The Dragon in the Cliff

by Sheila Cole

  The sound of iron wheels and horses’ hooves brought me back to the present with a start. An elegant carriage had come to a stop right in front of me. A footman dressed in livery was shouting to me, “Tell Anning that Squire Henley is here.”

  “Mr. Anning died in November, sir,” I said.

  “But this is Anning’s curiosity table, is it not?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  At that moment, Squire Henley reached over the carriage door with his cane and knocked on the side to be let out. The footman, a round, short-legged man, rolled himself down from his perch in back and went to help the Squire out of the carriage.

  Squire Henley was an impressive-looking man—dressed in the old manner with knee britches instead of trousers and powdered hair—he was tall, with dark, quick eyes set in a square-jawed face. “Did I hear you say that Anning is dead?” he asked, striding over to the curiosity table. Without waiting for me to answer, he picked up a curiosity and examined it.

  “Yes, sir,” I answered with a curtsy.

  “But then whose curiosities are these?”

  “They are mine, sir. I am his daughter.”

  “You mean to tell me, lass, that you go down to the shore and dig these fossils out yourself?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He picked up a verteberrie, then another, examining all of them in turn. “Where did you get these vertebrae?”

  It was the first time I had heard the word said that way, and I repeated it in order to remember it. Squire Henley must have thought that I was asking a question because he then said, “They are pieces of the backbone of an animal. I have never seen so many like these at one time. They’re part of a large animal by the looks of them. Larger than anything that lives around here now. Could be a crocodile. People say there are fossil crocodiles. If you find one, lass, you tell me. Promise now. I’ll pay handsomely for it.”

  Here I had just been thinking about what Papa had said about the dragon or the crocodile, or whatever it was, and now Squire Henley was talking about it. How strange, I thought.

  Squire Henley returned to his carriage without waiting for me to reply. “I will stop by from time to time as I did with your father,” he called to me. “He used to save the more interesting fossils for me, and I wish you to do the same. None of your thunderbolts, now. It is your rare ones I am interested in.” And with that the carriage drove away.

  I stood there daydreaming of finding the dragon for some time before I realized that the Squire had not bought anything from me. The coach was long past due. I rearranged the curiosities that he had jumbled and waited. I waited until it was late, too late to go down to the beach to hunt for my curiosity basket. No one else came past my display.

  It was raining when we woke up the next morning. “Don’t be foolish, child, people don’t buy curiosities in this kind of weather,” Mama said, when I started to put the curiosity table out. I spent the rest of the day in the workshop, preparing the few curiosities I had in the shop. But there was not much I could do with only one hammer, a medium-sized chisel, a penknife, and a mounted pin.

  I stole out of the shop as soon as the rain stopped and made my way down the beach to the slide where I had so foolishly lingered. Washed away by the tides and the rain, it was much smaller than it had been. Luckily, the tide was receding, which gave me plenty of time to search for my basket. I thought I remembered where I climbed off the beach. I tried to scramble up the cliff there but only slid back down because it was so slippery from the rain.

  Back down on the beach, I stopped to look around me. Was I in the right place? Then I remembered that at first I tried to walk back to town along the beach. Only when I realized that it was too late did I scramble up the cliff. I walked back along the beach searching for the place I had started my climb, but no piece of the cliff stood out from any other. There were the bushes, I remembered, searching the cliff face for some overhanging bushes, but I could see that there were bushes sprouting from several places. It was hopeless. I was close to tears in despair.

  I reasoned that it was better to start my search at the top of the cliff and work my way down. Walking toward town, I spied my basket lying on the shore, tangled in a clump of seaweed. I hurried toward it with a sense of relief, only to find that the basket was empty. The tools were gone, buried in the sand or beneath the water, sunk of their own weight. I would never find them.

  When I came home Mama was sitting by the window, working on lace for a wedding veil. Aunt Hunnicutt found her the work on the promise that it would be finished in two months’ time. She wasn’t to be paid until she delivered it.

