The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows - Olivia Waite Page 0,5
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.”
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