Did the stranger pull her skirts aside ever so slightly as I left?
“Who cares, eh, Tray?” I whispered, bending down to stroke his head.
So I see things other folk don’t – I see the bones I find - I don’t conjure them! Do they think I’m out in the dark clambering about the cliffs and along the shore putting the beasts into the rocks? My beautiful monsters – do they think they’re all witchcraft and magic? This is the nineteenth century, for pity’s sake!
Don’t think about it, I tell myself so many times a day. Don’t think about the illness at home, or the worry about the rent, or even where the penny for the laudanum is supposed to come from. These are thoughts to be pushed behind doors in my mind, especially with the shore calling.
I ran indoors, put the bottle within reach and then we were off! We left behind the town and the watchers and the stale, sad smell of the sick room. The shore stretched away and there was no one judging me here so I let my bonnet hang by its strings down my back – the wind could do what it liked with my hair. I hitched up my skirts and jumped from stone to shingle to sand to stone in my tackety boots, hunting along the low tide line. Tray rushed ahead and then back to me a dozen times a minute, his ears flapping like sails in the wind and a smile of pure delight all over his dear face.
If I’d found nothing at all it would still have been a joy just to be there, but the storm had left gifts for me beyond the salt tang in the air and the clean spray against my face. I spotted a stone of just the right shape – I cradled it in my hand and tapped it with my hammer, so that it split perfectly to reveal the fossil of an ammonite.
I’d found bigger specimens before, but this one was so beautifully complete. Not very long ago, people still believed they were serpent stones – coiled snakes petrified by some saint or other. They used to carve snake heads on to them to up the price.
“You’re a beauty,” I told the ammonite. “You’ll fetch a pretty penny just as you are.” Which made me think about all the pennies’ worth of debt on Mr Lloyd’s slate. No! I won’t think about that. Not here. Not now.
I was vaguely aware of Tray barking and a flock of gulls taking off, sending flying shadows across the shore. I took a few more taps at the ammonite with my hammer but then decided to stow it in my basket instead. It was a job to do carefully, at home.
The rumble took me by surprise.
Stupidly, I looked out to sea, thinking there must be some sudden, savage wave smashing into the shore. I stared, reaching my hand down to Tray to grab him by the scruff in case we needed to make a run for it…
He wasn’t there. He wasn’t there! The rumble was behind me, from landward, and now it was a roar. I spun round as the beach ruckled itself under my feet and the scattered pools shivered – and then I saw it. A river of rock, sliding down the side of the cliff and across the flat surface of the shore on its way to the sea and, just ahead of its leading edge, streaking towards me in a blur of black and white fur, was my Tray.
Save yourself, Mary! something screamed in my head, but my legs would not bend.
“Tray… Tray!” And then he was in my arms and I staggered back into the white foam at the edge of the water. I squeezed my eyes tight shut. For a long moment I don’t think either of us breathed – until a wave came crashing in, drenching my legs in icy water, and I opened my eyes with a yelp.
The slide had stopped, just at the sea’s edge. The scree had pooled almost at my feet. And a whole new segment of cliff face was visible.
Of course the sensible thing to do then would have been to splash through the shallows, back towards the town, carefully skirting the debris for fear of starting another slide. I considered doing just that. But the raw new limestone surface drew me like a moth to a candle.
“Always best after storms,” I murmured, setting Tray down. “Gently does it.”
We crept forward, slithering a little where the scree was still loose. It was all I could do to stop staring at the cliff face and pay attention to where I was putting my feet. How long had that rock been hidden from the sky? That rock and all it contained…
Closer and closer, trying not to stumble, the danger growing greater with every step. A sudden gust of wind or a gull landing at the top of the cliff could bring it all down on our heads. This is mad, Mary – you should stop now – you should go back, quiet as a mouse… You really should –
And there it was. Looking at me out of the stone, its unblinking eye fixed on me, as if in astonishment.
“What – have you never seen a girl before?” I asked it. “I thought dragons ate girls!”