  “The coach was here,” Mama said as I came in, “but they were not interested in curiosities. Didn’t even bother to look. It’s when the sun is shining that people are reminded of the seashore and curiosities. We’re going to have to think of something to tide us over until then.”

  I was hungry, and I went to the sideboard.

  Seeing me, Mama said, “If you eat the bread now, there will not be enough for supper.”

  I closed the sideboard door without taking anything.

  When I was sitting with Mama, darning stockings a few days later, I said something to Mama about being cold. She told me to put a blanket around my shoulders.

  “A blanket won’t warm my fingers,” I complained. “They are stiff from the cold and I am being clumsy.”

  “You cannot let a little cold discourage you, child. Just don’t think about it,” Mama advised. “See, I am still working the lace, and my hands are no warmer than yours. Summer will be here soon enough, and then we will all be warm. It is summer when the money is to be made here. We will whitewash the upstairs and take in lodgers. And the curiosities always do better in the summer when people come to take the waters.” Why didn’t I tell Mama that I had been caught by the tide and lost my tools and finds? I was not so much afraid of being punished as I was ashamed. Mama, Joseph, and the little ones were counting on me to keep us going. My carelessness had put everyone in jeopardy. I prayed that I would somehow be able to work round the loss so that no one ever need know. I did not want to fail them.

  OUR LOSSES

  It was April when Ann, who had just celebrated her eighth birthday, became sick with a sore throat and a raging fever. We tried to get water down her parched throat, but she could not swallow. We bathed her burning body in cool water. Still the fever raged, convulsing her body and jerking her arms and legs. Frightened by Ann’s turn for the worse, we called in Dr. Carpenter. There was little he could do. She fell unconscious and lay insensible for a day before she was delivered from her suffering into the hands of God.

  While Ann lay unconscious, John, who was almost six, was taken by the same illness. He fought it for several days. On the fourth day he sat up suddenly and called for Ann, who had been his constant companion and playmate. “Why doesn’t she come?” he asked.

  I turned away, unable to tell him.

  He saw that I was crying. “Why is Mary crying?” he asked Mama, who had come to take her turn at his bedside.

  “Because Ann has gone to heaven,” Mama said.

  John lay back down, turned his face to the wall, and closed his eyes. Mama thought he was sleeping. Thinking that the crisis was over, we were relieved. The next morning his fever rose again and by evening he, too, was dead.

  “You’ve taken my husband, my daughter, and now my son. Take me. Do not leave me behind! I have nothing left to hope for. Take me so that I may be with them!” Mama cried out when she saw that John was dead.

  “Mama, Mama, I’m here,” I said, putting my arms around her. She threw me off and I fell to the floor, where I sat watching as she howled in grief. “Why? Why? My babies! My babies are gone! Gone!” I didn’t know what to do. I was afraid to leave her to go for help.

  Mrs. Cruikshanks, who was passing by, heard her cries, and guessing that something terrible had happened, came in. “Get up, child. Go, fetch Joseph and the doctor,” she ordered, setting me in motion.
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  It was our neighbors’ kindness that carried us through the next days. They had laid out Ann when she died, and now they laid out John. They were patient with Mama, who would not be comforted in her grief. They had kind words for Joseph and me. They ordered the coffins and arranged for the burial.

  In the spring, with the trees and fields clothed in new green, we gave Ann and John to our Father in heaven, who in his divine wisdom had gathered them unto himself.

  We had barely enough money to pay for Ann and John’s burial and none to pay Dr. Carpenter. “There is nothing for it but to apply to the parish for aid,” Mr. Cruikshanks told Joseph.

  Joseph refused to hear such talk, “It will break Mama’s spirit to come down so in the world. She’s grief stricken as it is,” he replied. The only way Joseph could think to save us from going on the parish rolls was to leave his apprenticeship and to find work that paid immediately.

