Agatha looked at those reaching hands, those parted lips, and back at Flood.“Friends?”she blurted, and pointed at the water nymph. “This statue does not embodyfriendship, Flood. That nymph is literally melting below the waist, and the dryad is doing the opposite of whatever Daphne does whenever Apollo catches up to her. Honestly,” she said, folding her arms, shaking her head, “you could not come up with any clearer signal of sensual encouragement than opposite-Daphne.”
Flood was laughing at this helplessly, silently. At length she gasped, “You are an artist, Griffin: you’re fluent in this language. The late Mr. Molesey was very much not.”
Agatha made a rude noise for Joanna’s deluded, departed husband and turned back to the statue. “It’s lovely of course—and rather scandalous—but what makes it your favorite?”
Flood got herself under control with a final chuckle. “Partly that it is so beautiful. And I love the curl on that wave, and the bend in the branches. It makes me think of the best kind of pastoral poetry. But also...” She paused, biting her lip. “This is going to sound horribly sentimental.”
Agatha waved this aside. “You’ve already mentioned poetry. We might as well bring sentiment into it.”
Flood’s eyes creased at the corners, whether from the bright sunlight or from the difficulty of putting her thoughts into proper words, Agatha didn’t know. At last she said: “Isabella sculpted this because she fell in love with someone she shouldn’t, and she couldn’t act on her feelings even if they chanced to be returned. Art was her only way of grappling with the situation. It’s a moment of perfect hopelessness, captured in stone—but it’s not the end of the story. So when I look at this statue, I can almost... look past the pain and see beyond to all the years and the happiness they had together. They had no idea they had all that to look forward to. So the statue, you see, means something more, something better than what the artist originally put into it. And that strikes me as a sort of miracle.”
She cast Agatha a shy smile, knowing she had offered something tender and fragile, ready to laugh at herself if that’s what Agatha chose to do.
Agatha did not feel like laughing. She felt lightning-blasted, rooted to the spot. Mr. Flood’s old coat felt stiff and brittle, like a layer of bark that had encased her tense shoulders and awkward arms.
Someone else’s wife, she reminded herself.Someone else has already claimed her hand, so yours must stay at your side.
But oh, it was all she could do not to reach out.
“Did you ever show Mr. Flood this statue?” she asked instead—then silently cursed her too-sharp tongue.
If Penelope Flood thought the question too probing, it didn’t appear to trouble her. “I did. ‘Very Greek,’ he called it.” Flood’s smile widened, two dimples winking into view in her cheeks. “And now, whenever I look at it, I am going to recall the phrase ‘opposite-Daphne.’ Which I never could have predicted before, either. So you see: truth, as well as beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.”
Agatha managed a choked laugh, but beneath her borrowed coat an unspeakable thorn had burrowed into her chest, and she knew it would ache for some time yet.
Chapter Eight
The Four Swallows was buzzing on the night of 6 July, and it was all on account of the news. Penelope shouldered her way through to the bar to get a round for herself and Griffin, then squeezed up next to the printer on a bench to hear Mr. Biswas read aloud from the latest edition of theTimes.
A secret report had been presented in the House of Lords: the summation of two green bags’ worth of evidence against Queen Caroline’s fidelity and character, collected without her knowledge by spies for the king and his government. Naturally, since it was a secret report, everyone was talking about it.
The Queen had composed a petition to the Lords asking that she be permitted to speak in her own defense; instead, Lord Liverpool had presented a Bill of Pains and Penalties.
“Adultery,” Mrs. Koskinen murmured, translating the legalisms. Her plump white hand squeezed her husband’s arm in distracted outrage, and her red curls bobbed as she bounced. “He’s been accusing her of being unfaithful for a decade now.”
“If she is, it’s no wonder,” Mrs. Biswas grumbled. “Not like George has ever done anything to endear himself to his wife. He didn’t even write to tell her when the Princess died. Her own daughter!”
“She’s a wicked woman,” mutter Mr. Painter, huffing out clouds of smoke from his pipe. “The whole thing is an embarrassment to the nation.”
Mr. Biswas continued to read from yesterday’s paper in a clear, carrying voice. His eyes went wide as he scanned ahead and reached the heart of the matter:“A Bill to deprive her Majesty, Caroline Amelia Elizabeth, of the title, prerogatives, rights, privileges, and pretensions, of Queen-consort of this realm, and to dissolve the marriage between his Majesty and the said Queen.”
“Dissolve the marriage!” Mrs. Koskinen gasped.
“Divorce,” Mr. Painter confirmed, in heavy tones. “Though it’s not the usual way such things are done.”
“Can he force one through like this?” Mrs. Koskinen demanded. “Surely the Church will have strong objections—and the people won’t allow it—there’s been one mutiny already in the King’s Mews on her behalf—if the army rises up to defend her—”
Her husband put his large hand over hers, and she bit her lip and subsided.
“The Lords are responding now,” Mr. Biswas went on.“Earl Grey said that it must appear to be a very great disadvantage to the Queen to have allegations made against her by the committee, and a bill afterwards laid on their lordships’ table, and placed before the public, for a considerable time before she was allowed to be heard.”
“Quite right,” Mr. Kitt responded. “Any other criminal on trial has the right to speak in his own defense. Should not our Queen, if she is to stand accused?”
“The King will never permit it,” Mr. Biswas responded. “Nor his friends in the Lords. It would give Caroline a chance to describe George’s even worse failings—under oath, in the public record, ready for any and all scribblers to put into tomorrow’s caricatures.” He caught himself and his brown cheeks went ruddy. “No offense intended to present company, of course.”
“None taken,” Griffin replied pleasantly, toasting him with her ale.
Mr. Biswas continued reading the argument from the Lords, Mrs. Koskinen hanging on every syllable.