Not that I thought for a moment this was a dragon. It was something much more exciting than that.
Tray whined and I stroked his soft ears. In all honesty, I was calming myself as much as I was calming him. I had to be sure it wasn’t just my eyes playing tricks on me. Not just wishful thinking.
“Gently does it, lad. Gently does it. Nothing to worry about.” I looked into Tray’s loving eyes, drew his silken ears through my fingers one more time and straightened up.
The great skull was clearly visible, poking out of the limestone. And, as I had hoped, I could see where there was more.
Take a breath, Mary, I told myself. Take a breath…
I could see where the entire body of the creature stretched out beneath a thin layer of stone – spine, limbs, tail – each bone was there to be brought clear of the encasing rock and into the light. Carefully, though. Oh so carefully. I could see it even before I’d hit a single blow with my hammer – the shape in the rock, like a body under a sheet. Something from the deep time, long ago, when this great beast and the others like him were as common as cart horses and cows are today.
I gathered Tray up and hugged his warm little squirmy body tight in my arms and let him lick my face. “We’ve found a beautiful monster. That’s right, my boy. We found him.”
And I knew, however many other finds there would be – and there would be, of course, because I was the girl who saw things other folk didn’t – that this was a moment I’d remember for the rest of my life.
“Nearly morning,” said Mrs Lark. “Storm’s blowing itself out.”
“Time for more medicine, do you think?” asked Peggy, but Mrs Lark shook her head.
“Leave it. She seems to have moved beyond the pain now.”
The wind rattled the shutters a little but otherwise the room was very still.
“It’s so unfair,” said Peggy.
“What – dying? Comes to all of us, girl.”
“No, not that. It’s what the local ladies were talking about in the shop, when I went down there yesterday – Mary Anning should be famous, by rights, they were saying, but those gentlemen scientists took advantage of her and never gave her credit. Did you know she was the one who found all those bones in the rocks and worked out what animals they were? They were from ever so long ago, Mrs Lark – from even longer ago than Adam and Eve. But because she was only a woman and, well, common, the scientists and the collectors all acted as if she didn’t do anything. Those rich old men with their big beards, making it seem they were the only ones. It’s just not fair.”
“I think she’s maybe moved beyond that now, too,” murmured Mrs Lark but Peggy didn’t reply, for at that moment Mary Anning opened her eyes. They were calm and clear. She reached out her paper-thin hand and put it on Peggy’s sleeve.
“Gently does it,” Mary whispered. “Nothing to worry about. It’s always best after a storm.”
She smiled, and for one bright moment, Peggy thought she’d never seen anyone look so happy before.
“It’s over,” said Mrs Lark. She drew the sheet up to cover Mary Anning’s face. Then there was nothing but the shape of her bones to be seen. It was all that remained of the life that was gone.
But, somehow, Peggy could not be sad.
Why I Chose Mary Anning
For many years, I’ve been crazy about dinosaurs and ‘the dinosaur woman’, Mary Anning. I even dedicated th
e first of my Victorian detective books to her as an unsung nineteenth-century heroine. It is such a thrill to find even the smallest, most bashed-about fossil from all those millions of years ago, yet Mary Anning discovered complete skeletons of huge ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs and pterodactyls. At the other end of the size scale, she was also one of the first people to realise that coprolites aren’t ancient fir cones, but fossilised poo. She received little recognition in her own time, but is now called the Mother of Palaeontology (the study of prehistoric life).
JOAN LENNON
Mary Anning Facts
Mary Anning was born in 1799 and died in 1847. During her lifetime there was a great upsurge of interest in fossils and ideas about dinosaurs and prehistory. Most of the scientists of the day were wealthy men who had the time and the cash to build private collections of whatever they fancied. They bought the fossils that Mary and her family found in the rocks round Lyme Regis – an area now known as the Jurassic Coast. It was not until long after her death that she began to receive the recognition she deserved as a one of the first great finders and identifiers of prehistoric creatures.
