'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.
