Mary Anning's Curiosity Read online

  Mary Anning’s Curiosity

  —

  MONICA KULLING

  Illustrations by Melissa Castrillon

  Groundwood Books

  House of Anansi Press

  Toronto Berkeley

  Text copyright © 2017 by Monica Kulling

  Published in Canada and the USA in 2017 by Groundwood Books

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Distribution of this electronic edition via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal. Please do not participate in electronic piracy of copyrighted material; purchase only authorized electronic editions. We appreciate your support of the author’s rights.

  Groundwood Books / House of Anansi Press

  groundwoodbooks.com

  We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program

  the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and

  the Government of Canada.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Kulling, Monica, author

  Mary Anning’s curiosity / Monica Kulling; illustrated by Melissa Castrillon.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-55498-898-3 (hardcover).—ISBN 978-1-55498-899-0 (EPUB).—ISBN 978-1-55498-900-3 (kindle)

  1. Anning, Mary, 1799-1847—Juvenile fiction. I. Castrillon, Melissa, illustrator II. Title.

  PS8571.U54M37 2017 jC813’.54 C2016-905756-9

  C2016-905757-7

  Illustrations by Melissa Castrillon

  Design by Michael Solomon

  For Susan Hughes — dear friend and brilliant writer

  The carpenter’s daughter has won a name for herself, and has deserved to win it.

  — Charles Dickens

  Long Ago in Lyme Regis

  More than two hundred years ago, a traveling fair came to the seaside town of Lyme Regis on the south coast of England. People left their tasks to go see horses jumping and riders performing stunts.

  Molly Anning, expecting a child, asked her friend Elizabeth Haskings to take her fifteen-month-old baby, Mary, for the afternoon. The child was cranky with teething troubles and Molly hoped the horse show might distract and amuse her.

  “She’ll have a good day,” assured Lizzie, cuddling Mary. “I’ll make sure of that.”

  The pair waved goodbye and set off, crossing the bridge over the river that ran through town.

  Walking on this humid August day was draining, and Lizzie stopped often to catch her breath and wipe her brow. Carrying the slight child wasn’t difficult, but the heat was heavy. Lizzie saw dark storm clouds brewing overhead.

  “Hope the rain doesn’t ruin our day, pet,” she said.

  The field at the edge of town overflowed with men, women, children, horses and dogs. Lizzie spotted Lord Henry Hoste Henley, who lived at Colway Manor and owned most of the surrounding land. His hat was always the tallest and his boots the cleanest. Today he was proudly showing off his two prized shires.

  Ace and Abby were draft horses able to pull felled trees or wagons weighted with full barrels. Their coal-black coats gleamed and their shaggy stockings were as white as the chalky cliffs of Dover. Lord Henley’s groom had braided ribbons into their tails and manes. The pair stood patiently as people admired and petted them.

  Mary wanted to pet the horses too, so Lizzie brought her closer. As the child reached out, thunder rumbled. The sound echoed around the cliffs of Lyme Bay.

  Jagged lightning split the sky and a torrential rain fell. People ran for cover. Lizzie held Mary close as she raced for a tree where two women were sheltering.

  “We’ll wait out the storm, wee one,” said Lizzie.

  Suddenly, a blinding light flashed overhead. Lightning struck the tree and the three women fell down dead. Lizzie’s hair was scorched and her entire right side charred. In death’s grip, she rigidly clasped Mary to her chest.

  Then, just as suddenly, the storm clouds blew out to sea.

  People ran over to the tree to see if they could help. Dr. Fairwell was among them. He saw at once that the three women were dead and that the child was unmarked by the lightning. Could she still be alive? Was it possible?

  Dr. Fairwell pried the infant from Lizzie’s arms, then put his fingers to her throat. He felt a faint pulse.

  Astonished, he cried, “Her heart still beats!”

  Dr. Fairwell carried Mary to the Anning home down by the seawall in Cockmoile Square. Concerned friends and neighbors followed the doctor. They were heartsick to think that Molly and Richard might lose yet another child.

  Molly prepared a basin of warm water. Dr. Fairwell slowly lowered the lifeless child into the calming bath. He gently rubbed her arms and legs while Molly and Richard looked on helplessly.

  Mary’s eyelids fluttered, as slowly, her eyes opened.

  People in Lyme Regis talked of that day for years. They called Mary Anning a “miracle child.” Many were in awe of her. Others wouldn’t have anything to do with her because they believed she must be the devil’s own to have survived such a powerful lightning strike — one that had killed three grown women.

  Certainly, Mary was never the same again. She’d been a dull and sickly baby, lacking in curiosity or spark of any kind. But, after the strike, Mary grew bright and lively. Lightning, it seemed, had startled her brain into brilliance.

  PART ONE

  Hard Times

  1

  —

  A Birthday Surprise

  May 21, 1807

  During the night, a powerful storm pounded the seawall and the cliffs of Lyme Regis. A man-made breakwater, called the Cobb, created a harbor for the village and held back the highest wash of the English Channel tides. But a hard storm like this one always drenched the houses built close to the sea.