The Lad
That Stands Before You
A story about Mary Seacole
(1805–81)
BY CATHERINE JOHNSON
JUNE 1855, THE CRIMEA
“SIMMS!” CAPTAIN MILLER SHOUTED, so loud I reckoned the Russians in the trench opposite could have heard it. He shouted again but I took no notice. It wasn’t my name and I had two pairs of his boots to polish before noon. The sun was out and the guns were quiet. There were even some odd little brown birds, like foreign larks, flying up into the sky and singing.
“Damn and blast!” The captain stared at me. “Who the hell are you?”
“Bayliss, sir,” I said. “Private Harry Bayliss.”
Captain Miller frowned. “Where’s that weasel Simms when I need him?”
“Don’t know, sir,” I said.
It was a lie. Simms had promised me a bottle of ginger beer from the British Hotel if I did the captain’s boots for him. But Simms had been gone hours now. My stomach somersaulted between hope and anger. Hope that Simms was all right and not blasted by the Russians into kingdom come, and anger that he might just be drinking that ginger beer with blue-eyed Sally and forgetting he’d left me, the best friend he’d ever had, to do his chores as well as my own.
A sudden whistle and an ear splitting explosion rocked the trench. Me and the captain ducked. The ground shook and a rain of dust and earth fell down on our heads.
“Damn those Russians!”
The captain stood up slowly, shaking the dust from his cap, and I did the same. I saw him looking at something, staring hard, far away from the shell hole and up towards the battlefield.
“What in heaven’s name?” He swore.
I looked where he was looking, and through the smoke I saw a yellow-clad figure, red ribbons flying off a huge straw bonnet, leading a pony – or a mule perhaps. If I hadn’t known who she was I would have thought I was dreaming.
“Mrs Seacole.” Captain Miller swore again. “The woman is clearly mad! Has she no brain? No fear? Perhaps Negro women like her have neither. We mean to capture the town of Sevastopol in days. She will get herself killed.”
I watched as Mother Seacole bent down over the red-coated cavalryman. I wanted to say that me and Simms and every other soldier of the 47th Regiment thought she was lucky. A human charm. Last winter, on the coldest nights, I spent every last penny on her pepperpot stew.
A soldier’s life without Mother Seacole’s British Hotel, I thought, would be seven steps closer to hell.
There was more firing, the French and the Turks returning the Russians’ bullets.
Captain Miller yelled for Simms one last time and when no one came, held out a despatch to me.
“You’ll have to do,” he said. “Take this message to the Redan, to Captain Farrer, and wait for his reply. On the double, boy!”
I looked at him. “The Redan, sir?”
The fort was one of the Russians’ most heavily fortified positions outside the city of Sevastopol. We – our soldiers that is – had been here a year. Waiting to attack the Redan. The order would come any day now. We all felt it.
“Idiot boy. I do not expect you to drop my letter into the czar’s lap. This is for Captain Farrer with the advance party.” Miller scowled. “Hurry, damn you!”
I ran. Across the ruined land and into the trench that would take me most of the way. Another shell exploded to my left. It knocked me sideways, like a rag doll. I got up, my ears ringing, stumbling like a punch-drunk prize-fighter, my feet slipping and sliding on the dry, sunburnt, battle-scarred earth. One foot in front of the other. Trying not to look at the body flung across my path, arms out as if he’d hug me, colourful shining innards spilling out across his middle like a pedlar’s ribbon tray spilt across my path. I had seen so much death I barely slowed.
Until six months ago the only folk I’d seen dead were family. Father, Jeannie, our Tom, and before last Christmas past, Mam. But when they died they were all whole, not blasted apart or shot to pieces.
Before Mam passed over I worked in the mill with everyone else on our street, but afterwards there seemed no point. I couldn’t stand it there any more without Mam – the noise of the looms and the shuttles, the warm damp fug of the weaving room, the air thicker than porridge – so I went to join up. I took our Tom’s Sunday coat, which he’d left hanging on the back of the door, and Mother’s ring, which I sold for a pair of good boots, then signed my name, joined the 47th Regiment and promised to fight for queen and country. Everyone knew there was a war on. I thought: Why die here in the damp when I could see the world?
