than what he could hear on the landing, for after handing me a glass of claret he disappeared down the back staircase again, probably to sit by the fire and practise flirting with the serving girls brought in for the evening.

Reverend Conybeare delineated the head and the vertebrae, dwelling for a time on the number in different sorts of animals, just as Monsieur Cuvier had done in his criticism of Mary. Indeed, he mentioned Cuvier in passing a few times; the great anatomist's influence was emphasised throughout the talk. No wonder that Reverend Conybeare had been so horrified by Cuvier's response to Mary's letter. However, whatever its impossible anatomy, the plesiosaurus had existed. If Conybeare believed in the creature, he must believe in what Mary found too, and the best way to convince Cuvier was to support her.

It seemed obvious to me.

It didn't to him, however. Indeed, he did just the opposite. In the middle of a description of the plesiosaurus' paddles, Reverend Conybeare added, "I must acknowledge that originally I wrongly depicted the edges of the paddles as being formed of rounded bones, when they are not. However, when the first specimen was found in 1821, the bones in question were loose, and had been subsequently glued into their present situation, in consequence of a conjecture of the proprietor."

It took me a moment to realise he was referring to Mary as proprietor, and suggesting she had made mistakes in putting together the bones of the first plesiosaurus.

Reverend Conybeare only bothered to refer to her--still unnamed--when there was criticism to lay at her feet. "How ungentlemanly!" I muttered, more loudly than I had intended, for a number of the row of heads in front of me shifted and turned, as if trying to locate the source of this outburst.

I shrank back in my seat, then listened numbly as Reverend Conybeare compared the plesiosaurus to a turtle without its shell and speculated on its awkwardness both on land and in the sea. "May it not therefore be concluded that it swam upon or near the surface, arching back its long neck like the swan, and occasionally darting it down at the fish which happened to float within its reach? It may perhaps have lurked in shoal water along the coast, concealed among the sea-weed and, raising its nostrils to a level with the surface from a considerable depth, may have found a secure retreat from the assaults of dangerous enemies."

He finished with a strategic flourish I suspected he'd thought up during the earlier part of the meeting. "I cannot but congratulate the scientific public that the discovery of this animal has been made at the very moment when the illustrious Cuvier is engaged in, and on the eve of publishing, his researches on the fossil ovipara: from him the subject will derive all that lucid order which he never has yet failed to introduce into the most obscure and intricate departments of comparative anatomy. Thank you."

In so saying, Reverend Conybeare linked himself favourably with Baron Cuvier, so that whatever criticism arose from the Frenchman would not seem to be directed at him. I did not join in with the clapping. My chest had become so heavy that I was having difficulty breathing.

An animated discussion began, of which I did not follow every point, for I was feeling dizzy. However, I did hear Mr Buckland at last clear his throat. "I should just like to express my thanks to Miss Anning," he said, "who discovered and extracted this magnificent specimen. It is a shame it did not arrive in time for this most illustrious and enlightening talk by Reverend Conybeare, but once it is installed here, Members and friends are welcome to inspect it. You will be amazed and delighted by this ground-breaking discovery."

That is all she will get, I thought: a scrap of thanks crowded out by far more talk of glory for beast and man. Her name will never be recorded in scientific journals or books, but will be forgotten. So be it. A woman's life is always a compromise.

I did not have to listen any longer. Instead, I fainted.

9

The lightning that signalled

my greatest happiness

It was only by luck that I saw her go.

Joe got me up. He come to stand over me one morning when Mam was out. Tray was lying next to me on the bed. "Mary," he said.

I rolled over. "What?"

He didn't say anything for a minute, just looked down at me. Anyone else would think Joe's face was blank, but I could see he was bothered by me staying in bed when I weren't ill. He was biting the inside of his cheek, little bites that tightened his jaw if you knew to look for it.

"You can get up now," he said. "Miss--Mam is fixing it."

"Fixing

what?"

"Your problem with the Frenchman."

I sat up, clutching the blanket to me, for it was freezing, even with Tray's warmth beside me. "How's she doing that?"

"She didn't say. But you should get up. I don't want to have to go back upon beach again."

I felt so guilty then that I got up, Tray barking his joy. And I was relieved too.

After a day in bed it had got dull, but I felt like I needed someone to tell me to get up before I would do it.

I got dressed and took my hammer and basket and called to Tray, who had stayed with me while I was abed and was eager to get outside. When Colonel Birch give him to me, just before he left Lyme forever, he promised that Tray would be faithful to me. He'd been right.

I stepped outside, my breath turning to fog round my face, it was so cold. The grey sky threatened snow. The tide was in, and Black Ven and Charmouth cut off, so I went the other way, where a narrow strip of land would still be uncovered by the cliffs at Monmouth Beach. Though I had rarely found monsters in those cliffs, sometimes I carted back giant ammonites, like them that were embedded in the Ammo Graveyard, but prised loose from the cliff layers. Tray run ahead of me along the Walk, his claws clicking on the frozen ice. Sometimes he come back to sniff at me and make sure I was following and not going back home. It felt good to be outside, no matter the cold. It was as if I had emerged from a fuzzy fever into a hard, crisp world.

When I drew opposite the end of the Cobb, I saw the Unity docked there, being loaded for a journey. This weren't unusual, but what caught my eye amongst all the men rushing about were the silhouettes of three women--two wearing bonnets, the third an unmistakable turban stuck with feathers.

Tray come running back, barking at me. "Shh, Tray, hush now." I grabbed him, fearful they would look over and see me, and I ducked behind an overturned rowboat used to ferry people out to anchored ships.