  “What kind of work will you find without a trade?” Mama asked when Joseph informed her of his plan. He was silent and she answered herself, “None that pays. If you leave Hale’s we will only have another hungry mouth to feed here. Our only hope is for you to become an upholsterer. Then you’ll be earning good money steadily. Summer is almost here, if we can hold out until then, we’ll make it up with the curiosities.”

  All Mama’s hopes seemed to be concentrated on summer. “Things are always better in summer,” Mama said to me day after day as we sat down to our dinner of bread and porridge, a monotonous diet which was only occasionally broken by a watery soup made with a few tired vegetables. We had not seen meat on our table since Papa died. “We shan’t have to spend as much on coal when summer comes, and of course you shall be bringing in more,” she repeated. “Your poor, dear Papa always did better with the curiosities in summer, what with the travelers and all.”

  I listened and did not reply. Though I continued to search the beach for curiosities day after day, I had collected little. There were no good slides that spring, and I did not have a good geological hammer or heavy chisels for breaking fossils out of the rocks. I could not bring myself to tell Mama, poor, dear Mama who had suffered so much and who still had faith and hope despite it all, that it was hopeless.

  But one day when there was no money to buy bread and we had nothing to eat but porridge, which we had been eating for several days, I could not bear to listen to her go on about her hopes for the summer any longer. How could she be so blind? Didn’t she see that I was not bringing home many curiosities? She passed through the workshop several times a day. Didn’t she see that the tools were missing? Why did she keep saying the same foolish things again and again when we were cold and hungry and summer’s coming would change little. I ran from the room, bolting down the stairs.

  “Mary,” Mama called down the stairs after me. “Mary, what is the matter, child?”

  I did not answer. I ran frantically from shelf to work table and back to the shelves again, taking the curiosities from the shelves and carrying them to the workbench.

  Alarmed, Mama came down to the workshop. “What are you doing?” she asked.

  I counted the curiosities on the workbench, “One, two, three …” There were about thirty curiosities in all. “Thirty,” I said, turning to face Mama. “Not enough, Mama. Not enough to make a difference when the visitors come next month. We cannot count on the curiosities to pay our debts or to buy our food.” I turned away to rush from the shop, but before I got to the door, Mama caught me in her arms and swung me around. Pressing me to her, she held me, as I cried with shame.

  When I finally stopped crying, I told her how I lost my tools. Mama was quiet when I finished my story. She held me to her and swayed gently, rocking me back and forth, back and forth. “It was wrong of me to place such a burden on one so young,” she said. I wanted to say that it wasn’t a burden, that it was just that I forgot myself, but Mama hushed me and held me in her arms while I cried.

  We did not speak of the lost tools again. It was decided that I would go into service in a big house, where my food and bed would be provided. Mama would sell our belongings and go live with her sister, Aunt Letty Hunnicutt, and her husband, Mr. Hunnicutt, in Axminster until Joseph finished his term with Hale and was able to set up as an upholsterer. Then, God willing, we would set up house again.

  Mama started a letter to Aunt Letty and Uncle Hunnicutt to ask if she might come live with them, but put the pen down after the first sentence telling of Ann and John’s deaths. She left the letter lying on the table unfinished and went to sit at the window with her lacework, but she did not work. She stared out the window all that day, the next, and the day after. I cannot say how many days. I fled the house and wandered up and down the shore looking for curiosities. When I would return from my fruitless searches, Mama would turn away from the window to look at me and then would turn back to her lacework without a word. After a few stitches, her gaze would wander back to the window and her hands would grow motionless. She would forget to put out food at mealtimes. I do not know whether she ate, but we did not sit down together. We did not talk. We could not bring ourselves to. Talking would make our losses and the breakup of our family real.

  Joseph, who had put out word that I was looking for a post, heard that the housekeeper at High Cliff was looking for a girl to run errands and to help the cook. High Cliff was a grand house on Pound Street where many newcomers to town were building homes. It was owned by a family that made its money in tea plantations in India. Joseph told me to go there the next morning.

