Chapter 42
Chapter
Catherine was brought in to sketch the scene before we removed anything. She was the one who found the coin.
“I see something,” Catherine said, kneeling down with her lantern. “Metal, I think.”
We quickly passed it around, and Conybeare declared it to be Roman in origin.
“Roman, you say? You are certain?” Buckland said sharply. It was hard to see in the shadows, but I thought his brow was wrinkled. I realized several things in sequence, and bit down hard at the inside of my cheek.
The mammoth tusks and the bones were contemporaneous. The man had lived, and hunted, among the beasts. I had seen a flash of him when I touched the skull. I had known he was a man, in the same way that I knew he died in a time far, far older than the Romans.
But, as Buckland had pointed out, men weren’t supposed to have dwelt with mammoths. Mammoths seemingly vanished—or went into hibernation—with the flood, when there shouldn’t yet have been any humans in Britain.
Except that was wrong. And I was the only one who knew it for certain.
There was a heaviness in the pit in my stomach as I turned over the implications of this.
It was revolutionary. It was terrible. It was thrilling.
It was terrifying. It would unravel so much—too much?
—of Buckland’s carefully woven narrative of geomagic and biblical doctrine: either man had lived earlier, or the mammoth later, than we’d been taught.
I didn’t know what to do. Henry stood still, watching me very, very closely. I turned my face aside.
Goldsmild’s working had revealed all the cave’s secrets in wondrous fashion, but it had done so in a way that made it impossible to reconstruct a relative timeline of the artifacts.
We had not conducted the usual, careful analysis of geomagical strata that would normally be performed in such a case, logging layers as we passed through them to determine the relative age and type of rock.
Without that, it would be impossible to prove that the mammoth tusks, beads, and bones were from the same period.
And now there was the coin, and no way to prove that it had nothing to do with the skeleton. Buckland had said it himself, before—people had probably been using this cave for centuries.
My only evidence was my own power. But to reveal that would reveal all of my secrets. And I couldn’t risk that.
If I told them the truth now about my gift, Buckland would believe me. But would he still support me? Nominate me? The truth would undo so much of his careful work. Could our friendship withstand that?
And then there was Conybeare. He had been eager enough before to turn me in to the Inquisitors. I wasn’t keen to hand him a fresh two-for-one heresy: resurrection and biblical rejection.
So. So, this would be another secret I would keep.
“I do believe there was a Roman outpost nearby,” Mantell said excitedly.
“But why would she be buried here, alone?” Conybeare frowned.
“You still think it was a woman?” Catherine paused and looked up from her sketchbook. “But I thought Mary said—”
“The beads,” said Conybeare sharply. “Likely from a necklace. A Roman man wouldn’t have worn such adornments.”
Buckland nodded, and then began to spin the story, pacing around the larger cavern. Maybe she was a prostitute, he said, tapping at his chin. A local Briton who serviced men at the outpost. That would explain the single coin, and her solitary burial. My heart sank with every word.
It was the sort of scandalous history that people loved, and I could easily picture it in the headlines, splashed across the papers: Geomagicians discover remains of a Roman prostitute in Kirtlington Quarry Cave.
And my name would be there beside the others: Buckland, Conybeare, Goldsmild, Mantell, Stanton, and Anning. But—did I want that? My name, beside another lie? My stomach was queasy.
“Mary?” Henry cocked his head. “Are you all right? You look a bit pale.”
“I’m fine,” I snapped. “It’s a momentous occasion, is it not? I am simply overcome.”
His eyes narrowed; then he smiled. “You don’t think he’s right. You don’t think the skeleton is of Roman origin.”
Damn him, damn him, damn him.
“I—I am not sure,” I said, trying to force myself to meet Buckland’s eye. “But I do wonder if it isn’t…older.”
“Hmm,” Buckland said, stroking his chin and nodding. “Iron Age, then, you think? Could be. Could be. The beads could certainly be Iron Age. But the coin—”
I shook my head. “Older,” I said softly. Oh, damn Henry Stanton to Hell. “I think his people hunted the mammoth.”
Buckland’s mouth fell open. I swallowed. The shocked silence grew to fill every black pocket of the cave.
Henry stepped closer. “What makes you think this?” Was he goading me?
I could still tell the truth. What I could feel. What I could do. Fossil witch.
But I knew Buckland too well.
He would go to the archbishop. Coordinate some rationale. Find some justification in the text of the Old Testament, maybe. Tell the archbishop it would prove the age of humanity, perhaps. Whatever it was, eventually, Buckland would ask me to try to raise the bones.
I must admit Elizabeth’s accusation—coward—was ringing in my ears. What have you gained for others? she had asked me. And what answer did I have? But perhaps I could give one now, if only to myself.
Buckland might even promise that the man would live free, uncaged.
But the promise would never hold. They—no, we, because in the end I would join them, whatever I swore now—would poke and prick and measure and test and examine the hunter.
He would be a specimen. And he would never be free, until he died again.
If I were a better woman, maybe that would be enough. But I was not, and it was not.
Because I was afraid, too. I didn’t want to challenge the Church, or upend geomagical doctrine, or society. I was happy to leave all that to Edgar and Lucy. I was not a radical. I never had been. I only ever wanted to be a geomagician.
And if I claimed, truly, that the body was older than Rome—older than we’d ever imagined man to be—the votes would slip away like water on oil.
So, was it cowardice? Maybe. Did it matter that I knew it was also right?
I dropped my gaze and shrugged. “It was just a silly idea.”