I was too far away to make out the Philpot sisters' faces, but I could see Miss Margaret handing something to Miss Elizabeth, which she put in her pocket. Then there were hugs and kisses, and Miss Elizabeth took a step away from her sisters, and there was a break in the men running up and down the plank that led on board, and then she was walking up it, and then she was standing on deck.

I couldn't recall Miss Elizabeth ever going on a ship or even a little boat, despite living by the sea and hunting so often on its beaches. Nor had I but once or twice, for that matter. Though they could go by ship to London, the Philpots always chose to go by coach. Some people are meant for water, others land. We were land people.

I wanted to run along the Cobb and call out to them, but I didn't. I stayed behind the rowboat, Tray whining at my feet, and watched as the crew of the Unity unfurled the huge sails and cast off. Miss Elizabeth stood on deck, a brave, straight figure in a grey cloak and purple bonnet. I had seen ships leave Lyme many times, but not with someone on board who meant so much to me. Suddenly the sea seemed a treacherous place. I recalled Lady Jackson's body washed up from a shipwreck years before, and wanted to call out for Miss Elizabeth to come back, but it was too late.

I tried not to fret, but to go about my business. I did not look in the papers for news of shipwrecks, nor word of the plesiosaurus' arrival in London, nor of Monsieur Cuvier's doubts about it. This last I knew was not likely to be in the papers, as not being important to most. There were times I wished the Western Flying Post would reflect what mattered to me. I wanted to see announcements like "Miss Elizabeth Philpot Safely Arrived in London"; "Geological Society Celebrates Lyme Plesiosaurus"; "Monsieur Cuvier Confirms Miss Anning Has Discovered a New Animal."

One afternoon I run into Miss Margaret outside the Assembly Rooms, going in to play whist, for even in winter they played cards there once a week. Despite the cold she wore one of her outdated feathered turbans, which made her look the part of an aging eccentric spinster with a strange hat. Even I thought that, who had admired Miss Margaret all my life.

When I wished her good day, she started like a dog when its tail is trodden on.

"Have you--have you heard from Miss Elizabeth?" I asked.

Miss Margaret give me a funny look. "How did you know she was away?"

I did not say I had seen her ship embark. "Everybody knows. Lyme's small for secrets."

Miss Margaret sighed. "We've not had a letter, but the post has not got through for three days, the roads are so bad. No one has had letters. However, a neighbour has just ridden from Yeovil and brought a new Post. There is news that the Dispatch ran aground near Ramsgate. That is the ship before Elizabeth's." She shivered, the ostrich feathers in her turban quivering.

"The

Dispatch?" I cried. "But the plesiosaurus is on it! What happened to it?" I had a horrible vision of my beast sinking to the seabed and being lost to us forever--all of my hard work, as well as the one hundred pounds from the Duke of Buckingham, gone.

Miss Margaret frowned. "The paper said both passengers and cargo are safe and are being transported to London by land. There's no need to fret--though you might have a thought for those on board first rather than the cargo, however precious it is to you."

"Of course, Miss Margaret. Of course I'm thinking of the people. God bless them all. But I do wonder where my--the Duke's--plesie is."

"And I wonder where Elizabeth is," Miss Margaret added, tears welling. "I still feel we should never have let her onto that ship. If it is so easy to run aground as the Dispatch did, what might have happened to the Unity?" Now she was weeping, and I patted her shoulder. She did not want comfort from me, though, and pulled away, glaring.

"Elizabeth would never have gone if it hadn't been for you!" she cried, before turning on her heel and hurrying into the Assembly Rooms.

"What do you mean?" I called after her. "I don't understand, Miss Margaret!" I couldn't follow her into the rooms, however. They were not for the likes of me, and the men standing in the doorway gave me unfriendly looks. I lingered near by, hoping to catch a glimpse of Miss Margaret in the bay window, but she did not appear.

That was the first I knew that Miss Elizabeth went to London on account of me.

But I didn't know why until Miss Louise come to explain. She rarely visited to our house, preferring living plants to fossils. But two days after I met Miss Margaret she appeared at the workshop door, ducking her head because she was so tall. I was cleaning a small ichthyosaurus I'd found just before discovering the plesie. It weren't complete--the skull was in fragments and there were no paddles--but the spine and ribs were in a good state.

"Don't get up," Miss Louise said, but I insisted on clearing a stool of bits of rock and wiping it clean before she sat down. Tray come then and lay on her feet. She did not speak right away--Miss Louise never were a talker--but studied the heaps of rocks ranged round her on the floor, all containing fossils waiting to be cleaned. Though I always had specimens all round me, now there were even more from waiting while I had been getting the plesie ready. She said nothing about the mess, or the film of blue dust covering everything. Others might have, but I suppose she was used to dirt from her gardening, and from Miss Elizabeth's fossils.

"Margaret told me she saw you and you wanted to know about our sister. We had a letter from her today, and she has arrived safe at our brother's in London."

"Oh, I'm so glad! But--Miss Margaret said Miss Elizabeth went to London for me.

Why?"

"She was planning to go to the Geological Society meeting and ask the men there to support you against Baron Cuvier's claim that you fabricated the plesiosaurus."

I frowned. "How did she know about that?"

Miss Louise hesitated.

"Did the men tell her? Did Cuvier write to one of them--Buckland or Conybeare--and they wrote to Miss Elizabeth? And now they're all talking about it in London, about--about us Annings and what we do to specimens." My mouth trembled so much I had to stop.

