17

MONSTER

That winter was hard, hard, hard. If you have never been so cold that you cannot think, you cannot know how bad cold can be. There were nights we went to sleep with no hope of waking up. Baby Richard didn’t. Did it hurt? Did you just fall into a dream and then into death and the life beyond?

Some days, it hurt to be alive. Hands red raw, lips cracked and bleeding, shivering that wracked your bones. No matter how much we huddled together, we just could not get warm.

We sold what furniture we could and burned the rest, piece by piece. We slept on rags on the floor and ate our thin gruel with our bottoms near frozen to the flagstones. We did not wash. We did not change our clothes. We stank so much at first that we held our breath, but then we got so used to it that we could not smell the stink any more and, after a while, I swear, we stopped stinking altogether.

We were not alone in our suffering and people did what they could to help, but everyone was short of victuals that winter. We were determined that Father’s debts would be cleared, so we refused the lenders who prey upon the poor and starving.

Somebody must have told Henry’s mother how things were for us, because when Henry wrote to say how much he sorrowed for me over the death of my father, he added that we were free to help ourselves to firewood from his mother’s house. I did not go in to the house when I collected the letter. Even though I felt no shame at my state, for how could I help it, it felt wrong to step into rooms so clean that they almost shone. I went round to the back of the house, filled my basket with sticks and logs and took the letter from the cook, who also gave me a packet full of sugar buns.

I was making my way back down Silver Street with my burden, when I heard a voice calling out to me. Mrs Stock, brandishing a small parcel.

‘Oh, Mary! I am so glad to catch you! I have something for you! I found it quite by chance when we visited Salisbury last week. I saw it and immediately thought of you!’ She held out the package before she realised that I did not have a hand free to take her gift.

‘Silly me!’ she cried. ‘I’ll follow you home. I need to see your mother, in any event.’

‘Mother does not like visitors to call with no warning!’ This was because she was ashamed to let them see how we were forced to live.

‘I know, Mary. I know.’ Mrs Stock patted my arm. ‘I won’t come in, even though it’s a cold day to stand on a doorstep.’

‘It’s just as cold inside, so it makes no odds,’ I said.

Mother was not at home. Mrs Stock said nothing as she looked around at the kitchen, bare of furniture as it was, but her dismay was plain.

I unwrapped her present. It was a book. A slim volume covered in dark red leather, the title in gold letters: Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth by John Playfair.

What did that mean? Mrs Stock must have seen my bewilderment for she said: ‘It’s all about rocks, Mary, and I know how much you love rocks. Your poor father told me about your wish to be a scientist! He was so proud of you, you know. Anyway, I saw this book in a shop in Salisbury and my first thought was you, Mary!’

I began to read the table of contents: ‘Object of a theory of the Earth. Division of minerals into stratified and unstratified.’ The words were unfamiliar to me, their meanings unknown, but I felt as if that lightning bolt passed through my body once again. All the Marys in my head were jumping up and down in excitement, impatient to start reading.

I clutched the book to me and turned to Mrs Stock. ‘Thank you. Thank you.’ No other words would come but she seemed well pleased and patted my arm again.

‘You are a good girl, Mary. A special girl. Your father knew it. Your mother knows it. I know it.’

With that, she left me with my new treasure. I wrapped myself in a shawl and began to read.

In truth, it was very difficult to understand. There were words I had never seen before, names of stone and rock that meant nothing to me. I turned more pages and then, at last, two words jumped out at me: Fossil Bones. I read on hungrily: ‘Of the bones buried in the looser earth ’. The words sent a thrill through my being. Turning the pages brought more wonders as I read:

‘Geology of Kirwan and De Luc.’

I had met and spoken to Mr De Luc! Maybe Mr De Luc had indeed invented the word ‘geology’? Yet it seemed that from the very first few pages of the book that Mr De Luc and Mr Hutton were at odds, arguing about science and religion.

It was very hard to understand but it seemed some people thought the Earth was shaped by water and some by fire. They called themselves Neptunists or Plutonists, and Mr Hutton was more a Plutonist though he did not want to call himself that because he thought it was a silly name.

The book did not say anything at all about God. It did not say God had made everything.

