Chapter 25
Chapter
Gossip traveled quickly in Lyme Regis, but even faster in London. By morning, the whole city was buzzing with talk of the pterodactyl.
I discovered this when I finally stumbled downstairs for breakfast the next morning, Ajax mounted on my shoulder, and found the Buckland household in a state of chaos.
William Buckland shouted through the open door at the assembled crowd on his front steps, while Catherine gathered the younger girls in the sitting room away from the windows.
“You’re in the paper, Mary!” Elizabeth hurried to my side. I snatched the pages from her. Sure enough, it was there on the front page, right above a story about the upcoming second reading of Edgar Murray’s reliq reform bill.
Dorset Woman Discovers Ancient ‘Pterodactyl,’ Dormant Since Noah’s Flood.
“I’ve said you’ll get a statement this afternoon, direct from Palmanaeus House!” Buckland shouted at the crowd outside.
“Where is the creature to be kept?”
“Will it be on display?”
“Should we expect other ancient beasts to wake as well?”
“Is Miss Anning there? Does she have any comment?”
“Go away, you’re spoiling my breakfast!” Buckland slammed the door, sighing in exasperation. But he grinned when he saw me. “Mary! Oh, good, you’re awake!”
“I’m so sorry about all this,” I said. “I didn’t mean to bring all this trouble to your house.”
“No, no. It’s precisely what I hoped,” he said cheerfully. “Did Elizabeth show you today’s paper? You like my headline? Front page!” He beamed.
I nodded. “Yes, but…but it isn’t true.”
His brows shot up, and he hurried me into his study, shutting the door behind us.
“Mary, you cannot claim something like that. Not even here.”
“But Ajax wasn’t really a victim of the great flood,” I said, shaking my head. “Of a flood, maybe, but—”
“Then the evidence will show that. Eventually.”
“But you told the archbishop—”
“Frederick is a practical man. Ajax posed a problem for him. You did, too. I thought it best to make you a tool to serve his purposes, rather than a hindrance.”
I couldn’t decide if it was reassuring or terrifying to know that we’d played such a game with the archbishop, and that he moved his own players, too. That I now was among them.
I heard Henry’s voice in my ear, his words of condemnation. The truth is clear in stone and soil, he’d said. But we are too cowardly to speak it plainly.
“Mary.” Buckland’s eyes softened. With pity, maybe, though I couldn’t understand it. “You want to be a geomagician, do you not?”
“More than anything.”
“Then trust me. Someday—when you are safely ensconced within the Society, and all of this is a distant memory—maybe we can say it was an error in sampling. Or that new evidence was uncovered. But it will be long forgotten by then, and no one will care.
“How can I put this,” he said, and sighed. “Ajax is a bridge now between the Geomagical Society and the Church of England. Which makes you both exceptionally valuable. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I said, and it came out as a whisper, because I didn’t need the implications spelled out. If one side gave way—if either the Society or Church turned against us—then the other would as well. And I stood to lose everything in the fall.
I found Lucy out back, feeding an apple to the miniature horse. I let Ajax down to hunt bugs at our feet.
“Those newspaper men,” Lucy said, wiping horse slobber onto her skirts, “are very persistent.”
She jerked her chin toward the back wall. She’d enchanted the hedges to grow out thickly across the gate, but I could see figures trying to peer through nonetheless.
I exhaled. “Buckland’s thrilled about all the attention. He thinks it’ll be good for the Society.”
“And you? How are you feeling?”
I was still reeling from my conversation with Buckland. All those long years in Lyme Regis, dreaming of being a geomagician, I had never imagined how much politicking would be involved. How na?ve I’d been, thinking it would all be studying rocks and writing books.
“I’m just grateful I wasn’t executed.” I tried to laugh.
I could see Lucy knew there was more, but she also knew me well enough to see I didn’t want to talk.
“Well, to celebrate your survival, Edgar has invited us to dinner tonight.” Lucy dropped her voice low and looked around. “He’s promised to invite a few friends, too. Gentlemen he thinks might be interested in allying themselves with the cause.”
I managed to hide my grimace. An evening catching up with Lucy and Edgar sounded delightful. An evening listening to pompous philosophizing about reliq-reform? The opposite of delightful.
But Lucy’s eyes were shining, and I was eager to see Edgar again; we’d barely had a chance to speak before I was arrested.
“Of course,” I said, scratching the little horse’s forelock. “Dinner it is.”
The coach rumbled along, Ajax squawking in my lap as we were jostled over a deep pothole. I pulled the curtain aside as we neared Palmanaeus House and gasped at the gathered crowd. I clutched Ajax tightly, more to soothe my own nerves than his.
There were hundreds of people gathered in the park across the road, a mass of bodies held back by a row of constables.
“Well, look at that,” Buckland said. “I’d bet my hat that not one of them cared a lick about geomagical history before today.
And now, thanks to you, they will learn that we geomagicians are not the enemy of their faith, as they may have feared.
Because of you, Mary, they will know we only reap the field that God has sowed. ”
I rolled my eyes. “Spare me the sermon, Buckland. Are you sure we can’t just go in the back?”
He gave me a pointed look. “It’s never a good idea to disappoint an audience.”
I nodded grimly. We rolled to a stop a few moments later. I started to unlatch Ajax’s carrying basket, but Buckland shook his head.
“On your shoulder,” he said, “for all to see. Give them a show, remember?”
I took a deep breath, trying to steady myself. It was all a bit of show. And then I could get to work, studying Ajax as I’d intended, and proving my worth to the geomagicians.
“Go on,” I said, and Ajax hopped happily to my shoulder, swinging his beak around curiously. I could only pray he wouldn’t take the chance to demonstrate his flying.
Buckland flung open the door rather dramatically, and a footman helped me down. I ducked my head and rounded my shoulders, then scurried quickly up the wide marble stairs. Buckland sighed, but let me be.
Then a roar went up from the crowd across the street. I jumped at the sound. That’s the beast, and the woman who found him, they were saying.
“Well? They’ve recognized you. Give them a wave, eh?” Buckland prodded, then demonstrated, as if I had forgotten how it was done.
I scowled at him, but I turned and waved my elbow mechanically to and fro, using my free hand to press Ajax’s feet against my shoulder.
They cheered as Ajax rose and spread his wings.
President Davies swept forward to meet us at the top of the steps, shadowed by a gaggle of redcoats and constables.
“Welcome to Palmanaeus House, Miss Anning,” Davies said, as if I hadn’t been here only days before. He gave a sweeping, low bow. I settled on an awkward curtsy.
Davies signaled two servants, and they lifted the iron latch and pulled open the double oak doors, hinges creaking.
Davies bent as if to kiss my cheek and whispered, “Will the beast fly on command?”
“No,” I said, and Davies frowned. “I don’t want him to be lost. But I can have him spread his wings again.”
“Do it, then.”
I turned my chin to meet one of Ajax’s golden eyes. I raised the arm on which he stood, and he chirped and sidestepped out to my wrist. I wasn’t wearing gloves, and winced at his claws. But I lifted my arm slowly.
I bounced my wrist—irritating the pterodactyl—and sure enough, Ajax rose and spread his wings wide. He followed this display with a mighty cry, a sharp crack like breaking ice, and a hush fell across the crowd beyond the road.
I lowered my arm then, and as I turned to follow Buckland and Davies through the double doors, the gathered found their breath and cried back to us, the sound as loud as thunder.