The Dragon in the Cliff Read online

  My heart leapt. Next time! He said I could come next time! I couldn’t contain my happiness and raced ahead, scaring the sanderlings, who rose up with a shrill cry as I drew near. The sun broke through the morning fog, turning the sky a light blue, which the sea reflected in deeper shades. As if a curtain had been lifted, we could see the patchwork of green fields, edged with dark green hedgerows that stretch up the hills above the rocky cliffs. To the west, the thatched and slate-roofed buildings of Lyme climbed up the sides of the steep valley from the bay and spread out across the hilltops.

  That night, lying in bed beside Ann, I was too excited to sleep. I was going to find that giant creature whose verteberries I found in the slide. How proud Papa would be. Everyone would come from miles around to see it. Seeing how good a curiosity hunter I was, Mama would let me go to the beach any time I wanted to. In the midst of these thoughts, I heard my name in the whispered conversation that Mama and Papa were having in their bed across the room.

  “Richard, you’re fooling yourself if you think you put an end to Mary’s pestering about the curiosities. Did you see how excited she was when she came in? Couldn’t wait to show me what she had found. Ran upstairs with all that mud still on her. It was foolish to let her go. Now there will be no end to this curiosity business with her.”

  “Ah, there’s no harm in it, Molly,” Papa replied.

  And if anything ever really has a single beginning or a single cause, that was the beginning of my fossil hunting and the different turn my life has taken.

  CHAPEL SCHOOL

  Lizzie Adams, whom I used to consider my closest friend, now does not approve of me. She says I think that I am better than everyone in Lyme, that the fossils and my fame have made me proud and unyielding. She is by no means the only one of the people in this town who feels this way. From the beginning, there have been those who disapproved of my fossil hunting, who believed that it was not a proper pursuit for someone of my sex.

  I had gone collecting with Papa only a few times before the Reverend Gleed’s wife, a very large woman with powdery skin, a fleshy nose, and colorless, thin hair, called on Mama.

  Mrs. Gleed came from Taunton to Lyme with her husband, the leader of the Dissenting congregation to which we and many other artisans’ families in Lyme belong. Taunton being bigger and more prosperous than Lyme, which has fallen on hard times, Mrs. Gleed considered it her duty to enlighten us poor, backward souls. Hearing her in the hall downstairs, Mama, who was preparing dinner, quickly wiped her hands on her apron—which was none too clean—looked at her image in the glass, and straightened the cap on her honey-colored curls, all the while directing me. “Clear away the table. It is unsightly. Hurry, Mary.… Oh, John is crying. Pick him up and quiet him, please. Where is Ann? Is she into any mischief? Mrs. Gleed will be thirsty, she’ll want some cider.”

  Mama took John from my arms, and before I could finish clearing the table, Mrs. Gleed was standing in the middle of the room. “Mrs. Gleed, how nice of you to call,” Mama said pleasantly, greeting the reverend’s wife, who was winded from climbing the stairs.

  Mama offered her a chair, and Mrs. Gleed dropped into it with a sigh of relief. “My, my,” she said, shaking her head, “What a climb.”

  Mama gave me a look, reminding me of the cider. On the way down the stairs to the scullery I heard Mrs. Gleed say, “Mrs. Anning, I don’t know how you and Mr. Anning manage those stairs, they’re so steep. I would call more often if it did not mean climbing up here to your little room.”

  I heard Mama laugh nervously. Her discomfort made me realize for the first time that to some people our living arrangements, which are much the same as everyone else’s that we know—a small scullery behind the shop, a large room above the shop, and another small room under the eaves for sleeping—are poor.

  I opened the door to the scullery, filled a glass with cider from the jug, and brought it back upstairs, placing it on the table in front of Mrs. Gleed. She emptied the glass, wiped her lips with her handkerchief, and turned to ask me, “How old are you, Mary?”

  “I am seven, ma’am,” I answered with a curtsy.

  “Old enough to attend school so that she can learn to read and write,” Mrs. Gleed said to Mama.

  “I already know how to read,” I told her proudly. But I was speaking out of turn, and Mrs. Gleed paid no attention to me.

