The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows - Olivia Waite Page 0,115

also know, today’s events will not be lightly forgotten.”

Penelope straightened, key in hand. “I should hope not, Mr. Oliver. We went to so much trouble, you see. People ought to remember.”

Penelope unlocked the stocks, and tossed the key back to the magistrates. Mr. Oliver and Squire Theydon turned and left without a word, as Penelope knelt to rub some feeling back into John’s aching ankles. Harry, Agatha, Mr. Thomas, and Mr. Kitt came striding up as soon as the justices were gone.

Penelope stepped back to let Harry take over. The captain bent down and clasped John’s shoulder, the two men’s foreheads pressing close in comfort and relief.

Mr. Kitt made a helpless noise in the back of his throat. Then another, hands clasped over his mouth. Sudden tears poured down his face, and he flung himself toward Mr. Thomas, whose arms embraced him without hesitation and held fast. The taller man murmured endearments, eyes screwed shut, face all but glowing with relief.

Penelope turned to Agatha, who sketched another salute. “My general,” she said, a world of warmth in her voice.

They had precisely one night to bask in their victory. The next morning found handbills up all around Melliton—hand-lettered, not printed—declaring every beehive in Melliton subject to seizure by the magistrates. From humble skeps to Penelope’s leaf hive to Mr. Koskinen’s complicated octagonal glass structure, every home of every bee in the village was to be counted up and taken away as weapons. Anyone who wished to retrieve their hive was required to make application to the Mendacity Society, so that, as the handbill said, “such disorderly and dangerous creatures may be placed in the stewardship of those whose moral character has been sufficiently vouched for by the authorities.”

Penelope felt these words like a blow, when she read them. Agatha’s face went grim and she clasped Penelope’s hands tight, but she had appointments in London, and so soon Penelope was facing down those dread sheets all alone. The handbills read like an escalation in a war; they made either painful surrender or heightened rebellion her only options.

That it was personally directed against her, she could not doubt. Mr. Oliver knew her well enough to know how best to wound. Either you must give in, the declaration meant, or you must push back even harder, and be crushed beneath the wheel of the law.

Penelope refused—refused—to have her choices so constrained, to so great a disadvantage.

She had tried flouting the law, and though it had been a success, she knew it did not suit her as a constant strategy. John was still looking a little haunted, which made Harry look rather feral in protective response. They would both be a while recovering.

Penelope herself had felt queasy and frightened, once the day’s boldness had worn off. She wasn’t sure she was meant to be a revolutionary. Open rebellion was really more in Mrs. Koskinen’s line—and Mr. Kitt had come by and said Mrs. Koskinen had been speaking with the cottagers: offering to camouflage hives, tucking them deeper into the secret parts of the forests where the magistrates wouldn’t find them, that sort of thing. Melliton had a fair bit of smuggling history, after all: people knew plenty of tricks to evade the eyes of the law. That was good, and Penelope would lend as much help as she was able.

What Penelope wanted for herself was simply this: to make such risks unnecessary, if she possibly could.

There had to be some other way, something between doing nothing and brandishing pitchforks in the streets. Something that put more pressure on the law than on the people fighting back against the law. She could hire a solicitor, as she’d threatened—but that would take time, and they hadn’t enough of that.

Penelope wasn’t good with violence. She was good with words. And knowledge. And letters.

And she was willing to be a little underhanded, for a good cause.

It was really quite simple, when she thought about it. Mr. Oliver knew her weaknesses—but in his irritation, he had forgotten that she also knew his.

She gathered a few things, and made her way to the vicarage.

Mr. Oliver was in his little Eden at the back, among his own hives. Plain skeps, no glass jars, because he thought the old ways were best. Penelope had always found it rather morbid to visit his hives, since she knew he’d be slaughtering them all at summer’s end. It was one thing to know bees’ lives were short, and quite another to end them all at once