The celebration that night was raucous, as we emptied bottle after bottle of wine around the campfire, swapping stories of geomagical finds and expeditions.
Even Elizabeth stopped pouting when Goldsmild told the rapt audience about the fossilized shark’s tooth he’d been sent by a Swiss naturalist.
“As long as my palm, finger to wrist,” he swore. “Can you imagine the size of that maw?”
“Why, it would have to be taller than man,” Mantell exclaimed, and he and Conybeare began trying to calculate how tall it would be, assuming such a shark kept the same number of teeth as its modern kin.
I crept away when Catherine pulled out her sketchbook, and the geomagicians leaned over to draw these potential shark mouths at scale. Ajax was already asleep, curled in a pile of blankets by the fire, and I let him be.
The moon was bright and full, so I had enough light to walk by. I’d taken my blanket, wrapped around me like a cloak, to keep warm in the cool spring night.
I wandered away from the cave, down the slope of the hill and over another, until the happy noise of the campfire grew distant, replaced by the sounds of crickets and rustling leaves. An owl hooted somewhere from the treetops.
My heart was heavy. I’d made my decisions, but I was burdened, still, by the weight of so many choices. The decisions. The politicking. The calculations. The lies. What was right, and what was wrong, and how did anyone ever decide at all?
Prometheans and Lucy and Henry and Buckland and Edgar and Ajax and the archbishop and the Society, and so many loyalties and demands, and I was only one woman, who’d simply wanted to be elected geomagician and write a few well-reviewed papers.
I should have listened, all those weeks ago, when Buckland told me to send Ajax to London in his care.
“Oh, what do you want now?” I snapped at the quiet footsteps that crept behind me, turning toward the man who’d joined me in the dark hollow of the hill.
Henry caught me by the forearms. I froze, stunned at the intensity in his gaze.
“You could have done it, couldn’t you?” he whispered, searching my face. His eyes flashed.
“I didn’t—”
“Come, Mary,” he said, bending toward me. “I already keep so many of your secrets. What’s one more?”
His face had a wildness I’d never seen before—as if all his careful restraint was slipping. Was he drunk? No; he’d only had a little wine, and he didn’t smell of spirits. He smelled like the campfire smoke, and the spice of his cologne, and of himself. His sweat. His skin.
I swallowed. I lifted my chin, and my heart skipped a beat. “Is that a threat? I tell you, or you—what—destroy my career?”
“Do you really think I would do that?” Henry’s eyes were cold, searching mine. He still held my wrists. I didn’t pull away. I didn’t know why.
“I think you’ll turn on me.” I freed my hands and jabbed at his chest. His face darkened. “The moment it suits your purposes. The second it serves your cause.”
“You think you know my cause?” Henry’s chest rose and fell with the effort of his breathing as he stepped—somehow—closer.
“You think you understand me?” The fingers of his right hand curled into a fist. A warning prickle behind my neck tempted me to shrink away from the cold glare of those night-dark eyes, but I couldn’t make myself move. I shivered.
“Maybe you do.” Henry laughed, harsh and raw. I’d never heard that laugh before. “Is this your revenge?” He lurched away, turning his back to me. “To bring me low? To harry me to the brink of madness? Do you want me to grovel at your feet?”
Well, now he wasn’t making any kind of sense. It was as if he’d gone completely—ah.
I bit my lip. Yes. Well. That would explain things. Henry was experiencing a psychological break. He had been under a great deal of stress, what with his campaign for society president.
I should probably fetch one of the others. Get him some kind of medical attention.
“Um. Henry?” I set a hand on his elbow. He flinched from my touch.
“Damn it, woman,” he whispered, and ran both hands through his hair. His pupils were huge in the low light. “Very well. You’ve won. I will grovel.” His hand cupped my chin, his fingers trembling on my cheek.
“I surrender,” he said, with a hoarse, desperate whisper.
This wasn’t anger, I realized, though my thoughts seemed to be slow, and thick as molasses. Despair. And desire.
His lips parted.
“Oh…oh,” I stammered, my hands fluttering. “I—I see—”
Henry kissed me.
His hands clasped either side of my face, insistent fingers threading into my hair. My arms flung wide in shock as he crushed me against his chest. He tasted like wine, warm and heady. His lips were soft as his thumbs stroked at my jaw. He made a sound. A groan torn from his throat.
“Forgive me.” The cold air was a shock on my lips. A lock of black hair tumbled over his brow as he looked down between us. “I know—”
I stared at the broad shoulders, the coat rustling in the wind, his form a silhouette against the starlit sky.
“Oh, do be quiet,” I said, and closed the distance between us.
I pulled him into me, my hands insistent and wanting. This time it was Henry who stiffened in surprise, and I laughed as I wound my arms around his neck.
Then our breath caught on warm, desperate lips, and everything was a blur of shadow, and touch.
I kissed him hard. His hands were on my cheek, my neck, then my hips, then circling my back.
This was nothing like when we were young.
Fools; we thought we knew so much back then.
The way he’d touched me then was sweet as honey.
The way he’d kissed me then was gentle as a feather.
We thought we burned, but, God, we were innocent—that was nothing next to fifteen years of longing and resentment.
Henry’s lips roved along my chin. He groaned into my neck, sending shivers down my spine. His fingers shook as he brushed his hand over my breasts, and I threw my head back, laughing, shaking with want.
He kissed the soft, pale skin at the top of my breasts, his tongue darting circles as he worked lower, and I groaned.
“Are you sure?” he asked hoarsely.
Damn, damned, damnable Henry Stanton.
“Yes,” I managed. “Yes, I am sure.”