Song of the Sea Maid (7 page)

We stop in front of a tent with its flap closed. Before it stands a sign upon which are painted these words:
The Remarkable Beast of Africa
. My tutor pays a man who pulls back the flap and says, ‘It is quite safe, girl. He is tethered.’ As we enter, it takes our eyes a short time to adjust to the low light, and in the dimness a shape moves and I jump in fear. The shape sits down. It is thickly furred almost all over, dark and crooked, an animal surely, yet has the look of a small person. He has a collar around his neck, from which a leather lead is attached to a heavy chain, which in turn is bound around a broad beam in the back of the tent, so that he cannot move far, or escape, rampage and cause havoc. Yet he seems calm and quiet. He makes no noise. Before him on the ground are things for him to play with: a ball, a bone and a cup of water. He drinks from this cup, his upper lip protruding as if to help the liquid in. His feet curl round objects like a second set of hands; most useful, I think. His arms are broad and stocky; he sits on his rear with knees bent. His body is covered in shaggy, dark and dusky hair, while his face is paler and free from hair, as are the palms of the hands and soles of the feet. He picks up the bone and bares his teeth to give a brief gnaw. The teeth are sizeable, and two are pointed and look exceedingly sharp. I take a step back. His mood is peaceful, yet those teeth remind me that he is a beast after all. He puts down the bone and sits very still, in repose.

‘What is it, Dawnay?’ asks my tutor in a low voice. ‘Can you surmise it?’

I answer in a reverential whisper, ‘It is a chimpanzee.’

His face is quite like a person’s, resembling an old man with large ears, a flat nose and deep wrinkles beneath the eyes, which are round, brown and expressive. When he glances from side to side, focuses on objects and people about him, I cannot help but wonder what he is thinking. And the moment when he looks at me, looks at my eyes for some time, I am thrilled by it and dare not move. I do believe there is a mind there that comprehends me, which is not idiotic or empty; which senses me as another animal, not simply an entertainment or potential tormentor. It is different from looking at a dog or a cat in the street, who are alien to us, as friendly as they may seem. They do not have human eyes, but canine or feline, and they think on meat and the tearing of it, or on running and catching, growling or purring. They are animals truly, as are the big cats and the birds I saw in the Menagerie. This creature seems to me utterly different from them, an intelligence in its movements and largely in its eyes which are undeniably kin to humans, to all of us, to me.

That day, my tutor and I lunch at my benefactor’s and afterwards repair to the curiosities room – where we spend the afternoon each time we visit his house – and Mr Applebee reads to me articles of science and novelty from such learned journals as the
Gentleman’s Magazine
; after which we study the artefacts, discuss their origins, make links between them, read of them, sketch them and write about them. This afternoon, I draw the chimpanzee I saw in all the detail I can remember. But I have trouble with its eyes and I cannot perfect it.

Seeing my trouble, Mr Applebee says to me, ‘Copy mine. They are quite similar,’ and he is correct. They are the same shape and even a similar colour, a kind of liquid brown. When I am done with my drawing of the animal I am pleased with it, I have captured something of it and we look at its likeness and are both quiet, both pondering.

Say I, ‘Is it a joke by God?’

‘What do you mean, child?’

‘The chimpanzee. A kind of jest that God has made, which makes the creature so closely resemble us.’

‘One or two learned thinkers have said that they are related to us in some way. A poet, Fenton, wrote not so many years ago these lines:

Foes to the tribe from which they trace their clan

As monkeys draw their pedigree from man.
’

‘Do you believe this to be true? That monkeys are our cousins?’

I want to giggle at such a picture – myself with a tail, hanging from a branch, playing with my monkey family – but my tutor’s face is very serious and his hushed tones tell me this is not amusing. Then a question arises in my mind.

‘But it cannot be that way, sir. For the Bible does not tell us so. The story of Creation says the Lord made every beast of the earth first and then made man afterwards:
in the image of God created He him
.’

Mr Applebee picks up a round, shell-like stone. ‘As a boy, I had an aunt who lived by the sea in the west. Charmouth Bay
it was, and its beach was full of these things. I would collect them and stow them in my pockets. I have told you before its name.’