"Hush, Mary. Your mother came to see us."

"Mam?" Though relieved it was not from the men, I was shocked Mam went behind my back.

"She was worried about you," Miss Louise continued, "and Elizabeth decided she would try to help. Margaret and I could not understand why she felt she had to go in person rather than write to them, but she insisted it was better."

I nodded. "She's right. Them men don't always respond quick to letters. That's what Mam and I found. Sometimes I can wait over a year for a reply. When they want something they're quick, but they soon forget me. When I want something..." I shrugged, then shook my head. "I can't believe Miss Elizabeth would go all the way to London--on a ship--for me."

Miss Louise said nothing, but looked at me with her grey eyes so direct it made me drop mine.

I decided to visit Morley Cottage a few days later, to say sorry to Miss Margaret for taking her sister away. I brought with me a crate full of fossil fish I had been saving for Miss Elizabeth. It would be my gift to her for when she come back from London.

That wouldn't be for some time, as she was likely to stay there for her spring visit, but it were a comfort to know the fish would be there waiting for her return.

I lugged the crate along Coombe Street, up Sherborne Lane, and all the way up Silver Street, cursing myself for being so generous, as it was heavy. When I reached Morley Cottage, however, the house was buttoned up tight, doors locked, shutters drawn, and no smoke from the chimney. I knocked on the front and back doors for a long time, but there was no answer. I were just coming round to the front again to try and peer through the crack in the shutters when one of their neighbours come out. "No point looking," she said. "They're not there. Gone to London yesterday."

"London!

Why?"

"It were sudden. They got word Miss Elizabeth is taken ill and dropped everything to go."

"No!" I clenched my fists and leaned against the door. It seemed whenever I found something, I lost something else. I found an ichthyosaurus and lost Fanny. I found Colonel Birch and lost Miss Elizabeth. I found fame and lost Colonel Birch. Now I thought I'd found Miss Elizabeth again, only to lose her, perhaps forever.

I could not accept it. My life's work was finding the bones of creatures that had been lost. I could not believe that I would not find Miss Elizabeth again too.

I did not take the crate of fossil fish back to Cockmoile Square, but left it round the back in Miss Louise's garden, by the giant ammonite I'd once helped Miss Elizabeth bring back from Monmouth Beach. I was determined that she would one day sift through them and choose the best for her collection.

I wanted to hop on the next coach to London, but Mam wouldn't let me. "Don't be a fool," she said. "What help could you be to the Philpots? They'd just have to waste their time looking after you rather than their sister."

"I want to see her, and say sorry."

Mam tutted. "You're treating her like she's dying and you want to make your peace with her. Do you think that will help her to get well, with you sitting there with a long face saying sorry? It'll send her to her grave quicker!"

I hadn't thought of it that way. It was peculiar but sensible, like Mam herself.

So I didn't go, though I vowed one day I would get to London, just to prove I could. Instead Mam wrote to the Philpots for news, her hand being less upsetting to the family than mine. I wanted her to ask about Cuvier's accusation and the Geological Society meeting too, but Mam wouldn't, as it weren't polite to be thinking about myself at a time like this. Also, it would remind the Philpots of why Miss Elizabeth had gone to London, and make them angry at me all over again.

Two weeks later we got a brief letter from Miss Louise, saying Miss Elizabeth were over the worst of it. The pneumonia had weakened her lungs, though, and the doctors thought she would not be able to return to live in Lyme because of the damp sea air.

"Nonsense," Mam snorted. "What do we have all those visitors for if not for the sea air and water being good for their health? She'll be back. You couldn't keep Miss Elizabeth away from Lyme." After years of suspicion of the London Philpots, now Mam were their biggest supporter.

As certain as she seemed, I weren't so sure. I was relieved Miss Elizabeth had survived, but it looked like I'd lost her anyway. There was little I could do, though, and once Mam had written again to say how glad we all was, we didn't hear anything more from the Philpots. Nor did I know what had happened with Monsieur Cuvier. I had no choice but to live with the uncertainty.

Mam likes to repeat that old saw that it don't rain but pour. I don't agree with her when it comes to weather. I been out upon beach for years and years in days where it don't pour, but spits now and then, the sky never making up its mind what it wants to do.

With curies, though, she were right. We could go months, years, without finding a monster. We could be brought to our knees with how poor we were, how cold and hungry and desperate. Other times, though, we would find more than we needed or could work on. That was how it was when the Frenchman come.

It were one of those glorious days in late June when you know from the sun and the balmy breeze that summer has come at last and you can begin to let go of the tightness in your chest that's kept you fighting against the cold all winter and spring. I was out on the ledges off Church Cliffs, extracting a very fine specimen of Ichthyosaurus tenuirostris--I can say that now, for the men have identified and named four species, and I know each one just from a glance. There were no tail or paddles but it had tightly packed vertebrae, and long, thin jaws reaching a point, with the small, fine teeth intact.

Mam had already written to Mr Buckland asking him to tell the Duke of Buckingham, who we knew wanted an ichie as company to the plesie.

Someone come to stand near me as I worked. I was used to visitors looking over my shoulder and seeing what the famous Mary Anning were up to. Sometimes I could hear them talking about me from a distance. "What do you think she's found there?"

they'd say. "Is it one of those creatures? A crocodile or, what was it I read, a giant turtle without its shell?"