  How I dreaded the interview! More than that I dreaded leaving our home to go to work in a strange house and live among strangers. Lizzie and I had discussed what it would be like. Knowing that I had little choice in the matter and that I was afraid, Lizzie tried to comfort me with pictures of a kind, young mistress who would make a friend and companion of me and who would let me read her books, and take me with her to London and Bath. “Now that could be a real adventure, Mary. Going to London in the company of a young lady,” she said. “She might even let you sit in on her lessons.” Lizzie’s gray eyes were round and solemn as she tried to convince me, but her mouth twitched and I could see that she didn’t believe that such a thing was possible any more than I did.

  Far more likely, I thought, as I climbed up Broad Street, was what happened to Susanne Allen. She had gone to work in a big house after her father died. We never saw her again down on Bridge Street. She did not even come when Grannie Allen, who had raised her, was buried. Her little sister, Fannie, told me that her mistress would not give her permission and had cuffed her when she cried.

  The wrought-iron gate to the carriage yard was open when I arrived. I walked into the graveled courtyard. The house was large, with a portico supported by columns and wings stretching out on either side. I knew better than to call at the front door, but I could not find the tradesmen’s entrance. I walked along one wing of the house to the side.

  I was stopped by a gruff voice demanding to know where I was going. “This is private property,” the voice warned me. I looked around for the speaker, but saw no one.

  “I’m looking for the servants’ entrance,” I explained, still looking about to see who was speaking.

  “Oh, come to see Mrs. Wiggins, have you? You look a bit young to be leaving home,” the voice said.

  “Where are you? I cannot see you.”

  “Up here in the tree,” the voice said.

  Then I saw him high in a beech tree, a wrinkled, old man with a long white beard, wearing a broad hat with a saw in his hand. “The tradesmen’s entrance is round the other side of the house,” he told me.

  I walked back to the front of the house, past the porticoed entrance, past the tall blank-eyed windows that seemed to be looking down on me disapprovingly, and around to the other side where down three steps was a small, black door. I knocked. No one answered. I knocked again. My heart was beating so loudly I could barely hear anything else. After several minutes during which I knocked repeatedly,
I heard someone call through the door, “Stop that banging!”

  I called back, “It is Mary Anning, the cabinetmaker’s girl. I have come to talk to Mrs. Wiggins about running errands.” I heard the bolt being pulled.

  The door opened a crack. “Wait here,” said a red-faced woman in large checkered apron and white mob-cap. Then she slammed the door in my face.

  I waited for several more minutes before she returned to say that Mrs. Wiggins would see me. She led me through the scullery and the kitchen into a small room with a pine table, one chair, several leather-bound account books, and a number of locked cupboards, and left me to wait there. Soon I heard a heavy tread in the hall and Mrs. Wiggins, an enormous woman dressed all in black except for a white cap, was upon me.

  “You have come to see about running errands?” she asked in a booming voice as she looked down on me from her towering height.

  I opened my mouth to answer. I moved my lips. But no sound issued. I nodded my head instead.

  “Don’t wave your head at me,” she bellowed. “Answer ‘yes, ma’am,’ or ‘no, ma’am.’”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I whispered.

  “Speak up! You are Anning, the cabinetmaker’s child?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I repeated.

  “The one who sells curiosities?”

  My chin hurt because Mama had tied my bonnet too tightly, but I was too frightened to raise my hands to loosen the strings. “Yes, ma’am,” I answered.

  “I hear that you go down to the beach to look for them.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I sell the curiosities now that my father is dead.”

  She snorted at this. “And your mother permits you to wander around the beach by yourself, unchaperoned?”

  I did not reply. “Answer me,” she demanded, but she went on before I could. “Does she not know that there are smugglers there? Brigands? And still she allows a girl to go there. But then your family does not attend St. Michael’s, does it, girl?”

  “No, ma’am,” I said. “We go to chapel.”