  “I’ve been teaching her myself,” Mama said.

  “School attendance is daily. She will make more progress there.”

  “She is doing well here, Mrs. Gleed,” Mama said quietly, holding firmly onto John, who was struggling to get out of her arms. “I’ve begun to teach her to make lace. She has a deft hand and learns quickly. She helps me with the little ones so that I can do my work.”

  I took John from her arms and put him on the floor where he could practice walking and I could watch him without being sent away.

  “That may be, Mrs. Anning,” Mrs. Gleed said, “but what I hear from others is that the child goes down to the beach to collect curiosities. It is even said that she sometimes goes there by herself.”

  Red blotches appeared on Mama’s cheeks. “She does not go to the beach alone, only with Mr. Anning and her brother Joseph. And that is because she cries and begs until we let her go. She loves her brother and wishes to do whatever he does.”

  “Her will must be broken,” Mrs. Gleed insisted. “And the school will do it if you are too fond to do it yourself. Spoiled children are ripe for the devil’s harvesting.”

  Mama sighed, “I suppose you are right, Mrs. Gleed.” She looked down at her hands. “It seemed no harm. She is but little still and she so wants to go.…” She stopped for a moment. Then in a low voice as if speaking to herself, she said, “Sometimes it seems a pity that she is a girl, she is so quick.”

  Mrs. Gleed’s face did not soften. Rising from her chair, she replied, “Mrs. Harris will take care of that. She will teach her what is proper.” At the door Mama said, “I must speak to Mr. Anning about it.”

  “If you explain it to him, Mr. Anning will see that it is for the girl’s own good,” Mrs. Gleed replied.

  When Mama told Papa that people did not think it right that I went to the beach to hunt for curiosities, he replied scornfully, “There are always people who think they know how others should live, people who would hold everyone to their own narrow, ignorant ideas of what is proper. Let me see them live their own lives as they should, and then I will follow their good advice. The child is under my roof, and it is my duty to raise her as I think best. I see no harm in her gathering curiosities on the beach.”

  Mama met his icy blue glare with her own gentle gaze. “But the child must live among these people, Richard, and they talk and condemn her for it.”

  “Who are these people you speak of?” Papa asked angrily. “Ignorant old gossips who know nothing of science, care nothing for knowledge, and foolish young ones who follow them. Certainly Miss Philpot does not say anything against curiosity hunting, and she is respectable. I have seen her on the beach myself. I have even seen some of the London ladies venture out to hunt for curiosities.”

  “But Mary is not the daughter of a wealthy London merchant as is Miss Philpot, nor is she a London lady,” Mama countered. “She is a cabinetmaker’s daughter who lives here among people who disapprove.”

  The result of this discussion was a compromise: I was allowed to go curiosity hunting, but I was also enrolled in the chapel school, where Joseph was already a pupil in the boys’ class. There, in that low building behind the chapel, I spent my days in a small, noisy room filled with girls, learning to read the Holy Scriptures, to write, sum, embroider, and knit. School was daily, except Sunday, when we went to chapel in the morning and again in the afternoon. The result was that only rarely did we have a chance to go the beach with Papa.

  I went to school for almost three years, during which time every effort was made to break my will, as Mrs. Gleed predicted. I remember one such incident with pain to this day.<
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  It happened soon after I started school. There was a storm that lasted for several days, soaking the town and the surrounding cliffs with rain and lashing the beach with ferocious tides. Except for our forays to school, where we arrived wet through to the skin, Joseph and I stayed at home. We grew increasingly irritable with each other as one rainy day followed another. The rain finally came to a stop on a Sunday, and though it is customary to do little that day but go to chapel and read the Bible, Papa, Joseph, and I were eager to get out of doors. “To stretch our legs,” Papa said to Mama. “We’ll return in time for the Reverend Gleed’s sermon.”

  Being the Lord’s day, we were not going to hunt for curiosities. We just wanted to see if there were any new slides. In our search for a slide, we wandered far to the other side of Black Ven and did not hear the bells for afternoon services. We did not realize how late it had become until we met Mr. Clerkenwell coming home from chapel. He saw us but, turning away, did not acknowledge our greeting.