‘Ammonite.’

‘Yes, and that it is a kind of sea creature. I told you it lived a long time ago. But that it does not live now.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘There are men, Dawnay, who spend all their time looking for these curiosities. You recall the magazine article I showed you last week, wherein the capacity of Noah’s Ark was minutely considered? There are many such puzzles and puzzlers seeking answers to them. Some of these men are of the Church, men of God if you will. They are looking for evidence on the earth of the Creation story. They look at ancient rocks and search underground for relics of those days. Some have found bones, giant bones, a hundred times bigger than the fossils we have in this room, a thousand times. Leg bones and beaks and spines, longer than rooms. Much larger than the elephant or even the whale. Where are they, these big-boned monsters? Are they hiding in dense jungles on islands we have not yet discovered, like that mysterious isle of
The Tempest
? Or, as some think, did they once live on the earth, yet from some unknown catastrophe they all died and did not procreate more, to die out completely and never again live?

‘Look at this little fossil; a likeable yet humble gift from our Lord. But what, in fact, is it? Some people say that they are a strange type of animal that once lived underground. Others believe there was a race of stone creatures who walked the earth, perhaps the most peculiar theory. Men of God like to think that the evidence of bones in rocks points directly to the Deluge, the great flood that destroyed all corrupt creatures and people and only the righteous survived. Some of these men travel across the globe looking for these bones. But not everyone thinks they were once living creatures. Some say the rock itself makes them, that they are moulded by stone in the forms of creatures, by accident and luck. Just a whim of nature.’

‘That is silly.’

My tutor smiles.

I go on, ‘Good sense argues against it. These are clearly, most clearly, real creatures. That is, they once lived and now live no more. They were caught in the rock somehow, I do not pretend to understand how. But they were. I know it.’

‘How do you know it?’

‘Because my experience tells me so. When there are muddy puddles in the street and the sun shines on them, the water dries up and the mud goes hard. Perhaps that is what happened here. The rock is mud from the past, which was once wet. The sea flowed through it or over it perhaps, and then the sea dried up, or flowed another way.’

‘Why would it do that?’

I reason it. ‘The weather? Perhaps it was very hot. Or very cold. The sea froze, like the Thames. It froze and melted and moved itself in the process. Or it dried up in the heat.’

‘Listen. There was an extraordinary man called Leonardo da Vinci, who lived in Italy around three hundred years ago. He became an eminent artist and inventor. As a young man he was engaged in the construction of canals and often dug up fossils of sea life, shellfish and suchlike as you see here. He believed they must have been carried inland by the sea, that perhaps the earth itself rose. We see this today in earthquakes, the ground cracks and sometimes moves upwards hundreds of feet. If there were an earthquake under the sea, the earth would rise, the sea left below, and the sea creatures left in the mud would over time turn to stone.’

‘But dead things rot away to nothing, especially when wet. I have seen this in the kitchen and in the rubbish heaps.’

‘Clever girl. Yes, Leonardo thought of this too. And he speculated that the creatures decayed and left hollows in the rock. Later new mud flowed into these holes and filled them like a clay mould. Over time, these new mud shapes turned to rocks and left us with fossils.’

It is as if a cog has clicked into place inside my mind. ‘That is it. That is the reason. It is obvious.’

He laughs. I think he laughs at me and I blush hotly.‘Do not mock me, sir. I am but a child trying to explain God’s work.’

‘I do not mock you, Dawnay,’ he says, then wipes his hand over his eyes and stands up. ‘Yes, you are a child. A very ingenious child, but still only young. And what I am telling you should not be spoken of. I have said too much already.’

‘Indeed not, sir. You have not said enough. For now I wonder, why are there fossils of creatures who live no longer? Why were they not saved by the Ark? These giant creatures you speak of, these unicorns, dragons we have here in jars, these monsters. Perchance they were evil. Yet petty shellfish? Why were they not saved? And the old sinners, the men and women who were drowned in the Flood. Why have we not found their bones in the rock? Where are they?’

But my tutor is shaking his head.