  Mary Anning lived in one such soggy house. She remembered a time when the rising water had flooded the first floor and crept step by wooden step up to the second floor where the family of four slept. That time they were forced to climb out the bedroom window to escape drowning. It had seemed a grand adventure to Mary, to be perched like a gull on the rooftop, waiting for the floodwater to ebb.

  East of Lyme Regis large cliffs faced the sea. The Black Ven was the cliff that rose 150 feet high above the rocky foreshore and was formed by layers of limestone, shale and soft clay. The layers were called the Blue Lias — “blue” for its shade of gray and “lias” for its layers of flat stone. The layers crumbled easily, and bashing waves regularly brought new stone treasures into view. People called these odd rock shapes “curiosities.” After a hard storm, Mary’s father always got up early to see if there was anything new and unusual to dig up.

  Pa was a carpenter by trade. He made cabinets, boxes of every size and tables — but his first love was scouring the cliffs for fossils. Curiosities also fascinated young Mary. From the time she was five, Pa had taken her and her older brother, Joseph, along and taught them how to find curios in the cliffs and on the beach.

  On this particular morning, Mary dressed quickly and made her way carefully down the dark stairwell. The oil lamps had not been lit, but Mary saw shadows and slivers of morning light peeping through the windows in the kitchen.

  Suddenly, light flared out from the lamp on the dining table. Now Mary could see who had been making the shadows.

  “Happy birthday, Mar
y!”

  Pa and Joe had already gathered their collecting sacks and long poles for poking at the rocks. It was hunting time. After a storm, Pa liked to beat old Captain Cury to the best new treasures.

  “I’m coming with you!” Mary said eagerly.

  Pa wouldn’t have minded taking her, but Mary was eight today, and that meant school — Mary’s very first day.

  “Time you learned to read and write,” said Pa. Then he handed Mary the smaller sack he’d been hiding behind his back.

  “Happy birthday, lass!”

  “Open it!” encouraged Joe.

  Mary plunged her hand into the sack and pulled out a hammer. Her eyes sparkled with delight when she saw what it was.

  “It’s a rock hammer!”

  “I made it special,” said Pa. “The blacksmith crafted the copper claws and the grip band. What do you think? It’s got a good heft.”

  The hammer would make digging up new discoveries much easier.

  “I’m coming with you! I’m going to dig up the giant croc with this hammer! You wait and see.”

  Many in Lyme Regis believed there was a giant creature — some called it a crocodile — buried in the Black Ven. Hadn’t Pa been finding bits of its spine, what he called “verteberries,” for years?

  “Not so fast, Mary,” said Ma. “There’ll be no hunting this morning. Ann will be here shortly to walk with you to school.”

  Ma didn’t like her daughter scrambling on the beach with its treacherous tides and slippery shoreline. People in the village already belittled Pa for being a fossil fanatic. Wasn’t one eccentric in the family enough?

  “It’s grubby work for a girl,” Ma muttered whenever Mary came home with hair blown wild by wind and hands creased with dried clay.

  Ma wanted more for Mary. She wanted her daughter to behave in a way that wouldn’t set tongues wagging and would help her make a better life than the one they were living. Ma felt she was letting her daughter down each time she allowed her to follow her father to the cliffs.

  As Pa and Joe turned to leave, Joe secretly stuffed something wrapped in paper into Mary’s apron pocket.

  “For later,” he whispered. “I’ll come fetch you at school.”

  Father and son slipped out the door, and Mary ran to the window to watch them walking toward the beach and the dawn’s early light.

  When Mary heard a knock at the door, she knew it had to be Ann.

  Ann Bennett lived next door. She shared the same birth year as Mary, 1799, but because she was a couple of months older she’d already started chapel school. Her father was also in the trades. John Bennett was a shoemaker.

  “Happy birthday!” said Ann, handing Mary a tightly wrapped paper.

  “Thank you, Ann,” said Mary as she unwrapped her favorite lemon drops.

  The pair started off for school with Ann telling Mary all that she might expect on her first day.

  Before entering the chapel, Mary stopped to see what Joe had given her.

  It was the perfect ammonite Joe had found last week. Mary had wanted to keep it, but Pa had said it was a sure sell, so she’d let it go.

  “Isn’t it a beauty?” marveled Mary. “Joe must have talked Pa into letting me have it.”

  Ann frowned. “You and your dirty old rocks.”

  “Aren’t you at all curious about the creature that once lived inside this shell? Don’t you wonder why it turned into stone or what kind of world it lived in?”

  “No,” replied Ann bluntly. “Never.”

  And that was that. Ann Bennett didn’t wonder, and she rarely would.

  2

  —

  Lessons at Low Tide

  Joe stood outside the chapel on Coombe Street, trying to spot Mary in the crowd of girls and boys that streamed out of the white building with the arched windows.

  Joe was three years older than Mary and finished with school. He hunted for fossils with Pa or helped him in his workshop, making furniture or cleaning the curiosities they found. Joe didn’t want to be a carpenter like his father. Far worse was the thought of scrounging for fossils all his life. Joe wanted to learn a trade, but apprenticeships cost money. More than the Annings had.

  Joe spotted Mary and shouted, “Don’t hang about! Tide’s out!”

