Chapter 20
Chapter
Henry leaned over, his breath warm on my ear. I glared, and he stepped back, putting the appropriate distance between us.
“Would you like to see the saber-tooth?”
Even if it was, lamentably, Henry’s property, that wasn’t the kind of invitation a fossilist ever turned down.
I started to follow, already eager. Henry had authored a paper about his saber-tooth tiger a few years ago, which I’d read, but since they were an exclusively terrestrial species, I had never had the chance to see a skeleton other than in ink.
Lucy coughed, and Henry’s brow knit briefly. “You and Ed, too, of course.”
Buckland and Henry might have different philosophies regarding the nature of geomagical change, but there was a great deal of overlap between their tastes in décor.
A python skeleton hung from the ceiling of Henry’s office, frozen in undulation by thin wire and clacking softly with a breeze from the open window.
The built-in cabinets were a parade of fossils, carefully mounted and labeled, a clutter of delights.
Henry’s study was on the second floor, overlooking the hedge maze and the formal rose garden, and moonlight and the floating light-orbs cast a silvery glow through the room.
We huddled around the saber-tooth tiger bones, the yellowed-ivory skull nestled on red velvet.
“Beautiful,” I murmured, as I ran my fingertips down the length of one perfect canine.
The other was cracked near the root, the rest of the tooth lost to time and dirt.
When Henry and I began debating how far the lower mandible must have unhinged for the beast to sink those terrible canines into the throat of its prey, Lucy and Edgar grew bored and drifted over to Henry’s crystal collection.
Henry cleared his throat.
“There’s actually another specimen I’d like to show you, while we’re here.” He crossed to one of the tall, dark cabinets with an iron handle. “I bought this fossil from a Mr. Peter Hawkins, two years ago.”
It didn’t ring a bell. “I don’t know the name. Does he hunt fossils in Dorset?”
Henry shook his head. “Not a hunter. A collector.” He slid one drawer open on smooth silent hinges. I recognized the specimen at once and gasped with delight.
The specimen was a complete sclerotic ring from around the eye of an ichthyosaur, a circlet of bony, segmented plates, like scales. It lay like a crown, pillowed on a bed of black velvet.
I remembered this eye-ring well. It was the best of my samples, the finest of the four I’d sold to the Swiss geomagician to repay Lucy.
I stroked it tenderly, remembering the pain of the selling, and the elation of its discovery.
When I found that ring, I had to chisel it free over the course of one long, cold morning, my fingers slipping from wet and numbness.
I spent an hour looking, but there was no sign of the rest of the skull.
Only this near-perfect circle, the eye of a monster.
I ran my fingers over the stone plates, picturing the white of an enormous eye, a black pupil turning its gaze on me like some slippery prey. I’d never again found another eye-ring so complete, and I’d never read account of anyone having done so, either.
“Your original buyer—Mr. Hedinger, I believe—made some bad investments in the Americas and had to sell off most of his collection. His loss was Mr. Hawkins’s gain, and now”—Henry said, gesturing at the eye-ring—“yours.”
“I am very glad to see it again,” I said, feeling strangely touched. “Thank you for showing me.”
Henry laughed. “Oh, no, you misunderstand. The eye-ring is yours. It’s a gift.”
My very eyeballs must have bulged. I didn’t know what to say. “I—Henry—”
My tongue tripped over itself as I wavered between refusal and acceptance. I wanted the ring, obviously, but I didn’t want to be a pawn in whatever game Henry was playing now.
Buckland.
This had to be about Buckland. They were both vying for society president. Maybe Henry hoped to use me against Buckland. But how? Set me to spy on him, perhaps? It would be easy enough to do, with me staying in his house.
“I don’t know what new scheme you have in mind, but I’m loyal to Buckland,” I said firmly, “and I won’t betray him, whatever fossils you try to bribe me with.” I was proud that I managed to resist gazing longingly at the sclerotic ring as I said this.
Henry chuckled. “You mistake me, Mary. Not that I didn’t consider it, but, no. That isn’t what I want from you.”
He’d admitted it, at least. He wanted something. “Then what do you want?”
From the corner of my eye, I saw Lucy watching with a wary look, spine straight. Edgar, having finally sensed the strange shift in the room, looked up and blinked in confusion.