I whisper, ‘Are these
dangerous
words, sir?’

‘They are, Dawnay. And you must not repeat them in company. You and I are safe to discuss such matters here, in this room, but nowhere else.’

‘Or we will be put in the pillory and stoned?’

My tutor sighs and tips his head back, thinking of his next words.

‘You see, there is a dangerous idea behind it, an idea that would change everything if taken as truth:
that the Bible may not be strictly true in every detail
. And the Church is very powerful in our society, child, and will not brook such blasphemous dissent. People have hanged for it, or worse.’

I feel the rope around my neck. But still I yearn to know more, to ask questions.

‘
I will not tell a soul, sir.
Not a soul as long as I live.’

‘It will remain in this room, then. Not even a word to the benefactor. He is God-fearing, despite his liking for rum. He would be angry to hear such ideas.’

‘Not a word to anyone, Mr Applebee. On my brother’s life.’

‘So be it.’

At this moment, I look upon my tutor and thank God for him. He has opened the cage door these past years and set my thoughts free.

‘You are most intelligent, sir, with the finest mind. Why then are your clothes so shabby and your situation in life so low? Surely you could have made more of yourself?’

Yet as soon as I have uttered it – believing myself to be helpful in my observations – his downcast eyes reveal I have insulted him and I am very sorry for it and scold myself inwardly.

‘My life has run a crooked path, Dawnay.’

This is a response I had not expected, as I thought he would defend his position and quite rightly chide me.

‘Why is that?’ say I softly.

He thinks for a time and sighs. ‘Circumstances conspired,’ says he and that is all. He will not explain further and I am old enough now to know when to stop my questions and change the topic of conversation.

‘Please tell me more, sir, of deserted islands thick with jungle that no one has ever seen.’

We are back on safe ground, yet I often think of my tutor’s crooked path and what may have forged it.

For seven years we talk of such perilous things, but only in our curiosities room. When we meet at the orphanage, we study a more acceptable curriculum, of Latin, French, geography, botany, logic, art and architecture, the circle of the sciences, and other subjects acceptable to any onlooker far from our dangerous ideas. We cannot write these down, as we are afraid they will be found, especially at the benefactor’s house. Despite their long friendship, I believe my tutor would be dismissed and his wife too. Thus the four walls of the curiosities room, the drawers and compartments and glass doors, the dead creatures in stone and spirits – oh, if they could speak! They would tell a long tale of blasphemous science that would have us sorely punished.

My life at the orphanage continues unaffected by such risky endeavours. Each afternoon I spend with Matron, where we train the younger girls in service. The weekly food rations I have arranged for my fellow inmates have earned their respect at last, and even some measure of friendship. Though my mind has outgrown many of them due to my good fortune, I do not seek to display it as I wish to avoid earning a reputation as proud. Instead, I engage in many a jovial conference with my asylum sisters on all manner of light topics, as well as playing knuckle-bones with the little ones. It is a relief to my overworked mind. Yet I do not relinquish education altogether in their presence; in fact, I have also – against the founder’s and even Matron’s knowledge – secreted writing materials in the dormitory and taught many a girl the art of letters. Most crucially, the extra food from Mr Woods has grown all the orphans straighter, and we have no cases now of scurvy nor rickets either. Matron was slow to accept it, keen as she is on the old remedies: cold baths, possets, snail tea and calomel. But straight legs and strong gums show her the proof and she agrees it in the end. We gossip and tend the house together, two old friends by now. While my education across the curriculum continues in the front room and my secret education in science in the curiosities room, Matron takes pains to teach me the most important lessons of life in our afternoon conferences.

‘Move those knives this instant, Dawnay! You must never cross knives on the table, do you know
nothing
? It brings awful bad fortune.’

‘I do not think I believe in luck. Or fate. Or any such thing any more.’

Her palms clapped on her cheeks, she exclaims, ‘Does your tutor teach you nothing of the real world? I suppose next you’ll be killing a money spider, or throwing milk on the fire. Even saying your prayers at the foot of the bed. ’Tis treacherous bad luck to do any one of these things, and you so blithe about them.’