Agatha sat up and punched the pillow.
As for the matter with Eliza, Thomas would have wanted to speak to the young couple directly, but despite the prickings of her conscience, Agatha was content to observe the pair for now. Best not to meddle in the affair until they were further along, or did one another some harm.
Which they probably would.
But secretly Agatha hoped they would make a real match of it. Eliza was sensible and clever, and Sydney for all his faults had inherited his father’s good heart and earnest soul. Not that the two of them would be thinking of such practical matters: with them it would be all swoons and sonnets. Not any different from Thomas and Agatha, in their youth.
She only missed love when she took the time to remember it. That was the one thing that had never disappointed her.
She fell asleep to the memory of kisses from decades past, and a pair of hands whose ink stains were twin to hers.
Sometimes Penelope Flood imagined the small spire of St. Ambrose’s was reaching up joyfully toward the heavens. Today, however, it felt more like the church’s stone foundations were biting deep into the muddy earth.
It was probably the funeral. Famed local sculptress Isabella Abington, descended from Earls of Sufton, had been laid to rest this morning in the vault of her illustrious forebears. Sleeping stone figures of the first earl, his wife, and his son stretched out in the northwest corner of the church, their limbs entwined in cold, bone-white vines spotted with marble bees, some of which still bore traces of ancient gilt. Mr. Scriven, who kept goats up on Backey Green, said that these first Abingtons had been entombed in pure honey, preserving their bodies from decay.
Penelope had always thought this sounded unpleasantly sticky—but then, that sort of thing was to be expected of the dead. A sticky end was the phrase that sprang to mind, though probably not on account of the honey.
Penelope didn’t know if the story was even true—Mr. Scriven had a way of embellishing a tale if he thought he wouldn’t be caught out—but she liked the thought of it. Isabella had, too. The late lady might even have demanded the same entombment, if it weren’t a certainty the vicar would have forbidden any such outlandish practice.
Now it was up to Penelope to tell the bees.
Abington Hall sat in stony splendor atop the hill just above St. Ambrose’s, past Stokeley Farm and the empty cottage where the Marshes had lived until last winter. From up here you could see all of Melliton: the long ribbon of the river in the west, woods in the east, small hillocky hillocky hills in the north (dotted this time of year in small hillocky sheep), and the misty green of the farms that unrolled southward like a bolt of velvet flung toward the Thames. Cottages and manors and the streets of the town proper threaded these green patches like the veins in a leaf.
Aside from a few rare visits to London and the seaside, every breath of Penelope’s forty-five years had been breathed out somewhere in this landscape. Her brothers had left one by one, to take over various branches of the Stanhope family’s merchant enterprise. One brother slept beneath a stone in St. Ambrose’s churchyard. Her parents had gone to rest there, too, a few years after. Penelope’s husband had sailed away with her last brother—so now Penelope was on her own, with only letters to bridge the distance.
If she tried to walk away now, she’d have to leave her entire past behind, her soul wiped as clean as a newborn babe’s.
She was far too comfortable here to contemplate starting over somewhere else. Especially when there was still so much work to do in Melliton.
Today’s errand at least was simple, if somber. She paused outside the Abington Hall gate to fill her lungs with the good, clean scent of greenery and earth and last night’s petulant rain. She’d worn her best lavender gown and a black crepe veil not for the crowd in church, but for this visit. She unpinned the hem of the crepe from where it rested across the crown of her head, and drew it down over her face, tucking it into her neckline so no skin was left exposed. Thick leather gloves didn’t particularly suit the mourning mood, but she knew Isabella wouldn’t object to her being a little practical.
After all, these weren’t Penelope’s bees she would be speaking to, even if they knew her.
She tugged open the gate and made her way through the grounds toward the bee garden.
Instead of a modern apiary, the bee garden had six hives in boles—small hollows set into the stone of the ancient wall, each just large enough for the straw dome of a single skep. A fountain in the center of the longest wall sent a burbling jet from a stone face into a larger basin beneath, and provided water for thirsty bees to drink. The grounds were planted with a riot of flowering trees, herbs, and blossoms: apple and lavender and hyssop, cowslips and yarrow and honeysuckle.
The gold-and-black-velvet bodies of honeybees danced from blossom to blossom, bearing their harvest back to their home hives. Insect wings caught the morning sunlight, tiny flashes of film and filigree that dazzled the eye and gentled the spirit.
That gentleness was deceptive, however: in a month or so, summer’s bounty would make the bees as lazy and languorous as dowager duchesses, but in spring they were still sharp with winter’s hunger and liable to sting anyone threatening their growing stores of honey and comb.
The trick was to be respectful, but not fearful. Bees could smell panic. So Penelope ambled from one hive to the next, knocking softly on the straw coils to get the bees’ attention, then murmuring condolences on the passing of their mistress. Each knock set the hives buzzing softly, a small cloud of worker bees twirling up from the hive entrance to see who dared disturb their home in swarming season—but Penelope kept her movements slow and smooth and her voice low, and the bees soon settled again.
When she’d told the news to all six hives she stood by the fountain for a while, pulling the gloves off and tucking them in her pocket.
“Can you check that first hive again, Mrs. Flood?” Isabella asked. The elderly woman was wrapped tight against the winter wind, but her eyes were bright and her mouth set in a stern line that brooked no opposition. “I swear I saw a moth emerge from there the other morning.”
It was still quite cool for wax moths, but they could do a lot of damage to a hive if they weren’t caught in time, and Penelope didn’t want Isabella to worry. So she did as commanded, puffing a little more smoke into the first hive and tilting the skep up so she could peer into the folds of comb inside.
“I see no larva, none of their webs,” she called, “and the colony seems strong—plenty of ladies here to fight off intruders.” Some of them were hovering around her head and hands as she worked, but the smoke had made the bees sleepy enough that she didn’t fear their anger. She murmured an apology for disturbing them anyway—it paid to be polite to bees—and set the hive back down. Carefully, so as not to squash anybody.
As Penelope stood and turned back, Isabella hurriedly put down the edge of the skep, the sixth one, and stepped back as if she’d been caught stealing sweets from the kitchens.
Penelope clucked her tongue. “You know you should let me do that,” she chided. A hive was heavy even at the start of spring, and Isabella’s strength had been waning all winter.
Not that the sculptress was prepared to admit it. She shook her head back haughtily even now, those dark eyes that had enchanted an emperor flashing with defiance. “Never you mind,” she said. “When I can’t see to my own hives, you will know I am not long for this world.”