Though I smiled to myself, I didn't bother to correct them. It was hard for people to understand that there had lived creatures they could not even imagine, and which no longer existed. It had taken me years to accept the idea, even when I had seen the evidence so plainly before me. Though they respected me more now I'd found two kinds of monsters, people were not going to change their minds simply because Mary Anning told them so. I had learned that much from taking out curious visitors. They wanted to find treasure upon beach, they wanted to see monsters, but they did not want to think about how and when those monsters lived. It challenged their idea of the world too much.

Now the spectator moved so that he blocked the sun and his shadow fell on the ichie, and I had to look up. It was one of the burly Day brothers, Davy or Billy, I wasn't sure which. I laid down my hammer, wiped my hands and stood.

"Sorry to bother you, Mary," he said, "but there be something Billy and me need to show you, back by Gun Cliff." As he spoke he glanced down at the ichie, checking my work, I expect. I'd got much better over the years at chiselling out a specimen from the rock, and didn't need the Days to help so much, except sometimes to carry slabs of rock back to the workshop.

Their opinion mattered to me, though, and I was glad to see he looked satisfied with what I'd done so far. "What have you found?"

Davy Day scratched his head. "Don't know. One of them turtles, maybe."

"A plesie?" I said. "Are you sure?"

Davy shifted from one foot to the other. "Well, it could be a crocodilly. I never knowed the difference." Recently the Days had begun sea-quarrying in the Blue Lias, and often found things in the ledges off Lyme. They never wanted to understand what they dug up. They knew it made me and them money, and that was all they cared about.

People often come to me to help them with what they found. Usually it was a small bit of ichie--a jaw bone, some teeth, a few verteberries fused together.

I picked up my hammer and basket. "Tray, stay," I commanded, snapping my fingers and pointing. Tray come running up from the water's edge, where he had been chasing the waves. He curled his black and white body into a ball and lay his chin on a rock next to the ichie. He was a gentle little dog, but he growled when anyone come near one of my specimens.

I followed Davy Day round the bend that hid Lyme. The sun lit the houses piling up the hill, and the sea was silvery like a mirror. The boats moored in the harbour were strewn about like sticks, abandoned however the water set them on the sea bed at low tide. My heart brimmed with fondness for these sights. "Mary Anning, you are the most famous person in this town," I said to myself. I knew very well I was too full of pride, and would have to go to Chapel and pray to be forgiven my sin. But I couldn't help it: I had come such a long way since Miss Elizabeth first hired the Days for us so many years before, when I was young and poor and ignorant. Now people come to visit me, and wrote about what I found. It was hard not to get a big head. Even the people of Lyme were nicer to me, if only because I brought in visitors and more trade.

One thing did keep me from swelling too much, though, and were a little needle in my heart. Whatever I found, whatever was said of me, Elizabeth Philpot was no longer in Lyme to share it with.

"It be here." Davy Day gestured to where his brother was sitting, holding a wedge of pork pie in his big paw. Near him was a load of cut stone on a wooden frame they were using to carry it. Billy Day looked up, his mouth full, and nodded.

I always felt a little awkward with Billy, now he was married to Fanny Miller. He never said anything, but I often wondered if Fanny spoke harsh words about me to him. I weren't exactly jealous of her--quarrymen are not considered suitable for any but the most desperate women. But their marriage reminded me that I was at the very bottom of the heap, and would never marry. Fanny was getting all the time what I experienced only the once with Colonel Birch in the orchard. I had my fame to comfort me, and the money it brought in, but that only went so far. I could not hate Fanny, for it were my fault she was crippled. But I could not ever feel friendly towards her, nor comfortable round her.

That was the case with many people in Lyme. I had come unstuck. I would never be a lady like the Philpots--no one would ever call me Miss Mary. I would be plain Mary Anning. Yet I weren't like other working people either. I was caught in between, and always would be. That brought freedom, but it was lonely too.

Luckily the ledges gave me plenty of things to think about other than myself.

Davy Day pointed at a ridge of rock, and I leaned over and made out a very clear line of vertebrae about three feet long. It seemed so obvious I chuckled. I had been over these ledges hundreds of times and not seen it. It always surprised me what could be found here. There were hundreds of bodies surrounding us, waiting for a pair of keen eyes to find them.

"We was carrying a load to Charmouth and Billy tripped over the ridge," Davy explained.

"You tripped over it, not me," Billy declared.

"It were you, you dolt."

"Not

me--you."

I let the brothers argue and studied the vertebrae with growing excitement. They were longer and fatter than an ichie's. I followed the line to where the paddles would be and saw there enough evidence of long phalanges to convince me. "It's a plesiosaurus," I announced. The Days stopped arguing. "A turtle," I conceded, for they would never learn that long, strange word.

Davy and Billy looked at each other and then at me. "That be the first monster we ever found," Billy said.

"So it is," I agreed. The Days had uncovered giant ammonites, but never an ichie or plesie. "You've become fossil hunters."

In unison the Days took a step back, as if distancing themselves from my words.

"Oh no, we be quarrymen," Billy said. "We deal in stone, not monsters." He nodded at the blocks of stone awaiting their delivery to Charmouth.

I was astonished at my own luck. There was probably a whole specimen here, and the Days didn't want it! "Then I'll pay you for your time in digging it out for me, and will take it off your hands," I suggested.

"Don't know. We got the stone to deliver."

"After that, then. I can't get this out myself--as you saw, I am working on an ich--a crocodile." I wondered if I were imagining it, but it seemed that for once the Days weren't in complete agreement. Billy was more uneasy about having anything to do with the plesie. I took a chance then at guessing the matter. "Are you going to let Fanny rule what you do, then, Billy Day? Does she think a turtle or crocodile will turn round and bite you?"

