Chapter 36
Chapter
I knew what had been won today. To the doubters, who read Genesis and questioned its account, the archbishop could say: The science proves it.
And to the faithful, who looked at the science and questioned the geomagician’s claims, the Society could say: The Scriptures prove it.
The archbishop and Buckland had tied the Church and geomagic together and, in doing so, strengthened both.
I tried to focus on that outcome as I wandered aimlessly through the reception crowd and my brain chanted, Lies, lies, lies.
Given the ongoing protests, an entire battalion of infantrymen had been deployed to patrol the area around Palmanaeus House tonight, reliq-lamps and rifles at the ready.
None of the reception guests, arrayed in tails and evening gowns and milling about the entry hall, expressed discomfort at the row of stationed constables who had greeted them at the top of the Palmanaeus steps.
In fact, I heard quite a few murmurs of appreciation for the security measures as I made my way through the crowd in the entry hall, dodging servers with trays of champagne.
I grabbed two glasses and downed them quickly.
“I am relieved to see they’ve taken our safety seriously,” I overheard one older woman with too much powder on her brow saying, as I squeezed between her backside and a glass display of mammoth tusks.
The woman had her arm tightly looped through the arm of Augustus Ward, a geomagician with expertise in limestone composition.
“I’ll admit I was sympathetic to their cause at first. It must be a terrible thing to sell one’s magic. But surely destruction is never the answer.”
“Agreed,” said Mr. Ward firmly. “We simply cannot negotiate with the people terrorizing our city.”
“But I thought the protestors weren’t responsible for the attack on Parliament?” a young brunette responded. She had the look of a daughter, maybe, and wide, earnest eyes.
“So they claim,” said the first woman darkly. “But I don’t believe it.”
It was probably a good thing Lucy wasn’t around to hear her. But where the hell was she? And where was Henry, for that matter?
He’d visited every day during my convalescence, but with Edgar around, our conversations had been limited to the subject of Ajax.
But I needed to talk to someone, and Henry was the only one who knew the truth.
About Ajax. About Buckland’s theory. About me.
My strange magic. I even knew exactly what I wanted—for Henry to put his broad hands on my shoulders and assure me I’d done the right thing.
That I was safe. That our discoveries were worth the risk. That all would be well.
But, to my increasing annoyance, neither Henry nor Lucy was anywhere to be found.
Oh, there were plenty of other people eager to speak with me.
Several wives of geomagicians had offered to set me up with this-or-that young country cousin of theirs.
And Marged Davies had cornered me a few minutes ago to share her nonsense theory that plesiosaurs might have been exclusively ambush hunters, lying in wait on the seafloor and waiting for prey to pass above.
I listened politely, gently explaining that it was most likely they used their long necks to scoop fish from above, nearer the surface.
I’d finally excused myself to fetch another drink. If I couldn’t find my friends, at least I could try to locate someone who had actually spent time studying fossils and not inventing wild theories about them.
Still, I didn’t regret forcing Davies to open the house to women for the night. Elizabeth had been ecstatic, and Lucy, grateful. Even Catherine Buckland thanked me profusely and solemnly.
It was clear that most of the women here tonight had never stepped foot in these halls, even the white-haired ones whose husbands had likely been founding Society members twenty years ago.
I had to admit, it was gratifying to see the awe on the faces of wives and daughters as they stared up at my plesiosaur for the first time: the way their jaws dropped open and hands pressed to their breasts.
“Oh,” they all seemed to breathe, and it was like they were saying, I see now. I understand.
But it wasn’t all delight. One young woman, Adam Harrelson’s daughter, ran out screaming from Ajax’s room upstairs, where he was on display for the evening.
As she was escorted down the hall, the geomagicians chuckled knowingly.
I clenched my fists as men around me murmured about “delicate sensibilities” and “ladylike dispositions.” Fool girl; she’d just made the rest of us look weak by association.
I was still eavesdropping when I spotted Lord Knackbull through the crowd ahead, a young, doe-eyed girl, scarcely twelve—the granddaughter, presumably—at his side.
I tried to duck away, but Knackbull caught my eye.
“Ah, Miss Anning, there you are.”
I straightened as the crowd parted to let him through.
The granddaughter’s name was Alice. She trembled as she curtsied and murmured her greetings.
“Go on, dear,” Knackbull urged. “Show her what you brought.”
I don’t know what I expected. A cross-stitch, perhaps, something feminine and delicate. But instead, the girl pulled from her pocket a thumb-sized chunk of amber, a winged shape trapped in the frozen liquid.
I was interested now. I’d never had the chance to see a creature trapped in amber.
“Grandfather gave it to me,” Alice said in a quiet voice.
“It hails from the Baltics,” Knackbull added, “or so I was told by the rare-reliq trader who sold it to me.” He smiled indulgently at his granddaughter.
“Our Alice is quite…enthusiastic, shall we say, about insects. Her parents are, of course, scandalized by such an unwomanly passion”—he shrugged—“but what are grandfathers for, if not to indulge their grandchildren?” He winked, and Alice giggled.
“May I?”
“It’s a gift, Miss Anning,” Alice said shyly. “For you.”