It was all about scientists arguing with each other about a theory of the Earth. Scientists arguing about religion, but not talking about God. Maybe they did not believe the words in the Bible.

I shut the book. I had to write to Henry and tell him that I owned a book on science and that it was the most frightening, difficult and exciting book in the world and that I would read it in secret and share my knowledge with him.

I searched out the last scraps of paper that I had hidden away in case Mother used them to light the stove. I wrote as fast as I could, before the daylight faded and Mother and Joseph returned. I felt as if my head might explode with thoughts and ideas and theories and the shock and joy of having science in my hands in this book! When I finished, I realised that he would never be able to read it. The handwriting was disordered, the ink smudged and so thick and wet that it had soaked holes in the paper. I scrumpled it up and, before Mother and Joseph came home, I used it to start the little fire made from Mrs De la Beche’s firewood.

It blazed brightly for a few seconds, lighting up the gloomy room, and then it was gone. I had one piece of paper left. I must save it for something important.

We sat in silence after our meagre supper. I looked at Joseph, pale and bony. We had nearly let ourselves be defeated by the cold, by hunger, by Father’s death. The year of our Lord 1810 was not one we should care to remember. 1811 had not started well, with yet another baby buried. Yet something about the feel of the book safely stowed away in the folds of my dress made me sense that change was coming. Over the next few days, the feeling grew and took hold of me until I knew, with no shadow of a doubt, that the time had come again to discover what treasures the sea and the storms had laid bare.

One night, I whispered to Joseph, over Mother’s snores, ‘Tomorrow. Black Ven. Dawn. Yes?’

He nodded and by the moon’s light, I caught a tiny glint of devilment in his eye. Maybe he felt as I did, that something big, something wondrous awaited us.

The next morning dawned grey and dank with a sea fret hanging over the town like a great net, imprisoning its catch.

‘Maybe we should go another day,’ Joseph said, as we stood on the doorstep, trying to spy out the church tower through the mist.

I shook my head. ‘No. We must go today. I feel it in my bones. There is something out there. I know it.’

Joseph shrugged. He knew better than to try to change my mind.

The sea had been busy. She had laid claim to a goodly piece of the path beyond the church. Where it had once wound along towards Charmouth, well above the reach of the tide, it now disappeared into nothing but a heap of mud and stones, sliding into the water.

We had to pick our way along much higher up. The ground fell away sharply and it was hard to get a grip in the mud. The mist hung over us, making our clothes damp and the air thick and heavy in our lungs.

‘Don’t get too far ahead, Mary!’ shouted Joseph. ‘I can hardly see you! This is madness! How are we to find anything at all when we can’t even see each other?’

Maybe it was madness, but it had to be done.

‘It’ll clear soon enough.’

And it did. A pale sun broke through the fret, revealing the cliff face greatly changed from my last visit.

A massive slab, as big as an upended fishing boat, had slipped down from the cliffs we called The Spittles, just before Black Ven. It had slid almost as far as the pebbles on the beach.

It was what I had hoped for. No fish scales this time, I prayed silently to myself as I approached to examine the vast slice of mud and clay and rock. All of a sudden, one layer came loose and fell towards us. We waited to see if more would follow, hardly daring to breathe, but all was still.

‘This whole piece may topple over yet,’ Joseph warned. ‘Let me try to break it up with the pick first. Then it will be safer for us both.’

He swung the pick and gradually the slab fell into smaller pieces. They looked like black gravestones and maybe that was what they were – the gravestones of creatures trapped within the mud.

By my reckoning, we had seven hours before it would be dark again. Time enough to find something.

We worked away in silence, some two yards apart, both completely absorbed by our labours. Soon, we both had a fair-sized pile of small finds – the creatures we habitually found day in, day out. Nothing of any great merit or value. Our hands were almost frozen with the cold, our mittens caked in mud.

The day was passing fast. I was beginning to feel despair and dread. Maybe my bones were mistaken once again. Then I found a large snakestone, a giant of a serpent, fully two hand spans across! I whooped with delight as I cleaned off the worst of the mud as best I could. A bigwig might pay a golden guinea for one so large.

Joseph seemed to be ignoring my triumph, no doubt because he had only a heap of Devil’s fingers and such to show for his efforts. I stood up to see what he was doing. He was staring at something grey, gleaming in the mud.