Billy hung his head while Davy laughed. "You got the measure of him!" He turned to his brother. "Now, are we going to dig this out for Mary or are you going to sit with your wife while she holds your balls in her claws?"

Billy bunched up his mouth like a wad of paper. "How much you pay us?"

"A guinea," I answered promptly, feeling generous, and also hoping such a fee would stop Fanny's complaints.

"We got to take this load to Charmouth first," Davy said. That were his way of saying yes.

There were so many people upon beach now looking for fossils, especially on a sunny day like this one, that I had to get Mam to come and sit with the plesie so no one else would claim it as theirs. Summers were like that now, and it was partly my fault, for making Lyme beaches so famous. It was only in winter that the shore cleared of people, driven away by the bitter wind and rain. That was when I could go out all day and not meet another soul.

The Days worked fast, and got the plesie out in two days, about the same time I finished with my ichie. As I was just round the corner from them, I could go back and forth between the two sites and give them instructions. It weren't a bad specimen, though it had no head. Plesies seem to lose their heads easily.

We had just got both specimens back to the workshop when Mam called from her table out in the square, "Two strangers come to see you, Mary!"

"Lord help us, it's too crowded here," I muttered. I thanked the Days and sent them out to be paid by Mam, and called for the visitors to come in. What a sight met them! Two monster specimens laid out in slabs on the floor--indeed, covering so much of it the men couldn't even step inside, but hung in the doorway, their eyes wide. I felt a little jolt of lightning run through me, one I couldn't explain, and knew then that they could not be ordinary visitors.

"My apologies for the mess, gentlemen," I said, "but I've just brung in two animals and not had a chance to sort them out yet. Were there something I can help you with?" I knew I must look a sight, with Blue Lias mud all over my face and my eyes flaming red from working so hard to get the ichie out.

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 Prevost, 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. " Enchante, 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 Prevost 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 Prevost," 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 Prevost 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 Prevost 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 Prevost 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 Prevost 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 Prevost "--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?"

Monsieur Prevost glanced up from his study of the plesie with a keen look that made me think he understood more English than he spoke.

Mr Lyell smiled at me. "There is no need, Miss Anning. Baron Cuvier is fully convinced of the specimen, even without Monsieur Prevost having seen it. He has had a great deal of correspondence about the plesiosaurus with various of your champions: Reverend Buckland, Conybeare, Mr Johnson, Mr Cumberland--"

"I wouldn't call them my champions exactly," I muttered. "They like me when they need something."

"They have a great deal of respect for you, Miss Anning," Charles Lyell countered.

"Well." I was not going to argue with him about what the men thought of me. I had work to do. I begun scraping again.

Constant Prevost got to his feet, dusted off his knees and spoke to Mr Lyell.

"Monsieur Prevost would like to know if you have a buyer for the plesiosaurus," he explained. "If not, he would like to purchase it for the museum in Paris."

I dropped my blade and sat back on my heels. "For Cuvier? Monsieur Cuvier wants one of my plesies?" I looked so astonished that both men begun to laugh.

It took Mam no time to bring me down from the cloud I was floating on. "What do Frenchmen pay for curies?" she wanted to know the minute the men had left to dine at the Three Cups and she could leave the table outside. "Are they looser with their purse strings or do they want it even cheaper than an Englishman?"

"I don't know, Mam--we didn't talk figures," I lied. I would find a better time to tell her I were so taken with the Frenchman that I'd agreed to sell it to him for just ten pounds. "I don't care how much he pays," I added. "I just know Monsieur Cuvier thinks well enough of my work to want more of it. That be pay enough for me."

Mam leaned in the doorway and give me a sly look. "So you're calling the plesie yours, are you?"

I frowned, but did not answer.

"The Days found it, didn't they?" she continued, relentless as always. "They found it and dug it up, and you bought it off them the way Mr Buckland or Lord Henley or Colonel Birch bought specimens off you and called them theirs. You become a collector like them. Or a dealer, as you're selling it on."

"That's not fair, Mam. I been a hunter all my life. And I do find most of my specimens. It's not my fault the Days found one and didn't know what to do with it. If they had dug it out and cleaned it and sold it, it would be theirs. But they didn't want that, and come to me. I oversaw them and paid them for their work, but the plesie's with me now. I'm responsible for it, and so it's mine."

Mam rolled her tongue over her teeth. "You been saying you ain't had recognition by the men, who call the curies theirs once they bought 'em. Do that mean you'll tell the Frenchman to put the Days' names on the label along with yours when they display it in Paris?"

"Of course I won't. They won't list me on the label anyway. No one else ever has."

I said this to try to distract from Mam's argument, for I knew she was right.

"Maybe the difference between hunter and collector ain't so great as you been making out all these years."

"Mam! Why are you going on about such a thing when I've just had good news?

Can't you leave be?"

Mam sighed and straightened her cap as she prepared to go back out to customers at the table. "All a mother wants is for her children to settle into their lives. I seen you worried about recognition for your work these many years. But you'd be better off worrying about the pay. That's what really matters, isn't it? Curies is business."

Though I knew she meant it kindly, her words cut. Yes, I needed to be paid for what I did. But fossils were more than money to me now--they had become a kind of life, a whole stone world that I were a part of. Sometimes I even thought about my own body after my death, and it turning to stone thousands of years later. What would someone make of me if they dug me up?

