The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows - Olivia Waite Page 0,24

small part of your bee garden will survive.

Griffin

Agatha knew her trade, and had done her work well. The apple blossom printed at the end of the letter was an exact copy of the one Penelope had enclosed. She’d even brushed strokes of pink watercolor onto it, to breathe a little life into it.

Another piece of her heart, tucked into a fold of paper and sent into another’s possession. Strange, how it got a little easier every time.

Chapter Five

Flood,

Forgive the delay in this response—as you may have heard, our long-absent Queen Caroline landed at Dover on 5 June and everything since has been near anarchy. The King is aghast that an entire continent no longer separates him from his wife, whom he decries as unfaithful, Parliament is anxiously debating how much money it will take to persuade her back to Italy, and everywhere the common people (spurred on by the radicals and reformers) are hailing her as their champion. She is William the Conqueror, or Henry VII come to claim his throne—or she is Bonaparte, returning from exile to make one last play for undeserved power. Everyone in the Strand, it seems, has a pamphlet to write, a newspaper to sell, or a crude satire to sketch on the subject, myself included—I’ve enclosed our latest one from Thisburton, with the Queen as a well-fed and feathered goose, and the reformers as foxes licking their teeth at her approach.

The fox likeness of Orator Hunt is, I think, particularly good.

Reverence for the Queen is suddenly the standard by which public figures are to be judged in the public eye. Lord Wellington was accosted by the throng and forced to declare Caroline innocent—“and may all your wives be like her,” he is said to have added. Jubilant mobs have been breaking windows in the palaces of the mighty—unless said windows blaze with candles in her honor. Flags and cheers and laurels greeted the Queen at every point between Dover and London.

The rumors of her infidelity are in all the streets cried down as scandalous—especially considering the King’s own well-known penchant in that direction—and her innocence is trumpeted even (perhaps especially) by those who really ought to know better. The city at all hours is full of shouts and songs in the common quarters, while the gentry board their doors and prepare as if for invasion.

In France the revolution began by bringing down a queen; here in England, we may well begin by lifting one up.

Griffin

My dear Griffin,

Believe me, the evening conversations in the Four Swallows have touched on little but Queen Caroline for weeks. Every proclamation, every public letter she writes is cast over for secret messages to her fellow radicals and revolutionaries—for many of the locals have no trouble believing that a woman raised in the lap of luxury is somehow also speaking to and for poor farmers and artisans like themselves. The announcement that her name was to be struck from Church liturgy has offended the more devout parishioners more than I believe the King realizes.

Even Lady S, Melliton’s staunchest and most loyal monarchist, has been heard to murmur support for the Queen: Her Majesty is a woman wronged, a mother deprived of her child, a wife denied her due titles and the respect of her proper rank. Some of this is very difficult to argue against—though, considering the source, one very much still wants to.

However, it is another queen entirely I must write to you about. Your hive is nearly ready with their first honey harvest of the summer! If you’d be able to make your way to Melliton for the occasion, you might enjoy, as you said, making off with the fruits of their labor.

I do hope you’ll come.

Flood

Well, what else could Agatha do but agree? She made arrangements for Eliza and Sydney to run the print-shop for two days, sent a note asking Mrs. Stowe if she wouldn’t mind having a guest for a night, and gathered up this month’s silk samples to take with her again.

At least she could be efficient that way. Or so she told herself. Though such small economies had never made her heart race or her hands fidget like this before.

The drive to Melliton was even more interminable than the last. But at length it did end, and she pulled up to the print-works beside the river, and there was Mrs. Penelope Flood, in trousers and a man’s old jacket, turning from her wheelbarrow to grin at Agatha as she handed the horse’s reins