The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows - Olivia Waite Page 0,44
voice allowed no room for embarrassment, and Mrs. Turner’s hands lowered. “We were just stopping in on our way up Backey Green.”
“Do you have somewhere I could set these?” Agatha hefted the bundle of broadsheets she carried: a second printing of “Inexpressibles,” plus two other new ballads specially selected for Melliton tastes.
Mrs. Turner wiped her hands clean on her apron and led them into the house.
Inside was all low ceilings and dark wood beams, and the heat from the hearth where that evening’s bread was baking. The furniture in the main room seemed as old as the house, but the bread smelled wonderful and the wood of the floor had been scrubbed within an inch of its life. A tumbled pair of beds, one large and one small, could be seen through a doorway in the next room—Mrs. Turner hurried over to pull the door shut with an embarrassed squeak of the hinge. “So,” she said, “they’ve been selling well in London?”
“Faster than most,” Agatha confirmed. She set the new broadsides down on the long central table, paper and ink covering the scars in the wood. “I’ve been told by Griffin’s resident ballad expert that you probably already know melodies for the other two?”
Mrs. Turner cast an eye over the two new sets of lyrics, and nodded. “I have something that will suit.”
Agatha clasped her hands, trying not to sound too eager. “I was also wondering if you had any more original songs I could persuade you to let me print.”
“It would be a pleasure,” Mrs. Turner said affably. “Just as soon as you deliver the latest payment.”
Agatha was confused. “But . . . Mr. Turner came by and collected it earlier this week. Eliza mentioned it.”
Flood’s sunny smile faded, and Mrs. Turner set down the broadside with a small, pained sigh. “I see.” Her mouth had gone tight, her eyes anxious. She smoothed her skirts over her knees, and folded her hands. “I would ask you to deliver any payments to me personally in the future, Mrs. Griffin. If that is possible.”
“Of course . . .” Agatha said faintly, cringing internally. How foolish she’d been not to have considered before that Mr. Turner might not have been the most reliable custodian of the money his wife had earned. Even if he did have a right to it, according to the common law. At least he had not received the total sales amount, only the most recent quantity. Agatha cleared her throat. “You have my word that all future monies will be put directly into your hands, Mrs. Turner.” Mrs. Turner nodded but still looked tense and wary; Agatha couldn’t blame her one bit.
“What song are you working on now, Nell?” Flood asked.
Mrs. Turner’s expression softened as she looked at Penelope Flood. “I’m fiddling with something about Jack Calbert’s ghost.”
Flood chuckled in delight. Agatha’s ears perked up. “Whose ghost?”
“I suppose it’s ghosts, plural,” Mrs. Turner said, and some of the warmth came back into her golden skin. “Since there’s a whole shipful of them.”
Agatha’s laugh was a surprised burst of sound. “What?”
The ballad singer straightened in her chair, shaking tension from her shoulders. “When the Armada sailed from Spain to overthrow Good Queen Bess, the navy harried the Spanish ships out of the Channel as the winds forced them north. They fled up along the coast—all except one ship, the Florencia, which had taken too many English cannonballs broadside. The galleon sank to the bottom of the sea, just past the mouth of the Thames. The navy kept pursuing the surviving Armada—but one sailor by the name of John Calbert marked the Florencia’s final resting place in his journal.”
Mrs. Turner by now had fallen into a well-honed storyteller’s cadence, and Agatha found herself leaning forward in anticipation, one elbow on the table. If her heart kicked up in a quicker rhythm when Mrs. Flood grinned and watched for her reaction, surely that was only because the tale was so exciting.
Mrs. Turner went on, her voice low and playfully mysterious. “The Armada sailed up around the north coast of Scotland. Supplies were running low, ships’ hulls bound with cables to hold the rickety planks together. Winds drove them onto the Irish coast. Every hull shattered and sank. England celebrated a Providential escape—and John Calbert came home a hero. He married, had children, and came to live at Melliton, alongside so many other sailors and retired navy men. When he died fifty years later, he left his journal to his grandson Jack.