But Mam were right: I had become part not just of the hunting and finding, but of the buying and the selling too, and it was no longer so clear what I did. Maybe that was the true price of my fame.

What I wanted to do more than anything was to go up Silver Street to Morley Cottage and sit at the Philpots' dining room table spread with Miss Elizabeth's fossil fish and talk to her. Bessy would bang a cup of tea in front of me and slump off, and we would watch the light change over Golden Cap. I looked up at a watercolour Miss Elizabeth had made of that view and given me not long before our argument--trees and cottages in the foreground, the hills along the coast washed in soft light as they backed into the distance. There were no people visible in the painting, but I often felt as if I were there somewhere, just out of sight, looking for curies on the shore.

The next two days I was busy with Mr Lyell and Monsieur Prevost, taking them upon beach to show them where the beasts had come from and teach them how to find other curies. Neither had the eye, though they found a few bits and pieces. Even then my luck were with me, for in front of them I found yet another ichthyosaurus. We were standing on the ledge near to the other ichie's site when I spotted a length of jaw and teeth almost under the foot of the Frenchman. With my hammer I chipped off slices of rock to expose the eye, the vertebrae and ribs. It was a good specimen, apart from a crushed tail which looked like a cart wheel run over it. I confess it were a pleasure to wield my hammer and bring the creature into sight before their eyes. "Miss Anning, you are truly a conjurer!" Mr Lyell exclaimed. Monsieur Prevost too was impressed, though he could not say so in English. I was just as happy that he could not speak, for it meant I could enjoy being in his company without having to worry about what his pretty words might mean.

The men wanted to see more, so I had to fetch the Days to dig out that ichie while I took them to the Ammonite Graveyard at Monmouth Beach, and on along to Pinhay Bay to hunt crinoids. Only once they'd left to go to Weymouth and to Portland were I finally free to return to the plesie. I would have to clean it fast, for Monsieur Prevost planned to leave for France in ten days. I would be working day and night to get it ready, but it would be worth it. That was how this trade was: for months every day would be just like the last, but for the changes in weather, with me hunting upon beach. Then along come three monsters and two strangers and suddenly I would have to stay up all hours to finish preparing a specimen.

Maybe it were because I was in the workshop all the time till the plesie was done and the men gone that I didn't find out until everyone else in Lyme already knew. It took Mam shouting at me from her perch at the table one morning to get me outside. "What, Mam?" I grumbled as I wiped my hair from my eyes, leaving clay on my forehead.

"It's Bessy," Mam said, pointing. The Philpots' maid was heading up Coombe Street. I run after her and caught up just as she was about to go into the baker's. "Bessy!"

I called.

Bessy turned, and grunted when she saw me. I had to grab her arm to keep her from ducking inside. Bessy rolled her eyes. "What you want?"

"You're back! You're--Are they--Is Miss Elizabeth all right?"

"You listen to me, Mary Anning," Bessy said, facing me fully. "You leave 'em alone, do you hear? The last person they want to see is you. Don't you come anywhere near Silver Street."

Bessy had never liked me, so it were no surprise what she was saying. I just had to work out if it were true. I tried to read her face as she spoke. She looked bothered, and nervous and angry. Nor would she look at me direct, but kept turning her head from side to side, as if hoping someone would come and save her from me.

"I'm not going to hurt you, Bessy."

"Yes, you are!" she hissed. "You stay away from us. You're not welcome at Morley Cottage. You almost killed Miss Elizabeth, you did. We thought we lost her one night at her worst, the pneumonia were that bad. She would never have got it if it hadn't been for you. And she ain't been the same since. So you just leave her alone!" Bessy pushed past me into the baker's.

I went back along Coombe Street, but when I reached Cockmoile Square I didn't go over to Mam behind her table. Instead I turned into Bridge Street, crossed the square past the Assembly Rooms and the Three Cups, and started up Broad Street. If I were going to be kept away, I would hear it direct from the Philpots rather than from Bessy.

It was market day, and the Shambles was busy, with stalls extending halfway up Broad Street. The place was thick with people; pushing through them was like trying to wade through the sea with the tide coming in. I kept going, though, for I knew I had to.

With all of the crowd, it took me a moment to spot her, marching down the hill with her quick little steps and her straight back. It was like seeing a vague shape on the horizon that when it comes closer snaps into the clear outline of a ship. At that moment I felt the bolt of lightning pass through me and stopped dead, letting the market crowd part and push round me.

Elizabeth Philpot was surrounded by people, but she herself was alone, unaccompanied by her sisters. She looked thinner, almost skeletal, the familiar mauve dress hanging from her, her bonnet framing a bony face. Her cheekbones and especially her jaw were more prominent, long and straight and hard like an ichie's. But she was walking smartly, as if she knew just where she was going, and when she got closer I could see that her grey eyes were very bright, like a light shone through them. I let out my breath, which I hadn't even noticed I was holding.

When she saw me, her face lit up like Golden Cap does when the sun touches it.

Then I begun to run, shoving people out of the way and yet hardly seeming to move at all. When I reached her I threw my arms round her and begun to cry, in front of the whole town, with Fanny Miller at a veg stall staring, and Mam come to see what had happened to me, and everyone who ever talked about me behind my back now talking about me openly, and I didn't care.

We didn't say a word, just clung to each other, both of us crying, even though Miss Elizabeth never cried. No matter all that had happened to me--finding the ichies and plesies, going with Colonel Birch to the orchard, meeting Monsieur Prevost--this was the lightning that signalled my greatest happiness, in all my life.

