'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
'Not in London, but when we went to Birmingham from Oxford, we stopped
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.'
