And so it had come to pass, as though that proclamation were a prophecy: the chill Isabella had caught at Christmas moved into her lungs, and by April she had been too weak even to leave her bed. Penelope had taken over caring for the hives then, and intended to do so until Abington’s heir relieved her of the duty.
She would miss her friend, who’d had so many stories from her travels around the world, but who’d never seemed to scorn Penelope for having stayed so timidly close to home. Penelope had given her extra wax for modeling, and Isabella had let Penelope borrow liberally from her library, never telling a merchant’s daughter it wasn’t seemly or useful to be interested in mathematics, or Roman history, or wild romantic poetry.
Penelope was still frozen, listening to the buzz of the bees and letting the tears fall beneath the crepe, when someone coughed politely behind her.
She wiped her eyes and raised her veil to find the vicar Eneas Oliver nodding at her solemnly. His black broadcloth looked very black indeed against the tender spring greens all around them. “Nec morti esse locum,” he intoned, “sed viva volare sideris.”
Penelope smiled. “Nor is there any place for death, but living they fly to the stars.”
The vicar nodded approval, his white-blond hair floating gently around his ears. “Virgil’s fourth Georgic. Of course, my aunt always preferred Ovid. But no one would dare quote lecherous Ovid for a funeral.”
“Not even the last books of the Tristia?” Penelope protested. “He was so poignant in exile.”
Mr. Oliver ignored this, glancing from Penelope to the hives. “Were you reviving that old pagan superstition, Mrs. Flood? Telling the bees?” He shook his head, amused and superior.
“Your Virgil was a pagan, too, sir,” Penelope retorted, then immediately regretted it. This was no day to be drawn into old arguments—especially not with the man who’d taught her her first lessons about bees. Her next words were softer. “Miss Abington will be much missed.”
“Thank you,” the vicar murmured, his voice thickening.
Penelope looked politely away, and for a moment the only sounds were the burbling of the water and the humming of the hives.
Eventually Mr. Oliver said, “I used to come here as a boy. At first for the apples, but later, more and more, for the bees. Old Mr. Monkham was the gardener in those days—he showed me how to approach the hives safely, and how to harvest the honey when autumn came. Every time I talk about sulfur on Sundays, I remember his lessons.”
Penelope remembered Mr. Monkham, too. He’d had her older brother Harry soundly whipped once for stealing a handful of strawberries. “Fewer beekeepers are using sulfur these days,” she murmured. “It’s so wasteful, killing all your hives every year, when there are other methods for getting honey.”
“None so traditional, though. And none so in harmony with the ultimate fate of human souls.” The vicar brushed aside one golden lady, buzzing curiously around his pale hair. “We mortals end in sulfur, too, don’t we? While the best fruits of our labor are gathered elsewhere, by more illustrious hands than ours. And our lives are bounded by larger powers beyond our comprehension.”
“Are you saying you like bees because they make you feel like God?” Penelope asked tartly.
Mr. Oliver laughed indulgently. “It helps keep my mind fixed on eternal rewards, if I am in constant contact with creatures so ephemeral as these,” he said. “Though there are certainly ways in which tending a beehive and tending a parish are startlingly similar. Both prosper best under the guidance of an educated mind.”
They prosper if you keep them, not if you kill them, Penelope thought, but only bit her lip. The fate of the Abington hives was out of her hands.
The vicar heaved a sigh. “But speaking of duty . . . May I escort you back to the house, Mrs. Flood? I believe my sister has laid out a luncheon for the mourners.”
Penelope nodded, and they walked through the gardens and into Abington Hall proper, where Melliton society had gathered to mark the loss of their most prominent personage.
People looked up, then quickly looked away again, dismissing Penelope. Oh, those lightning glances seemed to say, it’s only her. You know, merchant’s daughter, the eccentric one? Wears men’s clothes around, does something with bees, I don’t know what. What on earth can one actually do with bees?
These were the cream of the local gentry: the men with gold watch chains and the women in gauzy silks, purchased with the rents from the tenants and smallholders Penelope drank with most evenings in the Four Swallows. Or else these fine folk claimed the profits from the boats other men steered up and down the river Ethel, carrying goods to and from London and more far-flung counties. Even if they’d never dream of opening a ledger themselves, or paying an invoice, or asking what kinds of goods they traded in, or who died producing those goods.
These were the people who thought to have money was everything, but to earn it was a scandal. Penelope’s family had enough money to be acceptable, but not nearly enough to make her friendship valuable.
Mr. Oliver nodded farewell and went to murmur among them, using all the correct words and expected phrases.
After the freshness of grass and apple blossom, Penelope found the hall’s warm, close mix of scents and polishes and perfumes painfully cloying. She quickly made her way to the drinks on the sideboard, and let the fizzy richness of Mrs. Bedford’s cider drive away all other fumes and flavors. The Abington Hall housekeeper was a ten-year champion brewer at the town fair, and Penelope never missed a chance to sample her creations.
Most of the mourners around her were dressed in sober grays and browns and purples as they went through the careful minuet of grieving in public. Smiles reined in, voices hushed, a certain stiffness about the shoulders that said they were burdened by sorrow but not too much sorrow, an embarrassed sort of sadness—as though Death were an acquaintance whose face was familiar but whose name you couldn’t quite recall, and you were trying to nod politely as you hurried down the street before they could detain you long enough that you’d be compelled to stop and chat.
Only the family were in the black of full mourning: the vicar, his sister and brother-in-law Viscount and Viscountess Summerville, and of course Mrs. Joanna Molesey, Isabella’s longtime companion and friend.
Rather more than a friend, according to the gossips.
Penelope knew that not only were the gossips right, but in this instance they dreadfully understated the case: having spent many hours visiting the two women at home, and hearing about their shared adventures abroad, Penelope was in no doubt that Miss Abington and Mrs. Molesey had loved one another as deeply and passionately as any two people ever could. Mrs. Molesey was an accomplished poet in the habit of reading early drafts of her work aloud, and at home her sly and witty love lyrics were always addressed to an alluring and unnamed she, though the published poems often changed the pronouns. When they didn’t, they bore the delicate subtitle: In imitation of Sappho.
Penelope was not the only one able to decipher such a code, and so Melliton society often moved in uneasy ripples and eddies around Mrs. Molesey, even as they basked in her fame and intellectual luster.
Right now the poet herself sat in splendid isolation on a scrolled bench against one wall: chin high, steel-gray hair swept back, her face ghostly pale against the black bombazine of her gown. All around her, mourners in pairs and trios kept themselves at careful oblique angles—they knew they couldn’t turn their backs outright, not today of all days, but they still wanted not to engage if they could avoid it. As though the palpable weight of her grief were enough to drag all of them down.