"I have given my sisters the slip and was just coming to find you," Miss Elizabeth said, when at last we let go. She wiped her eyes. "I am very glad to be home. I never thought I would miss Lyme so much."

"I thought the doctor said you can't live by the sea, that your lungs are too weak."

In response Miss Elizabeth took a deep breath, held it, and let it out. "What do London doctors know of sea air? London air is filthy. I am much better off here. Besides, no one can keep me away from my fish. Thank you, by the way, for the crate of fish you left for me. They are a delight. Come, let us go down to the sea. I have seen so little of it, as Margaret and Louise and Bessy won't let me out of the house. They worry over me far too much."

She begun walking down Broad Street again, and I reluctantly followed. "They'll be angry at me for letting you do this," I said. "They're already angry that I got you sick."

Miss Elizabeth snorted. "Nonsense. You didn't make me sit on a draughty landing for an evening, did you? Nor go by ship to London. Those follies I take complete responsibility for." She said it as if she weren't sorry for anything she done.

Then she told me about the meeting at the Geological Society and how Mr Buckland and Reverend Conybeare agreed to write to Cuvier, and Mr Buckland said nice things about me to all the gentlemen gathered, even though they weren't recorded in the minutes. And I told her about Monsieur Prevost and the plesiosaurus that was going to Monsieur Cuvier's collection in the Paris museum. It was wonderful to talk to her again, but underneath our words I felt anxious, for I knew I had to do something difficult. I had to say sorry.

We were strolling along the Walk when I stepped in front of her and stopped so that she could go no further. "Miss Elizabeth, I'm sorry for all the things I said," I blurted out. "For being so proud and full of myself. For making fun of your fish and your sisters.

I were awful to you and it was wrong, after all you done for me. I've been missing you these many years. And then you went off to London for me and almost died--"

"Enough." Elizabeth Philpot held up her hand. "First of all, you are to call me Elizabeth."

"I--All right. E- Elizabeth." It felt very odd not saying Miss.

Miss Elizabeth begun walking again. "And you need not apologise for my trip to London. After all, I chose to do it. And indeed, I am grateful to you. Going to London on the Unity was the finest experience of my life. It changed me for the better, and I don't regret it in the slightest."

There

was something different about her, though I could not say exactly what it was. It was as if she were more certain. If someone were sketching her they would use clear, strong lines, whereas before they might have used faint marks and more shading.

She was like a fossil that's been cleaned and set so everyone can see what it is.

"As for our disagreement, I too said things I regret," she continued. "I was jealous of you, as you said then, not just of Colonel Birch, but of your knowledge of fossils too--your ability to find them and understand what they are. I will never have such skills."

"Oh." I looked away, for it was difficult to return her bright, honest gaze. All of our walking and talking had brought us to the bottom of the Cobb. The waves were bursting over it, sending out a spray that made the seagulls wheel up into the sky.

"Do you know, I should like to see the Ammonite Graveyard," Miss Elizabeth declared. "It has been so long."

"Are you sure you can go that far, Miss Elizabeth? You mustn't tire yourself after your illness."

"Stop fussing. Margaret and Bessy fuss enough. Not Louise, though, thank heavens. And call me Elizabeth. I will keep insisting until you have learned."

So we continued, arm in arm along the beach, talking until at last we had no more to say, like a storm that blows itself out, and our eyes dropped to the ground, where the curies were waiting for us to find them.

10

Silent together

Mary Anning and I are hunting fossils on the beach, she her creatures, I my fish.

Our eyes are fastened to the sand and rocks as we make our way along the shore at different paces, first one in front, then the other. Mary stops to split open a nodule and find what may be lodged within. I dig through clay, searching for something new and miraculous. We say very little, for we do not need to. We are silent together, each in her own world, knowing the other is just at her back.

Postscript.

The reader's patience

Mary Anning's name was first published in a scientific context in France in 1825, when Georges Cuvier added it to a caption for an illustration of a plesiosaur specimen, in the third edition of his book Discours sur les revolutions de la surface du globe (Discourse on the revolutionary upheavals on the surface of the earth). She was first mentioned by name in Great Britain in a paper by William Buckland on coprolites in 1829; by then she and Buckland had worked out that bezoar stones were the faeces of ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs. She also discovered the first complete pterodactyl (now called a pterosaur) in Great Britain, and the squaloraja, a transition animal between sharks and rays, which became a type specimen.

Mary Anning never married, living with her mother until Molly's death in 1842.

They moved from Cockmoile Square to a house with a shop front on Broad Street in 1826. Mary's dog Tray was killed in a landslip in 1833; it missed Mary by a few feet.

Mary died of breast cancer in 1847 at the age of forty-seven. She is buried in the church yard of St Michael's, which she joined later in life. Her ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs are on display at the Natural History Museum in London, and the headless plesiosaur Cuvier bought from her is on display in the Palaeontology Gallery of the Musee National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris.

In 1834 the Swiss scientist Louis Agassiz came to Lyme and studied Elizabeth Philpot's fossil fish collection. He thanked both Elizabeth and Mary Anning in his book Recherches sur les poissons fossils (Research on Fossil Fish) and named fish species after both of them. Elizabeth outlived both Mary Anning and her sisters, dying in 1857 at the age of seventy-eight. Her nephew John inherited her estate, and in 1880 his wife donated the Philpot fossil collection to the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, where there are still drawers full of her superb specimens. Elizabeth's great nephew Thomas later established the Philpot Museum in Lyme Regis. Rather fittingly, the museum is now housed in a handsome building on the site of the Annings' house in Cockmoile Square, where amongst many treasures concerning the town's history you can see on display the fossil hammer Mary's father made for her.