  “Mama will be angry,” Joseph said.

  Papa and I knew that he was right, and we also knew that there was nothing we could say to excuse ourselves. Missing chapel was an unpardonable sin for which we were certain to be punished. The first punishment came from Mama. We were not greeted when we arrived, nor did Mama ask us what we had seen. We washed up in silence. No one but Ann and John spoke, and even they soon grew silent.

  Joseph and I read our Bible lesson aloud under Mama’s disapproving gaze. The lesson was one I love, the first chapter of the Book of Genesis telling how in the beginning the earth was without form and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God separated the light from the darkness and the light became day and the darkness night. On the second day God created heaven; on the third earth and the seas and all the plants of the earth; on the fourth day the sun to rule the day and the moon and stars to rule the night. On the fifth day God created the great sea monsters and all the creatures of the sea and the winged birds; and on the sixth day he created man.

  I had heard this passage any number of times, but listening to Joseph read this time, my mind wandered to the curiosities. If the curiosities were once living creatures, as Papa said they were, then they must have been created by God. Most of the curiosities we found were like creatures that live in the sea. Were they the creatures that God made on the fifth day? How did they turn to stone? And how did they get from the sea into the cliffs? I wanted to ask someone these questions, but I knew not to ask Mama. She would have been shocked by such thoughts and would have given me a slap if I had dared to utter a word about them.

  Instead it was she who was asking me questions. “What did God do on the seventh day?”

  I stood and recited: “God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on that day God rested from the work of creation.”

  “And what are we, his children, to do on the Sabbath day?” Mama asked Joseph pointedly.

  “On the seventh day we are to rest from our labors and worship God and his creations,” Joseph mumbled.

  Mama turned to me. “Why?”

  “Because it is God’s commandment. And those who disobey his commandments are punished,” I replied.

  She nodded, satisfied that we had learned our lesson. She closed the Bible, but she did not relent in her punishment. We ate our bread in silence, and then went to bed without as much as a good night.

  The second punishment came the next day. Knowing full well that I had yet to face Mrs. Harris’s wrath, I took my time getting to school, going there in a roundabout fashion to avoid meeting the other children from our quarter of town, and slipped into my seat between Emma Cruikshanks and Lizzie Adams only seconds before we were called to order.

  “Where were you yesterday afternoon?” Emma wanted to know. “You’re going to catch it from her.” Emma was always saying things like that with a certain amount of delight. She, of course, never did anything wrong herself.

  When I told her that we were walking on the beach and didn’t hear the church bells ring, her round blue eyes widened until they positively bulged. She shook her head and said, “Missing chapel and walking on the beach on the Sabbath! Mary, you’ll get at least seven for that. She gave Ann Beer six for less.”

  Seeing my terror, Lizzie Adams tried to soothe me. “If you explain, maybe she won’t. You did mean to come to chapel, you just didn’t come in time,” she whispered as Mrs. Harris entered. We all scrambled to our feet and stood stiffly at attention as she marched to the table that served as her desk. “Good morning, girls,” she said in her singsong voice.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Harris,” we chorused.

  “’Tis payday,” Mrs. Harris announced, opening the roll book on the table before her. She smoothed the pages with her fat white hand. “Adams,” she called.

  The penny stuck to my palm as I watched Lizzie Adams stride to the front of the room to pay for school. I prayed over and over to myself—Dear Lord, please let her get it over with quickly and I promise that I will never miss chapel again—knowing that my prayer would not be answered and that it did not deserve to be.

  Susanne Allen’s name was called. She hurried to the front of the room, bent over and whispered something in Mrs. Harris’s ear, and scurried back to her seat.

  “She doesn’t have a penny,” Emma whispered. “Mrs. Clerkenwell says the Aliens are to be turned out of their lodgings because they can’t pay the landlord. They have applied to the parish for aid.” Though normally I would have looked upon Susanne’s position with a mixture of pity, fear, and horror, I was too afraid myself right then to give Susanne much thought.

  “Anning,” Mrs. Harris called.