I rolled the smooth ball across my palm, studying the insect inside. It was a mosquito, remarkably preserved. I peered closer to see the tiny filaments along its legs, and the geometric shapes made by the veins in the wings.
I imagined the creature, its wings fluttering faster than the human eye could see, landing on the back of some warm-blooded, lumbering creature, and tasting copper in its strange mouth. The amber grew warm in my hand.
I could wake it. I could take it upstairs now, and crack open the amber, and reanimate the insect—
“I want to be an entomagician someday,” Alice said softly, her big round eyes darting from mine as I looked at her in surprise. “I never knew that women could study the science magics, until I learned about you.”
My heart lurched, and softened.
I took Alice’s hand and placed the amber in her palm, curling my fingers around hers.
“Keep it safe for me, for now,” I said, a lump in my throat. “And bring it back to me when you are an entomagician.”
Soon a piano was fetched and set before the plesiosaur, and the well-bred ladies took turns playing jaunty tunes, and the men told ribald stories to uproarious laughter.
I took my search for Henry into one of the cigar-filled lounges. But the room fell to an awkward silence when I entered, the men clearly waiting for me to leave to resume a conversation.
I was still nursing that sting when Ann Mantell, Gideon’s wife, lured me into the visitors’ library off the entry hall by suggesting that she’d like my help finding a suitable book about lizards of the continent to help her husband with his research.
I’d drunk too much champagne. My head was spinning, the glittering light of reliq-lamps refracting in starbursts.
But through the sparks, I could see that Marged Davies was lying in wait, and she sprang from her armchair as I trailed in behind Mrs. Mantell. Another woman sat beside her, salt-and-pepper in her black hair. She rose more slowly.
“Ah, if it isn’t the famous Miss Anning herself,” said the unfamiliar woman, smile widening to show two charmingly overlapped front teeth. She introduced herself: Roderick Murchison’s wife, Charlotte.
I ignored the hint of dismissiveness in her tone and tried instead to remember how I knew her name. It came to me as we shook hands. Henry had named her, and Ann Mantell, too, as the other women assistants of geomagicians.
I frowned, taking in the trio. “Did you two also have questions about lizard species?”
Marged Davies inhaled deeply. “Not exactly.” The three women exchanged glances.
I narrowed my eyes. “If this is more about plesiosaur hunting—”
“It isn’t,” Marged said quickly.
“Though to be frank, you should at least consider Marged’s argument,” Charlotte Murchison muttered darkly, before Ann Mantell hushed her.
Marged ignored them. She smoothed her hands on her skirts. “Thank you for joining us, Miss Anning,” she said, and it was suddenly clear that this was a practiced speech.
“Mrs. Murchison, Mrs. Mantell, and I have all spent many years supporting our husbands’ work in geomagic.
And we have learned a great deal through that experience.
But all three of us have long admired your aptitude and talent—not only with fossil hunting, but even more so with your analysis of the specimens and samples that you’ve found.
Your accomplishments in geomagical studies have inspired all three of us to learn more. ”
Even Charlotte Murchison nodded at that. Mrs. Davies continued.
“And while we know we cannot hope to match your genius, the three of us were hoping, well, we were wondering…”
She paused and looked to the others for help.
“We would like to learn from you, Miss Anning,” Ann Mantell finished hurriedly. “We were thinking perhaps you might offer a lecture, and open it to women—”
“And I hoped you might be willing to set us a syllabus, for our own education,” added Charlotte with earnest excitement. “My Roderick won’t ever lend me his books.”
“Maybe it could even be a series of lectures.”
“An Introduction to Geomagic for the Fairer Sex would be my proposed title,” said Marged, with flushed cheeks. “I am sure my husband would hate it. That’s half the fun.” She laughed.
“There has never been a woman geomagician, of course, but you’ve come closer than anyone. You’ve cracked the door, as it were, and perhaps one day it will be opened to us all,” said Charlotte solemnly, and the other two nodded.
They looked at me expectantly—so hopefully—and a hundred thoughts raced through my head. I didn’t think the ladies would like to hear any one of them.
The very idea of a lecture series on geomagic for women—forget Society election; if I tried to give such a talk, I would be laughed out of Palmanaeus House. My reputation would never recover.
I understood by now how Palmanaeus House operated; the way in which factions and relationships formed the structure of power, both social and scholarly.
If I allied myself with the women—with the wives of geomagicians—I would be seen as a wife, even if I wasn’t one.
The men outside this library, their three husbands included, would never again see me as an equal.
Not as a geomagician, or a practitioner.
Not as a scholar in my own right. I was already losing the battle to be respected. I couldn’t risk making it worse.
I felt a twinge of guilt, as I stood silent and their faces began to fall.
But I had fought my way to where I was. I’d shed sweat, tears, and blood in sea-rock. I hadn’t married a geomagician. I hadn’t asked some other woman to put her own ambition aside to help me with mine. What reputation I had, I’d earned myself. They could surely do the same.
“I can’t teach you,” was what I said in the end. “I’m—I don’t have the time.”
I turned and rushed out of the library.