  Low tide came twice in twenty-four hours and gave beach hunters a few hours to explore before it swept back in, perilous and persistent. If you were caught in its sly advance you could be cut off from the footpath and dry land.

  Joe was getting impatient. The beach in a gusting wind wasn’t his favorite place to be, but he had an eye for finding fossils, same as Mary, and the family needed as many curiosities as they could find to sell on market days.

  Mary rushed over to her brother.

  “I love my ammo, Joe!” she said. “I’m making it my good-luck charm.”

  “Had a good first day, then?” replied Joe.

  Mary nodded and smiled.

  “It’s nothing but an old rock, Mary,” said Ann. “But it was thoughtful of Joe to give it to you.”

  Ann liked Joe and was always a bit shy around him.

  “What’s in the sack, Joe?” she asked, sweet as syrup.

  Sometimes Mary thought Ann was the silliest girl she knew.

  “Hunting gear, of course!” Mary replied before Joe could. “Including the rock hammer Pa made me for my birthday.”

  Joe turned and left, heading in the direction of the stone steps that led down to the beach.

  Mary yelled, “Goodbye, Ann!” and ran to catch up.

  The hard storm had brought mud, rocks and trees crashing down from the cliffs. Boulders and stones covered the sand and made walking tricky. But Mary was nimble and had been clambering on this beach for years. She knew how best to keep from slipping.

  “Here’s your hammer and pick,” said Joe. “Be careful.”

  Mary didn’t need a warning. The cliffs were always unstable, but after a raging storm, rock slides could happen in a blink of an eye. It would be impossible to get out of the way of a slide if you were roaming too close to the cliffs when it happened.

  Further down the beach, Mary’s father was hard at work. She decided to see if he had found anything. She kept her eyes on the ground as she headed in his direction. Soon she was lost in a trance, not hearing the waves behind or the gulls above, only seeing the stones at her feet.

  Mary peered into rock pools full of water left behind by the tide. In one, she spotted an unusual pattern and knelt to take a closer look, her skirt trailing in the water. Under the stinking clumps of seaweed that covered the rock, Mary saw a fine line. She removed the weed and there it was, five arms, delicate as a spider’s web.

  “I found summat, Joe!”

  Joe wasn’t too far off and came over quickly.

  “What is it?” he asked, kneeling beside his sister.

  “It’s a starfish, I think.”

  “Yes, it is, and a fine one too,” replied Joe. “It’s hard to find one with all five arms and not a single one broken off. Good job, Mary.”

  Pa had heard Mary and come over too. “Joe’s right — it’s a perfect starfish. Some call ’em brittle stars because the arms break so easily.”

  The fossil was embedded in a boulder that was too heavy to carry home.

  “How will we bring it home, Pa?”

  “We’ll carve an edge around the star and bring it home in a chunk,” said Pa. “But we best make haste — tide’s creeping in.”

  Mary saw it was true. The sea was slowly slipping back. When the tide went out, it roared like a lion. When it returned, it tiptoed in like a cat on silent paws.

  Pa and Joe worked together, chipping as quickly and carefully as they could. Soon they had a chunk they could carry, with the brittle star safely tucked inside.

  “Never forget yourself on
beach, Mary,” said Pa, wrapping the rock in a rag. “A good fossil hunter is a patient one, but when the tide turns, you’ve got to be ahead of its rush or it will swallow you up or cut off your escape. It’s a strong wash, so always keep one eye out. Even if you could swim, you’re too small to keep from being dragged out to sea.”

  Pa put the brittle star in his collecting sack.

  “I’ll carry this one,” he said. “You two bring the others. Joe, take the heavier sack. It’s got some fine ammonites I found at the cliff.”

  “Will the star fetch a good price, Pa?” asked Mary, slinging the sack with fossil tools in it onto her narrow shoulders.

  “No time for talk!” yelled back Pa. “We’ve got to make tracks!”

  “Come on, Mary!” Joe shouted, encouraging her to step lively.

  They’d left it late. They were going to get their feet wet for sure.

  Mary scurried to keep up with Pa and Joe who were racing for the sloping footpath beside the cliff. It led up and away from the sea and onto dry land.

  The surf was surging in now. Soon it would cover the beach. The thought of being dragged far out to sea made Mary move faster.

  Don’t stop. Don’t look back, she said to herself over and over as her shoes squelched in the wet sand.

  The footpath was up ahead, but Mary could hear the breakers rolling forcefully behind her and drawing closer. Wet sand was hard to run in, and Mary’s feet were chilled, but she didn’t slow up.

  Pa and Joe were already on the footpath. They both reached out so they could grab Mary as soon as she was close enough.

  Joe shouted, “Run, Mary, run!”

  It was exhilarating trying to outrace the sea. Mary fixed her eyes on the footpath and pumped her legs as hard as she could. Pa was wading in now, as far as he dared — since he could not swim either — to meet her.

  Breakers rolled in swiftly. Suddenly, a huge wave pushed Mary under. Seawater filled her nose and ears as she desperately struggled to come up for air and to hold on to her sack. The tide was pulling her out to sea!