  I could feel everyone’s eyes on me as I made my way to the front of the room. Avoiding meeting Mrs. Harris’s eyes, I dropped my penny on her table and turned to go back to my place on the bench.

  “I haven’t finished with you, Mary,” Mrs. Harris stopped me. “Please tell us why you did not attend chapel yesterday afternoon.”

  For a second I considered lying, telling her that I was not feeling well, but I knew that I would be quickly found out if I did, and then I would be in even more trouble. “I was out walking on the beach with my brother and father—” I was cut off by a titter of laughter.

  Mrs. Harris’s eyes imperiously swept around the classroom, silencing everyone. “Your father will have to answer his own conscience and will suffer God’s judgment for his sin. But you followed him and you will have to answer for that, Mary.”

  “We meant to come, but we didn’t hear the bells,” I tried to explain.

  “You didn’t hear the bells,” Mrs. Harris repeated, her voice growing louder with each word, her sagging cheeks quivering.

  “No, Mrs. Harris,” I answered.

  Mrs. Harris pulled herself to her feet and leaned over the table toward me. “You went out on the beach on Sunday to look for curiosities.”

  “We didn’t look for curiosities. We were taking a walk.”

  “You are telling a falsehood. You have broken the Lord’s own commandment: On the seventh day you shall rest.”

  I tried to explain, but Mrs. Harris cut me off with an order to Emma to fetch the cane. Emma was, as usual, only too happy to be of use. I looked around the room. My eyes met Caroline Gleed’s. She stared back at me coldly. Jane Lovett smiled. Lizzie’s eyes were cast down.

  “Hold your hands out and look at me,” Mrs. Harris ordered. “Now repeat: I have offended the Lord by laboring on Sunday and shall be chastised,” she said, bringing the stick down on my knuckles.

  I drew back in pain.

  “Don’t move!” Mrs. Harris ordered. “Now again.”

  “I have offended the Lord by laboring on Sunday and shall be chastised,” I repeated as the stick came down on the back of my hands again, again, again, again, and again, ten times in all.

  “Any more absences from chapel and you will no longer be welcome here,” Mrs. Harris said, dismissing m
e. Dazed with pain, I continued to stand there, holding my bleeding hands out in front of me. Lizzie whispered loudly, “Mary, put cold water on your hands.” I turned and went to the cloakroom where there was a pail of water. I poured a little on my handkerchief and used it to wipe the blood off my hands. They stung as I touched them, and the pain brought tears to my eyes. I wrapped the handkerchief around one hand and then put both my hands under my arms and went back to my seat. Everyone except Lizzie turned their eyes away and drew their legs in to avoid me as I passed. She passed her handkerchief to me without a word, and I wrapped it around my other hand.

  No doubt Mama noticed the swollen red welts and cuts on my hands at dinner that noon. Perhaps she thought it right that Mrs. Harris punished me for missing chapel. She didn’t say a word about it and neither did I. The only one who mentioned it was Joseph. “I see that you got it, too,” he said as we were walking back to school after dinner.

  “Did you?” I asked.

  He nodded and pointed to his backside. “Promise not to tell Papa. It’ll upset him that we were punished because of him.” I promised not to tell, although I would not have minded at all if Papa became angry and took us out of school.

  That afternoon when Mrs. Harris was listening to the beginning readers, and I was sitting off to one side doing my sums on a slate, Jane Lovett came up to me. She bent over, bringing her face close to mine, and stared into my eyes without saying a word. I flinched. She moved closer so that our noses almost touched, and I could see the golden flecks in the blue-green irises of her cold, angry eyes and the white tips of her dark eyelashes. I looked away, but she grabbed my chin and turned my face back to hers and held me there in a viselike grip. My throat tightened. I could not breathe, but I did not know what to do. Then as suddenly as she had come, she turned and walked off. She came up to me the next morning as I was writing my spelling words on my slate. This time she held her stare for what seemed like forever. When I tried to turn away, she gripped my arm tightly and turned so I was still facing her. Tears came to my eyes. Her eyes glinted with satisfaction when she saw this. She let go and walked off.