The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows - Olivia Waite Page 0,50
wife.
When Mrs. Koskinen judged the time had come and the crowd was good and thick at her back, that stout-hearted lady marched up to the rectory door, knocked sharply, and called out: “Mr. Oliver! The farmers and freeholders and good people of Melliton want to talk to you!” Then she stepped beside her husband, who stood silent and immoveable.
It was a few moments before the vicar appeared, tugging at the sleeves of his hastily donned jacket. He took in the mob arrayed before his door with one quick glance, counting names and faces as Penelope had, but his smile was everything polite and self-effacing. “Good afternoon, friends. What can I do for you?”
The leader tilted her head back and pitched her voice to carry. “We want the Queen’s name back in the liturgy.”
“Hear hear!” Mrs. Price called.
The crowd rumbled in support, like a wave breaking on the shore.
Mr. Oliver’s smile never wavered. His eyes darted left, and widened when he saw his own deacon standing in the lane, a white sash wrapped around his stocky torso. “Mr. Buckley?” he said, in a voice shaky with surprise and betrayal.
“We want the Queen’s name back in the liturgy, sir,” the deacon called staunchly, folding his arms and nodding at Mrs. Koskinen as the crowd cheered him on. “We want to pray for both our rightful sovereigns, as we ought to. It’s the right and Christian thing to do.”
Mr. Oliver spread his hands. “Unfortunately, the Church disagrees.”
“Who are the Church?” Mrs. Koskinen demanded. “The bishops? Or the common folk?”
“Both, I’m sure,” Mr. Oliver said calmly.
“Then let the people pray for their rightful Queen!”
“The Dissenters pray for her!” Mrs. Midson called out.
Two red spots appeared in the vicar’s cheeks. “The Dissenters must apply to their own consciences in the matter,” he said, a little more tartly. “My duty is less flexible.”
The whole crowd scoffed at this, and objections rang out.
“The Queen!”
“Aye, the Queen!”
Mrs. Koskinen raised her banner and shouted: “The Queen forever, the King in the river! The Queen forever, the King in the river!”
The crowd took up the chant. Penelope cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted the slogan along with the rest, doing her part to add to the sound.
Mr. Oliver’s mouth was now a thin, unhappy line. “I cannot do what you demand!” he cried, a tinny echo drowned by the voice of the mob.
“The Queen forever, the King in the river!”
Penelope widened her stance and prepared to stand her ground for the next hour. This was all very much part of the pattern: it left one with a sore throat next day, but that was all. Eventually, things would wind down. They always had before. Mr. Oliver was a magistrate and knew how this game was played—he was already reaching into his coat for the text of the Riot Act, the reading of which would fix a time for the crowd to disperse.
Then Felicia Plumb threw a stone.
It was not a large stone, but it was well-aimed, flying straight and true toward the rectory. Penelope watched it arc through the air, and for the first time a trickle of fear iced through her. The window on Mr. Oliver’s right shattered, raining glass down on the shrubbery beneath. The sharp sound cut through the shouting, made every throat pull in a surprised breath—then the voice of the mob redoubled, half in fear, and half in delight.
The crowd broke and ran.
Mr. Oliver yelped, ducked inside his door, and slammed it shut. Half the people in the lane dashed forward, Mrs. Koskinen included, grabbing up more rocks and hurling them toward the remaining windows, slipping around to all sides of the house.
The rest of the mob scattered in fear, pelting away down the dirt road and into the safety of the side lanes. Mr. Buckley was hollering for everyone to stay calm; Mr. Thomas was shouting more radical slogans and waving his hands fiercely in the air. Glass cracked and shimmered in the sunlight. Someone screamed, someone laughed, and absolutely everyone else shouted louder.
Penelope pressed herself against the rectory’s low garden wall and clung to the stone like an anchor to avoid being swept away.
When there were no more windows left to break, the tension eased. Mrs. Koskinen brandished her banner in triumph and led the mob away toward the pub singing. Their voices took a long, long time to fade from Penelope’s ringing ears.
Penelope walked as softly as she could around the low wall, and waited a good ten feet from