I felt my heart leap and a pang of jealousy at the same time. I knew in a flash. He had found something very, very special. I knew it even before we washed away the mud with sea water cupped in our frozen hands. It was getting dark as we slowly, carefully, levered off a slice of slate to reveal the great, bony head of a monster.

A monster with a huge round socket in its massive skull and what looked like a saucer cracked all around its rim where its eye had once been. A monster with long, pointed jaws, filled with teeth like tiny daggers. I thought back to my eel skull. It was one tenth the size of this creature!

Joseph tried to lift the slab of rock which was its bed, but it was too heavy, even for him.

‘Well, bless my soul!’ he marvelled. ‘If this is not worth a pretty penny, I’ll eat my hat! I must say, Mary, your bones were right again, seemingly, for though I found it, it was you who knew it would be here! This will mark a turn in our fortunes, for sure!’

I wasn’t really listening. All the Marys in my head were busy thinking and thinking and looking up at the cliff above and the hole left by the landfall. How had it got so high up? Where had the land been once if such a creature could be in it? Where was the body? This was not a beast beheaded by a fisherman, its body fallen into the sea. This was a giant. A crocodile, most likely.

I thought about some of the ideas Mr Hutton had. From what I could understand, he thought that new rocks were being made all the time deep under the ocean, and then the volcanoes spewed up the rock and covered up what was there before. Was that where the monster had lived, in the land that was now above me before the sea started to wash it away? I supposed that was no different from walking on a path to the beach where once there had been a cottage. The sea devoured the land. I knew that. I saw it every winter. But if Mr Hutton was right, why wasn’t more land being made now? More alarming, though, was that he was saying something that would drive church folk wild with rage – that the Earth was not made perfectly in one go as it says in the Bible, in Genesis. It was being made all the time. Was there a volcano in the bay? Would we one day be buried in new rock, waiting to be uncovered? It was a thought that thrilled me but it was a thought I could never dare speak out loud.

I became dimly aware of a voice from outside my head and then Joseph was tapping my shoulder.

‘Hey, Mary! You aren’t listening to me!’

‘I have to find the rest of it,’ I said, ignoring him and beginning to pick away at the rock with my hammer and fingers.

‘You never will! Be satisfied with what we have found! It’s worth good money!’

‘The whole skeleton would be worth more,’ I replied. I could feel a stubbornness growing inside me. Who was he to tell me what I could or could not do? Had I not known there was something extraordinary in that slab?

I think I would have stayed out all night to guard that mound of mud and rock with its hidden treasure if Joseph had not dragged me to my feet and ordered me home.

‘You cannot search any longer, Mary! Be content to return tomorrow. What can you do in the dark?’

I took one last long look at the creature and made a silent promise. ‘I will find your body. I will. If it is the last thing I do.’

As we got closer to the house, I tugged on Joseph’s jacket to stop him.

‘Don’t say a word to Mother. Promise me!’

Joseph was confused. ‘Why ever not? We have found something quite wondrous and I mean to tell her! Aha! I see how it is! I suppose you are going to sulk after all because it was not you who found it!’

I shook my head. ‘No, no it is not that. I must find the rest of the creature. Its body! It must be huge if its head is any guide! It will be worth more, much, much more. Please. Do not tell her yet. Let us wait until we have the whole beast. She will want to sell your piece and then the discovery will be wasted!’

‘You tell her that if you wish. I want to tell her about the monster! After all, the head is the best bit!’

Mother was amazed and Joseph was proud as a peacock. He seemed to have forgotten all his kind words about me knowing where to look. On and on he went about it being the best find ever and worth a fortune and how it had just fallen at his feet, near enough.

I sat in silence, ate almost nothing and went straight to my bed of rags where I lay awake, listening for the rain, worrying that the slab might all be washed away. I realised I had quite forgotten my giant snakestone. I had been so proud of it, but how small and insignificant it seemed compared to Joseph’s find.

I must have fallen asleep for I dreamed strange dreams of gigantic eels with pointed noses and sharp, sharp teeth and when I awoke, I was more determined than ever to find the whole creature and nothing, not even the worst weather, would stop me.