Joseph Anning became a full-time upholsterer in 1825, married in 1829, and had three children. Apparently Mary Anning did not get on with his wife. Joseph managed to achieve the respectable life he craved, overseeing parish relief and becoming a church warden.

Colonel Thomas James Birch became Thomas James Bosvile in 1824, when he inherited the title and the family estate in Yorkshire. He died in 1829.

William Buckland did find a woman to marry him, in 1825--she was sitting opposite him in a coach and reading a volume of Cuvier. He continued to eat his way through the animal kingdom, and to try to reconcile geology with his religious beliefs. He later became Dean of Westminster School, but towards the end of his life he suffered from mental illness and had to be placed in an asylum.

Between 1830 and 1833 Charles Lyell published Principles of Geology, which became the seminal text on modern geology; Charles Darwin took it with him on his famous voyage on the Beagle.

Jane Austen visited Lyme in September 1804, and there is no reason why she and Margaret Philpot could not have been in the Assembly Rooms at the same time. Indeed, she did meet Richard Anning, for she went to his shop to have him give her a quote on fixing the broken lid of a chest. According to a letter she wrote to her sister, he charged far too much, and she took her business elsewhere.

Remarkable Creatures is a work of fiction, but many of the people existed, and events such as Colonel Birch's auction and the Geological Society meeting where Conybeare talked about the plesiosaur did take place. And Mary did indeed write at the bottom of a scientific paper she had copied out: "When I write a paper there shall not be but one preface." Sadly she never did write her own scientific paper.

Twenty-first-century attitudes towards time and our expectations of story are very different from the shape of Mary Anning's life. She spent day after day, year after year, doing the same thing on the beach. I have taken the events of her life and condensed them to fit into a narrative that is not stretched beyond the reader's patience. Hence events, while in order, do not always coincide exactly with actual dates and time spans. Plus, of course, I made up plenty. For instance, while there was gossip about Mary and Buckland and Mary and Birch, there was no proof. That is where only a novelist can step in.

I would like to thank the following: the staff of the libraries at the Geological Society and the Natural History Museum, London; the staff of the Lyme Regis Philpot Museum, the Dorset County Museum and the Dorset History Centre in Dorchester; the Dinosaur Museum, Dorchester, where I first learned of Mary Anning; Philippe Taquet of the Musee National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris; Paul Jeffery at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History; Maureen Stollery for her help with Philpot genealogy; Alexandria Lawrence; Jonny Geller; Deborah Schneider; Susan Watt; Carole DeSanti; and Jonathan Drori.

Most of all, I would like to thank three people: Hugh Torrens, who knows more about Mary Anning than anyone and has been very cordial to me. Jo Draper, who is a saint, opening up the files at the Philpot Museum and sending me bits and pieces of information about everything, and who wears her erudition lightly and with great humour. Finally, Paddy Howe, fossil hunter extraordinaire, who gave me many fossils and took me to the beach between Lyme and Charmouth to find more, teaching me with patience, intelligence, and grace.

Further Reading

Deborah

Cadbury,

The Dinosaur Hunters: A True Story of scientific Rivalry and the Discovery of the Prehistoric World, 2000 (UK); as Terrible Lizard: The First Dinosaur Hunters and the Birth of a New Science, 2001 (US) William Conybeare and Henry De La Beche, papers on the ichthyosaur and plesiosaur for the Geological Society, 1821, 1822, 1824, reprinted in The Dinosaur Papers, 1676-1906, edited by David B. Weishampel and Nadine M. White, 2004

Jo

Draper,

Mary Anning's Town: Lyme Regis, 2004

John

Fowles,

A Short History of Lyme Regis, 1991

Charles

C.

Gillispie,

Genesis and Geology: A Study in the Relations of scientific Thought, Natural Theology, and Social Opinion in Great Britain, 1790-1850, 1951

S.R. Howe, T. Sharpe and H.S. Torrens, Ichthyosaurs: A History of Fossil "Sea-Dragons" , 1981

W.D. Lang, various papers on Mary Anning in the Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1936-1963

Christopher

McGowan,

The Dragon Seekers: The Discovery of Dinosaurs During the Prelude to Darwin, 2001

Judith Pascoe, chapter on Mary Anning in The Hummingbird Cabinet: A Rare and Curious History of Romantic Collectors, 2005

Patricia

Pierce,

Jurassic Mary: Mary Anning and the Primeval Monsters, 2006

George

Roberts,

Roberts' History of Lyme Regis and Charmouth, 1834

Martin

J.S.

Rudwick,

Bursting the Limits of Time: The Reconstruction of

Geohistory in the Age of Revolution, 2005; and Worlds Before Adam: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Reform, 2008

Philippe Taquet, "Quand les Reptiles marins anglais traversaient la Manche: Mary Anning et Georges Cuvier, deux acteurs de la decouverte et de l'etude des Ichthyosaures et des Plesiosaures," in Annales de Paleontologie 89 (2003): 37-64

Crispin

Tickell,

Mary Anning of Lyme Regis, 1996

Hugh Torrens, "Mary Anning (1799-1847) of Lyme; 'the greatest fossilist the world ever knew'," in British Journal for the History of Science 28 (1995): 257-84

ALSO BY TRACY CHEVALIER

The Virgin Blue

Girl with a Pearl Earring

Falling Angels

The Lady and the Unicorn

Burning Bright

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