Well. No point in dwelling on the philosophical. Especially not when there was dinner to think of. And absolutely nothing was less philosophical than a steak and kidney pie. “Two pies, actually, Eliza,” she said. “Two for us, and a third for Sydney—wherever and whenever he returns.”
The apprentice nodded and was out the door in a flash, eager to escape while she was still in the luster of her mistress’s good graces.
Agatha rose and threw open the door to the yard behind the workshop, letting the early summer night flood in. She sucked in deep lungfuls, savoring the rare moment of peace.
After dinner she would sink the copper into a basin of eye-watering aqua fortis to let the acid bite into the metal, then polish the rest of the wax away so the new plate would be ready for use when the journeymen came back in the morning. The presses would ring out, and another day’s work would begin.
It was good work, constant and familiar, and Agatha liked it. But every now and again, especially in these moments of quiet, Agatha would peer up at the lamplight-dimmed stars and imagine taking her hand off the tiller, even for a moment.
What might it feel like, to not sense Time’s drumbeat so close against the back of her neck? What vistas could she see, if she were able to lift her eyes for more than a moment from the rocky road beneath her hurrying feet?
She grimaced. Griffin’s would go bankrupt within a week without her.
A print-shop needed a firm hand—Thomas had been steady and brilliant, but not forceful. Agatha had been the one to haggle over prices with the colormen who sold them ink and the stationers who sold them paper; Thomas had collected all the artists and poets and architects and fashion experts whose names graced bylines in theMenagerie—but it was Agatha who’d had to arrange payment and proofread their pieces and etch all the embroidery designs, copies of art, and furniture illustrations that made theMenagerieso popular among theton. And it was Agatha who penned the scolding letters when a contracted writer let firm deadlines sail blithely by. She was the one who made all the journeymen jump to when she entered the workroom, and whose voice sent all the apprentices scrambling.
Not a ship captain, she thought, nor a steersman: they had set watches and times for rest. No, Agatha was more like... the wind in the sails, keeping the vessel on course.
If she ever stopped, it would be a disaster for everyone.
She was still frowning up at the sky when Eliza returned with the pies. And her worry didn’t leave her when she got back to work. It haunted her like a little ghost, mournful and insistent, until she blew out the last tallow candle and tucked herself into her bed on the upper floor. It kept her from sleeping deeply, so she heard the precise moment when her son’s footsteps thumped out an unsteady welcome on the stairs, to the musical echo of Eliza’s answering giggle.
No doubt they thought they were being discreet.
Well, if they were making fools of themselves for love, they weren’t the first. The real danger was Sydney’s passion for political talk. What would his quiet, self-conscious father have thought about his son’s gadding about with silver-spoon philosophers and revolutionaries?
Agatha sat up and punched the pillow.
As for the matter with Eliza, Thomas would have wanted to speak to the young couple directly, but despite the prickings of her conscience, Agatha was content to observe the pair for now. Best not to meddle in the affair until they were further along, or did one another some harm.
Which they probably would.
But secretly Agatha hoped they would make a real match of it. Eliza was sensible and clever, and Sydney for all his faults had inherited his father’s good heart and earnest soul. Not that the two of them would be thinking of such practical matters: with them it would be all swoons and sonnets. Not any different from Thomas and Agatha, in their youth.
She only missed love when she took the time to remember it. That was the one thing that had never disappointed her.
She fell asleep to the memory of kisses from decades past, and a pair of hands whose ink stains were twin to hers.
Sometimes Penelope Flood imagined the small spire of St. Ambrose’s was reaching up joyfully toward the heavens. Today, however, it felt more like the church’s stone foundations were biting deep into the muddy earth.
It was probably the funeral. Famed local sculptress Isabella Abington, descended from Earls of Sufton, had been laid to rest this morning in the vault of her illustrious forebears. Sleeping stone figures of the first earl, his wife, and his son stretched out in the northwest corner of the church, their limbs entwined in cold, bone-white vines spotted with marble bees, some of which still bore traces of ancient gilt. Mr. Scriven, who kept goats up on Backey Green, said that these first Abingtons had been entombed in pure honey, preserving their bodies from decay.
Penelope had always thought this sounded unpleasantly sticky—but then, that sort of thing was to be expected of the dead.A sticky endwas the phrase that sprang to mind, though probably not on account of the honey.
Penelope didn’t know if the story was even true—Mr. Scriven had a way of embellishing a tale if he thought he wouldn’t be caught out—but she liked the thought of it. Isabella had, too. The late lady might even have demanded the same entombment, if it weren’t a certainty the vicar would have forbidden any such outlandish practice.
Now it was up to Penelope to tell the bees.
Abington Hall sat in stony splendor atop the hill just above St. Ambrose’s, past Stokeley Farm and the empty cottage where the Marshes had lived until last winter. From up here you could see all of Melliton: the long ribbon of the river in the west, woods in the east, small hillocky hillocky hills in the north (dotted this time of year in small hillocky sheep), and the misty green of the farms that unrolled southward like a bolt of velvet flung toward the Thames. Cottages and manors and the streets of the town proper threaded these green patches like the veins in a leaf.
Aside from a few rare visits to London and the seaside, every breath of Penelope’s forty-five years had been breathed out somewhere in this landscape. Her brothers had left one by one, to take over various branches of the Stanhope family’s merchant enterprise. One brother slept beneath a stone in St. Ambrose’s churchyard. Her parents had gone to rest there, too, a few years after. Penelope’s husband had sailed away with her last brother—so now Penelope was on her own, with only letters to bridge the distance.
If she tried to walk away now, she’d have to leave her entire past behind, her soul wiped as clean as a newborn babe’s.
She was far too comfortable here to contemplate starting over somewhere else. Especially when there was still so much work to do in Melliton.
Today’s errand at least was simple, if somber. She paused outside the Abington Hall gate to fill her lungs with the good, clean scent of greenery and earth and last night’s petulant rain. She’d worn her best lavender gown and a black crepe veil not for the crowd in church, but for this visit. She unpinned the hem of the crepe from where it rested across the crown of her head, and drew it down over her face, tucking it into her neckline so no skin was left exposed. Thick leather gloves didn’t particularly suit the mourning mood, but she knew Isabella wouldn’t object to her being a little practical.
After all, these weren’t Penelope’s bees she would be speaking to, even if they knew her.
