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. '
'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