The recruiting officer believed I was a small fourteen, not a large twelve, and took me on to bang the drum. I banged it from Manchester to London and on through the Middle Sea, past cities that looked as if they had floated in from my dreams – Malta, Venice, Constantinople – till I fetched up here on the Crimean Peninsular. I’d never heard of it in all my life, nor any of the other places with strange names – Sevastopol, Kadikoi and the Black Sea, which isn’t black at all. And there were soldiers from all over – more places I’d never heard of. Algeria and Sardinia to name just two. Along with us and the French and the Turks, it was like the world all squeezed up into one place.
I had decided I’d rather this than the mill and the churchyard any day of the week.
I ran on past the dead man. Up ahead there was more noise, the repeat of guns, and I crept as close to the edge of the trench as I could. I blinked the dust out of my eyes. And then grinned for exactly three seconds, until I understood exactly what I was seeing.
It was Simms, my best friend, John Simms of the 47th, hurtling round the corner of the trench. Then I froze, because his eyes were wild, his mouth was wide open and in his arms he held a shell – a Russian one, going by the casing. I saw him hurl that thing up and away with every ounce of his might and then I dropped and kissed the earth. Another blast, this time so loud I thought my head had exploded and the sound of a thousand weaving looms and flying shuttles had burst into furious life inside my head.
When I woke up I could not move. I was in a bed with sheets. Real sheets. Perhaps I was dead and this was heaven and I would see Mam again. But there was pain. And I knew from Sunday school was that there would be no pain in heaven. It was my left side, I was sore all along and down to my left leg and my left foot burned as if I had walked barefoot all the way from Manchester to Constantinople. I opened my eyes and was certain this was not heaven, as I found myself in a kind of cupboard made of corrugated iron. My bed was a rough wooden thing shoved up against jars and tins of preserved vegetables and bottles of ginger beer. I smiled. I’d never seen so much food – wait till I told Simms.
I was thinking whether one bottle might not be missed when the door opened and two people came in. A man and a woman.
“Harry Bayliss?” said the man – he had to be a doctor ?
?? and by his side, in the same canary yellow dress I’d seen on the battlefield, Mother Seacole.
I tried to sit up.
“There, there,” Mother Seacole said and smiled. She was a foot smaller than the doctor, and her brown skin was the selfsame colour as my mam’s kitchen table. Her eyes were dark and friendly, and I found myself smiling back at her.
“How is he, Mrs S?” The doctor spoke again.
“Coming along, Doctor.”
“Good, good,” the doctor said. “Well, Mrs Seacole, it has been good of you to put the patient up, but by the look of him he’ll be well enough to come back with me to Miss Nightingale’s hospital at Scutari.”
Mother Seacole made a face. “We need to keep him a while longer,” she said.
“Mother Seacole…” I tried to sit up. “When you found me, was there a Simms there too? John Simms? Was he hurt?” I looked at Mrs Seacole, crossed my fingers and prayed to God he was alive.
“Hush now,” Mother Seacole laid one hand upon my forehead. “There’s a fever here,” she said. “Sally…! Sally! Fetch a cooling poultice and some of my herbal tea.” She turned to the doctor. “My patient is not going anywhere till that fever’s truly gone.”
I thought how jealous Simms would be, the blue-eyed Sally bringing me tea. So long as he wasn’t dead. If only he would not be dead.
The doctor leaned close, he smelt of whisky. He looked at Mother Seacole. “Can we see the stump? If there is no suppuration the fever will be of no importance.”
I saw Mother Seacole give the doctor a reproving look and for some seconds I had no idea why. Then it trickled into my brain. The word stump. The pain in my foot. I sat up and looked down at my legs and let loose a thousand of the choicest, crudest curses known to man, burning the air bluer than a Black Sea summer sky.