Henry raised his voice. “Lucy. Ed. Might I have a moment to speak with Mary? Alone?”
My heart skipped a beat. Don’t be ridiculous, I chided the fool thing. This is only more of Henry’s scheming.
“Absolutely not; that’s wildly inappropriate—” Lucy began, but Edgar touched her wrist.
“We can give you five minutes,” Edgar said firmly.
Lucy started to protest again, but I shook my head. I wanted to know what Henry had to say.
Lucy huffed. “Fine, then,” she said, and stalked out. Edgar cast us a knowing look that made my stomach flip just before he shut the door.
Henry turned back to me, his gray eyes like a storm over the sea. He stood very still.
“Mary.”
My heart skipped again.
“The Geomagical Society has been beholden to fairy tales—to lies—for too long,” Henry said, and I felt my stomach unknot.
Of course. This was about the Society. It wasn’t some grand romantic declaration. Of course. Thank heavens.
Henry continued. “The truth is clear in stone and soil, but we are too cowardly to speak it plainly. And the work suffers for it.”
“You speak of Buckland.”
“I speak of all of them,” he said, gesturing toward the window and the geomagicians beyond. “Even my own fellows and friends. Even myself.” He shook his head. “But not you. You’re not afraid.”
I burst out laughing. I wasn’t sure if he was earnest or mocking, but either way, it was a good joke.
Henry shook his head. “You’re not afraid of the truth,” he said fiercely. “You speak the truth, Mary, and damn what anyone else thinks. And there is nothing I value more, in man or woman.”
I rolled my eyes. “Flattery isn’t going to get you anywhere, Henry. Speak plainly.”
“It would be easier to show you.” He turned us toward the great desk, which gave the impression of a magnificent chestnut stallion at attention. Loose papers and books were scattered across the desk, and a quill rested on the tusks of a brass mammoth statuette.
One stack of notebooks and loose papers, nearly a fist high, was neatly bundled in green ribbon. For Miss Anning, read the attached note.
“My research,” Henry said. “The sources behind my claims. About how species are changed.”
“I read your book, Henry.” I was familiar with his key hypothesis: that natural disasters—floods, storms, earthquakes, and the like—generated magic.
Henry argued that it was the lingering magic from these violent phenomena—catastrophes—that we accessed with reliqs. That intriguing blasphemy made up the first half of his book.
But personally, I’d found the second half more persuasive. Because Henry further argued that these catastrophes, and the enormous release of magic, caused animal species to change.
Henry postulated that the missing ancient species—even my ichthyosaur or plesiosaur—had, in fact, changed into something new. Molded like clay into a new shape, he’d written.
I remembered, in particular, a fascinating chapter about the saber-tooth tiger.
Henry suggested that a volcanic eruption 9,000 years ago in eastern Russia had transformed the saber-tooth into the Siberian.
It was easy to picture him drafting the chapter in this very room, staring at his saber-tooth skull and chewing on the end of a pipe, deep in thought.
I was irritated at how endearing I found the image.
“Then let me show you the rest,” Henry urged. “Let me show you what Buckland wouldn’t permit me to publish.”
Oh, I was curious now. So, this was the secret—the terrible theory Buckland had decried. The reason the two geomagicians had fallen out.
He took my silence as agreement, which I suppose it was, and began shuffling through the mess of papers and maps, sketches of species and diagrams of skeletons, handwritten documents, maps, and typeset letters.
“Here it is.” He pulled from the stack of maps one slightly larger than the rest, unfolding it to full size.
It was a map of England, Scotland, and Wales, and had been marked with tiny numbers.
The numbering seemed random, scattered across the whole of the map. But in several places, they clustered.
He spread it across the desk, and we leaned over, together. My initial guess was that the map must depict the locations of important geomagical discoveries.
But that didn’t make sense. The area around Bristol had an especially large cluster, and as far as I knew, there weren’t many major geomagical finds from that area.
And where I knew Lyme Regis to be had only three numbers—91, 242, and 533.
I tapped a finger on my hometown.
I thought, a little piqued, that if this map did show significant fossil finds, then the largest cluster should be here.
“What are these? Potential dig sites?”
Henry shook his head and grinned. “No. Not fossils. They’re witches, Mary. You see”—his eyes were wide, sparkling—“witches are the key to it all.”